US commercial real estate facing “wall of debt.”

Nick Beams

While Wall Street has been hitting record highs on the prospect of interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve in 2024, at least three and possibly more, a key sector of the US economy with crucial links to the financial system, is being hit by the rise in rates that has taken place since March 2022.

New housing in Middlesex Township, Pennsylvania, United States, April 19, 2023. [AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar]

According to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, reported on by the Financial Times (FT), “billions of dollars of debt will fall due this year on hundreds of big US office buildings that their owners are likely to struggle to refinance at current interest rates.”

There are $117 billion worth of mortgages based on offices which need to be repaid or refinanced this year. Many of the mortgages were taken out when interest rates were at ultra-low levels because of the quantitative easing police pursued the Fed and other central banks for almost a decade and half after the financial crash of 2008 and the crisis of 2020 when COVID struck.

The FT report cited the comments of a real estate finance lawyer at a major firm who said it would be a problem to get some of the refinancing done.

“We’re seeing deals where even sophisticated borrowers are calling it a day and asking their lenders whether they would like to take the keys,” he said.

The commercial real estate sector has already been hit with a shock because of the collapse of the Austrian firm Signa in December which has now put up for sale half of the Chrysler building in New York in order to raise cash.

While Signa’s owner, the billionaire René Banko assembled what has been characterised as a “financial time bomb”—gorging himself on “cheap financing left, right and centre” as one description put it—his activities were only one of the more extreme examples of a broader process.

Last November it was reported by industry tracker BankRegDate that delinquent commercial real estate loans had reached their highest rate in a decade—the consequence of higher interest rates and the fall on demand for office space as a result of growth of remote working in response to the pandemic.

The volume of loans on which property owners had missed more than one payment jumped by 30 percent, $4 billion, in the September quarter and increased by $10 billion in the past year.

It is expected the delinquencies are going to continue with Bill Moreland of BankRegData telling the FT that commercial real estate lending was “getting ugly fast.”

Larger banks have resources to weather the storm, at least so far, but much of lending in the US is carried out by small regional banks. They have already been hit by the rise in interest rates because of the loss of value on the government bonds in which they placed their cash, because it was a “safe” security.

This situation led to the demise of three banks in March, but the problem went across the board with many banks “underwater” where their total liabilities is greater than the book value of their assets.

The FT reported that last month “a group of US economists found that 40 percent of office loans on bank balance sheets were underwater, potentially causing problems for dozens of regional banks holding them.”

The problems for commercial real estate are long term. Back in April, Bloomberg reported that a “wall” of commercial and real estate debt worth almost $1.5 trillion would become due for repayment before the end of 2025. The big question facing these borrowers was “who is going to refinance them?”

A note by Morgan Stanley analysts at the time said refinancing risks were front and centre as it estimated that office and retail property valuations could fall by as much as 40 percent from peak to trough, increasing the risk of defaults. Things have not improved since then and, as the Bloomberg report noted, would continue to worsen.

It is not only small and regional banks that are being impacted. Problems are emerging as well in the high end of the finance sector and commercial real estate.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that one of the “hottest fundraising juggernauts” on Wall Street, nontraded real-estate investment trusts (REITS) that allowed investors to take part in the 2019‒2022 property boom, had “run off the rails” last year.

Redemptions from the funds soared last year as investors sought to cash in and on occasions the trusts had to implement rules that limited the rate at which people could get their money back.

Nontraded REITs raised $9.8 billion the year to November compared to $33.2 billion in 2022, as investors pulled out $17.4 billion.

The article said that while the pace of redemptions had slowed to some extent towards the end of last year, outflows were expected to exceed funds raised in 2024. This made “the business a symbol of the worst downturns to hit the commercial-property industry since World War II.”

An article in the New York Times at the end of last year said the building spree which had reshaped the Manhattan skyline over the past 25 years was over.

“Rising construction costs and interest rates have significantly driven up the price to build. Banks are increasingly reluctant to finance such construction while Manhattan has record office vacancies,” it said.

Office developers had been hit by a one-two punch. First the decline in demand because of COVID and then soaring interest rate “kryptonite for an industry built on debt.”

At the end of November nearly 18 percent of all office space in Manhattan was available for lease, much of it in older buildings built after World War II.

The average asking rent for office space in Manhattan is $75 per square foot. But with higher construction costs, rates and increased interest rates developers of new buildings would need to charge between $200 to $300 per square foot.

Such figures, coupled with the mounting commercial real estate problems across the country, indicate that the boom of the past quarter century, based on some of the lowest interest rates in history, is over and a financial reckoning is coming.

AOC silent as Biden prepares bipartisan deal with Republicans to eviscerate right to asylum

Jacob Crosse

As President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party work to strike a deal with the Republicans that will effectively abolish the right to asylum and virtually close the US-Mexico border to desperate migrants in exchange for $61.4 billion in additional military aid to Ukraine, Democratic Socialists of America Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has maintained a complicit silence.

This is all the more damning given Biden’s pledge to hire more Border Patrol agents after his border police doubled deportations last year, and the fascistic immigrant baiting of the White House’s Republican “colleagues.”

On Wednesday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and over 60 Republican House members descended on Eagle Pass, Texas, where they held a press conference demanding sweeping changes to immigration laws and polices in exchange for their votes for the $110 billion supplemental funding package proposed by Biden. The package includes, beyond the tens of billions for the war against Russia, an additional $14.3 billion to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza and $13.6 billion for “border protection,” i.e., more border gestapo and jails for migrant men, women and children.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks while standing with Republican members of Congress, Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024, in Eagle Pass, Texas. [AP Photo/Eric Gay]

In his speech, Johnson made clear that House Republicans would not support Biden’s supplemental war package unless the White House agreed to adopt all of ex-President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, including “Remain in Mexico” and completion of Trump’s border wall.

Johnson praised Governor Greg Abbott for signing Texas Senate Bill 4, which illegally empowers state police to deport suspected “illegal aliens,” superseding federal immigration law and congressional authority. He also praised the governor for deploying buoys in the Rio Grande River and razor wire along the border.

The Department of Justice on Wednesday sued Texas over SB 4 after Abbott refused to give assurances that the state of Texas would not enforce the law. Only 21 Democrats asked the Justice Department to intervene on SB 4, with only one DSA Democrat, Rep. Greg Casar, signing the letter.

Ocasio-Cortez has maintained some support among workers and left-leaning youth by falsely presenting herself as a “socialist” willing to fight the Democratic Party establishment. Leveraging her Puerto Rican ancestry, Ocasio-Cortez previously pledged to defend the democratic rights of “black and brown” people while being photographed weeping outside a migrant children’s facility.

One of the reasons Ocasio-Cortez amassed 14 million followers spread across her two X/Twitter accounts and another 8.4 million on Instagram was her stated opposition to Trump’s fascistic immigration policies. Ocasio-Cortez frequently trended on social media by declaring her intention to abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

However, after stumping for “Genocide Joe” Biden in 2020, Ocasio-Cortez denounced socialist opponents of Biden’s anti-immigrant policies as “privileged” while keeping quiet about his attacks on immigrants. Her congressional office has not issued a press release on the border situation since October. In that statement, Ocasio-Cortez implored the Biden administration to not waive environmental laws in order to “fast track” construction of Trump’s border wall through the Rio Grande Valley. Her letter was ignored.

Throughout the entire month of December, neither of AOC’s X/Twitter accounts mentioned the words “immigrant” or “asylum,” even after Texas Governor Abbott signed his trio of anti-immigrant bills in the middle of the month.

Instead, she has continued to sow illusions in the Biden administration and the Democratic Party. In one of the few social media posts she has made in the past two weeks, on her Instagram account just before the New Year, Ocasio-Cortez listed “our 23 wins from 2023.”

The video is a summary of what AOC presents as “wins” or “accomplishments.” Speaking of her ninth “win” of the year, Ocasio-Cortez boasts, “We hosted a dozen members of Congress to tour the migrant response in New York City and successfully secured additional resources and Temporary Protected Status for half a million Venezuelans.”

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez boasting about politicians touring migrant shelters in an Instagram video. [Photo: aoc]

She makes no mention of the fact that New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, is in the process of evicting thousands of immigrants from these shelters, many of which are overrun and in poor condition.

Ocasio-Cortez’s silence is matched by that of her organization, the Democratic Socialists of America. The last article published by the DSA in Democratic Left criticizing Adams and the Democratic Party’s attacks on immigrants was on October 3, 2023, three months ago.

Since that article was published, the Republican presidential front-runner Trump has used Hitlerian language to attack immigrants, accusing them of “poisoning the blood of country,” while promising to carry out the biggest deportation operation in US history.

This has not prevented Biden and Democratic lawmakers from conducting secret talks with Trump’s allies in the House and Senate over trading incalculable suffering for hundreds of thousands of migrants for more missiles, bombs, drones, tanks and warplanes to increase the carnage in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

On Wednesday, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates released a statement that sought to outflank the Republicans from the right by linking the so-called “border crisis” to their failure to back Biden’s supplemental spending bill and the billions more for border “security” it provides.

“Action speaks louder than words,” read Bates’ statement. “House Republicans’ anti-border security record is defined by their attempt to cut Customs and Border Protection personnel, opposing President Biden’s record-breaking border security funding and refusing to take up the President’s supplemental funding request.”

US draws up plan to attack mainland Yemen as Middle East spirals into war

Andre Damon

The amphibious assault ship USS Bataan, front, and the landing ship USS Carter Hall, back travel through the Red Sea, Tuesday, August 8, 2023. Western-backed maritime forces in the Middle East on Saturday, August 12, warned shippers traveling through the strategic Strait of Hormuz to stay as far away from Iranian territorial waters as possible to avoid being seized. [AP Photo/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Riley Gasdia/U.S. Navy]

The US military has “prepared options” for attacking Yemen, the Wall Street Journal reported, amid a major escalation of war throughout the Middle East.

The Journal reported that “potential targets could include launchers for antiship missiles and drones, targeting infrastructure such as coastal radar installations, and storage facilities for munitions.”

In a threat to Yemen, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday the US will not “shrink from the task of defending ourselves, our interests, our partners, and the free flow of international commerce.”

He added, “To accomplish these goals we have established and will continue to maintain a significant force presence in the Middle East. This includes an aircraft carrier strike group centered around the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, with its embarked air wing of some 80 aircraft, as well as an amphibious ready group with its embarked 26 Marine Expeditionary Unit.”

These ships, Kirby said, contain “more than 4,000 sailors and more than 50 aircraft.” He added, “These ships and their Marines are augmented by three additional squadrons of fighter and attack aircraft that are based ashore and additional highly capable warships at sea.” These ships, Kirby said, represent “offensive … military power.”

The belligerent statements cap two days of major escalations of tensions throughout the Middle East. On Tuesday, Israel carried out a strike in Beirut, Lebanon, killing Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of Hamas’s political committee. While Israel denied its responsibility for the strike, US officials later confirmed to Al Jazeera that the attack was conducted by Israel.

The US effectively endorsed the murder of al-Arouri, with White House spokesman Kirby declaring that Israel “has a right and responsibility to go after the threat that Hamas poses, which means they have a right and a responsibility to go after the leadership of Hamas.” He added, “I would just tell you that al-Arouri was a noted ‘designated global terrorist.’ And if he is, in fact, dead, nobody should be shedding a tear over his loss.”

Then, on Wednesday, over 100 people were killed at a memorial ceremony for Maj. Gen. Qassemi Soleimani, the Iranian general murdered by US President Donald Trump while on a diplomatic mission in Iraq four years ago. While Israel has for years carried out a string of bombings throughout Iran, in this case both the United States and Israel denied responsibility.

Mojataba Zolnouri, Iran’s deputy Parliament head, said that it was “clear from the style of the attacks that it is the Zionist regime” which is responsible for the bombing. But White House spokesman Kirby declared, “We have no indication that Israel was in any way involved in this.”

Last week, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed that Israel is at “war” with multiple countries. “We are in a multi-front war. We are being attacked from seven fronts—Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Iraq, Yemen and Iran,” he said. “We have already responded and acted on six of those fronts,” in a clear threat to Iran.

The US media continues to incite direct war against Iran. On the day in which 100 people were killed in a terror attack on Iran, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial calling Iran “the fulcrum of Mideast violence,” and declaring, “Sooner or later the US and its allies will have to reestablish deterrence if they want a more stable Middle East, and that means dealing with Iran.”

This week, Israel announced that thousands of troops would be withdrawn from Gaza, raising the prospect that they will be used in an attack on Lebanon. Israel has evacuated 70,000 residents from its northern border with Lebanon and has amassed troops and tanks there. Israeli forces have launched daily bombardments across the Lebanese border since October 7.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will depart Thursday to the Middle East, including a trip to Israel. The death toll in Israel’s genocide is quickly nearing 30,000, with Gaza’s Government Media Office declaring that 29,313 people in Gaza are either killed or missing since October 7.

Against the backdrop of escalating war throughout the region, the US has been thrown into crisis by the Israeli regime’s openly genocidal rhetoric. In a statement on Tuesday, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield declared, “There should be no mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, and we reject the recent inflammatory statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.”

In a separate statement, the US State Department declared, “The United States rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza. This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible. We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government. They should stop immediately.”

Regardless of what the United States claims it was told in private, Netanyahu has categorically endorsed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza in public, telling a meeting of his parliamentary faction, “Regarding voluntary immigration… This is the direction we are going in.”

Of course, these statements do in fact represent the policies of the Israeli government, which is engaged in a conscious genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign against Gaza. The United States, which declares it has no “red lines” on what Israel is allowed to do, is fully complicit in this genocide.

On Thursday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) announced that it will hold public hearings January 11 and 12 on South Africa’s accusation that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. The United States, however, continues to deny that Israel is committing genocide and that the US is an accomplice to it. “We have not at this point seen acts that constitute genocide,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.

Asked to comment on the filing by South Africa with the ICJ, White House spokesman Kirby called the submission “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”

(Unlike the International Criminal Court [ICC], which hears charges against individuals, the International Court of Justice hears charges by UN member states against other states. The US government does not recognize the ICC but does recognize the ICJ, and its current chair, Joan Donoghue, is an American.)

Public denunciations of Israel’s genocide by human rights experts are mounting. In a statement on Twitter, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, declared, “Forcible transfer of Gazan population is an act of genocide especially given the high number of children.”

On Wednesday, the Euro-Med Human Rights monitor declared in a statement that “Israel is determined to carry out the forcible displacement of civilians in the Gaza Strip, beyond the bounds of international law.”

Earliest known example of a human-built wood structure, dating to nearly a half-million years ago, discovered in Africa

Philip Guelpa

Two interlocking logs, with intentionally shaped ends and a notch in the upper log allowing their attachment at right angles (reminiscent of children’s “Lincoln Log” toys) have been discovered by archaeologists at a site along the Kalambo River near Kalambo Falls in Zambia.

According to the article in the scientific journal Nature (“Evidence for the earliest structural use of wood at least 476,000 years ago,” Barham et al, 20 September 2023), the logs bear distinctive traces indicating that they were worked using stone tools, conclusive evidence that the feature was of human manufacture. The truly significant aspect of this discovery is that it has been dated to nearly a half-million years ago. 

View of excavation of Kalambo Falls site [Photo by Larry Barham]

The discovery, at a site designated BLB, was originally made during field work in 2019. The recovered objects were then subjected to intensive scientific examination, including detailed imaging using an electron microscope. Experimental replication with stone tools to produce reproductions of the recovered objects was used to provide modern examples with which to compare manufacturing traces on the archaeological specimens. The notch showed signs of both scraping and adzing. V-shaped striations, evidence of incisions with a sharp cutting edge, were also identified in the archaeological specimens. Traces of burning were also identified, suggesting that the area to be worked may have been intentionally charred to make it easier to cut. 

Excavation of the structure [Photo by Larry Barham]

While it is highly likely that humans have been working with wood and other organic materials, in addition to stone, for a very long time, under most conditions organic materials decompose fairly rapidly, leaving only stone and to a lesser degree bone artifacts for archaeologists to study. The unusual preservation of the wooden objects at the Kalambo site is due to their being located at a riverbank, buried by sediment deposited by the river, in wet conditions, which retard decay. Therefore, it is highly likely that the discovered feature is not evidence of the earliest architectural construction ever created by humans, but rather that it is the earliest example that has been preserved and identified by archaeologists so far. 

Earlier examples of worked wood are known. A piece of polished plank dating to greater than 780,000 years ago was discovered along the Jordan River in Syria, but the Zambia find is the earliest known evidence of what may be termed architecture. The earliest previously known example of wooden architecture are platforms dated to 9,000 years ago, located at the edge of a lake in Britain. Possible early wooden artifacts have previously been reported from the Kalambo Falls vicinity. However, their dating was not secure and evidence of having been worked was ambiguous.

It is also significant that the age of this feature, dated using the thermoluminescence technique, applied to the sandy sedimentary sequence in which it was buried, places it earlier than the known appearance of our species, Homo sapiens, at about 330,000 years ago. Thus, it was presumably constructed by an earlier species of the genus Homo. This is not entirely surprising since earlier members of our genus, Homo erectus, who lived between 2 million and 100,000 years ago, already were manufacturing bifacial stone tools, known as Acheulean handaxes, long before the date of the Kalambo River feature. These required fairly sophisticated mental capabilities, such as an appreciation of symmetrical form. 

The discoverers suggest that these remains were once part of a wooden platform which may have been used to keep things such as food or perhaps a dwelling elevated above the wet ground. Subsequent changes in the river buried the feature. One implication is that, rather than being entirely nomadic, constantly moving across the landscape in search of food, some early humans spent time at specific locations, such as a wetland, where resources were sufficiently abundant as to make it possible to stay for a while and invest in the construction of more permanent facilities.

The researchers also suggested that the concept of articulating multiple elements to form a compound tool or feature may have been a precursor to the technique of hafting, later used to attach a handle or shaft to a stone tip, as in a spear. 

Five other worked wood artifacts were also recovered from higher in the depositional sequence at the site, including a wedge, digging stick, cut log and notched branch. These date to somewhat closer in time, between 390,000 and 324,000 years ago. 

Wedge [Photo by Larry Barham]

The Kalambo Falls vicinity has long been known as an area rich in archaeological evidence of human occupation dating back to the Late Lower Paleolithic, and investigations began in the 1950s. The discovery at the Kalambo River site BLB makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of the development of technology by early humans.

Homelessness crisis in Australia exposes Labor-Greens housing deal

Mike Head

Over the Christmas-New Year period reports continued to emerge of the intensifying impact of Australia’s housing crisis on working-class households. Growing numbers of people, many of whom have never faced homelessness before, are living on the streets, or in tents, vans or cars, and depending on charities for food and other essentials.

Soaring rents and home mortgage repayments, combined with the widening gap between wages and the skyrocketing cost of living, are producing homelessness on a scale described by charities as the worst on record in Australia.

Homeless woman in Chatswood Mall, Sydney, June 2019 [Photo: Photo by Sardaka / CC BY-SA 4.0]

In August, Homelessness Australia figures suggested 1,600 more people were being forced into homelessness each month. By all accounts, that toll has only risen.

“We’re getting people who are accessing service who have never been to homeless service before,” Mark Donchi, the homeless program manager at St Mary’s House of Welcome in Melbourne, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last week. “And they walk in and you can tell … they’re just confused.”

The charity’s staff tried to connect clients with housing services, but it was increasingly difficult to find available social housing. “You can walk into a homeless service and you’re walking out with a sleeping bag, that is the best option,” Donchi said.

Homelessness has been worsening in Australia for years, but it has accelerated since the Albanese Labor government scraped into office in May 2022, and this social crisis will deepen in 2024.

In a statement, Homelessness Australia, a peak body of charity services, said that between January and September 2023, an additional 5,600 people each month sought homelessness assistance compared with the same period in 2022.

That was a 6.2 percent rise to an average of 95,862 people per month—a shocking figure in a country of about 26 million people. Alongside record profits and wealth being extracted by billionaire property developers and the major banks, this is an indictment of the entire capitalist profit system and the governments, both Labor and Liberal-National, that serve its interests.

“Housing stress is the fastest-growing cause of homelessness, with an astonishing 27 percent increase from 2018 to 2022,” Homelessness Australia said. “[T]he 640,000 households whose housing needs are not being met is projected to surge to 940,000 by 2041…

“Those living on the streets are only the most visible. The majority of homelessness is hidden—people in crisis accommodation, rooming houses, insecure housing, overcrowded dwellings or couch surfing.”

According to the 2021 Census, on any given night, 122,494 people experienced homelessness. That was before the housing crisis deepened.

Since May 2022, the Reserve Bank of Australia has lifted interest rates 13 times. As a result, a household with a mortgage of $750,000 is spending $1,815 more on repayments a month. That is the equivalent of a wage cut of over $450 per week.

For more than 18 months, the Labor government has backed the central bank in imposing the burden of the global inflationary spiral on the backs of workers and their families, while suppressing wage demands with the help of the trade union bureaucracy.

Since July 2020, rents also have soared by 30.4 percent, pushing the median weekly rental to an unprecedented $588, far beyond any wage rise. The rent hikes are the greatest in working-class areas, particularly those with high numbers of immigrants and students.

Data from CoreLogic showed that over the 12 months to November, rents in Lakemba, one of Sydney’s biggest immigrant suburbs, soared 28.1 percent, closely followed by neighbouring Wiley Park, which was up 28 percent. Kensington, a Sydney suburb with many university students, had the highest house rent growth in the country, up 24.9 percent.

This is a social and political time bomb. It underlines the inadequacy and political cynicism of the housing deal struck by the Greens with the Albanese Labor government in September.

That agreement dropped all pretences by the Greens of advocating rent caps or freezes, which would themselves have done nothing but slow or delay the massive rent hikes. The Greens embraced Labor’s proposed $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF). To be invested on the stock exchange, this fund supposedly could result in “up to” 30,000 “social and affordable” homes being provided over five years, and none before 2025.

Even that depends on the vagaries of the share market, as well as the profit demands of the developers and construction companies that will be contracted to build housing units. And if the 30,000 figure actually eventuated, it would be a drop in the ocean compared to the rapidly growing need, already exceeding 600,000 dwellings.

September’s Labor-Greens deal exposed the pretences of the Greens, after months of political posturing on the housing crisis, to be the “party of renters” or present any alternative to the right-wing, pro-business program of the Labor government.

The agreement was the result of anxious efforts by the Greens, in the face of the worsening social crisis, to prop up an increasingly unpopular government, which depends on their support in the Senate.

In June, the Greens had indicated they would support the HAFF, despite its blatant inadequacy, in exchange for $2.5 billion a year in direct government funding for social housing. That “compromise” was half their initial call for $5 billion, which the Greens had said was the absolute minimum needed to meet the pressing need!

Outside the Labor Party’s national conference in Brisbane in August, the Greens’ housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Maher urged protesters to put pressure on the government to negotiate with the Greens. At the same time, he demagogically declared that Labor “acts more like the party of the banks and property investors, than the party of the worker.”

Chandler-Maher criticised a Labor-dominated “National Cabinet” meeting three days earlier for refusing to support a temporary freeze on rents. “While the banks make record profits, renters cop record rent increases,” he said.

The “National Cabinet” of federal, state and territory government leaders—all Labor but one—rejected any policy to address the rental crisis. Instead, it unveiled measures to sweep aside planning and building regulations in order to further boost the fortunes of the developers, banks and the other financial institutions which dominate the housing market that has created the crisis.

Inside the Labor conference, the perspective of putting pressure on the government for a more progressive face was shown to be a fraud. “Left” trade union and “Labor for Housing” representatives dropped their token calls for a super-profits tax to fund the affordable housing shortfall and welcomed the outcome of the “National Cabinet” meeting.

By Chandler-Maher’s own words, within a few weeks, the Greens too acted as a “party of the banks and property investors.” With minor changes, the Greens’ members of parliament agreed to help push through policies they had denounced for most of 2023.

To seal the pact, Labor agreed to a one-off $1 billion payment to a National Housing Infrastructure Facility to fund social and affordable housing. That would only result, at best, in the eventual construction of a few thousand additional dwellings.

The Labor-Greens deal continued a history of the Greens shoring up Labor governments as they inflict policies of widening social inequality and war on the working class. The housing agreement helped pave the way for the Greens’ equally cynical current role in imploring people at the mass weekly protests against the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza to direct their energies to trying to pressure this same government into modifying its full-throated support for the Zionist onslaught.

Earthquake strikes central Japan leaving dozens dead

Ben McGrath

A powerful 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck along the west coast of central Japan on Monday afternoon while many families gathered to celebrate the new year. As of Wednesday morning, at least 57 people have been killed, though this number may grow as rescuers search the impacted area. It is the deadliest earthquake since 2016 when 273 people died in the Kumamoto earthquakes.

A destroyed road near Noto town in the Noto peninsula facing the Sea of Japan, northwest of Tokyo, on Tuesday, January 2, 2024, following Monday's earthquake. [AP Photo/Hiro Komae]

The epicenter of the quake was located on the Noto Peninsula at a depth of 16 kilometers. The peninsula juts out into the Sea of Japan and is a part of Ishikawa Prefecture. Most of the deaths have taken place in Wajima and Suzu, two cities located close to the epicenter. More than 200 aftershocks have subsequently been recorded, leading the Japan Meteorological Agency to warn that another serious earthquake could be coming over the next week.

In the immediate aftermath of the quake, approximately 100,000 people were forced to evacuate due to the widespread destruction and the danger of a tsunami striking the coast. While a large tsunami did not materialize, some waves reaching as high as 1.2 meters struck Wajima Port, sweeping through the city and washing away cars. Trains and flights in the region were also delayed.

The earthquake was one of the strongest for that region of Japan in four decades. “I’ve never experienced a quake that powerful,” Shoichi Kobayashi, a 71-year-old resident of Wajima, stated. “Even the aftershocks made it difficult to stand up straight.”

Other countries in the region were also affected, though no casualties or significant damage were reported. The Korea Meteorological Administration in South Korea reported tsunamis as high as 85 centimeters striking the country’s east coast. North Korea and Russia also issued their own tsunami warnings.

The Noto earthquake has caused widespread damage, destroying buildings and roads, causing fires, and cutting off power and water to tens of thousands of homes while temperatures drop to freezing levels at night. Evacuees occupied school gymnasiums, community centers and greenhouses converted into shelters. In some cases, people slept in their cars.

The mayor of Suzu, Masuhiro Izumiya, told a meeting of the Ishikawa Prefectural government’s disaster response team on Tuesday: “We have a feeling that about 1,000 houses have been completely destroyed.” He added that thousands more were nearly completely destroyed. The city has 5,857 households, according to government data.

Many people are still unable to return to their homes. Less than half of the evacuees were able to do so as of Tuesday night. An estimated 33,000 homes were without power while 20,000 did not have running water.

The government has so far dispatched about 3,000 rescue personnel, including firefighters, police, and troops from the Self-Defense Forces, the formal name of Japan’s military. However, search teams have struggled to reach areas stricken by the earthquake, with at least 120 known cases of people awaiting rescue as of Tuesday night.

In response to the disaster, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida released the type of empty statements that come from capitalist governments after such tragedies. Attempting to give the impression that he was in control of the situation, Kishida stated during an emergency meeting, “We must rescue [survivors] as quickly as possible, especially those who are trapped under collapsed structures.” The prime minister, who is deeply unpopular due in part to an ongoing corruption scandal involving the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is no doubt sensitive to anything that can further damage his image and ability to remain in power.

While it is not possible to predict the exact moment an earthquake will strike, the damage caused by natural disasters is regularly compounded by the subordination of public safety to the capitalist profit system. This earthquake is no different and there are already indications that a lack of preparation has made things worse.

Suzu’s Mayor Izumiya has stated that evacuees are lacking basic supplies, saying Tuesday, “There is a shortage of everything: water, food, milk, diapers, and feminine hygiene products. Blackouts and water shortages will continue for a while.” Other survivors have also stated that they are running out of food.

Hiroko Aoki, a woman in her 70s, told the Japan Times, that she evacuated along with 40 other people to an elementary school that lacked heat. “I was really scared,” she stated. “Since it’s a gym, it was very cold and there was no radio or TV, so I had no idea what was going on.”

Japan is highly susceptible to earthquakes, sitting along fault lines where four tectonic plates meet. Major earthquakes have struck the country in recent years, including the devastating Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 2011 that killed 20,000 people. The tsunami severely damaged the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, leading to a meltdown that was covered up by the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company.

Furthermore, experts have been warning that Japan is likely to experience a major earthquake within the next few decades. The government reported last year that earthquake activity around the Noto Peninsula had been growing since 2018. Seismologists have also stated that the Kanto region, which includes Tokyo, is likely to suffer an event similar to the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which reached a magnitude 7.9 and killed as many as 142,000 people.

Despite this, according to the Japanese government’s 2022 “Disaster Management in Japan” white paper, Tokyo spent only 542.716 billion yen ($US3.8 billion) on disaster prevention in 2022, which was the lowest since 2011 and one of the lowest overall since 1986. The government also slashed spending from the previous year when its disaster prevention budget reached 1.108 trillion yen ($US7.8 billion).

By contrast, Tokyo is sharply boosting spending in preparation for a US-led war against China. Last month, Kishida’s cabinet approved a new military budget for the 2024 fiscal year, reaching a record high of 7.95 trillion yen ($US56 billion). One of the main pillars of the new budget is the procurement of cruise missiles, giving Japan the ability to launch attacks on China in flagrant violation of the country’s constitution. The increase is part the government’s plan for a de facto doubling of its military budget by 2027.

Threat of wider war in Middle East rises as Israel assassinates Hamas deputy leader in Beirut

Jordan Shilton

Israel’s far-right government carried out the assassination of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on Tuesday. This brazen act of aggression increases the danger of an escalation of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza into a region-wide war, for which US imperialism and its European imperialist allies have long been preparing.

Al-Arouri, reportedly Hamas’ closest link with Hizballah in Lebanon and Iran, was targeted in a suspected drone strike on an apartment building where he was meeting secretly with other senior Hamas officials in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh. Among the seven casualties were two commanders of the Qasem Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, Samir Findi and Azzam al-Aqraa. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh announced that the assassination meant a halt to negotiations with Israel over the release of the hostages remaining in Gaza.

Following the common practice in its long list of previous assassinations, Israel did not officially claim responsibility for the strike. An anonymous US Defence Department official speaking to the Washington Post said Israel was responsible for the assassination. The US State Department confirmed that a planned trip by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to Israel later this week will be delayed until the beginning of next week, underscoring that Washington intends to determine Israel’s next steps in the conflict.

Responding to the assassination, Hizbollah reportedly fired missiles towards Israel’s northern border late Tuesday. Two Israeli soldiers were lightly injured.

Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah stated in an August 2023 speech that any Israeli assassination on Lebanese territory would result in a “decisive response” to prevent Lebanon from becoming “a new killing field for Israel.” A statement from the militant group following al-Arouri’s killing vowed that it would not “pass without response or punishment.”

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati also denounced the targeted killing of al-Arouri, accusing Israel of dragging Lebanon into a “new phase of conflict.” In 2006, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) launched a massive invasion of southern Lebanon, triggering a month-long war in which Israel carried out barbaric war crimes against the civilian population. In 1982, supported by the Christian fascist Falange, Israel directed the bloody massacre of over 3,000 Palestinian refugees in the Sabra neighbourhood of Beirut and the Shatila refugee camp. Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon claimed the lives of some 18,000 people.

Israel’s extra-judicial killing of al-Arouri, a violation of international law, provides yet another example of the Zionist regime’s utter criminality. Since 7 October, it has flattened hospitals and schools, deliberately targeted journalists and medical workers, and used food, water, and fuel as weapons of war. All of these policies are part of a genocide against the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.

This fascistic policy was underscored again in comments calling for the “voluntary emigration,” i.e., ethnic cleansing, of Gaza’s residents by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir earlier this week. Speaking at his Jewish Power’s weekly faction meeting, Ben Gvir stated that the war provides an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza.” He added that a “correct, just, moral and humane solution” would include the return of Israeli settlements to Gaza, which were abandoned in 2005.

Al-Arouri’s assassination was timed to prove Israel’s readiness to escalate and broaden the war. In Gaza, the IDF’s savage bombardment continues, with over 200 Palestinians killed over the preceding 24 hours, according to figures released Tuesday by the Gaza Health Ministry. Strikes and fighting on the ground persisted in Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of civilians remain trapped. Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza where over 1 million people are now crammed, was also hit. The ongoing bloodshed underlines how Israel is persisting with its genocidal policy even as it modestly reduces the number of troops deployed in the north of the Gaza Strip.

In Khan Younis, the IDF bombed the al-Amal Hospital, which is used by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society for its training programmes. The strike killed five people, including a five-day-old baby. World Health Organisation head Tedros Ghibreyesus criticised the bombing, saying, “Today’s bombings are unconscionable. Gaza’s health system is already on its knees, with health and aid workers continuously stymied in their efforts to save lives due to the hostilities.” Some 14,000 people are sheltering in and around the hospital.

In the West Bank, an Israeli raid Monday night in the small town of Azzun resulted in the deaths of four Palestinian militants and the arrest of seven. Over 320 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank since 7 October.

The provocative escalation of the war represented by Israel’s assassination of al-Arouri plays into the hands of the far-right Netanyahu government, which is increasingly unpopular domestically. Its failure to secure the release of over 120 hostages still in Gaza has fueled popular anger. On Monday, Netanyahu suffered a significant setback when Israel’s Supreme Court overturned a judicial reform law that would have altered Israel’s constitutional basic laws to weaken judicial oversight over the government. The authoritarian reform, imposed by Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and his fascistic allies, triggered mass protests for a year prior to Hamas’ 7 October attacks.

Fully confident of American imperialism’s unrestrained support, demonstrated with the steady supply of high-powered weaponry for its Gaza onslaught, Israel has repeatedly struck targets in Lebanon and Syria since launching its genocide on the Palestinians. Last week, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant asserted that Israel was engaged in a “multi-front war” covering Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The assassination of al-Arouri in Beirut came just eight days after the targeted killing in Syria December 25 of Brigadier General Seyed Razi Mousavi, a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

US imperialism has made preparations to wage a wider regional war, whose main target would be Iran. Over the past three decades, it has waged one war after another, from Iraq, to Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, in the Middle East and Central Asia as it seeks to offset its economic decline by deploying its military might. Washington sees Israel’s onslaught as an opportunity to consolidate its hegemony over the energy-rich Middle East by defeating its major geostrategic rivals, China and Russia.

The Biden administration has ramped up the deployment of naval and air power to the region, most recently under the guise of protecting the flow of trade through the Red Sea following a series of attacks on merchant ships by the Houthis in Yemen. US troops are also deployed in significant numbers in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Syria, and Iraq.

On Sunday, US helicopters associated with the Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group fired on and sunk three boats used by Houthi militants in the Red Sea. A fourth boat fled the scene. The carrier strike group has operated in the Persian Gulf since the Hamas-led uprising against Israel on 7 October. A second carrier strike group led by the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is due to be withdrawn from the eastern Mediterranean this week. A UN Security Council meeting to discuss mounting tensions in the Red Sea is expected to take place Wednesday.

The Most High and His rebellious creations.

In the beginning, the Most High created the heavens (the first heaven: Inhabited by Him and the Morningstar which are also called the Stars of God, whose authorities are from the throne to the dominion levels, the second heaven: Inhabited by the sons of God(Most High) whose authorities are from the principality to the spirit levels, the third heaven: this constitutes the firmament which is located just above the Earth) and the Earth which constitute the earth(dry grounds), the deep places, the underwaters and the seas (wet grounds).

The Most High regarded as (Almighty, Jah, Lord Jehovah, Mighty one of Israel, God of Elijah, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Israel, Father of all spirits, God of all minds, ….. and Father of Jesus) was God before creation started and can never be limited by His creations because all powers belong to Him. Heaven which is also regarded as the kingdom of God serves as an habitation for the Most High and His heavenly creations with decreasing authorities from the dominion level, principality level, power level, rulership level and down to the least level called spirit. Almighty and the Stars of God whose authorities constitute the throne and the dominion levels have the image of Man, but the principality to the spirit levels have the image of Ox; nevertheless all levels of authorities have the potentials of manifesting themselves into various images.

Jesus who is the Son of the Most High, was elevated from the dominion level to the throne; at the right side of God, owing to His death and resurrection to put men back at his original level (dominion) on earth. He was sent by the Most High to the Earth to reconcile men back to Him, after the sin of Adam and Eve; facilitated by Lucifer ( son of the morning, satan, devil, great dragon) who is a fallen covering cherub at the principality level.

Lucifer, who was endowed with beauty and wisdom; rebelled against the Most High owing to pride, facilitated by his beauty and wisdom. He was able to seduce a third of all the sons of God to a rebellious battle against the Most High; but was overcame by Michael (angel at principality level, in charge of affairs of Israel and its people) with his subordinates; empowered by the name of the Most High. He and his rebellious angels were overcame and sent down to Earth (i.e. hell and delivered them into the chains of darkness), where they will be for an appointed time and afterwards; condemned for eternity in the lake of fire that burns with brimstone.

However, in the spiritual realm; there are two kingdoms: 

- Kingdom of God: It is empowered by the divine sentences (words of God) and its righteousness. It's also filled with joy, peace and righteousness of the Spirit (Holy ghost, Spirit of the Most High). Its power and righteousness are accessible through the Spirit of the Most High. The kingdom of God is also regarded as the kingdom of light, which exceed the kingdom of darkness; but both kingdoms are created by God, and He reigns over them. Jesus is the perfect manifestation of the kingdom of God on Earth. Whosoever on Earth is lead by the Spirit is empowered to become son of God and joint heirs with Jesus in the kingdom of the Most High. The fruits of this kingdom are love, joy, peace, righteousness, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance.

- ‎Kingdom of darkness: It is empowered by dark sentences and its unrighteousness. It's filled with unhappiness, conflict and unrighteousness of the spirit of darkness. Its power and unrighteousness are accessible through the spirit of darkness. Lucifer is the perfect manifestation of the kingdom of darkness on Earth. Whosoever is lead by the spirit of darkness is called child of darkness and partakers of same damnation of Lucifer and his angels in the lake of fire for eternity. The fruits of this kingdom are lust, hatred, envy, strife, disobedience, pride, adultery, fornication, wrath, backbiting, tumult, murder, unrighteousness, malignity, wickedness, deceit, maliciousness, covetousness and lie.

Men are created in the image and likeness of the Most High which are manifested as males and females on Earth, but as spirit-being; they are all males and perfect manifestation of God on earth until sin was found in them. So for men to overcome the deception and the devices of the power of darkness and its unrighteousness through Lucifer and his rebellious angels; they must seek the power and righteousness of the kingdom of God through the blood and testimonies of Jesus. Lucifer and his angels have been unrelenting in their purposes (killing, stealing and destruction) on Earth, being facilitated by the spirit of darkness to corrupt both the dead things and inhabitants of the earth (dry grounds), the deep places, the sea (wet grounds) and the underwaters (which are empowered to create dead things and its inhabitants).

Nonetheless, the Most High has empowered men to have dominion over his creations on Earth, but for them to have access to this power and its righteousness; they must be awakened to the reality of their divine purpose of creation by exhibiting the image and likeness of the Most High through Jesus (Son of God).