Hospitals strained across the US as over 2 million Americans now infected with COVID each day

Benjamin Mateus

On Tuesday, Biobot Analytics published their latest data on COVID-19 wastewater levels in the United States, which scientists estimate now correlate to over 2 million infections per day, the second-highest figure of the entire pandemic.

The current wave is now 20 percent higher than the peak seen in January 2023, after which the Biden administration and the World Health Organization (WHO) moved to arbitrarily end their respective COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declarations in May 2023. These unscientific decisions led to the rapid dismantling of all vestiges of pandemic surveillance, including accurate data on testing, hospitalizations and deaths, leaving wastewater data as the sole reliable metric on viral transmission.

While Tuesday’s data indicate that the current wave of infections appears to be peaking, this will only be clear once next week’s data are released. Regardless, the US remains mired in a horrific wave of mass infection with a virus that is still hospitalizing and killing masses of people globally and causing untold long-term damage to the health of the population.

The current surge is being driven by the JN.1 variant, which rapidly became dominant in the US and across the globe over the last several weeks. Corresponding with these waves of infections, hospitalizations have also started to rise, with many health systems inundated in the US, Canada and Europe.

Weekly hospitalizations across the US jumped 20 percent for the week ending December 30, compared to the week prior, and have more than doubled since the first week in November. Much of this is affecting those 70 years or older, who are at greater risk of death from their infection.

In Ohio, which is currently experiencing its highest wastewater levels of any point in the pandemic, emergency room physician Dr. David Christopher bluntly noted, “It’s a total plague ward shitshow in most emergency departments right now. Don’t believe me? Then ask anyone you know who works in one. If they’re being honest, willing to talk and aren’t too exhausted, you’ll likely hear some horror stories. It hasn’t been this bad since December 2021.”

North Carolina recently hit its highest level of COVID hospital admissions for the pandemic. It is one of several states to have some hospitals reinstate mask mandates in an attempt to curb the high rates of COVID transmission in the health sector. Those at or over 70 years of age account for nearly 60 percent of admissions.

Healthcare workers at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor, speaking with reporters from the World Socialist Web Site, said they were facing overcrowded emergency departments and ICUs over capacity. One worker observed, “COVID is rampant. Keep your masks on. It’s ramping up. Biden thinks it’s nonexistent, management thinks it’s nonexistent, too. I don’t think we are testing anyone. We are testing if they are a suspected case, but we don’t always know.”

Another nurse added, “What worries me the most is patients who are getting COVID when they are in the hospital. Then the roommate gets COVID too. And we don’t even move the patient anymore when they get COVID. There are no rules about informing the roommate either.”

In a recent TikTok post by a US healthcare worker who chose not to name her hospital or region of the country, she remarked, “I’m just letting you guys know from someone who works in a hospital, COVID is getting really really bad. I think I saw a statistic that said next week will peak with COVID cases at two million infections [per day]. The building I’m at has five floors.”

She added, “The third and fourth and a lot of the ICU are full of COVID patients. So, get yourself an N95, stay indoors if you can, test frequently, and do not trust the numbers the government is giving you, because they are not correct.”

Despite the massive ongoing surge that has been steadily rising since the summer, and the concomitant rise in hospital admissions which are inundating the health systems, the attitude adopted by the Biden Administration remains one of total indifference to the public health threats to the population.

This point was underscored when a reporter asked Karine Jean-Pierre about the high or very high levels of respiratory illnesses across more than 31 states, and the possibility of reimplementing mask mandates. The visibly annoyed White House press secretary responded, “So look, it is up to each and every American to make their decision on what they want to do.”

Outside of some esoteric discussion in the media on the rise of JN.1, there is hardly any mention of the current state of mass infections and hospitalizations across the country in any of the major media outlets. Any such coverage simply downplays the dangers posed by these infections, normalizes the idea that SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve and transmit rapidly, and omits altogether any explanation as to why the Biden administration and CDC continue to completely ignore the pandemic.

One of the few exceptions was a recent opinion piece published in the LA Times by Dr. Eric Topol, a leading expert on the pandemic, speaking succinctly and to the point about the absurd lack of any pandemic response. Topol asked, “What is the exit strategy that could get us to ‘return to normal’? It certainly can’t happen with the current complacency and false belief that the virus will burn out and go away. Inevitably, there will be another strain in the future that we are not at all prepared for and will lead to yet another very big wave across the planet.”

He added, “It’s crickets from the White House on COVID now, with no messaging on getting updated booster or masking. The Biden administration has done far too little to accelerate research on effective treatments for Long COVID … This passivity reinforces the illusion that the pandemic is behind us when it’s actually raging. And this season will be followed by a more quiescent period, which will, once again, lull us into thinking the pandemic is over.”

More disconcerting, and in line with predictions made by Arijit Chakravarty and colleagues that SARS-CoV-2 has the ability to become more virulent, evidence has emerged from two recent publications, one based in Ohio and the other from Europe, that the JN.1 strain appears to more efficiently infect cells in the lower lung, meaning the virus has regained some of its traits from the pre-Omicron strains, which were considered more deadly.

The researchers from Germany and France wrote that BA.2.86, the variant nicknamed “Pirola” from which JN.1 evolved, “has regained a trait characteristic of early SARS-CoV-2 lineages: robust lung cell entry. The variant might constitute an elevated health threat as compared to previous Omicron sublineages.”

Fortune journalist Erin Prater, one of the few consistent reporters on the pandemic in the bourgeois press, cautiously warned about these developments, “Omicron had a penchant for infecting the upper airway versus the lower airway, where prior versions of the virus tended to accumulate, causing more severe disease. The new studies offer proof that this trend may very well be reversing, the authors contend. If true, it’s bad news for those who hoped the virus was slowly attenuating to the equivalent of a common cold.”

US congressional leaders announce $1.7 trillion budget deal for 2024

Jacob Crosse

On Sunday, US House and Senate leaders announced they had agreed to a 2024 budget proposal that would total nearly $1.7 trillion, including a record $886.3 billion for the military.

From left, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2023. [AP Photo/.J. Scott Applewhite]

While the Pentagon will be flush with cash, the non-defense discretionary spending agreed to by both parties, and endorsed by President Joe Biden, is $772.7 billion. This means the US government is to spend over $100 billion more on the military than the combined amount for departments that provide K-12 education; low-income housing assistance; nutrition assistance for young children, families and the elderly; financial aid for college students; public health programs; science and medical research and other social needs.

The proposed budget does nothing to address the social crisis in America that has led to falling life expectancy, record homelessness and increased hunger.

An analysis of the budget deal by Roll Call notes that the framework provides “a very slight overall increase in non-defense funding, about 0.2 percent above the previous year,” while military and “security-related spending would rise by nearly $28 billion, or more than 3 percent.”

Despite the flat-lining of social spending, coupled with an increase in military and border police funds, the far-right Christian-evangelical House speaker, Mike Johnson, is fending off attacks from a fascistic faction of House Republicans for agreeing to the budget.

In a letter to the House Republican conference on Sunday, Johnson said the agreement included an additional $16 billion in spending cuts that he had negotiated. These include $6.1 billion in pandemic aid and $10 billion from the IRS. The trimming of the IRS is part of an ongoing effort by the Republican Party to erase some $80 billion in funding, spread out over 10 years, that had been appropriated to allow the agency to go after sophisticated and wealthy tax cheats.

Johnson told Republicans that the budget “will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like.” He claimed nevertheless that it was “the most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade.”

In a Fox News appearance Tuesday, Johnson said the budget was a “step in the right direction” and amounted to “the first reduction in non-defense spending in many years.”

While the Senate and House leadership have agreed to the broad “top line” budget proposal, the actual text of the bill has yet to be written and likely will not be available until next week. The House only resumed on Monday, while the Senate returned to work on Tuesday.

If the budget or a separate continuing resolution (CR) is not passed by January 19, there will be a partial government shutdown. Funding for the departments of Agriculture, Transportation, Energy and Veterans expires on January 19, while funding for Commerce, Justice, Defense, Homeland Security, Labor, State, Interior, Financial Services and other agencies expires on February 2. Previously passed stop-gap measures provided funding for four of the government spending bills through January 19, while eight other spending bills provided funding through February 2.

Last Friday, Roll Call reported that during a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young expressed doubt that an agreement would be reached before the first, January 19, deadline.

On Sunday night, shortly after the budget figure was released, the House Freedom Caucus tweeted that the budget was “even worse than we thought,” and a “total failure.” The caucus’ X/Twitter account reposted a December 29, 2023, statement that read, in part, “[W]e are extremely troubled that House Republican leadership is considering an agreement with Democrats to spend even higher than the modest $1.59 trillion statutory cap set six months ago by the Fiscal Responsibility act.”

Several Republicans inside and outside the Freedom Caucus have already indicated they will vote against the deal. Speaking on CNN Monday evening, the Freedom Caucus policy chair, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), said he wished “Speaker Johnson weren’t doing this,” and added that he was “very disappointed.”

Roy said there needed to be “some real conversations this week about what we need to do going forward.” Asked by CNN host Kaitlin Collins if those conversations included moving to vacate the speakership, Roy replied, “That’s not the road I prefer. I didn’t prefer to go down that road with Speaker McCarthy.”

He continued: “We need to figure out how to get this all done together. But it isn’t good and there’s a lot of my colleagues who are pretty frustrated about it, so we’ll see what happens this week.”

In an interview on the Steve Deace Show, Roy added, “I’m leaving it (vacating the speakership) on the table. I’m not gonna say I’m gonna go file it tomorrow night. I’m not saying I’m not gonna file it tomorrow. I think the speaker needs to know that we’re angry about it.”

While Johnson will have a hard time wrangling votes from Freedom Caucus members, the Democratic Party leadership has already voiced its support for the proposal, meaning Johnson will have to rely primarily on Democratic votes to pass a budget that prepares for world war, guarantees further social cuts and funds savage attacks on immigrants.

In a joint statement released Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said the framework agreement “clears the way for Congress” to “address many of the major challenges America faces at home and abroad.”

The statement called on “both sides” to “work together in a bipartisan way and avoid a costly and disruptive shutdown.” The Associated Press reported that in a call to Democrats, Schumer stressed that it was “a good deal for Democrats and the country.”

In a statement released by the White House, Biden said the 2024 budget proposal “reflects the funding levels that I negotiated with both parties and signed into law last spring.”

International Court of Justice complaint demonstrates that Israel is carrying out genocide

Tom Carter

A Palestinian child looks at the graves of people killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip and buried inside the Shifa Hospital grounds in Gaza City, December 31, 2023. [AP Photo/Mohammed Hajjar]

On Thursday and Friday of this week, arguments will be heard in the International Court of Justice in extraordinary proceedings that have been initiated against the state of Israel under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

These proceedings were initiated by South Africa in a formal complaint filed on December 29, which described the ongoing onslaught by Israeli armed forces against the civilian population of Gaza as “genocidal in character” because it is being carried out with the “specific intent,” in violation of the Genocide Convention, “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.”

This ICJ complaint is 84 pages of densely-spaced text, with 574 footnotes, nearly each citing to a longer and more detailed report or document. It presents a devastating, overwhelming case.

As of December 29, South Africa’s complaint documented the deaths of “in excess of 21,110 named Palestinians, including over 7,729 children—with over 7,780 others missing, presumed dead under the rubble.” On top of these deaths, “over 55,243 other Palestinians” have been injured, with many of these injuries involving amputations or permanent disfigurement.

The complaint continues, “Israel has also laid waste to vast areas of Gaza, including entire neighborhoods, and has damaged or destroyed in excess of 355,000 Palestinian homes.” This bombing campaign has forced “the evacuation of 1.9 million people or 85 percent of the population of Gaza from their homes.” The Israeli military is pushing these displaced people “into ever smaller areas, without adequate shelter, in which they continue to be attacked, killed and harmed.”

The bombing campaign is not just “indiscriminate.” In a section titled, “Destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza,” the complaint documents Israel’s targeted and systematic destruction of courts, libraries, universities, museums, historic structures, religious sites, schools, buildings housing records and historical artifacts, and even graveyards.

The complaint also documents Israel’s obstruction of “essential food, water, medicine, fuel, shelter and other humanitarian assistance for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian people,” citing warnings by experts that “silent, slow deaths caused by hunger and thirst risk surpassing those violent deaths already caused by Israeli bombs and missiles.”

“Most of the Palestinian people in Gaza are now starving,” the complaint states, “with levels of starvation rising daily.” The complaint cites evidence gathered by the World Health Organization that an “unprecedented 93 percent of the population in Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger, with insufficient food and high levels of malnutrition.”

Approximately 70 percent of the victims of Israel’s operation have been women and children: “Two mothers are estimated to be killed every hour in Gaza.” The complaint also accuses Israel of deliberately imposing “measures intended to prevent Palestinian births” through a blockade on medical supplies.

The complaint juxtaposes this detailed factual account of Israel’s rampage against Gaza with the expressions of genocidal intent coming directly out of the mouths of Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who stated on October 28, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you,” referring to a biblical passage that states, “go, attack Amalek … Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings.”

On October 7, Nissim Vaturi, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and Member of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, wrote, “Now we all have one common goal—erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. Those who are unable will be replaced.”

On October 9, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel.” On November 11, Israel’s Minister of Agriculture declared, “We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” referring to the Nakba of 1948, in which over 80 percent of the Palestinian population were forced from their homes.

On November 6, Giora Eiland, an Israeli Army Reservist Major General, wrote that Israel “needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza . . . Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.” He went on to declare that “severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer.”

Members of the Israeli Knesset have repeatedly called for Gaza to be “wiped out,” “flatten[ed]”, “eras[ed],” and “[c]rush[ed] . . . on all its inhabitants.” Meanwhile, “genocidal messages” are “routinely broadcast — without censure or sanction — in Israeli media.” These include “Gaza should be razed” and “there are 2.5 million terrorists,” referring to the entire Palestinian population.

Anticipating that Israeli officials will invoke the events of October 7 to justify their conduct, the complaint points out that in the years of the twenty-first century preceding October 7, 2023, “approximately 7,569 Palestinians, including 1,699 children” were killed in “four asymmetrical wars.”

Since it was filed, South Africa’s complaint has been endorsed by at least 60 countries, including the entire Organization of Islamic Countries, which includes Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, together with Malaysia, Turkey, Jordan and Bolivia.

The complaint, however, will have no effect on Israel’s conduct of the genocide, or on the support of the imperialist powers. The Netanyahu regime denounced the complaint as “ridiculous” and an “absurd blood libel.”

Biden administration national security spokesperson John Kirby responded to South Africa’s complaint by calling it “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” Matt Miller, a State Department spokesperson, claimed that the American government is “not seeing any acts that constitute genocide.”

These dishonest evasions are assisted by the major American newspapers and television news programs, which have generally refused to report the factual contents of the complaint.

The ICJ, sometimes called the World Court, is the highest judicial body of the United Nations. The complaint brought by South Africa may take years to make its way through ICJ procedures, which will feature the formal presentation of evidence and argument. The hearings this week will focus on the request for “preliminary measures” in the complaint, including South Africa’s request that Israel be ordered to immediately “cease killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinian people in Gaza.”

There is certainly enough factual evidence described in the complaint to warrant not only an immediate halt to Israel’s operations in Gaza, but the immediate arrest of the entire Israeli government, together with their accomplices and co-conspirators in Washington and the other imperialist capitals. Each day that passes while these war criminals remain at large is a scandal and an indictment of the entire capitalist social order and all of its institutions worldwide.

The ICJ complaint also serves as a devastating refutation of the efforts underway in many countries to delegitimize and criminalize all criticism of the Israeli government as “antisemitism.”

The overwhelming factual evidence that Israel is engaged in genocide also implicates the domestic laws of many countries, including those of the US, which nominally prohibit financial and other support for the perpetrators of genocide. To that end, a detailed complaint accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention has already been filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights in a US federal court in November.

The ICJ complaint also serves to further underscore the duty of Israeli soldiers under international law—and for that matter, American military personnel—to refuse to obey orders that would make them accomplices in war crimes. As was established in the trials of Nazi officials at Nuremburg, “following orders” is no defense when it comes to the crime of genocide.

However, nobody familiar with the history of the UN, itself implicated in countless bloody wars of imperialist aggression over the last three quarters of a century, will place any confidence in its procedures to bring about an end to Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, let alone to prosecute the war criminals in Washington and Tel Aviv. Lenin’s description of the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations, as a “thieves’ kitchen” is no less true of the UN today.

Between 2015 and 2022, the UN General Assembly adopted no less than 140 resolutions condemning Israel, as compared with a total of 68 resolutions condemning all other countries combined, but the UN failed to take any significant steps to enforce them, and Israel has simply ignored them. In December, a total of 153 out of 193 UN member countries voted for a resolution calling for a “ceasefire” in Gaza, with only 10 countries opposed. But that resolution served to slow neither Israel’s genocidal operations nor the flow of massively destructive weapons to Israel from the United States.

For its part, the ICJ, which consists of 15 judges elected by the General Assembly, does not have any mechanism for enforcing its decisions directly.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome of these proceedings—and regardless of the motives of the South African government and the other capitalist governments endorsing the complaint, which are doing so for their own cynical and contingent political reasons—the significance of the complaint to the ICJ lies in its thorough and objective presentation, in one place, for all the world to read, of a devastating exposure of what is, factually and legally and in every sense of the word, a genocide, in which the Israeli government is fully implicated, together with its imperialist backers, chiefly the United States.

Having appointed itself the “world’s policeman” in the aftermath of the liquidation of the Soviet Union—meddling, invading, sanctioning and bombing its way around the world in the name of “human rights” and a “responsibility to protect”—the world is confronted with the spectacle of an American government that is now defending the perpetrators of genocide in broad daylight as it continues to supply the weapons that are being used to carry it out.

The exposure of the fraud of “human rights imperialism,” as reflected in the Gaza genocide and in the case being presented in the ICJ, is itself a reflection of the crisis of world capitalism. Unable to overcome its internal contradictions within a capitalist framework, that system is staggering back upon the most horrific forms of barbarism of the last century. In this context, the Gaza genocide, for all its criminality, is only a foretaste of the horrors to come if these contradictions are not addressed and resolved.

Attal named French prime minister as Borne government falls

Alex Lantier

Gabriel Attal, France's new Prime Minister, arrives for the handover ceremony on January 9, 2024 in Paris. [AP Photo/Ludovic Marin]

French President Emmanuel Macron announced yesterday the replacement of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne by former Education Minister Gabriel Attal. At age 34, Attal became the youngest prime minister since the founding of France’s current Fifth Republic in 1958. He will now seek to assemble a cabinet of ministers for approval by Macron.

On Monday, Borne resigned, making clear that she had been pushed out by the presidency. Her resignation letter noted Emmanuel Macron’s “will” to “name a new prime minister” and defended the “essential reforms” she imposed while in office. Chief among these were the pension cuts adopted last spring despite overwhelming popular opposition and mass strikes brutally repressed by riot police, and sold out by France’s corrupt trade union bureaucracies.

Borne wrote, “Now that I must present the resignation of my government, I wanted to say how passionate I was about the mission, guided by our shared concern of producing rapid, tangible results for our fellow citizens.”

The final announcement that Macron had named Attal prime minister did not come until yesterday afternoon, however, amid reports of bitter conflicts inside the Macron government. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, Elysée presidential palace chief of staff Alexis Kohler, and Macron’s former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe all reportedly objected to Attal. “Bruno and Gérald screamed,” one anonymous minister told BFM-TV, while one of Le Maire’s advisors said he “does not want to work for a youth aged 34.”

As a result, yesterday morning, even after his name had been rumored as a potential prime minister, Attal held a meeting with education trade union bureaucrats which he had previously cancelled.

After Macron finally named Attal, however, Elysée palace officials cynically argued that having a new prime minister would allow for a politically-expedient rebranding of Macron’s policy agenda. Macron, one of his advisors told Le Monde, is inserting “a semi-colon, giving time to take a breath in his decade in power, changing tone as one might do in a musical score or in a poem.”

In reality, by naming Attal, Macron aims to deepen and accelerate the ever more overtly fascistic turn he has carried out since his re-election in 2022.

Borne was despised for imposing Macron’s massively unpopular pension cuts without a parliamentary vote, using the French constitution’s anti-democratic Article 49-3 provision on budgetary matters. Since Macron’s party lost its parliamentary majority in the 2022 elections, Borne ultimately resorted to the 49-3 to block parliamentary votes no less than 23 times. Starting after the adoption of Macron’s pension cuts last spring, there was mounting speculation in corporate media that Macron would remove her as a political liability.

Ultimately, however, Borne survived as prime minister until the crisis caused inside Macron’s party by the adoption last month of his fascistic anti-immigration law. This law blocks immigrants from receiving social benefits, in line with the “national preference” policy of the neo-fascist National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen. This law, which utterly exposed the charlatanry of Macron’s claims to be fighting for democracy against neo-fascism, led several members of his party to resign, including Borne’s former chief of staff, Health Minister Aurélien Rousseau. 

Borne herself also struck a somewhat discordant note on the immigration law, claiming to be “profoundly humanist,” and pointing to her background as the daughter of immigrants to say that she would ensure that the anti-immigration law would “respect our values.”

While Borne’s record is deeply reactionary, Attal’s record and his support for the immigration law appear more compatible with the openly fascistic turn Macron is carrying out. 

Attal, the product of an elite education at the Ecole Alsacienne school and the Sciences Po political science university, was only 26 when he followed Macron, leaving the big-business Socialist Party (PS) and joining Macron’s On the March party (since renamed Renaissance) in 2016. After serving as the government’s spokesman, he worked on Macron’s plan to impose universal national military service on French youth, and then, as a Minister for Balanced Budget, on the austerity agenda that led to last year’s pension cuts. Attal was finally named education minister last July.

As education minister, Attal oversaw anti-democratic measures like the imposition of a ban on the Muslim abaya in the schools, plans to segregate classes according to academic performance starting in junior high school, and plans to reintroduce mandatory school uniforms.

In a brief, perfunctory speech yesterday afternoon accepting the office of prime minister, Attal laid out a domestic agenda of continued assaults on the working class. He pledged to “continue transforming our economy,” to “drastically simplify the life of our companies and entrepreneurs,” and to carry out “resolute action towards the youth.”

Officials of the far-right RN, for their part, described Attal as someone who would adopt a far-right agenda from within Macron’s party. “He is very crafty. He always stays calm, with a smile, speaks the way we do without ever insulting us and uses our themes in a much more subtle way than the others, which is what makes him harder to fight,” said Jean-Philippe Tanguy, a RN legislator for the Somme, who added, “We will let him show his cards, and we’ll hit him when we need to.”

Indeed, Macron’s nomination of Attal is the political product of his turn towards the far right, particularly after last year’s pension struggle. It is now widely understood, among broad layers of workers and youth in France, that Macron rules via police violence against the people, impoverishing workers to enrich the wealthy. This policy goes hand in hand with a massive surge in French military spending, as Macron backs NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine and the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza.

Faced with these escalating and explosive class tensions, the Macron government has embarked on an attempt to divert these tensions along racial and ethnic lines with fascistic appeals to anti-immigrant hatreds. It is also planning to largely adopt the RN’s agenda as it runs against the RN in this year’s European elections. Attal is well positioned to implement this reactionary agenda in the service of Macron’s policies of imperialist war abroad and war on the working class at home.

Relying on police-state repression and the support of corrupt union bureaucrats to strangle workers’ struggles, Macron depends on the exorbitant powers of France’s executive presidency, served by an ever narrower circle of top officials personally loyal to him. This has created the conditions for the rapid promotion of young, politically-connected reactionaries like Attal.

The Year Ahead: Ten Issues and One Wild Card

Mel Gurtov

Photo by BoliviaInteligente

2024 is likely to be filled with more than the usual challenges to planetary safety and survival. Here’s a look at 10 issues and a wild card that suggest what’s ahead internationally that is worth our attention.

1. It will be another year of record temperatures and accompanying environmental stresses: more droughts, hurricanes, floods, species and coral reef losses. Antarctica’s ice loss will be particularly remarkable. The agreements reached at the COP28 conference on climate change will be cited again and again, but probably not in celebration of widespread compliance. In the US, climate litigation will be on the upswing. Among the most interesting cases will be those in Oregon, Hawaii, and California in which young people—following on a favorable court decision in Montana—are suing to protect the health of future generations from environmental damage.

2. Major wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine will continue throughout the year, with international support for Ukraine and Israel trending down. Expect the Ukraine war to feature more Ukrainian attacks inside Russia and some spillover of Russian attacks into NATO (Poland) countries. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza will become unmanageable as Israel’s occupation tightens. Israel may be convulsed by renewed conflict between the far right and liberals over judicial independence. Its war with Hezbollah may not be containable, leading either to Israeli military action in Lebanon or to conflict with Iran—or both. There may be calls in the US to attack Iran, not just in support of Israel but also to create regime change and end Iran’s nuclear program.

3. Failed and failing states may increase under the weight of coups, civil wars, climate change, and deteriorating economic conditions that include high food insecurity. Africa has many such stories: Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Somalia. But Africa is not alone; Haiti, Myanmar, and Pakistan also stand out. These signs of collapsing authority will put enormous pressure to provide aid on the UN and other international and nongovernmental organizations—aid that will be increasingly hard to come by.

4. The debt crisis for the poorest countries will intensify, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where every country is deeply in debt to China and has no foreseeable way out.

5. China will mainly be looking inward, not outward, as its economy gets deeper into trouble. Internal security will have top priority for Xi Jinping as he doubles down on party, military, and social discipline. Repression may intensify as the party-state seeks to thwart rising social dissatisfaction.

6. China-US relations may improve marginally as high-level diplomacy normalizes, especially military-to-military communication. But improvement depends on stabilization of the Taiwan situation following upcoming elections, and a cooling down of tensions in the South China Sea. Neither of those possibilities is likely if a pro-independence candidate wins in Taiwan and if the Philippines and China cannot resolve their competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.

7. The nuclear issue in North Korea will again raise alarms as Pyongyang carries out more long-range missile tests. Another North Korean underground nuclear test is also possible. The chances of a resumption of US-North Korea diplomacy seem remote.

8. Illiberal populism, a.k.a strong-arm autocracy, is likely to strengthen in so-called democracies such as Modi’s India, Orban’s Hungary, and Erdogan’s Turkey. Expect anti-democratic leaders in China, Russia, and elsewhere to continue their disinformation efforts aimed at supporting far-right politicians and denigrating liberals. Worse yet, centrist parties in Europe will seek to pacify the far right to maintain their ruling coalitions.

9. Cyberhacking and other threats to governmental and personal security will increase. Chinese hacking of US targets, for instance, has changed from economic sabotage to acquire corporate secrets, to attacks on critical infrastructure such as utilities and transport systems, experts say. The hacking issue seems destined to become a top matter for US-China discussions.

10. Immigration will continue to challenge liberal governments and give fuel to far-right politicians and extremist groups. The tendency everywhere will be to limit immigration by narrowing amnesty and residency rules.

Finally, the wild card: the US elections. A Trump victory would mean a turnabout from international involvement to domestic upheaval as Trump seeks retribution against his enemies. His politics of revenge will have global consequences.

It would portend a dramatic decline in democratic governance and liberal values, a significant withdrawal of the US from alliances and international organizations, pressure on Ukraine to give in to Russian occupation of its land, a major reduction in US foreign aid and other international programs, termination of US commitments on climate change, and a significant uptick in US-China tensions (especially over Taiwan). Authoritarian leaders and politicians around the world will cite the US retreat from democracy as a model and act accordingly.

Even a Biden win, if not accompanied by Democratic control of the House or Senate, would spell trouble for US international commitments, starting with Ukraine and climate change.

Sorry to be so pessimistic, but facts and trends are inescapable. It would be nice to live in peaceful, harmonious times, but we don’t.

German arms exports, including to Europe, Israel and Ukraine, at record levels

Gregor Link

Germany is fueling the war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip with record levels of arms exports. Last year, the German government approved arms exports worth €12.2 billion—an increase of 40 percent compared to the previous year. These arms exports are integral to the great power agenda of German imperialism and part of a massive Europe-wide armaments campaign.

German Leopard 2 main battle tanks on their way to Ukraine. [Photo: Bundeswehr]

A statement from the German Economics Ministry reveals that, in addition to arms deliveries to the Ukrainian military, Norway was supplied with armaments totaling €1.2 billion in the period from 1 January to 12 December 2023, followed by Hungary (€1.03 billion), Great Britain (€654.9 million), the US (€545.4 million) and Poland (€327.9 million). Arms shipments were also exported respectively to Israel and South Korea.

The record total exceeds the export volume of €8.36 billion approved by the coalition government in 2022, which itself was the second-highest annual total in the history of post war Germany.

Ukraine

German arms deliveries to Ukraine almost doubled in 2023 and, at €4.44 billion, accounted for the majority of exports in the second year of the war. On December 16, the Ministry of Defence added 7,390 155 mm shells (self-propelled howitzers), six mine clearance systems, a Patriot anti-aircraft missile system with rockets, 14 drone defence systems and 47,040 rounds of 40 mm ammunition to its already long list of arms deliveries.

In addition, ammunition is being delivered at a European level. European Union governments have committed to delivering 1 million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine by the end of March 2024, consisting primarily of heavy artillery ammunition. According to EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell, EU states have already delivered “more than 300,000” rounds from their stocks to Ukraine. EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton declared in November that the EU’s annual ammunition production capacity would “exceed one million in the spring and 1.3 or 1.4 million by the end of the year” and called on the arms industry to “prioritise customers from Europe and Ukraine.”

On December 17, the German arms giant Rheinmetall complied with this request and concluded an agreement with Ukraine for the supply of artillery shells, explosive devices and propellants worth €1.2 billion. On its website the defence company describes itself as an “essential, strategic partner of Ukraine in the supply of 155mm artillery ammunition” and as the “sole source of supply for the Ukrainian armed forces with large quantities of new medium and large-calibre ammunition” for German Marder and Leopard tanks.

“Several tens of thousands of rounds have already been delivered, with tens of thousands more to follow in 2024,” the company’s website continues. The German government has also commissioned Rheinmetall to deliver “several tens of thousands of rounds” in 2025.

The framework agreement was preceded by the establishment of the Rheinmetall Ukrainian Defence Industry LLC—a joint venture with the Ukrainian state-owned defence company Ukroboronprom—in October 2023, which is due to start producing German battle tanks on Ukrainian soil this year. In addition, Rheinmetall will supply the Ukrainian military with 25 Leopard 1A5 battle tanks, five armoured recovery vehicles and two training tanks, as well as 14 Leopard 2A4 battle tanks this year on behalf of the Dutch and Danish governments.

In an interview with Wirtschaftswoche, CEO Armin Papperger confirmed that Rheinmetall is already “Ukraine’s largest defence industry partner.” After orders worth around €900 million in 2022, the volume had risen to two and a half billion euros in 2023. According to Papperger, “certainly more” is expected for the new year. In Hungary, which received defence equipment worth €1.02 billion last year, series production of the Lynx tank is already taking place against the background of the war in Ukraine.

Norway

According to the German military, it maintains a “strategic partnership” with Norway and has been producing submarines with improved camouflage capabilities since September 2023 in order to “effectively combat enemy surface and underwater vehicles.” Although not an EU member state, Norway is now one of the largest troop providers for the EU’s EUMAM Ukraine mission, which aims to train around 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers by the end of 2024.

The Bundeswehr also emphasises the “very intensive cooperation between the German and Norwegian armed forces” as part of the European Battlegroup in Lithuania and the German-led “Brigade Lithuania,” which is to be established this year. During a recent visit to Norway, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) praised the two countries’ joint submarine construction, troop exercises such as “Noble Jump” and the procurement of Leopard 2 main battle tanks.

At the beginning of 2023, Economics Minister Robert Habeck travelled to Norway to expand the “strategic partnership” to include the areas of “climate, renewable energies and green industry.” In the future, “cooperation in the area of raw materials and associated important strategic links will be intensified in particular,” the German Economics Ministry stated in a press release. This includes microelectronics, as well as measures to “further improve the safety of the gas pipelines between Norway and Germany.”

Israel

Since the beginning of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, Germany has increased its military exports to Israel tenfold. In 2023, exports amounted to €323.2 million, consisting in particular of components for tactically relevant spheres such as air defence and communications. One hundred and eighty-five of the 218 individual export deals last year were granted following October 7.

German militarism is thus not only directly supporting the Netanyahu government’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, it is also directly profiting from it. When the war began, Rheinmetall’s share price rose by around 15 percent within just five days — the company’s steepest rise of the entire year. Together with its Israeli partners, Rheinmetall is currently developing a 155-millimetre wheeled howitzer, as well as combat drones that can be deployed in advance and can “wait a long time for an attack.”

The demonstration of the fully automatic artillery system from Rheinmetall and its Israeli partner company Elbit Systems took place in March at the Shivta firing range in southern Israel in front of “high-ranking guests from the British, German, Dutch and Hungarian armed forces.” German and Israeli managers declared they were “proud to present the advanced 155-millimetre artillery system to the world.” Elbit Systems is one of the three largest defence companies in Israel and plays a central role in the genocide against the Palestinians with weapons systems such as the Iron Sting, a precision-guided mortar munition.

In addition to the export and joint development of weapons, Germany also imports key weapons systems from Israel that have been developed in the course of the latter’s military operations. On November 23, for example, the Bundeswehr Procurement Office and the Israeli Ministry of Defence signed a multi-billion-euro procurement contract for Arrow 3, which is intended to counter long-range nuclear missiles.

A state secretary from the Defence Ministry had already announced on October 18 that the ministry was planning to procure an additional five PULS (Precise and Universal Launching System) Elbit multiple launch rocket systems. A corresponding €25 million proposal is to be submitted to the Bundestag in the first quarter of 2024 so that “the first systems can be delivered as early as 2024.”

According to the military magazine Soldat & Technik, the Bundestag’s approval would be slow, “but more expedient,” because “the Bundeswehr would thus secure political support for the introduction of the system” and German units could be equipped with PULS systems “across the board” in the future.

South Korea

Alongside Israel, South Korea is the only country among the 10 largest purchasers of German weapons that is not a member of NATO, with an import volume of €256.4 million. According to the Stockholm-based research institute SIPRI, South Korea was by far the largest purchaser of German weapons in the period from 2011 to 2022. In December, Berlin and Seoul signed new agreements to improve their intelligence and defence industry cooperation.

According to a Deutsche Welle report, the aim of the initiatives signed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz is to “strengthen the respective defence capacities in the midst of the conflict in Ukraine and tensions in the Indo-Pacific region.” A recent strategy paper by the government-affiliated German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) states: “For a long time, bilateral relations were characterised by an exchange on traditional cooperation topics, such as the experiences of division and reunification and, above all, economic ties. Recently, they have also expanded to include security policy and strategic issues.”

The massive extent of German arms exports to almost all of the world’s key war and conflict regions underline the aggressiveness with which German imperialism is once again acting to assert its economic and geostrategic interests globally. The government in Berlin has committed to further escalating its war course in the new year. Military aid for Ukraine alone is to be more than doubled in 2024. In addition, the military budget for 2024, totaling over €85 billion, will be the biggest since the end of the Second World War.