Government-Inspired Attacks on Female Journalists in El Salvador are Increasing

Carmen Rodríguez

Journalism in El Salvador is experiencing levels of hostility not seen since the 80’s, during the country’s bloody civil war. Threats, persecution, and false accusations against journalists are increasing in a country that paid for its young and fragile democracy with over 75 thousand lives.

For the first time in the 29 years since the signing of the peace accords, a president and several members of his cabinet have been called out for their repressive actions and for inciting violence against critics, in ways that echo the military governments of the 1980s.

Last week, the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES) presented its report on attacks on journalists, freedom of expression and freedom of the press. According to the APES report “Freedom of Expression in El Salvador 2020”, aggressions against journalists doubled between March and September of that year. The organization registered 125 cases in 2020 and 77 in 2019, while in 2018 there were 65. The main culprits of threats and aggressions against journalists and media included President Nayib Bukele and several officials of his cabinet.

“Threats made via social networks are a trend since the 2019 elections. Most of the digital attacks come from officials, led by President Nayib Bukele, who has also been dedicated to blocking users, journalists first and foremost. He is followed by his officials, also by government supporters and anonymous accounts,” said the president of APES, Angélica Cárcamo.

On July 2, Julia Gavarrete, a journalist with Gato Encerrado magazine, became a target. The journalist left her home for a last-minute press conference convened by the Ministry of Health (MINSAL). The event would be the only opportunity to hear from government officials authoritative figures regarding positive Covid-19 cases in the country. Thus far, this information has been closely guarded among State institutions.

“That day, they were going to publish data that they do not officially publish and that the Ministry of Health had. I found it curious that when I arrived I insisted to sign up for the list of questions and they told me no, after insisting, almost at the end of the conference, they asked the press secretary (Ernesto Sanabria) and he nodded his head and I was able to ask my question,” Gavarrete told Américas Program.

Gavarrete recalls that the conference took longer than usual. When Julia returned home, she found everything in disarray, her bedroom door was open, her closet drawers were open. Someone had broken into her house. Her laptop and other electronic devices used for work were gone.

“It wasn’t a simple burglary,” the journalist says. The people, or the person who broke into Gavarrete’s house, took nothing but the computer and other work equipment. “Because of the quarantine, I hadn’t been out for three weeks. The person who broke into my house knew where I was that afternoon,” she said.

“Nothing of value was taken. My wallet was at home with money in it and they didn’t take it; they didn’t take jewelry either. They only took my laptop, a tablet, which I normally left on the table where I worked.”

Weeks before the house was broken into, Gato Encerrado published several investigative articles by Gavarrete, exposing cases of corruption and nepotism committed in Nayib Bukele’s first year of government. In addition, the journalist had participated in forums on human rights violations during the country’s quarantine.

Reactions to the publications were immediate. As is now common, journalists or media investigating and publishing information on corruption, nepotism, lack of transparency, and administrative irregularities from the Executive or the constant disrespect of State institutions by President Bukele must contend messages loaded with hate and violence from anonymous troll accounts.

“With each publication we receive digital attacks. In one of the messages, they told me ‘I hope they find you and your family in a body bag’. Sometimes you know they are trolls and sometimes you don’t know if they are real government supporters. But it is dangerous,” said Gavarrete.

In the end, President Bukele downplayed the computer theft from Gavarrete’s home on social media. This led the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University (IDHUCA) and Julia to publicly denounced the incident. But while neither the Gavarrete nor the UCA singled out anyone in particular during a press conference, President Bukele felt alluded to and reacted on his twitter account stating:

“The UCA gives a press conference accusing the government of stealing a laptop. It seems like a joke but it is not.”

Attacks on journalists on the rise

During the first year of Nayib Bukele’s government, reports on the attacks against journalists increased considerably. The Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) noted in its latest report that during 2019, attacks, threats and lack of guarantees for the work of journalists in El Salvador were on the rise.

The report also highlighted that “independent media denounced selective inspections of sites critical of the current government, violations that are consolidated contrary to the environment conducive to the normal development of journalistic practice in the country”.

Julia Gavarrete’s case is one of the more serious incidents, but there are more. The same month, the independent news media Focos, denounced “incessant expressions of harassment and hate” against journalist Karen Fernandez, for criticizing the government. Messages with highly misogynist and hateful content against women journalists were republished by government officials, members and candidates of Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party.

Congresswoman Karina Sosa pointed out in a conversation on the political situation in El Salvador that took place with civil organizations in the United States at the beginning of September, that the increase in attacks against journalists, especially against female journalists, prompted by the government is concerning.

“We have observed an increasing number of attacks and we are concerned that the attacks on women journalists are worse than the attacks on male journalists. These attacks are loaded with a message of hate and misogynistic violence against women journalists. We have seen messages in which these accounts tell women journalists that they are going to rape them and we find this very worrying”, said Sosa.

APES data point out that between January 2019 and August 2020, 80 women journalists have been victims of violations and attacks. The organization’s president, Angélica Cárcamo, also points out that these violations are more evident when it comes to female journalists and that most of the attacks are promoted and encouraged by President Bukele and senior officials of his government.

“There is an intention to stigmatize journalists who criticize or who do not follow the government’s pro-government message. We are concerned that the president or his officials promote messages of discrediting or defamation against journalists and that the attacks against women journalists have a misogynistic component,” Cárcamo told Boletín Américas.

In early September, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Congressman Eliot Engel, sent a letter to President Bukele, questioning “the government’s increasing hostility toward independent and investigative media.”

A few days before Republican and Democratic senators sent the letter, Bukele instigated a series of attacks against journalists from El Faro, one of the most prestigious investigative media outlets in Central America. The smear message against the journalists was replicated on pro-government websites and on the accounts of government officials. In response to the president’s public accusations against El Faro and the lack of follow-up on accusations of gender violence in his own government, the Mesa de Protección a Periodistas published a communiqué under the title: “Gender violence must be investigated and prosecuted; it should not be instrumentalized nor should there be any sort of revictimization”. Among the cases that remain unpunished are the accusations of violence against women made against Bukele’s press secretary, Ernesto Sanabria.

Attacks against me

In January 2020, I joined the list of female journalists attacked by Salvadoran government officials and their supporters.

It was in this month that I published an article that highlighted the criminal proceedings for violence and threats against women made by the press secretary of the Presidential House of El Salvador Sanabria. Official court documents show that Sanabria sentenced his ex-partner and threatened her: “I’m going to kill you and no one will notice where I’m going to bury you”. According to the testimonies recorded in court, Sanabria intimidated her and prevented his ex-partner from reporting him, stating that: “I bought justice in this country. I did not kill you because I am going to be the first suspect”.

This story and other publications on denunciations of women journalists who are victims of sexual harassment in the media in El Salvador that I reported in November 2019 triggered attacks against me that were prompted by the press secretary in three distinct moments.

The latest attack took place the first week of last August. Sanabria accused me of slandering President Bukele, spreading hate messages against the Salvadoran government and sowing disunity among Salvadorans. Several social media accounts reproduced Sanabria’s hate messages. One of them declared me “enemy of the country and the color turquoise”, the color that represents President Bukele’s party. In addition, they used the domestic violence case of which I was a victim of to humiliate me.

My photograph was exposed, false information was spread about my immigration status and about an alleged investigation against me in the United States by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). A few weeks after the attacks began, the media outlet that published the articles about harassment against women journalists and the cases of violence, threats and physical violence by Sanabria, unpublished the stories.

Alarms and concern

Alarms and concern about the situation of journalists in El Salvador are starting to be raised. The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) also repudiated the threats and attacks instigated by President Bukele and his government against journalists and pointed out that “the increase of attacks, the tension with the presidency, the selective blocking of public information and the use of pro-government trolls to denigrate the critical work and independent press”, are worrying.

Additionally, the IACHR Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, Edison Lanza repeatedly expressed his concern in interviews and on social networks:

“The levels of stigmatization of media and journalists in El Salvador by officials has reached staggering levels. They do not resort to debate or accountability, but to diatribe and disqualification from power. The IACHR Rapporteurship is following these actions,” Lanza tweeted.

The Salvadoran Legislative Assembly authorized at the end of August the creation of a special commission to investigate attacks on journalists and the use of public funds to finance these attacks. The group of deputies has interviewed members of APES, journalists who have been victims of attacks and aggressions, and the Human Rights Ombudsman, Apolonio Tobar.

After 15 meetings with 26 journalists, the commission concluded that Bukele’s government uses state resources to promote and carry out attacks against journalists and media critical of his administration.

“In El Salvador there is harassment, discrimination, insults and mistreatment of journalists by the Executive Branch. There is a blocking of public information and access to public officials to certain media that are critical of the current administration”, said Congressman Emilio Corea, member of the commission that investigated the attacks.

However, the conclusions of the report do not include actions that could be taken to avoid further aggression against journalists and only recommend the government to stop the attacks. The Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office confirmed that there are reports of journalists and media outlets that have been subjected to threats, attacks on freedom of expression and coercion, but none of these cases have been taken to court.

Who are the 10 Biggest Pandemic Profiteers?

Chuck Collins

One year ago, the Institute for Policy Studies published “Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth  Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes and Pandemic Profiteers,”  and began tracking billionaire wealth gains as unemployment surged.  We teamed up with Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) to track the wealth growth of America’s billionaires over the last year.  This report summarizes the extraordinary growth in wealth of those now 657 billionaires based on real-time data from Forbes on March 18, 2021.

Here are highlights from the last 12 months of billionaire wealth growth:

+ The combined wealth of the nation’s 657 billionaires increased more than $1.3 trillion, or 44.6 percent, since the pandemic lockdowns began. [See Master Table] Over those same 12 months, more than 29 million Americans contracted the virus and more than 535,000 died from it. As billionaire wealth soared over, almost 80 million lost work between March 21, 2020, and Feb. 20, 2021, and 18 million were collecting unemployment on Feb. 27, 2021

+ There are 43 newly minted billionaires since the beginning of the pandemic, when there were 614. A number of new billionaires joined the list after initial public offerings (IPOs) of stock in companies such as Airbnb, DoorDash, and Snowflake.

+ The increase in the combined wealth of the 15 billionaires with the greatest growth in absolute wealth was $563 billion or 82 percent. [See table 1] The wealth growth of just these 15 represents over 40 percent of the wealth growth among all billionaires. Topping the list are Elon Musk ($137.5 billion richer, 559 percent), Jeff Bezos ($65 billion, 58 percent) and Mark Zuckerberg ($47 billion, 86 percent).

The 10 biggest “Pandemic Profiteers” saw the greatest percentage increase in their wealth—at least 300 percent. [See Table 2]

They mostly multiplied their fortunes in the world of online goods, services and entertainment, as forcibly homebound Americans shopped, invested and diverted themselves in isolation. They include the owners of ecommerce leaders Quicken Loans, Square, Carvana, and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase; social media sites Snapchat and Twitter; online streaming platform Roku; and digital ad agency Trade Desk. 19 other billionaires experienced increases of over 200% while 48 others more than doubled their fortunes with 100%+ gains.

1. Bom Kim (670 percent/$7.7 billion): A U.S. citizen and founder of the e-commerce giant Coupang, the Amazon of South Korea. Kim’s fortune surged as high as $11 billion after the company’s IPO in early March.

2. Dan Gilbert (642 percent/$41.7 billion): Owner of Quicken Loans, which capitalized on cloistered citizens tapping online financing. Lives in Michigan.

3. Ernest Garcia II (567 percent/$13.6 billion): Biggest shareholder of Carvana, the online car sales and auto-financing giant. Arizona.

4. Elon Musk (559 percent/$137.5 billion): Musk is now the second wealthiest Americans—at nearly $138 billion—as his shares in Tesla, Space-X and other companies that he owns continue to climb. Lives in Texas.

5. Brian Armstrong (550 percent/$5.5 billion): Chief executive of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the country. California resident.

6. Bobby Murphy (531 [ercent/$10.1 billion): Co-founder of Snapchat, with his Stanford fraternity brother, Evan Spiegel. California resident.

7. Evan Spiegel (490 percent/$9.3 billion): Co-founder of Snapchat with his other billionaire super-gainer, Bobby Murphy. California resident.

8. Jack Dorsey (396 percent/$10.3 billion): Co-founder and CEOs of both Twitter and Square, the small business payment app. Lives in California

9. Anthony Wood (331 percent/$5.3 billion): Founder of Roku, which enables online TV video streaming. California resident.

10. Jeff Green (300 percent/$3 billion): Californian founder and chairman of The Trade Desk, a digital advertising firm.

Other notable billionaire wealth gains during the pandemic

Eric Yuan, co-founder of video-conferencing technology Zoom, saw his wealth rise by $8.4 billion during the pandemic year, a gain of 153 percent. A year ago, Yuan had $5.5 billion which increased to $13.9 billion. Last year Zoom paid no federal income taxes on its $660 million in profits, which increased by more than 4,000 percent.

The three owners of Airbnb saw their wealth accelerate thanks to their pandemic year IPO. Brian Chesky’s wealth increased from $4.1 billion to $14.6 billion, a gain of $10.5 billion, an increase of 256 percent. Nathan Blecharazyk and Joe Gebbia, with equal ownership stakes valued at $4.1 billion a year ago, each saw their wealth increase to $13.2 billion, for gains of $9.1 billion each, or 222 percent.

Jim Koch, owner of Boston Beer Company and brewer of the Sam Adams brand, saw his wealth increase from $1.3 billion to $3.2 billion, a gain of $1.9 billion over the pandemic year, or 146 percent.

Dan and Bubba Cathy, the owners of drive-through sensation Chick-Fil-A, saw their combined wealth of $6.8 billion rise to $16.6 billion, a gain of $9.8 billion over the pandemic year, or 144 percent.

Harold Hamm, the politically connected oil and gas fracker, saw his wealth increase from $2.4 billion to $7.5 billion during the pandemic year, an increase of 5.1 billion, or 212.5 percent.

Of 17 industry categories, billionaires in the technology industry had the greatest collective wealth growth—$564 billion, or nearly 68 percent. [See Table 3]

They were worth $1.4 trillion on March 18, 2021, or one-third of the billionaires’ total. The titans of Wall Street—the Finance & Investment industries—saw their wealth grow by $226 billion—a nearly 37 percent increase. Automotive industry billionaires had the biggest percentage point increase in wealth—317 percent based on an increase in wealth of $172 billion. That was largely driven by the extraordinary rise in Elon Musk’s wealth—$137.5 billion or 559 percent.

All but three states saw the wealth of their billionaire residents increase. [See Table 4]

Topping the list in total wealth growth are California at $551 billion, Washington at $134.6 billion, and New York at $116.4 billion. The top three states with the greatest percentage increase in wealth are Michigan at 164 percent, Arizona at 110 percent, and Hawaii at 107 percent.

Billionaire wealth growth is calculated between March 18, 2020 and March 18, 2021, based on Forbes data compiled in this report by ATF and IPS. March 18 is used as the unofficial beginning of the crisis because by then most federal and state economic restrictions responding to the virus were in place. March 18 was also the date that Forbes picked to measure billionaire wealth for the 2020 edition of its annual billionaires’ report, which provided a baseline that ATF and IPS compare periodically with real-time data from the Forbes website. PolitiFact has favorably reviewed this methodology.

Increasing Nukes and Trimming the Military: Global Britain’s Skewed Vision

Binoy Kampmark

Campaigners for the abolition of nuclear weapons had every reason to clink glasses with the coming into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in January.  Nuclear weapon states and their allies still persisted in calling the document unhelpful and unrealistic; the self-appointed realists have preferred the go-slow approach of disarmament, a form of moderated insanity.

In March, it became clear that the United Kingdom, one of the opponents of the TPNW, had decided not only to look the other way but walk in the opposite direction.  The threshold of British nuclear warheads is to be increased to 260, though the authorities maintain an intentional ambiguity about the exact number.  This reverses a decision arrived at a decade ago, which promised to cut the maximum threshold for nuclear warheads from 225 to 180 by the middle of this decade.  In the words of the Defence Command Paper of the Ministry of Defence, titled Defence in a Competitive Age, “Some nuclear-armed states are increasing and diversifying their arsenals, while increases in global competition, challenges to the multilateral order, and proliferation of potentially disruptive technologies all pose a threat to strategic stability.”

Such a direction is very much at odds with public support for Britain joining the TPNW.  A poll conducted in January for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament found that 59% of the public expressed support for signing the treaty, including 50% of conservative voters and 68% of Labour voters.  The policy also breaches undertakings made under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue efforts to disarm.  Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, decried the decision as “toxic masculinity on display”, “irresponsible, dangerous and violates international law.”  UNA-UK’s Head of Campaigns Ben Donaldson remarked that the UK government could best “invest in measures to combat climate change and pandemics, not trigger a dangerous new arms race.”

The push towards more nukes would seem to be a compensation for reducing numbers in other areas of defence.  While the nuclear arsenal is slated to increase, the number of soldiers in service will decline: from the current target of 82,040 to 72,500 in 2025.  (Even here, a bit of make-believe is taking hold, given that the Army currently has 76,350 soldiers in service.)  Effectively, Britain wants to roar with less, all part of what Defence Secretary Ben Wallace calls “increased deployability and technological advantage”.

The justifications for doing so, outlined in the Defence Command Paper, are the immemorial ones: new threats, new security environments, and a topsy-turvy world.  “The notion of war and peace as binary states,” writes Wallace in the paper’s foreword, “has given way to a continuum of conflict, requiring us to prepare our forces for more persistent global engagement and constant campaigning, moving seamlessly from operating to war fighting.”

The review identifies “four overarching trends” of concern for the UK: the growing importance of the Indo-Pacific, China’s assertiveness and “the influence of middle powers”; systemic inter-state competition, including between governments with “democratic and authoritarian values”; the challenge of technology, beneficial “but also becoming an arena of intensifying geopolitical competition”; and various transnational challenges requiring “collective action, such as climate change, biosecurity risks, terrorism and serious and organised crime.”

This sounds much an ominous promise to commit Britain to a state of affairs reminiscent of that most absurd of US policies: the waging of permanent war for permanent peace.  But Wallace wishes to be farsighted, urging the dinosaurs to move over and forget “the shield of sentimentality to protect previously battle-winning but now outdated capabilities.”

The theatre for this commitment will not just be the conventional ones centred on the NATO alliance.  Officially, Britain is again looking east of Suez, with an eye to drawing in old allies.  “Our partnerships with Canada, Australia and New Zealand will be at the heart of our tilt towards the Indo-Pacific, as we work to support them to tackle the security challenges in the region.” Central to the “tilt” will be the maritime partnership with India.  The object of the exercise is clear enough.  “The rising power of China is by far the most significant geopolitical factor in the world today.”  Britain had “to be prepared to push back to protect our values and global interests, while maintaining our ability to cooperate in tackling global challenges such as climate change and the mutual benefits of our economic relationship.”

The way this Global Britain vision is going to be achieved is a novel one.  Fewer personnel will have fewer tanks (reduced from 226 to 148 upgraded versions).  The RAF will oversee the retirement of its older Typhoons (“equipment that has increasingly limited utility in the digital and future operating environment”) and Hercules transport aircraft.  The Navy will also farewell its share: two of the oldest T23 frigates.  “We will bring Type 31 and Type 32 frigates into service, these new vessels are not just replacements for existing platforms, they will be more flexible than their predecessors.”

The defence paper abounds in the terms of an accountant gone wild, intoxicated by notions of bottom lines and efficiencies.  Fleets are to be rationalised or retired; capabilities must be increased; the stress must be on the digital.  But on the subject of nuclear weapons, Global Britain’s eyes remain very much focused on the past, shackled to the notion that a greater number of nukes somehow guarantee security. A certifiably barbaric relic of thinking.

Israel’s election: Political gridlock as fascistic party gains seats

Jean Shaoul

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party has won the largest number of seats, but without gaining the 61-seat majority needed to form a coalition government. His political opponents, a diverse collection of right-wing and nominally centre, and left-wing parties, are likewise unlikely to be able to form a majority.

Naftali Bennett’s right-wing Yamina (seven seats) and Mansour Abbas’s Islamist United Arab List party (six seats) have yet to declare their support, making them potential “kingmakers” in coalition negotiations.

Benjamin Netanyahu [Photo: Office of the Israeli Prime Minister]

With some 10 percent of the vote—the double-sealed ballots of soldiers, prisoners and COVID patients—still to be counted in an electoral system that requires parties to achieve at least 3.25 percent of the vote to enter parliament and allocates the number of seats in proportion to the number of votes, the final result is not expected until Thursday evening.

It seems likely that Israel is set for weeks of political horse trading, while the possibility of an unprecedented fifth election next autumn cannot be ruled out.

The unclear result in Israel’s fourth election in two years reflects the ongoing fragmentation and stampede to the right of Israeli politics, with the explicitly right-wing and far-right forces—bitterly divided among themselves over their support for or opposition to Netanyahu—winning 72 seats in the 120 seat Knesset. The “centrist” parties won 25 seats and the nominal lefts, Labour and Meretz, focusing heavily on identity politics, increased their seats to 12.

The result testifies to the profound political crisis of the Israeli state and the absence of any means within the political establishment for the working class, Jewish and Arab, to express its social concerns and interests. While the economic circumstances are different, courtesy of its paymaster in Washington, “the only democracy in the Middle East” is no more able to agree a functioning government than its northern neighbour, Lebanon.

Tuesday’s election followed the collapse of Netanyahu’s national emergency coalition with former Israel Defence Forces chief of staff Benny Gantz’s Blue and White Party. Gantz had fought three elections opposing Netanyahu’s continued premiership, who will shortly appear in court to defend himself against numerous corruption charges over attempts to secure favourable media coverage, only to be bought off with Netanyahu’s promise of a rotating premiership, splitting his own party and political bloc in the process.

Such was the distrust between the various coalition members that the cabinet rarely met and had failed to agree the appointment of the state attorney, senior officials at the justice and finance ministries and other positions. But it was the failure to set a two-year budget—Israel has now been without a budget for more than two years—as agreed in the coalition agreement, that triggered the election.

While 30+ parties, many led by Likud dissidents or politicians who had previously served under Netanyahu, contested the elections, none of them—right, left, or centre—had any substantive differences with Netanyahu. The election was therefore a choice between a diverse grouping of right-wing oppositionists or a far-right incumbent in cahoots with outright fascists, religious bigots and Jewish supremacists.

Once the count is confirmed, President Reuven Rivlin will meet the leaders of the various parliamentary parties and choose the party leader with the best chance of forming a stable majority coalition. If unable to form a government in 42 days, Rivlin can designate another leader to form a government. If that too fails, yet another election must be held.

The turnout, at 67 percent, was the lowest since 2009, with far fewer Arab citizens voting. According to Ha’aretz’s latest figures, Likud has won 30 seats and the religious parties Shas, United Torah Judaism and Religious Zionism have won nine, seven and six seats respectively. Of those opposed to Netanyahu, Yesh Atid has won 17 seats, Blue and White eight, Israel Beiteinu and Labour seven each, New Hope six, Meretz five and the Arab Joint List six.

It is a measure of the rightward lurch of official politics and the collapse of what passes for the left that the fascistic Religious Zionism won almost as many seats as Labour, the founding party of the State of Israel that governed the country for 30 years.

Religious Zionism is part of Netanyahu’s far-right alliance that also includes the openly racist Jewish Power—the political heir of Meir Kahane’s Kach party that was banned as a terrorist organization—and the ultra-conservative religious and homophobic Noam. Religious Zionism advocates the expulsion of the Palestinian population, violence against Arabs and the eradication of secularism and intermarriage.

Should Netanyahu be able to form a government, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Religious Zionism’s number three, will likely be given a ministerial position, alongside the alliance’s leader, Bezalel Smotrich. A lawyer, Ben Gvir is best known for defending settlers accused of Jewish terror attacks and hate crimes against Palestinians and for representing Lehava, an organization that fights Jewish intermarriage with non-Jews.

These are the forces Netanyahu depends on for a majority, in his bid to acquire parliamentary immunity, neuter the judiciary and the Supreme Court and avoid trial and likely imprisonment, as Israel lurches to ever more authoritarian forms of rule.

Netanyahu has previously railed against Israel’s Palestinian citizens, about one fifth of the population, denouncing them for “voting in droves” and enacting the Jewish Nation-State Law that enshrined their second-class citizen status. But despite his denials this does not fully exclude striking a deal with the United Arab List, which has recently cooperated with the government in the Knesset and split from the Joint Arab List, calling for more policing to prevent crime in Arab towns and villages.

Yair Lapid, leader of the nominally centrist and opposition party Yesh Atid, has indicated his willingness to rely on the Joint Arab List’s support in a future coalition, which would be the first time a Palestinian party has ever been part of a governing coalition.

Absent from the campaign was any discussion about the long running conflict with the Palestinians, the creeping de facto annexation of the West Bank, or the economic and social catastrophe facing the working class. Some 17 percent of Israelis were unemployed in February as Netanyahu reopened the economy to ensure a “feel good” election. According to a recent Israel Democracy Institute survey, only 24 percent of Israelis viewed the government’s handling of the public health crisis positively, with even fewer approving its measures to mitigate economic and social fallout.

Instead, Netanyahu focused his campaign almost exclusively on a massive vaccine rollout, bought at enormous cost to the taxpayer, in which around 5.2 million Israelis have received their first shot and 4.2 million (46 percent of the population) the second shot.

This election, Netanyahu found himself without open political support from the incoming Biden administration in the US, unlike Donald Trump’s numerous political gifts. Trump’s support included recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights captured in 1967, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, launching the “deal of the century” that ignored the Palestinians, sanctioning Israel’s annexation of 30 percent of the West Bank, and the facilitating the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

Biden supported Israel against the International Criminal Court’s announcement that it would open an investigation into war crimes against Gaza and the Palestinians. But the Democrats clearly hoped for a more reliable Middle East partner to emerge out of the election. It took President Biden four week from taking office before he finally rang Netanyahu, whose intimate association with Trump is a problem domestically, but by no means an insuperable one.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson praises capitalism and “greed” for “vaccine success”

Thomas Scripps

On Tuesday evening, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a private Zoom meeting of backbench Tory MPs in the 1922 Committee, “The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends… It was giant corporations that wanted to give good returns to shareholders. It was driven by big pharma.”

The comments recall a speech Johnson made last June when he said, “Of course we clap for our NHS. But under this government we also applaud those who make our NHS possible: our innovators, our wealth creators, our capitalists and financiers.” In the aftermath of the 2008-9 financial crash, Johnson defined himself as the chief political opponent of “banker bashing” and champion of the City of London.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a Covid-19 Press Conference on Saturday October 31 in 10 Downing Street. (Picture by Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street)

This time, Johnson was more nervous about the political impact of his obscene remarks reaching the ears of the public. He is reported to have said afterwards, “Actually I regret saying it”, repeating several times “Forget I said that” and asking those present to “remove that comment from your collective memory.”

After his remarks were leaked to The Sun newspaper, probably by an MP who saw no need for political caution, a coordinated effort was launched by Downing Street to insist that Johnson was joking and that his words had been “distorted”.

Johnson, who is usually entirely unconcerned with the words coming out of his mouth, is right to be worried. Media commentators have focused almost exclusively on the danger that Johnson’s comments inflame tensions with the European Union (EU) over the supply of AstraZeneca vaccine doses by bragging of the successful rollout in the UK. More likely is that Johnson belatedly remembered he is sitting on a powder keg. He made his remarks on the evening of the government’s hypocritical “national day of reflection”, one year after the first lockdown was implemented, and after more than 147,000 people have lost their lives to the COVID-19 virus in the UK.

This catastrophe has exposed capitalism as a dysfunctional, murderous social order to millions. Johnson was clearly worried that gloating about how “greed is good” after so many have lost so much would provoke widespread anger and did not want to open a debate on the “glories” of capitalism and the free market that would prompt a deeper questioning of social and political realities.

The truth is that capitalism’s division of the world into competing nation states and stultification of social production by private ownership and the profit motive is responsible for the suffering that has overtaken the world in the last year. The pandemic got out of control because governments internationally refused to implement the necessary measures of containment that would cut across the drive for profit and national competitive advantage. They used the pandemic as an excuse for funneling trillions of dollars into the coffers of the major corporations and the super-rich, before being forced reluctantly into limited lockdowns by growing resistance in the working class.

Employers’ determination to keep down costs blocked the implementation of workplace safety measures and the payment of wages for those who needed to self-isolate.

The surge of infections which followed overwhelmed health services gutted by decades of cuts and privatisation.

Parasitic private companies, frequently run by close friends of the Tory party, ran away with billions in government contracts to provide test and tracing services and protective equipment. Advisers were paid up to £7,000 a day for their role in the national test and trace programme that failed in every conceivable way. Consultants from Deloitte were on £2,360 a day. Serco made £400 million for its COVID-related services.

Capitalism’s role in the development and distribution of vaccines has been no less damaging.

The BBC reported in December, “Initially firms didn't rush in to fund vaccine projects. Creating vaccines, especially in the teeth of an acute health emergency, hasn't proved very profitable in the past.” A spur had to be given by public funding, with billions of tax revenues poured into vaccine development programmes. Much of the science which underpins the vaccines was also conducted with public funding.

Once vaccines were developed, their international rollout was cut across by rival national interests. The UK and the EU have carried on a despicable scramble to secure vaccine supplies for their own populations. Europe is now well into a third wave of the disease with less than 14 percent of the population having received their first dose.

Things are even worse on the world stage. The pricing of the vaccines, the failure to increase production to meet the global demand and the appalling state of infrastructure in many countries thanks to global inequality and war mean that most people in the world will be waiting years to receive a jab.

Wealthy and middle-income countries account for 90 percent of the vaccines delivered so far. Johnson’s “big pharma” heroes have refused to waive patents or share technology and research with potential manufacturers in lower-income countries.

The day before Johnson praised this “greed” as the motor of human progress, World Health Organisation director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the monopolisation of vaccine stocks by rich countries as a “catastrophic moral failure”.

World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (centre) declaring the coronavirus pandemic a Public Health emergency of International Concern [Credit: Fabrice Coffrini]

“We have the means to avert this failure but it’s shocking how little has been done to avert it,” he told a press conference. “The gap between the number of vaccines administered in rich countries and the number of vaccines administered through COVAX is growing every single day and becoming more grotesque every day.”

Not only is this a “moral outrage”, said Ghebreyesus, but also “economically and epidemiologically self-defeating.

“As long as the virus continues to circulate everywhere—anywhere—people will continue to die. Trade and travel will continue to be disrupted and the economic recovery will be further delayed.”

Johnson’s claim of “success” amounts to a boast that the UK is beating its rivals in the EU and elsewhere in measures that in the end produce a disaster for everyone. In addition, moves to scrap public health restrictions and reopen economies all over the world are undermining even the limited vaccination programmes that are underway. Infections are being allowed to surge once again, which will lead to countless more deaths and could lead to new variants of the virus which evade the vaccines already administered.

Johnson would also have been worried about his remarks drawing attention to the fact that the pandemic, by contrast, has done wonders for the capitalists. Fueled by unprecedented government handouts, the world’s billionaires have seen their fortunes soar by $3.9 trillion, even as millions of lives, hundreds of millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of wages were lost.

It should be recalled here that Telegraph assistant editor and leading business and economics columnist Jeremy Warner wrote at the start of the pandemic, “From an entirely disinterested economic perspective, the COVID-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long-term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents.”

According to actuarial firm XPS, this grisly prediction is being borne out. They estimated a £25-60 billion saving for defined benefit pension schemes thanks to the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic taking an average of seven months off the projected life expectancy of 65-year-olds.

The pandemic crisis has prepared the way for a massive corporate onslaught on workers’ jobs, wages and conditions. More and more companies are carrying out brutal “fire and rehire” restructurings, in pursuit of the “good returns for shareholders” hailed by the prime minister.

Johnson’s comments sum up the response of the ruling elite to the pandemic. All in all, as they see it, nothing all that bad has happened in the last year. The profits continue to roll in and, for those at the apex of the existing social order, things have never been better. All this cost was the lives of working people, above all the old and the infirm who are viewed as an intolerable drain of profits in any case.

What a US nuclear war with China would look like

Andre Damon

Former NATO commander James Stavridis and novelist Elliot Ackerman have published a book depicting how the deepening conflict between the United States and China could escalate into a nuclear world war costing tens of millions of lives.

The book, entitled 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, should serve as a warning to millions of people of what is threatened by the massive new nuclear arms race initiated by the United States and its allies targeting China.

2034 is co-written by a man who would be a leading architect of such a war. Stavridis was one of the Pentagon’s most prominent political commanders, having been vetted as a potential running mate by the Clinton campaign and a possible secretary of state by President-elect Donald Trump in the fall of 2016.

The mushroom cloud from the world’s first test of a thermonuclear device, dubbed Ivy Mike, over Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands on November 1, 1952. (AP Photo/Los Alamos National Laboratory)

A retired four-star Navy admiral, he served as NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 2009 to 2013, after serving as the head of U.S. Southern Command and U.S. European Command.

Stavridis has decades of experience related to US weapons of mass destruction, “beginning with my first job as a division officer on a destroyer, where I crafted a long-range plan for the maintenance and inspection of our onboard nuclear weapons,” he writes in his memoirs.

Like many generals, Stavridis believes it is better for the United States to achieve its geopolitical aims without resorting to mass murder. But if war cannot be avoided and the bloodletting is to commence, “we must be prepared to fight and win,” as he writes in a recent op-ed in the Washington Post.

2034 is the fusion of two genres: the Pentagon tabletop exercise and the airport thriller. Its cookie-cutter characters and worn-out plot tropes do not merit paraphrase or examination.

The tabletop military exercise proceeds as follows. During a freedom of navigation exercise in the South China Sea taking place in the year 2034, a group of US frigates board a Chinese civilian vessel in distress. The Americans learn the vessel houses sensitive technology and seize it. While the operation is underway, the US vessels are attacked by a Chinese fleet, which totally paralyzes them using advanced cyberweapons.

When the US dispatches two aircraft carrier battle groups to the Pacific in a show of force, a total of 40 American ships are sunk with negligible Chinese losses. The numbers are not quantified, but some tens of thousands of American sailors, airmen, and marines must have lost their lives.

In response, Washington launches a nuclear weapon at a Chinese coastal city, against which Beijing retaliates by launching a nuclear attack on San Diego, California and Galveston, Texas. The US retaliates by obliterating Shanghai, one of the world’s largest and most important cities.

Stavridis writes that after an American nuclear attack on Shanghai, “These many months later the city remained a charred, radioactive wasteland. The death toll had exceeded thirty million. After each of the nuclear attacks international markets plummeted. Crops failed. Infectious diseases spread. Radiation poisoning promised to contaminate generations. The devastation exceeded… capacity for comprehension.”

The American survivors of a Chinese nuclear attack on San Diego are left to live in “wretched camps,” where “cyclical outbreaks of typhus, measles, and even smallpox often sprouted from the unbilged latrines and rows of plastic tenting.”

This appears to be a vision of hell. But it must be stated bluntly that even this depiction falls far, far short of the actual effects of a nuclear world war.

By training and temperament, Stavridis is largely incapable of viewing the world through the eyes of anyone besides a military officer or “national security” bureaucrat. “Ordinary” people are not described. The various protagonists take the lives of millions, and it is very hard on them, and the reader is supposed to sympathize.

In Stavridis’ account, the decisions governing the conflict are made by largely rational and analytical military technocrats. Elected leaders notionally exist, and they sometimes take actions that impinge upon the narrative, but it is the military officials that largely guide the action. Just as politicians have little impact on the plot, social dynamics and popular opinion are largely ignored.

The United States carries out a nuclear attack on a Chinese port city, and it appears to have no domestic social effect, except to lead the public to bray for blood.

Millions are killed, tens of millions are displaced domestically in the United States. In one single incident—the nuclear bombing of Shanghai—the United States carries out an act of mass murder surpassing in scale the vernichtungskrieg (war of extermination) waged by Nazi Germany in the Eastern front over four years.

Amid all of this, there is no domestic social response. The end of World War I toppled the Russian, Austrian, Ottoman, and German empires in a massive revolutionary upheaval. The end of the Second World War completely redrew the map of Europe. But in Stavridis’ account, the population somehow remains complacent throughout a third world war while millions are slaughtered.

This has nothing to do with the real world, dominated by class polarization and conflict. War will be accompanied not only by death on a vast scale, but by mass revolutionary upheavals and massive state repression. The pretext for a domestic crackdown and the need to divert intense internal social conflicts outward are, in fact, among the major unstated reasons why ruling classes are embarking upon military confrontations that can end in the acts of mass murder depicted in 2034.

Finally, the military dynamics are themselves totally unrealistic. The central assumption of the book is that there exists such a thing as a “tactical” nuclear war. Military actions are calmly and rationally discussed and deliberated.

Even so, it is only through an absurd and unbelievable plot twist that a strategic nuclear exchange is avoided. In a ridiculous deus ex machina, India attacks both Chinese and US vessels, bringing about an end to the war.

There is no such thing as a “tactical” nuclear world war. There has never been a full-scale war between two countries armed with nuclear weapons. More importantly, there has never been a full-scale war between “great powers” armed with 21st century technology.

The range, cheapness, and speed of offensive weapons, including drones and high-speed missiles, will mean that a third world war will be conducted everywhere at once, at dizzying speed and complexity. The logic of these phenomena—the complexity of global relations and domestic opposition, the expansion of the battlefield to the entire globe, the delegation of warfare to artificial intelligence—makes nuclear war impossible to control and limit to the “tit-for-tat” military exchanges depicted in the book.

A normal person, that is, one for whom moral derangement is not a professional requirement, would read Stavridis’ book with horror and do everything to avoid the massive level of death it depicts. But the fact is that, for its intended audience within the Beltway and the Pentagon, the tactical nuclear exchanges depicted in the book, constitute, in the words of Dr. Strangelove’s Gen. Buck Turgidson, “getting our hair mussed”—an entirely acceptable consequence of the use of nuclear weapons.

Stanley Kubrick’s masterful Dr. Strangelove, Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe, and, more obliquely, John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May (all released in 1964) were scathing critiques of the military and of nuclear war. No such critical works are being written and produced today, and ground has been ceded to Stavridis’ sanitized depiction of nuclear war from the standpoint of a practitioner.

2034 is a wake-up call. The US military is actively planning and discussing a nuclear war, based on the false claim that such wars can be managed and contained. No, they cannot. Nuclear war threatens the annihilation of humanity. These well-advanced war plans must be opposed and stopped before it is too late.

India demands more autonomy for Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority north

V. Gnana

Amid growing tensions between India and Sri Lanka, Tamil nationalist parties on the island are backing calls from the Indian government for the Sri Lankan government in Colombo to devolve authority to the provincial government in the Tamil-majority north of Sri Lanka.

Bagli (Credit-Facebook)

This was the subject of a four-day visit by India’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Gopal Bagli, to the war-torn north and east of Sri Lanka, earlier this month. Bagli met with all the political parties, including the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the Tamil People’s National Alliance (TPNA) and Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF). Bagli stressed the “aspirations of the Tamil community for equality, justice, peace and dignity” and the need for “meaningful devolution within a united Sri Lanka,” according to a report in the Hindu .

The visit came as the COVID-19 pandemic devastates India and Sri Lanka due to “herd immunity” policies of both governments, and shortly after the founding of the Sri Lanka Bharatiya Janata Party (SLBJP), a political ally of India’s Hindu-supremacist ruling BJP.

Their empty rhetoric notwithstanding, the purpose of Bagli’s visit and meetings with the Tamil nationalists was not to advance the democratic rights of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. Rather, amid a vastly more explosive situation bound up with the pandemic, they are drawing together to pursue the same geostrategic interests that dictated India’s bloody 1987 military intervention in Sri Lanka’s communal war of 1983-2009. What is unfolding is a bitter struggle inside the bourgeoisie for profits and strategic advantage, antithetical to the interests of the working class.

Bagli in meeting with TNA at Jaffna (Credit- facebook-India in Sri Lanka)

In the present century, by moving ever closer to Washington, successive Indian governments have locked themselves in a bitter geostrategic rivalry with China across the region, including notably in Sri Lanka, which sits on critical shipping lanes across the Indian Ocean. As US officials demand massive increases in US military spending to prepare to “fight” China, the purpose of this visit is to counter China’s influence and make the necessary political and military preparations for war.

Only weeks after the SLBJP’s founding, Bagli made a point of signaling the Indian government’s support for Hinduism and violently anti-Muslim Hindu forces in Sri Lanka. On March 11, the first day of his visit, he traveled to Mannar in order to perform a Hindu ritual on the beach. There, he pledged that “Indo-Sri Lankan ties will be strengthened.” Bagli also visited the Vegan Monastery in Nallur. There he was welcomed by Sachithanandan, the leader of the Sri Lanka Shiv Senai, who is notorious for his hate speech against Muslims.

After the Hindu ceremonies, he met separately with religious leaders, political parties, businessmen, journalists and intellectuals.

Bagli in Pooja at Mannar (Credit-facebook-India in Sri Lanka)

After the meeting, TNA media spokesman M.A. Sumanthiran told the press: “The Indian High Commissioner explained that there is no change in India’s diplomatic position. He said that there was no change in their policy of devolution and that they would exert pressure in this regard.”

TPNA leader C.V. Wigneswaran repeated earlier calls from India and Tamil nationalist parties for Sri Lanka to promptly hold provincial elections: “Although we do not receive the required powers through the provincial council, the absence of a provincial council means the Tamil Community is losing one of its entities. … We reiterated that provincial council elections should be held, and the high commissioner accepted that.”

These remarks point to the explosive international class and geostrategic tensions surging in Sri Lanka and across the region. The Sri Lankan government has postponed regional elections since 2019, citing legal issues related to a reform of electoral law in 2018. This month, Sri Lankan External Affairs Minister Dinesh Gunawardena said the government could not hold an emergency election and that an election could be held only after the High Court duly framed the law.

It is not difficult to identify political issues bound up with Colombo’s decision not to promptly hold elections. As it attempts to balance between its economic ties to China and its historic alliance with Washington, the Colombo regime must take into account the possibility that provincial elections in the north, strengthening the Tamil nationalists, would also strengthen India’s position in Sri Lanka.

As Tamil businessmen founded the SLBJP last month, leading TNA politician M.K. Shivajilingam demanded that Colombo cut its vital economic ties to China or face a joint US-Indian invasion. Calling for Chinese companies to “be immediately withdrawn” from the north of Sri Lanka, Shivajilingam warned that otherwise, there could be “major conflict … There is no guarantee that perhaps American or Indian troops might not land and stay in the North and East” of Sri Lanka.

These geostrategic interests are closely bound up with the attempts of the Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil bourgeoisies to suppress mounting class tensions and class struggles at home. While tea plantation workers in Sri Lanka are taking strike action against poverty wages, India has seen an explosion of class struggles. Mass public sector strikes across India and in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, as well as insurrectionary farmers protests, have shaken the Modi government to its foundations.

Broad sections of the ruling elite, both in India and in Sri Lanka, are turning to the incitement of anti-Muslim hatreds in order to divide the working class.

This is a longstanding theme of the Tamil nationalists. After the BJP won the 2019 elections and installed as prime minister Narendra Modi, who had overseen the massacre of 2,000 innocent Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, Vigneswaran hailed the victory of a “strong government in India.” He launched into an anti-Muslim diatribe: “We need to realize the challenges facing India today. Bangladesh is to the northwest of India and Pakistan to the northeast. Both are Islamic majority states. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And there are more than 20 crore [200 million] Muslims in India.”

“India fears that the challenge of Islamic organizations may come to India through Sri Lanka,” he said, adding that he believed an independent Tamil statelet would help India’s defense: “When our autonomous state is established in our territories, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal will have to join hands for India’s security. Then we will take steps to ensure that India’s internal security is strong without fear of maritime intrusion.”

Recently, Indian politicians have made similar points. On March 12, Indian Samata Party leader N.A. Cohn said: “Now, Sri Lanka is important to us. You can infiltrate [India] from Sri Lanka, reaching Rameshwaram in 20 minutes from Nainital. The ports are under their [Chinese] control. So this is a big threat to India.” He claimed, “India can only get relief if China is removed from Sri Lanka.”

The Tamil nationalists’ alignment on these forces amid the pandemic exposes their hostility to the working class and vindicates the Sri Lankan Socialist Equality Party’s principled opposition to all forms of nationalism. One would have to be politically blind to believe that their criminal ethno-sectarian activities aim to advance the democratic aspirations of the Tamil people. By associating with the SLBJP and Shiva Senai, they are signaling that they have utterly repudiated promises they made in earlier decades to defend democracy and end exploitation.