The fraud of Israel’s new “government of change”

Jean Shaoul

Israel’s new coalition government was sworn in on Sunday, with far-right leader and settler advocate Naftali Bennett replacing Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest serving prime minister.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, seated, smiles as he waits to pose for a group photo with the ministers of the new government at the President's residence in Jerusalem, Monday, June 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

It required a razor-thin confidence vote of 60 to 59 in the 120-seat Knesset, with one legislator from the United Arab List abstaining, to install the “government of change”—a motley crew assembled by opposition leader, Yair Lapid, a former TV news anchor, who heads the second largest party Yesh Atid.

Under a power-sharing agreement, Lapid will take over as premier in two years’ time, in the event the highly unstable eight-party coalition lasts that long. In the meantime, he will serve as foreign minister.

Lapid was tasked with forming a government after Netanyahu, who despite heading the largest party—Likud—in the March 23 elections, the fourth in two years, failed to do so. Two key small parties, Bennett’s Yamina Party and Mansour Abbas’ conservative Islamic Movement-affiliated United Arab List, or Ra’am, with seven and four seats, agreed to join forces with Lapid. While Bennett had indicated his willingness to join a coalition with Netanyahu, this was not enough to secure a majority in the Knesset, leading Bennett to switch sides to prevent a fifth election that was expected to cost him votes.

The two-year long deadlock has left Israel without a budget, amid a soaring social and economic crisis exacerbated by the pandemic, and ethnic strife in the country’s mixed population cities, whipped up by far-right vigilantes from the settlements in the occupied West Bank with the backing of Netanyahu and the security establishment.

Several thousand Israelis, many of whom have demonstrated for months against Netanyahu under the vacuous anti-corruption slogan of “Anyone but Bibi” (Netanyahu's nickname), took to the streets of Tel Aviv to celebrate the end of his 12 years as head of government. This ignores the reality that Bennett, a 49-year-old millionaire businessman, is an ideologue further to the right than Netanyahu—a fervent annexationist and implacable opponent of Palestinian statehood, who has admitted he has no problem killing lots of Arabs.

All of his senior colleagues have for years sat in government with Netanyahu and/or acted as aides to him. They include Avigdor Lieberman of the Israel is our Home Party, who served as finance and later defence minister; Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid as finance minister; Benny Gantz as Defence Minister and before that as chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF); and Ayelet Shaked of Bennett’s Yamina Party as interior minister. Gideon Sa’ar of the New Hope Party, a more recent deserter from Likud, has held numerous portfolios, while Bennett has served as defence minister.

The only thing these political criminals agree on is the need to accelerate the assault on the living conditions of the Israeli working class, more than 20 percent of whom live in poverty, with Bennett saying his priorities would be reforms in education, health and cutting “red tape,” a euphemism for more privatisation and free market reforms.

While the new government will focus on economic and social issues, the coalition agreements grant Bennett executive powers as prime minister to further consolidate the occupation, thereby bolstering the settlers at the expense of the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as targeting Israel’s own Palestinian citizens.

Lapid, as incoming foreign minister, indicated some of the broader forces at work in engineering Netanyahu’s exit from power—for the time being at least. Speaking at the swearing in ceremony, he vowed to repair ties between Israel and the Democratic Party in the US, which had become strained under Netanyahu as he bickered publicly with President Barack Obama and aligned ever more closely with the Republican Party and later, President Donald Trump. Netanyahu’s relations with President Joe Biden have been described as “chilly” at best.

Lapid said, “The management of the relationship with the Democratic Party in the United States was careless and dangerous. The Republicans are important to us, their friendship is important to us, but not only the friendship of the Republican Party. We find ourselves with a Democratic White House, Senate and House and they are angry… We need to change the way we work with them.”

Biden called to congratulate Bennett just two hours after the confidence vote in the Knesset, saying he looked forward to strengthening the “close and enduring” bilateral relationship. This contrasts starkly with the two-month long, frosty silence before Biden called Netanyahu after assuming the presidency in January.

Other world leaders followed suit, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, European leaders and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Lapid stressed the importance of restoring relations with the European powers, saying, “We both believe that it is possible, and imperative, to build relations based on mutual respect and better dialogue.” He emphasised the importance of Israel’s relationship with the Jewish Diaspora, especially in the US, which has become increasingly alienated by Israel’s criminal oppression of the Palestinians. While Netanyahu had stressed the importance of Christian evangelicals and other groups, Lapid insisted, “Jews from all streams, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox, are our family. And family is always the most important relationship, and the one that needs to be worked on more than any other.”

Lapid also appeared to step back from Netanyahu’s increasingly hostile attitude towards Jordan’s King Abdullah, amid suggestions that Israel and Saudi Arabia had sought to engineer a coup, replacing him with his half-brother Prince Hamzah. He called Abdullah “an important strategic ally,” promising to work with him.

Palestinian leaders had little to say to Israel’s Palestinian citizens, who will face the full force of a far-right, pro-settler and openly anti-Palestinian leadership, dismissing the new government as “an internal Israeli affair.”

The assortment of parties that include ostensibly ideologically opposed politicians from hardline Jewish religious nationalists and the Labour Party and Meretz—both of which are committed formally to opposition to annexation and settlements—and the Islamist United Arab List, ensures that this government will be no less fractious, unstable and short-lived than its predecessors.

The new government faces its first challenge on Tuesday when several right-wing Israeli groups plan a flag-waving march through Jerusalem’s Old City. The Netanyahu government gave the go-ahead for the march, a day after police banned the proposed route fearing it would incite violence and rekindle the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Netanyahu has refused to go quietly, declaring, “If we have to be in opposition, we will do this standing tall—until we bring down this dangerous government and return to lead the state.” He said, “The right will not forget Bennett’s deception.”

He told his allies in the Knesset, “I will lead you in a daily battle against this bad and dangerous left-wing government and bring it down. And with the help of God, this will happen faster than you think.”

Johnson government announces token delay in UK’s reopening plans

Thomas Scripps

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has delayed lifting Britain’s last remaining public health restrictions by up to four weeks.

Current restrictions on nightclubs, indoor gatherings, some large events and pub and restaurant capacity will remain until July 19, unless a review at two weeks brings that date closer. An exception was made for weddings and wakes where the 30-person limit will be lifted with social distancing rules maintained.

This is the most minimal of measures. But the fact that the Conservative government so determined to end the “last lockdown” on “Freedom Day” in a week’s time, has been forced to make even such a limited gesture points to the serious dangers posed to the working class by the resurgent pandemic. Johnson, a man who declared in October that he would rather “let the bodies pile high in their thousands” than enforce a lockdown, only adjusts course on the pandemic when the situation is potentially catastrophic and a backlash is threatened in the population.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson gives a press conference concerning the Covid pandemic with the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty and the Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance. 9 Downing Street, June 14, 2021 (credit: Picture by Andrew Parsons /No 10 Downing Street)

Last week, an Opinium poll found that 54 percent of the public felt the date should be delayed, 62 percent did not want mask-wearing to end, 60 percent thought nightclubs should stay shut and 57 percent thought the 30-people limit on outdoor gatherings should be kept. This concern is in response to the mounting proof that Britain is at the beginning of a third wave of COVID-19, driven by the more dangerous Delta variant.

In the last few days, the evidence and warnings from scientists and medical professionals have been overwhelming.

The seven-day average for daily new infection in the UK is now over 7,000, up from around 1,500 at the end of the New Year lockdown. Cases are doubling roughly every week.

Public Health expert Anthony Costello, a member of Independent SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), told the Daily Mirror that the real number of new cases each day was likely double the official total and that “In a month you’ll be up to 100,000 new cases a day.”

SAGE member Professor Andrew Hayward appeared on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday to warn of a “substantial chance we could have a wave of hospitalisations that would put very substantial pressure on the NHS [National Health Service] at a time that it’s really trying to deal with the enormous backlog of cases of people waiting for hospital care.”

The increased transmissibility of the Delta variant was “extremely worrying” and its higher likelihood to hospitalise people “also extremely concerning”.

Surges in certain areas of the country like the North West are beginning to spread across the country. Over 7 million people, one in eight, are living in areas recording more than 100 cases per 100,000 population.

Once again, the pandemic is falling heaviest on the working class. A disproportionate number of the most-affected locations are in the most deprived areas in the country. These areas are more likely to have lower vaccination rates than the national average.

London is particularly at risk. By June 8, just 55 percent of adults in the capital had received their first dose of the vaccine. The next lowest was the West Midlands at 69 percent and the highest was the South West at 73 percent. The gap is even starker on second doses—34 percent in London versus 51 percent in the West Midlands and 56 percent in the South West.

All regions of the country have communities with extremely low first-dose vaccination rates—around 25 percent in Stamford Hill North in London, Hockley and Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham and Harehills South in Leeds, and around 30 percent in Northampton Town Centre, Oldham Town South and Barton Hill in Bristol.

Nationally, there are 15 million adults, 2 million of them aged over 50, who have not received a vaccination.

Cases are for the moment concentrated among school-aged children and young adults but are rising among all age groups. As SAGE member Professor Devi Sridhar told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, “the worry is that this will slowly move, like it has in previous waves, into older groups.”

Current levels of vaccination are not enough to prevent a surge in cases and hospitalisations. According to Public Health England, a single dose of any vaccine is only 33 percent effective at preventing symptomatic infection with the Delta variant. Two doses of AstraZeneca are 60 percent effective and two doses of Pfizer 88 percent effective. Combining these figures with the number of people still unvaccinated, 68 percent of people effectively have no protection against getting coronavirus symptoms.

Vaccines have significantly reduced the chances of an infected person ending up in hospital, but admissions have begun to increase again with the spread of the Delta variant. At the start of the year, roughly 10 percent of people recorded as infected with COVID-19 ended up in hospital. That figure was pushed down to below 5 percent by the vaccination programme, but it has risen to 5.4 percent since the Delta variant became more prominent.

A surge in cases on the scale of last January will therefore see thousands admitted to hospital every day. Rates of hospitalisation are already increasing in areas most affected by the third wave. The seven-day average for COVID-19 patients in hospitals in the North West is 246, the highest since April 24. For London, the figure is 253, the highest since May 19. Overall, COVID-19 hospital admissions in the UK have increased by 15.2 percent in the last week.

Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London who advises the government, has said his team’s latest modelling does not rule out “a fairly disastrous third wave”.

Nothing Johnson announced yesterday will avert this disaster. Delaying the final reopening leaves in place all the conditions which are currently allowing cases to explode, including open schools with no virus mitigation measures and an almost wholly reopened economy. The government’s model remains “learning to live with the virus”, rather than suppressing it.

This murderous policy finds its most grotesque and hysterical expression in statements from the Tory backbenches which oppose even the semblance of attention being paid to the pandemic.

Sir Charles Walker, a vice chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee, said in parliament yesterday, “I just have an overwhelming sense of pessimism now that, if you can’t lift restrictions at the height of summer, then you are almost certainly looking at these restrictions persisting and tightening into the autumn and winter… I’m afraid this is one-way traffic towards further lockdowns… The government made the argument that we have to live with COVID-19. Existing is not living.”

Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the anti-lockdown Coronavirus Recovery Group of Tory MPs, claimed, “It is increasingly clear that the modelers are our masters now… Boris Johnson will need to be extremely careful he doesn’t allow them to lead us into a lockdown that lasts all winter.”

A senior Tory MP told the Sunday Telegraph, “I am very worried the people who want to keep us shut down now want to keep us shut down permanently and are aiming for ‘zero Covid’.”

Johnson pursues fundamentally the same policy as these open advocates for suffering and death. His four-week delay now is designed to better prepare for an “irreversible” reopening later, even as cases continue to rise.

Spanish courts escalate campaign to legitimise fascist Francoite dictatorship

Alejandro López

Political developments in Spain are moving in an increasingly dangerous direction. Eighty-five years after the 1936 fascist coup led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco started the three-year Spanish Civil War, in which the victory of Francoite forces backed by Hitler and Mussolini set up a dictatorship that lasted until 1978, Spanish courts are aggressively rehabilitating Francoism.

They have issued a spate of reactionary rulings, such as absolving a fascist leader’s anti-Semitic statements and opposing the changing of street names honoring fascist military units and leaders. It comes after the Supreme Court endorsed Franco’s 1936 coup, and the Constitutional Court ruled that Franco did not commit crimes against humanity during the war or his 40-year dictatorship.

Workers and youth internationally must be warned. If the crimes of fascism are being rehabilitated, it is because powerful sections of the ruling class are preparing to use ruthless and criminal methods against mass opposition to social inequality, austerity and murderous “herd immunity” policies.

Two weeks ago, a judge ruled that a leader of the fascist Falange, Isabel Peralta, did not “incite hatred” against Jews in a public speech earlier this year, widely condemned on social media, honouring the Blue Division. This was a 45,000-strong infantry division of fascist volunteers sent by Franco during World War II to support Nazi Germany’s war of extermination against the Soviet Union.

Peralta, using the language which led to the extermination of European Jewry in the 1930s and 1940s, said, “[t]he enemy is always going to be the same albeit wearing different masks: the Jew.” She added, “Because there is nothing that is more true than this statement: the Jew is to blame, the Jew is to blame, and the Blue Division fought for this.” She hysterically denounced Marxism as “a Jewish invention to pit the workers against one another.”

The judge defended Peralta and the fascist parties attending the gathering, saying that “no group that adheres to the publication of the referred speech is going to carry out any act of hostility or reflects their growing hatred or contempt for Jewish people.”

Last week, the General Council of the Judiciary endorsed a resolution against the law passed by the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government to ban pro-Francoite foundations, such as the Francisco Franco National Foundation. According to the report, apologetics for Francoism “constitute the expression of ideas that, although contrary to the values proclaimed by the Constitution, are protected by freedom of expression.”

While socialists oppose the outlawing of fascist organisations by the state—aware, as the 20th century has shown, that such state powers are then turned against the working class—the attempts of the General Council of the Judiciary to portray itself as a bastion of “freedom of speech” are ludicrous. Its courts regularly persecute singers and artists on terror charges or “insults against the Monarchy.” Stalinist rapper Pablo Hasél remains in jail for tweets and songs against the king and police.

The ruling clearly aims to prevent any limitation to the rehabilitation of fascism and its policy of mass murder and repression. This goes hand in hand with courts intervening to prevent street name changes honoring fascism in Madrid. The Fallen of the Blue Division Street and General Millan Astray Street, named after one of Franco’s chief henchmen and founder of the Spanish Legion, are to remain.

The judge said it is “non-compliant” that the previous pseudo-left Podemos-led city council wanted to change the street honoring the fascist general, as it cannot “unequivocally infer that Millán Astray participated in the military uprising, nor had any participation in the military actions during the Civil War, nor in the repression of the Dictatorship.” On the Blue Division, the court declared that it “was formed in 1941 two years after the Civil War ended, therefore it does not enter the period of exaltation of the military uprising, nor of the civil war.”

Soon after the ruling, the Madrid council, run by the right-wing Popular Party and backed by the fascist Vox party, announced it would install a 20-ton, six-meter statue in honor of the Spanish Legion.

Spain’s fascist crimes, both abroad and against the working class at home, are unquestionably established and well-known internationally. Despite its attempts to enforce collective amnesia of its crimes, the Spanish ruling class, under both Franco and the current post-Franco regime, have had to face the fact that its crimes were recorded in countless ways—in tens of thousands of books, films, songs and artworks.

Astray’s criminal record before, during and after the civil war are well known. Astray was known as the “glorious cripple” for his disfigured body injured in Spain’s colonial wars in northern Morocco. He lost both his left arm and right eye.

He founded the Spanish Legion, which regularly decapitated the forces opposed to colonial rule in Morocco and had as its custom to put their enemies’ heads on bayonets. On the eve of the Spanish Civil War, the Legion committed the brutal repression of the Asturian Commune in 1934, executing over 2,000 workers. During the war, it carried out the Badajoz massacre, where up to 4,000 workers and left-wing sympathisers were executed.

In 1936, Astray came back from a tour in Argentina and joined Franco, serving as the director of the Office of Radio, Press, and Propaganda. He is most widely remembered for screaming, “Death to the intellectuals” at the University of Salamanca against right-wing intellectual Miguel de Unamuno, who publicly criticised fascist extrajudicial murders. This scene is vividly captured in Alejandro Amenábar’s 2019 film, While at War, seen by millions of viewers, where Astray is portrayed as what he was: a brutal fascist thug.

The Blue Division ruling ignores the fact, acknowledged even in high school textbooks, that the Blue Division was part of Franco’s payback to Hitler for his support during the Spanish Civil War. It takes place just weeks before the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941 which left nearly 27 million Soviet dead. It is another affront against Moscow, aimed at inciting militarism and war, amid mounting NATO threats against nuclear-armed Russia and China.

The fact that the Spanish judiciary feels emboldened to rehabilitate Francoism points to enormous dangers confronting the working class. It speaks volumes about what Spain’s ruling elite passes off as the “left”—principally, the petty-bourgeois Podemos party. The courts know Podemos will not mobilise any opposition to its rulings, as it is a tool of the ruling class, including of its re-legitimization of Francoism.

For over six months, the PSOE-Podemos has night and day covered for the stench of fascism emerging in the army, after groups of Francoite officers began writing letters to the king demanding he support them against the elected government last December. In WhatsApp chats leaked to the press, these officers hailed Franco’s coup and called for the murder of “26 million people,” their estimate of the number of left-wing voters and their families in Spain.

Then-Podemos General Secretary Pablo Iglesias reacted by saying, “What these gentlemen say, at their age and already retired, in a chat with a few too many drinks, does not pose any threat.”

The rehabilitation of fascism in Spain is an urgent warning to the working class internationally. As working class strikes and protests erupt against austerity and profits, and bailouts are prioritised over human life during the pandemic, discussions of fascist coups and mass killings are on the order of the day—particularly after former US President Donald Trump attempted a coup on January 6 to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.

In Germany, right-wing extremist Professor Jörg Baberowski is being paraded across German universities to promote revisionist historiography, blaming the USSR for Nazi crimes and publicly rehabilitating Hitler as “not vicious.” Neo-Nazi networks are rampant in the police and army, acknowledged to have assembled lists of politicians for execution by far-right death squads.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron hailed fascist dictator and Nazi collaborationist Philippe Pétain as a “great soldier” amid “yellow vest” protests against social inequality. Now, letters are being signed by retired generals and active-duty military personnel calling for a coup to launch mass repression against Muslims and France’s working-class suburbs.

Opposing the ruling class’s rehabilitation of fascism requires mobilizing the working class in political struggle, independently of the forces which claim to be “left,” whether it is Podemos, the Left Party in Germany or the Unsubmissive France party. Throughout Europe, there is powerful opposition in the working class to fascism. In Spain, it is well within living memory of Spain’s population.

COVID cases rise in Russia as government fails to contain pandemic

Andrea Peters

New COVID-19 cases are once again rising rapidly in Russia, as the Kremlin’s effort to manage the pandemic through vaccinations flounders. Late last week the mayor of Moscow, where the outbreak is centered, announced a limited number of new restrictions to stem the crisis. Officials in Saint Petersburg, the country’s second largest city, followed suit on Monday.

New infections in Russia climbed to 13,721 on June 14, a 50 percent increase compared to a week ago. Over the weekend they had hit more than 14,700, well above the peak witnessed at the onset of the pandemic and at a level not seen since February of this year. The recent spike brings the total number of officially recorded coronavirus cases in Russia to over 5.22 million.

A woman wearing a face mask to help curb the spread of the coronavirus rides a subway car in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Jan. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

More than half of the new cases are in Moscow and the surrounding area. Saint Petersburg, the Nizhny Novgorod Region and the Republic of Buryatia in southern Siberia have the next three largest concentrations. Russia’s consumer and health safety watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, reported last week that the young are a major source of new infections.

Earlier, case numbers had plateaued at between 8,500 and 9,500 new cases per day. Daily deaths have been hovering in the range of 300 to 400 for several months now, with a total of 270,000 people having succumbed to the disease, according to the federal statistics agency. However, according to estimates by the Economist, excess deaths in Russia from COVID-19 are more than five times those officially recorded.

As of Monday, employers in Moscow have been directed to switch their workers to remote work or place them on paid leave through June 19. Restaurants and bars in the capital must close by 11:00 p.m. Food courts, playgrounds and athletic fields are shuttered for the duration of the week. Masking is required in stores and on public transit, and workplaces must make sure their employees mask. In Saint Petersburg, food and drinking establishments cannot serve customers in the wee hours of the night, food courts cannot operate, and some children’s play spaces have to temporarily close.

These measures, set to be in place for just a week, will do little, if anything, to control the outbreak. In both of the country’s major cities, where a total of more than 15 million people live, establishments can continue to serve food and drinks indoors 15 to 20 hours a day. In Saint Petersburg, the Euro 2021 football championship is continuing as scheduled. At the upcoming Poland-Slovakia game, more than 17,000 fans are expected.

More generally, as many workers are paid off the books, thousands of Muscovites will be unable to take a week off, when in reality it will likely be unpaid leave. With no official record of their employment, they have no recourse to recoup lost wages should their employer send them home and not pay them, despite the city government’s orders. With payday loans reaching record highs and past due payments on them climbing by 20 percent compared to last year, according to the Central Bank, ordinary Russians are under immense pressure to work under any conditions.

In an expression of what government officials actually think is coming, medical facilities around Moscow have been instructed to make thousands of hospital beds available to COVID-19 patients.

Russia’s vaccination rate is extremely low. Less than 13 percent of the population is fully inoculated, despite the fact that President Putin recently declared that the supplies exist to give one of the country’s three vaccines—Sputnik V, EpiVac and KovVac—to the entire population.

According to the polling agency VTsIOM, while 60 percent of those surveyed believe vaccines are key to arresting the pandemic, only 17 percent had gotten a shot and just 38 percent said they would like to. Fully 42 percent said they did not intend to get vaccinated, with 24 percent of them citing lack of trust in the vaccines, worries that they have not been adequately researched or fears of side effects.

The Kremlin’s rush to be the first country to create and authorize the use of a COVID-19 vaccine may have backfired. Rather than shoring up popular support and boosting confidence in the government’s handling of the pandemic, in bringing Sputnik V to the market before the completion of stage three clinical trials, many in the country are skeptical about the vaccine’s safety, even though a review by international medical experts published in the leading medical journal The Lancet has since declared it highly effective.

As this latest surge hits the country, concerns are growing about the circulation of the highly infectious Delta variant, as well as Russian variants of the disease. On Monday, the head of the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Alexander Gintsburg, said that scientists are continuing to find specifically Russian-origin mutations of COVID-19. Government officials also just announced that doctors are seeing a shift in the infection’s symptoms, which appear to be increasingly gastrointestinal in nature.

Speaking to the radio station Ekho Moskvy radio a few days ago, the chief physician at Russia’s leading infectious disease hospital, Denis Protsenko, said doctors are facing new challenges treating patients. “What is alarming is that there is a feeling that the virus is changing. In the recent period we’re seeing a lack of success of treatments, such that it makes one think about the fact that over the last year and a half this virus has also changed its face, it has mutated.”

Deadly building collapse in South Korea highlights unsafe conditions in construction industry

Ben McGrath

A five-storey building in the city of Gwangju, in southwestern South Korea, collapsed on June 9, toppling onto a nearby road and crushing a bus filled with passengers. Nine people were killed and eight more were seriously injured.

The building was being demolished at the time, but the company carrying out the work, and the local government, ignored basic safety precautions, all too common in such man-made disasters.

South Korean Fire Fighters (Image credit: Flickr/expertinfantry)

While the accident is still under formal investigation, South Korea’s Yonhap News agency reported that the Hyundai Development Company (HDC) and its subcontractor Hansol Corporation, ignored legal and safety procedures in the demolition process, by removing lower floors first, rather than starting at the top floor. The work was also done without regard to the strength of structural supports.

The day after the collapse, President Moon Jae-in called for a “thorough” probe into the accident, to give the appearance that the government would address safety concerns. In reality, nothing will be done to fundamentally change how business is done. Construction companies will continue to be allowed to sacrifice safety in order to cut costs, enforce speedups, and place profits before the lives of workers and the general population.

The local government in Gwangju itself failed to take the necessary safety measures, required by law, which include designating a safety zone around the building scheduled for demolition, as well as ensuring a safety supervisor is on scene to oversee the work. The supervisor was reportedly not at the job site when the building collapsed.

All the victims were passengers on the bus, which had stopped at a bus station next to the demolition. Gwangju mayor, Lee Yong-seop, attempted to place blame solely on HDC, saying: “The company did not request our cooperation regarding the relocation of the bus stop.”

The authorities are also trying to shift blame onto the workers. “Our investigation will focus on whether the construction workers had been abiding by safety rules when demolishing the building, and whether the demolition was being carried out in accordance with due procedures,” a police officer told the media.

Local residents, however, criticised the mayor and his government for the safety failures. In an attempt to deflect public anger, Lee declared there would be a two-week safety inspection throughout the city. These inspections are designed to do little more than paper over the root causes of fatal accidents: the drive for corporate profit, backed by the local and central governments.

Hansol Corporation, which had the subcontract from HDC, illegally subcontracted the work to another firm, Baeksol Construction. The use of subcontract workers is common in South Korea, where companies use highly-exploited labourers, in order to drive down wages and enforce the sort of speedups that led to the June 9 disaster. Workers may not receive appropriate training, and face being sacked if they raise safety concerns.

At least seven people have been charged with professional negligence resulting in death, in relation to the accident. This includes an HDC official and three site supervisors. They have been banned from leaving the country, but not detained. Even if found guilty, they will be scapegoats, while the unsafe practices will continue.

Similar accidents have occurred in recent years, including in 2019, when a building being demolished in Seoul’s Seocho District collapsed onto a street, killing one and injuring three others. In December 2017, a crane being used to demolish a building in Seoul’s Gangseo District, fell and crushed a bus waiting at a traffic light. One person was killed and another 15 were injured.

The June 9 disaster highlights the dangerous conditions that workers and the public are exposed to on a daily basis. It occurred during a three-day strike by crane operators, who walked off the job after a string of deadly accidents in recent weeks. According to the Korean Construction Workers Union (KCWU), which called the strike: “Since April 24, there have been at least eight small-tower crane accidents nationally, that have led to the death of one worker, while three others have been injured.”

The KCWU, which is affiliated with the “militant” Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, called off the strike on June 11, claiming it had concluded negotiations with the government. However, the ongoing accidents show that very little will change.

The agreement between the KCWU and the government included a promise that a union-backed expert would participate in inspections of small cranes. However, the union and the government know there are unsafe cranes. Last year, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport inspected around 10 percent of registered cranes, or 590 units, and found 4,000 defects. In other words, workers have been sent back to work on the same faulty equipment that drove them to strike in the first place.

As this record makes clear, the union called a token strike to allow workers to let off steam, before sending them back to work in unsafe environments. As a result, more workers will die, unless workers begin to take matters into their own hands.

NATO summit threatens China, at US instigation

Andre Damon

Members of the 30-nation NATO alliance concluded their summit Monday with a communique targeting China, declaring that it poses “systemic challenges” to the military alliance.

The wording of the document marked a significant new stage in the efforts of the United States to, in the words of US President Biden, “organize the world to take on China,” as part of a massive escalation of tensions by Washington against Beijing.

US tanks are unloaded in Antwerp, Belgium to take part in the Atlantic Resolve military exercises. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

The 79-paragraph NATO communiqué mentions China a dozen times, in a marked contrast from previous statements. The current NATO strategy document, first published in 2010, does not reference China, and the 2019 communique mentions the country only once.

“The strength of the statement shows how far relations between the West and Beijing have deteriorated in the 18 months since NATO countries last met,” noted the Financial Times. “Now, just a year and a half later, China has risen to become a systemic rival,” commented Germany’s Der Speigel.

“China’s growing influence and international policies can present challenges that we need to address together as an alliance,” the NATO document states. “We will engage China with a view to defending the security interests of the alliance.”

The communiqué says that China presents “systemic challenges to the rules-based international order,” claiming that China is expanding its military forces and seeking to cooperate with Russia.

Biden’s efforts to recruit Washington’s allies against China is the diplomatic aspect of US efforts to strangle China’s economic development, demonize it in the eyes of the world’s population and prepare for military conflict.

On Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a directive declaring China to be the “number one” focus of the US military. Foreign Policy commented that the review sought “to infuse the Pentagon, and indeed the entire U.S. government, with the overarching goal of bracing for long-term strategic competition with China.”

As Foreign Policy noted: “That’s been a constant refrain for Biden even before he took office, framing China’s rise as the United States’ central challenge of the century. Unless the United States regains its competitive and technological edge, Biden warned, China is ‘going to eat our lunch.’”

Last week, the US Senate passed the so-called “China competitiveness bill,” a massive $250 billion package of corporate subsidies and sanctions that the New York Times termed “the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades.”

The NATO summit followed the weekend’s G7 meeting, which, in the words of the FT, “criticised China over human rights, trade and a lack of transparency over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.”

After the NATO summit, Biden was set to fly to Geneva to meet Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ahead of the summit, Biden declared, “What I’ll convey to President Putin is that I’m not looking for conflict with Russia.” Biden described the Russian president as “bright,” “tough” and a “worthy adversary.”

Ahead of the summit, Biden refused to back Ukraine’s admission to NATO, declaring, in a non-sequitur, “School’s out on that question, it remains to be seen. … They have more to do.”

Despite the US’s insistence on threats against China, the NATO communiqué remained aggressively tilted against Russia, mentioning it 60 times.

While the US’s NATO allies agreed to its demands for more belligerent language against China in its communiqué, there remain significant differences over Washington’s diplomatic offensive against China.

“I don’t think anybody around the table today wants to descend into a new Cold War with China,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel added, “one must not overrate” the threat posed by China, declaring, “we need to find the right balance.”

And NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg insisted Beijing was “not an adversary” but said the alliance needed to “engage with China to defend our security interests.”

As Germany’s Der Spiegel commented: “For some NATO members, whose economy is closely intertwined with that of China, however, this is extremely dangerous—especially for Germany and its export economy. They therefore wanted to prevent overly martial rhetoric against Beijing.”

As Reuters pointed out:

Allies are mindful of their economic links with China. Total German trade with China in 2020 was more than 212 billion euros ($257 billion), according to German government data. Total Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasuries as of March 2021 stood at $1.1 trillion, according to U.S. data, and total U.S. trade with China in 2020 was $559 billion.

But, for all that, Der Spiegel declared: “In China—this much has been clear since Biden’s summit debut—the USA and NATO see the long-term more dangerous opponent.”

Despite their differences and contradictions, the United States and its NATO allies are barreling headlong into a major escalation against China with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Despite a raging pandemic, all of the NATO members are massively expanding their militaries. Earlier this year, the UK announced a 40 percent expansion of its nuclear arsenal, while the Biden administration has requested the largest Pentagon budget in human history.

The massive military buildup currently underway, combined with US threats against China, present an immense danger to all mankind.

With a frankness entirely missing from the US press, Russia’s Ambassador to China Andrey Denisov spoke with China’s Global Times about the consequences of a US war with China.

Denisov was asked by the Global Times: “Competition and confrontation between China and the US are escalating. If one day an armed conflict between China and the US happens, what position would Russia take?”

Denisov replied that there “will be no answer to this,” because “such a conflict would exterminate all mankind, and then there would be no point in taking sides.”

Politicians and big business in Germany ignore danger of new Delta coronavirus variant

Marianne Arens

The requirement to wear a mask has been largely suspended, shops and restaurants are mostly open, almost all foreign travel is allowed again. Stations, trains, and buses are filling up, and in Bavaria, even loud singing in churches is allowed again. Anyone who gains the impression that the pandemic is over needs to know: This impression is expressly what the establishment parties want.

School in NRW (Source: www.instagram.com schuelerstreik_nrw)

Yet the new, highly contagious Sars-CoV2 Delta variant, first seen in India, is currently spreading throughout Europe. The first cases have also been detected in Germany. “A mutant just made for the fourth wave,” is what Die Zeit calls the highly contagious virus.

What is worrying about it is that people who have already had their first vaccination dose are also falling ill with the Delta virus. Having both vaccination doses provides significantly better protection, but only 25 percent of the German population has been fully vaccinated. Just under half have only received their first vaccination. In addition, Health Minister Jens Spahn (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) lifted the prioritisation on June 8. Yet there is still a lack of vaccine, and very many people from the risk groups are still not immunised.

Virologist Melanie Brinkmann from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research also expects a fourth wave before the end of the summer. “I fear the numbers will rise again sooner or later,” Brinkmann comments on the current rapid move to reopen businesses. “Many people don’t realise the force with which exponential growth can skyrocket if you don’t counteract it in time.” If people had not been so careless last year, the virologist says, Germany could have spared itself the third wave in autumn and winter, and with it many sick and dead people.

Having only one quarter of the population fully vaccinated is not enough to end the pandemic measures, Charité virologist Christian Drosten also warned. “We have to pay attention, we are talking about the future here,” said Drosten. “At the moment, we are in a transitional phase. The next target we need to have in mind is that 80 percent of the adult population needs to have both vaccine doses.”

The Delta variant has just caused another spike in coronavirus infections in the UK. For the first time since mid-May, more COVID-19 patients have been admitted to hospitals there, and the seven-day incidence rate has risen to just under 50, up from 20 for several weeks. In India and other countries, Delta had previously caused a near-vertical rebound in the infection curve.

The European Football Championship could dangerously contribute to the spread of the Delta virus. Newsweekly Der Spiegel raises the anxious question: “Will the big event become a continental super-spreader?” The question is justified. What no amateur club would be allowed to do is possible in the European Championship: individual stadiums will be filled to 50 percent (St Petersburg) and 100 percent (Budapest). Among the venues filled on Sunday was Wembley Stadium in London, where the new virus is spreading. Some fans can tour all over Europe.

Several teams, including Spain, are already recording absences due to players suffering from coronavirus.

Nevertheless, for politicians like Markus Söder (Christian Social Union, CSU), the Bavarian Minister-President, the European Championship means “a signal for more normality with common sense.” Söder’s promise seems like a threat: “We are pushing the envelope.” The intended new “summer fairy tale” is being forced on viewers. According to a Spiegel survey, 40 percent of those questioned were clearly of the opinion that the European Championship should have been cancelled because of the pandemic, as it was last year.

Söder speaks from the heart of practically all establishment politicians. In Brandenburg, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has officially applied for the pandemic to be declared over, and the AfD sets the policy of all parties up to and including the Left Party. Thuringia’s state Premier Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) declared in the Rheinische Post, “I think we can take the risk of a complete reopening in the autumn.” In the interest of the profits of a narrow upper class, they are all ready to lift every protective measure to let nurseries, schools, businesses, and the whole economy run at full speed again.

Yet even now, around one hundred coronavirus patients are dying every day in Germany. The gruesome figure of 90,000 COVID-19 deaths in Germany alone, which has just been reached, is hardly worth a headline in the newspapers. Worldwide, there will soon be an incredible four million coronavirus deaths. Thousands continue to struggle for their lives in intensive care units, and even 20- and 30-year-olds are fighting the pain associated with long haul COVID, concentration problems and chronic fatigue.

One politician who would prefer to declare the pandemic over is the President of the Standing Conference of State Education Ministers (KMK), Britta Ernst (Social Democratic Party SPD). On 10 June, she pushed through a KMK declaration that there will be no more school closures or other restrictions in the coming school year, even if incidence levels rise again. Schools are explicitly no longer to be guided by the incidence values. School trips are also to be possible again without restrictions.

Britta Ernst is also the Education Minister of Brandenburg and wife of the SPD candidate for Chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Her KMK resolution contains the long-refuted claim: “Children and young people [are] not a driving force in the current situation.”

The new chairperson of the GEW teachers’ union, Maike Finnern, also agreed with Britta Ernst on the reopenings, and stressed that she, too, considers coronavirus-related school closures in the new school year to be most likely dispensable. “This is not imaginable again,” Finnern said.

In several federal states, schools will be reopened without restrictions, masks will no longer be required in classrooms, and sports will once again be played indoors.

Politicians justify this highly negligent reopening policy by saying that the seven-day incidence rate has dropped to a national average of 20 infected persons per 100,000 inhabitants. However, the seven-day incidence level in schools, in particular, is still much higher and sometimes twice as high as in the rest of the population. On 8 June, it was 41 infected per 100,000 for 5- to 9-year-olds, 42 for 10- to 14-year-olds and 37 for 15- to 19-year-olds.

No fewer than 35 teachers and educators have died so far, according to the sad figure officially announced by the Robert Koch Institute, but which undoubtedly does not include all educators who have died of coronavirus. And the danger is not over! The website news4teachers.de points out that most children and young people will not be vaccinated in the foreseeable future either. Air filtration is still missing in almost all classrooms. In a few days, on 30 June, the government will suspend the federal “emergency brake,” which has so far made school closures mandatory above an incidence level of 165.

The bourgeois politicians from the AfD to the Left Party have learned nothing from the pandemic, and they do not want to learn anything either. What would be needed was to learn the lessons of the last few months, to consistently bring the infection numbers down and keep them low. In any case, to avoid major outbreaks and new exponential rises, there must be serious testing and systematic tracking and isolation of contacts.

To enforce this, the working class must be in charge! The pandemic has proved this beyond doubt. That is why the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) and all parties affiliated to the International Committee of the Fourth International are fighting to build independent rank-and-file committees in all workplaces and establishments. These committees will network across Europe and the world and prepare a European-wide general strike to impose safe conditions.

The pandemic has shown that the political class that runs the capitalist governments practically lives on a different planet than the vast majority of working people. It has made the class divide openly visible. Bankers, shareholders and the super-rich, who have every opportunity to protect themselves and their families, were able to massively increase their wealth in the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Germany, private financial assets consisting of cash, bank account balances, shares, pensions, and life insurance rose to nine trillion dollars and real assets to 13 trillion dollars. Germany has 2,900 super-rich who possess more than 100 million dollars, putting it in third place in the global rankings behind the USA and China.

Working people pay for this in two ways. They cannot escape the daily health threats in factories, production halls, hospitals, schools, and other establishments. Nor can they hope for protection from the trade unions, which refuse to effectively protect workers from the threat of infection.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of workers are acutely threatened with job loss and poverty. One example is the Continental Corporation. As a prelude to massive job cuts in the auto and supplier sector, which are expected to destroy 180,000 jobs, Continental management, with the help of the IG Metall union, is pushing through 13,000 job cuts in Germany and 30,000 worldwide. At the same time, Continental has never shut down production in its plants in time, even when incidence figures are high.

An outbreak at the Conti tyre plant in Aachen in mid-May shows how irresponsibly the profits-before-lives policy is being pursued. The Conti workers are also under double pressure in Aachen because the closure of the tyre plant is already a done deal. Even when incidence levels in Aachen rose threateningly, operations were never halted until a major outbreak had already spread. It was only when the number of sick people reached 33 that operations were interrupted for a few days on 19 May.

The pandemic exposed the true role of the trade unions. IG Metall, Verdi and Co. have ensured that production has continued during the lockdown, even if this endangered workers’ health and lives. To this day, they help to keep the number of coronavirus cases in factories secret.

Germany: Green-Christian Democrat government in Baden-Württemberg presses ahead with reopening

Max Linhof & Jan Ritter

Despite warnings from virologists of a looming increase in COVID-19 infections, governments at the federal and state levels in Germany are largely dismantling all public health restrictions. The German state of Baden-Württemberg, which is governed by a Green-Christian Democrat (CDU) coalition, is a case in point.

Although the region has experienced its highest seven-day incidence of infections per 100,000 people—27 cases per 100,000 residents as of last Wednesday, compared to a nationwide average of 21—the state government led by Green Minister President Winfried Kretschmann is pressing ahead with the reopening drive, provoking a new wave of infections in the process.

Minister President Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) and Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) (Image: State Government B-W /CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

“The danger remains. We are still in a pandemic,” Kretschmann felt compelled to warn last Tuesday. The possibility exists “that people become careless and that the wave (of infections) can return,” he declared.

The responsibility for the continued high number of new infections in the state, which recorded 667 cases on Wednesday and six deaths, bringing the total to 10,036, lies with the government. After the Greens and CDU published their coalition agreement on May 5, 2021, one of the first measures they announced was a new COVID-19 order. It came into force on May 14 and included sweeping reopening measures, to be implemented as soon as the incidence rate fell below 100 cases per 100,000 inhabitants for five days running. This removes the requirement that local authorities follow the so-called “federal emergency brake.”

The government has focused ever since on accelerating the reopenings and pressing ahead with its policy of mass infection. The coalition carried out first and foremost the reopening of all schools and child care facilities, which are now open throughout the state, so that the labour power of parents is fully at the disposal of big business. In 33 of the state’s 44 rural districts and cities, in-person learning in full classrooms is taking place. The state government is also planning to allow summer camps where children will stay overnight. To this end, the COVID-19 order will be revised in mid-June.

People who have recovered from an infection or those who are fully vaccinated are no longer counted when calculating the upper limit for private meetings. Overnight stays by tourists in hotels and holiday homes are also permitted, as well as the running of travel buses, recreational boats and cable cars. Outdoor swimming pools, swimming in lakes, and spas have also been permitted.

Events with large numbers of people, which have proven to be sources of mass infections, are once again allowed. Outdoor cultural events with up to 100 attendees are permitted, as well as professional and elite sports with up to 100 spectators.

Retail stores are allowed to admit customers without any tests, so long as the store restricts the number of people per square metre to half the level of a store. In Sindelfingen, it has been possible for the past two weeks to go shopping without getting tested, making an appointment, or leaving contact details so that infections can be traced at a later date.

Restaurants have been reopened in many areas between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., with restrictions on customers only enforced indoors. The 9 p.m. closing time is also set to be abolished. According to the DPA news agency, the Green-CDU government is considering “adapting the rule to the realities of life.”

With its aggressive reopening policy, the state government is continuing the agenda that has been characteristic of the Green Party throughout the pandemic. The party is part of 11 out of 16 state governments in a wide range of coalitions, and has spearheaded the “profits before lives” strategy from the outset.

At the federal level, the Greens voted in March 2020 for the federal government’s coronavirus emergency bailouts, which funneled hundreds of billions of euros primarily to the banks and big business. Ever since, the Greens have pushed ahead with the reckless reopening of businesses and schools so as to extract the vast sums of money handed over to the financial oligarchy from the working class. Here are only a few examples of how the Greens spearheaded the reopening drive throughout the pandemic:

The Social Democrat (SPD)-Left Party-Green coalition in Berlin ordered final-year students to return to in-person learning in April 2020. In Saxony, the CDU-SPD-Green coalition government reestablished in-person learning with full classrooms in May 2020 and reopened child care facilities at full capacity. The Greens described the reopening of schools as an “important step for more justice in education,” because the coronavirus crisis had impacted “children from socially disadvantaged families above all.”

Green Party representatives also participated in the right-wing extremist demonstrations demanding an immediate end to all coronavirus protection measures in the interests of big business. For example, the leader of the Green parliamentary group in the Saxony state parliament, Franziska Schubert, took part in a protest by coronavirus deniers in May 2020 and stated on a sign she was carrying that she was “prepared to talk” with them.

During the same month, Green Party mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer, summed up the inhumane character of the Green Party’s policies. “I’ll put it in brutal terms for you: we’re saving the lives of people in Germany who will probably die in six months anyway,” he declared. The current effort by the Greens to expel Palmer following his latest outburst in no way represents a deviation from these policies, but is merely a transparent attempt to cover them up.

The Greens’ entire election campaign for the 2021 federal election underscores that they are a ruthless party of big business that will relentlessly pursue the interests of the corporate and financial elites at home and abroad.

At their party congress in November 2020, the Greens adopted a new party programme that called for a more independent German and European great power foreign policy and a massive programme of military rearmament.

In March 2021, they presented their programme for the federal election with the cynical title “Germany: everything is possible.” While the programme offers nothing for workers and young people other than the empty phrases about “social justice” and “prosperity based on climate fairness,” the business, military, and financial elites get everything they want: more money for rearmament and wars, a strengthened apparatus to suppress domestic social opposition and pro-business reforms to shore up German capital in its competition with its global rivals.

The Greens do not raise a single demand or make a single proposal in their entire election programme to combat the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed almost 90,000 lives in Germany alone. For this reason, among others, the Green Party and its chancellor candidate, Annalena Baerbock, are being embraced by leading business representatives, such as Siemens chief executive Joe Kaeser, as “pragmatic renewers.”