Amazon, Microsoft and other companies promise to “diversify corporate boards” and embrace black capitalism

Angelo Perera

Major corporations based in Washington state have joined a new effort to triple the ratio of black executives on executive boards by 2028. Embracing the right-wing principles of black capitalism, corporate leaders argue that diversifying the upper echelons of American society will advance the fight against racism and police violence.

Promotional still from the Black Boardroom Initiative

According to a Seattle Times article, “New program to diversify corporate boards gets backing by Seattle-area companies,” the Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie initiated the “Black Boardroom Initiative” on June 2, hoping to make the corporate boardrooms “a little less white.” The campaign has attracted the support of Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, F5, Zillow and a handful of other businesses.

The initiative was developed in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin last May, which sparked mass demonstrations among millions of workers and youth throughout the world. James Williams, managing director of Perkins Coie is quoted in the article as being “galvanized” to “get this off the ground,” in the wake of Floyd’s murder.

Last year’s eruption of protests against police brutality, social inequality and the capitalist response to the pandemic certainly shocked the ruling class, which was fearful of the potential for mass anger to escape the control of the two-party political establishment. In that context, various corporations, including Amazon and Microsoft, issued statements of support for police reform and the end to “systemic racism,” donated to Black Lives Matter and affiliated organizations, and stated their commitment to “diversity and inclusion” in their own ranks.

The real content of their “solution” to unending police terror is revealed in efforts like the Black Boardroom Initiative: Adding a handful of minorities to their ranks and continuing to bask in record wealth accumulated from the exploitation of the rest of society. None of the executives clamoring for boardroom inclusion has explained how having more black directors in a corporation will compel the cops to kill less.

The Black Boardroom Initiative reflects the class character of identity politics, which is aimed at obscuring the basic class divide in society while elevating a small layer of privileged upper-middle class minorities into the top 1 percent of society. This program is even more revealing in the context of the pandemic, when the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $3.4 trillion while the vast majority of the planet faced mass death, unemployment and poverty.

Since Nixon’s passage of affirmative action executive orders in 1969, the ruling class has sought to elevate a layer of upper-middle-class African Americans that would be loyal to the status quo.

In 1960, around the time E. Franklin Frazier wrote his pioneering work, The Black Bourgeoisie, there were an estimated 25 black millionaires in the US. That number has grown 60,000 times. Today there are an estimated 1.5 million black millionaires and seven black billionaires in the United States.

The concentration of wealth among African Americans is extreme. According to a Pew Research Study, 35 percent of black households have negative or no net worth. Another 15 percent have less than $6,000 in total household worth.

Virtually every major corporation, financial investment firm and state agency has adopted the program of diversifying the upper strata of their organizations. Last December, NASDAQ filed a yet-to-be-approved proposal with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which would require all companies listed on the exchange to publicly disclose consistent, transparent diversity statistics about their boards of directors. When the companies are unable to have at least two “diverse” directors, they are compelled to explain why. A director is considered “diverse” if they self-identify as female, an underrepresented minority, or LGBTQ.

As outlined in its “2021 Stewardship Expectations” published in December 2020, BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, will be voting down directors of companies in their $8.67 trillion portfolio if they do not improve diversity in the workplace, including the board.

Wikipedia lists BlackRock as the largest investor in weapons manufacturers through its iShares U.S. Aerospace and Defense ETF. State Street Global Advisors, another investment firm holding $3 trillion in assets, followed suit in January, putting pressure on the S&P 500 and FTSE 100 that it has voting power over.

While the super-rich have engaged in their “diversity” campaign in the wake of Floyd’s tragic death, American cops have been busy killing workers and the poor, of all races, at about the same rate as before. Statista’s report on police brutality published on June 1 notes that “the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 371 civilians having been shot, 71 of whom were Black, in the first five months of 2021.”

It is significant that the Black Boardroom Initiative is piloted in Seattle, a city that has witnessed a drastic economic and social polarization fueled by the expansion of the technology industry, led foremost by Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google.

The population has grown by 18.7 percent since 2010, making it the fastest-growing city in the nation. While the median income increased from $60,200 in 2010 to $102,500 in 2019, driven by the growth of millionaire and billionaire executives in the tech, medical and business sectors, working class households have struggled to afford housing and pay the bills. The bottom quarter of Seattle families earn under $50,000, which is a poverty income in one of the most expensive cities in the United States.

As a result of rising inequality, housing costs and gentrification, homelessness has worsened. According to a report released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Washington state experienced a 6.2 percent increase in homelessness between 201 and 2020, during which time 30 out of every 10,000 people in the state were homeless. During the same time period, homelessness grew by 2 percent nationwide.

Police violence continues and intensifies, because its real source is ever-rising social inequality, requiring ever more brutal forms of police terror on behalf of the corporate oligarchy.

Today, economic polarization is greater within the black population than in the US population as a whole, and the conditions of African American workers are worse than they were a half century ago.

The “inclusiveness” of people of color into the ranks of the ruling class indicates the selfish profit interests of this social layer. Their diversity initiatives will do nothing to address the plight of millions of workers in the United States, least of all black workers, who face among the highest rates of poverty, hunger and housing insecurity.

The ending of police violence, racism and poor social conditions demands not the redistribution of wealth and privileges in the richest strata of society under capitalism, but rather the elimination of social inequality under socialism.

German Green Party election conference endorses the use of armed combat drones

Johannes Stern

Were any proof needed that a federal government including or lead by the Greens would exacerbate the militarist policies of the present grand coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, the recent Green Party conference supplied it.

Green party co-leaders Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, pool)

At the end of their gathering, the former pacifists decided to include a passage in their election manifesto that would, in principle, allow the procurement of armed drones for the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces). By a narrow majority of four votes, the federal delegates’ conference approved a corresponding motion by former Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin.

The motion justifies the planned procurement of combat drones on the grounds that, “these systems can better protect soldiers in certain situations.” This is nothing but propaganda. Everyone knows that combat drones, like no other weapon, are brutal tools of murder that are linked to the imperialist powers’ illegal interventions in Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East.

According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the US military alone carried out 14,040 drone strikes between January 2004 and February 2020, killing between 8,885 and 16,901 people. Among the victims are many civilians (910 to 2,200) and children (283 to 454), participants of birthday parties, weddings and other family celebrations repeatedly targeted for attack.

The Greens are aware that their decision paves the way for regular use of this murderous means of warfare by the German military. “Armed drones are primarily used in anti-terrorist missions and often for killings that violate international law. The availability of armed drones threatens to change military deployment scenarios,” read a counter-motion that was rejected by delegates.

The conference decision to leave criticism of NATO’s two percent target in the manifesto also has nothing to do with pacifism. “We’re talking about an extra 15 to 20 billion euros a year,” said National Executive Secretary Michael Kellner. “Let’s reject the arbitrary two percent target and at the same time make an offer on how Germany can play a stronger role in the world.”

Earlier, Annalena Baerbock, who was officially elected as the party’s candidate for chancellor at the conference with 98.5 percent of delegates’ votes, had attacked the infamous two percent target from the right. An abstract fixation on defence spending amounting to two percent of gross domestic product was not enough to ensure the necessary rearmament, she said. Perhaps, “more spending on our security” was needed, she declared in a joint TV discussion with the two other candidates for chancellor, Armin Laschet (CDU/CSU) and Olaf Scholz (SPD).

The Greens know what they are talking about. When they first participated in the federal government between 1998 and 2005, they helped organise Germany’s first combat operations since the Second World War, in Kosovo and Afghanistan, together with the SPD. Now they want to further intensify the war policy.

The election manifesto adopted by the Greens leaves no doubt about this. Although the grand coalition has massively rearmed in recent years, launched numerous interventions in Africa and the Middle East and increasingly openly harkened back to the disastrous traditions of German militarism from the last century, German foreign policy is still far too hesitant for the Greens.

“For years, however, Germany has at best moderated in Europe and the world, has often hesitated, has gone into hiding.” It was “time to pursue an active foreign policy again and to lead the way as a shaping force,” it says in Chapter 6 of their election manifesto on international politics. In the style of a lobby group for the arms industry, the Greens plead for massive rearmament of the Bundeswehr, NATO and the European Union. Here are some examples.

In the section “Modern Bundeswehr” it says: “The mission and tasks of the Bundeswehr must be oriented towards the real and strategically significant challenges for security and peacekeeping. We want to securely equip the Bundeswehr with personnel and materiel per its mission and tasks. It is unacceptable that soldiers go on missions with inadequate protective equipment.”

The EU must also “live up to its responsibility for its own security and defence.” To develop the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), “enhanced cooperation between armed forces in the EU should be developed” and “military capabilities should be pooled and generally recognised capability gaps closed.” What was needed is “appropriate equipment, the expansion of EU units and a strengthening and consolidation of the joint EU command structure.”

Regarding NATO, the Greens call for a “strategic reorientation” so that “strategic interests can be jointly developed and cohesively and more convincingly represented based on European values such as multilateralism, democracy and the rule of law.” What this means is clear. The Greens are playing the leading role in Germany in the escalating war preparations of the imperialist powers against Russia and China.

The election manifesto contains numerous threats against these two nuclear powers. “The German and European economy” was “under great pressure” and had to “hold its own in global competition with authoritarian state capitalism and largely unregulated tech giants,” it says at one point.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline project was “geostrategically harmful—especially for the situation of Ukraine,” and must “therefore be stopped.” At the same time, the sanctions “imposed on Russia because of the annexation of Crimea in violation of international law and the military action against Ukraine” must be maintained and “tightened if necessary.”

Again, the Greens do not shy away from military escalation. Before the party conference, co-chair Robert Habeck visited the war zones in eastern Ukraine and demanded that the right-wing, anti-Russian government in Kiev be supplied with German weapons and given greater military support.

The Greens played an active role in the Maidan coup in early 2014, supporting extreme right-wing forces in the name of democracy and human rights to bring a pro-Western regime to power in Kiev. Now, they are pushing the same strategy regarding Russia and Belarus.

On Russia, the Greens’ manifesto announces they would “support and intensify exchanges with the courageous civil society that stands up to the Kremlin’s increasingly harsh repression and fights for human rights, democracy and the rule of law.”

Significantly, Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya appeared at the party conference on Sunday. She said that Germany must play a “key role” in resolving the political crisis in her country because Europe can “only be secure if Belarus is secure.” She explicitly thanked Habeck and Baerbock for their commitment to Eastern Europe and for “giving Belarus a voice in Germany.”

In domestic politics, too, the Greens are positioning themselves as ruthless representatives of the interests of German capitalism. In the speeches by Habeck and Baerbock, the dangers posed by the still rampant COVID-19 pandemic played almost no role. The same applies to the election manifesto. Over 137 pages there is not a single demand or concrete measure to fight the virus. Words like “lockdown,” “coronavirus protection measures” or “vaccination programme” do not appear.

This is not surprising. Wherever the Greens govern in the federal states, together with the CDU, FDP, SPD and Left Party, they put into practice the murderous “profits before lives” policy that has already led to almost 90,000 deaths in Germany alone. When reference is made to the coronavirus, it is only to argue that the German economy needs to be restructured and made fit for international competition. “After the coronavirus pandemic, our country needs a new economic awakening,” it says, for example, in the chapter titled “We promote entrepreneurship, competition and ideas.”

Against this background, the few social promises in the manifesto are not worth the paper they are written on. After the federal elections, the ruling class is preparing to recover from the working class the debt created as hundreds of billions were handed to big business and banks through the so-called coronavirus bailout packages.

Here, too, the Greens and the affluent upper middle-class layers they speak for are prepared to walk over corpses. For example, the party conference decided to leave the “debt brake” (a legal cap on public spending) in the manifesto. With this, the Greens explicitly back the most important instrument of the austerity policies of recent years. In 2003, when they were in a federal coalition government with the SPD, the Greens had helped initiate the “Hartz laws,” which have plunged millions of workers and their families into abject poverty.

Unprecedented drought conditions across Western US fuel wildfires and water disputes

Adria French

The wildfire season has arrived in the Western United States and once again revealed the glaring increase in drought conditions throughout the region. Experts predict that temperatures and blazes this year will likely surpass all-time records set last year. The National Weather Service (NWS) has recorded skyrocketing temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona, and Las Vegas, Nevada, which have reached 116 degrees Fahrenheit and 111 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively.

Aerial photo showing low levels of Lake Oroville in Northern California (Source: Public Policy Institute of California)

Several other areas in the American West set new temperature records, with Salt Lake City hitting 107 degrees, a record that has only been reached twice before in 147 years of records, while Denver broke its seasonal record on June 15 of 97 degrees to reach 101 degrees. Direct exposure to such temperatures is unbearable to humans after just minutes.

According to the June 8, 2021, US Drought Monitor, a project run by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, moderate to exceptional drought covers 37.8 percent of the US, an increase from last week’s 36.5 percent. The worst drought categories (extreme to exceptional drought) increased from 17.5 percent last week to 17.8 percent. Abnormal dryness and drought are currently affecting over 143 million people across the continental US and Puerto Rico—about 45.9 percent of the population.

As shown by the long-term forecasts for temperature and precipitation produced by NWS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), drought conditions are likely to continue to become far worse, especially in the West and Southwest US. Record high temperatures and very low precipitation in the region create the conditions for wildfires to burst out of control during the entire year, well into the fall and winter of 2021. Sudden thunderstorms that move in after an area has been burned over by wildfire can create destructive mudslides and landslides that can destroy homes, farms and entire neighborhoods.

The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) reported Wednesday that “Currently, 33 large fires have burned more than 360,000 acres in 10 states. Eleven new large fires were reported yesterday. Wildland fire activity increased in the Northern Rockies and Rocky Mountain areas where seven new large fires were reported. More than half of the 33 uncontained large fires are in the Southwest and Great Basin areas.”

Current and predicted weather conditions will likely further fan new flames. According to the NIFC, the strong high pressure weather front that remains over Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, the northern Rockies into Canada, and upper air moving into the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies, combined with very hot, record-setting temperatures in the Southwest, southern California, and the northern Rockies, are creating an extremely dangerous situation that will exacerbate wildfires in the region.

Moreover, isolated dry thunderstorms are expected for the Southwest and southern Colorado. Lightning strikes during these extreme conditions can set off a massive wildfire that would be difficult to contain.

Wildfires this season have already been dangerous enough to force evacuations. On May 31, a wind-driven wildfire 20 miles north of the town of Beatty, Oregon, prompted a Level 2 evacuation order for residents of Sycan Forest Estates after growing to 650 acres. It was the second southern Oregon fire to prompt evacuation alerts during Memorial Day weekend.

The decades-long growth of drought conditions has also sparked numerous struggles over water shortages across the Western United States. The ongoing dispute over the Klamath Project, an irrigation project in the Klamath Basin of Oregon/California developed by the United States Bureau of Reclamation, which started in 1906, is one of many examples.

The most recent water conflict in the Klamath Basin stretches back to at least 2001. Two years ago, on November 14, 2019, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the Court of Federal Claims decision in Baley v. United States, denying compensation to Klamath Project irrigators for a claim that the US government seized their water rights in 2001.

The decision hinged on recognition of the senior tribal water rights of the Klamath Tribes and other downriver Klamath Basin tribes. In western water law, the “first in time, first in right” principle applies. The 1908 Supreme Court decision in Winters v. United States affirmed this doctrine, ruling that since tribes were living in the region long before any other current water users and were using the water for fishing and other purposes, the tribes had “senior” water rights. All other rights, including agribusiness, are “junior” to those rights.

In the long-running Klamath Basin case, Klamath Project irrigators sought nearly $30 million in compensation from the US government for the Bureau of Reclamation’s curtailment of water deliveries during a severe drought in 2001. The water restrictions were made to meet Endangered Species Act requirements and fulfill tribal trust responsibilities. Among other things, the irrigators claimed that tribal water rights were not relevant to the Bureau of Reclamation’s water management decisions. In late 2017, the US Court of Claims confirmed that the Klamath Tribes and downriver Klamath Basin tribes have senior water rights over other water interests in the Klamath Basin. Thus, the Project irrigators were not entitled to receive any Project water in 2001.

In appealing the case, the irrigators disputed whether the tribal water rights included all of the water withheld from delivery in 2001. But with this ruling, the US Court of Appeals declared, once again, that the Klamath Tribes’ water rights are the most senior in the region, with a priority date of time immemorial, and that the senior tribal water rights entitle the tribes, at the least, to the amount of water needed to meet Endangered Species Act requirements. The court also affirmed that the Klamath Tribes’ water rights include waters in Upper Klamath Lake that secure the Tribes’ treaty fishing rights.

The Tribes have lived in the Klamath Basin for millennia. In an 1864 treaty, they relinquished millions of acres of their homeland to the US federal government in exchange for guarantees, including protections for the tribal right to harvest fish in their streams and lakes. There is no expiration date on those treaty promises, and they cement the Tribes’ top water rights in the region.

On April 12, the Seattle Times reported that “For the first time in 20 years, it’s possible that the 1,400 irrigators who have farmed for generations on 225,000 acres (91,000 hectares) of reclaimed farmland will get no water at all—or so little that farming wouldn’t be worth it. Several tribes in Oregon and California are equally desperate for water to sustain threatened and endangered species of fish central to their heritage.”

The report added, “The competing demands over a vanishing natural resource foreshadow a difficult and tense summer in a region where farmers, conservationists and tribes have engaged in years of legal battles over who has greater rights to an ever-dwindling water supply. Two of the tribes, the Klamath and Yurok, hold treaties guaranteeing the protection of their fisheries.”

The Bureau of Reclamation announced on April 14 that farmers who rely on the massive irrigation project spanning the Oregon-California border will get 8 percent of the deliveries they need amid a severe drought. The Yurok Tribe, one of the tribes affected by the water decision, said in a press statement that even with the slashes to farmers’ water, they were facing a “catastrophic loss” of salmon this year.

“The Yurok Tribe is suffering significant economic damage on top of the extreme cultural and social impacts of failing fish runs,” said tribal Vice Chairman Frankie Myers.

Jay Weiner, an attorney for the Klamath Tribes, said the tribe was pursuing legal action over water releases that will impact fish and accused the federal government of precipitating the crisis by mismanaging water in the basin for decades. He said, “What we’re seeing with climate change increasingly—year after year after year—is that there is not enough water to go around. This crisis should not come as a surprise to anyone.”

The Klamath Tribes sued the Bureau of Reclamation on Tuesday, April 13 to ensure minimum water levels in Upper Klamath Lake for the sucker fish and asked for a temporary restraining order from the court. That order, if granted, would mean less water flowing down the Klamath River for the coho salmon that are critical to the Yurok Tribe. The tribe is already documenting a proliferation of worms that carry a bacteria fatal to salmon in the lower river because of historically low water levels.

The Klamath Tribes said in a statement after filing their lawsuit that it was “beyond repugnant” that the mismanagement of the ecosystem in the basin forced them to court, potentially jeopardizing a fish key to another tribe’s heritage.

Other water shortage problems are occurring with surface and groundwater that have been building for decades and are exacerbated by legal constraints in addition to long-term drought and excessive withdrawals. The Ogallala Aquifer, which spans eight states under the high plains from South Dakota to New Mexico, is being depleted far faster than it is recharged by rain and snow.

In a bizarre case, Texas recently sued the state of New Mexico for monetary payment for the loss of water from evaporation of water stored in a New Mexico reservoir before it was delivered to Texas through the Rio Grande. The US Supreme Court denied Texas’ demand.

The solution, however, to a lack of needed water, is not competition between small farmers and native tribes, which the capitalist profit system creates and expands. By treating natural resources as property, the capitalist system divorces those resources from human needs and cuts off those resources in times of natural scarcity. What is needed is a rational, scientifically planned approach to water usage across the continent and globally to fight off the immense dangers of drought, wildfire, water shortages, and human displacement.

Nepal plunges deeper into political crisis as pandemic rages across the country

Rohantha De Silva & K. Ratnayake

The Nepal Supreme Court has begun hearing 30 petitions, opposing the dissolution of the country’s parliament by President Bidya Devi Bhandari, on the request of Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli.

Nepalese demonstrators participate in a torch rally to protest against the dissolution of parliament in Kathmandu, Nepal. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Last week, the five-judge Supreme Court bench that is hearing the case issued “show cause notices” to the office of the president, prime minister, and the cabinet, giving them 15 days to reply to the petitions challenging the constitutionality of the president’s dissolution order.

A longtime political associate and ally of Oli, President Bhandari dissolved parliament on May 21—almost 18 months before the end of its term. National elections are now scheduled for November 12 and 19.

It is uncertain when the Supreme Court will deliver its verdict. But whatever the ruling, it will not and cannot solve the political crisis that has sharply divided and splintered Nepal’s faction-ridden ruling elite. Whilst various privileged factions are jockeying for power, the crisis is fundamentally rooted in mass popular alienation from the entire establishment—due to Nepal’s chronic backwardness and endemic poverty—which has only been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the Himalayan country’s emergence as a major arena of strategic competition between the US and India, on the one hand, and China on the other.

Last December, President Bhandari shut down parliament, on the advice of Oli. This was legally challenged by the opposition, and in late February, the Supreme Court overturned the dissolution, ruling it unconstitutional.

Oli attempted to form a new government, but was defeated in a no-confidence vote in parliament on May 10. President Bhandari set May 21 as the deadline for the establishment of a new administration. While both Oli and the opposition Nepali Congress (NC) leader Sher Bahadur Deuba insisted they had the support of a majority of MPs, President Bhandari suddenly decided to end the parliament without testing their rival claims.

One hundred and forty-six opposition MPs and some members of other political organisations have petitioned the Supreme Court, accusing the Nepali president of siding with Oli and acting unconstitutionally. The hearing, which was due to begin on June 6, was delayed after senior lawyers questioned the “impartiality” of the bench, appointed by Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana.

The bitter infighting is an expression of deep political instability. There have been twelve governments and nine prime ministers since the end of monarchical rule and the establishment of the “Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal” in 2008.

Amid the continuing turmoil, two Stalinist parties—the Oli-led Communist Party of Nepal-UML (CPNML) and the Communist Party of Nepal Maoist Centre (CPNMC), which was involved in a decade-long insurgency that ended in 2006 —fused together, and contested the 2017 election as the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN). The CPN won government, claiming it would bring political stability to the country. In February 2018 Oli became prime minister.

Unable to fulfill its election pledges to improve the social conditions of the masses, the CPM became embroiled in faction fighting over government positions. Maoist Centre leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal demanded to be appointed prime minister, in line with a previous unity agreement. Oli refused and the ruling party split into two.

To oust Oli, the Maoist Centre and its splinter groups have united with the National Congress, the country’s traditional right-wing bourgeois party, and are supporting NC leader S. Deuba’s bid to become prime minister.

The geopolitical tensions in the region are a major factor intensifying the political crisis in land-locked Nepal, which borders India and China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region.

Due to the inhospitable geography, Nepal’s access to the outside world is primarily through its long border with India. The Indian bourgeoisie, which contemptuously considers Nepal as its backyard, has long used Nepal’s dependence on access to India to influence and bully successive regimes in Kathmandu, the country’s capital.

Washington and Delhi regard Nepal as crucial to their drive to strategically isolate and encircle China. Beijing has responded by stepping up its efforts to develop close relations with Kathmandu, including through the development of a railway, linking the two countries and other infrastructure projects.

This strategic rivalry has impacted the conflict between Oli and his UML faction of the CPN, and Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s Maoist Centre, over the prime minister’s post.

Last December, China sent high-profile officials to Kathmandu, hoping to patch-up these differences. This included a delegation led by Guo Yezhou, vice-minister of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party, who met with Oli and Dahal.

Seeking to maintain and strengthen its interests, India countered by sending the head of its intelligence apparatus, Samant Goel, and Army Chief Mukund Naravane, for talks in Kathmandu.

In 2017-18, Oli whipped up anti-Indian nationalism, exploiting popular anger over the devastating months-long blockade that India imposed on Nepal in 2015, in a bid to force changes to its constitution. However, apparently out of fear that China was supporting his rival Dahal, Oli has shifted closer to New Delhi and Washington, in an attempt to secure his political survival.

According to Indian media reports, the decision by a faction of the People’s Socialist Party, represented by Mahantha Thakur and Rajendra Mahato, to give support to Oli, is the outcome of maneouvres undertaken by New Delhi. On June 4, Oli appointed Mahato deputy prime minister, as well as eight ministers and two state ministers from Mahato’s faction, to bolster his caretaker government.

The India-based Diplomat commented on May 16: “Recent developments suggest that India is silently supporting Oli. The United States also seems to favour Oli.”

Last year, a majority of the NCP central committee opposed the US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact for Nepal, saying that it opened the way for greater US influence, and delayed submitting it to the parliament. In April this year, Oli nonetheless insisted that the speaker should bring the MCC compact to parliament immediately.

Commenting on this shift, Hari Roka, a political commentator, told the Kathmandu Post: “Both India and the US have their own interests in Nepal. Oli is an old ally of India and now, with the MCC endorsement, he wants to demonstrate that he is not going to antagonise the US in the context of the US-India alliance.”

The political crisis gripping Nepal’s ruling elite is occurring as COVID-19 infections soar across the Himalayan country of 28 million people. The government’s criminal mishandling of the pandemic is provoking widespread opposition amongst workers and the poor. According to yesterday’s official—grossly understated—figures, more than 614,200 people have been infected and more than 8,500 have died from COVID-19. The far more infectious and lethal Delta or B.1.617.2 coronavirus variant, first identified in India, is now running rampant in Nepal.

Currently, only symptomatic cases are being screened, due to the shortage of testing equipment. Dr. Samir Kumar Adhikari, the health ministry’s chief spokesperson, recently admitted: “Our medical infrastructure is in crisis. The oxygen supply-demand gap is huge. We also have no more vaccines.” Hospitals have run out of intensive care beds and ventilators, and, as Adhikari’s remarks suggest, there is an acute shortage of oxygen all over the country.

The Oli administration, which failed to make any serious medical preparations for the pandemic, despite numerous warnings last year from public health experts, is overseeing an escalating social and economic crisis.

According to a recent World Bank survey, the Nepali economy contracted by 1.9 percent in 2020, with major falls in jobs and incomes. The survey notes that two in every five economically active workers report that they lost jobs or suffered prolonged work absence. “Women, young workers, and those engaged in nonagricultural activities have been the most severely affected,” it said.

Torn by political instability and nervous about the political implications of the deepening social crisis, sections of the ruling elite are desperately calling for the parliamentary parties to work together. An editorial in Monday’s English-language Himalayan Times declared: “Let the intra and interparty hostility not spill out onto the streets and jeopardise the ongoing efforts to contain the virus.”

The principal concern of the Nepali capitalist class and all its political parties, however, is not COVID-19 but the eruption of mass struggles. Having faced a popular uprising in 2006 that led to the end of monarchical rule, the political forces that allied to dissipate that movement and establish a bourgeois republic—the NC, NCP-UML, and the Maoists—and the various other bourgeois factions, fear they will not be able to contain future mass struggles.

US seeks to ease tensions at Biden-Putin summit, as anti-China drive escalates

Summit talks between US President Joseph Biden and Russian President 

Andrea Peters

Vladimir Putin concluded on Wednesday with declarations by the heads of state that the dialogue had been “good,” “positive,” and “quite constructive.” Against the backdrop of the intensifying US-led war drive against China, Washington appears to be trying to ease tensions with the Kremlin.

President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, arrive to meet at the 'Villa la Grange', Wednesday, June 16, 2021, in Geneva, Switzerland. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

The ultimate aim of such an effort—over which huge question marks hang—is to disrupt Moscow’s deepening economic, political and military ties with Beijing in order to isolate China in preparation for war. The discussions were held just after the conclusion of G7 and NATO meetings at which China was identified as the primary target of world imperialism.

Speaking at separate press conferences on Wednesday, Biden and Putin said that their more than two-hour long discussion covered a range of topics, including nuclear agreements, the conflict in Ukraine, competition over of the Arctic, cybersecurity, human rights and economic ties. While providing few details, each indicated that further high-level discussions would take place in an effort to restore “strategic stability.” Ambassadorial relations, which had been broken off in March after Biden called Putin a “killer,” will be restored. The New START treaty is to be extended to 2024. There will be bilateral working groups created to address arms control and ransomware attacks.

With regards to Ukraine, no mention was made of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that the US and Europe accuse Russia of having illegally seized. In addition, the two sides stated their commitment to the implementation of the Minsk Protocol, accords signed in 2014 and 2015 that lay the basis for a negotiated settlement over the status of the Donbass—a region in eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists who came to power after the staging of a far-right, US-backed coup in Kiev.

The Ukrainian government, which has recently been moving troops and military equipment to the contested area and said it intends to retake Crimea by force, has repeatedly expressed its opposition to implementing the Minsk agreements. Wednesday’s endorsement of Minsk follows on the heels of Biden’s pre-summit statement that Kiev was “not ready” for membership in NATO, to which the country has been hysterically appealing for admission. After years of Washington’s strident anti-Russian rhetoric over Moscow’s “violations” of Ukrainian sovereignty, it appears that the country and its extreme nationalist leaders have been sidelined—at least temporarily—in the interests of the US pursuit of larger geopolitical aims.

Despite being repeatedly pressed by reporters to make hostile declarations against his Russian counterpart and state that the US had threatened “military consequences” over further alleged cyberattacks, the American president stated that “no threats” were made and that the Kremlin leader offered “to help” on issues related to Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria. Relatively little was said about Alexei Navalny, the much-fawned-over “pro-democracy” oppositionist, although Biden did indicate it would be bad if he died.

The US press corps at Biden’s event seemed genuinely disappointed that there was less braying for blood. Many in the American media and ruling establishment had anticipated that Trump’s replacement by Biden would signal a harsher policy toward Moscow.

A tactical shift in Washington’s relationship with Russia will provoke both internal and foreign conflicts. A glimpse of this was on display on Wednesday. Just as Putin finished his press conference, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters, “We believe that a renewed partnership allowing us to realise the full potential of a close cooperation with Russia is a distant prospect.” He said the EU anticipates a “further downturn of our relations” with Moscow.

Whatever tactical maneuver Washington may be attempting to carry out, its readiness to strike at Moscow was also made clear. Biden warned Putin that, should he not abide by “international norms,” his “credibility worldwide” would diminish and there would be “consequences.” The US has an immense capacity to unleash cyberwarfare, observed the US leader, noting, in particular, the vulnerability of Russia’s oil industry.

Putin pointed to US support for “democracy”-building organizations in Russia, which he observed were little more than puppets of US foreign policy. While downplaying Biden’s previous description of him as a murderer and violator of human rights, the Russian president pointed to police killings in the US, the deaths of innocent civilians in drone strikes, the existence of CIA black sites and the continued operation of Guantanamo Bay as examples of American hypocrisy on human rights questions.

Beneath the surface appearance of cordiality that both leaders tried to project on Wednesday lie explosive tensions. As the summit took place, NATO was conducting its largest-ever military exercises, explicitly directed at Russia. The US has been beefing up its military presence in Ukraine, the Black Sea and the Arctic, and in May the Biden administration released a military budget proposal that would bring US arms spending to record levels. Russia recently declared the creation of 20 new anti-NATO military divisions, to be stationed on its western borders. This summer it has been reviewing the fighting capacity and readiness of its ground, air, and naval forces nationwide.

In his remarks Wednesday, the US President stated that some expected to hear that “Biden said he would invade Russia,” a remark that unintentionally revealed the very real threats of war surrounding the summit. Whether through a direct military conflict, the use of ethnic and national differences to break up the country, or the promotion of internal conflict—or all three—Russia remains in the gunsights of American imperialism, which views its domination of a large portion of the Eurasian landmass as an intolerable limit on US imperialism’s appetites.

But what is increasingly coming to the fore, as was demonstrated at the G7 summit, is a sentiment that China must be the first target in America’s buildup to war. The Wuhan lab theory, which over the last two months has been placed at the center of US and European foreign policy, is laying the groundwork for the argument that Beijing is responsible for the death of millions. This follows on the heels of endless accusations that China is manipulating its currency, violating international trade conventions, pursuing control over East Asia’s sea lanes, abrogating human rights conventions, and on and on.

There are significant concerns in Washington that the US cannot maintain a two-front war. Inasmuch as the anti-Russia campaign has encouraged closer ties between Moscow and Beijing, this has raised worries that American imperialism may be biting off more than it can chew.

For its part, the Russian ruling class has been in a deepening state of disarray over what to do about the inter-imperialist conflict in which it finds itself ensnared. There are divisions both inside and outside the Kremlin over the country’s relationships with China and the US. Russia is dwarfed in all respects by its much larger neighbor. For years, Putin sought a more amiable relationship with the United States, constantly referring to his “friends” across the Atlantic even as the tensions with Washington grew.

Biden himself identified the crisis facing Moscow when he was asked whether a new “cold war” was emerging in US-Russia relations. In reply, he observed that Russia has “a multi-thousand mile border with China. China’s moving ahead…seeking to be the most powerful economy in the world,” but Russia’s “economy is struggling.” “I don’t think [Putin] is looking for a cold war with the United States,” Biden said.

Regardless of what anyone is “looking for,” war has a logic of its own. Tactical twists and turns aside, it is clear that the drive by the American ruling class to defend its waning global hegemony threatens the world with a massive military conflagration.

Israel’s new government sends planes to bomb Gaza

Jean Shaoul

On Tuesday, in line with his hostile stance towards the Palestinians, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett authorised a new series of attacks on the Palestinians, including airstrikes on Gaza and a crackdown on protesters in East Jerusalem.

Israeli air strike on Gaza on May14, 2021 (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

While the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that it had struck military compounds in Gaza City and the southern town of Khan Younis belonging to Hamas, the Muslim-Brotherhood-affiliated group that controls Gaza, Palestinian media reported that one of the strikes had caused property damage. There have been no immediate reports of casualties. The IDF said that it was “ready for all scenarios, including renewed fighting in the face of continued terrorist acts emanating from Gaza.” According to Al Arabiya, Egypt asked Hamas and Islamic Jihad not to escalate the crisis and the two groups told Cairo they were not seeking to do so.

These latest airstrikes follow the launching of incendiary balloons from Gaza that caused some fires in open fields in southern Israel.

Bennett, the multi-millionaire businessman, religious nationalist and settler advocate who was sworn in as prime minister on Sunday, is notorious for his hard-line response to the Palestinians, having boasted of killing “lots of Arabs” and criticised previous governments for failing to respond to incendiary balloons. Before becoming defence minister in 2019, he tweeted that those launching the balloons were “terrorists” who should be killed. According to the news site Ynet, he denounced these home-made devices as life-threatening and said, “An explosive balloon is like an anti-tank missile ...Whoever launches one is a terrorist who is trying to murder Israelis and must be hit,” he added.

The airstrikes come just four weeks after a fragile ceasefire on May 21 ended Israel’s criminal 11-day assault on the besieged enclave that killed more than 250 Palestinians, including 66 children and 39 women, injured 1,900 more and destroyed numerous buildings, displacing at least 60,000 people. These horrifying figures contradict Israel’s claims to have solely targeted Hamas’s arsenals, weapons manufacturing facilities and underground infrastructure network. They demonstrate, coming atop of Israel’s 2008-09, 2012 and 2014 wars and its lethal repression of the 2018-19 Great March of Return, that the bombing is aimed at terrorising the Palestinians into submission.

In contrast, the Palestinians’ largely amateurish rockets killed 12 people, including two children and three foreign nationals, and injured 357 in Israel, indicating the grossly one-sided nature of the assault. Since then, Israel and Egypt, which together control access to Gaza, have withheld key financial and material assistance, blocking any reconstruction. Israel has made any easing of its blockade conditional upon Hamas’s agreement to return the bodies of four of IDF soldiers missing in action in Gaza.

This latest bombardment early Wednesday morning comes just days after the new coalition secured a confidence vote with a majority of just 60-59 as a United Arab List legislator who had been expected to support the new government abstained, indicating its extremely tenuous hold on power.

The new government, headed by Bennett, was cobbled together by Yair Lapid, former TV news anchor and head of the second largest party, Yesh Atid, in a bid to revive Israel’s relationship with the Democratic Party in the United States, Israel’s chief backer. That bond had frayed under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who infuriated President Barack Obama, had close relations with his Republican successor, President Donald Trump and used his last speech in office at the weekend to attack President Joe Biden as a danger to Israel.

The government’s leading lights, all of whom were once aides to Netanyahu and occupied senior government posts under his leadership, have no significant political differences with him. It is a thoroughly unprincipled and reactionary coalition of parties, from the far-right to the former peace camp, dedicated to rescuing Israel’s bourgeoisie from the gathering economic, social and political storm at the expense of Jewish and Palestinian workers within Israel/Palestine and the working class across the resource-rich Middle East.

One of the first decisions of the Bennett-Lapid government was to confirm Netanyahu’s decision to allow a march by Jewish extremists through Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem on Tuesday, which critics had warned could lead to angry confrontations between Palestinian residents and Jewish marchers and a violent escalation with Hamas.

The march was a rescheduled version of the one planned for May 10 to mark the anniversary of Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbours and its annexation, illegal under international law, that was cancelled amid Israel’s violent crackdown on Palestinians worshipping at the al-Aqsa Mosque and protesting against the planned eviction of Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. It was the escalating violence in the city that precipitated Hamas’s firing of rockets toward Jerusalem on May 10.

On Monday, Hamas warned that it would respond if the postponed march were allowed to go ahead.

The postponed march, initially conceived as a means of derailing Lapid’s efforts to form an anti-Netanyahu coalition, was given the go-ahead by Netanyahu in his last days in office with the dual purpose of appeasing his far-right supporters and destabilising the incoming government. It is part of his hysterically aggressive attacks from the right on the new government that include a fight over the threatened eviction of Evyatar, an illegal settler outpost in the West Bank.

Amid insistence from his cabinet colleagues that any blocking of the march would be a concession to Hamas , incoming public security minister Omer Bar-Lev, a Labour Party legislator and former IDF commander, who also oversees Israel’s police force, green lighted the event, known as a “flags march.” He said, “The flags march will be taking place. Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital. In a democracy, it is permitted and it is important to hold demonstrations and marches like these, as long as they are in accordance with the law.”

Bar-Lev’s words were a provocation to the Palestinians. Firstly, because as occupied territory, East Jerusalem does not belong to Israel. East Jerusalem, the heart of Palestinian social and cultural life, had been envisioned as the capital of a future Palestinian state under a “two-state solution” long since rendered moribund by the relentless spread of Zionist settlements in the occupied West Bank. Secondly, Palestinian demonstrations are routinely broken up with brutal force, with the Damascus Gate Plaza, outside an entrance to the Old City, declared off limits to the Palestinians who use it for social gatherings to mark the end of the day’s fast during Ramadan. Such is the abuse and violence from the marchers that those living on the route of the march often board up their homes and shops.

In anticipation of counterdemonstrations, the Israeli authorities raised the alert level and deployed additional police and military forces near the Gaza Strip and in towns with mixed populations of Jewish and Palestinian citizens. Tor Wennesland, the UN’s envoy in the region, warned of rising tensions and asked all sides to “avoid any provocations that could lead to another round of confrontation,” while the US State Department banned its staff from entering the Old City the day of the march.

The march took place Tuesday with full police protection. The police arrested at least 17 Palestinians, while the Palestinian Red Crescent said 33 Palestinians were wounded as security forces forced Palestinian residents away from the route of the march for much of the afternoon, except for those working in the shops, closing roads and the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City. Videos posted online showed a Palestinian being beaten by officers on the steps at the Gate as they cleared the area to make way for the marchers.

Thousands of right-wing extremists assembled at the Damascus Gate, waving flags, singing anthems of the settler movement and chanting “Death to Arabs” and “May your village burn down.” Fascistic legislators and allies of Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of Jewish Power, and Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism faction, were carried on the marchers’ shoulders.

Counterdemonstrations took place in Jerusalem as well as in Israel’s mixed population towns and cities, with some Palestinian groups calling for a “day of rage” denouncing the far-right march.

In a radio interview on Tuesday, Mansour Abbas, the leader of the United Arab List or Ra’am, an Islamist party within the eight-party coalition, condemned the parade and said it should never have been allowed to proceed, while admitting he had not discussed the issue with Bennett. “If we quarrel over everything, there is no doubt that this coalition will fall apart,” he explained.

Global debt binge continues as Fed keeps printing money

Nick Beams

There is a clear conclusion to be drawn from the two-day meeting of the Federal Reserve’s policy-making committee, which concluded yesterday.

The world’s major central bank has indicated it will do nothing that could be construed as withdrawing support from the mountain of debt and fictitious capital its policies have created in the US and worldwide and will continue the flow of ultra-cheap money that has enabled the enrichment of a financial oligarchy to levels never before seen in history.

The "Fearless Girl" statue faces the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, June 16, 2021 as traders wait for the latest decision on interest rates from the Federal Reserve. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In the financial press, the indication by the Fed that it may start raising its base interest rate from virtually zero at the end of 2023 rather than in 2024, as had been previously indicated, was described as “hawkish.” But in fact, the Fed did not lift a finger to change its monetary policy.

The Fed’s program of asset purchasing, initiated in response to the freeze in financial markets in March 2020 with the onset of the pandemic, will continue at the rate of $120 billion a month.

In the lead-up to the meeting, the issue had been raised in financial circles about whether the Fed would begin to “taper” its financial asset purchases. Fed chair Jerome Powell was at pains to offer reassurances that nothing would be done to upset the financial markets.

The standard for reducing the level of asset purchases was “a ways away,” he said, and while the Fed was “talking about tapering,” any move would be “orderly, methodical and transparent” and communicated well in advance. This was in effect a guarantee to financial markets that at the very first sign of market turbulence any hint of ending support would be withdrawn.

Before the global financial crisis in 2008, the Fed held around $900 billion worth of financial assets on its books. That rose rapidly to more than $4 trillion as a result of quantitative easing and then rose again to more than $8 trillion in 2020 and is now on course to reach at least $9 trillion by the end of this year.

The Fed’s policies, which have been followed by other major central banks, have had two effects. First, they have directly facilitated the transfer of wealth into the hands of a global corporate and financial oligarchy. Data published by Forbes in April that in 2020 alone the collective wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by 60 percent from $8 trillion to $13.1 trillion, described by the magazine as “the greatest acceleration of wealth in human history.”

Second, they have created a mountain of debt. Some indication of the extent of this process was outlined in an article in the Wall Street Journal this week. It noted that after issuing $1.7 trillion in bonds last year, nearly $600 million above the previous high, the total debt of US corporations at the end of March was $11.2 trillion, equivalent to around half of US gross domestic product.

The same situation exists in Europe, where thousands of companies are only being sustained by the zero-interest rate policy of the European Central Bank and its financial asset purchases as well as direct government support.

The extent of this operation was highlighted in recent comments by the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. “We do not want to abruptly cut our support and trigger dozens of thousands of bankruptcies,” he said.

The creation of a debt mountain is only one consequence of the Fed’s policies. The flood of ultra-cheap money into the global financial system has promoted a wave of speculation, ranging from commodities to housing, shares and cryptocurrencies, to name some examples.

With Wall Street trading at record highs, price-earnings ratios on stocks, the traditional metric for assessing market valuations, have been climbing.

The yield on corporate junk bonds—those rated below investment-grade status—has fallen to all-time lows. This week, Bloomberg reported on a company that had floated a $500 million offering of junk bonds to purchase bitcoin and received a favourable rating from Moody’s because it has a “very low cost of borrowing.”

Commodities have been the centre of speculation, with prices swinging wildly. In May, lumber prices in the US rose to record highs and then plunged by 41 percent this month. Industrial commodities such as iron ore and copper have also been the subject of speculation, sending their prices to record highs.

According to the latest global data, house prices are rising at the fastest rate since before the global financial crisis of 2008, with New Zealand recording a 22 percent rise in the past year and the US seeing an increase of 13.5 percent.

It is vital for its ongoing struggles that the working class grasp the objective significance of this vast escalation of speculation promoted by the Fed and other central banks. Debt, corporate bonds, and other financial assets are what Marx characterised as fictitious capital. That is, they do not have an inherent value. Rather, in the final analysis, they are a claim on the surplus value extracted from the working class in the production process.

The escalation of this mountain of fictitious capital has decisive implications for the development of the class struggle. It portends an immense intensification of the assault on the working class—the extraction of ever greater amounts of surplus value—to meet the claims of these assets.

During his presentation and question-and-answer session following the Fed meeting, Powell devoted considerable attention to inflation and the prospects for its increase.

The chief concern of the central bank is not price rises as such, but whether this brings about an upsurge of the working class in support of wage and other demands and resistance to the “restructuring” of labour and working conditions to meet the relentless demands of finance capital to increase the flow of surplus value.

Powell indicated that the Fed stood ready to use its monetary policy tools if a permanent rise in inflation results in struggles for high wages.

But monetary policy alone—higher interest rates to prevent so-called “overheating” in the economy—is not enough. Moreover, it contains the danger of setting off a financial crisis.

Other means, therefore, have to be developed, chief among which is the use of the trade union bureaucracy as the industrial police force of finance capital, a method being employed in the US and internationally.

Herein is the significance of the struggle waged by the International Committee of the Fourth International and its sections for the formation of rank-and-file committees and the development of an international alliance to advance the independent struggle of the working class against the suppression of wages organised by the trade union apparatuses.

These committees will go forward and develop to the extent they are guided by an international socialist perspective. The deepening economic crisis has not only revealed the objective necessity for this program; it has also shattered the ideological nostrums advanced by the capitalist ruling class and all its agencies.

The central doctrine of the ruling elites, developed over centuries, is that the so-called capitalist free market operates like a law of nature and is the only viable, the only possible, form of socioeconomic organisation and that a socialist program, based on the conscious control and regulation of the economy to meet human need, is therefore irrational.

The socialist movement has continually exposed this outlook, drawing out its absurdity: the claim that while mankind can probe the outer reaches of the universe and the inner structure of the atom and the mechanisms of life, it cannot consciously organise society.

Long ago refuted theoretically, the doctrines of the free market are now being torn to shreds in practice. The so-called free market has ceased to function. Without the daily ongoing intervention of the capitalist state, in the form of the Fed, it would collapse in an instant.

The state has now assumed the role of the chief economic organiser. The chief question today is in whose interests it will function. The present capitalist state, the instrument for the enrichment of the oligarchs and the impoverishment of the working class, must be overturned and a workers’ government established. That is the inherent logic of the struggles now unfolding.