Ethiopia’s war on Tigray threatens broader civil war

Jean Shaoul

One year after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered the invasion of Tigray province, intensified fighting threatens an all-out civil war amid escalating ethnic conflicts around the country.

The breakup of Africa’s second-most populous country would destabilise the wider Horn of Africa region, including Somalia, the Republic of Sudan, South Sudan, and Eritrea. Ethiopia, the headquarters of the African Union, has long acted as the region’s anchor state on behalf of US imperialism.

Military conflict with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) has caused untold suffering and devastated the economy. Last week, Abiy declared a state of emergency, giving him powers to impose curfews and censor the media, issued a call to arms for Ethiopia’s citizens and ordered house-to-house searches for and arrests of ethnic Tigrayans and those accused of sympathizing with the TPLF.

Tigrayan women who fled from the town of Samre, roast coffee beans over a wood stove in a classroom where they now live in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

He also announced the stepping up of recruitment into both the national and regional armed forces, amid reports of new arms purchases, with Eritrea set to send more troops at Ethiopia’s expense and Iran, Turkey and China bolstering Ethiopia’s arsenal. China is to supply four Chengdu J-20 fighter jets and Wing Loong drones, while Iran and Turkey are supplying attack drones.

Abiy has called the Tigrayan leaders, who were between 1991 and 2018 the leading political force in Ethiopia, “cancer” and “weeds”. This prompted Facebook and Twitter to remove one of Thursday’s posts urging Ethiopians to take up arms and “bury” the approaching rebel forces.

On Sunday, the government organized a pro-military, nationalist demonstration in Meskell Square, in the centre of the capital Addis Ababa, to rally support for the conflict and oppose “foreign interference” from the US and other countries calling for an end to the violence. While the public are generally supportive of the federal government, Al-Jazeera reported that many expressed dismay at the war itself.

Days earlier the TPLF announced it had formed an alliance with eight other opposition groups to oust Abiy, through political negotiation or military force if necessary, and install a transitional government. They are threatening to block the crucial road linking landlocked Ethiopia to the Red Sea port of Djibouti and advance on Addis Ababa. Getachew Reda, a TPLF spokesperson, said, “If marching to Addis is what it takes to break the siege [of Tigray], we will.” Tigray has for months been suffering from Abiy’s blockade that has cut off budget transfers and telecommunications, electricity and banking services.

The alliance brings together previously opposed ethnic groups, including the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), a splinter from the Oromo Liberation Front, that is fighting for greater rights for the ethnic Oromos who make up 35 percent of Ethiopia’s 110 million people. The government has declared the OLA a terrorist entity and jailed many suspected supporters.

The alliance, the United Front of Ethiopian Federalist and Confederalist Forces, called on the Biden administration to support their efforts. Berhane Gebre-Christos, a former foreign minister and TPLF spokesperson, told a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, “We are left with one option—changing the situation; otherwise, we’ll all be massacred,” and called for a resolution to the crisis “before Ethiopia implodes and affects the region.”

Abiy, an Oromian and former military intelligence officer backed by Washington, became prime minister in February 2018 following rising ethnic tensions incited by the elites in a bid to prevent a unified opposition to their free market reforms, including the sale of prize land for commercial, export-based agriculture and flower growing.

Touted as a “reformer” who would bring a “new beginning” to Ethiopia, Abiy disbanded the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of militia groups and parties dominated by the TPLF. He replaced it with his Prosperity Party (PP) which TPLF refused to join. Abiy retired Tigrayan military and government officials, launched corruption charges against some TPLF members and announced plans for the privatisation of the state-owned economy and liberalisation of the banks.

The prime minister launched his murderous “law-and-order” operation against Tigray in November 2020 in response to what he claimed was an attack on an army compound. That move followed the federal government’s efforts to bypass the TPLF after it rejected Abiy’s decision to postpone the 2020 elections due to the pandemic and went ahead with its own elections. While Tigrayans form just 6 percent of the population, they have long provided much of Ethiopia’s national army, seriously depleting Abiy’s forces on the ground.

The national elections went ahead last June, although voters in 125 out of the 547 parliamentary seats were unable to vote and two regions, Somali and Harar that voted in September, have yet to announce their results. Meeting few basic standards for a credible vote, Abiy and his Prosperity Party won 401 of the 422 seats contested in June, enabling him to claim a popular mandate for his policies, including greater powers for the federal government.

Contrary to Abiy’s expectation of a swift victory last year, the TPLF have retaken most of Tigray, including the capital Mekelle, and moved into the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions. Fighting alongside allied ethnic Amhara militias opposed to Abiy, the TPLF have reportedly taken two key towns and are some 220 miles from Addis Ababa.

The military conflict in Tigray takes place amid ethnic strife and inter-communal violence across many parts of the country, with large swathes of Benishangul-Gumuz, Afar, Somali, Oromia, Amhara and the Southern Region under “Command Posts”—de facto military rule.

With the end of the rainy season, fighting will expand further beyond Tigray, adding to the terrible death toll of 100,000. The federal government’s blockade of the region has prevented food and medicine, including United Nations (UN) and international aid, reaching the Tigray where, according to UN estimates, 5.2 million people are in urgent need of help and 400,000 face starvation. The UN says that nearly 2 million Tigrayans have been displaced by the conflict, as well as 450,000 in Afar and Amhara provinces, with 70,000 fleeing to Sudan.

There have been accusations of massacres, sexual violence and horrific human rights abuses on both sides. Last week, a joint UN-Ethiopian report detailed first-hand accounts of numerous human rights violations, some of which Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said “may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.” She added, “the majority of the violations” between November 2020 and June 2021 appeared to have been committed by Ethiopian forces and their Eritrean allies, but following the Tigrayan counter-offensive in June, there were “an increasing number of allegations of human rights abuses by Tigray forces.”

Last September, the Biden administration announced it was considering sanctions that could target military commanders, government officials, state institutions and the national carrier, Ethiopian Airlines, prompting Abiy to expel seven senior UN officials. The US government has also suspended security and some economic assistance, said it will not support International Monetary Fund and World Bank funds for Ethiopia and warned that Ethiopian exporters may lose their preferential access to the US market.

The UN Security Council has called for a ceasefire, while the African Union has appointed Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo as its special envoy to the Horn to try and broker talks.

The US and other western countries have called on Abiy to begin talks with the rebels, advising their citizens to leave the country. On Thursday, Washington sent Jeffrey Feltman, its fixer for the Horn of Africa, to Addis Ababa, to try and persuade Abiy to step back from all-out war. Abiy reportedly rejected this as “external interference.”

The fighting in Ethiopia could draw Sudan into the war, under conditions where relations between Addis Ababa and Khartoum are at a low ebb, both over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam that could affect Sudan’s water supply and al-Fashaga, the disputed farmlands adjacent to western Tigray which Sudan occupied in December.

Having fallen out of Washington’s favour, Abiy hopes that he can profit from the increasing attention being paid to the Horn of Africa. Sited at the crossroads between Africa, the Middle East and the Mediterranean, it has become the focus of great power and regional rivalries, as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Israel and China, which paid for the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, jockey for position.

Polish government announces massive rearmament programme

Martin Nowak

Last week, Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak, together with PiS party leader and Minister of National Security Jaroslaw Kaczynski, presented the “Plan for the Defence of the Fatherland.” This provides for an increase in the target strength of the Polish army to 250,000 professional soldiers. Currently, the Polish armed forces number about 110,000 soldiers.

In addition, there are the planned 53,000 volunteers of the Wojska Obrony Terytorialnej, or WOT (Territorial Defence Forces), whose strength is currently around 30,000. This paramilitary militia is directly subordinate to the Ministry of Defence and, in the style of the US National Guard, serves both to support the regular army and to provide “internal security.” The WOT also aims to “strengthen the patriotic and Christian foundations of the Polish system and armed forces,” and is considered a stomping ground for right-wing extremists.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, right, leader of Poland’s ruling PiS party, and Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak presented plans Oct. 26 for the “Defense of the Fatherland” bill, which aims to massively upgrade the Polish military (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Kaczynski justified this “radical strengthening of the armed forces” with a worsened security situation as a result of Russia’s “imperial ambitions” and the “ hybrid attacks ” by Belarus. The latter refers to the current situation on the Polish-Belarusian border, where hundreds of refugees are facing hunger, cold and death. The EU and the Polish government justify their brutal border regime by declaring themselves to be the victims. After Spain, Greece and Hungary, a border fence more than two meters high is now being erected on the Polish border.

In classic fashion, Kaczynski presented his orgy of rearmament as an act of defence and peacekeeping. He invoked the Latin proverb: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

Not coincidentally, information about the Polish military exercise “Winter 20” leaked to the public earlier this year. The exercise simulated a surprise attack by Russia on Poland. In keeping with the rearmament doctrine, Polish forces were devastated, and Warsaw surrounded after only four days. Comparisons were drawn to the “Blitzkrieg” of Hitler’s Wehrmacht (army), with the conclusion: “Even worse than 1939.”

In reality, the NATO powers are the aggressors. The military alliance has massively rearmed in recent years. This has been accompanied by a build-up of troops on NATO’s eastern flank, the border with Russia. The largest manoeuvrers were “ Trident Juncture ,” “Defender 2020,” “ Defender 2021 ” and “ Sea Breeze .”

Poland has a key role in NATO strategy as both a battlefield and a logistical hub. The PiS government is seeking to expand this role further and is seeking closer ties with US imperialism. Following the election of President Biden, however, relations have cooled considerably.

Nevertheless, at the inauguration of the 1st US Infantry Division’s Forward Command Post in Poznan, Poland, in early October, Defence Minister Blaszczak stressed that expanding the US troop presence was one of his priorities in office. It is part of the 2,000-soldier increase in the US troop presence in Poland under President Trump. Poznan serves as the command centre for all US units operating on NATO’s eastern flank as part of the “Atlantic Resolve” rotational deployment.

This rearmament initiative will also further exacerbate intra-European conflicts, both that between Germany or the EU and Poland, and the conflict between France and Britain. The latter has announced an alliance with the Visegrad Group (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) and the Baltic states against France.

Defence reform has long been announced and was described by Kaczynski as the crowning achievement of his ministerial tenure. Although no draft law has been published yet, and thus no details are known, the scope of the planned measures seems enormous. The legislative package is to consist of 720 articles and replace 14 key laws, first and foremost the law on the general duty to defend, which has been in force since 1967.

One goal is to ensure the enormous increase in the defence budget from various sources and to make it largely independent of the official state budget. A “support fund” is being set up at the national development bank BGK specifically for this purpose. Revenues from government bonds, BGK bonds, the state budget and the profits of the National Bank of Poland are to flow into the rearmament programme.

The official military budget has also been increasing for years. It currently stands at around $12 billion, or about 2.2 percent of GDP. The Ministry of Defence has already announced additional arms spending of around $33 billion for the next 11 years. It has already signed defence contracts worth $17.4 billion in the last three years, including for two Patriot missile defence batteries, four Black Hawk helicopters, 32 F-35 fighter jets, 250 Abrams main battle tanks and three Miecznik class frigates.

Another goal is to attract more soldiers to the armed forces. While there is to be no reintroduction of conscription—at least for now—there will be, among other things, a one-year voluntary military service and more financial incentives. Blaszczak has announced plans to increase pay by about €130. Another financial incentive is a full scholarship for those who commit to five years of military service after graduation. There are also plans to increase the size of the reserve forces, for example by requiring an oath be taken after completing voluntary military service, which will also be remunerated.

In addition, the “Wojska Obrony Cyberprzestrzeni,” or cyberspace forces, are to be established as a separate branch of the armed forces, and national crisis management is to be subordinated to the ultra-right WOT. As always when the ruling class speaks of “defending the fatherland,” the rearmament is thus directed both outward and inward.

The Civic Platform PO, the largest opposition party, invariably criticizes the rearmament plans from the right. On broadcaster TVN, Tomasz Siemoniak, deputy party leader and until 2015 defence minister, mocked that this inflating of the armed forces in terms of numbers was totally useless. Instead, he stressed the need for a qualitative upgrade—especially in air and missile defence. At the same time, Siemoniak also called for a reserve of several hundred thousand. This would go far beyond the PiS plans known so far.

In general, it is clear from all the comments in the Polish media that there is only disagreement about how to upgrade the military. The differences revolve around whether equipment should be purchased or whether Poland should increasingly develop its own defence industry. It is also about fundamental questions of foreign policy orientation. While the opposition PO is calling for better cooperation with the EU, Kaczynski justified the massive increase by saying that in the event of war, it would be necessary to hold out until the NATO allies arrived.

The unanimity between PiS and PO in their demand for rearmament underscores the class nature of both parties. For weeks, doctors and medical staff have mounted the “Białe miasteczko” (White City) protests for improvements in the ailing health care system, only to hear from the Ministry of Health that their demands could not be financed. On the other hand, there are apparently endless resources for military rearmament.

In view of a rapidly spreading new coronavirus wave in Poland, the unscrupulousness of the Polish bourgeoisie becomes particularly clear. Due to the dismantling of all protective measures, infection figures have risen by over 50 percent within a week, and the 7-day incidence rate has skyrocketed to over 140 per 100,000. Poland has already suffered over 70,000 victims of the pandemic, one of the highest death rates in the EU. Whether in the pandemic or war, recent developments show how willingly the Polish bourgeoisie sacrifices hundreds of thousands of lives for its class interests.

Mounting problems in global economy and financial system

Nick Beams

If there is one word to sum up assessments of the state of the world economy and the related question of the state of financial markets, it would be confusion.

No one has any clear estimate for the path of global growth, how long the present surge in inflation will extend as well as its impact and when supply chain problems will ease. Despite the much-vaunted insistence by central banks they provide “forward guidance,” there is no idea about where they are headed on crucial aspects of monetary policy, leading to turbulence in bond markets.

Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file]

On top of this there is the impact of the latest surge in COVID-19 infections in Eastern Europe, amid warnings from the World Health Organisation there could be another 500,000 more coronavirus deaths in Europe by February, on top of the 1.4 million who have already died.

A Wall Street Journal article last weekend pointed to the perplexity in ruling circles. It stated that the global economy’s “comeback” from the deep contraction last year was “approaching a delicate juncture, as policy markets and executives grapple with the bumpy transition from the post-pandemic reopening to a more normalized pace of growth.”

Central banks, it said, were trying to chart a path that will curb inflation but not choke off growth as they “navigate the process of weaning economies off the extraordinary measures—including rock-bottom interest rates and enormous bond-buying programs—deployed to support their economies.”

The plan of central banks and government authorities—insofar as they had one—was that after an initial surge of inflation, higher prices would prove to be “transitory” and the economy would move back to a “normal” path of development.

That happy scenario has been blown apart. Inflation in the US is running at 5 percent, with little sign of abating. In the UK it is predicted by the Bank of England to reach 5 percent next year and it is surging in the euro zone.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting of the US Federal Reserve last Wednesday, Fed chair Jerome Powell said it was “very, very difficult to forecast and not easy to set policy.”

“Inflation has come in higher than expected and bottlenecks have been more persistent and more prevalent. We see that they’re now on track to persist well into next year. That was not expected by us, not by other macro forecasters.”

The US growth rate slowed markedly in the third quarter, experiencing its lowest level since the start of the recovery from the pandemic recession.

In China, the world’s second largest economy, concerns over its growth rate mount as the problems in the real estate sector, one of key drivers in the economy, continue.

It was announced on Friday that shares in the property developer Kaisa Group Holdings had been suspended in Hong Kong after the company announced it had missed payments on debt. It pointed to “unprecedented pressure on its liquidity”—the same issue which caused the property giant Evergrande to miss payments on offshore debt.

The Japanese finance company Nomura has warned that Chinese growth will slow to an annual rate of 3 to 4 percent over the next few quarters. Kevin Lai, chief economist at Daiwa Capital Markets, told the Journal that the Chinese slowdown “is going to be bigger and longer than anyone has seen in the past 10 years.”

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and the world’s fourth largest, “is expected to stall over the coming months as supply bottlenecks weigh on the nation’s powerful manufacturing sector, particularly in the auto industry.” Manufacturing output was 10 percent below pre-pandemic levels in September.

The highly uncertain outlook for Europe goes a long way to explaining why European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde has been so insistent that, despite pressure to tighten monetary policy due to increased inflation, a rate rise in 2022 is “off the chart.”

Lagarde’s comment points to the dilemma facing all central banks. On the one hand, inflation is pressuring them to tighten rates. On the other, they fear that if they do so lower growth combined with high levels of debt—the result of the quantitative easing policies over the past decade and more that have seen $23 trillion pumped into the financial system—will bring major economic and financial turbulence and even a crisis.

However, mixed messaging and rising inflation are causing major problems. Initially, major investors bought into the central banks’ scenario that price rises would be short-lived and made their speculative bets accordingly. But the persistence of inflation caused yields in the short end of the market to rise and bond prices to fall—the two have an inverse relationship.

This trend was fueled by comments from the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, in October that the central bank would “have to act” if inflation proved to be stubbornly high. In the event, the BoE decided last week not to raise its rate, sparking violent moves in the other direction.

Some major hedge funds have lost large amounts of money, running into billions of dollars. While the movement in rates may be relatively small, the losses can be high because hedge funds borrow large amounts of money to make their bets.

According to reports in the financial press, the London-based hedge fund Rokos Capital, which manages $12.5 billion in assets and has been something of a market leader because of past successes, has lost 27 percent so far this year and 18 percent last month.

Amid the turbulence in the short end of the bond market last month—the Financial Times (FT) described it as an “inferno”—there is a longer-term issue. This concerns the operation of the $22 trillion Treasury market and the meltdown it suffered in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.

This market, which forms the basis of the global financial system, is supposedly the most liquid and safest in the world. However, at the start the pandemic, it virtually froze when no buyers could be found for US government bonds. Rather than seeking a “safe haven” in purchases of government debt, there was a “dash for cash.”

The universal opinion in financial policy circles is that such an event, which had the potential to set off a crisis going beyond that of 2008, must never be allowed happen again.

There have been a series of investigations into the source of the crisis. It was only ended through the massive intervention of the Fed, which doubled its holdings of financial assets from $4 trillion to more than $8 trillion virtually overnight. But no definite diagnosis has emerged, much less a possible solution.

An article by FT columnist John Dizard at the weekend noted that the US Treasury market was “ill-equipped to finance” whatever spending packages are finally delivered by Congress. This was known by the administration and market regulators, and they have been working on developing a new market structure.

“The Treasury, the Fed and regulators like [Gary] Gensler [chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission] are haunted by the Treasury market’s seize-up in March last year, which shook global markets,” he wrote.

But so far, no plan has been developed. One of the problems is the increased involvement of hedge funds.

A research paper published by the Fed in October noted that “hedge funds play an increasingly important role in the US Treasury market.” It found that the Treasury market exposure of large hedge funds “doubled from early 2018 to February 2020, reaching $1.45 trillion and $0.94 trillion in long and short exposure, respectively.”

The Fed paper reported that the doubling was driven by relative arbitrage trading supported by corresponding increases in repo borrowing.

Arbitrage trading refers to investors, largely hedge funds, taking advantage of small and fleeting differences in various parts of the market to make money with the financial bets financed by repurchase agreements (repos), essentially very short-term borrowings, either from the Fed or other banks and finance houses.

In normal times, such operations can assist the smooth functioning of the market, but under conditions of a sudden shock, such as the onset of the pandemic, they can become the source of a crisis.

Dizard reported that one of the plans under consideration is a clearing house mechanism which would simultaneously act as a seller to all buyers and a buyer to all sellers. But he cited a report from the Securities and Financial Markets Association which cast doubt on its efficacy.

In a note issued last March, the report said: “Even with most Treasury trades being centrally cleared, it is highly unlikely that sufficient capacity would have been freed up to absorb the ‘dash-for-cash’ by investors that occurred last year.”

The recent turbulence in bond markets, under conditions of completely unanticipated problems, such as inflation, supply chain problems and the continuation of the pandemic, is an indication that the crisis which erupted 20 months ago could be coming to the surface again.

Analysis of EPA data shows millions subjected to high levels of cancer-causing industrial pollution

Chase Lawrence

According to a new analysis by ProPublica of US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data from 2014 through 2018, 256,000 Americans are being exposed to pollution levels higher than the EPA’s uppermost limit of 1 in 10,000 excess cancer risk, with 43,000 being subjected to at least triple this risk. Meanwhile 74 million people, nearly a quarter of the country’s population, are exposed to pollution that carries a higher than 1 in 1 million excess cancer risk.

Union Carbide Corporation, a subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company, in Seadrift, Texas. (Source: ProPublica)

According to the US Centers for Disease Control, 1.7 million new cases of cancer were reported and almost 600,000 people died of the disease in 2018, accounting for at least 436 cancer cases and 149 deaths per 100,000 people in the US. Cancer was the second leading cause behind heart disease, with one in four deaths due to cancer that year.

ProPublica used data from an EPA model called Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI). This data has significant limitations, with the EPA warning in its RSEI Methodology Document that “RSEI does not perform a detailed or quantitative risk assessment, but offers a screening-level, risk-related perspective for relative comparisons of certain waste management activities (e.g., releases to the environment) of TRI chemicals.” That is, that the RSEI values are relative and by and large can be expected to be under the actual absolute value, meaning that actual cancer risk could be much higher.

Additionally, the analysis excludes the six criteria pollutants used for the EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which include ground-level ozone pollution, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, lead and sulfur dioxide, some of which may or are known to cause cancer.

According to the EPA, PM2.5 pollution concentration, which refers to the concentration of fine particles 2.5 microns or less in width in the air, increased over the period of 2016-18, and again in 2019-20. While increases were also seen in 2004-05, 2006-07 and 2009-10, the general trend has been downwards, with a 41 percent decrease in the national average since 2000. The American Lung Association puts the number of people living in unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution at over 135 million.

One of the most significant conclusions from ProPublica’s analysis is that the EPA’s method of risk assessments, which assess facilities one by one, is woefully inadequate when more than one facility is present, causing dangerous overlaps in pollution that lead to cancer risks much higher than the EPA’s “acceptable” risk. Corporations frequently violate EPA rules with impunity, accepting fines from environmental violations as a mere cost of business, while the law does not even require the EPA to penalize polluters violating agency rules.

ProPublica identified more than 1,000 hot-spots of cancer-causing air. One environmental scientist and ex-EPA official, Wayne Davis, stated after reviewing the map the organization produced, “The public is going to learn that EPA allows a hell of a lot of pollution to occur that the public does not think is occurring.”

Many of the affected areas are in residential zones and schools, though the highest concentrations are unsurprisingly located at the source of the emissions—factories.

According to a study by the National Institutes of Health, “Cancer Incidence and Mortality among Petroleum Industry Workers and Residents Living in Oil Producing Communities,” those who work at factories experience much higher cancer rates than elsewhere. Employees in jobs which expose them on a daily basis to crude petroleum or its product, compared with non-exposed employees, were found to have rate increases ranging from more than double for mesothelioma and between 1.2 and two times the baseline of a variety of cancers, including skin melanoma, multiple myeloma, prostate cancers, urinary bladder cancer, leukemia, stomach cancer and lung cancer. Residential proximity to petroleum facilities was found to increase childhood leukemia incidence by 1.9 times.

ProPublica’s report and analysis provides a chilling visualization of this process of mass poisoning.

Almost all of the carcinogenic sites were found in southern states known for weaker regulations, with half in Louisiana and Texas combined. Texas is the number one oil producer out of all states, accounting for 41.4 percent of all oil production in 2019.

Celanese Ltd. Clear Lake plant in Houston, Texas, emits enough pollution to cause a lifetime cancer rate as high as 1 in 210 at the source, 48 times the EPA’s “acceptable risk,” with nearby Equistar Chemicals Bayport Chemicals plant having a similar rate of 1 in 220. Equistar produces this risk through ethylene oxide and acetaldehyde emissions, while Celanese produces this risk through emissions of ethylene oxide, methyl iodide, acetaldehyde and two other carcinogens. Shell Chemical LP has a 1 in 930 rate at the source.

In response to the publication of the map, Joe Goffman, the acting assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation said that “toxic air emissions from industrial facilities are a problem that must be addressed” under the Biden administration and claimed that “the EPA has reinvigorated its commitment to protect public health from toxic air emissions from industrial facilities—especially in communities that have already suffered disproportionately from air pollution and other environmental burdens.”

While pointing out where the sources of cancer are, ProPublica muddies the water by implying that pollution is either predominantly or solely a racial issue and not a class one. It is the working class, both those working at the polluting facilities and those living in the vicinity who bear the brunt of the pollution. The emissions are made by million-dollar and billion-dollar companies which have, through their representatives in the Democratic and Republican parties, systematically destroyed environmental regulations in the drive for profit. The time period that ProPublica is examining covers two years of the Democratic Party Obama administration, the first black president, as well as two of the Trump presidency.

Given that 46.9 million people in the US identify as black or African American according to the US Census Bureau, even if every single one of these people were confined to these cancer-causing areas, it would still not explain why the rest of the 27.1 million people are being poisoned, let alone the 135 million people in the US exposed to ozone and particle pollution.

The Democratic Party-controlled government of Flint, Michigan, which was predominantly “black and brown” in the parlance of the Democratic party and pseudo-left, presided in coordination with the state Republican party over the poisoning of the population with lead by switching the city to untreated Flint River water. In the wake of this, then-president Barack Obama trivialized the disaster and told residents whose children were poisoned by contaminated water that “the kids will be just fine.”

Similarly, Houston, which is examined for a significant portion of one of ProPublica’s articles, has been governed by the Democratic Party for years. It has had a black mayor, Sylvester Turner, since 2016, and every mayor since 1982 has been a Democrat. The city council has been dominated by the Democratic Party for almost as long, with 11 of the 16 seats held by Democrats. The current city council is composed mainly of women and minorities, with the latter group holding almost half of the seats. They, along with the Republican state government and the federal government under both the Democratic and Republican administrations and the polluting companies who the aforementioned parties serve, are responsible for the plumes of cancer-causing pollution spewing over Houston.

The situation in Louisiana is similar, where a whole swath, stretching from New Orleans—dominated by the Democratic Party since the 1870s—to Baton Rouge, which has had Democratic mayors since 2005, is commonly referred to as Cancer Alley. A previous investigation by ProPublica detailed such high levels of pollution from nearby chemical plants that residents living in St. Gabriel, Louisiana could observe a golden mist falling from the sky at night so thick that they had to wash it off their lawns the next day.

Australia: Property bubble bonanza for ruling elite fuels social crisis for the working class

John Harris

As is taking place around the world, the intensifying COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the already staggering levels of income and wealth inequality in Australia. Millions of working-class households are suffering severe financial distress, while the ruling elite is swimming in cash. The social chasm is summed up by the speculative frenzy in the property market.

Domain last month revealed that median house prices across Australia reached $994,579 at the end of the September quarter, up from $816,082 at the corresponding time last year. This is a 21.9 percent increase in 12 months, the sharpest rise in three decades.

The worst affected city is Sydney, where median house prices last month hit a record of $1,499,126. This is up by $349,000 since the 2020 September quarter, or 30.4 percent, so the median housing cost increased by $984 per day over the past year. Prices in half a dozen suburbs rose by at least $500,000.

Canberra’s median house prices sat at $1.074 million, representing a record $740 increase per day over the past year. Melbourne’s median house price rose to $1.034 million. Brisbane’s hit $702,455, and Adelaide saw a 5.6 percent rise to $667,888. Perth experienced a rise of 9.8 percent, from $545,129 to $598,601.

Units and apartments across the country had a median cost of $609,642 up from $571,016 last year, a 6.8 percent increase. In Sydney, again the worst-affected area, median costs last month were $802,475, up from $733,049, an increase of 9.5 percent.

Suburban houses in Hobart, Tasmania (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Hobart, capital of the island state of Tasmania, also saw staggering increases in housing and apartment costs at 31.9 percent (increasing to $698,212) and 23.8 percent (increasing to $532,284 respectively). Hobart house prices have doubled in the past five years.

The explosion in prices has been fueled by record low interest rates implemented by the Reserve Bank of Australia, which has effectively funneled billions of dollars into the financial markets. Federal and state governments have provided unprecedented business stimulus packages that are being churned into speculative activity on the share and property markets.

Like its Labor Party predecessor, the Liberal-National Coalition government has maintained capital gains tax concessions and other policies, such as negative tax gearing, which has provided a financial bonanza for property developers. The rise and rise of housing costs has seen finance capital gouge out profits through speculation, especially in the property market.

One graphic expression of the crisis was the sale in March of a modest three-bedroom brick house in Cabarita in Sydney’s inner-west for $8.275 million. It is not unusual to hear of houses in Sydney’s working-class western and southwestern suburbs selling for well over a million dollars.

Working people, and younger people in particular seeking to purchase their first home, have been priced out of the market and face a wall of investor money when they try to buy a property.

Economist Saul Eslake told ABC-TV’s “Four Corners” program last month: “What’s really striking is the decline in the home ownership rate among people under the age of 45.” At the 2016 census, the rate of home ownership among people under 45 was lower than it had been at the census of 1954.

Eslake added: “I suspect when the 2021 results come out, the home ownership rate among younger Australian adults, that is say between their 20s and mid-30s, will be lower than it was at the census of 1947.”

The housing bubble is fueling a social disaster for millions of working people, students, and youth. In July, a Domain survey reported that approximately 31 percent of the population face rental or mortgage stress—that is, spending at least a third of their income on housing costs. According to an Equity Economics report released earlier this year, in New South Wales alone 530,000 households, accounting for 1.4 million people, were in housing stress and in need of affordable housing.

The government-promoted speculative frenzy in the property market is flowing on to increased rents. In June, CoreLogic reported that median rents were up 6.6 percent in a year, the biggest increase in a decade. The median weekly rent is now over $470 for houses or units.

Even before the pandemic, on any given night in 2019, around 290,000 people were homeless, according to the Australian Homeless Monitor 2020 report. In that year too, some 1.3 million people in low-income households were pushed into poverty because of unaffordable housing costs.

The housing bubble is also creating the conditions for a major financial meltdown similar to the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States that triggered the global crash of 2008.

A central component of the collapse of the US bubble was the divergence between house prices and real wages. These conditions are emerging sharply in Australia. While housing costs are reaching astronomical heights, real wages are stagnating and declining.

Australian Tax Office data for the 2018–2019 fiscal year showed that the average salary was around $63,085, while the median salary was $52,732. This means that the median house price in Sydney was around 24 times higher than the average salary, and the national median house price was 16 times higher.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, wages have grown by just 1.7 per cent in the 2020–2021 fiscal year, below the rate of inflation, representing a wage cut in real terms. The pandemic has been used to accelerate a government-employer-union assault on the conditions of workers and intensify pro-business restructuring aimed at destroying permanent full-time jobs and driving down wages.

Governments, both Liberal-National and Labor, have proceeded with the full reopening of the economy, adopting Boris Johnson-style “freedom days,” recklessly restarting schools and effectively embracing a “herd immunity” policy. These criminal policies are endangering the lives of working people, students and young people.

At the same time, the government has deliberately imposed the economic burden of the catastrophe on working-class households. Income support for workers and youth who have lost their jobs during lockdowns was at a poverty-level and is being ended with the “reopening.” Meanwhile, the governments continue to pour billions more dollars into the pockets of the finance and property markets.

The housing disaster is a sharp expression of a global process, with the deepening crisis of the capitalist economy resulting in an ever-more pronounced turn by the ruling elite to financial speculation and parasitism.

Blacklisting the Merchants of Spyware

Binoy Kampmark

In a modest effort to disrupt the global spyware market, the United States announced last week that four entities had been added to its blacklist.  On November 3, the US Department of Commerce revealed that it would be adding Israel-based companies NSO Group and Candiru to its entity list “based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.”

Russian company Positive Technologies and the Singapore-based Computer Security Initiative Consultancy also made the list “based on a determination that they traffic in cyber tools used to gain unauthorized access to information systems, threatening the privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide.”

The move had a measure of approval in Congress. “The entity listing signals that the US government is ready to take strong action to stop US exports and investors from engaging with such companies,” came the approving remarks in a joint statement from Democrat House Representatives Tom Malinowski, Anna Eshoo and Joaquin Castro.

This offers mild comfort to students of the private surveillance industry, who have shown it to be governed by traditional capitalist incentive rather than firm political ideology.  Steven Feldstein of the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program observes how such entities have actually thrived in liberal democratic states.  “Relevant companies, such as Cellebrite, FinFisher, Blue Coat, Hacking Team, Cyberpoint, L3 Technologies, Verint, and NSO group, are headquartered in the most democratic countries in the world, including the United States, Italy, France, Germany, and Israel.”

The relationship between Digital China and Austin-based Oracle shows how talk about democracy and such ideals are fairly meaningless in such transactions.  Digital China is credited with aiding the PRC develop a surveillance state; software and data analytics company Oracle, despite pledging to “uphold and respect human rights for all people” was still happy to count Digital China a global “partner of the year” in 2018.  Its software products have been used to aid police in Liaoning province to do, among other things, gather details on financial records, travel information, social media and surveillance camera footage.  What’s bad for human rights is very good for business.

In its indignant response to the Commerce Department’s blacklisting, NSO wished to point out to US authorities how its own “technologies support US national security interests and policies by preventing terrorism and crime, and thus we will advocate for this decision to be reversed.”  Portraying itself as a card-carrying member of the human rights fraternity, the company claimed to have “the world’s most rigorous compliance and human rights programs that are based [on] the American values we deeply share”.  Previous contracts with governments had been terminated because they had “misused our products.”

As NSO has shown on numerous previous occasions, such strident assertions rarely match the record.  In July, an investigation known as the Pegasus Project, an initiative of 17 media organisations and groups, reported how 50,000 phone numbers had appeared on a list of hackable targets that had interested a number of governments.  The spyware used in question was Pegasus, that most disturbingly appealing of creations by NSO designed to infect the phone in question and turn it into a surveillance tool for the relevant user.

The range of targets was skin crawlingly impressive: human rights activists, business executives, journalists, politicians and government officials.  None of this was new to those who have kept an eye on the exploits of the Israeli concern. Its sale of Pegasus has seen it feature in lawsuits from private citizens and companies such as WhatsApp keen to rein in its insidious practices.

Despite denying any connection, the company will be forever associated with providing the tools to one of its clients, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to monitor calls made by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a fellow dissident scribbler, Omar Abdulaziz.  In October 2018, Khashoggi was carved to oblivion on the premises of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a hit squad with prints stretching back to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  In a legal suit against NSO, lawyers for Abdulaziz argue that the hacking of his phone “contributed in a significant manner to the decision to murder Mr Khashoggi.”  To date, the vicious, petulant modernist royal remains at large, feted by governments the world over as a reformer.

While NSO has hogged the rude limelight on the international spyware market, that other Israeli-based concern, Candiru, has been a rolling hit with government clients.  Their products are also tailored to infecting and monitoring iPhones, Androids, Macs, PCs, and, discomfortingly enough, cloud accounts.

Those behind this company evidently have a distasteful sense of humour; the original candiru of Amazon River fame is, goes one account in the Journal of Travel Medicine, “known as a little fish keen on entering the nether regions of people urinating in the Amazon River.”  Equipped with spikes, the fish invades and fastens itself within penis, vagina or rectum, making it a gruesome challenge to remove.  However colourful the imaginative accounts of the candiru’s exploits are – William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch is merely one – the Israeli version is far more sinister and deserves consternated worry.

In July this year, the Citizen Lab based at the University of Toronto identified over 750 websites that had been influenced by the use of Candiru spyware.  “We found many domains masquerading as advocacy organizations such as Amnesty International, the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as media companies, and other civil-society themed entities.”  The company, founded in 2014, maintains an opaque operations and recruitment structure, reputedly drawing expertise from the Israeli Defence Forces Unit 8200, responsible for code encryption and gathering signals intelligence.

Within two years of its founding, the company had raked in $30 million in sales, establishing a slew of clients across Europe, states across the former Soviet Union, the Persian Gulf, Asia and Latin America.  A labour dispute between a former senior employee and the company shed some light on the company’s activities, with one document, signed by an unnamed vice president, noting the offering of a “high-end cyber intelligence platform dedicated to infiltrate PC computers, networks, mobile handsets, by using explosions and disseminations operations.”

NSO Group’s reputation, and credentials, are now impossible to ignore.  The Israeli government, which grants the export licenses that enable the likes of NSO and Candiru to operate, is splitting hairs.  “NSO is a private company,” insists Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, “it is not a governmental project and therefore even if it is designated, it has nothing to do with the policies of the Israeli government.”  In his view, no other country had “such strict rules according to cyber warfare” and “imposing those rules more than Israel and we will continue to do so.”

No Israeli government is likely to entirely abandon companies that make annual sales of $1 billion in the business of offensive cyber.  The efforts by governments the world over to attack encrypted communications while trampling human rights on route have become unrelenting.  In that quest, it matters little whether you are a citizen journalist, a master criminal, or a terrorist.  Those deploying the spyware rarely make such distinctions.

Labour Party returns to power in Norway

Jordan Shilton

Norway’s Labour Party returned to office last month at the head of a coalition government with the rurally-based Centre Party. The minority government brings an end to eight years of rule by the Conservative Party, which governed for most of that time in coalition with the far-right Progress Party.

Labour’s return was not the product of any popular enthusiasm for its record of support for US-led military aggression, attacks on immigrants, and public spending discipline. Its share of the vote fell compared to its 2017 electoral defeat. The social democrats secured just 26.3 percent of the vote, losing 1.1 percentage points and one parliamentary deputy compared to the 49 elected in 2017. This marked one of Labour’s worst electoral results since the 1920s, barely surpassing the 24.3 percent of the vote the party secured in its devastating 2001 electoral defeat.

Its ability to form the government was thanks both to even larger losses for the Conservatives and far-right Progress, and modest gains by Centre. The Conservatives, led by incumbent Prime Minister Erna Solberg, obtained just 20.5 percent of the vote, a decline of 4.7 percentage points. This translated into a loss of nine deputies, leaving the Conservatives with 36. Centre, meanwhile, emerged with 28 deputies, up nine compared to the previous parliament. Gains were also made by the Socialist Left, which has its origins in a fusion of disgruntled Labour Party “lefts” and the Stalinist Communist Party in the early 1970s and served as a coalition partner with Labour between 2005 and 2013, and the ex-Maoist Red Party, which crossed the 4 percent hurdle required to form a parliamentary group for the first time.

Norway’s new prime minister is Jonas Gahr Støre, who was foreign minister in the last Labour-led government under Jens Stoltenberg. He initially sought to form a majority government with Centre and the Socialist Left, but the latter withdrew from talks citing a lack of progress on ending Norway’s dependence on oil.

Støre in February 2016 (Credit: Creative Commons)

The new government appears set to continue the Solberg government’s pandemic response, which has been to lift almost all public health measures over recent months. Norway managed to restrict infections and deaths comparatively well in the pandemic’s early stages, recording 919 deaths and about 200,000 infections to date. This compares with neighbouring Sweden, which has twice the population but has recorded 1.75 million cases and over 15,000 deaths due to its pursuit of an explicit “herd immunity” policy.

Støre is a close ally of Stoltenberg, who took over as head of the NATO military alliance after stepping down in 2013. Ever since, Stoltenberg has served as an ardent proponent of US-led military aggression throughout Eastern Europe against Russia, and in the Middle East. NATO’s Secretary General has also joined in the Biden administration’s ratcheting up of diplomatic, economic, and military pressure against China.

Norway, which shares an Arctic border with Russia, is an important ally and military base of operations for US imperialism. In April, Oslo concluded a new Supplementary Defence Cooperation Agreement with Washington. Building on decades of military collaboration since the founding of NATO in 1949, the deal permits the US military to build facilities at three Norwegian air bases and a naval port to “enhance cooperation between the two armed forces.” It provides for American military personnel to enjoy “unimpeded access and use of these facilities and areas.”

Particularly significant will be the US bases at Evenes Military Air Station and Ramsund Naval Station, located in Norway’s far north. Foreign Minister in the Conservative government, Ine Eriksen Soreide, commented, “To ensure that Norway and our Allies can operate together in a crisis situation under difficult conditions, we must be able to hold exercises and train regularly here in Norway.”

Labour is fully on board with this agreement.

In addition to support for US military aggression, the new government will enforce the strict public spending controls imposed by the previous right-wing government. While no expense was spared during the coronavirus pandemic to support big business, the Conservative government imposed strict spending limits when it tabled the 2022 budget just days before Støre took over as prime minister.

These limit government expenditures in the budget each year from Norway’s oil fund, one of the largest wealth investment funds in the world with a valuation of about $1.3 trillion. In 2017, Solberg’s government cut the annual spending cap from 4 percent of the fund’s total value to 3 percent. This cap was suspended for the 2020 and 2021 budgets, to fund large subsidies to business. For the 2021 budget, the previous government used 3.6 percent of the oil fund’s total value. This was slashed to 2.6 percent for 2022.

Established in the early 1990s to invest Norway’s oil profits, the fund has served to strengthen the position of the Norwegian bourgeoisie abroad and keep public spending on a tight leash at home. Kyrre Aamdal, a senior economist for DNB markets, remarked, “The total use of oil money (the structural, non-oil deficit) will probably not be changed that much by a new government.”

As the pandemic spread globally in early 2020, Norway’s economy suffered what was described as its worst peacetime economic shock. Unemployment reached levels not seen since the Great Depression.

The government responded with two state-backed loan guarantees worth up to 100 billion kroner for businesses. This package included 50 billion kroner of investment in the bond market to support large companies. This massive bailout for the corporate elite and Norway’s rich accelerated the growth of social inequality, which has steadily expanded over the past four decades.

Often held up as an example of equality and social harmony in the international liberal and “left” press, Norway is riven by a deep social gulf. A 2018 Statistics Norway report noted that the richest 10 percent of Norwegians own 60 percent of the country’s wealth. The top 1 percent controls 21 percent of total wealth. In comments to the faktisk.no website in 2020, Statistics Norway researcher Rolf Aaberge compared the levels of wealth inequality in the country to those found in Britain and France. “The value of the big fortunes are underestimated,” he remarked, because, “we use values that are reported to the tax authorities, while the actual market value of for instance commercial real estate or unlisted shares in reality may be much higher. The same goes for property abroad.”

According to Aaberge’s estimates, the top 1 percent of income earners take home 20 percent of all income. The richest 0.01 percent earn 6 percent of total income.

A 2018 report from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health noted the gulf between the life expectancy of the richest and poorest in society. In Oslo, life expectancy varies by up to eight years between rich and poor neighbourhoods. Life expectancy for those with the highest education levels is five or six years more than for people with the lowest level of education.

Labour and the Socialist Left sought to exploit the growth of social inequality during the election campaign. But their criticisms rang hollow given their record in power. Under the first Stoltenberg government beginning in the late 1990s, Labour initiated the privatisation of oil, telecommunications, and railway companies. When Stoltenberg, who portrayed himself as the Norwegian Tony Blair, returned to power in 2005 with support of Centre and the Socialist Left, his government embraced the far-right Progress Party’s anti-immigrant policies and enforced fiscal discipline for public services following the 2008 global financial crisis

The integration of Progress into the mainstream of Norwegian politics, and the embrace by all major parties of its immigrant-bashing, racist outlook, played no small part in the strengthening of right-wing extremist and outright fascist forces. The most terrible expression of this process occurred in July 2011, when fascist mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people at a Labour Party youth camp on the island of Utoeya and in Oslo’s government district.

The groundwork for the austerity that characterised Solberg’s two terms in office, which marked the first time that the far-right, tax-cutting Progress Party formally entered a Norwegian government, was also laid by Stoltenberg and Labour.