Six children killed in jumping castle tragedy in Tasmania, Australia

Karen Maxwell

Six children have died in an horrific incident at an end-of-year celebration at Hillcrest Primary School in Devonport, northwest Tasmania.

At 10 a.m. on December 16, a gust of wind caught a jumping castle and several zorb balls (large inflatable balls that a person can get inside), lifting them in the air. Nine children were thrown in the air, and fell from a height of about 10 metres in front of horrified parents, teachers and classmates.

Five children died on the day of the accident, and another died three days later in hospital. Two other children remain hospitalised in a critical condition. One other child has been allowed to return home to recover.

Top, left to right, Chace Harrison, Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones, Zane Mellor, Bottom, Addison Stewart, Jye Sheehan, Peter Dodt [Source:Tasmania Police]

Tasmania Police, with the permission of the families, released the names of the deceased: Addison Stewart (11 years old), Zane Mellor (12), Jye Sheehan (12), Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones (12), Peter Dodt (12) and Chace Harrison (11).

A young boy who witnessed the event told the Mercury: “It was our turn next. Grade five and six went first.”

As news of the tragedy spread, frantic parents rushed to the school, but were apparently forced to wait outside the school gates for hours with little information. One parent wrote on social media that as of 11:30 a.m. they still did not know if their children were injured.

Rescue helicopters were used to fly the children to hospital, while several ambulance teams and police attended the scene. A nurse who was involved in the response to the crisis wrote on social media that emergency health workers went “above and beyond their calling,” with doctors from other hospitals on their day off driving in to assist.

Police are investigating the causes of the calamity, under coronial direction. Tasmanian police commissioner Darren Hine announced the day after the tragedy that the investigation would “take some time,” due to the number of witnesses to be interviewed, including about 40 children.

Worksafe Tasmania, the state’s work health and safety agency, is collaborating with the police to determine whether the castle was tethered to the ground safely and whether proper operating procedures were followed. The website of the company which supplied the jumping castle and Zorb balls, Taz-Zorb, has been disabled by the company.

Devonport is a working-class town, with a population of about 26,000. According to the 2016 census, 33.5 percent of all households in Devonport and its suburbs had an income of less than $650 per week. The corresponding overall national figure was 20 percent of all households. The median weekly family income in Devonport was just $1,172, compared with $1,399 across Tasmania, and $1,734 nationally.

The area also suffers from disproportionately high unemployment rates. The official rate (which grossly understates the real level of joblessness) for Devonport in June 2021 was 8.9 percent. That compared with 6.4 percent across Tasmania, and 6.2 percent nationally. In 2019, northwestern Tasmania was ranked among the 20 regions in Australia worst afflicted by youth unemployment, with an official figure of 15 percent.

In a message on social media, a relative of one of the dead children portrayed the burden of grief and hardship her family will now endure: “My niece was tragically taken in the accident at Hillcrest Primary. I’m hoping to raise some money for my brother and sister-in-law to help pay for funeral costs and pay off some bills for them while they try to navigate life without their precious daughter. They have another daughter and son to take care of and I’m hoping to alleviate some of the stress of their bills.”

The tragedy has seen an enormous outpouring of sympathy and support for the devastated families.

Young families from other towns drove to Devonport to pay their respect. Hundreds of mourners have visited the school, with strangers in tears consoling each other. Hundreds of flowers, toys, candles and messages of support have been left outside the school, extending for 50 metres along the street. Locals have organised food drops to the grieving families.

A Go Fund Me page has already raised $1.2 million from ordinary people across Australia to assist the families and community. This is nearly equal to the entire government funding response.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced special emergency funding of $800,000 to provide trauma counselling for those involved: $250,000 for the first responders, and $550,000 for the community at large to be paid over 18 months. Another $500,000 in funding was announced by the Tasmanian state government.

There is a long record of injuries and fatalities associated with jumping castles, both in Australia and overseas.

In 2001, an eight-year-old girl died in South Australia after a jumping castle lifted into the air. The subsequent coronial inquiry established that the castle had not been tethered securely enough, causing the device to break away from its anchor plates.

In the UK in 2016, a seven-year-old girl was killed when a gust of wind wrenched a jumping castle away from its moorings. Two people were subsequently convicted of manslaughter for gross negligence.

In 2019 in China, two children were killed and 20 were injured when a jumping castle was blown into the sky by a small whirlwind. Just last year in Tabbita, New South Wales, two children had to endure emergency surgery after being badly injured when a jumping castle was blown seven metres into the air.

An article in the prestigious BMJ medical journal in 2010 reported: “Collective data suggests as many as 2,200 children across Australia were injured in the period 1996–2006.” The article also raised concerns about inadequate regulation of the manufacture, sale and use of commercial inflatable jumping castles.

Greece announces a record 130 COVID-19 deaths in a single day

John Vassilopoulos

Greece announced 130 COVID-19 deaths on December 14—the highest death toll recorded in a single day since the beginning of the pandemic. The death toll has been consistently high in recent weeks with over 1,400 deaths recorded since the start of December. November was the deadliest month of the pandemic so far with nearly 200,000 cases and 2,157 deaths.

The toll of the pandemic in Greece this year was underscored in a recent press release by the Greek Statistical Service ELSTAT, which stated that there were 11,185 additional deaths in the first 43 weeks of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020. Compared with the average number of deaths between 2015 and 2020, the death toll in 2021 was 14.27 percent higher.

The 32,327 COVID cases recorded in the last week took overall infections to over 1 million (1,026,902). This is among a population of just 10.3 million.

A woman receives the first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination shot inside a van used as a mobile vaccination unit at the port of Piraeus, near Athens, Greece, on Monday, Dec. 13, 2021.

The latest upsurge is part of a wider trend in Europe with infections and deaths rising across the continent as governments reject any public health measures that cut across the profit interests of the financial elite.

Greece has been hit particularly hard by the latest wave of infections and now has one of the highest COVID death rates in Europe. According to figures compiled by Our World in Data, Greece’s COVID mortality rate currently stands at 8.98 per million, which is the second highest rate in the eurozone after Slovakia (19.23 per million) and almost double the average death rate across Europe (5.86 per million).

The disproportionate devastation wrought by the virus in Greece is the direct result of the brutal austerity imposed by successive conservative, social-democratic and pseudo-left governments at the behest of the European Union and International Monetary Fund over the previous decade. Total healthcare spending decreased from 9.52 percent of GDP in 2010, when the first austerity package was signed, to 7.72 percent in 2018. According to a 2020 OECD report, Greece had 5.3 intensive care unit (ICU) beds per 100,000 population in 2019 just before the pandemic began, well below the EU average of 12.9 ICU beds per 100,000 population.

Despite claims by the government that ICU beds have been doubled in response to the crisis, the pandemic has brought Greece’s public health system to near collapse. The number of people on ventilators throughout December has been around the 700 mark. Figures published by the Ministry of Health on December 12 reported that 104 patients on ventilators were hospitalised outside of ICU due to a lack of beds in intensive care. One 62-year-old COVID patient recently died on a hospital trolley at the Ippokrateion Hospital of Thessaloniki after an eight-hour wait to be admitted into intensive care.

In an interview to medical news website iatronet.gr at the end of last month, ICU doctor Apostolos Tsapas painted a devastating picture of the current situation at the Papageorgiou Hospital in Thessaloniki where he works.

Speaking about patients on ventilators outside his ICU he said, “as a rule these people are monitored not by ICU specialists at the Papageorgiou hospital, but by anaesthetists, while in other hospitals I have heard it’s general practitioners.” He added, “If required they will ask for our help. And then we split ourselves in two and go and help. On the other hand, if ICU departments are full and woefully understaffed by doctors and nurses this means that we can’t practically cover our own patients in ICU let alone those on ventilators outside ICUs. And for seriously ill patients on ventilators there are situations where time is not a luxury. Interventions need to be immediate, within 60 seconds.”

As for the government’s refusal to address the staffing crisis in ICU departments. he said, “It takes two years to specialise in ICU medicine. If incentives had been given from the start [of the pandemic] today we would have nearly fully-fledged ICU doctors and the system would be better staffed. This shows which needs were prioritised.” Referring to the €3 billion defence deal that Greece signed with France in September he said, “We gave ample money for Rafale [fighter jets] and frigates. But for health we chose not to give anything.”

Another ICU doctor, Michalis Rizos, who works at Attikon Hospital in Athens, told online news site tvxs.gr, “If a COVID patient with additional problems can’t find an ICU bed how is it possible for them to live? This is so-called hospitalisation, which is why I call it mass murder.”

During a December 1 debate in parliament Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of the ruling New Democracy sought to downplay the issue of patients being on ventilators outside intensive care, stating, “Do we have indications [that patients on ventilators outside intensive care] have a higher mortality than those in ICU? I don’t have such an indication, do you? If so bring it to me.”

Just such a study was published this week in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health authored by epidemiologist Theodoros Lytras and Sotiris Tsiodras. Tsiodras is the infectious disease specialist in charge of the government’s Committee of Public Health Experts (EEDY). Analysing the mortality of patients on ventilators in Greek hospitals between September 2020 and May 2021, the study concluded that the mortality of patients on ventilators outside intensive care was 87 percent higher than those within an ICU.

Regional disparities were also exposed with mortality being significantly higher outside of the Attica prefecture which contains the capital Athens. Mortality was 35 percent higher in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, and 40 percent higher across the rest of Greece. The report also concluded that mortality of ventilated patients increased by 25 percent if there were more than 400 patients hospitalised in ICUs, rising to 57 percent if the number of patients exceeded 800.

In a December 14 tweet, Lytras made clear that the study’s findings were made immediately available to the government in May, exposing Mitsotakis’ claims in parliament as lies. Lytras also tweeted that out of the nearly 4,000 deaths included in the study, around 1,500 of these would not have occurred “had they been hospitalised in a health service that was not under pressure (meaning less than 200 patients on ventilators), in hospitals within Attica and within intensive care”.

Health Minister Thanos Plevris tried to present the record number of deaths recorded on December 14 as a peak, pointing to the fact that daily cases have been consistently dropping in the past two weeks while claiming, “we are vigilant about the new variant Omicron, which has not yet hit us”. Just a couple of days later this was belied after the total number of confirmed Omicron cases jumped to 17 on December 16—up from five at the beginning of the week, prompting the government to require a negative test from all travelers coming into Greece.

However, with no additional measures to suppress community transmission it is only a matter of time before Omicron spreads further. With hospitalisations at an already high level the impact will be catastrophic.

Speaking to state broadcaster ERT earlier in the week, Yiannis Prassas, a molecular biologist at Toronto University in Canada, predicted that Omicron will hit Greece in about a month and will produce “a very grim situation for the National Health Service.” He warned, “Under the threat of a huge wave of cases with everyone becoming infected at the same time, hospitals will receive unprecedented pressure with no scope for leeway when you have 700 patients on ventilators. Health workers will also become infected, which will result in huge staffing gaps when maximum coverage will be required.”

PSOE-Podemos government arrests Cádiz workers as strikes spread in Spain

Alice Summers

Protesters march during a strike of metal workers in Cadiz, southern Spain, November 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Javier Fergo)

The Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos coalition government arrested at least six people in raids in the southern Spanish city of Cádiz Thursday on charges of “public disorder, causing damage, causing injury and attacking law enforcement officers.” The charges cite actions that allegedly took place during the powerful metalworkers’ strike in this city at the end of November.

The Cádiz strikers faced down riot police sent by the “progressive” PSOE-Podemos government, who assaulted them with tear gas, truncheons and rubber bullets. As workers and supporters took to the streets to defend the strike, the government deployed a 15-ton BMR (Blindado Medio sobre Ruedas, Medium Armoured Vehicle on Wheels), which became known as the “tankette.”

Thursday’s arrests were made among workers in the neighbourhood of San Pedro, one of the areas through which the BMR drove during the strike, crashing through obstacles on the street. Many residents shouted slogans denouncing the “tankette” from the balconies of their homes.

At least one of the arrested workers was seized by police while taking his daughter to school, leaving his wife to console the terrified five-year-old girl outside the school gates. Others were taken from their homes in the early hours of the morning, without being told the reasons for their arrests, one Cádiz metalworker told elDiario.es.

The PSOE-Podemos government’s arrests are a blatant attempt to punish workers for exercising their right to strike, and intimidate others who are planning to do so. It utterly exposes the right-wing character of these two parties. After having attacked Cádiz workers with militarised violence during the strike, the PSOE and Podemos are now desperately trying to prevent further militant industrial action by making an example out of these workers.

In this they are fully supported by their lackeys in the unions. After selling out the Cádiz workers, the corporatist unions, led by the Podemos-linked Workers Commissions (CCOO) and the PSOE-aligned General Workers Union (UGT), have scrambled to demobilise or cancel strikes across the country, terrified that workers’ militancy could get out of their control.

But despite the PSOE-Podemos government’s intimidation tactics, and repeated sell-outs by the union bureaucracies, workers remain determined to fight. Numerous strikes are due to take place in Spain over the next month, especially in the transport and logistics sectors. The new wave of industrial action comes amid an upsurge of the class struggle internationally, including strikes by autoworkers and Kellogg’s food production workers in the USA, transport workers in the UK and India, and health care workers in Sri Lanka and Turkey.

In Spain, ground and air crew at airline EasyJet, as well as at cargo handling contractor Menzies, will take part in indefinite strikes every Friday and Saturday from December 17, in opposition to plans to lay off about 20 percent of the workforce since the start of the pandemic. A protest against the mass sackings organised at Málaga airport on December 13 attracted more than 100 workers.

On January 12, cleaning workers at Madrid-Barajas airport will launch an indefinite strike against poor working conditions. The employer, Sacyr Facilities, has kept 70 percent of the airport’s workforce on furlough, despite a significant uptick in air travel since the start of the pandemic, leading to severe staffing shortages at the airport and impossible workloads for the remaining workers.

A stoppage of lorry drivers across the country is also set to take place between December 20 and 22, though there are calls for the industrial action to be indefinite. Drivers are demanding improved working conditions, including the construction of safe rest areas and limitations on the amount of loading and unloading they are expected to carry out. They are also protesting poor compensation, under conditions in which rising fuel costs and plans for “Eurovignette” toll roads are reducing real pay.

The strike has received widespread support from lorry drivers. Estimates from the sector indicate that around 95 percent of the 21,000 trucks in the northern region of Galicia will not be operating on the strike days. The remaining 5 percent of vehicles will be active in order to allow essential supplies to reach pharmacies and hospitals.

Around 2,000 administrative and maintenance workers at Spanish air traffic control company Enaire had also been due to strike on December 23 and 26, but the industrial action was cancelled by the UGT, CCOO, USO (Syndicalist Workers Union) and CSPA (Confederation of Professional Aeronautical Unions) on Thursday. Aiming to limit the impact of the strike, the unions had already refused to call out air traffic controllers in support of their administrative colleagues.

The strike had been called to demand the restoration of productivity pay dating back to 2020. The productivity bonus was included in a 2018 pay agreement for workers at Enaire and Aena, an airport management firm of which Enaire owns a 51 percent stake. In a divide-and-conquer manoeuvre, only workers at Aena were awarded the bonus in 2020, excluding Enaire employees, though both sets of workers received the additional pay in 2019.

Unions claimed on Thursday that Enaire workers would receive the back pay in this month’s paycheck, but no further details have so far been given. There is no indication as to whether this productivity bonus will continue into 2022.

A strike of workers at coach transportation company Auto Res was also called off on Friday. Workers had been set to walk out over the Christmas period, on December 24, 26 and 31, and on January 2, to fight the closure of ticket offices and customer service centres, and to oppose the cutting of services across the country.

Under conditions in which the government has refused to issue a stay-at-home lockdown to fight the spread of COVID-19, workers were also denouncing Auto Res’s maintenance of large numbers of workers on furlough, which the company is using to avoid paying workers their full salaries.

Outside of transport and logistics, strikes are also scheduled or threatened among dairy producers, fishing workers, labour inspectors and lottery workers, to demand improved working conditions, staffing and pay.

This new wave of industrial action in Spain comes amid a prolonged assault on workers’ living and working conditions over many years, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers have seen unprecedented cut in real wages, while skyrocketing energy prices, fuel costs and inflation rates have pushed many to the brink of poverty.

Inflation reached 5.6 percent in November, as compared to the same month in 2020. This is significantly above the 4.9 percent rate in the Eurozone as a whole. Between October 2007 and October 2021, inflation went up by 21.7 percent according to the National Statistics Institute (INE). Meanwhile, the Spanish Tax Agency indicates that average salaries in the private sector rose by only 5.1 percent between 2007 and 2020, leading to a significant decline in purchasing power. Energy bills have also skyrocketed, jumping 63 percent in the year up to October 2021.

While millions of workers have been pushed to the edge of poverty during the pandemic, 2020–21 was a bonanza year for Spain’s super-rich. The richest 10 individuals in Spain saw their fortunes increase by 17 percent this year alone, going up €153 billion. This is the equivalent of €565,000 a day.

Castillo government unleashes police against mining protest in Peru

Cesar Uco & Bill Van Auken

Mining protest in Cuzco (Source: Minem)

Units of the Peruvian National Police (PNP) attacked a group of peasant community members protesting against the MMG Las Bambas mining company early Thursday morning, arresting five and leaving several wounded, Peru’s Observatory of Mining Conflicts (OCM) reported.

The peasants, from the Pumamarca community in the Cotabambas province of the Peruvian southern-central region of Apurímac, where the mine is located, had occupied what they say was communal land taken from them by the Chinese-owned mining company. They had burned down a security gate leading to the area and defied earlier attempts to disperse them with tear gas.

The MMG mining company claims that the land had been legally purchased from former leaders of the peasant community.

The use of force ordered by the government of Peru’s purportedly “left” President Pedro Castillo came on the eve of today’s deadline set by MMG for the complete shutdown of its operations at the mine, which is responsible for 2 percent of the world’s copper supply, in response to protracted protests.

The confrontation has brought into stark relief the irresolvable contradiction between Castillo’s unfulfilled populist promises to govern in the interests of Peru’s impoverished majority, and his declarations of allegiance to the profit interests of Peruvian and transnational capitalist enterprises, particularly in the country’s key mining sector.

The MMG confrontation is only one of some 199 ongoing protests across the country registered by the government ombudsman Defensoría del Pueblo, which described nearly 65 percent of them as “socio-environmental,” pitting impoverished communities against extractive industries.

The Las Bambas protest actions have centered on a month-long blockade by peasants from Chumbivilcas province in the region of Cuzco that began on November 20, cutting several points on Peru’s southern mining corridor used to bring in supplies and workers and ship out copper concentrate bound for the Pacific port of Matarani, and on to China. Protests have continued virtually without interruption since last July, before Castillo’s inauguration.

The Las Bambas mine

MMG’s threatened shutdown is aimed at pressuring the Castillo government into forcing an end to the blockades by declaring a state of emergency and sending in a heavier police as well as military presence to suppress the protests, as previous governments have done, including in 2015, when five peasant community members were shot to death.

The government has predicted that it will reach a negotiated settlement over the weekend. But Peru’s Prime Minister Mirtha Vasquez, speaking to reporters Wednesday, warned that “we cannot sustain this situation for much longer.”

The leadership of the Chumbivilcas communities have protested MMG’s use of what they insist are communal lands to run a constant stream of heavy trucks on dirt roads through their villages, sending up dust clouds that blight their crops, reducing air quality and increasing noise, while providing no benefits to the region’s impoverished inhabitants. They further charge that MMG changed plans submitted by the mine’s previous owner, the Anglo-Swiss Xstrata mining company, that called for the copper concentrate to be shipped by pipeline to another facility in Cuzco, switching to overland transportation with no new environmental impact assessment.

Protest leaders have demanded that the mining company award the Chumbivilcas communities contracts for trucking, road maintenance and other services, as well as funds for community development. MMG has offered little in the way of compromise in talks organized by the Castillo government, counting on pressure from the mining industry and other big business and financial sectors to bring the government to its side.

Other peasant communities in Apumíra closest to the mine have also called upon the government to take action to shut down the protests, claiming that they endangered revenues flowing from the mine. No doubt there is also fear that grants, tax income and contracts for Chumbivilcas communities will cut into their own deals with MMG.

Apurímac’s Governor Baltazar Lantarón demanded that the government “reassert the principle of the country’s authority, that there cannot be an abuse of protest,” while describing the demands made by the Chumbivilcas communities as “unviable.”

The union representing Las Bambas copper miners has essentially lined up with MMG in demanding an end to the blockades. Erick Ramos Luna, the secretary general of the United Union of MMG Las Bambas Workers, told RPPnews that the protests were placing 9,000 jobs at risk, including those of miners and contractors, and further endangering 75,000 Peruvians whose livelihoods are directly or indirectly dependent upon the mine continuing operations. He insisted that the peasant actions could not be allowed to interfere with “the right to work.” The union staged a protest this week in Lima demanding that Castillo act.

The heaviest pressure by far, however, has come from Peruvian and foreign capitalist interests, which have all lined up with the Chinese mining company.

Raúl Jacob, the president of the National Society of Mining, Petroleum and Energy (SNMPE), denounced the protesters for carrying out “violent acts.” He warned, “We will not allow Peru to become a country in which mining companies are blocked and consider pulling out.”

Oscar Carpio, president of Confiep (National Confederation of Private Business Institutions), charged that the protests were hindering “the generation and foreign currency for the country,” while blaming the Castillo government for appointing “officials and advisors who are opposed to the development of the industry.”

Even as the controversy over Las Bambas continued to escalate, the Peruvian Congress voted to block a key element of Castillo’s reformist program, stripping from its proposed fiscal and tax reform legislation the government’s right to increase taxes on the mining industry and on Peru’s wealthiest through changes in capital gains taxes. The measure was passed overwhelmingly, with 98 in favor and 18 against, with one abstention. Castillo’s own Perú Libre party split its vote down the middle on blocking the tax increases.

Simultaneously, Julio Velarde, the right-wing economist who Castillo kept in place as chairman of the Central Reserve Bank of Peru, signaled that the government’s proposal for an increase in the minimum wage should be quashed, claiming that it would benefit only a minority of workers in the formal sector, while placing an undue burden on “small business.”

Velarde, who was kept at the helm of Peruvian financial policy as a signal of Castillo’s subservience to capitalist interests, warned after his reappointment that Peru’s mining protests were “affecting the perception of the country in terms of future investments,” and that the government had to “re-establish order.”

Castillo has carried out a continuous turn to the right since his election in an attempt to placate his opponents in the Peruvian ruling class, jettisoning virtually every one of his major cabinet ministers. He survived a December 7 vote in Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings by a comfortable margin of 76 to 46 to reject the resolution.

Nonetheless, Castillo’s far-right opponents led by Fuerza Popular, the party led by Keiko Fujimori, whom he defeated by a narrow margin to win the presidency, have refused from the beginning to accept the legitimacy of his election. They are continuing attempts to oust Castillo, no matter how much he concedes.

A new avenue in this attempt to overturn the election may have been opened by the Peruvian attorney general’s office presenting influence-peddling and conflict-of-interest charges against Castillo in connection with his personal dealings with a businesswoman who secured a government contract for the construction of a bridge over the Huallaga River. While the alleged corruption is penny-ante compared to Keiko Fujimori’s own bribe-taking—and that of most of Peru’s living ex-presidents—from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, her party will undoubtedly use it in a renewed bid for a parliamentary coup.

Alongside the right-wing impeachment maneuvers in the Peruvian Congress, fascistic extra-parliamentary groups linked to former members of the armed forces have become increasingly aggressive, denouncing Castillo as a “communist” and a “terrorist” and demanding his immediate removal from office.

The recent developments in Peru—including the Castillo government’s failure to respond to the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more lives per capita in Peru than in any other country on the planet—have demonstrated once again that neither the anemic present-day incarnations of bourgeois nationalism nor the bankrupt trade union leaderships and their pseudo-left allies can provide any road forward for the working class and the impoverished rural masses.

US maintains support for Solomon Islands’ opposition forces after failed coup attempt

Patrick O’Connor

The US government is maintaining its support for anti-government forces in Solomon Islands, as part of its aggressive drive to counter China’s growing influence in the South Pacific.

US ambassador to Solomon Islands Erin McKee issued a provocative statement on December 10 insinuating that the government was corrupt and urging people to “choose” the US over China.

Erin McKee, US State Department [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

“I ask you to decide for yourself what type of development and future you want for you and your families,” McKee wrote. “Do you want aid that benefits one person, one party, and one bank account? Or do you want assistance that empowers entire families, strengthens entire communities, and enriches entire nations? As democratic and independent states, you have a choice of who to partner with. And I believe that the choice is obvious.”

The Solomons’ government has been in Washington’s cross hairs since it announced in late 2019 that it was ending diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognising Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China. This sovereign decision aligned the country’s foreign relations with the vast majority of the world’s nation-states.

In US ruling circles, however, it was regarded as a blow to their drive to isolate and encircle China and bolster Taiwan. Republican Senator Marco Rubio threatened to crash the Solomon Islands’ economy by imposing sanctions and cutting off access to US and global financial institutions.

The State Department subsequently developed close ties with a provincial premier, Daniel Suidani in Malaita, who opposed the recognition of China on anti-communist and Christian fundamentalist grounds. Suidani was rewarded with $US25 million in so-called aid—50 times more than the province receives annually from all other countries put together—and the promise of additional American capital for infrastructure projects.

The provocative and reckless nature of these US moves cannot be overstated. Suidani is backed by the now proscribed Malaita for Democracy (M4D) outfit, which in September 2020 issued a pogromist threat to Chinese nationals in the province, giving them 24 hours to leave. Suidani and his supporters are separatists, and plan on staging an independence referendum early next year. Their manoeuvres now threaten to reignite the low intensity civil war that wracked the country between 1998 and 2003 as rival militias from Malaita and Guadalcanal fought for dominance.

Suidani’s campaign culminated in last month’s coup attempt. On November 24, around 1,000 of the Malaitan premier’s supporters attempted to storm the parliament in the capital Honiara, and take Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare hostage. After riot police beat them back, the mob went on a three-day rampage, looting and burning dozens of buildings, including a police station, high school, and businesses owned by ethnic Chinese residents. Three people were killed in the destruction.

The US ambassador’s December 10 statement only included a cursory, pro forma denunciation of the violence. McKee said this was “tragic and should not have happened,” but immediately added tacit support to the claims of the Solomons’ opposition that the rioting was not a coup but a peaceful protest that somehow got out of hand. “Those who wish to appeal to their government must do so in a peaceful manner,” the ambassador stated.

McKee’s reference to aid that “benefits one person, one party, and one bank account” was immediately understood in the Solomon Islands as lending support to opposition allegations of Sogavare government corruption.

After the failed coup attempt, the opposition attempted to remove the government through a parliamentary no confidence motion on December 5. When this failed, with only 15 of the 49 parliamentarians voting in favour, opposition leaders accused Sogavare of bribing members of his government with allegedly Chinese-sourced funds distributed via Constituency Development Funds.

While the US embassy has now thrown its weight behind these allegations, several points need to be made. Firstly, if channelling government funds to selected constituencies, known as pork barrelling, is corruption then there is not a single bourgeois government in the world that is not corrupt. Secondly, the Constituency Development Funds were first established by Taiwan and were for decades manipulated to favour Taipei’s economic interests, especially in the logging sector. There is not a single faction of the Solomons’ political establishment, including those now in the opposition, that did not capitalise on these funds when in power.

Inconveniently for the opposition and Ambassador McKee, there is also the fact that Sogavare has previously announced that Constituency Development Funds will be ended in 2022. Washington is in fact entirely uninterested in corruption, whether in Solomon Islands or anywhere else. The issue is nothing but a pretext to advance its anti-China agenda.

McKee emphasised her concern with Beijing after she was nominated in 2019 by the Trump administration to serve as the joint ambassador to Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Vanuatu.

In her July 2019 statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which confirms ambassadorial appointments, McKee declared the Pacific states were “important to US national security” and warned that China’s relationships in the region had “deepened dramatically over the past two years.” McKee noted that Solomon Islands was then one of just six Pacific states that recognised Taiwan, and added that she would “stress the importance of maintaining cross-Strait relations.”

Just three months later the Sogavare government switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, evidently blindsiding Washington.

At her confirmation hearing, McKee was asked two questions, both concerning China’s presence in the Pacific. Democrat Senator Jeanne Shaheen asked what would be done to “counter” China. McKee demurred at this expression, saying she preferred to “characterise it as providing alternatives and options,” while making clear her determination to “increase our presence” in the region to offset Beijing’s influence.

US support for the Solomons’ opposition remains subject to a blackout in the Australia and western media, with the issue never raised among the numerous articles and reports published in the aftermath of last month’s violent rioting.

Within the foreign policy establishment, however, there is an ongoing discussion on how US imperialism can best advance its interests. There is frustration that the Australian-led military and police intervention force that was deployed to the country last month appears to be serving to stabilise Sogavare’s rule. There have been open calls to organise the removal of the democratically elected government.

Australian Federal Police Special Operations members prepare to depart Canberra, Australia, for the Solomon Islands Thursday, Nov. 25, 2021 [Credit: LACW Jacqueline Forrester/Australian Department of Defense via AP]

The Diplomat website, a US-based publication focussing on Asia-Pacific geopolitics, published a lengthy article yesterday titled “The Solomon Islands Crisis Shows America Needs a New Pacific Strategy.”

The comment was authored by Alexander Gray, the former director for Oceania & Indo-Pacific Security at the White House National Security Council (2018–2019), and Cleo Paskal, of the right-wing think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. They stated that the Solomons’ crisis “offers an opportunity for Washington to reimagine the scope of its engagement with the Pacific Islands.”

Gray and Paskal explained that in the decades since World War II, Washington had “subcontracted US diplomacy and statecraft in the Pacific Islands” to Australia and New Zealand. “Yet the recent imbroglio in the Solomon Islands is revealing the folly of this approach,” they continued. “[T]he United States’ interests in the Pacific are unique to its global role and the increasing centrality of full-spectrum competition with Beijing. Outsourcing the effective representation of American interests on this front line of strategic competition to even its closest friends is fraught with peril.”

The authors complained that the Australian-led intervention force was “likely to entrench the rule of Sogavare, whose corruption, pro-Beijing policies, and determination to suppress opposition to his switch of recognition from Taipei are directly contrary to US interests.” Gray and Paskal concluded by calling on the Biden administration to organise a massive increase in Washington’s military and diplomatic presence in the South Pacific.

The piece will no doubt set off alarm bells in Canberra. Australian imperialism has for decades benefitted from Washington’s support for its predatory operations in the region. The threat of being sidelined in Solomon Islands will likely see the Australian government consider using its military and police assets in the country to help destabilise and remove Sogavare’s government.

EU summit threatens Russia

Peter Schwarz

The escalating coronavirus pandemic and threats against Russia were the focus of the EU summit that met on Thursday in Brussels. The two issues are closely linked. The more palpable the criminal recklessness with which the European governments are sabotaging any serious safeguarding of the population from the life-threatening virus, the louder they bang the war drum to deflect social tensions outward.

The assembled leaders agreed that with the Omicron variant, a fifth wave was now developing that would dwarf all the previous ones. In Britain, which is no longer part of the EU, infection rates are doubling every other day. By mid-January, Omicron will also be dominant in the EU, reports the Wiener Standard, citing EU council circles: “No one questioned this diagnosis.”

Nevertheless, the summit participants did nothing to halt the looming disaster. Even Italy’s decision to require those entering the country to provide a negative PCR test was met with fierce criticism. This undermined freedom of travel in the Schengen area, the EU Commission complained. Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel also criticized that travel restrictions were not a solution.

The two sides finally agreed on a platonic call for “coordinated efforts” based on scientific findings. One wanted to proceed in a “coordinated” and “joint” manner, both in raising vaccination rates and in procuring medicines, and to push forward with booster vaccines. Above all, it was important to ensure that restrictions did not undermine the functioning of the internal market and did not “disproportionately hinder” free travel within the EU, the final draft declaration reads.

In other words, despite the threat of an Omicron tsunami, the summit continued the current policy of subordinating the protection of life and health to the profit interests of big business.

Several participants stressed that vaccination was the best weapon against the pandemic anyway. But aside from the fact that vaccination rates vary widely across the EU—ranging from 80 percent in Portugal to 30 percent in Bulgaria—and even a double vaccination provides insufficient protection against Omicron, vaccination alone cannot contain the pandemic. It can only do so in conjunction with lockdowns, contact tracing and other measures, which the summit categorically rejected.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the EU summit in Brussels on Dec. 16 [Credit: Kenzo Tribouillard, Pool Photo via AP]

There was only a brief debate on the pandemic, on Thursday morning. The summit devoted much more time to the conflict with Russia. A meeting of participants with the so-called Eastern Partnership (Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova) and talks between President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had already taken place on Wednesday. On Thursday, the confrontation with Russia was again the main topic of the summit, which lasted into the night.

EU leaders had already threatened Russia with punitive measures in the run-up to the summit. “Any further military aggression against Ukraine will entail massive consequences and high costs,” Council President Charles Michel wrote in the invitation letter. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen threatened that the EU would “take additional, unprecedented measures with serious consequences for Russia” in the event of a further escalation of the Ukraine conflict.

Chancellor Scholz said, “Any violation of territorial integrity will have a high price.” In the final declaration, the leaders warned Russia of the “massive consequences and high costs” of further military aggression against Ukraine.

The accusation that Russia is planning a military incursion into Ukraine has been made by the governments and media of NATO countries for weeks. It has no factual basis. Nevertheless, it is being spread as aggressively, like the lie about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that provided the pretext for the Iraq war in 2003. The accusation is based on hard-to-verify US intelligence reports that Russia is massing troops near the eastern Ukrainian border; with talk of 100,000 to 175,000 troops.

Emissaries from the Biden administration have been systematically pushing this line to European allies, as news weekly Der Spiegel reported in its latest issue.

“For weeks, the US has been pushing the Europeans behind the scenes to take a tougher line against Moscow,” the news magazine writes. In November, Avril Haines, Biden’s Director of National Intelligence, had appeared with a phalanx of aides in a bug-proof meeting room in Brussels and showed the NATO ambassadors “intelligence pictures of the Russian deployment, without much preamble.” The diplomats were said to have been surprised.

Similar briefings had taken place for individual allies in the days that followed. “In Germany, as well as the intelligence agencies, the US also briefed the Foreign Ministry in detail, as rarely before.” Two weeks later, at the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Riga, Secretary of State Antony Blinken then joined his British counterpart in pressing for tougher sanctions against Russia.

“The ministers were surprised by the Americans’ vehemence,” Der Spiegel reports. “Many Europeans, meanwhile, are reacting hesitantly. They see no evidence that Russia is really planning an invasion of Ukraine.” Which did not stop them from backing the US threats.

Even if the reports of troop deployments were true, they do not indicate Russia intends to invade. The troop movements are taking place on Russian territory, which it has a right to do as a sovereign country.

Moscow has every reason to feel threatened. President Zelensky, who is under domestic political pressure because of the coronavirus pandemic and the desolate economic situation, has been threatening for months to reconquer Crimea by force. In August, he told representatives from 40 countries in Kiev, including then-German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, that from now on, the “countdown to de-occupation” of Crimea was underway.

At the time, NATO was conducting its largest ever military manoeuvres in the Black Sea region, involving 32 countries—including Ukraine—with 5,000 troops, 32 ships, 40 aircraft, and 18 special forces units. In the course of this and other manoeuvrers, there were repeated near-misses with Russian troops.

At the instigation of President George W. Bush, NATO had held out the prospect of Ukraine joining as early as 2008, but did not link it to a specific timetable, at the insistence of Germany and France. After the 2014 coup, which brought a pro-Western regime to power in Kiev with US and German support, Ukraine was then systematically rearmed and integrated ever more closely into NATO.

The US alone has since provided it with more than $2.5 billion in military aid. The US military budget approved Wednesday provides another $300 million for this purpose.

President Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have repeatedly made clear in recent days that Ukraine’s NATO membership was a “red line” they could not accept. They are demanding a formal guarantee that NATO and its military infrastructure will not expand further east.

President Biden and other NATO leaders have indignantly rejected this demand, citing Ukraine’s sovereignty. In fact, such a demand is not outlandish. When the Soviet Union deployed intermediate-range missiles in Cuba in 1962, President John F. Kennedy risked nuclear war to force the Soviet Union to withdraw the missiles, even though Cuba is also a sovereign state.

Accepting Ukraine into NATO would render Russia virtually defenceless militarily. The two states share a 2,300-kilometre border that runs only 500 kilometres from Moscow.

When Moscow gave the green light for the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1990, NATO had pledged not to expand eastward. In the meantime, almost all former Eastern bloc states and the three former Baltic Soviet republics are members of NATO, which is encircling Russia ever more closely militarily. It regularly conducts manoeuvrers on the Russian border, along which it flies strategic bombers, and has built up a rapid reaction force that can be deployed to the Russian border at a moment’s notice.

The Putin regime has no answer to this threat. It vacillates between making threatening military gestures and pandering to one imperialist camp or another, trying to play them off against each other. It is completely incapable of appealing to the international working class, the only social force that can stop the threat of war, because it itself represents the interests of a reactionary capitalist oligarchic caste.

Ethiopia: Historic Battle for the Mother of Africa

Graham Peebles

The outrage felt by Ethiopians at the Western-backed terrorist attack on their country is spreading across the Horn of Africa and parts of the continent more widely. A great movement of solidarity is emerging as Ethiopia’s neighbors, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Kenya join hands, standing together against terror, imperial interference and mainstream media lies and misinformation.

In sight of US duplicity and subterfuge, the warped, destructive relationship that exists between African states and pernicious imperial powers has once again been revealed. Pre-existing feelings of mistrust and anger are being strengthened and the realization of an old truth, that to become truly independent, nations within the continent must unite; only then will exploitation, manipulation and injustice be brought to an end.

As Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana famously said: “If we [African nations] do not formulate plans for unity and take active steps to form political union, we will soon be fighting and warring among ourselves with imperialist and colonialists standing behind the screen and pulling vicious wires to make us cut each other’s throats for the sake of their diabolical purposes in Africa.”

The US supported assault by the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) on Ethiopia, – “for the sake of their diabolical purposes in Africa” – is not only an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government and install the terrorist TPLF, it is a bid to unsettle the entire region. The Horn of Africa is of great strategic importance, and Ethiopia sits at its heart – destabilize Ethiopia and impact the whole region; install a dictatorial ethnocentric regime (TPLF) and sow division, poison the atmosphere of mutual understanding and cooperation that is being built within the region.

Central to regional cohesion is the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Recognizing this fact, immediately after taking office Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed worked to end the twenty year long border war – instigated by the TPLF with US support – with Eritrea; for this unifying work, which was largely overlooked by western media at the time, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2019.

Shocking US violation

From the 3 November 2020, when TPLF forces committed treason and attacked the Northern Command Base in Ethiopia (an action that many suspect was sanctioned by the US), killing federal soldiers and stealing arms, the Biden administration has stood firmly behind the terrorists. It has consistently tried to tarnish the reputation of the government and has imposed a series of potentially devastating economic sanctions against Ethiopia, including advising US citizens against travel to Ethiopia, thereby impacting tourism, which is a major growth sector. Other countries including UK, Germany France, happy to add to the fear-mongering, have predictably followed suit.

This shocking violation of one of the poorest countries in the world, by the most powerful, was at first bewildering to many. It is, however, a copybook action, one that the United States (referred to as “The Godfather” by Noam Chomsky) has followed many times around the world when it wants to assert itself.

If the government of a developing or middle-income country embraces democracy, dares to act in an independent manner and works to establish socio-economic policies that will benefit their own people over the ideological demands of America and US corporations, the US rarely hesitates. PM Abiy, who has enormous support in Ethiopia, and the democratically elected government has made clear that it’s primary concerns are the well-being of Ethiopians, the prosperity and unity of Ethiopia and the integration of the region and the continent. Such independence and blatant defiance of “The Godfather” is unacceptable in Washington, no matter the creed or presiding officer.

The US method of dealing with such troublesome governments is clear, consistent, and has been employed in dozens of countries: In the name of ‘democracy, human rights and civilization’, destabilize the country, violently overthrow said government – either directly or by arming a group of thugs to carry out the dirty work; spread misinformation in order to create an environment which allows the slaughter to go ahead virtually unopposed, and regime change to occur.

This violent practice has killed hundreds of thousands of people in dozens of countries over the last 70 years or so, making the United States the leading, most brutal terrorist group in the world, and, according to various polls the country most widely and consistently regarded as the greatest threat to world peace.

In Ethiopia, the thugs (widely hated across the country including inside Tigray), are the TPLF. A terrorist organization that ruled with an iron fist for thirty years; ignoring human rights, embezzling funds, fueling ethnic divisions and committing Crimes Against Humanity in various parts of the country. Such details however are irrelevant to the US administration, their sole concern is power – regional and global, the perpetuation of colonial capitalism, and ensuring a government is in place in Ethiopia that will not interfere with US demands and regional policies, but will actively facilitate them.

The conflict in Ethiopia, then, is not simply an assault on a sovereign state by a terrorist coalition (the TPLF now with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF)), it is a fight for independence and democracy; a fight for freedom by an ancient nation against an adolescent imperial force, and as such, is a historic battle; one that Ethiopians, united and enraged, are determined to win.

Assault on Africa

Imperial interference and exploitation throughout Africa is long, stretching from slavery and colonialism to wealth and climate inequality, racial capitalism and now Covid vaccine apartheid. Power, greed and control are the animating forces of this evil, coupled with a perverse sense of entitlement based on a deluded sense of superiority/inferiority, which maintains that some people – black and brown people – are disposable and can be sacrificed in the pursuit of wealth and dominion.

This is aptly demonstrated by the way rich nations and western conglomerates have withheld Covid vaccines, refused to share patents and destroyed supplies rather than giving them to Africans before they expired. Whilst western nations have vaccinated on average 65% of their populations and are now administering booster jabs, a mere 7% of people across Africa have so far been vaccinated.

Vaccine injustice is but the loudest, most recent display of the immorality and abuse of Africans by the global north. It shows that while gunboat colonization has been consigned to the past, not only does economic, social and cultural colonization continue, mental colonization (among former colonizers and no doubt some in Africa), which is perhaps the most pernicious form of indoctrination, persists.

Ethiopia is the only African country never to have been colonized – something else that no doubt infuriates the US and Co. As such Ethiopia occupies a unique place within the continent, and for decades has served as an inspiration and beacon of hope for other African nations. In acknowledgement of this fact, and of Ethiopia’s status within the continent, President Uhuru of Kenya, Speaking at Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s inauguration on 5 October, said, “Ethiopia is the Mother of African independence……for all of us on the continent, Ethiopia is our Mother.” And, referring to the TPLF, “As we know, if the Mother is not at peace the family cannot be at peace.”

People within Africa, particularly the Horn region, as well as diaspora groups throughout the world, are rallying to “Mother” in this time of crisis. They are unified against the TPLF and furious at US interference and the corporate media (CNN, BBC, New York Times, Al Jazeera, etc) coverage; lazy “hotel” journalism, disinformation/misinformation and the use of prejudicial, slanted language has created a misleading picture of the conflict, and presented a corrosive narrative of criticism against PM Abiy and the government.

Thousands have mobilized, attending protests in cities across the world. NoMore is the collective cry of the people – Ethiopian, Eritrean, Sudanese, Somali, Kenyan, and friends of Ethiopia; “NoMore” media lies and misinformation; “NoMore” TPLF; “NoMore” colonialism; “NoMore” sanctions, designed to deter foreign investment in Ethiopia and Eritrea; “NoMore” US meddling and duplicity. Hands off Ethiopia; hands off the countries of the region; hands off Africa, is the demand, loud and clear made upon the US administration, her puppets, and the mouthpiece for war, the western media.