Incumbent PM declares victory in turbulent Papua New Guinea election

John Braddock

On Tuesday, the James Marape-led Pangu Pati was invited by the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Governor-General Sir Bob Dadae to form the country’s next government. Marape was unanimously re-elected unopposed as Prime Minister by MPs present in the first sitting of the new parliament.

Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape addresses the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly, on Sept. 24, 2021, at the UN headquarters. [AP Photo/Peter Foley/Pool]

The announcement came in the wake of an election plagued by violence, fraud allegations and large numbers of voters missing from the electoral roll. As parliament met there were still 14 seats to be declared in the 118-seat house. Voting began on July 4 and ended on July 22, but counting was extended until August 5 by Dadae because of writs still outstanding. The deadline was extended again for a third time until August 12.

Former Prime Minister and Peoples National Congress (PNC) leader Peter O’Neill unsuccessfully applied to the Supreme Court to delay parliament’s return until all electorates had finished counting.

Marape claimed victory last week, saying the Pangu Pati had the numbers to form a coalition giving it an “overwhelming mandate.” The Pangu Pati, along with a string of coalition parties and independents, controls a total of about 80 seats.

The Pangu Pati has the most seats with 36, the main opposition PNC 14, United Resources Party (URP) 10, People First Party (PFP) 2, People’s Progress Party (PPP) 1, United Labour Party (ULP) 3, Peoples Party 4, National Alliance Party 5. There are also several single-member parties and eight independents.

Marape told the National that the Pangu Pati had entered the election with “clear coalition partners” such as the URP and PPP and had not contested certain seats against them. “Hence, it is very easy for us now to stitch a coalition,” he declared. Belden Namah, leader of the opposition Papua New Guinea Party and a former deputy prime minister, was one prominent recruit.

Solicitor General Tauvasa Tanuvasa initially stated that the Electoral Commissioner had no power to extend the receipt of writs beyond August 5 and any not handed in by then would be declared as “failed.” However, his comments have been ignored in the haste to install the new government. A series of court battles is expected. 

The election will be widely viewed by the population as illegitimate. In a desperate bid to stem popular distrust, Marape was forced at one point to issue a statement that the Pangu Pati was “not rigging” the process. He said if Pangu was doing that it would have made a “clean sweep” of all 118 seats, including those lost by prominent party leaders such as John Simon in East Sepik.

His chief rival, O’Neill, told the media that “the rights of at least 3.8 million citizens and hundreds of candidates have been denied by the willful actions of a few power-hungry men.” Electoral roll problems meant “millions of our people have not voted,” he said.

The three-week polling period saw widespread illegal ballots, accusations of bribery, weapons brandished to intimidate voters and even killings. The media have reported at least 50 election-related deaths, down from 204 documented in the 2017 election, but including several days of violence in the capital Port Moresby during which troops were deployed onto the streets.

In one area alone, Madang, 211 men were charged for fighting and disrupting the count. Police Commissioner David Manning described “ongoing investigations into some candidates who are believed to have been inciting their supporters to fight with opponents, and arrests will be made.” He added there was potential for more confrontation as parliament sits and the court hears disputes over the vote.

International election observers reported problems ranging from interference in counting by scrutineers and double voting, to incomplete electoral rolls, which had not been renewed since 2017. In some cases, up to half of the names of eligible voters were not on electoral rolls, a Commonwealth Observer Group said.

The Melanesian Spearhead Group, in another observer report, said the election’s “many challenges” included unexplained delays of up to three days before counting started in some electorates, scrutineer interference and failure to check voter identity documents.

The new government is likely to be highly unstable. In 2019 Marape, who was then finance minister, took over the prime ministership after O’Neill resigned amid corruption charges. Marape has presided over an economic and social disaster, including the ongoing closure of the Porgera goldmine and alleged misuse of international funds for PNG’s COVID response. Budget shortfalls resulted in government debt rising to 52 percent of GDP.

Marape’s coalition almost collapsed in late 2020 when dozens of MPs, including cabinet ministers, defected to the opposition. Marape passed his 2021 budget in an emergency parliamentary session with the opposition absent—a move the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional. He then adjourned parliament for four months to avoid a vote of no confidence, ensuring that he could not, under the rules, be removed before the current election.

O’Neill, Marape’s main opponent, declined in the end to challenge for the prime ministership. “I encourage leaders who have been elected properly and who are genuinely interested in rescuing PNG from the economic and social chaos Marape has plunged the country into over the past three years, to consider putting their hand up for the top job,” O’Neill declared.

The Guardian asked in one commentary whether “PNG’s institutions have been so eroded that people feel they have no option but to take matters into their own hands.” In fact, trust in the entire ruling elite has disintegrated following decades of social deprivation and growing inequality, buttressed by authoritarian military-police measures.

The crisis has been exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Tens of thousands of workers, as high as 25 percent of the workforce, lost their jobs. PNG remains one of the least vaccinated countries in the world, with just 3.4 percent of the eligible population partially vaccinated. Authorities have ceased vaccination operations in the capital Port Moresby due to lack of funding. The fragile health system is facing collapse, its inadequate conditions and low pay leading to repeated protests and strikes by nurses.

The political and business elite in Australia, PNG’s colonial ruler until 1975, is increasingly concerned about the unstable situation in its northern neighbour. The Lowy Institute’s Interpreter commented on August 4 that while Canberra had helped with planning, transport and ballots for the PNG election, its electoral support “was clearly inadequate to the task.”

Canberra’s primary concern is not the plight of the impoverished PNG peoples, but its own geo-strategic and business interests.

Pointing to the Solomon Islands’ recent security pact with Beijing, the Interpreter declared that “PNG should be the centre-piece of Australia’s renewed Pacific foreign policy.” It highlighted “strategic infrastructure investments” such as the government-backed purchase of telecommunications company Digicel by Telstra, a ports upgrade program and the Coral Sea Cable as projects that will “enhance connectivity with PNG and contribute to regional security.”

Amid the United States-led drive to war, Australia’s chief aim is to maintain its hegemony over the country, and to push back against China’s growing economic and diplomatic influence in the Pacific. This will undoubtedly be at the centre of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit in September.

COVID-19 now leading cause of death in New Zealand

Tom Peters

COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death in New Zealand, equal with heart disease. The New Zealand Herald reported on August 7 that in the week ending 17 July, 120 deaths were directly attributed to COVID-19, nearly 15 percent of all deaths. The figure rises to one in five if one includes all deaths within 28 days of a COVID infection being reported. 

Epidemiologist Michael Baker told the Guardian that 15 percent was likely an undercount, as some people would have died from the virus without being tested. He expressed concern that “at the point where we’re seeing peak mortality, we’ve seen, seemingly, public interest and concern dropping to quite a low level.” 

Baker pointed out to the New Zealand Herald that “there will be people dying from conditions which are not attributed to Covid-19, but are actually caused by it.” In more than one in 10 cases, coronavirus infection leads to long-COVID, a condition which can severely affect the lungs, heart, brain and other organs.

Medical staff test shoppers who volunteered at a pop-up community COVID-19 testing station at a supermarket carpark in Christchurch, New Zealand. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

As of August 9, a total of 2,475 people had died within 28 days of being reported as COVID-positive. While the Ministry of Health previously described all such deaths as COVID-related, its reporting guidelines changed on July 19, wiping hundreds of deaths off the tally. According to the Ministry, there are now 1,688 “confirmed” COVID-related deaths, which certainly underestimates the real toll.

Baker has previously noted that if COVID kills 3,500 people by the end of the year, this would add 10 percent to New Zealand’s overall mortality rate, and would have a measurable impact on life expectancy.

According to the New York Times’ COVID tracker, New Zealand’s death rate is the sixth-highest in the world, at 0.36 deaths per 100,000 people. Close to 20 COVID deaths and 6,000 cases are being reported each day, and over 600 people are in hospital with the virus. This is down slightly from a peak of more than 10,000 cases and more than 800 hospitalisations last month.

In total, almost 1.7 million COVID cases have been reported, and there are estimates that more than half of New Zealand’s 5 million inhabitants have been infected. Over 26,000 reinfections are recorded, and this figure will increase as people’s immunity from vaccination wanes.

The Labour Party-led government and the media, however, are promoting the maximum level of complacency and encouraging the illusion that cases will soon fall to a “manageable” level.

A New Zealand Herald editorial on August 4 noted that public health restrictions are “barely visible in many situations” and there is an “almost complete laissez-faire environment whether to mask, boost vaccinations, test, report, or even isolate.” While observing that the pandemic “is not over,” the editorial welcomed the change, saying that “we should be capable of thinking for ourselves.”

On August 9, New Zealand’s minister for COVID-19 response Ayesha Verrall announced that the government will maintain the current, grossly inadequate, public health settings—once again rejecting calls from experts for mask mandates and other mitigation measures in schools.

Verrall declared that New Zealand was “heading in the right direction, with case numbers coming down,” despite “considerable pressure on the health system.” 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the media that masks should still be worn in many indoor settings, and positive cases should still be isolated. However, she hinted that the government may remove even these measures if hospitalisations continue falling, saying: “we of course hope that we’ll continue to… see a decline in the impact on our health system, which is a major factor for us in the consideration of the settings.”

New Zealand’s COVID death toll is the outcome of deliberate and criminal policy decisions. For most of the pandemic, the government had an elimination policy: it used temporary shutdowns of schools and businesses, as well as border quarantine and other measures, to keep the country almost entirely free from the virus.

On October 4, 2021, however, Ardern suddenly declared that COVID could no longer be contained and the elimination policy would be abandoned. Ardern also stated, falsely, that an elimination strategy was no longer required because of the availability of vaccines—which do not prevent all deaths and severe illnesses and have hardly any impact on transmission. At that time, New Zealand had only recorded about 30 deaths for the entire pandemic. 

Bowing to pressure from big business, the government adopted the same policy of mass infection that has been imposed internationally, except for China, leading to more than 20 million deaths. Schools and workplaces have been kept open this year as the country was hit by the far more infectious Omicron variant. The unions, acting as the agents of big business and the state, played an indispensable role in enforcing the reopening of schools and workplaces.

Hospitals, already understaffed and rundown before the pandemic, are now experiencing an unprecedented crisis, with emergency departments swamped and staff continually getting infected with COVID. The Herald reported on August 3: “A woman was left lying in a hospital bed soaked in her own urine for 14 hours, while another patient was forced to wait for eight hours in the emergency department of an Auckland hospital.”

Thousands of operations are being repeatedly postponed, often leaving patients waiting in chronic pain, including some with cancer and heart conditions. Stuff reported on July 30 that “more than 8000 Auckland women [are] currently waiting for gynaecologist appointments, with some waiting nearly two years for care.”

People with COVID may also be missing out on essential medical care. Radio NZ reported that since March, 87 people have died from COVID-19 in their homes, an average of four per week. The Ministry of Health has not said how many of these people received any hospital care or whether they had been given antiviral treatments. Maori and Pacific Islanders, who are largely among the more oppressed sections of the working class, made up 37 percent of these deaths. 

Meanwhile, New Zealand is completely unprepared for monkeypox, which is rapidly developing into a new global pandemic. So far, three cases have been identified. Officials have asserted that there is no community transmission. Very few people are being tested, however, and the country has no vaccines.

The Burnett Foundation (formerly the AIDS Foundation), the Sexual Health Society and Auckland University expert Peter Saxton wrote to Ardern on August 3 calling for an immediate response, including a vaccination plan. They said “we cannot afford to wait for a widespread outbreak to justify a plan to address monkeypox” because it would “further overwhelm our already strained health system.” According to the World Health Organisation, 10 percent of cases require hospital treatment.

There have been more than 31,000 monkeypox cases reported in the outbreak globally. While it is currently spreading largely among gay and bisexual men, the virus is not a sexually transmitted disease and can be transmitted through physical contact, surfaces, clothing, and via airborne transmission—a fact that is being covered up by governments and public health authorities internationally, including in New Zealand, as they seek to downplay the risks.

Sri Lankan trade union leaders line up with President Wickremesinghe

Saman Gunadasa

Sri Lankan working people face unbearable living conditions with rampant inflation and scarcities of essentials, including food, fuel and medicines. Last month the inflation rate rose to 60 percent and food inflation to 90 percent. In spite of seething anger among workers and the poor over the continuing attacks on their democratic and social rights, the trade unions are suppressing their struggles.

Far from in any way defending the working class, the unions are pledging their support for President Ranil Wickremesinghe and his government, even as it prepares to unleash the savage austerity program demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The health and plantation unions are prominent among those directly backing Wickremesinghe.

Saman Rathnapriya assuming duty and speaking to media (Photo: Facebook/Government Nursing Officers’ Association)

In an extraordinary move, Government Nursing Officers’ Association (GNOA) leader Saman Rathnapriya has been directly integrated into the state apparatus. On August 2, Wickremesinghe appointed him to the newly-created post of Director General of Trade Unions. He is also a leader of the Federation of Health Professionals (FHP), a grouping of unions in the health sector.

Rathnapriya’s close collaborator—FHP president Ravi Kumudesh—met with Wickremesinghe on Saturday morning and promised to block the struggles of health workers.

“Even the groups which are totally opposed to you believe that amidst this kind of crisis you have the ability to play a role,” Kumudesh declared, adding: “We can’t afford to struggle frequently. This is a time [when] we all should get together and sacrifice and build the country. Only you can make that change happen. We are not your enemies or adversaries.”

After grovelling to Wickremesinghe, Kumudesh went the same day to a rally organised by the Trade Union Coordinating Committee (TUCC), the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) and anti-government protesters in Nugegoda, on the outskirts of Colombo. He is a co-convener of the TUCC.

Kumudesh demagogically told the rally: “Up to now none of the expectations of the ‘struggle’ [anti-government protests] has been fulfilled.” He then thundered: “This struggle is not going to end unless the victory is achieved.”

Ravi Kumudesh (Credit: WSWS)

The actions of Rathnapriya and Kumudesh are a graphic exposure of the role of the trade unions. While making empty declarations that they will “fight to the end,” they pledge to Wickremesinghe to sabotage that fight. They keep workers straitjacketed to the capitalist class and its political servants.

Health workers have been in the forefront of protests and strikes since late 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic struck, unions were compelled to call industrial action because of a groundswell of anger among health employees over the lack of safety measures and medicines, inadequate facilities for patients, increased workload, and stagnating salaries and allowances.

Unions shut down all action after discussions with health authorities and government ministers without achieving any of the workers’ demands. Both Rathnapriya and Kumudesh later publicly declared that the unions only called the strikes and protests to “manage” workers’ anger.  

Now, amid an unprecedented crisis of capitalist rule, the unions are being drawn even more closely into the government’s plans to suppress the opposition of working people to the austerity agenda that it has to impose.

Wickremesinghe, a long-time IMF enforcer, is acutely conscious that former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse was forced to flee the country in the wake of general strikes in April and May involving millions, followed by mass anti-government protests in June.

After assuming his duties as Director General of Trade Unions, Rathnapriya spoke to the Aruna newspaper of his plans to ensure the government would not be toppled by the working class and rural masses.

Glorifying his new political boss, Rathnapriya said that when Wickremesinghe was first appointed as prime minister in May, prior to becoming president, many people, including himself, believed Wickremesinghe was the person to “reconstruct the fallen economy of the country.”

Rathnapriya explained how he had sought to rein in the working class. “At that time, I told the trade unions not to put forward inappropriate slogans. Now he [Wickremesinghe] is the president. We must give him support believing he can do this job.

“When there’s a grave economic crisis in the country, without solving the problems, changing the government month after month is not practical.” Rathnapriya insisted working people must “give time” to Wickremesinghe.

Kumudesh and Rathnapriya were both co-conveners of the TUCC which, together with other unions and organisations, called one-day general strikes on April 28 and May 6. Millions of workers participated. Rural and urban poor people also rallied around these strikes.   

However, the unions deliberately limited these strikes to one-day actions and subordinated them politically to the demand of the bourgeois opposition parties—the Samagi Jana Balavegaya and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna—for an interim government, in other words, another capitalist government.

The unions, like the rest of the Colombo political establishment, were terrified by the mass upsurge of working people and the threat it posed to capitalist rule.

After being installed as president, Wickremesinghe immediately set out to suppress anti-government opposition. He imposed the emergency rule, extended the Essential Public Services Act ban to all industrial action in key sectors and unleased a police-military crackdown against anti-government protesters occupying Galle Face Green in central Colombo. Dozens of protest leaders have been arrested.

The suppression of working-class opposition by the unions opened the door for this police-state repression. Significantly, health was one of the sectors subjected to bans under the Essential Public Services Act. Health workers face fines and jail terms for failing to turn up to work. Rathnapriya, Kumudesh and the health unions have taken no action to oppose this draconian measure.

Wickremesinghe is now seeking to rally the whole Colombo political establishment to implement the austerity program of the IMF. This will include sweeping privatisations of the state-owned enterprises, the destruction of hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs, an end to state subsidies for education and health, and increased taxes on those least able to afford them.

Wickremesinghe is seeking the support of the unions and, in the case of Rathnapriya and Kumudesh, they are already on board. In an earlier interview, Kumudesh told the WSWS that he “personally” supported going to the IMF for emergency funds even though he knew the harsh conditions that would be attached. Rathnapriya is a former MP of Wickremesinghe’s right-wing United National Party, which has always backed and implemented the IMF’s demands.

The unions in the plantation sector, including the Ceylon Workers Congress, National Union of Workers and Democratic Workers Front and Up-Country Peoples Front, have all agreed to be part of Wickremesinghe’s all-party government. All of them support IMF austerity.

The plantation unions, which also function as political parties, have a long and sordid history of backing one or other capitalist government in Colombo and being given comfortable and lucrative ministerial posts. While their leaders serve in government, the unions function as industrial police for plantation companies in sabotaging workers’ struggles for higher wages and decent working and social conditions.

Fire in Berlin’s Grunewald forest demonstrates the political recklessness of the municipal authorities

Markus Salzmann

The largest forest fire in Berlin, Germany, since the Second World War has once again demonstrated the irresponsibility of the capital’s municipal government, a coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Left Party and the Greens.

Smoke over the Grunewald forest behind the former radar tower of the National Security Agency (NSA) in Berlin (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

Teacher shortages, dilapidated schools, a dysfunctional administration in which the simplest trip to the authorities becomes a marathon, as well as a decaying infrastructure have long been permanent issues in Germany’s capital. Now there is also the irresponsible storage of tons of old munitions and confiscated fireworks in the middle of a recreation area, and a fire brigade that has been cut to the bone and was unable to bring the foreseeable catastrophe under control for days.

For reasons that have not yet been explained, numerous explosions occurred early on Thursday morning at a police explosives testing and destruction facility in the middle of Berlin’s Grunewald forest. There are 30 tonnes of ammunition and explosive ordnance on the site, as well as several hundred kilograms of fireworks.

World War II bombs, which are still being discovered in Berlin and the surrounding area, are brought to the site on a weekly basis. Confiscated pyrotechnics are also stored there. Controlled detonations then take place at intervals of several months, most recently in April.

After the fire broke out, a column of smoke developed that could be seen for kilometres over the forest, and more explosions were heard. On the hottest day so far this summer, the fire spread throughout the dry forest area as the day progressed. About 42 hectares were affected

Despite support from the police, the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) and the THW federal civil protection agency, the fire brigade has not yet been able to completely extinguish the fire. On Sunday, emergency forces were still fighting the enormous heat that had developed. The fire brigade explained that the flames were currently under control, but that it was always possible they could flare up again. Some spots on the ground were as hot as 700 degrees Celsius.

The fire brigade is still unable to reach the explosives facility because of the continuing danger of detonations. Two Second World War bombs were torn from their moorings and must first be cooled down.

Nearby regional and suburban railway lines in the direction of Potsdam remained closed until Saturday, and the Avus city motorway remained closed to traffic until Monday. A one-kilometre exclusion zone has been set up in the local recreation area, which no one may enter except the emergency services.

The fire has once again thrown a spotlight on the decrepit state of the fire brigade in Berlin. While the demands from fires occurring are becoming ever greater as a result of climate change, savage cuts in equipment and personnel have been made for years. “The overload has been clear for a long time,” Tagesspiegel quoted a spokesperson for the German Fire Brigades Union (DFeuG) in Berlin-Brandenburg. A report by the state audit office shows an additional need for 1,000 jobs—and that under normal conditions.

The workload is therefore enormous, as the number of states of emergency that have been called shows. A state of emergency is declared when ambulances are working at 80 percent capacity and the specified arrival time of ten minutes for patients can hardly be met. In 2020, a state of emergency was declared 64 times; in 2021, the number tripled to 178. Now, it also looks as if this record will be broken halfway through the year. It is clear that the delayed arrival of rescue services and the fire brigade, and their exhausted personnel, acutely endanger the lives of those affected.

Due to the extreme situation of the professional fire brigade, many members of the volunteer fire brigade were also put on duty on Thursday to staff services in the city. According to official reports, there were also more volunteer fire brigade officers than professional fire fighters in Grunewald on Friday night. The spokesperson for the firefighters’ union reported complaints from the ranks of the volunteer fire brigade because they are being so frequently and regularly called upon for duty.

In addition, more than 50 THW staff were deployed at the major fire in Grunewald. They set up several 30,000-litre pools to service the fire engines, laying a network of hoses from surrounding lakes to fill them.

The Bundeswehr deployed a “Dachs” bulldozer tank, which created five-kilometre-long breaks in the forest to contain the fire. In addition, a “Teodor” demolition robot was deployed, which had also been used in the Afghanistan war. The Bundeswehr cynically announced that the fire breaks should remain in place; they could “be used by the Berlin population after this crisis as beautiful cycling and hiking paths due to their extension,” a spokesperson said.

The police provided water cannons—one of the few technical devices with which Berlin is well equipped, being more regularly used against squatters and left-wing demonstrators.

Not available, on the other hand, were fire-fighting helicopters and aircraft that could have extinguished the forest fire from the air. German fire brigades do not have their own fire-fighting helicopters. The Bundeswehr’s fire-fighting helicopters are currently deployed in Saxony, where large forest fires have been raging for weeks. Despite the increasing number of forest fires, there are no fire-fighting aircraft in Germany.

It is pure luck that the fire broke out in the night hours and did not claim any victims. The impact on the forest will only be seriously assessed after the fire-fighting operations are over.

After the incident, the authorities emphasized the supposedly high safety precautions at the explosives facility, saying there was a fire break around the site and a fire alarm system. The ammunition depots were continuously sprayed with water in summer so that the phosphorus they contain does not ignite at high temperatures, it was said.

The Berlin police even went so far as to say that the explosives facility in the middle of a forest area was an advantageous location. Berlin police president Barbara Slowik said, “Currently, this facility is the only one that can be approved on Berlin land, with 80,000 square metres, far away from residential areas, which has also greatly benefited the fire brigade.”

It has been known for decades that the facility in a recreational area that attracts thousands of people every day is literally a ticking bomb. A facility for the destruction of weapons has existed here since 1950. The police are responsible for this and have had to admit that for a long time there had been repeated discussions about relocating it for safety reasons.

With German reunification 32 years ago, when West Berlin lost its insular location in the middle of the former East Germany (GDR), it would have been possible to relocate the explosives and storage site to less dangerous locations in sparsely populated Brandenburg. But plans to do so always came to nothing. In 2004, an application was made to relocate the site, but the SPD and Left Party Senate (Berlin state executive) at the time rejected it. Speaking at the site of the fire, Berlin’s mayor, Franziska Giffey (SPD) tersely declared that this would have to be reconsidered.

The same indifference with which the establishment parties treat the safety and lives of the population and have allowed the coronavirus to run wild in the pandemic, can also be seen in their reaction to climate change and its devastating consequences, which are increasingly apparent in the Berlin-Brandenburg region.

The summer months are getting hotter every year and less rain falls, which results in drier soil and underbrush Brandenburg is considered one of the driest regions in Germany with the fire brigade called out dozens of times during the summer months because of forest fires.

It is foreseeable that the SPD-Left Party-Green Senate will not draw any conclusions from the major fire in Grunewald. Representatives of the governing parties merely declared after the fire that they “wanted to talk about it.”

Environment Senator (state minister) Bettina Jarasch (Greens) said, “Of course, this has to do with climate change—not this fire, mind you, but the overall increase.” She added that one must be prepared for it. Her only conclusion from this was to build up more mixed forest areas instead of coniferous forest.

The SPD, Greens and the Left Party are continuing and intensifying their austerity policies in all areas of public and social infrastructure in the current legislative period. Niklas Schrader, responsible for domestic issues in the Left Party’s state parliamentary group, explained that Berlin had taken the right path in recent years in dealing with the fire brigade.

Instead of increasing the urgently needed material and personnel, there should be a “more efficient approach.” The Senate’s domestic affairs administration also expressed this view: “The fire brigade is basically well positioned for all foreseeable emergency situations in the city,” said a spokeswoman.

Gaza slaughter: Israel’s war crimes and US hypocrisy

Patrick Martin

Over the past three days, relentless Israeli airstrikes killed at least 45 Palestinians, including 16 children, and caused extensive devastation.

At least 400 were wounded, many severely, and the handful of barely functioning hospitals and clinics were overwhelmed. Some 2.3 million Palestinians live in Gaza, confined by Israeli and Egyptian military cordons and fences. Hundreds of powerful bombs and missiles have rained down on a territory comprising only 141 square miles—exactly equal in area to the city of Detroit.

The most heavily bombed neighborhoods, where Israeli officials claimed leaders of the Islamic Jihad were the targets, were scenes of apocalyptic destruction, with apartment buildings transformed into craters and body parts strewn about. An Al-Jazeera montage of the faces of 12 martyred children, supplied by the Palestinian Health Ministry—shown here—was circulated throughout the Arab world, producing widespread outrage.

If it were Ukrainian children who suffered the same fate, there is no doubt that the American corporate media, the faithful servant of the CIA and State Department, would be providing saturation coverage. There would be endless hours devoted to mourning the loss of innocent lives and branding those responsible for their deaths as murderers and war criminals. No such terms will be used for Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and other top Israeli military and intelligence officials.

Sixteen children aged 18 and under were killed by Israeli air strikes on Gaza over the past three days. Twelve are pictured here; the three without photos, all siblings, died in the Al-Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza. The 16th child died in the hospital late Monday of wounds received earlier, and has not yet been named.

The New York Times, which has spearheaded the media’s campaign over supposed Russian atrocities in the Ukraine war, began its report on the temporary halt in the Gaza bombardment this way: “A cease-fire ending three days of fierce cross-border fighting between Israel and a Palestinian militant group in Gaza appeared to be holding on Monday, and life on both sides of the lines began to return to normal.”

The supposed “fierce cross-border fighting” was a completely one-sided affair, with the Israeli military, the most powerful in the Middle East, armed to the teeth by US imperialism, dropping bombs and missiles on a defenseless population. Meanwhile, militants of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fired off hundreds of rudimentary home-made rockets, nearly all of them landing harmlessly or shot down by Israeli’s antimissile system.

As to the “return to normal,” for the people of Gaza, this means unbearable poverty, a 50 percent unemployment rate and a smashed infrastructure, in what is routinely described by observers as the largest open-air prison camp on the planet. Electricity is available only 11 hours a day even when the Gaza power plant is running, but it was shut down, not because of the bombing, but because Israel and Egypt halted the delivery of fuel supplies required to keep it running.

The Biden administration issued a brief statement welcoming the ceasefire, expressing appreciation for the role of Egypt, Qatar, Jordan and other reactionary Arab dictatorships and monarchies for their role in the diplomacy that brought a temporary end to the violence, while condemning Islamic Jihad for “indiscriminate rocket attacks.” Biden reaffirmed his “long-standing and unwavering” support for Israel, adding, “I commend Prime Minister Yair Lapid and his government’s steady leadership throughout the crisis.”

There is no doubt that the onslaught against Gaza was discussed and approved during Biden’s visit to Israel July 13-15, just three weeks before the well-prepared attack began. The Pentagon will now rush to resupply the munitions expended by the Israel Defense Force during the bombing campaign.

The rocket exchanges with PIJ were deliberately provoked by Israel’s arrest and detention of the senior leader of the group on the West Bank, Bassam al-Saadi, on August 1 in the city of Jenin. This was part of a systematic campaign of Israeli military violence in Jenin which has killed at least 30 Palestinians and wounded hundreds since the beginning of this year.

The timing of the attack seemed calculated to benefit Prime Minister Lapid, who heads a caretaker coalition regime headed into a November 1 general election. A Times of Israel headline declared: “With elections looming, Lapid’s Gaza gamble seems to have paid off” and cited the former television broadcaster’s need to burnish his military credentials before a contest where the main opposition comes from the right-wing militarist Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud Party coalition was ousted just last year.

Israeli press reports suggest that the main shift in policy since the fall of Netanyahu has been a decision to concentrate on the destruction of Islamic Jihad, the smaller of the two Islamist groups in Gaza, noting that Lapid had not mentioned Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza, in his public statements on the Israeli military attack. On Saturday night, General Oded Basyuk, the head of the Israeli Defense Forces Operations Unit, told reporters that the IDF had successfully killed “the entire senior security echelon of Islamic Jihad’s military wing in Gaza.” 

The response of the Arab rulers to the three-day bombardment of Gaza provided example of their cynical treachery and betrayal of the interests of the Palestinian people and the Arab masses as a whole. Most of the Gulf sheikdoms followed the lead of Saudi Arabia, whose media denounced Islamic Jihad as a tool of Iran and suggested that PIJ had provoked the conflict in conjunction with the resumption of nuclear energy talks between Iran and the so-called P5+1 group (the five full members of the UN Security Council plus Germany). These talks resumed in Vienna on August 4.

This allegation turns the world upside down. It is far more likely that the Israeli regime, not Islamic Jihad, timed the conflict to disrupt the nuclear talks because it stridently opposes any deal that would ease sanctions on Iran.

The bloodstained Egyptian military regime brokered the ceasefire, while maintaining its iron grip on Gaza’s western border, which it has largely closed since Hamas came to power in the territory in 2007.

The Gaza bloodbath also demonstrates the impotent and bankruptcy of the Palestinian bourgeois nationalists of every stripe, whether the Islamist variety, like Hamas, or the secular Fatah group which controls the Palestinian Authority and acts as Israel’s appointed prison guard on the West Bank. It is noteworthy that while the US and Israel still nominally treat Hamas as a “terrorist group,” Egypt, Qatar and the UN mediators “dealt with the Hamas leaders as if they were the legitimate and sole rulers of the Gaza Strip,” as the Jerusalem Post observed.

The situation in Gaza remains fraught. The Israeli military has called up 25,000 reserves and has no plans to demobilize them, while an Islamic Jihad leader said that if Israel did not release two imprisoned PIJ leaders, including Bassam al-Saadi, by the weekend—as was apparently promised to Egypt—the conflict would be resumed.

Biden administration approves $1 billion military aid package for Ukraine, the largest yet

Clara Weiss

In the midst of its escalating provocations against China over Taiwan, the Biden administration approved yet another $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine. This brings the total direct military aid provided by the Pentagon to Ukraine since the beginning of the imperialist-provoked invasion by Russia to $9.8 billion. The White House also announced an additional $4.5 billion in financial aid for Ukraine on Monday. 

According to the Pentagon, the new tranche of weapons deliveries will include:

• additional ammunition for the 16 long-range HIMARS missiles which the Biden administration began delivering to Ukraine in May;
• 75,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition; 
• 20 120 mm mortar systems and 20,000 rounds of 120 mm mortar ammunition;
• 1,000 Javelin (each worth about $78,000) and hundreds of AT4 anti-armor systems; 
• 50 armored medical treatment vehicles; 
• C-4 explosives, demolition munitions and demolition equipment; and
• Munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS).

This comes on top of $23.8 billion in military aid, including direct military aid and financial aid designed to help finance future weapons purchases, that the US had pledged as of July 1, according to the Kiehl Institute for the World Economy. 

The new tranche in weapons is aimed at bolstering the Ukrainian army as it is preparing an offensive in the south of the country which has been largely occupied by Russia. Ukrainian officials have also threatened an offensive targeting the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, with a Pentagon spokesman refusing to rule out such attacks, even though Kremlin officials have threatened to retaliate with nuclear weapons. 

Highlighting the immense dangers posed by the conflict, there has been intense fighting at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant—the largest of its kind in Europe—over the past week. Russia and Ukraine have traded accusations of shelling the plant, which was reportedly damaged last week. Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have warned that “there’s a very real risk of a nuclear disaster.” According to Bloomberg, Russia has invited IAEA representatives to visit the plant, but they are still awaiting permission from Kiev, as well as security guarantees and a safe passage through the war zone.

The latest US weapons delivery announcement comes as more and more information emerges that confirms the utterly criminal character of the imperialist proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and its horrific toll on the civilian population and soldiers on both sides. Reports by Amnesty International and the United Nations have now confirmed that the Ukrainian military is deploying tactics that serve to drive up civilian casualties. In violation of international law, Ukrainian troops have been routinely launching rockets and stationing personnel in densely populated areas, including hospitals, and have been using civilians as human shields.

While the Ukrainian government responded with hysterical denunciations to the report by Amnesty International, there has been no credible denial of the allegations of serious violations of international law.

The United Nations now put the figures of civilian casualties at over 5,400 dead and over 7,300 wounded. At least 12 million people out of a pre-war population of less than 40 million have been displaced by the war. Out of these 12 million, about 5 million have fled to neighboring countries, primarily Poland, while at least 7 million were displaced within Ukraine.

Ever more horrifying figures are also emerging about the shocking number of casualties among the Ukrainian army. While it has been impossible to confirm the veracity of documents circulating on social media which suggest that a stunning 191,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been either killed or wounded in action, it is clear that the casualties among the Ukrainian army must by now be in the tens of thousands. In June, one of the advisers of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Aleksei Arestovich, publicly stated that about 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed with another 100 more dying each day. The total number of dead must have increased significantly in the past months since this public revelation. The Ukrainian army also admitted that 7,200 men were missing in action as of July 11. 

The Russian military has not made a single public statement on its casualties since March, when it acknowledged that 1,351 soldiers had died and 3,825 had been wounded in the first few weeks of the war. The Russian BBC wrote in June that it had established the names of at least 3,502 dead Russian soldiers and officers, based on official statements and information about funerals. The US government claims that the Russian military has had between 70,000 and 80,000 casualties.

Whatever the real numbers, it is already clear that the war in Ukraine is the bloodiest conflict in Europe since 1945, and, indeed, one of the bloodiest in modern history with the Washington Post noting in June that it “is killing far more soldiers per day than the typical war.” Yet Western weapons manufacturers are reaping profits from the slaughter and the massive military build-up by the imperialist powers. 

In the first month of the invasion alone, the shares of the two leading US weapons manufacturers, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, increased by 28 and 20 percent respectively. A report by Business Insider from May revealed that 20 Democratic and Republican congressmen and women owned shares in these two weapons manufacturers, with some buying their shares on February 24 or just days before the war began. All of them voted in favor of a massive $40 billion bill, which provides for over $17 billion for weapons that are to be manufactured in the US, primarily by these two companies, and then sent to Ukraine. 

The bonanza of war profiteers is not limited to the US. The German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall, a company that already ranked among the biggest profiteers from the horrific crimes of German imperialism in both world wars, saw its stock price surge a whopping 88 percent in the first three months of the war. Using the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a pretext, the German government announced a €100 billion rearmament program, the largest in German history, which included a €42 billion order to Rheinmetall.

The British Telegraph reported in late July that the UK’s BAE Systems, the largest weapons manufacturer in Europe, is “expecting a flood of new orders from countries preparing for the return of industrial war.” In the first six months of this year, the company already enjoyed a £18 billion (70 percent) boost in orders and saw its earnings before interest payments and tax rise to £1.11 billion. The UK has been the second-biggest weapons supplier to Ukraine, after the US.

Britain’s second largest weapons manufacturer Babcock has also been seeing orders raining in from Eastern European NATO member states, which are massively building up their militaries and are trying to switch from Soviet-era weapons. After making a loss of £1.18 billion the year prior, Babcock unveiled a pre-tax profit of £182.3 million in March 2022, and an order book up more than a fifth to almost £10 billion.

Charles Woodburn, BAE chief executive, told the Financial Times last week that his company was negotiating more orders with multiple governments, including the British. He stated, “We see this playing out over a multiyear period now.”

Israeli airstrikes massacre Palestinian children in Gaza

Jean Shaoul

For three days, Israel has bombarded the densely populated and impoverished coastal enclave of Gaza, targeting leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), civilians and their property in the worst flare-up since May 2021.

As of Sunday evening, Israel’s “surgical” air strikes have killed at least 43 Palestinians, including Taysir al-Jabari and Khalid Mansour, senior PIJ military leaders in northern and southern Gaza. Fifteen children and four women have been killed since Friday. At least 300, more than half of them women and children, have been injured and at least 31 families made homeless. One Israeli civilian and two soldiers have been lightly wounded by shrapnel.

Smoke rises following Israeli airstrikes on a building in Gaza City's Shijaiyah neighborhood, Sunday, August. 7, 2022. [Photo: Hatem Moussa/WSWS]

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said its aerial bombardment was a preemptive operation aimed at preventing rocket attacks planned by Palestinian Islamic Jihad against Israel. It warned that its operation could last up to a week.

The continuous outbreaks of violence—Israel has launched at least eight murderous assaults on the besieged enclave since 2005 when it “withdrew” from Gaza—flows inexorably from the 15-year-long Israeli siege of Gaza that has been aided by the butcher of Cairo, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The blockade, an act of collective punishment banned under international law, has turned the enclave into an open-air prison for its two million inhabitants. Most lack even the most basic essentials of life, clean water, sanitation and electricity, while more than half the population is unemployed and the vast majority live in appalling poverty.

At the same time as waging war on Gaza, the caretaker government under Yair Lapid, who heads an eight-party coalition that includes one of Israel’s Arab parties and several Jewish parties ostensibly committed to a Palestinian state alongside Israel, gave free rein to the far right to incite violence against the Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Under the protection of armed Israeli security forces, 1,000 religious bigots, far right nationalists and settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem on Sunday morning. They waved Israeli flags, prayed and chanted anti-Muslim and anti-Arab slogans, breaching long-standing agreements with Jordan, the official custodian of the site, whereby non-Muslims are not allowed to pray within the compound or display Israeli symbols. Israeli police have allowed settlers and far right activists entry to the site on a near-daily basis.

The authorities allowed this latest provocation to go ahead as Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza entered its third day, amid concerns that this would incite Palestinian protests and clashes. In May 2021, similar provocations at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound coinciding with Ramadan led to Israel’s 11-day assault on Gaza that killed 256 Palestinians and extensive riots in Israel’s mixed cities of Haifa, Acre, Lod and Ramla.

The latest conflict started on Monday with the storming by Israeli special forces of the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. They fired live and rubber-coated bullets as well as tear gas at Palestinians and arrested senior Islamic Jihad leader Bassam al-Saadi, and his son-in-law, Ashraf al-Jada, at his home in Jenin. Pictures of al-Saadi being dragged across the ground accompanied by an attack dog provoked a storm of protest, amid fears for his life, from PIJ supporters. Islamic Jihad vowed revenge.

The PIJ has become the main force behind the armed resistance in Jenin and Nablus to both Israel and its subcontractor, the Palestinian Authority (PA) of President Mahmoud Abbas. During the raid, Israeli forces also shot and killed Derar Riyad al-Kafrini, a 17-year-old Palestinian youth and injured Saadi's wife as well as least one other.

Israel claimed that PIJ was planning to launch attacks from Gaza on Israel and made full-scale preparations for an extensive operation against Islamic Jihad. It ordered a lockdown on towns and villages in southern Israel, closing roads and sending reinforcements to the area, and called up 10 reserve Border Guard battalions in case rioting erupted in Israel’s predominantly Palestinian cities. It closed both the Erez and Kerem Shalom border crossings into Gaza, preventing essential commodities, including food and fuel, from entering the besieged enclave and medical patients and the 14,000 Palestinians from Gaza with work permits in Israel from leaving. Shortly afterwards, Gaza’s sole power plant announced it would close, citing a lack of fuel.

On Friday, Israel began pounding Gaza with what it said were targeted strikes to “take out” Islamic Jihad leaders and militants. The US and major European powers supported this latest war crime with nostrums about “Israel’s right to defend itself” from attack, although no such attack had taken place.

Yair Lapid, Israel’s caretaker prime minister until Israel’s fifth elections in four years on November 1, described the PIJ as “an Iranian proxy that wants to destroy the state of Israel.” His statement signals an Israeli offensive against Iran’s allies in the region.

PIJ and Hamas, an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood that rules Gaza, are listed as “terrorist organisations” by the US and European powers. Backed by Iran, the PIJ also has supporters in Lebanon and Syria. Its leader Ziad al-Nakhalah was in Tehran for talks with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Friday, the day Israel launched its bombardment on Gaza.

Al-Nakhalah pledged that the group would launch revenge attacks, including targeting Tel Aviv and other cities. But Islamic Jihad’s rockets, launched only after Israel’s onslaught, had little impact. Most of its 400 rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system or fell on empty ground. One house was damaged.

Major-General Hossein Salami, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Saturday the Palestinians are “not alone” in their fight against Israel, declaring, “We are with you on this path until the end, and let Palestine and the Palestinians know that they are not alone.” He added that Israel “will pay another heavy price for the recent crime.”

Hamas, despite its bitter opposition to its rival, said it supported Islamic Jihad’s response to Israel’s bombardment. However, it took no action against Israel, as it tried to prevent the conflict erupting into a full-scale war. It also stood aside during Israel’s two-day assault on Gaza in November 2019 that assassinated PIJ’s southern military leader Bahaa Abu el-Atta and his wife.

Israel’s government, under Naftali Bennett and now under Lapid, has in contrast to that of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to bolster Hamas at the expense of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority as a means of dividing the Palestinians. Israel has lifted a few of the restrictions on Gaza, increasing its power supply and ability to carry out reconstruction work. It has granted work permits to 20,000 Gaza residents that enable them to cross into Israel daily to work for wages that are some 10 times the rate paid in Gaza, where the unemployment rate tops 50 percent.

Lapid’s government has reportedly agreed to an Egypt-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Islamic Jihad set to take effect at 8 p.m. Sunday, with pledges from Israel to alleviate Gaza's fuel shortage in return for a crackdown on PIJ by Hamas. It remains to be seen whether it will take effect or hold.

Lapid is fighting a bitterly contested election against two rivals for the premiership. The first is Netanyahu, who, despite fighting criminal charges of bribery, corruption and breach of trust in three separate cases, is currently predicted to receive the largest number of votes for his coalition. This is more likely if his far-right religious allies, Itamar Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, agree on a merger for electoral purposes as they did ahead of last year’s election. The second is Defence Minister Benny Gantz, the former army chief. Lapid, who has never held a security post, is thus anxious to bolster his militarist credentials.

His efforts to terrorise the Palestinians and give succour to the fascistic far right seek to deflect the immense social tensions within Israeli society outward as the elections—unusually—focus on the rising cost of living and the increasing poverty. One of the most unequal societies in the advanced world, Israel has the highest poverty rate for any country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The coalition government, in power for just a year, has widened the already vast socioeconomic gaps in Israeli society, offering tax breaks to the wealthy, raising prices on basic household goods and promoting agricultural reforms that would devastate farmers, while failing to curb the soaring cost of housing. As elsewhere, deteriorating conditions for most Israeli workers and their families have led to a growing number of working class strikes and protests.