Zelensky government expands media censorship

Jason Melanovski

Amid the intensification of its NATO-backed war with Russia, the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has passed a bill that grants Ukraine’s National Council of Broadcasting sweeping and arbitrary powers of censorship over nearly all of the country’s media.

The 279-page bill, which has existed in various forms since Zelensky first ordered its creation in 2019, essentially permits the National Council of Broadcasting to censor television, print and online journalism, as well as social media and search engines such as Google. News sites that fail to officially “register as media” with the right-wing Ukrainian government may be shut down without a court ruling.

Moreover, the National Council of Broadcasting itself will be filled with appointees by Zelensky and the Ukrainian parliament, which is currently dominated by the president’s Servant of the People party.

While the bill was passed under the guise of “media reform” to comply with EU “press freedom” standards, the law violates the most basic democratic freedoms.

Both the European Federation of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists have opposed the measure, and in September Ukraine’s own National Union of Journalists called the law “the biggest threat to press freedom in (Ukraine’s) independent history.”

Earlier in July, the European Federation of Journalists denounced the law, writing that “it proposes to give arbitrary and disproportionate regulatory powers to the national regulator, the National Council of Broadcasting, which would have authority not only over audiovisual media, but also over print and digital media.”

“The coercive regulation envisaged by the bill and in the hands of a regulator totally controlled by the government is worthy of the worst authoritarian regimes. It must be withdrawn. A state that would apply such provisions simply has no place in the European Union,” Ricardo Gutiérrez, general secretary of the federation, said at the time.

While such organizations express consternation at Zelensky’s blatant attempt to control Ukraine’s media, in reality, censorship and the attack on democratic rights have long been integral to the Kiev regime’s rule. They have only intensified as the Ukrainian state has moved towards war with Russia, backed by NATO.

After coming to office in 2019 due largely to widespread disillusionment with the xenophobic and militarist policies of former President Petro Poroshenko, Zelensky shifted sharply to the right by prosecuting Russia-friendly political opponents and escalating tensions with Moscow.

As his approval ratings fell in February of 2021, Zelensky took the unprecedented step of closing down three popular, opposition-affiliated TV channels—112, Newsone and ZIK—on the grounds of “national security.”

Later that same month his government imposed sanctions on Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of the pro-Russian Opposition for Life party, the second largest political party in the Ukrainian parliament at the time. Medvedchuk was later indicted on charges of embezzlement and “high treason” and placed under house arrest. At the time, the move was a clear signal to Moscow that the Zelensky government had no interest in a negotiated settlement to the ongoing civil war in eastern Ukraine, which had killed over 14,000. The arrest was also viewed as a provocative escalation in the drive to war by Zelensky and his backers in the Biden administration, who publicly applauded his crackdown on domestic, pro-Russian political opposition.

In August 2021, on the eve of his infamous “Crimea Platform” summit, the Zelensky government banned the popular opposition website strana.ua by decree. The site was one of the few major media outlets in Ukraine that reported on the violent exploits of the country’s various militant far-right nationalist groups and corruption within the Ukrainian government.

Hypocritically, the Crimea Platform denounced Russia for supposedly limiting “fundamental freedoms” in Crimea, “such as the right to peaceful assembly, the rights to freedoms of expression and opinion, religion or belief, association, restrictions on the ability to seek, receive and impart information, as well as interference and intimidation that journalists, human rights defenders and defense lawyers face in their work.”

Following Russia’s invasion of the country in February 2022, the Zelensky government doubled down on political oppression and censorship by banning 11 “collaborationist” political parties, prohibiting the import of Russian books, canceling Russian language education, and consolidating all of the country’s television and radio reporting into one single government-approved program.

Such reactionary policies have been backed by Ukraine’s Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko, who in December wrote an op-ed in The Guardian urging a worldwide boycott of “The Nutcracker” by Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

Last week Tkachenko announced the introduction of a law in the Ukrainian parliament that will accelerate its reactionary “de-Russification” policies by renaming streets currently dedicated to Russian cultural figures, such as Alexander Pushkin, and simplifying the removal of statues. 

Speaking to the National News Agency of Ukraine, Tkachenko proudly reported that the law “will permit the government to continue the fight against hundreds of streets named after Pushkin, which already started last year.”

Such reactionary measures expose the true nature of the right-wing and undemocratic NATO-backed Zelensky government. Rather than seeking to end a bloody and disastrous war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians, the Zelensky government is dedicated to undemocratic and xenophobic political and cultural censorship to divide the Ukrainian and Russian working class and impose its war policies on the population.

German politicians and media demand Leopard battle tanks for Kiev, further escalating danger of world war

Johannes Stern

Last week, the German government announced it would deliver at least 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles and a Patriot missile system to Ukraine. According to official statements, Ukrainian soldiers will be trained on the weapons systems, which will be deployed to the front lines within the next three months.

The measures represent a massive escalation of the proxy war NATO is waging in Ukraine against Russia. They form part of a spiral of escalation that raises the threat of a third nuclear world war. German politicians and media outlets are waging an aggressive campaign to now provide the Ukrainian army with battle tanks and other heavy warfare equipment.

Leopard 2 main battle tank [Photo by Bundeswehr/Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0]

“We should do everything possible and deliver. This includes Leopard tanks,” Bundestag (federal parliament) Vice President Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Greens) told Funke Media Group. The chairwoman of the defence committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (Liberal Democrats, FDP), drooled on Twitter, “Our efforts have worked. But we are not letting up. After the Marder comes the Leopard.”

Saskia Esken, co-chair of the chancellor’s Social Democrats (SPD), which met in Berlin over the weekend, also held out the prospect of further arms deliveries. She said Ukraine would continue to receive “humanitarian, financial and military” support. However, it remained the case that one coordinated with international partners regarding sanctions and arms deliveries, she said, “especially with the United States of America.”

It is clear what this means. After the joint German-American announcement to deliver infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine, the deployment of battle tanks is only a matter of time. On Sunday, Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) hinted on broadcaster ARD’s “Report from Berlin” program that the decision on battle tanks and further arms deliveries has already been made behind the scenes.

Last week had “shown that the German government, together with the other friendly allied states, always adapts its decisions to the situation ‘on the ground’ on the battlefield in order to provide maximum support to Ukraine,” Habeck declared. After all, “if you trace the long path from the first still controversial decisions for anti-tank missiles, to self-propelled howitzers, and now the Marders, you have an enormous dynamic also in the decisions of the German government. And I think that dynamic will continue as long as this war continues to develop dynamically.”

When asked specifically by ARD whether this meant he did not rule out delivery of Leopard 2 and Leopard 1 battle tanks, Habeck replied, “No, of course it’s not ruled out.” He added that the situation was “always being examined, we are coordinating with the other countries and decisions will continue to be made within this corridor.” The decision on the Marders was “long overdue” and it was “good that it was made.” He added that they would now watch “to make sure these things got there and see how the debate develops.”

In reality, it is not a “debate,” but nonstop war propaganda aimed at further escalating the conflict. The Greens, who more than any other party speak for war-loving affluent middle class layers, are playing a particularly aggressive role. Their leading representatives are calling not just for dozens, but thousands of battle tanks for Ukraine.

At a Berliner Zeitungevent in December, Green Party European politician Anton Hofreiter demanded that Ukraine either be admitted to NATO or that 3,200 (!) Leopard main battle tanks be delivered to Kiev. What sounds like pure madness, Hofreiter obviously meant seriously. In its report on the event, the Berliner Zeitung writes that the Green politician defended his demand even in response to critical questions; among others, with the statement that Putin was like a “street thug who only backs down when his nose is broken.”

This is fascistic language. Despite the official propaganda of “freedom” and “democracy,” current German war policy stands in the dark tradition of German imperialism. 82 years after the Nazi war of extermination against the Soviet Union, in which almost 30 million people fell victim, German tanks are again rolling against Russia.

In its its statement “No tank deliveries to Ukraine! Stop the threat of a third world war!” the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) writes of the German war aims:

Since reunification, the ruling class has been systematically working to organize Europe under German leadership in order to advance its geostrategic and economic interests worldwide.... Now it is using Russia’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine as a pretext to launch the biggest rearmament since Hitler and to strike again against Russia. German imperialism is concerned not only with geostrategic interests and Russia’s vast reserves of raw materials, it is also driven by the desire for retribution for its war defeats in the 20th century.

German generals are again ranting about a full-scale German tank war against Russia. In a commentary for Die Welt titled “Finally, Chancellor! But now also [send] battle tanks for Ukraine,” retired Brigadier General Klaus Wittmann writes:

But now the German government should regard its decision as a liberating blow and not hesitate any further regarding battle tanks either. It is obvious that besides air defence and artillery, Ukraine urgently needs armoured combat vehicles if it wants to make further progress in pushing back Russian troops and retaking stolen territory. Combat, infantry, and transport tanks are at stake.

Germany, he said, must take the lead in enabling the Ukrainian army to mount a counteroffensive. “If Germany finally took the initiative here, many would follow, and it would be a concerted action of enormous impact,” Wittmann writes. “Although tracked vehicle operations are possible even now on frozen ground,” he adds, “armoured combat vehicles should be available in sufficient numbers and with trained crews for effective major counteroffensives by spring at the latest.”

By now, the media is openly stating what has long been the case: the NATO powers are at war with Russia in Ukraine, pursuing the goal of militarily defeating the nuclear-armed power. “On January 6, Germany entered the Russian-Ukrainian war, it is a proxy war. Ukraine must win it, or (also) Germany will lose it,” writes Nikolaus Blome, head of the politics department at broadcasters RTL and n-tv. His guest commentary for Der Spiegel is titled: “Marder tanks for Ukraine: Olaf Scholz is now party to the war.”

Scholz, Blome and the other warmongers in politics and the media should explain what the consequences of their escalation policy are. How many hundreds of thousands or millions of lives are they willing to sacrifice for a “conventional” military victory over Russia? What is clear is that a nuclear escalation of the conflict—the danger of which increases with every arms delivery—would not only turn Europe into a nuclear desert, but would place the survival of the entire human race in question.

China fully reopens borders amid devastating COVID-19 surge

Benjamin Mateus

On Sunday, China fully reopened its borders to international travel after three years of border restrictions that formed a key component of the Zero-COVID policy. Going forward, travelers will no longer undergo quarantine, although a negative COVID-19 test within 48 hours of one’s flight will still be enforced.

The emergency ward of a hospital in China, January 3, 2023. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

The ditching of these final restrictions takes place two weeks before the Lunar New Year holiday begins on January 21, in what is historically the largest annual human migration. Approximately 2.1 billion domestic journeys are expected to take place during the 40-day travel season, according to Chinese government estimates. It is widely known that this mass travel will deepen the dire surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths across China.

Many of the press reports on the resumption of travel to China have a jubilant tone, thrilled to see the lifting of the country’s final public health constraints. They universally claim that Zero-COVID was sheer folly that only harmed China’s economic standing and its population.

Tickets to vacation destinations like Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia are selling fast. Ctrip, a Chinese travel booking platform, reported that visas for Singapore are up 30-fold from December 27. Hotel reservations at resorts in Malaysia and Thailand by Chinese vacationers have more than doubled. Other major destinations include Australia and Japan.

Japanese financial firm Nomura reported, “The Tourism Authority of Thailand recently raised its full-year target to 25 million inbound tourist arrivals [five million passengers from China], driven by the earlier than expected reopening after Beijing’s recent border rules relaxation.”

Considering these economic windfalls for Thailand’s tourist industry, on Monday the health ministry revoked the rule requiring foreign travelers to carry proof of COVID-19 vaccination after protests from business leaders. Last year, Thailand, Southeast Asia’s second largest economy, had only 11.5 million foreign visitors. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, that figure stood at 40 million, with a quarter of those from China.

Bloomberg recently observed, “[The] influx of travelers heading into the country is unlikely to be matched by a surge in demand for overseas trip. The flow of Chinese tourists, previously a $280 billion spending force in global holiday hotspots from Paris to Tokyo, will take months if not years to recover to its pre-pandemic level.”

Not one report mentions the calamity that befell Hong Kong last February when Omicron decimated the elderly and, for a few weeks, harbored one of the highest death tolls among any country throughout the pandemic. Nor do they raise the important fact that the maintenance of Zero-COVID in Shanghai last March eliminated Omicron and kept deaths to around 500. Such public health successes are meaningless in terms of profit margins and quarterly earning figures that financial institutions pore over.

According to health officials in China, many of the country’s most populous regions are now passing or have passed through the peaks of COVID-19 infections. Kan Quancheng, director of the provincial health commission, noted that Henan Province in central China, home to 100 million residents, had an infection rate of 89 percent. Similar estimates have been provided by health officials for Guangdong, Jiangsu and the capital city of Beijing.

UK-based health data firm Airfinity has estimated that cumulative deaths across China due to COVID-19 from December 1 to the end of the year had likely reached 100,000, registering 9,000 deaths per day. They also modeled that a peak in daily new infections would reach 3.7 million cases per day on January 13. Given the lag in deaths, this would translate to 25,000 fatalities per day by January 23, with a cumulative death toll of around 584,000 by the end of this month. Absurdly, official figures place COVID-19 deaths at fewer than 40 since December 7.

With the arrival of the Lunar New Year holidays, many epidemiologists have warned of a second major peak in infections and deaths as the pandemic in China finds its way into poorly resourced rural regions of the country. Testing has essentially stopped and the elderly infected wait at home, with very few able to procure oxygen tanks for breathing support.

Given the complete obscurity in statistical terms on the state of the health crisis, the Washington Post published a report on Monday on the use of satellite imagery that show crowds gathering at crematoriums and newly expanded parking lots to accommodate mourners.

In collaboration with imagery captured by Maxar Technologies, the Post wrote that they have seen a significant uptick in “activity at funeral homes across six different cities, from Beijing in the north to Nanjing in the east, to Chengdu and Kunming in the southwest.”

A receptionist at the Jiangnan Funeral Home in Chongqing, speaking under conditions of anonymity, told the Post, “I have worked here for six years, and it has never been this busy. The phone has basically not stopped ringing.” She added that since the Christmas holidays, the line of cars has continued, the freezers have been packed full and the incinerators have operated non-stop. Many funeral homes have stopped accepting the deceased except to perform only the briefest of services and are offering only storage or cremation.

In a particularly cynical and hypocritical photo report on the state of the pandemic in Shanghai published in the New York Times yesterday, they wrote that around 70 percent of the city’s 26 million people have recently been infected, health systems remain inundated with older people and funeral homes are at capacity.

In opening their report, the Times wrote, “Infections soared across China late last year, and the government abruptly lifted its strict, but ultimately futile, COVID restrictions in early December. Shanghai endured one of China’s most grueling lockdowns last spring, with residents confined to their homes for more than two months.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must be held accountable for the public health travesty that has befallen their population. But a significant share of the criminal responsibility also falls on the shoulders of the bourgeois press and the Times in particular, which repeatedly demanded that China abandon Zero-COVID, which they portrayed as cruel and inhuman, and lift all obstacles to the production of profits.

During the two-month lockdown in Shanghai, which successfully suppressed the largest outbreak until then, the Times brayed for the lifting of Zero-COVID, knowing full well the catastrophe that would unfold, which they are now presenting as inevitable.

The truth is that Zero-COVID was a highly effective policy based on the deployment of all available public health measures, which kept fatalities in China to an enviably low level after the initial wave of infections and deaths in the first few months of 2020.

Furthermore, for the vast majority of the pandemic, the entire Chinese population was mobile and free to interact in public due to the suppression of viral transmission. Indeed, when opened its doors once more at the end of May in 2022, having conquered Omicron, this was a triumph of public health.

The CCP lifted Zero-COVID under economic pressures from global finance capital, which would not tolerate further restrictions placed on them by public health inconveniences. Their threats of moving production out of China were the decisive factor in the CCP abandoning Zero COVID.

Given the emergence of the XBB.1.5 “Kraken” sublineage of the Omicron subvariant, alongside the mass infection of the Chinese population, viral evolution will continue unhindered, with the possibility that an even more concerning and horrific pathogen could evolve at any time.

Rather than taking a proper accounting of the dangers posed by these evolutionary leaps made by SARS-CoV-2, the corporate media and capitalist politicians throughout the world instead celebrate these reckless policies.

Fascists storm Brazilian government buildings two years after attempted coup at US Capitol

Tomas Castanheira

Thousands of supporters of Brazil’s fascistic former president Jair Bolsonaro invaded and occupied for more than three hours the headquarters of the three branches of government in Brasilia, the country’s capital, on Sunday. The protesters demanded a military coup to depose and imprison recently inaugurated President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party (PT).

Police stand aside as fascists invade Brazilian government buildings [Photo:Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil] [Photo: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil ]

This event marks a new stage in the explosive political crisis in Brazil and throughout Latin America. Happening only one week after Lula took office, it is a vivid verification of the opening phrases of the World Socialist Web Site’s New Year statement: “The celebration of the beginning of the New Year will be brief. The old year has passed into history, but its crises persist and will intensify.”

The January 8 invasion in Brasilia is the latest product in the conspiracy of Bolsonaro and his fascist allies against democracy in Brazil. Along with his Liberal Party (PL), the former president refused to recognize Lula’s victory and fomented a violent movement to contest the elections.

Yesterday’s action was directly inspired by, and in many ways an attempt to reenact, the invasion of the US Capitol in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021 by Donald Trump’s supporters. Bolsonaro has openly used the attempted fascist coup in the United States as a political guide.

While his son, Eduardo, was invited to watch the events directly in Washington, then-President Bolsonaro announced in January 2021 his intention to carry out his own version of Trump’s electoral coup. He said Brazil would have “worse problems than in the United States” in its elections.

Just as in Washington two years ago, the storming of the seats of governmental power by Bolsonaro’s fascist supporters had the decisive acquiescence of the police, the military and other sections of the state.

The day before, the daily O Estado de São Paulo had already reported that government intelligence reports indicated 100 buses with 3,900 people were heading to Brasilia for a demonstration on Sunday against Lula’s elected government. According to the same newspaper, the action had been announced on pro-Bolsonaro social media channels since January 3.

Schedules for buses taking demonstrators from different parts of the country to the capital were being publicly announced, with slogans like: “take over Brasília”; “occupy the Executive, Congress and STF”; “Plan B: all to Congress!”. One of the publicity videos called for a “generalized civil disobedience movement” on January 7 and 8 to “surround the [Presidential] Palace, not let any senator, minister, judge to enter,” and declare a “provisional government” that would later gain support from the military.

These people, brought by bus from other parts of the country, joined a smaller group of fascist foot soldiers encamped in front of Army headquarters in Brasilia since November. This encampment, cultivated by leaders of the Bolsonaro administration, served as an organizational center for systematic actions to overthrow the election results. Among them was a terrorist plot that included a failed bomb attack at the Brasilia Airport on December 24.

Despite having prior knowledge of the preparations for January 8 and having observed over months the actions of the fascists organizing it, the police forces in Brasilia deliberately allowed the plan to be executed.

Around 2 p.m., the protesters marched from the encampment at the Army headquarters to the Praça dos Três Poderes (Three Powers Plaza). Before 3 p.m. they were already inside the Congress, and soon took over the Presidential Palace and the Supreme Court.

Reporters from Estado de São Paulo present at the event stated: “More than three hours after the beginning of the invasion, the radicals were still arriving to reinforce their terrorist acts. They were passing in front of groups of police officers, who complacently remained inert without preventing the invaders’ access.”

The attitude of the policemen was not merely one of complacency, but rather of open admiration. Military police officers were recorded amiably chatting and taking selfies with the fascist demonstrators as they stormed the state buildings.

With the supposedly failed attempts by the Brazilian police—internationally recognized as one of the most violent and murderous repressive forces in the world—to contain the protest, the fascist mob had enough time and room to invade and wreck the buildings’ interiors. After retaking their headquarters, officials of the Lula government reported that the protesters stole weapons and ammunition from the Institutional Security Office (GSI).

Bolsonaro, who has been in Orlando since late December, having refused to participate in Lula’s inauguration, took to Twitter to publicly distance himself from what took place in Brasília. He wrote that “depredations and invasions of public buildings such as occurred today, as well as those practiced by the left in 2013 and 2017 [referring to popular protests with social demands], go beyond the rule.”

Bolsonaro’s attempt to disassociate himself from the actions in Brasília mimics Trump’s public posture on January 6, 2021. This latest act is inseparable from the entire plot to overthrow the elections that Bolsonaro personally prepared and led. And, while his direct involvement in yesterday’s events is yet to be proven, there is no possibility that he was not previously aware of what was to take place, and he only criticized it afterwards.

Despite recognizing the event as a serious threat, the PT administration’s reaction exposes both the impotence and the reactionary role of this political representative of the Brazilian ruling class.

In the late afternoon, Lula spoke out, condemning the attack and decreeing federal intervention in the Federal District (DF), which takes the security forces out of the hands of the state governor, Ibaneis Rocha, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), and puts them under the direct control of the federal government.

Lula described those who carried out the attack as “fanatical fascists” who “did what has never been done in the history of this country.” He said that “this genocidal [Bolsonaro]... not only stimulated this, but, who knows, is still stimulating it through social media... from Miami, where he went to rest. In fact, where he ran away so as not to deliver me the presidential sash.”

As Lula announced the federal intervention in Brasília, he publicly acknowledged that on Sunday and in other recent episodes, those responsible for the “public security of the Federal District” acted in “bad will or bad faith.” Speaking of Secretary of Security of the Federal District Anderson Torres, Lula declared that “his reputation of connivance with the demonstrations” is “known to all.”

Through its legal representative, the Attorney General’s office, Lula’s government demanded that the Federal Supreme Court (STF) immediately arrest Torres and all those involved in Sunday’s actions. Like Bolsonaro, Torres is in the United States. Late in the evening, the STF decreed the 90-day removal of Governor Ibaneis.

While Lula claims that his government took these actions “to guarantee once and for all that this will never happen again in Brazil,” these measures only touch the tip of the iceberg.

A critical section of the forces responsible for the fascist attacks on January 8 and in the preceding months in Brazil remain in powerful positions in the state apparatus and even on Lula’s own staff. In particular, the responsibility of Lula’s defense minister, José Múcio Monteiro, is flagrant.

Less than a week ago, Múcio publicly opposed any repression of the fascist movement that would go on to organize the invasion of the buildings housing the three branches of Brazil’s government and declared his sympathy for the participants. “Those demonstrations in the encampment, and I say this with great authority because I have family and friends there, are demonstrations of democracy,” the minister said.

On Sunday, Múcio visited the encampment in front of the Army headquarters, reportedly to inspect it and “feel the mood” of the demonstrators. Poder360 reported speaking with the minister at 2:27 p.m., just minutes before the Congress was stormed, quoting him as saying that the demonstration was “for now, calm.”

PT Congressman Washington Quaquá pointed out that besides Múcio, Minister of Justice Flávio Dino of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) had direct responsibility for what happened. He told Metrópoles: “Both Dino and Múcio were warned days ago about this invasion. This could never have happened. Dino and Múcio were inoperative.”

The PT’s choice of Múcio and other right-wing figures for leading positions in its government was not the product of poor decision making. They were selected precisely to facilitate an accommodation by the new government with the growing fascistic forces within the military and the state.

The efforts of the PT and its pseudo-left supporters in the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) to create illusions in the supposedly democratic inclinations of the rotten Brazilian bourgeoisie and its state—which can only generate political reaction—makes them politically responsible for the development of a fascist movement in Brazil.

Netanyahu’s far right government plans political control over Israel’s judiciary

Jean Shaoul

In its first major legislative initiative since taking office a week ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has unveiled proposals that will give politicians sweeping powers over Israel’s judiciary, which already leans to the hard right.

Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu (left) far-right Israeli lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich (right) and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (centre) and leaders of all Israel's political parties pose for a group photo after the swearing-in ceremony for lawmakers at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem, Tuesday, November 15, 2022. [AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov]

It paves the way for the government, made up of fascistic, ultra-nationalist and religious forces, to assume dictatorial powers. It heralds stepped up attacks on the Palestinians and a mounting assault on the social and democratic rights of all workers, Jewish and Palestinian, as Netanyahu cracks down on political dissent on behalf of Israel’s plutocrats.

This direct political assault on Israel’s already limited checks and balances—Israel has no constitution, just 12 Basic Laws—again explodes the myth that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

Ever since his indictment some years ago on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases now being heard in court, the scandal-ridden Netanyahu has waged a vociferous campaign against the judiciary, claiming he is the victim of a witch-hunt orchestrated by a hostile media, police and left-wing prosecutors.

He was able to form a majority government after five elections in four years only after brokering an electoral alliance between three far right and racist parties—Religious Zionism, Jewish Power and Noam—to ensure they met the threshold for entry into the 120-seat Knesset and bolster his bloc. No sooner had it won 14 seats in November’s elections, becoming the third largest party in the Knesset, than the electoral alliance broke up. Their agenda, which Netanyahu largely shares, is Jewish supremacy and apartheid rule, the annexation of large swathes of the West Bank, the expansion of illegal settlements and Jewish prayer at al-Aqsa Mosque.

Netanyahu tweeted, “The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel,” adding “The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel” that includes the West Bank, which has been occupied, and East Jerusalem, annexed, in breach of international law since the 1967 Arab Israel war.

Having welcomed their offer to introduce legislation banning the indictment of a sitting prime minister, he is utterly beholden to these forces, even though these policies risk an uprising in both the Palestinian territories and Israel itself, jeopardise Israel’s burgeoning relations with Arab states and cut across the Biden administration’s efforts to forge a regional alliance against Iran.

Last week, National Security Minister and Jewish Power leader Itamar Ben-Gvir staged a provocation, visiting the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City under heavy security protection as part of his campaign to enable Jews to pray at the site. He threatened anyone opposing this with reprisals, saying they “must be dealt with an iron fist.”

Under Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s plans, a simple majority in Israel’s single chamber parliament will be able to overrule High Court decisions that strike down laws. The High Court, which acts as both the Supreme Court, the highest court of appeal, and the body that hears petitions against government authorities, provides one of the few means of restraining government actions given that most laws can be changed with a simple majority and there is no second chamber to review or block legislation.

Yariv Levin [Photo by לילך שלי at he.wikipedia / CC BY-SA 3.0]

Since the start of judicial review in 1995 and a plethora of illiberal laws and actions, the High Court has opposed just 22 laws, often just an article or clause. But even this is too much for Netanyahu. In future, the High Court’s power to strike down laws will require an unspecified “special majority” of its 15 members. Even so, its decisions could be overridden by just 61 of the Knesset’s 120 lawmakers--although the Knesset would not be able to override High Court decisions backed by all 15 of its judges within the same parliamentary term.

Once this becomes law, Netanyahu’s far right government intends to scrap Supreme Court rulings outlawing Israeli settlement outposts on private Palestinian land in the West Bank. It would also overrule the Court’s decision that outlawed the protracted detention of African asylum seekers and another that mandates all Jewish citizens, including the ultra-Orthodox, to carry out military service.

Levin also plans for the government and its parliamentary allies to control the appointment of judges by stacking the committee of politicians and jurists that appoints and dismisses judges with its own politicians, ensuring rulings that match up the government’s Jewish Supremacy, religious and anti-LGBTQ agenda.

Under the new proposals, the advice of the government’s legal advisers would no longer be legally binding, ministers would be able appoint their own legal advisers instead of using independent professionals, while the High Court would no longer be allowed to use “reasonableness” as a criterion for determining whether or not government decisions are lawful.

The new legislation was announced the day before the High Court began hearing petitions against the appointment of Aryeh Deri, the leader of the Shas religious party, to head two ministries—Health and Interior—in the new government, in which the criterion of reasonableness is set to play a central role.

His appointment is opposed by the Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who argues that it “exceeds in the extreme the boundaries of reasonableness” given his conviction and jail sentence in 1999 for taking bribes and his conviction and suspended jail sentence last year for tax fraud. Campaigners argue that Deri’s appointment to the cabinet follows a legal amendment, brought in by the new government that allows those convicted of crimes who do not receive a jail sentence to become ministers, that is illegitimate.

A successful petition against Deri’s appointment would affect the viability of Netanyahu’s coalition, ensuring that the new law, if enacted, would trigger the first battle between the Supreme Court and the government, which would be able to overrule the court decision to pass the amendment and appoint Deri to the cabinet. Some 65 percent of Israelis, according to a Channel 13 poll, deem Deri’s appointment unacceptable in view of his record. 

Levin plans a second suite of measures that would split the attorney general’s role in two—one for the government’s legal adviser and the other for the state prosecutor. This would allow Netanyahu to replace Attorney General Baharav-Miara with a prosecutor of his choosing who would either revise or revoke the corruption charges against him.

Opposition politicians and judicial and legal figures have opposed the plans. Head of the Israel Bar Association Avi Himi said, 'The new government wants power without limits, without oversight and without restraints, and to turn the State of Israel from a Jewish, democratic and liberal country into a benighted one.' Amir Fuchs, a senior researcher at Jerusalem’s Israel Democracy Institute, said, “It will be a hollow democracy,” adding “When the government has ultimate power, it will use this power not only for issues of LGBTQ rights and asylum seekers but elections and free speech and anything it wants.”

Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid said merely that his opposition bloc would reverse the legislation 'the moment we return to power,' adding, 'Anyone who carries out a unilateral revolution against the system of government in Israel should know that we are in no way committed to it.'

The Biden administration, which loses no opportunity to claim human rights and democracy as the basis for its military interventions, while refusing to prosecute any of the leaders of the January 6 coup including the ringleader Donald Trump, voiced no opposition to Netanyahu’s assumption of dictatorial powers.  Tom Nides, US ambassador to Israel, said that keeping the countries’ “shared values” in mind, Washington would not rush to judgment.

On Saturday evening, there was a mass rally of some 20,000 people in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square protesting the new government and the proposed law. One march was organized by Standing Together that promotes Jewish and Arab equality and partnership, and another focused specifically on the threat to the country's justice system. Protesters carried banners saying, “Democracy in danger,” “Together against fascism and apartheid” and “Housing, Livelihood, Hope,” while others carried rainbow flags.

Netanyahu denounced the protests, criticizing banners comparing justice minister Levin to a Nazi and signs calling to “Free Palestine from [the] Zionist colonial regime.” He demanded an end to the demonstrations he said were acts of “wild incitement that went uncondemned by the opposition or the mainstream media. I demand that everyone stop this immediately.”

Mandatory overtime is increasingly the norm for Canadian workers

Steve Hill & Dylan Lubao

The eight-hour working day and forty-hour workweek are increasingly becoming a relic of the past in Canada and internationally. These fundamental advances, which workers fought and died for over the course of a century and a half, are now effectively a dead letter.

A scaffolder in Alberta [Photo: Government of Alberta]

In spite of extraordinary technological progress and unprecedented productivity, workers in every industry are working longer for less. The endless drive for higher profits has corporations and capitalist governments forcing workers to run themselves ragged, while criminalizing efforts by workers to resist these edicts. The pro-capitalist unions, which function as an arm of management, dutifully enforce this retrogression in working conditions.

In August 2022, to protest low pay and poor working conditions at energy company Suncor’s oil sands operations in northern Alberta, scaffolders employed by AlumaSafway refused to work beyond their ten-hour shifts and instead only fulfilled their contractual obligations.

Acting on Suncor’s behalf, AlumaSafway responded by filing a case with the Alberta Labour Relations Board (ALRB). The board declared the workers’ protest an “illegal strike” because workers had circulated an anonymous letter recommending that they refuse to accept the “voluntary” assignment and had thus acted in a coordinated manner. The ALRB backed this ruling with the threat of civil or criminal penalties.

In response, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC), which represents the scaffolders, merely posted a copy of the ALRB order on its website without comment. They did not so much as issue a protest in defence of the workers.

This situation is not unique to Canada or anywhere in the industrialized world. The Canada Labour Code, which oversees federally regulated industries, only allows a worker to refuse overtime to address a family member’s health care or educational issues, and only if “reasonable” steps to solve the issue have already been taken. Provincial labour boards across the country like the ALRB have ruled that workers cannot refuse overtime if they have regularly worked overtime in the past.

Mandatory overtime, or “voluntary” overtime under duress, is the norm for millions of Canadian workers. Adding to the mounting pressure on workers is the record number of job vacancies in the economy, which peaked at one million in May 2022. With fewer workers available to satisfy the demand for profit, employers are squeezing the workers they do have for harder work and longer hours.

A major driver of this phenomenon is the attrition of the workforce caused by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed thousands of workers and forced many more into early retirement due to burnout or the effects of Long COVID. Furthermore, an aging population is leaving the workforce, with retirements up 50 percent year-on-year as of August.

Public and private sector workers affected

One of the hardest hit sectors is health care, where more than one in five nurses worked overtime (21.6 percent) as of July, more than double the national average of 9.7 percent. Here, the burden of the capitalist “let it rip” pandemic policy is felt most keenly. Nursing job vacancies totaled 23,620 in the first quarter of 2022, or more than triple the number from 2017.

A November 2022 study from the Canadian Institute for Health Information found that 45 percent of paramedics, 34 percent of salaried family doctors, and 31 percent of respiratory therapists worked overtime in 2021.

Health care workers across the country often work long overtime hours to prop up a collapsing public health system, which is buckling under the weight of the pandemic after decades of systematic underfunding via capitalist austerity measures.

In Quebec, years of government budget cuts, health care rationing, and privatization by the Liberals, Parti Québécois (PQ), and now Coalition Avenir Québéc (CAQ) have resulted in inadequate resources, short-staffing and forced overtime. Even prior to the pandemic, many Quebec nurses were routinely compelled to work extra shifts, depriving them of the personal and family time needed to physically and psychologically recuperate from their jobs. Since 2021, a wave of sit-ins by nurses has swept hospitals across Quebec to protest short-staffing and forced overtime.

It was the unions that proposed the PQ government of Lucien Bouchard use a scheme of voluntary retirements to slash health care spending in the late 1990s. Under this scheme, the government permanently eliminated tens of thousands of health care jobs, thereby diminishing the quality of care available to Quebecers, and significantly increasing the workload for the nurses and other health care workers who remained.

This process is replicated across the country. In Ontario, hundreds of thousands of health care workers have endured decades of pay cuts, which were extended in 2019 by Tory Premier Doug Ford’s Bill 124, capping public sector wage increases at 1 percent per year.

Union officials have not lifted a finger to mobilize their members for a political struggle against these disastrous conditions. On the contrary, they have served as the chief obstacle to all efforts by workers to fight back, whether it be against wage restraint or dangerous working conditions produced by the ruling elite’s decision to let COVID-19 run rampant. Thousands of workers have left the public sector, compounding staff shortages and the need for overtime.

At the start of 2022, American railroad workers at the railway BNSF became subject to a punitive points-based “Hi-Viz” attendance policy. The policy, which effectively leaves workers on-call 24/7, binds workers entirely to their jobs with no time left over for their families.

Although all 120,000 railroad workers in the US were in strike position and were determined to overturn near-identical conditions across the industry, their unions barred them from striking and conspired with the Democratic Biden administration and railroad corporations to impose a sellout contract, which Congress enacted in December through a bipartisan vote.

Working in excess of ten to twenty additional hours per week is the norm, not the exception, for workers in industries like auto manufacturing. After decades during which unions like the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the US and UNIFOR in Canada imposed two-tier wage systems and rollbacks to benefits and pensions, workers have no choice but to chain themselves to their workstations just to make ends meet.

The workers movement and the fight for the eight-hour day

The achievement of the eight-hour day was the product of sustained struggle by the working class throughout the period of capitalist economic development, culminating with the conquest of power by the working class under the leadership of the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the working day ranged from 10 to 16 hours, the work week was typically six days long, and the use of child labour was common. When the International Workingmen’s Association took up the demand for an eight-hour day at its Congress in Geneva in 1866, it declared, “The legal limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvements and emancipation of the working class must prove abortive… The Congress proposes eight hours as the legal limit of the working day.”

In addressing the deleterious health effects of long working hours, Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital (1867), “By extending the working day, therefore, capitalist production… not only produces a deterioration of human labour power by robbing it of its normal moral and physical conditions of development and activity, but also produces the premature exhaustion and death of this labour power itself.”

Legislation limiting the working day was a fundamental conquest of militant labour struggles going back to the early part of the 19th century. The first Canadian legislation giving protection to unions emerged in 1872 in the aftermath of an unsuccessful agitation for a nine-hour day led by the Toronto Typographical Union. This was a common demand of the 1860s and 1870s in both Europe and North America. The first May Day, on May 1, 1886, saw 300,000 workers walk off the job across the United States in support of the demand for an eight-hour day.

The Soviet Union was the first country to adopt the eight-hour work day for all professions in 1917. In the industrialized nations, the eight-hour day was primarily a result of militant struggles led by socialist-minded workers in the 1920s and 1930s, inspired by the October Revolution in Russia. Canada adopted the forty-hour work week in the 1960s, but there has been constant pressure by employers, and constant concessions by the unions, which have weakened that provision ever since.

The current situation for workers has been decades in the making. Twenty years ago, under the banner of Ontario Premier Mike Harris’ “Common Sense Revolution,” the Tory government removed longstanding limits on the length of the workweek and changed the way in which overtime pay is calculated to the detriment of workers. This helped set a precedent for similar attacks by other provincial and state governments across North America.

As we wrote in September, “While big business is free to utilize all the instruments of the state apparatus and the courts to criminalize worker opposition to its relentless drive for profits, workers are prevented at every turn from responding collectively. The so-called ‘labour relations’ system, including collective bargaining, would in fact better be termed ‘labour enforcement’ by a collective dictatorship of businesses, trade union bureaucrats and governments over the working class. There is no way for workers to defend even their most basic interests through these rigged institutions of bourgeois class rule.”

Japan’s healthcare system pushed to collapse by COVID-19 cases

Ben McGrath

Japan is currently experiencing one of its worst COVID-19 surges since the pandemic began three years ago. Total official cases have now exceeded more than 30 million while deaths reached 60,000 on Sunday. Both are underestimates of the real figures and the overall toll of the pandemic. None of this gives the government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pause as it presses ahead with the removal of remaining mitigation measures.

People wearing face masks flock to a shopping street famous for a year-end shopping before New Year holidays in Tokyo, Friday, Dec. 30, 2022. [AP Photo/Hiro Komae]

On January 5, Japan reported a single-day record high of 498 deaths, a fact that exposes the official lie that the pandemic is over. In December alone, official deaths spiked sharply with approximately 10,000 people succumbing to the virus. In comparison, it took 14 months to first reach the first 10,000 deaths in the pandemic while it took only four months to rise from 40,000 to 50,000.

Daily new cases have skyrocketed over the past two months reaching well over 200,000, following relatively low figures in October after the summer surge. Now, at least 12 prefectures have posted record-high cases, while nine have had record-high numbers of deaths. The highest daily case number was recorded on January 6 with 245,542, coming close to the record peak of 261,252 on August 19.

The true extent of the situation is not known as infected people recovering at home are not recorded as official cases. In addition, the dangerous new XBB.1.5 variant has also been detected in Japan, believed to be the most immune-evasive strain yet, meaning vaccination and previous infections offer little or no protection.

The real situation is therefore far more serious than presented by the government and in the media, which are inundating the public with claims that the pandemic is finished. Toho University Professor Tateda Kazuhiro, who sits on the government’s COVID-19 advisory board, warned that cases could rise later this month as high as 450,000 per day.

Excess deaths point to the real impact of the pandemic. In August, during the height of the summer surge, approximately 7,000 people died from infection with COVID-19, according to Health Ministry figures. However, the National Institute of Infectious Diseases estimated in the same month that there were between 12,000 and 17,000 excess deaths.

According to figures released last February, the year 2021 set a record for the number of deaths in the post-war period with 1,452,289, driven by the Delta variant of COVID-19. This was an increase of 67,745 deaths over the previous year. Similarly high numbers are expected for 2022 as a result of the spread of the numerous Omicron subvariants.

Hospital bed occupancy rates are rising, with beds for COVID-19 patients in Tokyo for example filled to 55.3 percent of capacity as of January 5. Patients are also being admitted to hospitals for different ailments and becoming infected.

In an interview with Tokai TV, Dr. Kobayashi, head of the Sakura General Hospital in the town of Oguchi, Aichi Prefecture, stated that the official prefectural hospital bed occupancy rate of 70 percent did not reflect the true situation. “We’re actually at 95 percent or more,” he said. “No mistake about it. We’re on the eve of collapse. If this wave continues for much longer, or if another wave strikes before this one recedes, we’re in a state where collapse is going to be imminent. I can say that with certainty.”

Doctors in Fukuoka Prefecture are warning that they can only accept the most severe cases, despite an official bed occupancy rate of just 8.2 percent. Following a record number of deaths of 36 in the prefecture on January 6, Dr. Ishikura Hiroyasu, head of Fukuoka University Hospital Emergency and Critical Care Center, warned: “People on respirators are in critical condition, so others are dying before even having the opportunity to get hooked on the respirator. This is what contributes to the rise in the death count, and I think when such a rise begins, it is the start of collapse for health care.”

The pandemic continues to have a serious impact on patients with other conditions as well. The number of cases where ambulances transporting patients in the country’s 52 major metropolitan areas rose to 7,158 during the week of December 26, exceeding the previous record-high from the week earlier by 358 cases.

Government officials have tried to downplay the recent surge. One official from Kumamoto Prefecture telling the media, “The reports may have been concentrated because medical facilities were closed during the year-end and New Year holidays. We need to see how the situation develops.”

As part of dismantling necessary public health measures, the government has restricted the free availability of the more reliable PCR tests. People showing symptoms can get tested while those who are asymptomatic and have not been referred by a doctor must pay for a test or are simply unable to access one at all. It is designed to prevent workers from accessing reliable testing and keeping them on the job.

The government is also planning to lower COVID-19 from its current classification as a Category II infectious disease to Category V, the lowest in the tier system. The move would make it easier to keep infected people working and further reduce reporting of new cases, while justifying ending the indoor mask-wearing requirement. Prime Minister Kishida made clear that the economy was at the heart of these changes, saying on December 26, “We hope to fully take back normal life and achieve a strong economic rebound next year.”

Travel has been renewed, with Tokyo aiming to bring in 5 trillion yen ($US37.9 billion) in annual tourist spending. On December 21, the Japan National Tourism Organization reported that the number of foreign travelers to Japan the previous month reached 934,500. It was the first full month in which mitigation measures for travelers had been fully scrapped.

At the same time, Japan is imposing restrictions on travelers from mainland China, demanding a negative PCR test upon arrival. Travelers from Hong Kong and Macao are exempt, even as both places have experienced a spike in new cases. This measure has nothing to do with stopping the spread of the virus, but instead is meant to further demonize China in the minds of the public. All of this demonstrates that the pandemic in Japan, as around the world, is far from over.