Sudan’s military junta to normalise relations with Israel amid massive crackdown on Palestinians

Jean Shaoul

As the new far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ramps up its murderous repression of the Palestinians, the head of Sudan’s military junta, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has agreed to “normalise” relations with Israel in the near future.

It is yet another sordid betrayal of the Palestinians by an Arab regime that has barely been reported in the Arab media, much less commented upon or criticised.

Sudan's head of the military, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, speaks during a press conference at the General Command of the Armed Forces in Khartoum, Sudan, October 26, 2021. [AP Photo/Marwan Ali, File]

The announcement came during Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen’s visit to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, where he also discussed military and security issues. The signing ceremony of the peace agreement “will take place in a few months’ time in Washington after the establishment of a civilian government… as part of the ongoing transition process in the country,” according to a statement issued by Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

Sudan follows the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain—unquestionably given the nod by Saudi Arabia—and Morocco, which normalised relations with Israel under the “Abraham Accords” brokered by the Trump administration and Egypt and Jordan, which recognised Israel in 1979 and 1994 respectively. These agreements, establishing diplomatic and trade relations, ended the state of war and boycott by members of the Arab League since the establishment of the state of Israel, the Arab–Israeli War and the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.

The agreements made visible their back-channel security, intelligence and commercial dealings with Israel and their repudiation of any commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital—based on Israel’s full withdrawal from the territories captured in the 1967 Arab Israeli war—and a “just settlement” of the Palestinian refugee problem based on UN Resolution 194.

It was in Khartoum after the 1967 Arab Israeli war that the Arab League famously inaugurated its “three nos” policy in relation to Israel: no peace, no recognition and no negotiations. Now, as far as the Arab regimes are concerned, the Palestinians no longer matter.

While Sudan had accepted the Abraham Accords in November 2020, signing with the US in exchange for a package of vital financial incentives, including Sudan’s long-awaited removal from Washington’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, it had not signed the agreement with Israel. Discussions stalled after the military’s sacking of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and his transitional civilian government in October 2021, when the Biden administration suspended $700 million in financial assistance to Sudan.

Cohen, speaking at a press conference Thursday, said that the visit to Sudan laid “the foundations for a historic peace agreement with a strategic Arab and Muslim country. The peace agreement between Israel and Sudan will promote regional stability and contribute to the national security of the State of Israel.” The signing would “serve as an opportunity for the establishment of relations with other countries in Africa as well as the strengthening of existing ties with African countries.”

Sudan occupies a strategically important location on the shores of the Red Sea, between Egypt and Eritrea, where it controls maritime routes. It borders on Ethiopia, one of Israel’s most important allies on the African continent, whose leader Abiy Ahmed paid his first visit to Sudan since the military coup.

Under longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir, who was aligned with Qatar, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood and had supported Hamas, the bourgeois clerical group that controls the Gaza Strip, Sudan was subject on several occasions to Israeli bombings of convoys allegedly carrying weapons and ammunition to Hamas.

Al-Burhan, following his pre-emptive military coup in the face of mass protests against al-Bashir in April 2019, has repudiated Sudan’s alliance with the Palestinians and Hamas, to secure security and trade deals with Israel. This was part of a bid to win favour with Washington, amid a deepening economic and political crisis. While he announced a framework deal in December, after months of protests and repression in which 120 protesters were killed—for a two-year civilian transition towards elections—it is widely viewed as yet another fraudulent cover for military rule and has been met with mass protests.

Protesters march on Friday, July 1, 2022 in Khartoum, Sudan, a day after nine people were killed in demonstrations against the country’s ruling generals. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali)

The US Biden administration is determined to sever Sudan’s relationship with Iran, Russia and China, close Sudan’s large Red Sea port of Port Sudan to the Russian navy, and strengthen its regional anti-Iran alliance.

The UAE, which has signed extensive commercial deals to open economic zones and ports in Sudan, and Egypt have welcomed normalization. Hamas condemned the move, which “contradicts the general Sudanese stance that is against the normalization of ties with the Israeli occupation state and supports the just Palestinian cause” and called “on the Sudanese leadership to backtrack on this decision that contradicts the interests of the brotherly people of Sudan and would only serve the Israeli occupation’s agenda.”

This latest normalisation deal deepens the treacherous role of the Arab bourgeoisie, which has now formally buried its own “two state” solution and confirms that the nationalist agenda championed by all sections of the Palestinian bourgeoisie provides no way forward for the decades-long struggle of the workers and oppressed masses.

On Thursday, Chad's President Mahamat Idriss Deby, who took power after his father, the dictator Idriss Deby, was killed by rebel forces in 2021, opened the country’s embassy in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv, some 50 years after diplomatic ties were severed in 1972. Chad is a member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), founded in 1969 after a fire in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem apparently started by a Christian fundamentalist. Like the Arab League the OIC is ostensibly committed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a boycott of Israeli products to pressure Israel into ending the occupation. In establishing relations with Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world, Netanyahu is signaling that the Palestinians do not figure on the agenda of either the Arab or Muslim states.

These developments come just weeks after the installation of the most far-right government in Israel’s history, one that includes fascistic and racist parties based on Jewish settlers, and ultra-Orthodox parties which seek to suppress not only the Palestinians but the more secular sections of the Jewish population.

It has stepped up Israel’s already savage repression of the Palestinians in pursuit of its programme of accelerated settlement expansion and moves towards full annexation of the Palestinian territories illegally occupied since the 1967 Arab Israeli war. This is combined with imposing even more pervasive apartheid conditions for Palestinians, including legislation making it easier to disqualify Arab legislators, and provocations at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Last year, 231 Palestinians lost their lives in extra-judicial killings at the hands of the Israeli military and settlers, the highest number since 2005. Some 35 Palestinians have already been killed this year. One factor in the massive raid on Jenin by the Israel military last month that left 10 dead and 20 injured—as well as terrorising the Palestinian population—was to provoke retaliation by desperate Palestinians to deflect anger against the government outwards and demobilise the anti-government protests.

A key element in Netanyahu’s expansionist plans at the expense of both the Palestinians and the Israeli working class is his bolstering of the government’s powers—to be achieved by neutering the judiciary. This is in the service of Israel’s plutocrats, ruling over one of the most socially polarised countries in the OECD group of advanced economies, raising the spectre of civil war.

The court “reform” plan has sparked mass opposition, with weekly demonstrations protesting the government’s plans. Saturday witnessed the fifth such protest with widening participation across the country as tens of thousands took to the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and other towns and cities. Anti-occupation groups including Combatants for Peace, Machsom Watch, Peace Now and A Land for All, took part in a separate demonstration in Tel Aviv under the slogan, “There is no democracy with occupation.”

Demonstrations were also held in some 20 cities in North America, Europe and Australia.

The recent events have exposed the twin political myths of the Middle East. First, the transformation of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation into a repressive adjunct of the Israeli state, and by extension US imperialism—imposing impoverishment of the Palestinian masses—refutes the notion that bourgeois nationalism, even in its most radical form of the armed struggle, could end the oppression of the Arab masses. Second, the emergence of a fascistic government in Israel and the very real prospect of civil war shatters any conception that the establishment of a Jewish state based on the dispossession and removal of the Palestinian people could provide a safe haven for the Jewish people.

Crisis deepens in Australia’s emergency departments

John Mackay

Emergency departments (EDs) across Australia face a growing crisis in 2023, with reports of long wait times, life-threatening delays and dangerous understaffing.

A recent survey by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) highlighted a national shortage of emergency doctors. The survey found ED directors were expecting widespread shortages in 2023, including shortfalls of 28 percent for specialist trainees, 30 percent for junior medical officers and 10 percent for senior decision-makers. The ACEM said this was a product of staff leaving due to unsustainable working conditions.

ICU nurses protesting outside Westmead Hospital on January 19, 2022. [Photo: NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association]

The crisis is particularly acute in rural, regional and remote EDs, where staff shortages are as high as 85 percent for specialist trainee roles, 66 percent for junior medical officer positions and 22 percent for senior decision-making roles.

In December, the Age reported that Victorian EDs were experiencing such a significant staffing crisis that they were often forced to run at reduced capacity and many staff were working double or extra shifts to cover absences. Doctors expressed concern that smaller EDs, particularly in regional areas, would be forced to close because they could not operate safely.

Dr Andy Tagg, deputy chair of ACEM’s Victorian faculty, told the Age that EDs were regularly short of junior doctors, nurses and senior consultants. ACEM President Dr Clare Skinner said burnt-out colleagues were facing “some of the busiest, most crowded shifts they’ve ever worked in their lives.” There were “significant” numbers of patients with COVID or disease exacerbated by COVID.

Senior emergency doctor Simon Judkins told the Age some EDs, particularly those in regional areas of Victoria, could be considered “sometimes unsafe” due to the lack of staff.

He said: “I think there’s a lot of EDs moving into [2023] who are really looking at their roster templates and thinking ‘how the hell are we actually going to get by? There [are] so many gaps in their rosters that they are concerned about the safety of their ED.”

Understaffing has been exacerbated by the ongoing wave of COVID-19 infections, the product of the “let it rip” COVID policies embraced by all Australian governments, federal and state alike. In the second week of December, some 1,500 staff were unable to work due to COVID-19 infection across Victorian hospitals.

The crisis in emergency care is reflected in figures tabled in the Victorian state parliament last month, which showed hundreds of people have waited more than 24 hours in emergency departments. Western Health, which serves a major working-class region of the state’s capital, was the worst performing area. Sunshine Hospital emergency department recorded 366 patients forced to wait more than 24 hours for treatment in 2021-22. At Footscray hospital, 65 people waited more than 24 hours.

This crisis is mirrored across the country. Bed-block and increased ambulance ramping outside overcrowded emergency departments have been reported in every state and territory in recent months.

In Queensland, recent government figures show that between June and September, 6,979 patients waited more than 24 hours in emergency departments, across the state’s 26 largest hospitals.

In Western Australia, ambulances spent 66,000 hours ramped outside hospitals in 2022, the worst annual figure on record.

In New South Wales, between July and September 2022, just 65.6 percent of ED patients were treated within the timeframe appropriate for the severity of their injury or illness, 9 percentage points lower than in 2021. In working-class Western Sydney, just 43.2 percent of patients received timely emergency care, down from 52.4 percent the previous year.

The healthcare crisis was also highlighted in South Australia last month, with the resignation of a high-ranking emergency physician from Royal Adelaide Hospital. Dr Megan Brooks issued a four-page letter warning that the hospital’s emergency department lacked the “resources to provide timely and safe patient care.”

Focusing her criticism on the hospital’s finance and planning leadership, she wrote: “If the clinical teams conducted our work with the same flagrant disregard for basic governance processes and professionalism, we would be at risk of being barred from clinical practice… It offends our very humanity, and flies in the face of all that we are trained to do… we have looked every one of those patients in the eye and been forced to decide that another human being needs care before them.”

In response to the letter, state Labor Health Minister Chris Picton acknowledged the hospital system was suffering from “years of neglect.” The Labor party regained office in South Australia last year after a campaign focused on the disastrous state of the public health system. But when Labor was last in office, from 2002 to 2018, it slashed health spending, presided over rising levels of ambulance “ramping” and shut down hospitals, including the Adelaide General Repatriation Hospital. Labor, moreover, has accelerated the “let it rip” COVID policies that are overwhelming the healthcare system.

At the end of December, the Tasmanian branch of ACEM issued a press release entitled “Tasmania’s emergency doctors: healthcare staff are breaking,” after a “code yellow” was issued at the Royal Hobart Hospital. Dr Juan Asceno-Lane, Tasmanian chair of ACEM, explained: “What [a code yellow] means, in real life, is that the hospital and interconnected health system are overwhelmed. There are far too many sick and injured people, and there are not enough trained staff and beds to cope with demand.”

Asceno-Lane continued: “No one wants to watch elderly patients, who are so confused and disorientated from being stuck in the ED for days and days, due to a lack of spaces in care or hospital, that they must be sedated.”

The nationwide crisis is the product of decades of funding cuts to public healthcare under successive state and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National. This offensive is only being deepened under the Albanese Labor government.

Federal budget papers handed down in October revealed payments to the states and territories for public hospitals are expected to decrease by more than $755 million this financial year and $2.4 billion over four years.

The Labor government has also refused to increase Medicare consultation rates for doctors, which have been frozen for most of the past decade. This is increasingly driving doctors, including GPs, to abandon “bulk-billing” and demand up-front payments from patients that will only be partially reimbursed. Those who cannot afford to pay are forced to attend hospital emergency clinics for medical assistance, putting further strain on public hospital emergency departments.

US media whips up anti-Chinese hysteria over balloon flight

Andre Damon

Over the past four days, the American population has been subjected to a barrage of war propaganda over the claim that China sent a huge balloon visible to the naked eye to spy on US nuclear bases.

The media machine is operating at full throttle. Since the balloon’s existence was publicly announced last week, breathless coverage has provided minute-by-minute updates on the progress of the floating white balloon as it slowly traversed across the continental United States. The story led every newspaper for days, was the first item on the evening news broadcasts, and dominated the 24-hour cable news networks.

A Chinese balloon drifts over Myrtle Beach, South Carolina shortly before being shot down by an US F-22 fighter jet. [Photo by Russotp / CC BY-SA 4.0]

On Friday, former President Donald Trump called for the balloon to be shot down—a demand that was repeated by Republican and Democratic politicians. On Saturday, under orders from Biden, the US Air Force shot down the balloon, in the first US attack on a Chinese aircraft since the Korean War.

On Friday, a day after the existence of the balloon was publicly announced, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled his scheduled trip to China, which had been promoted as part of a supposed rapprochement between the two countries.

All of the media coverage has accepted the unsubstantiated claim that the airship was a secret Chinese “surveillance balloon” specifically targeting US military installations.

While the specific purpose of the balloon cannot be definitively stated, the notion that the Chinese government is seeking to secretly obtain vital information on US nuclear weapons by means of a gigantic and clearly visible object slowly passing through US airspace is, to put it mildly, ludicrous.

Far more likely is the account given by Beijing, that the high-altitude balloon was conducting meteorological surveillance and was blown off course, entering the United States on January 28. “It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes,” China’s Foreign Ministry said. “Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course.”

NASA has launched dozens of balloon missions similar to the one destroyed by the US Air Force on Saturday. According to a NASA presentation by University of Hawaii Professor Peter Gortham, “Balloons offer flight opportunities for unique science investigations that require, or can be done in, near-space.”

According to the website of NASA’s arctic balloon program, “Scientists use scientific data collected during balloon flights to help answer important questions about the universe, atmosphere, the Sun and the space environment.”

A worker helps inflate NASA’s super pressure balloon, launched from Wanaka Airport, New Zealand, in 2016. Scientists regularly launch balloons into the atmosphere to study physics and meteorology. [Photo: NASA/Bill Rodman]

In publications that are written primarily for those within the state apparatus, a more sober assessment can be found. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a leading think tank connected to US intelligence agencies, commented on Friday that “the most likely explanation is that this is an errant weather balloon that went astray—lost weather balloons are the basis of many ‘UFO sightings.’”

The CSIS added that the incident is “embarrassing for China, and some Chinese meteorologist may be packing his or her bags for reassignment to Inner Mongolia.”

But in the media, such an appraisal is nowhere to be found. That the white orb is a “spy balloon” is taken as fact, and no section of the US media has even suggested the possibility of the most routine and reasonable explanation—that this was a peaceful research mission just like NASA has conducted dozens of times.

Instead, the Biden administration, working together with the Republican Party and with the support of the US media, seized on the opportunity to whip up anti-Chinese hate and xenophobia.

The aim of this campaign is to condition the public to accept US plans for war with China that have been years in the making, and to construe China, which the United States is encircling with offensive missiles just miles from its coastline, as the aggressor in the Sino-American conflict.

The script of this week’s “imminent threat” is well-worn. This type of wall-to-wall media hysteria was used to justify the 1991 Gulf War, the 1998 bombing of Yugoslavia, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the 2011 bombings of Syria and Libya. All of these claims—above all the Bush administration’s assertions that the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction”—turned out to be nothing more than hot air.

But the media, acting as if the American people are all idiots, is reprising its role, hoping it will have the time-tested result of laying the groundwork for America’s next “war of choice.” This time, the target is not an impoverished former colony, but China, the world’s second-largest economy with the world’s second-largest military budget.

Even as the US and NATO powers recklessly escalate the war with Russia over Ukraine, the ruling class is preparing for a conflict with China, for which the war against Russia has been viewed as a necessary precondition.

In 2018, the United States adopted a National Security Strategy that urged the Pentagon to make its highest priority preparing for a war with China. While the military was operating with this conception, the US media kept these plans secret from the American population.

But this week’s media hysteria over the balloon was used to introduce the concept of a potential war with China as a positive good, which the United States needs to prepare for.

The declaration by Air Force General Mike Minihan that the US faces a war with China by 2025 has been treated by the media as a sage and impartial warning.

He called for building “a fortified, ready, integrated, and agile Joint Force Maneuver Team ready to fight and win inside the first island chain,” referring to Taiwan, Japan, and other islands off the coast of China.

Implying that large numbers of his command will die in such a war, Minihan instructed them to “consider their personal affairs and whether a visit should be scheduled with their servicing base legal office to ensure they are legally ready and prepared.”

Chuck Todd, moderator of Meet the Press, asked Democratic Senator Cory Booker, “Are you going to be supporting whatever it takes to prepare for war with China over Taiwan? Do we need to do more to prepare for that potential?”

In just the past week, the United States announced a plan to put additional bases in the Philippines from which it could launch attacks on China. Biden also held discussions with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on the remilitarization of the country in preparation for a conflict with China.

The entire incident is a lesson in how the media works to advance US war plans, promoting trumped-up threats against the US and covering up the US’s aggressive actions against the targets of its wars.

The latest campaign to demonize China has parallels to the promotion by both the Trump and Biden administrations of the Wuhan lab lie, the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created by scientific research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Podemos bemoans crackdown in Peru, but arms Peru’s regime against the workers

Alejandro López

The bloody police-state repression unleashed on the Peruvian workers and youth by the regime of Dina Boluarte, which was installed in a US- and EU-backed coup, is again exposing Spain’s ruling pseudo-left party, Podemos.

Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, January 13, 2020. [AP Photo/Manu Fernandez]

Protests have continued for seven weeks since the installation of the Boluarte regime, which has responded with a bloody crackdown. Mass arrests are underway. More than 60 people have been killed, including minors, and nearly 1,000 injured as the Peruvian regime unleashes police armed with tear gas, rubber bullets, and armored vehicles on protesters.

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos coalition government is firmly on the side of the coup against the Peruvian workers.

Last week, Podemos lawmaker and first secretary of parliament, Gerardo Pisarello, publicly insisted his government was shocked and dismayed by the violence in Peru. He declared: “I cannot begin my speech on foreign policy without first expressing our deep concern about the repressive violence that has been unleashed against the civilian population in Peru in recent weeks.” He called on “the Government of Dina Boluarte to end the repression and persecution of community leaders, and ensure Peruvians’ legitimate right to protest.”

This was a cynical and lying exercise in political damage control, after Amnesty International issued a report showing that the Peruvian regime was using riot control equipment sold to it by the PSOE and Podemos to crack down on Peruvian workers and youth.

Amnesty International estimates that between 2017 and June 2022, the PSOE-Podemos government exported millions of euros worth in arms to Peru, including €4.7 million in light arms, €2.4 million worth of ammunition and close to €1 million in riot control weapons. Over the same period, it issued licences authorising the export of €184 million in arms to Peru, of which about €40 million were riot control material.

This was when the PSOE and Podemos were in power, first in a PSOE-led minority government backed by Podemos from 2018 to January 2020, and in a coalition government since then. The WSWS reported in 2021 that the PSOE Podemos-government is a “leading exporter in police and riot gear as the global financial aristocracy faces mass social opposition to its policies of austerity, militarism and malign neglect in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.” These weapons are now being used against workers in Peru.

Amnesty International has requested the suspension of these exports in a letter addressed to the Spanish Secretary of State for Commerce, Xiana Margarida Méndez. It requests that—in accordance with the Arms Trade Treaty, which obliges not to authorise exports when there is a substantial risk of serious human rights violations—the PSOE-Podemos government should revoke authorisation of exports of lethal and anti-riot material. This letter has been ignored.

The export of riot control material under Podemos was not an oversight or a passing error of this pseudo-left party. Indeed, Podemos placed calls for the mass export of lethal weaponry to military dictatorships and right-wing regimes at the centre of its economic policies.

In October 2020, Podemos’ Defence spokesman Roberto Uriarte spoke at the Information Defence Forum in parliament to call for export diversification and more research in the arms industry. The industry should not “put all their eggs in one basket,” he said. Instead, he added, “The defence industry must base its growth on the diversification of its solutions and on the search for new markets abroad, so that the Ministry of Defence is not the only client of the weapons industry.”

Uriarte called on Spain to export arms to regimes around the world. “We should not only sell [arms] in a monoculture fashion to the monarchies of the Persian Gulf,” he said. Spain, he insisted, must “implement public policies and facilitate the internationalisation” of weapons sales. He called for investment in research and development, which requires “long-term policies, little demagogy and a lot of sacrifice and dedication.”

Podemos acted on its call for a massive expansion of Spanish arms exports. Under Podemos, Spain climbed from the 11th-largest arms exporter worldwide in 2016 to the seventh in 2020—a position it still has today. It only lags behind the major imperialist countries like the US, Britain, Germany and France and world powers such as Russia and China. Spain’s military-industrial complex is a pillar of its economy, employing 21,000 people and generating an annual turnover of €6.2 billion.

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic killed hundreds of thousands across Spain and Europe, the PSOE-Podemos government authorised weapons sales worth a record €22.5 billion.

Amid NATO’s rapidly-escalating war with Russia in Ukraine, Podemos is working to ramp up its arms sales. Spain’s arms industry is set for record profits after the PSOE-Podemos government passed its 2023 budget, with the largest increase in military spending in Spanish history. This spending will total over €12.8 billion next year, up from around €10 billion in 2022. This is in line with Madrid’s pledge to NATO to increase its defence budget to 2 percent of GDP by 2029.

According to data from the Delàs Center for Peace Studies, Madrid’s real military spending—which includes, besides the Ministry of Defence budget, other items of a military nature purchased by the Spanish government—will be €27 billion, or €75.7 million per day. A large portion of this spending, €4.9 billion, is allocated to “special modernisation programmes,” which mostly go to Spanish arms companies.

The Barcelona-based daily La Vanguardia recently published an article titled “Historic boost to the defence industry” hailing the military escalation launched by Podemos. Arms manufacturers like Airbus, Navantia, GDELS-Santa Bárbara and Indra are those, it wrote, that the PSOE-Podemos government “wants to convert into the spearhead of a long-term country operation to strengthen the sector. For them there will be a shower of millions.”

It hailed the surge in state handouts to the arms manufacturers launched by Podemos, adding: “The opportunity is unprecedented. Never before has the Spanish defence, security, aeronautics and space industry faced the challenge of growing and modernising with such a powerful contribution of state money.”

Podemos’ eagerness to export arms for state repression internationally was clearly bound up with its now well-established record of using such weapons against strikers in Spain itself.

In November 2021, the PSOE-Podemos government sent police to fire pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets at striking Cádiz metalworkers, even deploying armoured cars in working class areas to terrorize the public. It launched the unprecedented deployment of 23,000 cops to break the April 2022 truckers’ strike, and of 20,000 police officers armed with 6,000 taser cartridges to crack down on protests against last June’s NATO summit.

Abroad, by backing Boluarte in Lima, Podemos aims to safeguard continued extraction of Peru’s strategic mineral wealth—especially copper, zinc and liquefied natural gas—and the corporate interests of Spanish banks BBVA and Banco Santander, and multinationals like Telefónica and Zara.

Biden administration reaffirms “US support” for murderous regime in Peru

Andrea Lobo

On Wednesday, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that Biden administration officials had welcomed and met in Washington D.C. with Ana Cecilia Gervasi, the foreign minister of the Peruvian coup regime of Dina Boluarte.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman “expressed US support for Peru and President Boluarte, and her efforts to affirm Peru’s democracy, ensuring peace, stability and the unity of the Peruvian people,” according to the official statement issued by Price. The Biden administration, moreover, “encouraged the government to continue taking steps to hold those responsible for acts of violence accountable.”

More than 200 troops joined the National Police to clear roadblocks in Arequipa, Peru, on January 27. [Photo: Peruvian Armed Forces]

While accompanied by the threadbare references to “human rights” and “peace,” the Biden administration is endorsing and providing material assistance to an authoritarian regime installed in a US-backed coup last December. The statement openly declares support for Boluarte’s ongoing escalation of military and police repression, which has already involved the killing of nearly 60 unarmed demonstrators, mostly with live ammunition.

The regime recently renewed a state of emergency that authorizes the deployment of troops against protesters and the suspension of democratic rights, including freedom of assembly and speech and the right to life and safety.

Just four days earlier, the capital, Lima, recorded its first confirmed police killing of a demonstrator. At least two videos have surfaced that show police shooting a tear gas canister directly and at close range at Víctor Santisteban, who was left with a 1.5-inch hole in his skull. The 55-year-old plumber and electrician was protesting days before a trip to Argentina to meet his grandson.

Reflecting the levels of bestiality being employed by the security forces, police Gen. Victor Zanabria responded to Santisteban’s autopsy and the videos by claiming that tear gas canisters are not “hard objects” and insisted that a fellow protester standing near the victim must have been responsible for the injury.

It’s worth noting that the Biden administration is echoing the same calls by the Peruvian far right to detain more “instigators” on fraudulent charges as a means of further terrorizing protesters.

Most recently, state prosecutors demanded that the leader of the Ayacucho People Defense Front, Rocío Leandro Melgar, remain in custody for 18 months for allegedly belonging to a “terrorist” organization and participating in a murder in 1992. No evidence other than “intelligence” reports have been presented. The Ayacucho Defense Front has backed the protests and continued to give political support to deposed president Pedro Castillo, who was also vindictively given 18 months of pretrial detention.

On Monday, 20 Democratic members of the US Congress issued an open letter asking the Biden administration to denounce the “human rights violations” in Peru and temporarily halt security assistance funding.

While invoking the hypocritical pretension that US imperialism defends democracy and human rights, the signers knew that the Biden administration would simply ignore them. Anticipating this, the letter muddies the waters and provides a cover for Boluarte’s criminal policies by stating: “While we recognize that a small number of protesters have participated in violent acts, the Boluarte government has a responsibility to distinguish criminals from peaceful protesters…”

The unprincipled and bankrupt appeal, which was signed by all the US representatives who belong to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), responds solely to the interests of US imperialism in sustaining the “human rights” hypocrisy used by Washington to justify the escalation of its war drives against its geopolitical rivals like Russia and China.

Thousands of demonstrators in the southern departments of Junin, Apurimac, Arequipa, Cusco, Puno and Tacna continue to defy the state of emergency and participate in roadblocks and peaceful marches, while hundreds continue to demonstrate in the capital Lima.

On Thursday, the national ombudsman said that protests and roadblocks continue in 27 provinces representing 13.8 percent of the national territory, and that confirmed deaths have risen to 66.

The roadblocks have resulted in major fuel shortages and affected natural gas production across the south, while Bloomberg warned last week that 30 percent of the country’s copper output is at risk in the world’s second top producer, “at a time of low global stocks and high prices.”

On February 1, citing transportation and supply issues, the Chinese-owned MMG Limited halted operations at the Las Bambas copper mine, the third largest in the country, responsible for 2 percent of global production.

The US-based multinational Freeport mining corporation said last week that its Cerro Verde copper mine, the largest in the country, has had to cut back operations 10-15 percent due to the blockages. The major Antapaccay mine, owned by US-based Glencore, remains shut down since protesters invaded it early last month.

“Due to the protests,” the Canadian-based American Lithium halted its hydrological studies in the Falchani Project in Puno, which could hold one of the world’s largest lithium deposits.

Mines in the north and shipping have reportedly not been affected, and local business organizations have called for the deployment of the military across the southern mining corridor to clear roadblocks.

Facing a terminal political crisis in Peru, marked by the ouster of six presidents in five years, US imperialism and the European Union are concerned above all by the prospect that mining, energy, shipping and other workers in key sectors will intervene and further disrupt the output of strategic minerals and natural gas from Peru.

As shown by recent statements by the Pentagon and the trip of German chancellor Olaf Scholz to the region, the imperialist powers see Latin America as a key source of natural resources and cheap labor as part of their ongoing efforts to isolate and subjugate Russia and China and redivide the world.

In Peru, and increasingly across the region and beyond, there are no credible institutions or political parties left. With much of the Peruvian political establishment also facing prosecutions and arrest for corruption, the ruling class finds no other answer to the resurgence of the class struggle, which is driven above all by opposition to social inequality, inflation and austerity.

Recent polls show that 71 percent of the population supports elections this year and 74 percent want Boluarte to resign. In response, Boluarte insisted that her resignation is not an option, but vowed to keep demanding Congress approve elections in 2023.

In a nationally televised speech on January 30, Boluarte incongruously repeated the lie that demonstrations are being instigated by “an organized group seeking to sow chaos,” while warning of the “imperative of improving the democratic legitimacy of the country’s political representatives” by “channeling institutionally” the popular demands.

However, the far-right parties that control Congress are demanding an even more brutal repression, insisting that moving forward elections will not resolve the political crisis. After meeting last weekend with Boluarte’s cabinet, the fascistic congressman and former head of the military José Cueto said to RPP Noticias that he asked for “a greater force of authority to prevent new terrorist acts.”

Cueto also demanded that the military remain deployed even after demonstrations stop, proclaiming an international “war” against “Communist hordes.”

Congress “is there to work, legislate and supervise,” he said, confirming that they are calling the shots, while the executive power is there to “maintain order.” Hoping to use the current regime to crush opposition to their reactionary economic and social agenda at the behest of the transnational corporations and local oligarchy, the far right in Congress insists that Boluarte and the current legislators must finish the term until 2026. These are the fascistic political forces backed by the Biden administration in Perú.

After Quran-burning provocations, Turkey-NATO tensions rise amid war on Russia

Hakan Özal

Ankara has suspended NATO membership talks with Sweden and Finland after a far-right politician publicly burned copies of the Quran, a holy book for Islam, in Sweden and Denmark in late January.

As NATO escalates the war against Russia in Ukraine with the delivery of battle tanks to Ukraine, the United States, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Canada have issued successive statements warning their citizens of the possibility of a “terrorist attack” in Turkey due to the Quran burning provocation.

“As long as it [Sweden] allows the burning of the Quran, we will not say ‘yes’ to your entry into NATO,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Wednesday. “Our view on Finland is positive, but not on Sweden,” he added.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on September. 6, 2022. [AP Photo/Armin Durgut]

“It is not possible for us to say yes to Sweden’s NATO membership right now,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu said on Tuesday.

At a joint press conference with his Estonian counterpart on Wednesday, Çavuşoğlu said that his government considers there are “two threats to NATO” in the form of “Russia and terrorism,” Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency reported. He added, “We, of course, understand the legitimate concerns of Estonia and the other two candidate countries [Finland and Sweden], but on the other hand, it is equally legitimate to expect our allies to understand the security concerns of Turkey and other countries.”

Reiterating his government’s support for NATO’s “open door policy,” Çavuşoğlu said, “Of course we oppose the war [in Ukraine]. We continue to support Ukraine. Turkey is also making very important efforts to end this war.” He added that Ankara’s stance was to ensure Ukraine's “territorial integrity” at the “negotiating table.”

In an interview with Radio Sputnik, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that the tensions with Turkey over Sweden and Finland's membership in NATO “show the degree of mistrust within the alliance and among Western states in general.”

Finland and Sweden decided to join NATO last May, in the midst of the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine. The Erdoğan government, however, has declared its opposition to their accession, threatening a veto. A unanimous vote of all 30 member states is required for a country to join NATO.

Amid Washington’s escalation of the war against Russia, significant factions of the US political establishment are advocating responding to Turkey’s threat to veto Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership by not supplying the Turkish military with F-16s.

At the end of June, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and Erdoğan met, followed by the signing of a memorandum by their foreign ministers.

In exchange for Sweden and Finland’s commitment to fulfill Ankara’s demands, it withdrew its veto on their NATO membership. Ankara demands that Sweden and Finland “stop supporting” the Kurdish nationalist People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), both considered “terrorist groups” by Turkey.

Sweden and Finland pledged to lift the arms embargo on Turkey imposed after its military operation against the YPG in Syria in 2019. They also pledged to process Turkey's “expulsion or extradition requests for terror suspects immediately and in all their dimensions.” Those allegedly include supporters of Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, claimed by Ankara to have led the putschist officers in the failed 2016 coup against the Erdoğan government. However, recent developments led to the breakdown of the trilateral talks.

On January 11, Kurdish nationalist groups in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, hung an effigy of Erdoğan by its feet from a pole in front of the historic city hall. Then on January 21, Islamophobic and anti-immigrant Danish far-right extremist Rasmus Paludan burned a Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.

After these provocations, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar announced the cancellation of Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson's visit to Turkey. Ankara then announced that the trilateral talks scheduled to be held in Brussels in February had been suspended “indefinitely.”

In part, Erdoğan's government is resorting to populism and nationalism to try to quell social tensions and burnish its support ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections in May.

However, the tensions between Ankara and its NATO allies have far deeper roots than the immediate electoral agenda. Although it is part of the NATO alliance, the Turkish bourgeoisie, which has strong economic and military ties with Russia, believes that the US-NATO goals in the war against Russia will also harm its own interests. In addition, the US alliance with Kurdish nationalist forces in Syria is seen as unacceptable by Ankara.

As Erdoğan has already announced his army’s invasion plans into Syria, Turkey’s attempt to launch a comprehensive ground military operation to prevent the emergence of a Kurdish enclave led by the YPG on Turkey’s southern border carries with it the risk of a confrontation between the two NATO members, the US and Turkey. Moreover, the presence of Russian, Iranian and Syrian forces in the area could turn such a military intervention into a major war.

Other critical geopolitical conflicts related to Ankara’s ties with Russia, as well as to the YPG’s growing power in Syria, erupted in the failed NATO-backed coup attempt against the Erdogan government in 2016. Far from being resolved, these conflicts have only deepened.

The US-NATO war against Russia has further escalated historical conflicts between Greece and Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea. NATO’s use and consolidation of Greece as a transshipment hub in the war against Russia is seen as a threat by Ankara.

Turkey’s decision to close the Dardanelles and Istanbul Straits from the Aegean to Black Sea to all warships immediately after the Russian invasion in Ukraine based on the Montreux Convention increased Greece’s logistical and regional importance. Ankara could be forced to make a critical decision if NATO powers want to move their warships into the Black Sea to counter Russia.

“Operation Nightingale”: Fraudulent nursing diploma scandal exposes US health care and education crises

Katy Kinner

Last week, in the final stages of the multiyear federal investigation nicknamed “Operation Nightingale,” 25 people were arrested and charged in connection with the sale of 7,600 fraudulent nursing degrees. 

A nurse administers a COVID-19 test outside the Salt Lake County Health Department, Tuesday, December 20, 2022, in Salt Lake City, Utah. [AP Photo/Rick Bowmer]

The scheme involved the selling of fake nursing diplomas and transcripts obtained from three accredited Florida-based nursing schools—Siena College, Palm Beach School of Nursing and Sacred Heart International Institute—which allowed aspiring Registered Nurses or Licensed Practical Nurses to sit for the board exams and obtain licensure. At this time, it is unclear if there are more people involved in this scandal or if other such fraudulent diploma rings remain to be discovered.

Those charged include administrators of the involved nursing schools and administrators of several test preparation academies across the country that recruited interested parties to purchase the fake diplomas. Charges include wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and the defendants face up to 20 years in prison. 

The allegations reflect a deepening crisis in the health care and education systems that the defendants sought to exploit. The health care system in the US is crumbling amidst continued surges of COVID-19 and the mass exodus of nurses and other health care workers who face unsafe and exhausting working conditions. 

At the same time, the increasing expense of higher education tempted workers who wanted to better themselves and their career prospects to engage in illegal activities rather than face a mountain of student debt in becoming a nurse. While the names of those who purchased the fake diplomas have not been released, it has been reported that many were Haitian immigrants living in South Florida. 

Those who purchased the fake diplomas are not currently being charged and individual state nursing boards have been tasked with finding and annulling the licenses in question.

A few states have already annulled fraudulent licenses, including 26 licenses in Delaware and 22 in Georgia. Seventy-seven licenses are under review in Washington state. It has been left to the discretion of the nursing regulatory bodies in affected states to investigate individual cases and take appropriate action in accordance with their state laws and due process. The scandal also calls into question the practices of state nursing boards, which were unable to detect the fraudulent documents for multiple years. 

Between 2016 and 2021, a total of $114 million changed hands in exchange for the fake degrees with “students” paying between $10,000 and $17,000 for the service and never stepping foot in a classroom or clinical setting. Out of the 7,600 degrees sold, only about 2,400 people eventually passed the licensing exam and were eligible for employment in health care facilities.

It has been reported that the nurses with the fake degrees found employment in various settings, including pediatric home care, assisted living facilities and veterans hospitals in several states, including Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Georgia, Maryland and Texas.

Investigators with the US Department of Health and Human Services–Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) were first tipped off to the fraud in 2019 when the state of Maryland reported two Florida business people, Geralda Adrien and Woosvelt Predestin, and their company PowerfulU Health Care Services LLC, which processed applications for buyers through the aforementioned Florida nursing schools and helped buyers coordinate testing preparation and any other requirements needed to sit for the licensing exam.

Adrien and Woosvelt pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 27 months in prison after cooperating with the HHS-OIG investigators to identify other defendants. There are no court dates set for the 25 defendants currently being charged.

State nursing boards and hospital systems have been slow to respond, leaving upwards of several hundred or more licensed nurses in health care who are working illegally with no formal training. There is also no way at present to trace or understand the damage that has already been done by the rogue health care workers. 

Currently, none of the workers who purchased the fraudulent materials are being criminally charged. Many nurses across social media have taken issue with this, concerned that it is a product of hospitals and nursing regulatory boards seeking to avoid liability. A hospital that investigates and admits to employing fake health care workers would likely face costly lawsuits. 

One nurse spoke to a WSWS reporter on Reddit, stating, “We all know why they aren’t going after them. Once they start pulling on threads it will uncover patient harm and (more importantly to them) liability to their precious hospital systems/top donors.” A similar sentiment was echoed by others on a thread related to the diploma scandal. 

This, of course, contrasts with the criminal prosecution by Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) of RaDonda Vaught in May of last year. Vaught made a medication error that led to the tragic death of one of her patients, Charlene Murphey, in 2017. After first attempting to cover up the incident, VUMC later fired Vaught and took her to court rather than examining the conditions of chronic understaffing and system failures that no doubt led to the incident. 

The case demonstrated the attitude of the health care corporations and the entire capitalist state to health care workers. Charges were brought against Vaught not out of genuine concern for patient safety but rather to protect the reputation and profit interests of the university and medical center.

In the context of the current diploma scandal, hospital systems do not appear to be engaging in a serious investigation or publicly acknowledging the employment of fraudulently licensed nurses. This exposes, yet again, the profit-driven character of the health care system itself, where reputation and finances take top priority over the safety and needs of patients and staff.