Following corruption allegations, the fall of India's Adani group continues

Nick Beams

In the month since the publication of explosive accusations about its financial operations, the India-based Adani group of companies has been undergoing a not-so-slow train wreck.

Congress party members demand investigation into allegations of fraud and stock manipulation by India's Adani Group in New Delhi, India, Monday, Feb.6, 2023. [AP Photo/Manish Swarup]

The combined market value of the group’s shares fell to below $100 billion earlier this week, bringing to $135 billion the loss of market capitalisation since the US-based Hindenburg Research published a report on January 24 alleging widespread accounting fraud and stock manipulation.

The group’s founder, Gautum Adani, at one stage ranked the third richest man in the world, has close connections with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Adani has denied the allegations and wrapped himself in the Indian flag, claiming they were an attempt to take down the country. But his protestations and efforts to provide assurances to the markets that the financial position of his group is sound have not halted the slide.

The Hindenburg allegations, which it said were the result of a two-year investigation, claimed that the Adani Group was “pulling the largest con game in corporate history.” The increase in the group’s share values over the past three years of more than $100 billion was “largely through stock price appreciation in the group’s seven listed companies” which spiked an average 819 percent in that period.

Despite its name, Hindenburg’s investigation was not disinterested academic research. It is well known as a shorting investor. Shorting involves borrowing shares in a firm and selling them in the expectation the price will fall, then buying them back at the lower price, returning them to the lender and profiting from the transaction.

While there are restrictions on such activities in India, Hindenburg seems to have found a way to short Adani stock, according to a report in the Financial Times. The founder of Hindenburg, Nathan Anderson, has not indicated how he organised his bet against the Adani group saying only that he had taken a short position “through US-traded bonds and non-Indian-traded derivative instruments.”

But the withdrawal of money goes well beyond the activities of Hindenburg. Adani suffered a significant blow when the ratings agency Moody’s cut its outlook on four companies in the group from “stable” to “negative” while leaving ratings unchanged.

Moody’s said its decision was the result of “the significant and rapid decline in the market equity values of the Adani Group” following the release of the Hindenburg report.

Like many corporate giants, Adani has sought to advance an ESG (environment, social governance) program to capture funds from so-called ethical investment.

Norway’s largest pension fund, KLP, recently dumped its entire holding of shares in Adani’s Green Energy on the basis that it may have been financing polluting activities. In particular the Carmichael coal mine project in central Queensland, Australia, has been the subject of intense opposition on environmental grounds.

Bloomberg reported that a public filing on February 10 “made clear that Adani is using stock from its Green companies as collateral in a credit facility that’s helping to finance the Carmichael coal mine.”

The money invested in the Adani green companies is not directly involved. But to the extent that it raises their share values it increases the value of the collateral used to finance other, polluting projects and thereby lowers the cost of loans to finance them.

KLP has banned investment in coal. According to its head of responsible investing, Kiran Aziz, any indirect financing of the Carmichael project would be a “breach of our commitments.”

The withdrawal of money could be extended. According to Bloomberg, there are more than 500 funds in the European Union which are registered as “promoting” ESG goals and which hold Adani stocks either directly or indirectly.

According to the Hindenburg report, the notion that the operations of the Adani companies were in some way separate from each other was a fiction. It noted that “Adani Group companies are intricately linked and dependent upon one another” and that none of the entities “are isolated from the performance, failure, of the other group companies.”

Announcing the withdrawal of money by KLP, which manages funds of around $75 billion, Aziz said: “Adani’s corporate structure created an unacceptably high risk that ‘clean’ investment could be siphoned off towards coal mining.”

But this reaction could well be taken with a large grain of salt because the complex and interconnected structure of the Adani group was well known before the Hindenburg report.

The intimate connection between the Adani group and the Modi government means that its possible demise will have significant political consequences. While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has declared it has “nothing to hide,” Modi has remained silent.

Others, however, are questioning whether Modi will be able to ride out the storm.

Speaking at the recent Munich Security Conference, multi-billionaire George Soros, who made his fortune as a hedge fund manager, said: “Modi and business tycoon Adani are close allies; their fate is intertwined.”

Soros said that Adani had tried to raise funds in the stock market but had failed.

“Adani is accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards. Modi is silent on the subject, but he will have to answer questions from foreign investors and in parliament.”

He claimed the Adani demise would weaken Modi’s stranglehold on the federal government, open the way for much needed institutional reforms and even bring about a “democratic revival in India.”

What Soros means by a “democratic revival” is not an end to the domination of the Indian economy by corporate and financial giants. He wants a weakening of the control exercised by Modi over economy and finance which has been used for the benefit of “insiders” such as Adani. This would open the way for other sections of finance capital, for which Soros speaks, to benefit from the plunder of the country’s resources and the exploitation of its labour.

White House violates right to asylum and bans immigration at US-Mexico border

Eric London

On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced a sweeping new immigration policy that bars entry to almost all immigrants at the southern border and denies them the right to apply for asylum.

The new policy is to take effect on May 11, the day of the expiration of Title 42. This previously obscure public health provision of US law was first employed by Trump to ban immigration at the US-Mexico border under the false pretense that immigrants spread COVID-19. This cruel and hypocritical policy of blanket exclusion was then continued by Biden, even as he proclaimed the pandemic had ended.

Biden’s new policy is aimed at filling the gap left by Title 42’s expiration. It means all immigrants who attempt to cross the southern border on foot will be deported without a court hearing or any right to apply for asylum.

The administration’s pseudo-legal justification is that all immigrants who pass through Mexico forfeit their right to asylum in the United States when they fail to do so in Mexico. But the reality is Mexico is wracked by the same violence and poverty that dominate all countries from which refugees flee.

The administration of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been harassing, beating and persecuting Central American and Caribbean immigrants on behalf of American imperialism since he took office in 2018, while many thousands seeking refuge in the US have been condemned to languish in tent camps on the border, subject to cold, hunger and the predations of Mexico’s infamous cartels.

Biden came into office promising that he would reverse the anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration and uphold the right to asylum. The policy now introduced by his administration makes a mockery of that pledge, grossly violating both international and US law, which both guarantee the right to asylum. The United Nations 1951 and 1967 protocols on the rights of refugees, which were ratified in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the Second World War, expressly guarantee the right to asylum and make it illegal to deport “refugees,” the legal term for those who meet the requirements for asylum. Article 33 of the 1951 protocol states, “No contracting state shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of the territories where his life or freedom would be threatened.”

The decision will have a disastrous impact on the lives of masses of workers across Latin America. Countless people will be sent back into the clutches of their persecutors in societies devastated by over a century of US imperialist exploitation. Many will die or be tortured in violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which bars countries from forcing people back to countries where they face a likelihood of suffering extreme persecution.

Thousands more will be separated permanently from parents, children and relatives who are already in the US. Billions of dollars in remittance money will be lost, fueling starvation and poverty already worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and the US-NATO war against Russia. In the end, the policy will only force immigrants to cross under more dangerous conditions to avoid detection: deeper into the deserts, farther out into the sea, where many more will die.

There are only three precedents in US history which were as sweeping and anti-democratic as this:

The first is the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred all immigration by Chinese laborers for 10 years beginning in 1882.

The second is the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which excluded immigration from the impoverished countries of Southern and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Hitler wrote approvingly of the act, and, as Yale Law Professor James Whitman explained in his 2017 book Hitler’s American Model, Nazi jurists drew on the Chinese Exclusion and the Johnson-Reed acts in shaping the race laws of the Third Reich.

The third precedent is Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries in early 2017 which was met with large spontaneous demonstrations at airports across the country.

Despite the historically reactionary character of the asylum ban, the move has been met with almost total silence in the corporate media, which is too single-mindedly focused on endless denunciations of Russia’s crimes, real and imagined, to acknowledge the ban. A day after it was announced, no article about the asylum ban could be found on the online front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post or CNN.

The media silence is an acknowledgment that the asylum ban exposes the lie that US imperialism is a champion of “democracy” and is defending it in the US-NATO war against Russia.

In June 2022, Biden issued a statement marking “World Refugee Day” in which he presented the US as a beacon of hope for asylum seekers and blamed “Russia’s war against Ukraine” for the fact that over 100 million people have been forced to flee their home countries.

Biden’s statement covered up the fact that most of those 100 million are fleeing countries devastated by US imperialism’s wars of the last three decades: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Unlike Russia, he said, the United States is “protecting and welcoming refugees” and “leads the world in responding to the needs of refugees.”

The hypocrisy and lies of American imperialism know no bounds. Speaking last week, Vice President Kamala Harris cited alleged Russian deportations of Ukrainians as proof the government is carrying out “crimes against humanity.”

“Russian authorities have forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine to Russia, including children,” Harris said. “They have cruelly separated children from their families.”

While the Russian government has denied these claims, no one can seriously dispute that the United States leads the world in separating immigrant children from their parents.

In 2021, the Biden administration detained 122,000 immigrant children at facilities across the US, according to a report by CBS News. Under Donald Trump, tens of thousands of children were deliberately separated from their families in a fascistic policy concocted in the sick mind of Trump’s Nazi adviser Stephen Miller. Under Title 42, the Trump and Biden administrations have together expelled hundreds of thousands of immigrants on the false and racist pretense that they were likely to spread COVID-19.

The Biden administration’s decision is a major concession to the far-right elements who dominate the heavily militarized state deportation apparatus and who are two years removed from the January 6, 2021 plot to overthrow the Constitution. The Democratic Party, desperate to maintain “bipartisanship” with the increasingly fascistic Republican Party in order to prosecute the war against Russia, is driving the political system ever further to the right.

The attack on immigrants is an international phenomenon. As the European imperialist powers escalate the conflict with Russia, right-wing nationalist elements are being emboldened to attack immigrants and refugees, while nation after nation close their doors to immigrants.

After British Home Secretary Suella Braverman depicted the attempts of refugees to secure asylum in the UK as an “invasion,” a far-right mob assaulted immigrants at a hotel housing refugees last week in Knowsley, outside Liverpool. Refugee organizations published a letter earlier this month warning of a rise in “premeditated extremist attacks” against immigrants across the UK.

According to the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, violent attacks on immigrants increased dramatically in 2022, with 65 separate incidents in the first ninth months of the year. In June 2022, the Spanish government of Pedro Sanchez massacred dozens of immigrants at the Melilla border crossing in North Africa.

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation International Climate Protection Fellowships 2023

Application Timeline: 1st March 2023

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Citizenship of a non-European threshold or developing country (see list of countries in the Program Webpage Link below) which is also the fellow’s habitual abode and place of work;

To be taken at (country): Germany

Subject Areas: Climate Protection

About the Award: The International Climate Protection Fellowships enable prospective leaders to conduct a research-related project of their own choice during a one-year stay in Germany. Submit an application if you are a prospective leader from a non-European threshold or developing country working in the field of climate protection and resource conservation in academia, business or administration in your country.

Type: Fellowship

Selection Criteria:

• First academic degree (Bachelor’s or equivalent), completed less than 12 years prior to the start of the fellowship
• Extensive professional experience in a leadership role (at least 48 months at the time of application) in the field of climate protection and resource conservation or a further academic or professional qualification;
• Initial practical experience (at least 12 months at the time of application) through involvement in projects related to climate protection and resource conservation (possibly already during studies);
• Leadership potential demonstrated by initial experience in leadership positions and/or appropriate references;
• A detailed statement by a host in Germany, including a confirmation of support; details of the proposed project must be discussed with the prospective host prior to application;
• Very good knowledge of English and/or German, documented by appropriate language certificates;
• Two to three expert references by individuals qualified to comment on the candidate’s professional, personal and, if applicable, academic eligibility and his / her leadership potential.

Benefits of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation International Climate Protection Fellowships

• Fellowship amount according to qualifications between €2,150 and €2,650 per month
• Two-month intensive language course in Germany
• Lump sum for travel expenses
• Allowances for visits by family members lasting at least three months
• Allowance of €800 per month for the host in Germany for projects in the natural and engineering sciences, and €500 per month for projects in the humanities and social sciences

Number of Awards: 20

Duration: One year

How to Apply for Alexander von Humboldt Foundation International Climate Protection Fellowships: Apply online until 1 March 2023

Visit the Scholarship Webpage for Details

Sponsors: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

Important Notes: Potential applicants who have spent more than six months in Germany or more than 12 months in a country that is not on the list of countries at the time of or shortly before application should contact the Humboldt Foundation (info@avh.de) before submitting an application as they may be ineligible on formal grounds.

Cuba and Vietnam, What’s the Difference?

Jacob G. Hornberger

During a visit to Mexico by Cuba’s president Miguel Díaz-Canel, Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), announced that he was willing to lead an international effort to pressure the U.S. government into lifting its six-decade-old economic embargo against the Cuban people. AMLO stated, “As a sign of goodwill and that all the countries of the Americas are willing to join forces, I consider and express with respect that the US government should lift, as soon as possible, the unjust and inhumane blockade of the Cuban people.”

AMLO raises a good point: Why does the U.S. government continue to wage economic war against the people of Cuba with its unjust and inhumane economic embargo? 

No, I’m not suggesting that U.S. officials have to embrace Díaz-Canel or any other Cuban communist official, as AMLO does. What I’m saying is that the U.S. government has no moral or legal justification for its economic war against the Cuban people.

After all, let’s not forget something important: Neither the Cuban people nor the Cuban government has ever attacked or invaded the United States. Never! In fact, in the long sordid relationship between the United States and Cuba, it has always been the United States that has been the aggressor. 

It was the CIA that invaded Cuba through the use of Cuban exiles. It was the CIA that repeatedly tried to murder Cuban president Fidel Castro. It was the Pentagon that constantly pressured President Kennedy into invading Cuba with the full force of the U.S. military, both before and during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It has been the U.S. government that has targeted the Cuban people with death and economic privation as a way to achieve regime change on the island. 

Why? Why is it so important to the Pentagon and the CIA to continue waging economic warfare against the people of Cuba?

After all, it can’t be an anti-communist thing, which is what they used to justify their embargo during the Cold War. Why do I say that? Well, just look at how the U.S. government treats Vietnam, which, like Cuba, has long been run by a communist regime. 

Consider this statement entitled “U.S. Relations With Vietnam” on the website of the U.S. State Department:

“U.S.-Vietnam relations have become increasingly cooperative and comprehensive, evolving into a flourishing partnership that spans political, economic, security, and people-to-people ties. The United States supports a strong, prosperous, and independent Vietnam that contributes to international security; engages in mutually beneficial trade relations; respects human rights and the rule of law; and is resilient in the face of climate and energy-related challenges…. U.S.-Vietnam people-to-people ties have flourished. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese study in the United States, contributing nearly $1 billion to the U.S. economy…. In an effort to build Vietnam’s self-reliance, the United States works to spur further growth and trade competitiveness, combat pandemic threats, promote renewable energy, address war legacy issues, and conserve Vietnam’s forests and biodiversity…. Since entry into force of the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral trade agreement in 2001, trade between the two countries and U.S. investment in Vietnam have grown dramatically.”

The website of the Center for Strategic & International Studies points out:

The current depth and breadth of the U.S.-Vietnam partnership was not a foregone conclusion. It is the result of decades of hard work and perseverance from both sides…. Since the two countries normalized relations in 1995, Vietnam has vaulted onto the shortlist of countries of greatest interest to U.S. investors. U.S. foreign direct investment into Vietnam has grown from under $1 billion in 2011 to over $2.6 billion in 2019.

Don’t forget something important: Unlike the Cuban Reds, the Vietnamese Reds killed more than 58,000 American soldiers!

Thus, the logical question arises: Why can’t the American people have a normal relationship with the people of Cuba? Why must the U.S. government continue waging a brutal economic war against Cubans when it has established a friendly relationship with the Vietnamese Reds?

In my opinion, it’s because the Pentagon and the CIA simply have been unable to get over the fact that the Cuban Reds defeated them and humiliated them. Yes, I fully realize that the Vietnamese Reds did the same thing, but there was one big difference between Cuba and Vietnam: The Pentagon and the CIA have always been dead-set on achieving regime change in Cuba. In Vietnam, they were trying to prevent the unification of the country under communist rule. After their defeat in Vietnam, they knew that they would never reverse the unification of Vietnam under communist rule. With Cuba, they have never given up hope of achieving their goal of regime change.

Almost from the very beginning of the Cuban Revolution, the Pentagon and the CIA were obsessed with achieving regime change in Cuba. Their aim has been to oust the communists from power and replace them with some pro-U.S. dictator, such as Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator that the communists ousted from power, or as Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the brutal military tyrant who the Pentagon and the CIA helped install into power in Chile. 

For all their omnipotent power, the Pentagon and the CIA have never been able to achieve their regime-change goal in Cuba. The Third World Cuban communist regime has foiled them every step of the way and, in the process, deeply embarrassed and humiliated both the Pentagon and the CIA.

Moreover, for decades the Pentagon and the CIA resigned themselves to waiting for Fidel Castro to die, hoping that that would be the day that the Cuban people would rise up and install another pro-U.S. dictator. It didn’t happen, which only deepened the sense of embarrassment and humiliation within Pentagon and CIA officials. Díaz-Canel, who succeeded Fidel and Raul Castro as president of Cuba, is himself a self-avowed communist. 

What the Pentagon and the CIA have never been able or willing to recognize is that the last thing the Cuban people want is to be ruled again by the U.S. government. Notwithstanding the horrors of living under socialism, given a choice between socialism and U.S. rule, most Cubans would pick socialism any day of the week. Given a choice between economic liberty and socialism, I think most Cubans would pick economic liberty, just so long as the U.S. government butted out of their lives.

It is painfully clear that the Pentagon and the CIA simply cannot let go of their obsession with controlling Cuba. The ultimate answer to this moral and economic travesty lies with the American people. After all, the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s economic embargo is also an attack on us and, specifically, our fundamental, natural, God-given rights of economic liberty, freedom of travel, freedom of trade, and freedom of association.

What we need in this country is a revival of conscience and a thirst for liberty within the American people. When that day comes, what AMLO correctly describes as the “unjust and inhumane” economic embargo against the people of Cuba (and against the people of the United States) will come to an end.

Awaiting China’s Ukraine Peace Plan

John V. Whitbeck

Photograph Source: kremlin.ru – CC BY 4.0

At the recently concluded Munich Security Conference, Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, proved the skunk at the party, interrupting the Western cheerleading for more and more war “for as as long as it takes” by announcing that on February 24, the first anniversary of the Russian invasion, China will announce a peace plan for Ukraine which will underscore the need to uphold the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the UN charter while also respecting Russia’s legitimate security interests.

A peace plan based on these announced principles might include all or most of the following elements:

1. An immediate ceasefire-in-place and freeze on the introduction of further weaponry into the war zone by either side.

2. Ukrainian acceptance of a status of permanent military neutrality.

3. A European Union commitment to an accelerated process leading to EU membership for Ukraine.

4. A prompt withdrawal of all Russian and Russian-allied forces from all Ukrainian territory outside the territory of the four eastern and southern oblasts/regions which, since the referendums and annexations of September 2022, have been considered to be Russian territory by Russia but which Ukraine still considers to be Ukrainian territory (the “Contested Regions”).

5. A formal renunciation by Russia of any territorial claims or ambitions regarding internationally recognized Ukrainian territory other than Crimea and the Contested Regions.

6. Ukrainian acceptance that Crimea will remain part of Russia.

7. New referendums, organized and supervised by the UN or another agreed international organization, to permit the people of the four Contested Regions to choose freely and with ample time for reflection whether they prefer to be part of Ukraine or part of Russia, such referendums to be held far enough in the future after the acceptance of negotiated peace terms to permit all those who have left the contested regions since February 24, 2022, and wish to return and vote in the new referendums to do so — a reality-based attempt to reconcile the difficult-to-reconcile international law principles of the territorial integrity of states and the self-determination of peoples.

8. Commitments by both Ukraine and Russia to accept the results of the new internationally-organized referendums.

A peace plan along such lines, if proposed by any potential peacemaker, would be warmly welcomed by the Global South, which has resolutely resisted the black-and-white narrative regarding the current war which the West has been seeking, unsuccessfully, to impose upon it.

Since China is unlikely to propose any peace plan which it knows would be dismissed by Russia, it is likely that whatever peace plan China proposes will be accepted by Russia subject to a few negotiable reservations and additions.

If Russia were to do so, would the USA/NATO and Ukraine refuse to engage in serious peace negotiations, as they refused to do when Russia proposed its two mutual security treaties in late 2021, and continue to insist on perpetuating “for as long as it takes” the deaths and destruction in Ukraine and the significant collateral damage being inflicted on the rest of the world and particularly on the peoples of the Global South?

To cite the ancient Chinese curse, we are living in interesting times. However, the promise of a serious peace plan proposed by a major power offers a welcome ray of hope.

Royal College of Nursing moves to end nurses strike in England

Robert Stevens

The Royal College of Nursing union (RCN) called off the national nurses strike in England Tuesday evening to begin intensive talks, aimed at a rotten sell-out.

The RCN leadership has spent months offering to call off any future strikes, with the only condition that the Conservative government agree to pay talks. Both parties have agreed to begin negotiations Wednesday.

The RCN immediately announced the cancellation of a 48-hour strike due to start March 1. Only days ago, the RCN was boasting that the March 1 action would be an “escalation” from previous sporadic 12-hour stoppages. For the first time the upcoming strike was set to include hundreds of thousands of workers at all 100 National Health Service (NHS) Trusts who passed a strike ballot threshold, and involve nurses from emergency departments, intensive care units, cancer care and other services exempted in previous stoppages.

Government and Royal College of Nursing joint statement announcing the agreement to enter "a process of intensive talks. Strikes will be paused during these talks." [Photo: screenshot-gov.uk]

In their determination to enforce the lowering of wages among millions of workers the Sunak government sees the defeat of the NHS strikes as pivotal. The Guardian noted the “rare joint statement” put out by Department of Health and Social Care and the RCN announcing the talks. In wording setting the agenda for a rock bottom pay deal, in the “national interest”, the statement reads, “Both sides are committed to finding a fair and reasonable settlement that recognises the vital role that nurses and nursing play in the National Health Service and the wider economic pressures facing the United Kingdom and the Prime Minister’s priority to halve inflation. The talks will focus on pay, terms and conditions, and productivity enhancing reforms.”

The statement concluded, “The Royal College of Nursing will pause strike action during these talks.” The government knows that in the language of the union bureaucracy “pausing” the strike is the precursor to ending it entirely.

The framework for a sell-out by the union has already been set by repeated cave-in statements by RCN leader Pat Cullen, which began almost immediately after 300,000 nurses across the UK voted in November to reject the Conservative government’s imposition of a £1,400 fixed sum pay award. For newly qualified nurses, this represented a well below inflation 5.5 percent, and for most nurses around 4 percent.

Forced to recognise the mass sentiment of its members for a fight, last October the RCN launched what it described as the “biggest strike ballot in its 106-year history”. The RCN said it aimed to win a pay increase of 19 percent—the then RPI inflation rate plus 5 percent.

The RCN and other health unions have overseen a series of below inflation deals. In 2018, the RCN and 13 other health unions, including the largest public sector union, Unison, reached a pay deal with the Tory government, selling a miserly 6.5 percent pay “increase” as “the best deal in eight years” and bombarding members with misleading information to secure acceptance.

As soon as the real impact of the deal became clear, RCN members called for an Extraordinary General Meeting and overwhelmingly passed a motion of no confidence “in the current leadership of the Royal College of Nursing”, calling for them to “stand down”. The leadership Council was forced to step down in September that year.

In the current dispute, the union’s climbdown began immediately, with the RNC declaring it would call off the first nurses’ strike in December—stipulating only that the government agree to sit around a table and negotiate. The government’s rejection of the RCN entreaties saw Cullen declare her readiness to meet the government “halfway” on pay and settle for 10 percent. The humiliating climbdown was not taken up by the Tories. The RCN then responded that it would consider any pay offer made by the government.

Striking nurses at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, January 18, 2023 [Photo: WSWS]

The RCN has already agreed a deal with the Scottish National Party/Greens government. On Monday, the RCN recommended its Scottish NHS members on Agenda for Change contracts accept the deal offering an average rise of just 6.5 percent and a miserable on-off payment (including just £387 for those in the lowest paid band). The ballot closes on March 20.

The RCN has also suspended strike action on February 6 and 7 by nurses in Wales and put a derisory 3 percent deal, (including a 1.5 percent lump sum) to a ballot closing February 27.

According to the BBC the deal set to be stitched up with the Tories in the NHS in England could be even worse! Successive Tory health secretaries have insisted for months that the NHS pay deal for 2022-23 would not be reopened. The BBC reported Tuesday, “The breakthrough [allowing talks to go ahead] was announced as the government unveiled its plans for the 2023-24 pay rise, which would come in to effect in April. It says it is willing to give a rise of 3.5%.

The broadcaster added that a source close to the negotiations “said this had opened the door for that pay award to be backdated into this year, so giving nurses and other staff, such as paramedics, cleaners and porters, an extra boost in pay.”

Any increase on these terms will be tiny and eaten up by rampant inflation. Moreover, as the talks announcement states, negotiations will centre on productivity measures imposed on an already burnt out workforce.

The calling off of the nurses strikes by the RCN follows just four days after the University and College Union (UCU) called off a national strike by 70,000 university lecturers and other higher education workers at all 150 UK universities, as they were set to hold a further seven days of strikes. UCU leader Jo Grady had not even received a concrete offer addressing members grievances over pay, conditions and pensions.

Top level Taiwanese ministers hold secret talks in Washington

Peter Symonds

The Financial Times reported on Saturday that Taiwan’s foreign minister Joseph Wu and national security adviser Wellington Koo will travel to the United States for secret talks this week with senior White House officials. Washington and Taipei have both refused to confirm the discussions. Asked directly, Wu said he was not able to comment on whether he would be in Washington this week.

Taiwan's Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, right, greets former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen as he arrives at Taipei Songshan Airport in Taipei, Taiwan, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. [AP Photo/Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs]

The FT report was based on five unnamed officials said to be familiar with the talks. Jon Finer, the US deputy national security adviser and Wendy Sherman, deputy secretary of state, will reportedly take part in the discussions with the Taiwanese delegation. The talks will be held at the Virginia headquarters of the American Institute in Taiwan—a nominally private organisation set up to manage US relations with Taiwan.

The very fact that high level talks are taking place behind closed doors reveals again the close ties that the Biden administration is developing with Taiwan while claiming to still adhere to the “One China” policy. Since 1979, US-China relations have been premised on Washington’s de facto recognition of Beijing as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan.

Following on from Trump, Biden has torn up longstanding diplomatic protocols limiting contact with Taiwan, boosted arms sales to Taipei and increased US military activity in the immediate area, including through the narrow Taiwan Strait separating the island from the Chinese mainland. Washington is deliberately goading Beijing which has repeatedly declared that it will use force if necessary to prevent Taipei from declaring formal independence.

Biden has also explicitly declared on four separate occasions that the US would defend Taiwan militarily, effectively tearing up Washington’s longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity”—that is, refusing to confirm that the US would come to the aid of Taiwan in a war with China in all circumstances. The policy was aimed at reining in deliberately provocative acts by Taipei as well as warding off military action by Beijing.

The US-Taiwan talks this week take place as the Biden administration has ramped up tensions with China through its belligerent response to a Chinese balloon that drifted into US airspace. Washington inflated the incident into a major security threat insisting, without any substantiation, that China had deliberately sent a spy balloon over US military installations. A US Air Force fighter shot the balloon down on February 4.

The Financial Times reported that the talks are known as the “special channel”—keeping them hidden not only from China but also the American public. The newspaper revealed the existence of the diplomatic channel two years ago when Taiwan’s foreign minister Wu met with US officials in Annapolis.

No details of the nature of this week’s US-Taiwan discussions have been revealed. However, US planning and preparations for war with China will undoubtedly be at the top of the agenda. The meeting takes place only days after Michael Chase, the top Pentagon official for China, travelled to Taipei—a trip also shrouded in secrecy.

According to the Taiwan-based United Daily News, Chase visited the country’s Ministry of National Defence and associated think tank, as well as meeting with members of the opposition Kuomintang. He is only the second high-level US defence official to visit Taiwan since 1979, following a trip in 2019 by Heino Klinck, then-deputy assistant secretary for East Asia.

Speaking to a delegation of US lawmakers in Taipei yesterday, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said that “Taiwan and the United States continue to bolster military exchanges.” She added that Taiwan would cooperate even more actively in the future with the US and other partners to confront global challenges such as “authoritarian expansionism”—a thinly veiled reference to China.

The latest US delegation led by Ro Khanna, a member of the US House China Select Committee, is focused on strengthening economic and technological ties, particularly with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company which dominates the global production of computer chips. In comments to Tsai, Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, emphasised the need “to continue to build the economic partnership on technology and also of course the partnership on military and defence.”

The increasingly frantic character of the US military build-up in the Indo-Pacific was revealed in a leaked memo by Air Force General Michael Minihan last month to his commanders, telling them that his gut feeling was that the US would be at war with China by 2025. The memo contained detailed orders to step up training and ensure as a matter of urgency that all personnel have their affairs in order—that is, be ready for immediate deployment to a war zone.

The US is also strengthening the Taiwanese military based on the strategy it has pursued in Ukraine—to provoke Russia into a war in Ukraine that will weaken and destabilise the Russian regime and the country as a whole. The New York Times reported last October on high-level discussions in the White House and Pentagon to intensify “efforts to build a giant stockpile of weapons in Taiwan.”

The Biden administration has continued large sales of arms to Taiwan. The huge US military budget passed by Congress last December included, for the first time, direct military aid to Taiwan. It authorised up to $10 billion in security assistance and fast-tracked weapons procurement.

Details of the talks underway between top Taiwanese and US officials this week are unlikely to surface publicly, especially as neither side is even acknowledging their existence. But they are a further ominous sign of the advanced preparations for a US-led conflict with China even as Washington and its NATO allies are escalating the war in Ukraine against Russia.

NATO powers intensify offensive against Russia after Munich Security Conference

Johannes Stern

One year after the reactionary invasion of Ukraine by the Putin regime, the imperialist powers are organizing a massive escalation of the war, which increasingly raises the threat of a nuclear world war. 

On Monday, US President Joe Biden paid a “surprise visit” to Kiev and announced further arms deliveries, including missiles designed to enable Ukraine to attack targets in Crimea and the Russian heartland. The other far-reaching decisions taken behind the scenes are not known, but demands in the US media range from the delivery of F-16 fighter jets to NATO ground troops. 

The visit showed how far the escalation spiral has progressed. According to US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, the White House informed the Kremlin of the planned visit a few hours before Biden’s departure. “A situation in which there could have been a conflict between the two nuclear powers ought to be avoided,” wrote Der Spiegel. 

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his state of the nation address that Russia was restricting its participation in the “New Start” agreement. The treaty limits the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States to 800 delivery systems and 1,550 operational nuclear warheads. “We are not withdrawing from it, but we are suspending our participation,” Putin said.

President Joe Biden delivers a speech marking the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023, at the Royal Castle Gardens in Warsaw. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

On Tuesday evening, Biden gave another speech at the historic Royal Palace in Warsaw. There will continue to be “hard and very bitter days, victories and tragedies” in a long war with heavy losses, he informed his hand-picked audience. Then he declared threateningly: “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia – never. We will work together to ensure that Ukraine can continue to defend itself. ”

Already at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, the far-reaching war goals of the imperialist powers were formulated openly: the complete military defeat of Russia in Ukraine and the weakening and ultimate subjugation of the geostrategically important and resource-rich country.

“We must defeat Goliath, who wants to destroy us,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. He continued by stating that being David means having to win. And in order to win, it would take a “slingshot” – to defeat the “aggressor Russia,” just as David defeated Goliath. And Ukraine has not yet received this sling, Zelensky added.

Zelensky’s speech via video on the first day of the conference set the tone. In their official speeches and statements, the heads of government from the European Union (EU) and NATO powers then outbid each  other with calls for more and faster arms deliveries to Kiev and a constant military escalation.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for more military aid to force Russia to the negotiating table, that is, to impose a peace of victory on the country. “It is imperative that we intensify our support and efforts” to enable Ukrainians to engage in a “counteroffensive,” he said. “The coming weeks and months are crucial. France is ready for an even longer conflict. Now is not the time for dialogue.”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that Poland was ready to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine together with other countries. A prerequisite for such a move is a “NATO decision,” he added.

The German government in particular, which has long been officially portrayed as restrained, is now at the forefront of the war offensive against Russia. In their speeches, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius and Chancellor Olaf Scholz boasted of German military support for Ukraine and demanded more support from the “partners” for the formation of a tank army against Russia. 

“Germany’s aid to Ukraine amounted to more than €12 billion last year,” Scholz said. “We deliver state-of-the-art weapons, ammunition and other military goods, more than any other country in continental Europe.” This is not only in line with the “legitimate expectations of our partners and allies,” but also shows that “we are taking on the responsibility that a country of the size, location and economic strength of Germany has to shoulder in times like these.”

Scholz also made it clear that the arms deliveries are aimed at a long and intensive war. “And it is important to put our support in place from the beginning so that we can maintain it for a long time,” he said. “This has been our benchmark in the delivery of new weapon systems: self-propelled howitzers and multiple rocket launchers, anti-aircraft weapons, armored vehicles, Patriot missile batteries and, most recently, Western battle tanks.” This is how it will remain “in the future”.

This means “that all those who can deliver such battle tanks actually do so now,” Scholz continued. Together with Defence Minister Pistorius and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Scholz promoted this point energetically in Munich. “Germany will help to facilitate this decision for our partners, for example by training Ukrainian soldiers here in Germany or by supporting them with supplies and logistics,” he commented.

A German officer, left, talks to Ukrainian soldiers at the German forces Bundeswehr training area in Munster, Germany, Monday, Feb. 20, 2023. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius visits the training of Ukrainian soldiers on the Leopard main battle tank and the Marder infantry fighting vehicle at the training area. [AP Photo/Gregor Fischer]

In the same breath, Scholz asserted that he would “ensure that there is no war between NATO and Russia.” This claim is preposterous on its face. In fact, the military alliance has long been at war with Russia and is escalating the conflict. Baerbock said this quite openly recently. “We are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other,” she told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in late January.

Germany’s ruling class is pursuing even more comprehensive war goals. It is using the NATO war against Russia to implement its great power ambitions announced nine years ago at the Munich Security Conference in 2014, and to make Germany the leading military and war power again after two lost world wars in the 20th century.

“From this podium, there has often been talk in recent years of Germany having to live up to its security policy responsibility,” Scholz said. He stated, “Not only do we share this claim, we are fulfilling it.” The Chancellor boasted that Germany, among other things, sent an “additional brigade” to Lithuania under his leadership, supported Poland and Slovakia with air defense, and currently leads the NATO spearhead rapid deployment force “for which we keep 17,000 soldiers at the ready”. 

“In order to be able to achieve this and even more in the future, we are putting an end to the neglect of the Bundeswehr (armed forces),” Scholz continued. The €100 billion Bundeswehr special fund “laid the foundation” for this and made possible “a permanent lane change in the development of the capabilities” of the Bundeswehr. But military spending should continue to grow, he added.

“Of course, with new fighter jets, helicopters, ships and tanks, the costs for ammunition and equipment, maintenance, exercises, training and personnel are also rising,” he said. He therefore reaffirmed that Germany will permanently increase its defense spending to two percent of gross domestic product. Pistorius warned that the defense budget would be increased by another €10 billion next year. 

The ruling class not only envisages the comprehensive militarization of Germany, but of the whole of Europe. “In order to invest these funds sensibly and sustainably, we need a high-performance and competitive arms industry in Germany and throughout Europe,” Scholz said. Gigantic armaments projects such as the Future Combat Air System, the Main Ground Combat System and the “European Sky Shield, initiated by Germany, are “steps towards a Europe of defence and armaments” and “towards a more geopolitically capable Europe.”

All the phrases about freedom, democracy and human rights repeated by Scholz, Biden and Co. cannot hide the fact that the leading NATO powers and their proxies are waging a dirty imperialist war in Ukraine. In Munich, Ukrainian deputy head of government Olexandr Kubrakov called for the delivery of cluster munitions and phosphorus bombs to Kiev. “Why can’t we use them?” he asked provocatively. “It is our territory” and the weapons could help to withstand the Russian army.

The use of cluster munitions and phosphorus bombs is illegal under international law. The effects of these weapons are devastating. Cluster munitions are rockets and bombs that break apart in the air and release countless small explosive devices. Phosphorus is an extremely flammable chemical that is difficult to extinguish. It burns flesh to the bone and its toxic fumes lead to severe burns of the respiratory tract. Both weapons are used extensively and are designed to kill and mutilate people indiscriminately. 

Even though the NATO leaders publicly rejected Kubrakov’s request, he knew whom he was addressing. The imperialist powers are “experts” when it comes to the use of these devastating weapons. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, nearly 13,000 cluster bombs with an estimated 1.8 to 2 million submunitions were dropped by the United States and the United Kingdom in the course of the invasion of Iraq in violation of international law. Missiles and shells containing white phosphorus were also used against the civilian population during the destruction of Fallujah.