After the refugee tragedy off Crotone, Italy: Brussels and Berlin further restrict sea rescues

Martin Kreickenbaum

Some two weeks after the refugee tragedy off Italy’s Calabrian coast near the town of Crotone, the death toll has risen to 74. On Saturday, the body of a young girl was recovered from the water. Among the victims are 29 minors, 20 of them children under 12. While 79 refugees were rescued from the Mediterranean, around 30 people are still missing.

Relatives cry on the coffin of one of the victims of last Sunday’s shipwreck at the local sports hall in Crotone, southern Italy, Wednesday, March 1, 2023. [AP Photo/Giuseppe Pipita]

The cruel deaths of the refugees could have been avoided if a rescue operation had been launched in time. The tragedy throws a harsh spotlight on the murderous policies of the European Union, which deliberately accepts such victims in order to prevent other refugees from reaching Europe. For example, the German government is planning to drastically reduce civilian sea rescue operations in the Mediterranean.

The breakup of the wooden boat with presumably about 200 refugees on board, just a few dozen metres from the beach, caused worldwide horror. The coffins of the those who died were laid out in a sports hall in Crotone, where many came to pay their respects. At least 57 of the victims were refugees from Afghanistan. Many had relatives in Germany and other European countries who travelled to Crotone to identify their relatives and say goodbye.

Italy’s government, led by fascist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, denies any responsibility for the horrific disaster. Matteo Piantedosi, the nonpartisan interior minister, even blamed the victims themselves. “They shouldn’t have set off in this weather in the first place,” he declared cynically. Desperation did not justify “putting your own children in danger.”

In the meantime, however, it is known that a surveillance plane from the European border protection agency Frontex had spotted the boat in the late evening of February 25. Based on footage from the thermal imaging cameras on the aircraft and the detected draft of the vessel, the crew concluded that there must be around 200 people on board. Frontex did not launch a rescue mission, however, but informed the Italian financial police, the Guardia die Finanza, which prosecutes “illegal border crossings.” However, military vessels dispatched by the financial police struggled in a force eight wind and four-meter waves before they could reach the refugee boat.

“A small, overloaded boat, and in a sea state that forces two military ships to return, cannot but be in danger,” concluded the daily il manifesto. Nevertheless, the Coast Guard in the port of Crotone, with its practically unsinkable ships, was not sent to the rescue. It was not activated until about 4:30 a.m. on February 26 and did not reach the wrecked ship until an hour later. By that time, dozens of refugees who could not swim had drowned.

During a state visit to the United Arab Emirates, Meloni nevertheless said “the situation is as simple as it is tragic: we did not receive any distress signals from Frontex.” Rather, she said, everything was done “to save lives after we were alerted to the problem.” She added, “I wonder if anyone in this country seriously believes that the government deliberately let more than 60 people die, including many children.”

In fact, not only do many believe this, but it is the terrible truth. What happened Sunday night off the Calabrian coast was “not a tragedy, but the result of this nefarious policy,” as Orlando Amodeo, a doctor and long-time aid worker in shipping accidents who was also on the scene during the February 26 operation, told La7 television. It was “what was wanted,” he said.

“Fortress Europe”

This applies not only to the Italian government, but to the entire European Union. The dead of Crotone are victims of the deadly “Fortress Europe” policy, organized from Brussels and supported by all EU member states.

In 2013, when two refugee boats sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, dragging 500 people to a horrific death, the European Commission was still promising that such a tragedy should never be repeated. But these were nothing more than empty promises. The “Mare Nostrum” mission launched by the Italian government at the time, which was supposed to pick up refugee boats and escort them back to Libya, was discontinued at the insistence of the European Union just one year later, after nearly 100,000 refugees had been rescued from distress at sea and brought to Europe.

Instead, the EU trained militias in Libya, equipped them with fast boats and appointed them as coast guards. This has since served as a European mercenary force, intercepting refugees before they reach international waters in order to bring them back to Libya. There, they are interned in facilities that German diplomats attested were “concentration camp-like conditions” in 2017.

When private aid organizations, which are financed solely by donations, tried to close the gap left by the withdrawal of the EU and the Mediterranean states from sea rescue, they were repeatedly thwarted. Under the false accusation that the presence of these sea rescue boats was fueling the movement of refugees across the Mediterranean, the ships belonging to private aid organizations were chained up and prevented from leaving port.

In 2019, then-interior minister and now Transport and Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini of the far-right Lega ordered Italian ports closed to private sea rescue boats and threatened draconian fines and confiscation of the vessels. The regulations were largely rolled back in October 2020, but were reintroduced in a modified form by the new fascist-led government just days before the new refugee tragedy.

Under these rules, private rescue boats must immediately head to their assigned port after a rescue mission, even if it is not the closest port. There must also be no other rescues along the way. Moreover, since the assigned ports are far away, a quick return to the search and rescue area is not possible—with the consequence that considerably fewer refugees can be rescued.

The ink on the government’s decree had not yet dried when the “GeoBarents,” operated by the organization Doctors Without Borders, received a penalty notice for rescuing 48 refugees, allegedly in violation of the new regulations. The “GeoBarents” was detained for 20 days and fined €10,000.

German government cracks down on sea rescuers

The German government also wants to take massive action against civilian sea rescuers. According to information from broadcaster ARD’s magazine programme Monitor, the federal Ministry of Transport under Volker Wissing (Liberal Democrat, FDP) is planning to tighten the Ship Safety Ordinance. According to the draft bill, ships undertaking “political ... and humanitarian activities or comparable idealistic purposes” should no longer be classed as part of the leisure sector.

Consequently, aid organizations that operate these ships will face enormous costs due to requisite conversions, additional technology, different insurance conditions and further requirements. The smaller ships that can be on the scene quickly and rescue drowning people from the sea will be particularly affected.

“For the majority of civilian sea rescue ships under a German flag, this regulation will mean they will have to limit or stop their life-saving work,” a statement from the NGOs Mare*GO, Mission Lifeline, r42-sailtraining, Resqship, Sarah Seenotrettung, Sea-Eye and Sea-Watch said of the planned measures.

With the new regulations, the coalition government was “deliberately widening the drastic rescue gap in the Mediterranean,” the statement by the civilian rescuers continues. “In the absence of a government rescue operation and safe and legal escape routes, people on the run will pay the price for the planned legal changes with their lives.”

The Transport Ministry rejected these accusations to taz, claiming that the plan “is not aimed at hindering private sea rescue in the Mediterranean, but on the contrary, it is about safeguarding their work.” The supposed safety deficiencies of the ships deployed should be prevented and thus the “protection of life and limb guaranteed.”

Since the beginning of rescue missions by civilian ships, there has not been a single accident in hundreds of missions, with many thousands of rescued persons, in which a crew member on board the ships has been injured. In reality, the tightening of the rules of engagement for civilian sea rescuers is aimed at restricting the rescue of refugees from distress at sea.

In doing so, the Transport Ministry is following guidelines developed by the EU Commission together with Frontex in the “Contact Group for Search and Rescue.” According to information from Neues Deutschland, on January 31 this contact group called on the EU member states to “jointly consider” how private sea rescuers could be regulated. It suggested tightening security requirements under the guise of “public order and security.”

The German government is acting as a driving force here, like the way it pushed through the EU’s dirty deal with Turkey back in 2015 to prevent refugees from reaching Europe via Turkey. This cynical arrangement, under which the EU pays the Turkish government billions of euros for its stooge services in fending off refugees, proved to be the undoing of the refugees on the boat that has now capsized off the Italian coast.

Alauddin Mohibzada, who lost his aunt and three cousins, aged 5, 8 and 12, in the accident, told refugee charity ProAsyl the reasons why they had embarked on the crossing despite knowing of the risk:

They had no other choice. They had to flee Afghanistan several years ago because my uncle was being persecuted there and was not safe anywhere. For the last few years, they lived in Turkey. But they didn’t have a residence permit, they were there illegally, they were threatened with deportation to Afghanistan.

Even now, when the Taliban are in power in Afghanistan, Turkey is deporting people en masse back to Afghanistan. They had therefore worked illegally in a textile factory for a pittance to somehow make ends meet. On the side, they saved money to continue their flight to Europe.

Legal channels were not open to them and “they didn’t get a visa. And of course, fleeing from Turkey to Greece sounds easier at first. But everywhere, the borders have been closed. And they heard from Greece that refugees don’t get any protection there but are stuck for years under miserable conditions. No one wants to put their children through that.”

Even Syrian refugees, who have once again become homeless because of the catastrophic earthquake in Turkey and are left with nothing, are not granted entry permits in Germany.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who in 2020 described Greece as Europe’s protective shield and thus justified the use of live ammunition in shootings against refugees, is now also explicitly praising the Italian government for its ruthless actions against refugees. In a letter to Giorgia Meloni, she states that Italy’s actions to “offer safe and legal routes to people in need of protection with humanitarian corridors” was a crucial contribution to the further development of European migration policy.

In fact, the EU is waging an outright war against refugees. As early as February 9, after consultations among EU heads of government, Ursula von der Leyen announced: “We will better protect our external borders and prevent illegal migration.” In this context, the strengthening of the closure policy includes not only the erection of kilometres-long border fences but also shameless cooperation with North African despots.

In her letter to Meloni, von der Leyen reiterated this plan and promised to support Libya and Tunisia, in particular, in securing their borders against refugees. “We will continue to support Libyan maritime border security and search and rescue capabilities and build similar land border control capabilities with Egypt,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Italian government has announced it will provide Tunisia with 100 pick-up trucks worth €3.6 million to strengthen its border controls against refugees. In the process, the Tunisian security authorities have acted even more brutally against refugees since they were incited to do so by President Kais Saied in a violent and racist speech.

Since then, thousands of refugees have been trying to leave the country as quickly as possible. In the process, at least 14 people drowned off the coastal town of Sfax last week, when two boats capsized. This brought the number of refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean this year to at least 346. More than 25,500 refugees have died in the Mediterranean since 2014.

Xi Jinping reappointed to head Chinese regime under siege

Peter Symonds

China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) officially installed Xi Jinping for a third term as president on Friday and Li Qiang, a close associate of Xi, as premier on Saturday. The body, which nominally acts as the country’s legislature, is finalising other top governmental appointments—with Xi’s supporters being appointed to key positions.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Chinese Premier Li Qiang, right arrive for a session of China's National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Sunday, March 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Xi’s re-appointment as president was a foregone conclusion following his appointment to a third term as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary at the party congress last October. It is the culmination of the process that Xi set in motion in 2018 when the country’s constitution was amended to end the two-term limit on the presidency.

The CCP congress also stacked the top party body, the Politburo Standing Committee, with Xi’s followers and incorporated “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” into the party’s constitution. Party officials and the state-owned media ritually declare Xi to be the “core” of the party leadership and government.

The flipside of the official lauding of Xi in China is the coverage in the US and Western media. As part of the propaganda for the accelerating US-led preparations for war with China, the American media paints Xi as a political strongman and autocrat—the most powerful leader in China since Mao Zedong. In reality, Xi has been thrust to the fore by a fragile CCP regime under siege both at home and abroad. He is a Bonapartist figure balancing between rival factions in the party and capitalist class amid sharpening social and geo-strategic tensions.

Beijing confronts escalating US military and diplomatic provocations over Taiwan and the South China and East China Seas, and a dramatic US military build-up and strengthening of alliances throughout the Indo-Pacific region. In addition, the Biden administration has not only maintained the trade war measures put in place by Trump but imposed one ban after another on the transfer of advanced semiconductors and the machinery needed for their manufacture to China.

Last week, in an unusual step, Xi explicitly accused the US of seeking to undermine China, declaring: “Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-around containment, encirclement and suppression of China.” A major restructuring endorsed by the NPC on Friday of the State Council points to several significant aspects of the mounting crisis facing the regime.

The State Council, which functions as China’s cabinet, will strengthen its control over the key Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), which will be called on to boost efforts to create an advanced computer chip-making industry in China. A new Central Science and Technology Committee will be created, directly under the State Council, to oversee all the ministry’s operations.

China is heavily dependent on imported semiconductors and has been hit hard by the US bans. According to the latest Chinese customs figures, the number of semiconductors imported by China in the first two months of the year plunged by 26.5 percent to 67.6 billion units, compared to the same period last year. Their total value dropped by 30.5 percent from $68.8 billion to $47.8 billion compared to the first two months last year.

While higher numbers of relatively low-end chips may have been manufactured within China, the most damaging impact will have been in the lack of access to advanced semiconductors, critical for both commercial and military applications.

The reform plan endorsed by the NPC declared it was necessary to “rationalise the scientific and technological leadership and management system… to overcome difficulties in key core technologies, and accelerate the realisation of high-level technological self-reliance and strength.” 

However, China, despite its economic size, confronts huge problems in replicating and competing with what is a globally-organised industry. The US has not only banned the sale of American equipment and semiconductors to China but pressured Japan, Taiwan, the Netherlands and South Korea to do the same. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has a virtual global monopoly in the production of the most advanced chips.

The Financial Times reported last week that the Netherlands is preparing to impose bans on the export of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China on the pretext of national security. The Dutch company ASML is the world’s largest supplier of advanced chip equipment. The article suggested that a ban on the servicing and repair of existing ASML equipment in China may be under consideration.

The State Council reform also strengthened the oversight of Chinese financial sector, which is threatened by a meltdown in the real estate sector following years of frenzied speculation as well as high levels of government debt. Estimates put public debt as high as $US18 trillion, of which $10 trillion is “hidden debt” owed by shaky local government financing platforms.

A new National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA) is to be established to take over from the existing China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC). It will wield significant new supervisory powers over the financial industry, excluding the share markets, including over small local banks that represent nearly half of the country’s banking sector. Significantly, its national officials will take over from local regulators. The NFRA will be directly administered by the State Council.

The economy as a whole has slumped sharply. Economic growth in 2022 was just 3 percent, well under the target of 5.5 percent and one of the lowest figures for decades. Projected growth for 2023 of “around 5 percent” was announced by outgoing Premier Li Keqiang on the opening day of the NPC. The CCP regime had long regarded 8 percent growth as the minimum figure necessary to minimise unemployment and maintain social stability.

Under intense pressure from the major powers and the corporate elite, the Chinese government in December abruptly ended its zero-COVID policy that had minimised infections and deaths in China and removed virtually all health restrictions. As a result, infections have ravaged the population and estimates for the death toll are over one million. While the CCP regime is hoping that ending zero-COVID will give it an economic boost, the adoption of the same murderous let-it-rip policy as governments around the world will only further undermine its claims to be looking after public welfare.

Over the past decade, Xi had effectively sidelined Li Keqiang and taken control of economic policy, which traditionally had been the province of the premier. Li Keqiang had been an advocate of further opening up the Chinese economy to foreign investment as part of a China 2030 plan drawn up with the World Bank. In response to Washington’s increasingly confrontational stance and the global economic turmoil, Xi has sought to boost Chinese corporations and China’s ability to compete technologically.

Li Qiang, the new premier has been closely associated with Xi. He worked for Xi as secretary when Xi was governor of the wealthier coastal province of Zhejiang in the mid-2000s. When Xi became president in 2012, Li took over as Zhejiang governor himself, then party boss of nearby Jiangsu province. In 2017, Li was installed in the powerful position of CCP secretary in Shanghai where he is credited with convincing Tesla founder Elon Musk to build the company’s first overseas factory in the city. He is due to speak today about the direction of economic policy and will undoubtedly cleave closely to the line of his mentor.

Israeli protest leaders ignore escalating attacks on Palestinians, direct opposition along nationalist lines

Jean Shaoul

Opposition to the power grab by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has grown to unprecedented levels, but the protests’ leaders have said nothing about the ongoing attacks on Palestinians by Israel’s security forces and settlers in the West Bank.

On Saturday evening, for the tenth successive week, a record number of people—estimated at 500,000—took to the streets of towns and cities all over Israel, calling for democracy and a halt to Netanyahu’s plans to neuter the judiciary. As well as 100,000 demonstrating in Tel Aviv, 50,000 people rallied in Haifa and in Jerusalem and 10,000 in Beersheva.

Israeli demonstrators hold torches during protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to overhaul the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 9, 2023. [AP Photo/Oded Balilty]

This was despite the police’s use of horses, stun grenades and water cannon to break up previous rallies, and the government’s efforts to use the shooting and wounding of three Israelis Thursday evening by a Palestinian, who was killed by security forces, to scare off protesters.

The rallies were again addressed by former government ministers, many of whom have served under Netanyahu in the past, as well as retired generals and intelligence chiefs, who are determined to channel the heterogeneous sentiments of the protesters along nationalist lines in defence of the Zionist project, amid the greatest political crisis and social and economic divisions in Israel’s history.

The organisers have called for mass walkouts and rallies next Thursday in another “day of disruption,” again without challenging the refusal of the trade unions to endorse the walkouts. The Zionist Histadrut union federation fears a massive explosion of anger over the rising cost of living, with inflation now running at 5.4 percent, interest rate hikes and spiraling housing costs. The Histadrut has just agreed a paltry 11 percent pay rise over a seven-year period for 350,000 public service employees, having fended off strikes during the pandemic and four elections in five years “to help with the economic recovery.”

Neither have the organisers made any appeal to Israel’s Palestinian citizens, sharing the concern of a government made up of a far-right coalition of fascists, racists and ultra-Orthodox parties to assert their pro-Zionist credentials. They have gone to great lengths to insist that these protests are in defence of Israel, issuing hundreds of thousands of Israeli flags to the demonstrators.

All factions of the Israeli bourgeoisie are united in their policy of occupying Palestinian land, expanding Israeli settlements—deemed illegal under international law and in violation of United Nations resolutions—and continuing the system of apartheid oppression against the Palestinian population.

The protest leaders are also no less determined to suppress any dissent within Israel itself that would challenge the rule of Israel’s oligarchs. Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid and the other leaders of the opposition seek to convince the ruling elite that they are a safer set of hands to be entrusted with protecting the Israeli state.

The Israeli military has meanwhile stepped up its ever more lethal mass search and arrest operations in the West Bank, which include extra-judicial, targeted killings. They are being carried out during the daytime when towns and cities are packed with people, in an effort to intimidate and terrorise the Palestinian population.

From Monday to Wednesday last week, during the Jewish festival of Purim, the security forces closed the border crossings from the West Bank and Gaza into Israel, confining the Palestinians in a ghetto.

On Sunday, Israeli forces shot and killed three Palestinian gunmen after they opened fire on troops in the West Bank, while a fourth man turned himself in. This follows a raid by Israeli troops last week on the West Bank village of Jaba, where they shot and killed three Palestinians they claimed were “militants.”

On Tuesday afternoon, soldiers raided the West Bank city of Jenin, firing rounds of machine gun fire and explosives, with at least seven drones circling overhead, killing at least six Palestinians and wounding another 10. Video footage showed a damaged ambulance and witnesses said that medical staff were prevented from reaching the injured. A simultaneous arrest operation was mounted in Nablus.

On Monday night, settlers returned to Huwara, scene of a horrific pogrom-like attack a week earlier, where they threw stones at a supermarket and cars and injured five members of the same family, including an elderly man and a toddler. Israeli soldiers were seen dancing on the town’s main road to celebrate Purim. The Israeli military did nothing to stop the attack, instead firing tear gas on the Palestinians, of whom 25 needed medical treatment.

President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA), which is widely reviled for its dictatorial and corrupt rule in the service of Israel, has done nothing to protect its citizens, despite being responsible for “security” in the West Bank’s towns and cities. It has enriched a handful of plutocrats while policing the deepening poverty of the majority.

Teachers have been on strike since February 5 over the PA’s failure to pay them their full salaries. With more than a million Palestinian students unable to attend school, families have started a movement to support the strike.

Israel’s orgy of criminal violence brings to 80 the number of Palestinians killed since the start of the year, while Palestinian attacks have killed 14 Israelis. It threatens the eruption of a violent conflagration that would engulf not just the occupied Palestinian territories, but Israel and its neighbours, even as Israel is involved in a covert war against Iran and its allies in Syria.

All this has the backing of Israel’s paymasters in Washington, with the Biden administration granting Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—the Religious Zionist leader whose remit now includes the settlements in the West Bank—a diplomatic visa to visit the US where he will address the Israel Bonds conference. Civil rights groups and Palestinian and Jewish organisations have called for the self-confessed fascist and homophobe to be denied entry. Smotrich has called for Israel to “wipe out” Huwara, home to 7,000 Palestinians.

Pakistan economy unravels as IMF imposes ever harsher conditions

Sampath Perera

Even as Pakistan’s government implements brutal International Monetary Fund-dictated austerity measures, the US-dominated international lender is pushing for even more sweeping “reforms” before allowing Islamabad access to a previously agreed tranche of $1.1 billion from a 2019 loan.

While the country is on the verge of state bankruptcy, its impoverished population is subjected to systematic hunger and destitution due to the impact of decades of austerity, last summer’s devastating climate-change driven floods, and soaring prices. All indications are that the conspiratorial “negotiations” between the IMF and Islamabad are being used to pressure Pakistan to undertake a geopolitical realignment away from China and towards reviving its long-standing but recently strained partnership with US imperialism.

An Afghan youth gives alms to a beggar woman in Daman-e-Koh park, north of Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, February 9, 2023. [AP Photo/Rahmat Gul]

An IMF delegation visited Islamabad between January 31 and February 9. However, instead of the visit concluding with the release of desperately needed funds, IMF officials demanded that the highly unpopular interim coalition government led by Shehbaz Sharif further increase electricity prices and raise interest rates. These measures would further exacerbate the catastrophic social crisis facing the country’s 230 million people.

According to IMF official Esther Perez Ruiz, Pakistan must also present “firm and credible assurances that there is sufficient financing to ensure… (its) balance of payments is fully financed.” The IMF insists that there is a $7 billion gap in financing, while Islamabad asserts that the gap is only $5 billion for the fiscal year ending in June.

The IMF’s fresh demands come as the agency has imposed a de facto embargo on virtually all external financing options for Islamabad, including from its traditional Gulf allies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Islamabad had a reprieve from this Catch-22 situation last week when China extended a $2 billion loan. The reason for Beijing’s policy shift remains unclear, but in welcoming it Pakistani political leaders and opinion-makers were quick to reiterate that China is the country’s “all-weather friend.” The Chinese government had previously indicated that an agreement between Islamabad and the IMF would be essential for the provision of further financial assistance.

On Feb. 28, the global rating agency Moody’s lowered Pakistan’s credit rating by two more notches to “Caa3,” reportedly the lowest in three decades. It cited the country’s “increasingly fragile liquidity and external position” by way of explanation. Pakistan lacked the funds to pay for three weeks of imports, it added.

The current impasse has nothing to do with any reluctance on Islamabad’s part to impose ruthless austerity measures. Former prime minister Imran Khan’s government was promptly removed in April 2022 after he reversed IMF-demanded subsidy cuts in the face of country-wide protests. Khan had previously implemented two rounds of some of the toughest austerity in the country’s history. In the final year of his government, Khan shifted the country’s foreign policy towards a closer alliance with Russia and deepened ties with China, prompting concern and anger in Washington.

Sharif’s Muslim League (PML-N) and the People’s Party (PPP) assumed power in a coalition with the approval of the military, long the most powerful political actor in the country and the linchpin of the alliance between the Pakistani bourgeoisie and US imperialism. The express aim of the new government was to implement IMF austerity, which it has done. As soon as it took office, it worked to patch up ties with the US. While Khan initially accused the US of involvement in his ouster, he has since repudiated this claim as a means to curry favour with Washington, placate the military, and pave a path for his potential return to power.

Khan is attempting to exploit the popular opposition to ruinous IMF reforms and seething anger against Islamabad’s decades-long reactionary partnership with US imperialism that has led the country from one disaster to another. He is cynically posturing as an opponent of IMF austerity and US bullying and wars. The government, meanwhile, is attempting to implicate Khan in a politically motivated corruption scandal. With an arrest warrant from a court hearing pending, his supporters rallied in Lahore this week to demand early general elections. Armed with an anti-democratic ban on public gatherings imposed by the provincial government, the police attacked Wednesday’s rally and killed at least one Khan supporter.

The ruling elite is increasingly concerned that the political turmoil and social crisis could escape its control, resulting in the development of mass opposition to its ruthless austerity measures like last year’s popular upsurge in Sri Lanka that forced president Rajapakse to flee.

A March 1 report in the widely read English language daily Dawn cited unnamed officials who compared the current impasse with the IMF to a “1998-like situation,” when Islamabad was sanctioned for carrying out nuclear weapons test, and claimed that “foreign capitals (are) working for Pakistan’s ‘meltdown.’” According to one official, “This time some powers had Pakistan’s missile programme in mind.”

Neither the quoted officials nor Dawn named the countries being referred to. However, the only plausible candidate is the US, which not only dominates the IMF but has a record of ruthlessly leveraging it to advance its geostrategic aims.

Pakistan remains under constant pressure from the US for its increasingly close economic and defence partnership with Beijing. Washington publicly opposes the strategic $66 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative, which it denounces as the cause of Islamabad’s debt crisis. Washington’s determination to escalate the war against Russia in Ukraine is intimately connected with its advanced preparation for war against China, which American imperialism views as its chief strategic rival.

On March 2, the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security blacklisted 14 “entities” in China and Pakistan for “contributing to ballistic missile programs of concern,” including Pakistan’s missile program, “and for involvement in unsafeguarded nuclear activities.” While this is not the first time such actions have been taken against Pakistani entities, these measures are always aimed at bullying Islamabad to line-up with Washington’s geostrategic agenda.

Prominent PPP leader Raza Rabbani, once a close aide to the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and a longstanding member of Pakistan’s senate, demanded on Monday that Sharif explain the “pressures” Islamabad is coming under to a joint session of the parliament’s lower and upper houses. Rabbani questioned “if our nuclear assets are under pressure” and demanded to know “if our strategic relationship with China is under threat or we are being called up to play [a] role in the region which will facilitate the military presence of an imperialist power.” Rabbani also wanted to know the reason for the “reluctance of friendly countries” to assist Islamabad.

It is worth recalling that in June 2021 Prime Minister Khan, questioned by an HBO Axios interviewer on the stationing of the CIA in Pakistan, declared, “There’s no way we're going to allow any bases or any sort of action from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan. Absolutely not.”

Another noteworthy development was Pakistan’s statement last month denying reports that it is supplying “defence items” to Ukraine. Due to its close Cold War alliance with Washington, during which it armed Islamist fighters against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and later as an ally of the fraudulent “war on terror,” Pakistan is armed with US fighter jets, artillery, and other military equipment. Pakistan’s military maintains relations with Washington independently of the civilian government.

Pakistan has developed a range of “strategic” nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable missile systems in addition to an arsenal of “tactical” nuclear weapons to compete with its geostrategic rival India.

The crisis of Pakistan’s bankrupt capitalist economy is hardly unique. It has been exacerbated by the continuing ravages of the global pandemic and the inflationary pressure around the world resulting from the ongoing war in Ukraine. Despite having made no contribution to this crisis, the working people and the poor, who encompass the overwhelming majority of Pakistan’s population, are encountering a social catastrophe of unprecedented scale.

Before the country’s central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), raised its trend-setting policy rate by an unprecedented 300 basis points to 20 percent in response to IMF demands, the rupee was in a tailspin, falling to over 278 rupees per dollar on March 2. While it subsequently recovered somewhat, a further devaluation is likely due to the IMF demanding the “free floating” of the currency. For comparison, the rupee stood at 179.5 per dollar in March 2022.

Prior to the devaluation of the rupee, the understated official inflation rate was recorded at 31.5 percent, the highest since 1975. The rate stood at 41.07 percent last week when the prices were compared to the same week’s previous year.

In addition to crushing inflation, the brutal austerity program is being imposed on top of the unprecedented level of devastation caused by last summer’s floods that inundated one-third of the country, producing $30 billion in damages. A total of 30 million people were directly impacted.

Dawn quoted Muhammad Khan, a cart pusher in an industrial market in Lahore, who said his earnings barely allow him to provide his family with two meals a day. “With a family of six, we need at least 20 rotis [a round flatbread native to the Indian subcontinent] twice a day, which cost a staggering 600 rupees [at a rate of 15 rupees each]… basic family meals cost me more than 1,000 rupees a day ($3.63) and I cannot make that kind of money every day given my age and health,” he said.

Niaz Ahmed, a loom worker from Faisalabad, said, “Falling ill, especially to any life-threatening ailment, is almost a death sentence for a poor [person] now.” The report contrasted the 25,000 rupees ($90.69) monthly minimum wage to unprecedented price hikes in all essentials, the increasing joblessness and added, “Even normal medicines are out of middle-income group’s reach.”

Georgian government withdraws “foreign agents” bill after two days of NATO-backed protests

Jason Melanovski

After two days of Western-back protests in Tbilisi, Georgia’s ruling “Georgian Dream” party has withdrawn a “foreign agents” bill that was viewed by the US and the EU as a threat to their interests. Georgia, a country of 3.7 million in the southern Caucasus, is regarded as strategically important in the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, which has destabilized the entire region.

The protests that began on Tuesday saw violent clashes between the police and demonstrators and the arrests of dozens of people. The bill, titled “On Transparency of Foreign Influence,” was intended to force organizations such as media outlets and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to disclose whether they are backed by foreign money. Under the proposed legislation, organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad could be labeled “foreign agents.”

Similar anti-democratic measures were passed in Russia and intensified in June of last year, amid fears that Western governments, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, would ratchet up their support for so-called “civil society” groups and institutions.

Such organizations have been heavily funded by both the United States and the EU since the fall of the Soviet Union, and played a prominent role in staging the so-called Georgian “Rose Revolution” in 2003 and the Ukrainian “Orange Revolution” in 2004. In reality, no revolutions took place, and both cases merely marked the installation of US and NATO friendly regimes hostile to Moscow.

In 2014, Ukraine’s Western-funded “civil society” allied with the country’s far-right neo-Nazi groups to undemocratically bring down the Russian-backed government of Viktor Yanukovych and install a NATO puppet regime.

While the bill that the Georgian government sought to pass this week constituted an attack on democratic rights, there was nothing progressive about the political orientation of the protests in the country’s capital. In class composition and political outlook, they resemble those of 2003 in Georgia or 2004 and 2014 in Ukraine: they are rooted predominantly in layers of the middle class and led by the country’s pro-Western opposition. Protesters have been waving EU, US and Ukrainian flags and, from day one, the demonstrations were endorsed by US and EU officials. 

The withdrawal of the bill is an indication of the intense pressure exerted by NATO and the pro-Western opposition on the Georgian government.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—all NATO and EU members who have played a prominent role in escalating the war in Ukraine and promoting anti-Russian sentiment—condemned the draft law.

“We call on the Parliament of Georgia to responsibly assess the real interests of the country and refrain from decisions that may undermine aspirations of Georgia’s people to live in a democratic country which is advancing towards the EU and NATO,” the chief diplomats of each country wrote in a statement on the situation.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price made clear that the US viewed the bill as part of a larger struggle tied to the conflict in Ukraine and Washington’s ongoing proxy war against Russia.

“Parliament’s advancing of these Kremlin-inspired draft laws is incompatible with the people of Georgia’s clear desire for European integration and its democratic development,” Price stated.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky threw his support behind the protesters, thanking them for waving the Ukrainian flag.

“We want to be in the European Union and we will be. We want Georgia to be in the European Union, and I am sure it will be,” Zelensky stated. “We want Moldova to be in the European Union, and I am sure it will be. All free peoples of Europe deserve this.”

The French-born Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has opposed the bill from the beginning and called for “a quicker and shorter path” into both NATO and the EU for Georgia. He described the introduction of the bill as part of a plot hatched in Moscow.

“Clearly, Russia is not going to let go very easily, but Russia is losing its war in Ukraine,” Zourabichvili said in an interview with CNN.

The ruling Georgian Dream has likewise supported the country’s integration into the EU and NATO, but it has at the same time tried to maintain good relations with Moscow. In contrast to Zourabichvili, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, who is also the chair of Georgian Dream, supported the bill and called protesters part of the “radical opposition.” Since 2012, the party has pledged to “normalize” relations with Moscow over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. 

In 2008, then-Georgian President and darling of the United States, Mikheil Saakashvili, set off a disastrous war with Russia, after he initiated an artillery barrage on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. At least 162 civilians were killed.

The Georgian Orthodox Church, which plays a prominent role in Georgian society and politics, has likewise supported the “foreign agents” bill, as the institution views Western encroachments on its territory by other religious organizations and LGBTQ groups with hostility.

Amid the ongoing NATO-backed war in Ukraine, the protests in Tbilisi and the efforts by NATO against the bill make clear that the imperialist powers will not accept attempts by the Georgian Dream party to balance between Moscow and the West. They expect complete obedience to their plans to subjugate Russia and the entire former Soviet Union.

Second biggest bank failure in US history as Silicon Valley Bank collapses

Nick Beams

Silicon Valley Bank, servicing high-tech start-ups as well as their investors, was shut down yesterday in the second biggest bank failure in US history.

With $209 billion of assets, the SVB demise has been eclipsed only by the failure of Washington Mutual in 2008 at the start of the global financial crisis.

Santa Clara Police officers exit Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, California, Friday, March 10, 2023. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is seizing the assets of Silicon Valley Bank, marking the largest bank failure since Washington Mutual during the height of the 2008 financial crisis. [AP Photo/Jeff Chiu]

Less than 18 months ago, SVB had a market value of $44 billion. Now it is in the hands of receivers at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) which moved in after an attempted $2.5 billion capital raising failed.

On Thursday, the SVB chief executive was reassuring customers and investors that despite its problems the bank was on a sound financial footing. All to no avail.

SVB was no small operation. It was the sixteenth largest bank in the US and deeply integrated into Silicon Valley high-tech, serving around half of all new start-ups funded by venture capital investors.

The extent and rapidity of the collapse was highlighted by a senior executive at a multi-billion venture capital fund who commented to the Financial Times: “SVB’s 40 years of business relationships supporting Silicon Valley evaporated in 14 hours.”

SVB’s failure is a direct product of the interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve, instituted at the fastest pace in 40 years, in a bid to crush the growing wages upsurge of the working class in the face of the highest inflation rate in four decades.

As money poured into the high-tech sector as a result of the Fed’s previous ultra-easy monetary policies, SVB sought to find a safe haven for its extra cash holdings by investing in supposedly safe US Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article on the SVB demise began by posing the question of how it was that a bank, which had bought some of the safest assets in the world, could have failed in just two days?

It noted that the bank’s securities portfolio rose from about $27 billion in the first quarter of 2020 to around $121 billion at the end of 2021.

This increase was the direct result of the Fed’s massive $4 trillion injection into the financial system after the market freeze of March 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But as the Fed started lifting interest rates last year and the yields on Treasury bonds, and other debt increased, their market value fell—yields and bond price move in opposite directions—and SVB incurred significant losses.

It has been calculated that it has suffered a $15 billion loss on the $91 billion worth of long-dated securities which it held.

The other major factor was the change in money flows. Instead of receiving new money from investors, trying to get in on the ground floor for the next high-tech rocket, many of SVB’s clients began to make withdrawals as they burned through cash.

The collapse sent a shock wave through similar banks and the banking system more broadly.

Trading in the banking groups PacWest, Western Alliance and First Republic was suspended for a period as their shares experienced sharp falls because they were seen to be similar to SVB.

First Republic shares ended the day 15 percent down and the fall in the other two was 38 percent and 21 percent respectively.

First Republic issued a statement pointing to its “continued safety and stability and strong capital and liquidity positions.” Such statements essentially mean nothing because if any bank says otherwise, or even indicates all is not well, it can trigger a collapse.

And the market has reason to question the position of First Republic. Its latest annual reports disclosed a significant gap between the market value of its assets, mostly loans, and their book value.

The WSJ reported that the market value of its “real estate secured mortgages” was $117.5 billion as of the end of last year, compared to their book value of $136.8 billion.

“The fair-value gap of that single asset category was larger than First Republic’s $17.4 billion of total equity,” the article noted. It said the total value of the company’s financial assets was $26.9 billion less than was shown on the balance sheet, adding that a spokesman for the company had refused to comment on the divergence.

There are likely to be significant immediate follow-on effects from the FDIC takeover of SVB. Deposits of up to $250,000 are federally insured. But the vast majority of SVB customers fall well beyond that category with the bank reporting at the end of last year that out of $173 billion in total domestic deposits $151 billion were uninsured.

As it became clear the bank was facing major problems on Thursday, investors tried to get their money out and place it elsewhere.

Silicon Valley start-up companies are facing major problems as a result of the collapse with one industry representative tweeting it was an “extinction level event.”

Such is the significance of the SVB collapse and its possible effects on the banking sector, which has experienced falls on Wall Street in the past few days, that the US Treasury Department issued a statement saying it had met with top officials from the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which all have some role in overseeing the banks, to discuss the situation.

The statement said Treasury secretary Janet Yellen expressed “full confidence in the banking regulators” and noted that the banking system “remains resilient.”

Of course, it could not really say anything else. But all manner of issues remain. New regulations, put in place after the 2008 crisis, failed to prevent the market freeze of March 2020 for which financial regulators, nearly three years on, have failed to provide an explanation, much less a solution.

Moreover, the massive injection of money by the Fed in response to that event, some $4 trillion, which fueled a new round of unprecedented speculation in all financial markets, has created the conditions for a new crisis as interest rate hikes continue.

Three years and 21 million dead from the COVID-19 pandemic

Bryan Dyne

Three years ago today, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) formally declared COVID-19 a pandemic. At the time, there were about 120,000 reported cases and less than 5,000 deaths worldwide.

The official death toll of the pandemic now stands at 6.9 million, but the best estimate of the true amount of men, women and children that have died is at least 21 million, three times official figures. That is, more than 21 million people would be alive today if the pandemic had been contained when it first emerged in early 2020.

For context, in three years, the coronavirus pandemic has killed more people than all the casualties of World War I. In the United States alone, there are 1.1 million official deaths and an additional 300,000 excess deaths, including at least 1,705 children. The overall per capita death rate is steadily approaching that of the 1918 flu pandemic.

In addition to those who have died, tens of millions continue to suffer from a vast array of symptoms that have been grouped under the name Long COVID. Just last week, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that those with Long COVID are at high risk of “cardiovascular events and excess all-cause mortality.”

In a rational, scientifically organized society, humanity would currently be celebrating the beginning of the end of the disease three years ago. The WHO’s declaration would have been part of a worldwide mobilization to test for and trace the virus, to care for those who contracted COVID-19 and to develop treatments for those afflicted with any unforeseen long-term symptoms.

The unprecedented scientific advances of the past 150 years would have been wielded to full effect and the novel and deadly pathogen would have been eliminated and ultimately eradicated.

Under capitalism, however, the anniversary was marked by the end of the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. For the past three years, the tracker has served as a cornerstone for monitoring real time cases, deaths and other necessary data to end the coronavirus.

Johns Hopkins has said the reason for shutting down is that states have stopped reporting data. Going forward, those who relied on Johns Hopkins will now be essentially blind to the spread of the ongoing pandemic.

More importantly, from the perspective of the capitalist governments, especially the Biden administration, the end of the Johns Hopkins tracker is part of a policy that treats the pandemic as over. Even as 500 people on average die each day in the US and thousands internationally, there is no coverage in the media of the disease.

Biden’s term in office has been characterized by the effort to convince the population that the threat has passed. During his period in office, he ended all remaining mitigation measures, including masking. The US has led the way to the abandonment of all restraints on the spread of the virus throughout the world.

The process reached new heights at the start of the Omicron wave in November 2021, when the variant was declared “mild” and all pretenses of policies to halt the spread of the disease were dropped. Biden foisted responsibility for the continued spread of the pandemic on those that were unvaccinated, claiming that all people who received the vaccine were “protected from severe illness and death.”

The White House initiated a campaign aimed at, in the words of Politico, “conditioning Americans” to accept permanent mass infection through the suppression of data. The White House instructed states to reduce the frequency of testing. In January, the Department of Health and Human Services no longer allowed hospitals to report daily cases and deaths, and by the end of the year the CDC had ended daily reporting.

At every turn, Biden’s actions have been guided by the same interests as those of his predecessor Donald Trump, of placing profits over lives. Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, the focus of the American ruling elite has been to use the pandemic to transfer astronomical amounts of money to the financial oligarchy.

From the standpoint of these social interests, the lives of the population, and particularly older Americans and disabled people who are disproportionately affected, were valueless. This is what CDC Director Rochelle Walensky meant when she declared in January of last year that it was “encouraging” that chronically ill people made up a large proportion of deaths.

Leading politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, as well as major media figures were all aware in January 2020 of the immense danger of the virus that had emerged in Wuhan, China. Their focus, however, was not on saving lives but saving the wealth of the ruling class.

And thus did the capitalists feast. A report by Oxfam from January showed that the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $2.7 billion a day since the pandemic began, collectively increasing their wealth by $26 trillion since 2020.

As profits have soared, so has the death toll. The third anniversary of the pandemic also occurred alongside an update of excess deaths caused by COVID-19 from the Economist.

The policy of mass death in the US has been implemented internationally. Beginning late last year, China, the one holdout in the policy of mass infection, abandoned its Zero-COVID measures, under the pressure of international finance capital. The death toll is colossal, by some estimates more than 1 million.

The pandemic has also provided an opportunity for fascist ideologue Steve Bannon and his Chinese expatriate co-thinkers to invent and promote the Wuhan lab lie, the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was developed in a Chinese lab, possibly with US funding, and unleashed upon the world. Over the course of the pandemic, this lie, which has no basis in scientific fact, has been seized upon across the US political spectrum to demonize China and shape public opinion for war.

The Wuhan lab lie has also been utilized to foment attacks on scientists and science more generally. The dangers of the pandemic, especially of Long COVID, were obfuscated, and scientists who have spent decades as leaders in the field of epidemiology have been vilified.

In contrast to the response of the ruling class to the pandemic, the working class sought to take action to save lives. As the pandemic spread in March 2020, workers spearheaded plant closures and other measures that ultimately forced the lockdowns in 2020 and parts of 2021.

That the lockdowns were ended before the pandemic was suppressed was the direct result of right-wing and fascistic provocations championed by Trump and his ilk in other countries, such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and ex-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to prematurely end the lockdowns and get workers back on the job and pay for the bailouts.

Moreover, ending the lockdowns had bipartisan support and was promoted as the correct policy by the corporate media. It was during this time that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman coined the phrase, “the cure can’t be worse than the disease.”

Significantly, despite the relentless propaganda campaign during the past three years to minimize the dangers of the disease, many are still concerned about the virus and are trying to protect themselves. A Gallup poll published Thursday showed that 15 percent of Americans are still completely or mostly isolating themselves and that 35 percent are at least partially isolating themselves.