In what amounts to a double ultimatum to the Australian parliament, the Albanese government is demanding the passage this week—the scheduled final parliamentary session of 2023—of two sweeping bills that eviscerate fundamental democratic and legal rights.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media after meeting with Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, in London, Friday, May, 5, 2023. [AP Photo/Frank Augstein]
One bill attacks the right to citizenship and the other bill attacks the right not to be imprisoned without trial. Taken together, they constitute a warning of a turn by the ruling class to dictatorial measures amid mounting political disaffection.
The twin ultimatum has been accompanied by a foul witch hunt that, in effect, demonises refugees and other immigrants, depicting many of them as a danger to society. A reactionary climate of emergency is being whipped up by the very same forces that are backing the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The Labor government, the Liberal-National Coalition and the corporate media are vying to outdo each other in branding as “murderers,” “sex offenders” and the “worst of the worst” all the people who could be thrown back into indefinite immigration detention as a result of the two bills.
One is the preventative detention bill, due to be tabled tomorrow. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil proclaimed last week that the bill, then still to be drafted, had to be passed by both houses of parliament by this Thursday, or parliament would be kept sitting until it did so.
That bill, reportedly cynically rebadged as a “Community Safety Scheme,” is a transparent bid to flout a November 8 High Court order. Unanimously, the seven judges partially overturned the reactionary three-decade regime of indefinite immigration detention of asylum seekers and other non-citizens who had been stripped of visas.
A government spokesperson blatantly declared yesterday that the bill would re-detain most of the 148 or so detainees that the government was forced to release as a result of the seven judges’ unanimous ruling. The bill would allow the immigration minister to apply for a court order to re-incarcerate an ex-detainee on the flimsy allegation of “a high degree of probability” that “the offender poses an unacceptable risk of seriously harming the community by committing” what the bill classifies as “a serious violent or sexual offence.”
Clearly, by its spokesperson’s boast, the government is not waiting for a court to pass judgment on individuals, even by that arbitrary test. This amounts to punishment for a thought crime, based on an accusation of what the person might do in the future, not on what they have actually done.
The other bill is a no less far-reaching operation to evade two other recent High Court rulings that outlawed powers legislated in 2015 by the previous Coalition government with Labor’s assistance. That legislation allowed the home affairs minister to strip dual citizens of their Australian citizenship for allegedly committing acts deemed to “repudiate” their “allegiance” to Australia.
Last week, in partnership with the Coalition, the Labor government rammed the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Repudiation) Bill 2023 through the House of Representatives in a single day and is demanding that the Senate rubberstamp it by this Thursday.
That is despite the vast implications of stripping someone of their citizenship, which even one of the High Court judges described as a punishment amounting to “civil death.” Without citizenship, no other political or civil right currently exists, including to vote, reside, travel and not be detained without trial, and the same goes for access to employment, health and welfare services.
In two cases in 2022 and 2023, known as Alexander and Benbrika, the High Court overturned parts of the 2015 legislation that blatantly violated the limited protection of the colonial-era 1901 Constitution.
This constitution contains no bill of rights whatsoever. But it contains a formal separation of judicial and executive powers. That essentially forbids most forms of punishment, which includes cancellation of citizenship, from being imposed without a court order, except in wartime.
Labor’s bill hands vague and politically-loaded powers to judges. Acting on a government application, they will determine whether a person’s “serious offences” have “repudiated their allegiance” to Australia by repudiating “Australian values.”
These values are said to consist of “values, democratic beliefs, rights and liberties that underpin Australian society.” Yet, the bill itself demonstrates the readiness of the ruling class and its political servants to override “democratic beliefs, rights and liberties.”
The “serious offences” listed in the bill include terrorism-related acts, advocating mutiny, treason, espionage, foreign interference and foreign incursion. These offences have the potential to be used to lay charges against opponents of any war waged by the Australian government, on the grounds, for example, that their political activities serve the interests of the enemy.
The bill’s definition of “serious offences” also applies to a broad range of offences that include preparatory conduct, that is, alleged plots or behaviour which have not resulted in a crime.
There is a threshold that a person must have been sentenced to at least three years’ imprisonment, but most of the listed offences carry sentences that can far exceed that.
The danger to democratic rights is highlighted by threats that have been made to charge people with crimes, such as “giving material support” to terrorism for opposing the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Accusations have been made that denouncing the massacres of Palestinians constitutes assisting Hamas, which has been listed by successive governments as a “terrorist organisation” under Australia’s sweeping “counter-terrorism” legislation.
Because of the broad legal definition of terrorism, a person could lose their citizenship for supporting the right of people in Gaza to resist the Israeli onslaught. Likewise, the extensive “foreign interference” offences could cover anti-war and anti-government activists.
The government and the Coalition rode roughshod over proposed amendments in the House of Representatives last Wednesday. Independent Kylea Tink sought to raise the age of those who could lose their citizenship from 14 to 18. Another “teal” independent, Zoe Daniel, tried to have the section on “values” struck out. Both were brushed aside.
Greens leader Adam Bandt said: “It’s one of the most fundamental issues, the bedrock of democracy in this country, and we get an hour to debate it—and, as a result, someone can lose their citizenship!”
These objections only produced a doubling down. Opposition leader Peter Dutton wrote to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last Thursday demanding that further offences be listed as “serious” in the bill, including advocating terrorism or genocide, and training with a foreign military.
Citizenship-cancellation powers are being used with little or no media coverage. According to figures released under Freedom of Information legislation by the Home Affairs Department last year, 59 people have had their citizenship revoked by governments since 2007, when the first cancellation powers were introduced.
So far, citizenship-stripping legislation has been restricted to dual citizens—those holding citizenship of another country. But that covers millions of Australians in an increasingly diverse population. Moreover, the High Court rulings do not legally prevent any extension to sole citizens.
Following the Supreme Court judgement ruling the climate fund to be unconstitutional, which has torn a billion-euro hole in the federal budget, the government is preparing social cuts on a massive scale. Health, education and housing are to be gutted to pay for the horrendous levels of armaments spending and billions in gifts to the rich.
Robert Habeck, Olaf Scholz and Christian Lindner [Photo by Bundesregierug / Denzel]
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democrat, SPD), Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Finance Minister Christian Lindner (Liberal Democrat, FDP) have been negotiating behind closed doors since Sunday afternoon on how to plug the hole. Scholz therefore returned from a trip to the Middle East a day earlier than planned and Habeck cancelled a planned visit to the World Climate Conference in Dubai. By the time the cabinet meets on Wednesday, the tripartite group wants to present an agreement in principle so that the 2024 budget can be passed this year. However, it is questionable whether this will succeed.
The Supreme Court sent a political signal with its ruling on November 15. It has become the ultimate judge in budgetary matters, which are traditionally the prerogative of parliament in democratic states. Based on the so-called debt brake, which the grand coalition of the SPD and Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) had jointly enshrined in the constitution in 2009, it declared the supplementary budget for 2021, which the Bundestag (parliament) had passed retroactively, to be unconstitutional and null and void.
As a result, the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF), which finances climate-friendly technologies in the steel industry, battery and computer chip factories, the modernisation of the railways and numerous other projects, is missing €60 billion. These projects must now be cancelled or financed directly from the budget through savings elsewhere.
However, the judgement not only affects the climate fund. Some of the federal government’s 29 special funds, which together amount to €870 billion, are also affected. This applies in particular to the €200 billion Economic Stabilisation Fund (WSF), used to subsidise gas and electricity prices, among other things, which have risen as a result of the sanctions against Russia. In addition, there are similar special funds operating in the federal states.
The Supreme Court has also made clear that it will keep a close eye on the federal government’s budget policy in future. The judgement states that it is subject to “full supreme court review” as to whether an extraordinary emergency situation exists. The Bundestag can decide on such an emergency situation so that the government can circumvent the debt limit.
The Supreme Court judgement means one thing above all: the government must squeeze the billions it is spending on arming the military, financing the war in Ukraine, subsidising large corporations and similar projects even more brutally out of working people than it already has.
The current draft budget already provides for the most severe social cuts in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Measured against inflation, the real budget is set to fall by 11.8 percent. The healthcare budget alone has already been cut by three-quarters compared to 2022, from €64.4 billion to €16.2 billion. The education budget has been reduced by 5.4 percent and housing by 5.1 percent. These plans are now to be vastly overshadowed.
The Supreme Court is acting as the direct mouthpiece of big business and the rich, who have been demanding this for a long time. It is only “independent” in formal terms, as it is not bound by instructions from the government. Politically, however, it is anything but independent. The two judges who had a decisive influence on the ruling, rapporteur Sibylle Kessal-Wulf and Peter Müller, were both nominated for office by the CDU/CSU, which filed a lawsuit against the supplementary budget. Müller was CDU state premier of Saarland from 1999 to 2011 before moving to Karlsruhe as a supreme court judge.
Although the judgement is causing difficulties for the federal coalition, it is by no means inconvenient as it is also determined to intensify the attacks on workers’ incomes and social benefits. Now it can appeal to an “independent” authority, the Supreme Court.
The SPD, which has been a member of the federal government for 25 years with one interruption and heads the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, is responsible for the “Hartz IV” welfare and labour “reforms,” which worsened welfare provisions and employment protections, increased the retirement age to 67 and carried out numerous other social attacks. As a result of its policies, the number of poor and low-wage workers has reached record levels. Now, together with the FDP and the Greens, the SPD is initiating a new stage of social cuts. The sums involved in the budget give an idea of their dimensions.
The government has adopted a supplementary budget for the current year that exceeds the permitted debt ceiling by €44.8 billion. To make this possible, the Bundestag is to declare an extraordinary emergency for 2023, citing the energy crisis and the costs of reconstruction following the flood disaster in the Ahr valley two years ago.
The finance minister has ruled out the possibility of another declaration of an extraordinary emergency for the coming year. According to Lindner, €17 billion would then have to be saved in the core budget. Other estimates assume much higher sums. According to the Federal Audit Office, the government will have a shortfall of €48.5 billion in the coming year. To make up for this, 8 percent of all expenditure would have to be cut or refinanced.
The government and opposition categorically rule out increasing taxes on the incomes and assets of the rich, which have been growing steadily for decades. The government will also not cut defence spending, which will amount to over €89 billion in the coming year, including ancillary budgets. Chancellor Scholz has just promised Ukraine a doubling of annual military aid to €8 billion.
The government will also hardly touch the expenditure summarised under the collective term “subsidies.” On the one hand, there are powerful lobbies behind them—such as the tax exemption for aviation fuel (€8.4 billion) and diesel (€8.2 billion) and the concessions for large industrial electricity consumers (€13.6 billion).
The abolition of the commuter allowance (€6 billion) would hit workers with a long journey to work particularly hard. The government has already stopped the electricity and gas price brakes (€6.3 billion), which will further increase electricity and energy costs for private households.
According to Scholz, the government intends to maintain the promised subsidies from the climate fund, some of which are simply trade war measures. Here, €19 billion is earmarked for the promotion of heat pumps and solar roofs, €4 billion in subsidies for the chip industry, €3 billion for hydrogen projects and €2 billion for charging stations.
The government, however, will not touch the interest payments to banks. At 8.7 percent, they are the third-largest item in the federal budget and have exploded in the last two years due to rising interest rates—from €4 billion in 2021 to €40 billion in 2023.
Instead, social spending is at the centre of the savings efforts, accounting for 42 percent of the core budget at €185 billion. Pensions account for the largest share of this.
Representatives of the CDU/CSU and FDP are already calling for massive cuts to basic child benefits, Bürgergeld (a form of social assistance) and pensions. The SPD is still reluctant, but everyone knows that the party of Hartz IV and the Agenda 2010 cuts programme is prepared to do so.
Finance Minister Lindner always mentions the social budget first when asked about possible cuts. Baden-Württemberg’s state Finance Minister Danyal Bayaz (Greens) has questioned the mothers’ pension (€19 billion) and paying pensions at age 63 (€13 billion).
Bavaria’s Minister President Markus Söder (CSU) called for the increase in Bürgergeld planned for January to be postponed by one year and completely rescheduled. Refugees and asylum seekers, including those from Ukraine, should no longer receive Bürgergeld at all. CDU leader Friedrich Merz expressed similar views.
The wage settlements in the public sector, railways and postal services, which are far below the level of inflation thanks to the help of Verdi and the other trade unions, also serve to pass on the costs of militarism and the enrichment of the wealthy to the working class.
On November 23, representatives of the Government of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), negotiating on behalf of the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), held a secret signing ceremony at Oslo City Hall in Norway. Five days later, the Ferdinand Marcos Jr administration and representatives of the National Democratic Front living in political exile in the Netherlands staged separate press conferences and announced that they would be resuming peace talks to bring an end to the insurgency waged since 1969 by the CPP’s New People’s Army (NPA), the longest running armed conflict in Asia.
Luis Jalandoni, National Democratic Front of the Philippines chair, in 2017 [AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino]
The joint statement of the 23rd—signed by Luis Jalandoni, chair of the NDFP, and Antonio Lagdameo, a leading businessman and Special Assistant to the President—declared:
Cognizant of the serious socioeconomic and environmental issues, and the foreign security threat facing the country, the parties recognize the need to unite as a nation in order to urgently address these challenges and resolve the reasons for the armed conflict.
References to concern over socioeconomic and environmental issues have been the boilerplate of such announcements for decades. “The foreign security threat,” however, is new. The Marcos administration is integrating itself with Washington’s drive against China and Manila is playing an increasingly prominent role in the preparations for war. China is the “foreign security threat” that both the Marcos government and the CPP present as the justification for “national unity.”
Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff Romeo Brawner made this point explicitly in remarks to Reuters, “If this conflict will finally end, the Armed Forces of the Philippines will be able to shift our focus to external or territorial defense. Our resources, efforts will be poured into defending our territory.”
The announced resumption of peace talks was the product of nearly two years of secret negotiations initiated by the Philippine military and adopted by Marcos with the singular motive of ending domestic armed conflict so the Philippine military could focus its energies on preparations for war with China. The CPP is lining up behind the anti-China campaign and presenting it as an “urgent” justification for discussing the end of more than half a century of armed struggle.
The armed struggle and peace talks
The CPP and NPA launched their armed struggle in early 1969. Ferdinand Marcos Sr was president of the Philippines. In September 1972 Marcos declared martial law and imposed a brutal military dictatorship on the country that lasted until his ouster in February 1986.
The CPP is a Stalinist party; it has a nationalist political perspective. Like Stalinist parties around the globe, the CPP claimed that the tasks of the revolution in the Philippines were exclusively national and democratic in their character and not yet socialist. They told workers and the toiling masses of the Philippines that the nationalist character of the revolution in the Philippines imparted a progressive role to a section of the capitalist class, the so-called national bourgeoisie. The task of workers, peasants, and youth was to ally with the section of the capitalist class and give them critical support in the carrying out of the national democratic revolution.
The CPP was founded as a breakaway from an older Stalinist party, the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP). While the PKP followed the political line purveyed by Moscow and allied with the Marcos dictatorship, the CPP adopted the perspective of Maoism, which is a tactical variant of Stalinism. Maoism claimed that the ends of the national democratic revolution and the alliance with the national bourgeoisie could only be secured by means of armed struggle waged by a peasant army in the countryside. The armed struggle would gradually surround the cities, and the victory of the armed struggle would culminate in the national democratic revolution and the formation of a coalition government of workers and progressive capitalists. In the words of the CPP, peace talks with the “reactionary government” were a means of achieving the victory of the armed struggle and the success of the national democratic revolution.
Stalinism, in both its Soviet and Maoist variants, is an anti-Marxist program of nationalism and class collaboration. The Bolshevik party led the Russian working class to victory in October 1917 on the basis of the perspective of the Theory of Permanent Revolution first put forward by Leon Trotsky in 1906. The tasks of the revolution in every country were determined by the world system of capitalism and not by individual national particularities. It was world capitalism that imparted to revolutionary struggles, regardless of where they first erupted, the necessity of adopting socialist measures in order to succeed. The national and democratic tasks of the revolution, long belated, could only be realized through socialist revolution. The capitalist class was the enemy of the working class in every corner of the globe.
On the basis of their Stalinist perspective the CPP launched peace talks with multiple successive administrations, including those of Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Benigno Aquino III, and Rodrigo Duterte. The advance of the peace negotiations involved the leadership of the CPP cultivating in the minds of their followers and of the working class more generally the illusion that pressure brought to bear on the government could culminate in the realization of a just society.
Former Communist Party of the Philippines leader Jose Maria Sison [AP Photo/Andrew Medichini]
This took particularly grotesque form with Duterte in 2016. The CPP hailed the fascistic president as progressive, treated as good coin his claim to be “a socialist,” selected candidates to serve in his cabinet, and endorsed his murderous war on drugs. CPP leader Jose Maria Sison’s enthusiasm for Duterte was public and overwhelming. The CPP and the legal national democratic organizations that follow its political line campaigned for Duterte, propped up his administration in its first year, and sowed great confusion in the Filipino working class.
Under immense pressure from the military, which had been trained in anti-Communist counter-insurgency since the era of American colonial rule, Duterte broke off negotiations with the CPP in November 2017.
In the wake of the breakdown of talks, the CPP suffered tremendous setbacks. Their support for Duterte, whose ‘war on drugs’ led to the murder of over 30,000 impoverished Filipinos, and the political exposure of their support published by the World Socialist Web Site led to a substantial loss of followers for the CPP. The political rallies staged now by national democratic groups are poorly attended, pale shadows of what they were a decade ago.
The leadership of the CPP and NDFP is ageing and dying off and they have not trained replacement cadre for leadership. None of the negotiators of the NDFP are under 75 years old. Fidel Agcaoili, leading negotiator of the NDFP, died of illness in 2020 at the age of 75.
An image repeatedly circulated by Sison on Facebook in 2016 calling for “unity” with Duterte
The repressive Duterte regime that the CPP had enabled turned its apparatus of murder against the followers of the CPP. A number of leading representatives of the NDFP, so-called “peace consultants,” were murdered by the police, military, and paramilitary forces, including Randy Malayao, Julius Giron, Randall Echanis, Eugenia Magpantay, Agaton Topacio, and Rustico Tan. Others disappeared and have not yet been found. Benito Tiamzon and Wilma Austria, for years the heads of the CPP in the Philippines, were killed by the military.
Most devastating of all, founder and lifelong ideological leader of the CPP, Jose Maria Sison, died in December 2022 in exile in Utrecht at the age of 83.
The remaining leaders of CPP and NDFP come to peace talks in 2023 in a position of unprecedented weakness, as the organization over which they have presided since its founding is collapsing.
New talks
During his six years in office, Duterte pursued a policy of conciliation toward China, hoping that by distancing Manila from Washington’s aggression in the region he could secure improved economic ties with Beijing. A section of the military brass, many of whom had been trained at facilities in the United States, opposed this policy. There were repeated rumblings of possible coups.
The peace discussions with the CPP were initiated by sections of the Philippine military brass demanding that the government prepare for war with China. At the center of this was retired Gen. Emmanuel Bautista.
Jalandoni told the press that the peace discussions had started at the “discreet initiative of the GRP [Philippine government] emissary” which was “positively welcome and highly appreciated” by Jose Maria Sison. The emissary was retired General Emmanuel Bautista. Juliet de Lima, widow of Sison and head of the NDFP delegation, reiterated Jalandoni’s point. “The initiative of Gen Bautista was welcomed by Joma Sison. … We are grateful for this kind of initiative.”
Jalandoni asserted there had been two years of discussions that culminated in the joint statement of November 23. This would mean, however, that discussions began before Marcos was elected. They were certainly not launched by the outgoing administration of Rodrigo Duterte. They began with neither administration; they began in the military.
Bautista was AFP Chief of Staff under the Benigno Aquino III administration (2010-16). He was the chief architect of Oplan Bayanihan, the multi-pronged counter-insurgency strategy of the Aquino government, that was fiercely denounced for its bloody and repressive character by the CPP in numerous issues of its flagship publication Ang Bayan.
When Aquino nominated Bautista to head potential peace talks with the CPP in early 2015, Sison denounced the appointment as “an insult to the NDFP and the revolutionary movement.”
Bautista is a member of a shadowy organization, Advocates of National Interest, composed of generals and colonels and ex-Ambassadors who published a statement in May 2021 in the final year of the Duterte administration, calling for an aggressive prosecution of the Philippine claim to the South China Sea. They called for “national unity” in preparation for “conflict with China.”
That same week, Jorge Madlos, spokesperson of the NPA, issued a statement denouncing Duterte for being “sickeningly subservient and loyal to his Chinese imperialist boss. … We call on all patriotic soldiers to side with the people by withdrawing support for a traitor Commander-in-Chief. … Defend national patrimony and sovereignty!” The statement made no mention, not a word, of US imperialism.
There was a clear alignment of interests and perspective between the CPP and the sections of the military that Bautista represented. The outlook of this layer was clearly articulated by Bautista in an interview in April 2023, when he told the press it is “impossible for the Philippines not to get drawn in a Taiwan or South China Sea conflict … if you cannot deter war, prepare for war.”
Preparation for war is the motive behind the peace talks. In early 2022, in the midst of a fiercely disputed presidential election, Bautista secretly arranged to meet personally with Sison in Oslo. Press reports state that their meeting was coordinated by the Norwegian government, longtime mediators in the peace talks, during a visit by Bautista to Oslo, and thus we know that Sison and Bautista met in June 2022 before president-elect Marcos took office.
The initiative for the negotiations, in other words, began not with the office of the President but with coup plotting sections of the military who were demanding that the country be firmly reoriented back into the camp of Washington. It is their voice that is expressed in the joint statement’s appeal for national unity in the face of a “foreign security threat.”
Lining up behind Marcos
Marcos entered office a political cipher, wavering between sections of the elite who sought to continue Duterte’s conciliatory policies toward Beijing and those who sought to reverse this policy. Within months, he oriented to Washington, resumed construction of basing facilities for US troops in the country, and secured support from the Biden White House for his administration.
Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. at a rally in Quezon City, Philippines on April 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
The Philippine military is staging provocative joint patrols with both the United States and Australia in the disputed South China Sea. Some of the basing facilities authorized for Washington’s use by the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) are operational. Marcos has launched discussions to craft a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) for Japanese forces in the country. The preparations for war with China have never been more advanced and the Philippines has resumed playing a leading role as a proxy of Washington’s interests in the Asia Pacific region.
The elite opposition to Marcos was mobilized to a significant extent on the fear that he would uphold his pledge to continue the foreign policy orientation of the outgoing Duterte administration. Marcos’s reorientation to Washington produced a seismic shift in Philippine political life. Marcos’s allies in the elite camp of Duterte and Arroyo that is oriented to Beijing, including his Vice President Sara Duterte, came into open conflict with the President. And the erstwhile elite opponents of Marcos swallowed their displeasure and have increasingly embraced the son of the dictator.
There is a growing alignment, initially subterranean but now openly expressed, between the Liberal Party opposition forces of the last election and the Marcos administration. This finds its clearest manifestation in Leila de Lima, niece of Juliet de Lima, and Justice Secretary under the Benigno Aquino III administration. She had been unjustly imprisoned on trumped up drug charges by Duterte, a reprisal for her conducting a Senate investigation into his drug war. De Lima was recently released by Marcos on bail and she has been made spokesperson of the Liberal Party and has, at the same time, aligned with the Marcos administration. It is widely mooted that she will lead a human rights campaign against Rodrigo Duterte with the backing of Malacañang presidential palace.
The NDFP, then aligned with Duterte, were part of the official lynch mob that put de Lima behind bars in 2017. Makabayan, a political umbrella coalition of groups that follow the nationalist line of the CPP, worked alongside the right-wing Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) to bring corruption charges against the Aquino administration. The drug charges against de Lima were filed by VACC stemming from this initiative. Burying its own culpability, the NDFP issued a press statement on November 28 hailing de Lima’s release from “unjust imprisonment.”
Vice President Sara Duterte has emerged as the center of the forces plotting against Marcos. Speaking at the fifth anniversary celebration of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), a deeply reactionary body of which she is vice chair, Duterte announced that the government’s agreement with the NDFP was “an agreement with the devil.” Leila de Lima, now spokesperson of the Liberal Party, denounced the Vice President on behalf of Marcos and defended the administration’s initiative.
Over the weekend, leading members of the national democratic organization, Bayan Muna, stepped in to defend the Marcos administration from any attempt at “destabilization.” Bayan Muna chair, Neri Colmenares, and Bayan Muna executive vice-president, Carlos Zarate, warned of reports to “destabilize” the government. Colmenares called on the military and police to remain loyal to the Marcos administration. Seven years ago, Colmenares campaigned to get Duterte elected and Zarate signed a public pledge of “full support” for Duterte. Now both line up to defend Ferdinand Marcos Jr from the Duterte wing of the elite. The orientation of the CPP has shifted, and so too has loyalty of the national democratic organizations it leads.
It is geopolitics that fuels the tensions in the Filipino ruling elite; it is this that drives the machinations and rumors of destabilization and coups d’etat. The sharpness of these tensions is a concentrated expression of the advanced danger of war with China, which both factions seek to remedy by increasingly desperate measures to either ally with or gain distance from the United States.
The CPP is lining up behind, and giving voice to, the overwhelming sentiment of the thin layer that is the petty bourgeoisie in the Philippines which demands the nationalist prosecution of the country’s claim to the “West Philippine Sea.” These layers are engaged in the angry, insistent assertion of sovereignty over rocks and reefs—many submerged at high tide—against China, while American forces again tread Philippine soil, with the extraterritorial immunity they enjoyed throughout the 20th century.
This geopolitical orientation of the CPP has been growing for years. While they still engage in their denunciations of US imperialism—although at times they forget to even mention this—their anger is reserved for China. The alignment of the nationalist orientation of the CPP with the agenda of Washington is increasingly open. In 2020, Sison gave an interview to the US government propaganda outlet, Radio Free Asia, in which he proclaimed that the NPA would be targeting Chinese firms blacklisted by Washington.
Prospects
The NDFP had always insisted in prior peace talks that the agreements reached with earlier administrations remained binding, including the Hague Joint Declaration, the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG), and the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL). That is no longer the case.
Aged, weakened, and desperate, the leaders of the NDFP negotiating team repeatedly told the press that there are “no preconditions” to resumed negotiations and insisted that they were “making no demands.” They listed four points, including the release of political prisoners, but repeated to the press that these were not demands; they were issues to be discussed.
Juliet de Lima declared that through the peace talks, “We envision and look forward to a country where a united people can live in peace and prosperity” and that they hoped to arrive at an agreement that will “provide solutions to problems that have long burdened the Filipino people.” The problem that has long plagued the Filipino people is capitalism. No deal with the Marcos government, or any capitalist government, will solve this problem.
Hostility to the family name Marcos, and the brutal legacy that it represents, has to an extent been the defining feature, almost the raison d’etre, of the CPP for the past fifty years. Now they are lining up, preparing to provide critical support to the son of the dictator, in furtherance ultimately of the geopolitical interests of Washington. One of the very last political acts of Jose Maria Sison was to welcome the architect of counter-insurgency warfare as the negotiator of a peace deal with the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The political decay of Stalinism has reached a stage of unimaginable rot.
Regardless of the outcome of the peace talks, the CPP stands utterly exposed as an agent and ally of the most reactionary social layers in Philippine society.
A fall in the headline rate of inflation in major economies and pressure from financial markets for interest rate cuts are creating the conditions for a conflict in the governing bodies of the major central banks over the direction of monetary policy.
The European Central Bank during a thunder storm in Frankfurt, Germany, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. The ECB's governing council met on Thursday. [AP Photo/Michael Probst]
Following a decline in the eurozone inflation rate to 2.4 percent in October, its lowest level since July 2021, pressure is building on the European Central Bank to start reducing its interest rates amid fears that unless this is done there could be significant economic and financial consequences.
The collapse of the Austrian real estate group Signa at the end of last month, which rose to stratospheric financial heights on the back of a near-zero interest rate regime, could well be a sign of what is to come if a tight monetary regime persists. There are also the ongoing concerns about the position of Italian banks and the financing of government debt.
As the Financial Times reported, the new governor of the Italian central bank, Fabio Panetta, hinted in a major address last week that rates might need to be cut soon.
He said that while the ECB tightening was necessary, present indications were that existing policy was bringing inflation down to the target range of 2 percent. “We need to avoid unnecessary damage to economic activity and risks to financial stability, which would ultimately jeopardise price stability,” he added.
The chief global economist at Oxford Economics, Innes McFee, told the FT the major central banks were at risk of making a major policy mistake, particularly the ECB.
“They have every incentive to talk tough, but the action is going to have to change,” he said.
Any move by the ECB to ease its monetary policy, however, is likely to meet opposition from within its governing body made up of representatives of the European banks.
The head of the German central bank, Joachim Nagel, said the fall in the eurozone inflation rate was “encouraging.” He warned, however, that borrowing costs might need to go higher, adding that it was “far too early to even think about a possible reduction in key interest rates.”
According to an FT report, OECD chief economist Clare Lombardelli said the ECB and the Bank of England would not be in a position to ease interest rates until at least 2025 given persistent underlying inflation resulting from wage pressures.
“Monetary policy is going to have to remain restrictive for a period of time—we are still worried about inflation persistence,” she said. “You are going to need real rates to be high.”
The issue of wages is front and centre in the determination of central bank monetary policy as was highlighted in an FT editorial this week. It said that while inflation was coming down fast, to “declare an end to the inflation battle—as some are doing—smacks of complacency.”
It noted that while job markets had “cooled” they remained “tight” and while wage increases had fallen “they are still elevated.”
“This is feeding into high services inflation—the largest component of the price indices. With productivity forecasts subdued, central bankers will want to see salary growth fall further to bring down core inflation, which is still higher than desirable.”
The chief economist at the Bank of England, Huw Pill, has said that falling headline inflation could give a false impression that the inflation threat had passed. There was a challenge for policy makers to maintain their “persistence” in keeping monetary policy tight under conditions where there would be “lots of pressure in the face of weaker employment and activity growth and declining headline inflation, to declare victory and move on.”
In other words, even in the face of higher unemployment, an economic slowdown and possibly even a recession, central banks must maintain their higher interest rate regime.
In the US, the central bank is under pressure from financial markets to declare that the rate tightening cycle is over, with traders making bets that the Federal Reserve will start cutting rates next year. Traders in financial markets now see a two thirds probability that the Fed will start cutting rates in March next year as compared to 20 percent little more than a week ago.
In a question-and-answer session following a speech last Friday, Fed chair Jerome Powell sought to push back against the market pressure, saying the Fed was “strongly committed” to bringing inflation down to 2 percent and keeping monetary policy restrictive until it was confident inflation was on a path to that objective.
“It would be premature to conclude with confidence that we have a sufficiently restrictive stance, or to speculate when policy might ease. We are prepared to tighten policy further if it becomes appropriate to do so.”
Those comments eased the fall in market rates for a short period but then analysts seized on the conditionality of his remarks—“if it becomes appropriate”—and the downward movement resumed.
The continued uncertainty over the direction of monetary policy and the bets that the Fed will be forced to ease rates is reflected in the gold market. On Monday, as the value of the dollar continued to fall—it lost 3 percent in value against a basket of six currencies in November—the price of gold touched an all-time high of $2,135 per ounce above the previous record of $2,072 in August 2020 at the start of the pandemic.
Besides the immediate moves in currency and financial markets, there are other, longer-term factors in the upward movement in the gold price, including rising geo-political tensions and war.
At the start of the US-NATO war in Ukraine, the financial system was delivered a major shock when, as a result of US action, the dollar assets of the Russian central bank were frozen. This sent a warning to other countries that they could be subject to the same treatment should they cross the path of the US.
Central bank buying of gold reached a record high in 2022 and is on course for another record this year. According to the World Gold Council, central banks in emerging markets bought 573 metric tons of gold a year on average between 2010 and 2021. Last year they bought 1,100 metric tons and in the first three quarters of this year 800.
John Reade, a market strategist with the council, in comments to CNN, pointed to the rise in geopolitical tensions as a key factor.
In something of an understatement, he said: “The geopolitical risk environment appears to have changed, not just Russia invading Ukraine, not just the terrible things going on in Israel and Gaza, but the trade tensions between the US and China, concerns about what will happen in the South China Sea, concerns about what China will do in Taiwan.”
The financial effects of these tensions are being exacerbated by conditions in the US, including the question of how long its massive deficits can continue to be financed, dependent on foreign purchases of government debt, and the political turmoil which is certain to intensify in the presidential election year of 2024.
Over the past six weeks, transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has more than doubled across the United States, according to the latest wastewater data released Monday by Biobot Analytics. Amid complete silence from the Biden administration and the corporate media, the American population is being subjected to its eighth wave of mass infection with a deadly virus capable of damaging every organ system and causing myriad long-term debilitating symptoms.
Modeling the latest wastewater data, oncologist Dr. Mike Hoerger of Tulane University estimates that at present roughly 1.2 million Americans are catching COVID each day, while 8.6 million people are now actively infectious. By New Year’s Day, there will likely be 1.8 million daily new infections and 12.9 million infectious people. This would be the second-highest level of daily infections of the entire pandemic, surpassed only during the initial wave of the Omicron variant in the fall-winter of 2021-22.
The Biden administration is doing everything possible to keep the public from knowing the immense dangers it confronts, in order to facilitate a policy of deliberate mass infection that will cause older Americans and disabled people to “fall by the wayside,” as expressed by Dr. Anthony Fauci earlier this year. To the extent that the surging pandemic kills vulnerable people, this is, in the words of former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky, an “encouraging” sign.
The fourth winter wave of the pandemic in the US is now concentrated in the colder Midwest and Northeast regions, with the Midwest experiencing its worst level of infections since January 2022, during the first wave of the Omicron variant. Wastewater levels of SARS-CoV-2 are also rising in the South and West, and expected to surge in the weeks ahead.
COVID-19 hospitalizations are rising rapidly in the Midwest, particularly Illinois, Michigan and Indiana, and deaths will soon climb as well, although both official figures are significant undercounts due to the scrapping of COVID testing.
Until now, the wave in the US has been fueled primarily by the Omicron EG.5 and HV.1 subvariants. The JN.1 subvariant, a descendant of the highly-mutated BA.2.86 subvariant (nicknamed “Pirola”), is rapidly becoming dominant and expected to supplant all other variants globally in the weeks ahead. Only after this variant is dominant will it be possible to tell whether it is more pathogenic and likely to hospitalize or kill those infected.
The latest wastewater data entirely confirm the warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site two weeks ago that this year’s record Thanksgiving travel would facilitate the spread of COVID-19, endangering millions of people across the country.
This is the first holiday season in the aftermath of the Biden administration and the World Health Organization (WHO) ending their respective COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declarations, legitimizing Biden’s lie that “the pandemic is over.” With the corporate media dutifully following suit, masses of people throughout the world have been led to believe this disinformation and have dropped their guard, with most family and other gatherings involving no mitigation measures whatsoever.
The ending of the PHEs put the final nail in the coffin of whatever semblance of public health remained in the US and globally. In every country, pandemic surveillance has been scrapped, including testing, contact tracing, and the regular reporting of official COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths, as part of a systematic effort by capitalist governments to cover-up the ongoing impacts of the pandemic.
Most recently, on November 27 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly announced on their website that they will no longer provide data from COVID case reports submitted to them by the states, until now the most reliable and prompt method of reporting COVID-19 deaths.
The US and world population are now flying blind into what could be a catastrophic winter storm of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths. Coinciding with a surge of other respiratory pathogens, in particular influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), this could quickly become a repeat of last year’s “tripledemic” or even worse. There are already reports of children’s hospitals being inundated in cities across North America and Europe, as well as in China.
A byproduct of the deepening cover-up of the very existence of the pandemic—fueled by heavily-funded anti-vaccine disinformation campaigns—is that booster vaccination rates have plummeted. Only 16 percent of American adults, and only 27 percent of the most vulnerable millions of elderly Americans who live in nursing homes, have been vaccinated with the latest monovalent booster shot tailored to the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant. Throughout much of the world, these life-saving boosters are not even available.
In a rare admission of the ongoing dangers of COVID-19, German Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), spoke on the devastating effects of Long COVID at a press conference Monday. Noting historical spikes in Parkinson’s disease and dementia after the 1918-20 influenza pandemic, Lauterbach said that COVID-19 infection “affects how the immune system in the brain functions, as well as the brain’s blood vessels, potentially increasing the long-term risk of these major neurodegenerative diseases.”
Lauterbach stated, “We are seeing an increasing number of [Long COVID] cases as the waves of infection continue to affect us.” He added, “COVID is not a cold—with a cold you don’t usually see any long-term effects. You don’t see any changes in the blood vessels. You don’t usually see an autoimmune disease developing. You don’t usually see neurological inflammation—these things that we all see with Long COVID… It can affect brain tissue and the vascular system.”
Expressing concern that only 3.6 percent of the German population has received the latest booster shot, Lauterbach concluded, “Please protect yourself from Long COVID. Currently, the danger posed by COVID is indeed being underestimated.”
Listening to this press conference, one could be forgiven for holding out hope that at least one official is taking the pandemic seriously. But the truth is that Lauterbach’s comments were mere lip service to the immense suffering from Long COVID, meant to provide political cover for his own and the entire German government’s criminal response to the pandemic.
Over the past two years, ignoring thousands of studies already published on Long COVID, Lauterbach has overseen the complete dismantling of all anti-COVID public health measures, creating the very conditions over which he now feigns concern. In April, Lauterbach echoed Biden’s lie, tweeting, “We can say that the pandemic is also over for Germany.”
He has also complied with the SPD-led government’s gutting of the health budget, which has been cut by three-quarters over the past two years, from €64.4 billion to €16.2 billion. This includes the slashing of funding for research into Long COVID from €100 million to only €21 million, a drop in the bucket relative to the vast scale of this health crisis.
Furthermore, Lauterbach, like all other capitalist politicians, refuses to encourage masking or offer any other means to stop or even slow the spread of the pandemic. A global elimination strategy—based on cleaning indoor air in all public spaces, mass testing of the population to identify and cut off all chains of transmission, and other public health measures—is beyond the pale for the capitalist profit system.
Such a strategy, however, is now more attainable than at any point in the pandemic. On the same day that Lauterbach spoke and Biobot updated their wastewater data, an article was published in Vox on the growing research showing the immense potential of far-UVC technology to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and all other airborne pathogens.
The article, titled, “Ultraviolet light can kill almost all the viruses in a room. Why isn’t it everywhere?” covers much of the same ground as a two-part series published by the WSWS this year. Citing a report from the organizations Rethink Priorities and 1Day Sooner, it notes, “All told, the report estimates that a comprehensive plan to improve air quality, including far-UV, upper-room UV, and ventilation/filtration, in every single commercial building in the US would require a one-off investment of $214 billion.”
Instead of providing such funding, necessary for the health of society, the Biden administration is funneling unlimited sums to Israel to carry out a genocide of the Palestinian population and to Ukraine to perpetuate its proxy war against Russia. The annual military budget for American imperialism now stands at over $1 trillion, enough to provide clean food, water and air for billions of people globally.
Palestinians look at destruction after the Israeli bombing In Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza Strip on December 1, 2023. [Photo: Mohammed Dahman/WSWS]
Israel’s military reported Tuesday it had reached the centre of Khan Younis in southern Gaza amid what a top general labelled “the most intensive day” of combat since the start of the Netanyahu regime’s genocidal onslaught on the Palestinians. The ground offensive on the city, whose population has swelled over recent weeks by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing from northern Gaza, was accompanied by indiscriminate air strikes.
On the fifth day of the Zionist regime’s savage onslaught, after it unilaterally declared an end to the week-long pause in fighting, the United Nations said it was impossible to ensure “so-called safe zones” for civilians anywhere in Gaza due to the ferocity and scope of air and ground attacks. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder stated that the “safe zones” proposed by the Israeli military “are not scientific, they are not rational, they are not possible, and I think the authorities are aware of this.” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) said that aid operations are at a “breaking point” and that Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza could become “a major source of death.”
A series of devastating air strikes Tuesday in Khan Younis and the surrounding area underscored the fact that civilians have no place of refuge. At least 45 men, women, and children were slaughtered in an attack on what eye witnesses said was “an entire residential block” in the town of Deir el-Balah just north of Khan Younis. A further 50 civilians were reported killed in strikes prior to the advance of Israeli troops into Khan Younis on Tuesday.
Tens of thousands have already fled Khan Younis for the southernmost city of Rafah. Home to some 280,000 people prior to Israel’s onslaught, estimates predict that over a million people could soon be crammed into the city on the Egyptian border. The UNRWA warned that there were inadequate resources to provide humanitarian aid for all displaced people, many of whom were already displaced once before from the north to Khan Younis and its surroundings earlier in the bombardment.
Adnan Abu Hasna, a UNRWA representative, described the hellish conditions already prevailing in Rafah: “We have tens of thousands of families in the streets. They are already [sheltering] under random things – pieces of nylon and wood. It’s raining now. We will see the disaster.”
On top of the danger posed by air strikes and the heavy weaponry used by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on the ground, the threat posed by untreated diseases is growing rapidly. The UN reported Tuesday an outbreak of hepatitis A at one of its refugee facilities. Just nine out of Gaza’s 35 hospitals continue to function, and there is a chronic lack of medical equipment, medication, and clean drinking water.
The Gaza Government Media Office on Tuesday placed the death toll since the Israeli bombardment of Gaza began at 16,248 people. More than 7,000 people are reported missing, most likely buried under the rubble produced by air strikes. The death toll includes 7,112 children, 4,885 women, 286 medical workers—including paramedics and doctors, and 81 journalists and media workers. The bombardment has injured at least 43,616 people.
In the same statement, the Media Office described the virtual halt to aid deliveries into Gaza following Israel’s resumption of military operations as a “death sentence” for 2.3 million people. Reports indicate that only around 100 aid trucks are making it into Gaza through the Rafah crossing each day, just 20 percent of the pre-war daily total of 500 trucks.
The development of Israel’s military operations is following a clear plan: ethnically cleanse most of Gaza and force a large portion of its residents, if not the entire population, into Egypt’s Sinai desert. This approach has been outlined in Israeli government documents and in comments by far-right figures within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government. The Zionist regime’s strategy has the unconditional backing of the imperialist powers, above all the United States, without whose military and political support Israel could not carpet bomb Gaza and indiscriminately massacre civilians.
In language that could have been used by any Nazi leader during World War II, Netanyahu outlined his regime’s intentions for Gaza Tuesday evening at a press conference alongside Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz. “We are settling accounts with all those who kidnapped, participated, murdered, slaughtered, raped and burned the daughters of our people,” Netanyahu fumed. “We will not forget and we will not forgive.” In Khan Younis and Jabalia, he continued, “the ground shook” during IDF operations, “we surrounded both…there is nowhere we do not get to.”
Outlining his vision for an end to the onslaught, Netanyahu declared, “There will be no forces that support terror, educate for terror, finance terror and the families of terrorists.” Gaza “must be demilitarized,” he added, “and the only force that can ensure this is the IDF. No international force can be responsible for this.”
Referring to the flattening of the vast majority of residential buildings in northern Gaza, Gallant added in a similar vein, “What happened in Gaza City is happening now in Khan Younis…with impressive results.” For good measure, Gantz emphasised that Israel would not be bound by any restrictions on its operations, asserting, “Only Israel will determine its fate.” Even after the official end of hostilities, he said there would be “months and years” of IDF operations aimed at “stabilising the reality.”
Speaking at a fundraiser in Boston on Tuesday, US President Joseph Biden made clear his full endorsement of the Netanyahu regime’s genocidal plans. Blaming Hamas for ending the pause in fighting because they refused to release some female hostages, Biden declared, “We’re not going to stop — we’re not going to stop until we bring every one of them home and it’s going to be a long process.”
Biden is the leading representative of US imperialism, which has waged bloody wars that have destroyed entire societies and killed millions across the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia over the past 30 years. The last thing he is concerned about is the lives of an estimated 138 hostages still in Gaza. American imperialism is determined to use Israel’s ethnic cleansing operation in Gaza, the culmination of the Zionist project’s 75-year-long dispossession and oppression of the Palestinian people, as an opportunity to lay the groundwork for a region-wide war. The Biden administration dispatched two aircraft carrier strike groups and a nuclear-capable submarine to the region early in the conflict to menace Iran and its rivals for domination over the oil-rich and geostrategically critical Middle East. Biden’s acknowledgement of Israel’s forcible expulsion of the Palestinians being a “long process” underlines that in order to consolidate its hegemonic position in the region as part of a redivision of the world at the expense of its rivals, above all China and Russia, Washington has no qualms about allowing the IDF to continue massacring innocent civilians for weeks and months to come.
The threat of an escalation towards a regional conflagration remains imminent. Since the IDF’s resumption of its assault on Gaza, hostilities have also intensified on the northern border with Lebanon. On Tuesday, the Lebanese army reported that one of its soldiers was killed in an Israeli strike supposedly aimed at a Hizbollah position. The fatality was the first reported by the Lebanese army during the cross-border conflict since 7 October, which has seen Israel strike numerous targets in southern Lebanon and Hizbollah fire rockets into northern Israel. The IDF released a rare statement claiming, “Lebanese army forces were not the target of the attack.” UNIFIL, the UN agency tasked with monitoring the border since Israel’s withdrawal in 2000, described the stepped up exchange of fire in recent days as “alarming.”
