Right-wing social democrat Pellegrini wins presidential election in Slovakia

Markus Salzmann

Following its success in parliamentary elections in October last year, the camp around Prime Minister Robert Fico has now also recaptured the Slovakian presidency. In the runoff election on April 6, the pro-government candidate Peter Pellegrini clearly prevailed against his opponent from the liberal camp with 53 percent of the vote.

Fico’s SMER, which belongs to the social-democratic Socialist International but presents right-wing populist positions, had lost power in 2018 following mass protests against the brutal murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée.

Peter Pellegrini [Photo by Xavier Lejeune / EU / CC BY 4.0]

Pellegrini’s election success is a distorted expression of the widespread rejection of the war against Russia, which the leading EU powers continue to escalate. With an unusually high voter turnout of 61 percent, 1.4 million Slovaks voted for Pellegrini. Only the first directly elected Slovakian president, Rudolf Schuster, had received more votes in 1999.

In Slovakia, the president has mainly representative duties. However, he can appoint the cabinet as he sees fit, as the current President Zuzana Čaputová did after the fall of Eduard Heger’s government last year.

Independent Ivan Korčok won the first round of the presidential election in March with around 42 percent of the vote. Pellegrini had 37 percent. During the election campaign, Korčok, who ran for the right-wing liberal opposition parties, had promised to form a counterweight to the government of Prime Minister Fico. Politically, the former foreign minister is strictly in favour of the European Union. Korčok is in favour of a massive escalation of the war against Russia in Ukraine.

This war is deeply unpopular among the Slovakian population. Inflation rose astronomically during the war. At the end of last year, food prices were still rising by over 30 percent. The effects are particularly noticeable in the east of the country, which is plagued by poverty and unemployment. Pellegrini was far ahead of the other candidates in all border regions with Ukraine.

The result of the far-right former Justice Minister Stefan Harabin, who rejects NATO and is considered to be extremely pro-Russian, is also a distorted expression of the opposition to the war. Harabin achieved over 11 percent of the vote in the first round, although he is discredited as a former associate of Fico.

During the election campaign, Pellegrini deliberately presented himself as an opponent of the war in Ukraine and mixed this with nationalist slogans. “I will never allow Slovakia to be dragged into a war,” he declared on Facebook. He promised that no soldiers would be sent to Ukraine under his presidency. “Slovakia will always come first for me,” said Pellegrini.

Pellegrini’s election victory was met with outrage in Germany and the European Union. The warmongers in Berlin and Brussels are only in favour of “democracy” as long as the electorate votes for candidates they like.

Christian Democrat (CDU) foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen accused Pellegrini and Fico of openly sympathising with Vladimir Putin. This was just as incompatible with EU membership as the attitude of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who was “Putin’s Trojan horse in the EU,” he said. “The EU must not and cannot continue to tolerate this,” Röttgen told the Funke Mediengruppe. Anyone who sided with the aggressor did not belong in the EU.

Green member of the European parliament (MEP) Anton Hofreiter, a notorious warmonger, demanded “that the Slovakian government receive a clear warning signal from Berlin and Brussels.” If Fico and Pellegrini “take an axe to the Slovakian rule of law and open the floodgates to corruption, no more money should flow from EU funds.”

Of course, figures like Röttgen and Hofreiter know that Pellegrini and Fico are not going to go too far in their opposition to the EU. Like Hungary, the country is economically dependent on the EU. Röttgen and Hofreiter are reacting so aggressively because their pro-war course is meeting with widespread resistance among the population. They are demanding that the Slovakian government suppress this resistance with all its might instead of adapting to it.

Pellegrini is anything but an opponent of the war. His Hlas party has been in government since October last year together with Fico’s Smer and the radical right-wing SNS. Fico won the parliamentary elections with the promise to deliver “no bullets” to Ukraine and to stand up for peace negotiations with Russia.

But these were just empty words. His anti-war rhetoric merely served to disguise his extreme right-wing policies, which have so far been largely accepted with favour in the EU.

At a meeting last week in Bratislava with the Ukrainian head of government Denys Shmyhal, Fico declared his complete support for his neighbour. At a joint press conference, he said, “Russia’s use of military force in Ukraine was a blatant violation of international law,” adding that Ukraine needed help and solidarity: “We are here to help.”

Shmyhal confirmed the political agreement. He praised the “constructive meeting.” Slovakia stood “very firmly on the side of Ukraine” and condemned Russian aggression.

Although he had promised during the election campaign that “not a single bullet” would cross the border, Fico also promised further arms deliveries from Slovakian companies. He even tacitly agreed to cooperate in the production of weapons. Slovakian companies are also to be involved in the reconstruction of destroyed Ukrainian infrastructure and a direct train link between the eastern Slovakian city of Košice and the Ukrainian capital Kiev is planned.

After his election victory, Pellegrini also immediately endeavoured to dispel any concerns that he would go against the political will of Brussels and Berlin and said he was firmly committed to NATO and the EU.

The 48 year old is a political pupil of Fico and was prime minister for two years from 2018 to 2020. The split of his party Hlas from Smer was not due to political differences. After Fico came under suspicion of corruption and had to resign following the murder of Kuciak, Pellegrini split with his party in 2020 because he thought he had a better chance.

Fico and Pellegrini both advocate an extreme right-wing policy against refugees and immigrants and are in favour of massively increasing the powers of the state at home and rearming the military, which is to be financed by drastic austerity measures. To this end, 30 percent of costs are to be cut in the country’s public sector. In addition, there are to be severe tax increases. The country’s budget deficit is expected to rise to 6.3 percent this year.

In order to suppress the opposition at home, the Slovakian government has introduced far-reaching attacks on press freedom and the judicial system, following the Hungarian example. Fico has already replaced the leaders of the police and other authorities. He is also trying to gain complete control over the state media and suppress critical media.

Protests erupt in New Caledonia as France amends colony’s electoral system

John Braddock

In New Caledonia’s capital Nouméa on Saturday, April 13, two rival demonstrations took place, triggered by changes to the Pacific colony’s electoral rolls that are being pushed through the French parliament. The protests followed weeks of unrest and rising tensions with demonstrations involving tens of thousands.

Organisers claimed that as many as 58,000 pro-independence and 35,000 pro-France marchers took part in the latest protests, under heavy security surveillance with police reinforcements from France. If accurate, the figures account for 34 percent of New Caledonia’s population of 270,000 and are the largest such gatherings since the civil war conditions that erupted in the 1980s.

Protest in Nouméa, New Caledonia [Photo: CCAT]

One of the marches was organised by a pro-independence coordination committee (CCAT) close to Union Calédonienne (UC), part of the pro-independence FLNKS umbrella that claims to represent indigenous Kanaks. The other was called by two right-wing pro-France parties, the Rassemblement and Les Loyalistes.

The constitutional amendment proposes to change eligibility rules to allow citizens who have lived in the territory for at least 10 uninterrupted years to vote in local elections for the provincial assemblies and local Congress, or parliament.

The change will open the door to up to an estimated 40,000 more voters, shifting the overall balance away from indigenous Kanaks as more French nationals become eligible to vote. Under the 1998 Nouméa Accord, New Caledonia’s local elections restricted voting rights to citizens born or who had resided there before 1998.

The Accord was brokered by the then Socialist Party government in Paris as a “compromise” between the independence and anti-independence factions. While setting out a long-term process for a series of independence referenda, the agreements also gave limited influence to a privileged Kanak layer. Money was poured into building a Kanak infrastructure, training public servants and establishing a base for this social layer in the lucrative mining industry.

Now, under conditions of intensifying social and class conflicts, both factions of the ruling elite are seeking to exploit the latest constitutional moves to channel class anger into different forms of nationalism.

Opponents say the measure could make indigenous Kanaks a minority on their “own” land and denounce the process as forced upon them by Paris. Congress Chairman Roch Wamytan told the pro-independence rally that the French State “is no longer impartial. It has touched a taboo and we must resist. Unfreezing this electoral roll is leading us to death.”

The pro-France parties marching in support of the amendment meanwhile brandished French tricolour flags, sang “La Marseillaise” and claimed “one man, one vote” on their banners. Other signs read “This is our home!”, “Unfreeze democracy” and “proud to be Caledonians, proud to be French.”

The Accord is entrenched within the French constitution, so a constitutional change is required. This process began with a vote in the French Senate on April 2 and has gone to the National Assembly for debate before a vote in Congress, a gathering of both Houses, with a required majority of three fifths to pass. New Caledonia’s provincial elections have been postponed from May to mid-December.

The French government is determined to impose the measure as part of its efforts to tighten Paris’ grip on the colony following French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit last July. France’s Home Affairs and Overseas Minister Gérald Darmanin, who initiated the constitutional process, has visited Nouméa half a dozen times over the past 12 months to garner support for it.

Macron’s 2023 trip was designed to assert France’s imperialist interests as a Pacific power. It coincided with a surge of diplomatic manoeuvres across the region ramping up Washington’s warmongering against China.

France’s strategically placed territory is vital to this agenda. The island hosts a major French military base—which is to receive a boost to troop deployments and a new training academy—and holds nearly a quarter of the world’s reserves of nickel, essential in the manufacture of stainless steel and in the defence industry.

In Nouméa, Macron bluntly told those in favour of “separatism” they should accept the pro-France victory in the final referendum on independence held in December 2021. “After these three referendums, I do not underestimate the disappointed hopes of those who backed a completely different project,” Macron said. “But I say to them all, together we all have to have the grace to accept these results and to build the future together.”

The current tensions, however, reveal that none of the issues around independence have been resolved. Three referenda were held over five years. In the first two, 57 and 53 percent rejected independence. The final referendum was widely viewed as illegitimate. With a 40 percent voter turnout, it resulted in a 97 percent vote against secession after Kanaks boycotted the process amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Full independence has always been strenuously resisted by the French ruling class. New Caledonia has been on the United Nations’ so-called “decolonisation” list since 1986, when French elite troops brutally put down a Kanak insurrection. France’s voting record at the UN shows that Paris repeatedly abstains on resolutions on decolonisation and self-determination.

The constitutional crisis comes at a time of escalating economic and social tensions. As global nickel prices tumble, New Caledonia’s crucial nickel mining and smelting industry is in turmoil, faced with increasing competition from emerging world producers such as Indonesia and China which are producing much cheaper nickel.

Last month, one of the three major processing plants, Koniambo (KNS), was idled due to a decision by its major financier, the Anglo-Swiss giant Glencore, which is seeking a potential buyer for its 49 percent shareholding. The two other plants, Prony Resources and Société le Nickel (SLN), are facing similar crises.

The French government and its Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who visited New Caledonia in November 2023, are demanding that a “nickel pact” be signed by all local “players.” The plan which involves French financial assistance amounting to 200 million euros would be tied to far-reaching “reforms” to make New Caledonia’s nickel “competitive” under world market conditions.

The industry until recently employed about a quarter of the total workforce. Hundreds of jobs have already been axed with thousands more at risk. Clashes have erupted between security forces and protesters opposed to the pact. On April 9, clashes involving firearms, teargas and stone-throwing went on for most of the day, blocking access roads to Nouméa and the towns of Saint-Louis and Mont-Dore.

Miners, processing workers, truck drivers, airport workers and others have repeatedly engaged in militant struggles to defend jobs and conditions. This has brought them into conflict with the entire ruling elite, including the privileged layer represented by the FLNKS, which seeks a larger slice of the economic pie and a greater political say.

Workers’ struggles have been sold out by the trade unions. Nouméa is a polarised capital, where many low-paid workers live in slum conditions. Kanaks, who make up 44 percent of the population are socially disenfranchised, with many living in primitive, subsistence circumstances in rural villages.

As ordinary people reel from escalating living costs, both the local government led by President Louis Mapou—a pro-independence Kanak politician from the National Union for Independence, part of FLNKS—and the rival anti-independence forces all stand on the side of the business elite, opposing any meaningful measures to end poverty and inequality.

The FLNKS is asking that the constitutional amendment be withdrawn and that a French “dialogue mission”—similar to the delegations sent by Paris before the signing of the Nouméa Accord headed by a “high, recognised and independent official”—should come and negotiate a compromise. According to the FLNKS, “dialogue, a consensual solution and a comprehensive agreement” are still feasible. Paris, however, is unlikely to accommodate.

Israeli strike on Iran expands Middle East war

Andre Damon

On Friday morning, Israel carried out an airstrike on a military base in central Iran near one of its nuclear facilities, further widening the war in the Middle East instigated by the imperialist powers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, with commanders and soldiers in the northern Gaza Strip, on December 25, 2023. Netanyahu has said Israel will continue with the offensive until a "final victory" achieves all of its goals. [AP Photo/Avi Ohayon/GPO]

After decades of proxy conflicts throughout the Middle East, Israel and Iran have now each exchanged fire against one another from their own territory, setting a precedent for further escalation.

Neither Iranian nor Israeli officials have admitted to the existence of the strikes, which were announced to the American press Thursday by White House sources on background.

Commenting on the significance of the Thursday night’s attack, the aggressively pro-war Wall Street Journal wrote, “The strike is a message to Iran that Israel has the military capability to hit deep in its homeland, and not merely its proxy forces in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Israel also showed it could hit a target near a nuclear facility despite the presence of the Russian S-300 missile defense system.”

The New York Times, for its part, wrote, “The taboo against direct strikes on each other’s territory was now gone. If there is another round - a conflict over Iran’s nuclear advances, or another strike by Israel on Iranian military officers - both sides might feel more free to launch directly at the other.”

The article concluded, “The signal sent by the decision to hit a conventional military target in Isfahan was clear: Israel demonstrated that it could pierce Isfahan’s layers of air defenses, many of them arrayed around key sites like the Isfahan uranium conversion facility.”

Friday’s strike was the latest measure in a wave of escalation following Israel’s April 1 attack on an Iranian consulate in Syria that killed seven high-ranking Iranian military figures.

US officials effectively endorsed the April 1 Israeli strike, with US deputy ambassador to the UN Robert Wood declaring that the consulate was in fact a terrorist base.

After Iran retaliated against the strike on its consulate with an attack on an Israeli military base, the United States and its imperialist allies condemned Iran, imposed sanctions on it, and vowed effectively limitless support for Israel.

In the subsequent week, US officials repeatedly made clear that a potential Israeli strike on Iran is “an Israeli decision to make,” effectively granting Israel a blank check to attack Iran.

Notably, the strike took place just hours after the conclusion of a high-level US-Israeli discussion dealing with both Israel’s planned strike on Iran and its plans to assault Rafah, where over one million Palestinians are sheltering.

In its readout of the meeting, the White House declared, “The two sides agreed on the shared objective to see Hamas defeated in Rafah. US participants expressed concerns with various courses of action in Rafah, and Israeli participants agreed to take these concerns into account.”

Behind the scenes, however, there are indications that the “limited” Israeli strike on Iran is in fact the prelude to a full-scale assault on Rafah.

Both the Times of Israel and Haaretz, citing The New Arab have reported that the US has authorized Israel to assault Rafah as part of an agreement on Israel’s strike on Iran.

The report in The New Arab claimed that Israel plans on “dividing Rafah into four quarters, which will be conquered sequentially.”

Such an invasion would have disastrous consequences. In a statement Thursday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “In Gaza, six and a half months of Israeli military operations have created a humanitarian hellscape. Tens of thousands of people have been killed. Two million Palestinians have endured death, destruction, and the denial of lifesaving humanitarian aid; they are now staring down on starvation. An Israeli operation in Rafah would compound this humanitarian catastrophe.”

Haaretz, citing the Arabic newspaper Rai Alyoum, asserted “this week that Egypt has deployed forces along the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi route and defined a ‘neutral zone’ where displaced Gazans can go. According to the report, the zone is being readied to absorb 200,000 people and will have services, clinics, and food distribution points.”

If these reports are indeed correct, the United States not only gave Israel private authorization to carry out a strike on Iran, significantly escalating war throughout the region, but also authorizing it to carry out an assault on Rafah that would displace hundreds of thousands of people—potentially even onto the territory of Egypt.

Whatever was said in private, the US said essentially the same thing in public, declaring that whether to strike Iran was entirely up to Israel and publicly declaring that the military defeat of Hamas in Rafah is a goal of the United States.

This reality makes clear the close connection between the Gaza genocide and the US military buildup against Iran.

Rising gold price a sign of emerging financial crisis

Nick Beams

The publication by the Financial Times (FT) of a comment by one of its leading editorial writers on the soaring price of gold is an indication that this issue is starting to raise concerns in financial circles about what it signifies for the stability of the global monetary system based on the US dollar.

Gold bars [AP Photo/Seth Wenig]

The article by Rana Foroohar on Monday, entitled “Gold is back—and it has a message for us” began: “It’s easy to mock gold bugs, but their moment may finally have come.”

She pointed to several immediate factors for the rise, which has seen the gold price escalate from around $1,800 last year to close to $2,400. These included higher than expected inflation in the US, anxiety over geopolitics, the US presidential elections and uncertainty over monetary policy.

However, there were longer-term factors at work, including higher for longer inflation which aside from a “technology-driven productivity miracle” looks to be a real prospect.

One of the major factors to which she pointed was the vast shift in the global economic order.

“It is no secret that the Washington consensus—which expected emerging nations to fall in line with free-market trade rules written by the west—and the postwar Pax Americana are over.”

Trade tensions with China are growing and the weaponisation of the dollar after the outbreak of the Ukraine war—when the US and the European powers froze the financial assets of Russia’s central bank—had “quickened moves in many countries, especially China, to sell Treasury bills and buy gold as a hedge against America’s financial might.”

What she termed a “pendulum shift” had led many analysts to predict a “massive run-up in gold.”

Two economic strategists at BNP Paribas Fortis, a major European bank, have predicted that gold could rise from its present level of $2,347 per ounce—already a record high in monetary terms, although not yet when adjusted for inflation—to $4,000 in “the not-too-distant future.”

As one of the analysts put it, “this isn’t just an interest rate thing. People are hedging against a new world.”

That “new world” is characterised above all by war and the division of the world into rival blocs on both the economic and political fronts. There are moves by a number of countries, not only China, to make trade payments in their own currencies and bypass the dollar.

A recent report by Currency Research Association, cited in the article, noted: “China buying gold and selling Treasuries mirrors how Europe’s central banks began to redeem dollars for gold in the late 1960s as the Bretton Woods system began to break apart.”

Bretton Woods system, which was aimed at restoring the international financial system that had been shattered by the Great Depression of the 1930s, established the US dollar as the global currency. It was backed by gold at the rate of $35 per ounce.

But it was marked by a profound contradiction which was identified in the early 1960s. The functioning of the system required an outflow of dollars from the US to the rest of the world to finance trade and investment. At the same time the build-up of dollars outside the US undermined its capacity to redeem them for gold.

This was not a problem initially because of the enormous strength of the US relative to the other major capitalist powers. But as those economies recovered from the devastation of the war and more productive industrial methods were introduced, the competitive supremacy of the US was eroded.

The turning point came when the US balance of trade went negative, leading US President Nixon to remove the gold backing from the dollar on August 15, 1971.

Since then, the world has operated with the dollar as a fiat global currency. Unlike gold, which embodies value, paper dollars have no intrinsic value. They can function as world money, facilitating trade, investment, credit and acting as a store of value to the extent they are backed by the economic power of the US state and its financial system.

That power is now increasingly called into question. It was severely shaken by the global financial crisis of 2008, originating in the orgy of speculation by US banks, which, but for massive intervention by the Federal Reserve, would have led to the collapse of the world financial system.

Since then, it has been delivered further major shocks including in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic. The US Treasury market froze for several days—there were no buyers for US debt, supposedly the safest financial asset in the world—and the Fed had to again intervene to the tune of around $4 trillion.

The role of the US dollar has provided enormous advantages to US imperialism. It has allowed it to run up deficits and debts, much of which has been used to finance military spending and wars, in a way not possible for any other economy.

There are now very clear indications that as a result of this process, a new crisis is brewing which has parallels with what took place in 1971, but at a much higher level.

As Foroohar noted in her comment piece, echoing sentiments expressed at the highest levels of the US financial system, including by Fed chair Jerome Powell, the pile-up of US government debt is “quickly becoming unsustainable.”

“The most recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections put US debt as 99 percent of GDP at the end of this year, and have it on track to reach 172 percent by 2054. If this happens the result would be monetisation [a situation where assets based on debt would essentially become worthless], inflation, financial repression and a period of extreme chaos in monetary policy and markets.”

Such a situation is not 30 years down the track but very much an emerging present-day reality because of the accelerating growth of the debt mountain. When interest rates were near zero, because of the Fed’s quantitative easing program, the problem could be covered over.

Not any more, with the Fed rate at around 5 percent, the highest in 20 years.

According to the CBO, the US budget deficit will rise by almost two-thirds over the next decade, from $1.6 trillion to $2.6 trillion, with three-quarters of that rise coming from the interest bill, making it a larger component than the bloated military budget.

The potential for a financial crisis in the near future was indicated by the director of the CBO, Phillip Swagel, in an interview with the FT last month.

He said the US fiscal situation was on an “unprecedented” trajectory, raising the risk of a Liz Truss-style financial crisis when the short-lived UK prime minister tried to finance tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy in September 2022 by running up debt.

There are decisive social, economic and political—that is class issues—in the present situation.

It appears at times that the financial system operates somewhere way above everyday life, even assuming a kind of illusory character as central banks create money out of nothing with the press of a computer button. However, in the final analysis, it depends on the value which can be extracted from the working class in the real economy.

As the bitter experiences of 2008 revealed, a financial crisis means sweeping attacks on wages, the destruction of jobs and the evisceration of vital social services.

Another crisis, for which all the conditions are being created, will bring an even deeper assault. One of the warning signs is the rising price of gold—the historically-determined ultimate store of value.

EU and Berlin step up attacks on refugees

Marianne Arens

On Monday, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (Social Democrats, SPD) visited the city of Plovdiv in southern Bulgaria. There she inspected the barbed wire fence on the border with Turkey, which serves as a model to seal off the European Union to refugees.

The border, which is almost 260 kilometres long and secured by a double fence, is notorious for brutal pushbacks, i.e., illegal deportations by the Bulgarian border police. Yet it is precisely there, at a border crossing called Kapitan Andreevo, that a pilot project of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is to be set up. This clearly shows the extreme right-wing attitudes that now prevail in the European Union.

Protest against the CEAS on 10 April in Brussels [Photo by Laura Vaca / pressenza]

With the final adoption of the CEAS on April 10, the European Parliament has effectively suspended the right to asylum and turned the immigration policies of the extreme right into law. The measures adopted provide for Europe’s external borders to be hermetically sealed off. This means that refugees will have to undergo their asylum procedure outside the EU in closed, militarily guarded detention centres.

Completely sealed off, people traumatised by war, forced migration and fleeing danger, including children, will have no access to legal, medical or psychological support in such camps. Instead, they are detained, screened, registered, and selected with the primary aim of deporting as many as possible as quickly as possible—often to the same countries from which they fled, or even to so-called safe third countries. Their number has been increased as part of the reform, which means that even more deportations are possible.

As the WSWS has already shown, CEAS means the “abolition of the right to asylum, the extension of Fortress Europe, mass deportations and the detention even of women and children in deportation facilities similar to concentration camps.”

During the vote on April 10, refugee supporters demonstrated in front of the EU Parliament in Brussels. Some shouted from the visitors gallery in the plenary chamber to the MEPs: “Be human, vote NO!” Others threw paper aeroplanes into the chamber with the coordinates of shipwrecked people and information about refugees who had died while fleeing.

Marine accidents with fatalities occur almost every day in the Mediterranean. On the same day that MEPs approved the CEAS, a life-threatening incident occurred off the North African coast, as reported by the rescue organisation Seebrücke.

The “Mare Jonio” had rushed to the aid of shipwrecked people and tried to rescue them from a sinking boat whose engine had failed. The EU-funded Libyan coastguard then turned up and ordered the rescue ship to move away immediately, which it did not do. The coastguard militias “carried out dangerous manoeuvres around the boat and fired into the air. ... Panic broke out and people jumped into the water.” In the end, the “Mare Jonio” was able to bring a total of 56 people to Pozzallo, Italy.

Every year, thousands of refugees freeze to death, starve or drown at Europe’s borders. According to Statista, almost 30,000 people have drowned while fleeing across the Mediterranean in the last 10 years. This year alone, at least 459 people had already died at sea in the Mediterranean by the end of March.

Migrants and refugees wait for assistance on an overcrowded wooden boat, as aid workers of the Spanish NGO Open Arms approach them in the Mediterranean Sea, international waters, at 122 miles off the Libyan coast [AP Photo/Bruno Thevenin]

Thousands of others die in the dangerous attempt to cross a border like the one in southern Bulgaria. Or they are crammed into overcrowded camps such as Moria (Greece) for an indefinite period. Or they are picked up on the high seas by the Libyan coastguard and forced back into the hell of a detention centre in Libya.

Nancy Faeser favours and promotes the murderous European asylum system in the name of the coalition government of the SPD, the Greens and Liberal Democrats (FDP). For the past six months, she has also been in favour of the massive expansion of surveillance at the EU’s external borders by Frontex, a project being pursued by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (Christian Democrat, CDU) together with Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s fascist prime minister.

In Germany itself, the SPD-led government is also increasingly openly realising the policies of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). On January 18, the Bundestag (parliament) passed the shameful Repatriation Improvement Act with the votes of the coalition parties.

At the beginning of April, it was agreed to introduce a payment card for asylum seekers, which refugee support organisation ProAsyl rightly calls a “discrimination concept” and which serves exclusively as a deterrent and for anti-refugee propaganda. Refugees’ lives are made more difficult by the fact that they no longer have access to cash and can no longer send money to their families abroad. Refugees and immigrants are being increasingly stigmatised.

The militarisation of society as a whole is accompanied by intolerable nationalist agitation and propaganda. In order to divide and weaken the working class, the federal coalition relies on racism and the spectre of “foreign criminality.” In the media, immigrants and asylum seekers are only mentioned in connection with robbery, rape, drugs and terrorism.

Shortly before the CEAS was passed in the EU Parliament, Faeser presented the police crime statistics at the Federal Press Conference on April 9. Together with the president of the Federal Criminal Investigation Agency (BKA), she called for “tough action,” “swift action by the authorities” and a policy of zero tolerance. Faeser claimed, “The connection is correct that increasing immigration has led to more criminal offences.”

That is pure demagoguery. The crime statistics record all cases investigated by the police, even if no final court judgement has yet been made. It is well known that immigrants are prosecuted much more severely. The vast majority of cases are also petty offences, such as shoplifting or fare evasion, which are mainly committed by poorer people. The statistics also include physical confrontations in reception camps, where traumatised refugees fleeing war and hardship are crammed into very confined spaces and condemned to inactivity and a lack of prospects.

By contrast, the statistics exclude financial and tax offences committed by the rich as well as the political crimes of the ruling class. Instead, the figures paint a picture of a class society in which non-Germans at the bottom are not only perpetrators, but very often also victims.

Israel strikes Iran as US and EU impose a new round of sanctions

Andre Damon

Israel carried out an airstrike on Iran Friday morning, a US official told major US news outlets. Iranian state TV reported that three drones were shot down over the Isfahan air base.

The move came just hours after the United States and its European allies on Thursday announced a new round of sanctions targeting Iran, deepening their participation in a spiraling war in the Middle East.

In a statement announcing the sanctions, US President Joe Biden declared, “I’ve directed my team, including the Department of the Treasury, to continue to impose sanctions that further degrade Iran’s military industries.” He continued, “Let it be clear to all those who enable or support Iran’s attacks: The United States is committed to Israel’s security.”

The same day, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a new round of sanctions targeting Iran. Biden and Sunak were joined by the European Council, which declared that sanctions would be imposed in order to “isolate Iran.”

The sanctions come after days of declarations by Israeli officials that they intend to carry out an attack on Iran following Tehran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel over the weekend. On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel will “do everything necessary to defend itself” and that “we will make our own decisions” with regard to attacking Iran.

This statement came one day after UK Foreign Minister David Cameron, following a meeting with Iranian officials, said, “It’s clear the Israelis are making a decision to act.”

Meanwhile, Iranian officials vowed that any strike by Israel would be met with overwhelming force, with Iranian Maj. Gen. Ahmad Haghtalab warning that “the hands are on the trigger” to retaliate against Israel’s nuclear sites.

In an interview with CNN, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian declared, “In case the Israeli regime embarks on adventurism again and takes action against the interests of Iran, the next response from us will be immediate and at a maximum level.”

The Middle East is poised on the knife-edge of full-scale war. In an address to the UN Security Council, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned, “One miscalculation, one miscommunication, one mistake could lead to the unthinkable: a full-scale regional conflict that would be devastating for all involved and the rest of the world.”

In a further endorsement of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its military escalation against Iran, the United States vetoed a resolution in the UN Security Council to make Palestine a full member-state of the United Nations.

Absurdly, the US carried out this action while proclaiming its support for a so-called “two-state solution.” In a statement, US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said, “The United States will continue to oppose unilateral measures that undermine the prospect of a two-state solution. This includes any actions that violate the principles that Secretary Blinken has emphasized for months, that Gaza cannot be a platform for terrorism.”

In a statement in response, the Palestinian presidency rebuked the US action, which it described as “unfair, immoral and unjustified.” The statement read, “This aggressive American veto reveals the contradictions of American policy, which claims, on the one hand, to support the two-state solution, while it prevents the international institution from implementing this solution through its repeated use of the veto in the Security Council against Palestine and its legitimate rights.”

Ziad Abu Amr, special envoy of the Palestinian presidency, asked, “How could this damage the prospects of peace between Palestinians and Israelis? How could this recognition and this membership harm international peace and security?”

The Biden administration is increasingly framing its escalating conflict with Iran as part of a globe-spanning war targeting Russia and China. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Biden drew an equivalence between the US conflicts with Russia and China, claiming, “Both Ukraine and Israel defended themselves against these attacks, holding the line and protecting their citizens. And both did it with critical help from the U.S.”

He continued, “But while both countries can capably defend their own sovereignty, they depend on American assistance, including weaponry, to do it. And this is a pivotal moment.”

He declared, “Vladimir Putin is ramping up his onslaught with help from his friends. China is providing Russia with microelectronics and other equipment that is critical for defense production. Iran is sending hundreds of drones; North Korea is providing artillery and ballistic missiles.”

He concluded with a threat: “ ‘An attack on one is an attack on all’ means that if Mr. Putin invades a NATO ally, we will come to its aid—as our NATO allies did for us after the Sept. 11 attacks.”

This conception forms the rationale for the US support for the Gaza genocide, which it sees as a critical element of its effort to dominate the Middle East. Amid mass starvation and continuous bombing, the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains disastrous.

In a statement, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “In Gaza, six and a half months of Israeli military operations have created a humanitarian hellscape. Tens of thousands of people have been killed. Two million Palestinians have endured death, destruction, and the denial of lifesaving humanitarian aid; they are now staring down on starvation. An Israeli operation in Rafah would compound this humanitarian catastrophe.”

He continued, “The casualty figures are overwhelming and unprecedented in speed and scale during my time as Secretary-General. According to UNICEF, more than 13,900 Palestinian children have reportedly been killed in intense, often indiscriminate attacks.”

Under these conditions, there are indications that the United States is moving toward an open endorsement of Israel’s planned assault on Rafah.

On Thursday, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Israeli officials to discuss the Rafah attack. The official readout of the meeting noted: “The two sides agreed on the shared objective to see Hamas defeated in Rafah. U.S. participants expressed concerns with various courses of action in Rafah, and Israeli participants agreed to take these concerns into account.”

In a press briefing Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson Pat Ryder declared, “We understand the need for Israel to go after Hamas and to eliminate or defeat Hamas as a threat.”

Meanwhile, the death toll of the Gaza genocide has reached 33,970, with 76,770 more wounded, according to the latest figures from Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Global pandemic agreement undermined by corporate interests

Bill Shaw

The efforts of the World Health Organization to develop a global approach to preparing for and preventing future pandemics have suffered a setback at the hands of wealthy nations. What began as a weak and insufficient pandemic agreement was subsequently watered down even further in recent negotiations. But this was still not enough to appease global corporations and the nations that do their bidding.

In a desperate move to reach some agreement versus none, the World Health Organization announced on March 28 that its member states agreed to resume negotiations on the pandemic agreement on April 29. A new version of the agreement text—to be further negotiated at that time—is expected by April 18.

Despite launching the process to create the agreement in December 2021, with a target date for adoption at the World Health Assembly in May 2024, negotiations have stalled. As reported by the World Socialist Web Site, efforts intensified two months ago to pressure nations to reach agreement on key points.  The just-approved resumption of negotiations represents the failure of those efforts, as the extension was not previously planned. 

The negotiations are being overseen by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB). The ninth meeting of the INB (INB9) began on March 18 and ended March 28 without reaching resolution of the remaining issues. Therefore the INB approved a resumption of its ninth meeting, to begin on April 29  and end on May 10. 

Since the World Health Assembly is scheduled to commence on May 27, concluding negotiations successfully by May 10 would essentially be finishing in the final seconds after two-and-a-half years of talks. 

The concern over the inability to reach agreement on schedule was articulated by INB co-chair Roland Driece, who said: 

“Governments said clearly we cannot fail to reach an agreement at the next World Health Assembly to make the world healthier, fairer and safer from pandemics. We are at the finishing line and we are committed to maximizing the remaining negotiations to reach the result the entire world needs.”

The WHO released a “Revised draft of the negotiating text of the WHO Pandemic Agreement” dated March 13, 2024. The prior version was entitled “Proposal for negotiating text of the WHO Pandemic Agreement” and dated October 30, 2023. 

World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (center) declaring the coronavirus pandemic a Public Health emergency of International Concern in March 2020. [Photo: Fabrice Coffrini]

The changes made from the “Proposal” to the “Revised draft”—which reflect the outcomes of negotiations thus far—are not marked explicitly. A detailed, side-by-side comparison, however, reveals significant changes too numerous to review comprehensively here. 

A summary of some key changes to the binding clauses of the agreement, based on known points of contention among the negotiators, follows.

First, instead of “committing” to improvements in disease surveillance both within and across nations, now parties only “should” do so. 

Second, a clause was struck entirely that required the parties to recognize the impact of “environmental, climatic, social, anthropogenic and economic factors” on the risk of pandemics and commit to taking them into consideration in pandemic preparedness. This is despite the well-known relationship between climate change and a significantly increased risk of pandemics.

Third, a clause committing to follow ethical practices on the international recruitment of healthcare personnel, to avoid draining crucial human resources from resource-poor nations to wealthy nations in the event of a pandemic, was removed. As documented in Nature, such poaching of healthcare workers exacerbated pre-existing workforce shortages in poor nations and consequently further hindered their pandemic response.

Fourth, multiple clauses on international collaboration in the prioritization, direction, and conduct of scientific research for pandemic preparedness were struck. Included in these clauses was one that envisioned a prominent role for the WHO in setting research goals and priorities.

Fifth, a clause was edited that required parties to develop national policies to mandate “provisions in government-funded research and development agreements for the development of pandemic-related products that promote timely and equitable global access to such products during public health emergencies of international concern and pandemics” and to “publish relevant terms of government-funded research and development agreements promoting equitable and timely access to such products during a pandemic emergency.”

Instead, parties now must only publish whatever terms exist in these agreements and in the intellectual-property licensing agreements arising out of the research. Gone is the requirement to include specific clauses in the agreements that promote “timely and equitable global access” to products. These changes are clearly driven by corporations for whom maximizing profit from workers’ intellectual property outweighs protecting the public’s health.

Sixth, instead of being required to “facilitate the transfer of relevant technology, know-how, and licences pooled in relevant mechanisms,” now parties only must “encourage” the global corporations who receive significant public financing to grant royalty-free licenses to other manufacturers in developing countries. And even then, such grants are subject to “any existing licensing restrictions.”

Such “encouragement” has a proven track record of failure. To date during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it resulted in only one highly-restricted waiver approved by the World Trade Organization. The requirements of that waiver posed an insurmountable barrier and thus it proved ineffective. As noted by a report recently issued by the US International Trade Commission, no country made use of it by September 2023. Now, opponents of even that ineffectual waiver cite its designed-for failure as a reason not to extend it, or implement new waivers, in ongoing debates.

Even before INB9 negotiations ended in March, an editorial in The Lancet published March 2 pilloried the agreement, calling it “shameful and unjust.” It said:

The INB might be doing its best, but ultimately it is the politicians of G7 countries who must put aside vested industry interests and finally understand that in a pandemic it is not possible to protect only your own citizens: the health of one depends on the health of all.

A subsequent piece under “Published Correspondence” in The Lancet on March 31, referring to the March 13 “Revised draft”, noted:

“A new phrase has also crept into this draft, subject to national laws, appearing six times. With this provision, parties can opt out of key reporting obligations if they consider the required information to be confidential or private.”

Nevertheless, even this wholesale watering down of the already toothless pandemic agreement is not enough for US-led imperialism. The negotiations starting April 29 will continue to focus on weakening the provisions on intellectual property, the sharing of information and resources, and the requirements for government spending on strengthening healthcare systems and disease surveillance.

The result, as individuals close to the negotiating parties note, will most likely be a bare-bones agreement of “essentials,” with further hashing out of the contentious provisions likely to occur under the first one to two years of meetings of the Conference of Parties created by the agreement. 

The WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made emotional appeals to the parties, saying:

“Let the spirit of Geneva—the spirit of cooperation, mutual respect, and shared responsibility—guide your deliberations as you work towards finalizing the agreement by the set deadline in May this year.” 

However, the ruling class has already demonstrated its imperviousness to such appeals by demanding and receiving concessions on behalf of pharmaceutical corporations. Further gutting of the agreement is certain to ensue in the continuation of negotiations later this month and into May.

Future pandemics can be prevented, prepared for, and responded to only on a global, cooperative basis. Pathogens do not respect national borders, and the fractured response to the COVID-19 pandemic under capitalism is responsible for millions of deaths and the failure to end it.

The pandemic agreement is an attempt to increase global coordination towards the levels necessary to prevent, prepare for, and respond to future pandemics. However, capitalism is successfully subordinating the agreement—and by extension the survival of humanity in a future pandemic—to its profit interests, thereby rendering an already insufficient agreement wholly ineffective. 

If an agreement in principle is reached at the resumption of INB9 and subsequently adopted by the World Health Assembly in May, it will be a ghost of its former self and impotent in the face of the growing threat of pandemics induced by imperialist destruction of habitats and acceleration of global climate change.