wsws

The assault on Rafah and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine
Andre Damon, WSWS, May 27 2024

Defying Friday’s order by the International Court of Justice, Israel has carried out more than 60 bombings in the city of Rafah over the past two days. On Sunday, millions of people around the world were horrified by footage of an Israeli massacre at a refugee camp in one of the “safe” areas of Rafah that killed at least 35 people, including women and children. Rafah has been under continuous bombardment for three weeks, with Israeli tanks advancing into the city street by street every day. The intensity of the bombardment and ground attacks has led to the total suspension of humanitarian food distribution in the city, and Israel has shut off nearly all food aid into the territory. In contrast with what millions of people see with their own eyes, the US and UK governments have publicly declared that there is no large-scale offensive on Rafah. They claim that, to the extent that Israel is carrying out “limited” military operations in the city, it is, in the words of Biden, doing “all it can to ensure civilian protection.”

This preposterous and absurd lie was the subject of a highly revealing exchange Tuesday in the British House of Commons. UK Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell was asked by MP Andy McDonald how the government could declare that there is no “significant” military offensive in Rafah when 0.8m people had been forcibly displaced from the city. To this, the Deputy Foreign Secretary replied that the 0.8m displaced people had “chosen” to go. McDonald asked:

What choice did they have to move? Was this just, ‘I think I want to go and live somewhere else’? Is that not a preposterous suggestion to make?

The declaration that the Palestinians had “chosen” to flee, while certainly preposterous, carries with it immense historical resonance. It is a restatement of what the world-renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé (who was interrogated for hours upon a recent trip to the US) called the “foundational myth” of Zionism: that the 1948 “Nakba,” in which 0.75m Palestinians were expelled from their homes, was a voluntary resettlement on the part of Palestinians, unprompted by the actions of Israeli forces. Pappé’s 2006 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, is a devastating exposure of all the lies of official Israeli historiography. It demonstrates that the 1948 displacement and mass killing of Palestinians was the outcome of a detailed conscious plan. In a chilling parallel to the events of the present day, Pappé explained that Israel cloaked its plans as a response to attacks by an Arab militia, noting (p. 14):

The Zionist policy was initially based on retaliation against Palestinian attacks in Feb 1947, but it eventually evolved into an initiative to ethnically cleanse the entire country in Mar 1948. Once the decision was taken, it took six months to complete the mission. When it was over, more than half of Palestine’s native population, close to 0.8m people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed, and eleven urban neighbourhoods emptied of their inhabitants. The plan decided upon on 10 March 1948, and above all its systematic implementation in the following months, was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity.

The Gaza genocide marks a culmination of what Pappé explained were the goals “set by the Zionist movement very early on, when it had appeared in Palestine: to have as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible.” That the present genocide is the expression of a conscious plan is not a secret. On Sep 22 2023, one month before the onslaught on Gaza, Netanyahu displayed a map at the UNGA of the “new Middle East.” The map showed Israel encompassing all of the Palestinian territories, as part of a geopolitical framework with the US-aligned Middle Eastern states of Egypt, Sudan, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu made this provocative display just two days after meeting with Biden and Blinken in Washington. During that meeting, Biden declared, “the dream of generations will be fulfilled” in the US-led reorganization of the Middle East, adding:

You’ve heard me say many times: Were there no Israel, we’d have to invent one.

That meeting took place three weeks before the events of Oct 7, in which Hamas forces overran the Gaza border following the deliberate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the area, in execution of a Hamas plan the Israeli government had in its possession for over a year. The events of that day set into motion what Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter called “Nakba 2023.” Last week, Blinken made what appeared to be two identical verbal slips in two separate Senate committee hearings, which revealed the underlying genocidal intent of American imperialism. In testimony on May 21 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Blinken declared:

There’s an opportunity for Israel to become integrated in the region, to get the security, fundamental security it needs and wants, and to have the relationships that it has sought going back to its founding. But in order for that to actually go forward, there has to be an end to Gaza.

At another Senate committee hearing the same day, Blinken used the same formulation, declaring that “normalization” requires an “end to Gaza.” Every day, the actual US-Israeli policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing is becoming clearer. Securing the US-dominated reorganization of the Middle East, what Biden called the “dream of generations,” does in fact require the “end of Gaza,” the systematic crushing of organized resistance by the Palestinian people to Israeli domination. The outbreak of global war, with the imperialist powers targeting Russia, China and Iran, is giving Israel and its imperialist backers the occasion to carry out the “final solution” of the Palestinian question. For decades, every war launched by the United States and all the imperialist powers has been justified as an operation of preserving “human rights” and stopping genocide. Everything from the bombing of Yugoslavia to the regime change operation in Libya was sold as the only way to prevent an imminent genocide. Even the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine was sold to the public as an effort to stop what Biden called a “genocide” in which “Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be Ukrainian.” The events of the past seven months have made it clear, however, that the greatest state sponsors of genocide and ethnic cleansing are the United States and its imperialist allies.

G7 steps up economic and financial war against Russia and China
Nick Beams, WSWS, May 27 2024

The three-day meeting of the finance ministers and central bankers of the G7 group of imperialist powers held in Stresa, Italy, concluded on Saturday. Significantly, it stepped up its aggressive stance against Russia and China, as well as giving carte blanche to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. A major item on the agenda was how the $300b worth of foreign assets of the Russian central bank, frozen by the US and European powers at the start of the Ukraine war, could be used to finance the Zelensky regime as it prepares to throw thousands more men into the meat-grinder, on top of the hundreds of thousands already killed or wounded. As well, revealing the interconnected character of the imperialist war fronts, the meeting adopted a more strident attitude to China and its so-called industrial overcapacity, and the threat posed to the economic position of the US and Europe. The statement issued from the meeting declared:

We will advance our cooperation to enhance global economic resilience and economic security and protect our economies from systemic shocks and vulnerabilities. To this end, we will work to make our supply chains more resilient, reliable, diversified and sustainable and to respond to harmful practices, while safeguarding critical and emerging technologies.

This was a significant escalation in the wording from previous statements which had referred only to a “free and rule-based multilateral system.” Earlier this month, the Biden administration decided to maintain tariffs on a range of Chinese goods set in place under Trump and introduce a set of new ones, spearheaded by the 100% impost on electric vehicles. In this context, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spelled out what was behind the new G7 language. She told a news conference at the start of the meeting:

We need to stand together and send a unified message to China so they understand it’s not just one country that feels this way, but that they face a wall of opposition to the strategy that they’re pursuing.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said it was important to avoid a trade war with China, which remains “our economic partner” but the G7 needed to protect its interests against China’s “unfair trade practices.” This is a reference to the fact that Chinese companies can produce high-tech products, especially in green technology, at a lower cost than their US and European rivals. The doctrines of the “free market” are being thrown aside as the US seeks to crush Chinese economic development, which it regards as the greatest threat to its economic dominance, and puts its own economy on a war footing. Reflecting the dependence of the German economy on China, particularly in its major industry, auto production, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner sounded a more cautious note. He told reporters:

Trade wars are all about losing, you can’t win them.

The Italian economy minister, Giancarlo Giorgetti, who chaired the meeting, indicated that it could be only a matter of time before Europe fell in line behind the US tariff war. He told Italian state television:

The US has taken very tough decisions and Europe will probably have to consider whether to do the same.

The use of Russian financial assets to finance the Ukraine war took up a large part of the meeting. The preferred position of the US has been that the funds, largely held in the European banking system, should simply be seized. But this has been opposed by the EU, not out of any principled opposition to outright theft, but due to the fear it would lead to other countries looking to hold their money elsewhere. Faced with the inability to advance its initial proposal, the US has been pushing for alternative methods to achieve its objectives. It is now backing a plan to use the profits obtained from the frozen Russian assets to create a loan for Ukraine worth up to $50b. There is some haggling over how the G7 would back the loan and who would bear the costs if interest rates fell and profits were eroded. The other issue is legal considerations. That is, how to devise a scheme for blatant thievery that somehow complies with EU and other laws. The G7 statement said:

We are making progress on potential avenues to bring forward the extraordinary profits stemming from immobilised Russian assets to the benefit of Ukraine, consistent with international law and our respective legal systems.

The lawyers are going to have to be hard at work over the next three weeks because the US is pushing for a mechanism to be put in place for endorsement by the meeting of G7 leaders in Italy in the middle of next month. Pushing for the finalisation of the loan scheme, Yellen said:

There does seem to be broad-based support for the general notion and that that’s a productive way forward.

In advance of the G7 meeting, Putin signed a decree on Thursday authorising the seizure of American property to compensate for any losses incurred from the freezing of its assets. Russia has no access to US state funds, but it could seize American-owned property in retaliation. However, Yellen, determined to press ahead, dismissed this threat saying it had been made previously. She said:

That’s not going to deter us from going ahead and taking action in support of Ukraine.

The meeting also endorsed taking further action against Russia which could see major sanctions against other countries, including China. The meeting said:

We are committed to further financial and economic sanctions to reduce Russia’s sources of revenue and capacity to wage war against Ukraine. We shall counter attempts to evade or circumvent sanctions through facilitation of Russia’s defence industry procurement efforts by financial institutions.

It condemned military co-operation between North Korea and Russia, called on Iran to stop assisting the Russian military, and expressed “concern” about “transfers to Russia from firms around the world, including those in China, of dual-use materials and components for weapons and commitment for military production.” These condemnations are a clear warning that further measures, on a widening front, are in the pipeline. The meeting also gave its full backing to Israel saying it condemned “in the strongest possible terms Hamas’ brutal terrorist attack against Israel” on Oct 7, without a mention of the genocide, save for a throwaway line about the “devastating and growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Official briefing on Australian “military secrets” laws points to wartime-like regime
A correspondent, WSWS, May 27 2024

An Australian Defence Department briefing last week on the new “military secrets” legislation laid out some of its vast implications for the entire economy, with threatening potential consequences for researchers, educators and others working in industries involving technology that could be linked to war preparations. About 600 people joined the in-person and online “information briefing” by the department’s security chief, First Assistant Secretary for Defence Security Peter West. He is conducting a series of such events on the Safeguarding Australia’s Military Secrets Act 2024, one of two war-related Acts that came into operation this month. Both Acts were pushed through parliament simultaneously on Mar 27 by the Labor government, working closely with the Liberal-National Coalition, at the behest of the US government to match its similar legislation, as part of the AUKUS military pact directed against China.

First of all, the SAMS Act prohibits former defence department and military personnel from working for, or providing training to, foreign governments and government-linked companies, with the exception of the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand (the “Five Eyes”). However, the SAMS Act has a far wider application. All Australian citizens and permanent residents are barred from “training” non-citizens in military tactics or the use of software or technology with possible military applications. Jail terms of up to 20 years apply to them, as well as the ex-defence personnel. In response to worried questions during the briefing, including from university educators, West gave often vague answers. Nevertheless, he said the legislation could apply to university lecturers teaching courses to classes that included overseas students who had scholarships or other support from governments or government-linked businesses. Even writing textbooks that could be read by such students might fall within its reach. It would all depend on the circumstances, West said.

West said everyone teaching or otherwise working in fields that could be covered by the SAMS Act had until Aug 7 to apply for a “foreign work authorisation” or face the danger of prosecution. He emphasised that this was the responsibility of every individual involved, not their employers. West said 291 such applications had been received but he was sure that this was the tip of a very large iceberg. That points to the extensive regime being introduced, potentially requiring many thousands of people in a range of industries and education providers to obtain “foreign work authorisations” or face investigation and arrest by the Australian Federal Police. In his opening remarks, West stated that the legislation was required by the AUKUS treaty. He said it had always been a crime to divulge military or security information, but the new measures were now needed to protect the global capability of Australia’s AUKUS allies, as well as what he termed Australia’s historic investment in AUKUS. That “investment” by the Albanese Labor government involves the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars on US and UK nuclear-powered submarines, long-range missiles, drones and other weaponry, and the upgrading of military bases and ports around the country for use in a war against China.

West described the matching legislation adopted in the US, UK and Australia as a game changer for the AUKUS partners, providing a seamless combined security capacity against what he described as an insatiable appetite by other governments to acquire military information. West said the prohibitions applied to all training, paid or unpaid, direct or indirect, even if an individual was employed by a third party or contractor, if it benefited a foreign organisation. The SAMS Act itself defines training very broadly to include “regular or irregular training” and “formal or informal instruction.” Answering questions, West said research was not training in general, but universities and other entities conducting research should check with his department’s team supervising the other Act that commenced this month, the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Act. The expanded DTC Act sets prison terms of up to 10 years for “supplying” or disclosing military-related or “dual-use” goods, technology or services on a Defence and Strategic Goods List to non-Australian citizens, with the exception of US and UK authorities and companies. The DCT provisions directly threaten researchers because it can cover simply sharing research results, which is integral to the development of science and technology. In addition to imprisonment, fines of nearly $0.8k apply for individual researchers and almost $4m for corporate bodies, including universities. According to the government’s explanation for the DTC amendment, “dual use” goods and services cover a wide range, including “equipment and technologies developed to meet commercial needs but which may be used either as military components, or for the development or production of military systems.”

The legislation hands sweeping powers to the government, via the defence minister, to decree by regulations which countries are subject to the restrictions, decide what goods and technologies are listed on the DSGL, and grant, refuse or alter “foreign work authorisations.” That means the rules can change overnight. West said the government would give adequate notice of such changes, but not if an emergency or contingency required swift action. Extraordinarily, he gave the example of a fascist coup in Canada, which would mean taking it immediately off the authorised lists. Under the SAMS Act, the prohibited training by all Australian citizens and permanent residents applies to “goods, software or technology within the scope of Part 1 of the Defence and Strategic Goods List” or to “military tactics, military techniques or military procedures.” This casts a wide net. Part 1 of the list covers “goods or technology that is designed or adapted for military purposes including parts and accessories thereof.” This list can be expanded at any time by ministerial declaration.

The legislation presents far-reaching threats, especially for university and other researchers in a wide range of science and technology fields. That is particularly so for those who might be accused of any links to, or partnership with, colleagues from China, Russia or any other non-“Five Eyes” country. In response to one question, West said this even extended to working with companies or entities from France and other NATO members. The Albanese government has introduced this regime, which resembles a wartime one, despite many objections by researchers, research organisations and sections of business because of the chilling and crippling impact it will have in many scientific fields that depend on international collaboration. The legislation is a central aspect of the Labor government’s intensifying commitment to US militarism, from the US-armed Israeli genocide in the Middle East, to the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the Biden administration’s escalating military and economic confrontation with China. These laws enforce the sweeping “whole-of-government and whole-of-nation” war effort outlined in the government’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review and 2024 National Defence Strategy, directed against Russia and China, which made specific reference to aligning universities and sections of industry more directly with the needs of the military.

Chief of Canada’s top spy agency urges shutdown of Tiktok as anti-China hysteria continues
James Clayton, WSWS, May 27 2024

Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) Director David Vigneault has all but publicly urged the government to ban TikTok, issuing a dire “warning” to “young people” against using the social media platform on the entirely bogus premise that it is a tool of the Chinese state. Vigneault’s attack on TikTok builds upon the ongoing and baseless accusations from Canada’s top domestic spy agency that China has interfered in Canadian elections and blackmailed Canadian politicians. It is part of a sustained campaign of anti-Chinese hysteria whipped up by Canada’s security agencies, corporate media and political establishment. The demonization of Beijing is the ideological component of Canadian imperialism’s preparations for war with China in the Indo-Pacific, which Ottawa intends to fight alongside American imperialism, its military and geostrategic partner for over eight decades. The goal of North America’s twin imperialist powers is to prevent China emerging as a global economic and geostrategic competitor by consolidating their dominance over the strategically crucial Eurasian landmass. This insane program, which includes risking a global conflagration with nuclear weapons that would call into question the very survival of humanity and that requires the diversion of vast resources from social spending to armaments, can only be pursued through increasingly anti-democratic, authoritarian rule at home. This is what lies behind Vigneault’s diatribe against TikTok, which the ruling elite views as dangerous because it enables workers and young people to share information and access news that contradicts the pro-war narrative of the ruling class. Speaking in a “set piece” studio interview with Catharine Tunney, a “national security reporter” with the state-run Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Vigneault stated:

I would absolutely not recommend someone have TikTok, because it is very clear from its design that data gleaned from its users is available to the government of China.

In fact, it’s not “clear” at all. No Canadian or American official or technical expert has been able to demonstrate how TikTok user data is available to the Chinese government. In the face of similar smears from American politicians and US government threats to shut down the company’s US operations, TikTok has taken unprecedented steps to insulate its data from Chinese state interference. All of its US user data is now stored on servers housed in the US and owned by the US software giant Oracle. Meanwhile, Canadian user data is either stored on the Oracle platform or on servers in Singapore. Vigneault and other representatives of the security establishment have only to make sweeping unsubstantiated claims against Beijing and Chinese-owned companies for highly paid “journalists” like Tunney, who have reduced themselves to the role of court stenographers for imperialism, to promote them as the gospel truth.

These claims, it need be added, are made by agencies engaged in the largest spying program on the world’s population, as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. US-owned social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as well as providers like Google, have a revolving door between their top levels of management, and military and security “experts” from the state. What’s more, there is hard evidence to prove that these platforms make available the vast amounts of data they collect on their users for the purposes of state surveillance. Vigneault’s subsequent accusations against TikTok, which went completely unchallenged, were a laundry list of the very capabilities which CSIS, Canada’s signals intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment Canada, and their counterparts in the US and Britain already have. Said Vigneault:

There is a very clear strategy on the part of the Government of China, which is to acquire as much personal information as possible from anyone around the world. They’re using big data analytics, they have amazing computer farms crunching the data, they are developing artificial intelligence…

Western state spying agencies such as the NSA in the US have had unlimited access to widely used software programs such as Microsoft Windows for decades via a digital “backdoor.” This permits them to access not only user data, but every single keystroke made on an individual’s computer. NSA can activate the camera and microphone on a computer desktop or phone or smart TV, without the individual being aware. In 2017, WikiLeaks exposed the “Vault 7” documents, which detailed a comprehensive program of US interference in the 2012 French elections, using the most sophisticated digital hacking tools. NSA’s “zero-day exploits” can be installed on the operating system of any device such as a phone or computer, and run undetectable until the device is re-started. Canada’s ally Israel is currently using digital signals from cell phones and Wi-fi networks to target civilians in Gaza for destruction using snipers, drones and bombs. None of this troubles Vigneault. What disturbs him is that TikTok refuses to share its user data with western spy agencies, leaving them “blind” to the growing radicalization of young people and workers taking place on the platform. A 2022 US government proposal to avoid a ban of the app required TikTok to provide its data to the US DoJ and the DoD “eerily similar” as a Gizmodo tech journalist observed, “to the surveillance tactics critics have accused Chinese officials of abusing.”

CSIS and the Canadian state are participants in the “Five Eyes” alliance, alongside the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand, which operates a global eavesdropping and espionage network against the population of the whole world. Snowden’s revelations showed this surveillance network targets everyone whose views and actions could be of interest to Washington, even political leaders who are close US allies, like former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But the ultimate targets of this global spying operation are left wing movements and the threat of revolutionary activity in the working class. Appealing to far-right fears of “communism,” Vigneault insinuated that TikTok served “to protect the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, so ultimately this is a threat to the way we live.” Rather than challenge this absurd slander, dredged up from the sewer of the Cold War-era Red Scare, Tunney instead repeated the phrase ominously for emphasis:

I want to acknowledge the magnitude of that, a threat to the way we live.

She then asked Vigneault if he would ban TikTok, adding in a revealing aside:

I know you don’t tell the government what to do, at least not explicitly.

Vigneault replied, cautiously, that the Liberal government’s decision to ban the app from government-issued cell phones was a “very astute approach.” Vigneault’s remarks will have been welcomed with open arms by the Trudeau government. Though it has repeatedly come under attack from the opposition Conservatives and New Democrats, and sections of the corporate media like the Globe and Mail, for being too “soft” towards China, Trudeau has overseen a hardline policy towards Beijing. From the detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, to the strengthening of Canada’s military presence in the Asia-Pacific, recent years have witnessed a dramatic sharpening of tensions between the two countries. With its recently introduced Bill C-70, the so-called “foreign interference bill,” the Liberals have responding to the trumped up allegations of Chinese “interference” in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections with a sweeping attack on core democratic rights. This includes granting CSIS massive new powers to collect and surveil Canadians’ electronic data.

The ruling-class attack on TikTok and the broader anti-China campaign confront the obstacle of the growing radicalization of Canadian workers and youth. TikTok has become a popular platform for young people and workers to share their political criticisms of US and Canadian imperialism and the imperialist-backed Zionist genocide in Gaza. Palestinian civilians and journalists have used it to document the horrors of genocide, including with brutal images and videos of casualties, witness testimonies, and massive explosions demolishing whole city blocks. In comparison, US-controlled social media platforms and online services such as Facebook and Instagram are now actively censored to the point where it is becoming increasingly impossible to share critical political content without having one’s account suspended. When such content is posted, it often cannot be seen by others. In 2020, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, testified before the US Congress that the Google search engine censors the WoSWS and other left-wing publications. The US and Canadian ruling classes are desperate to silence the voices of the youth, because a rapidly growing layer of young people is implacably opposed to imperialist war, and increasingly to the capitalist system which produces it. In a final insult to the intelligence of his audience, Vigneault declared that private user information from TikTok “lands in places that don’t live by the same principles of rule of law, respect for human rights” as Canada.

What astonishing hypocrisy! The Canadian state is currently arming and defending Israel, which is carrying out a genocide and using sophisticated digital spying techniques to target civilians for death! Ottawa has been involved in virtually every US-led war of aggression over the past 30 years, and is playing a leading part in the US-NATO war on Russia, which the Western powers provoked by inciting Putin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine. Two of Canada’s closest allies, the US and UK, have hounded and imprisoned Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, for exposing the rampant and unrestricted spying of the imperialist states on the world’s people, among many other crimes. David Vigneault speaks for a state soaked in the blood of Somali, Yugoslav, Haitian, Libyan, Afghan, Iraqi, Ukrainian, Russian and now Palestinian civilians. These imperialist wars, which erupted with fury after the dissolution of the USSR by the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1991, have killed several million people. Vigneault and his fellow spymasters, the Trudeau Liberal government, and all the opposition parties in parliament support the rapidly escalating third imperialist world war, directed against Russia in Eastern Europe, Iran in the Middle East, and China in the Asia-Pacific. Workers and young people determined to oppose ongoing state surveillance and the gutting of their democratic rights must draw the connection between these authoritarian measures and the waging of imperialist war. The defence of all democratic and social rights is possible only through the building of a global anti-war movement led by the working class.