It is characteristic of any war that the first victims are usually innocent civilians. The World Socialist Movement fully sympathises with the compassion being expressed for the plight of the people of besieged Gaza. Saturday saw an example with an enormous turn-out in London showing support for the Palestinians. We roundly denounce the lethal Israeli air-strikes against Gazans who cannot flee the war–zone to safety nor seek refuge in the shelter of underground tunnels which were being deliberately targeted.

 Every few years we have witnessed Israeli state-violence with the purpose of repressing Palestinian resistance. Palestinians had begun protests against the eviction from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. These were accompanied at the al-Aqsa mosque with demonstrations against the provocative incursions of extremist Zionists. As the protests grew, Israeli police responded with increased violence.  

It is frustrating that many concerned people are endorsing armed struggle by Hamas as fully justified. A common refrain repeated is it is not for us to determine the methods of resistance but the Palestinians themselves and they have chosen Hamas as their representatives. But we cannot avoid questioning that claim. Has it ended the siege of Gaza? Has it provoked Israel to deploy its army to face high casualties that a ground invasion would inflict? Has it challenged Israel’s security with several hundred rockets fizzling out before even reaching Israeli territory and those that do, 90% get shot down by Iron Dome? As the political commentator, Norman Finkelstein observed, the rocket risk to Jewish-Israelis is as much as being struck by lightning. Has “self-defence” been a financial cost to Israel with the USA paying most of the bills?

The rockets, in fact, distracted from the East Jerusalem and the Palestinian-Israeli protests and served Hamas efforts to control events. It was a power-play by Hamas, not solidarity. Hamas wanted to portray itself as the leadership of the Israeli-Palestinians the moment they appeared to be acting independently in various cities within Israel. We can see that the real motive Hamas has in militarising the struggle is to ensure it retains partisan political control, distancing the Palestinian Authority even further but also undermining those that possess the decisive potential power,  the Palestinian-Israelis.

John Pilger and others present the argument that the occupation legitimises the right of resistance. But the dilemma is that defending the armed struggle directly weakens other strategies such as the rights of those who seek to wage non-violent resistance using general strikes and civil disobedience.

Rather than rockets, Hamas could so easily have revived the March of Return along the fences and if the Israeli snipers shot the participants as the IDF did previously, it would have resulted in far fewer casualties being incurred. Hamas wanted a media event of Israeli bombing and Israel willingly gave it to them for Netanyahu’s domestic election reasons.

The apologists for Hamas, the romantics who still adhere to the proven failed national liberation ideology, never mention that Hamas supported the Islamist al-Nusra who fought against Syria’s Assad, Hezbollah and Iran. The very same al Nusra jihadists being also supported by Israel and the USA. Strange bedfellows indeed. 

As socialists, our position is one against all nationalism but it should not be mistaken for docility to oppression or that Israel’s apartheid system and its occupation should not be resisted. The Palestinians should practice self-defence and engage in equal human rights. But the tactics chosen must be ones with the best chance of success.

No war but the class war but class politics is something many of the marchers against Israel and for a free Palestine don’t wish to understand, preferring to depict it as a religio-ethnic conflict. We support a vision of Jews and Palestinians coming together as workers, no matter how remote such an aspiration might appear today. Our fundamental principle is that true freedom will never be achieved until we are all liberated from wage slavery. This means that we do not support Hamas or any other would-be rulers. We cannot accept the sacrifice of our fellow-workers to satisfy the self-interest of sectarian political parties.

 At least nine persons have become new billionaires since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, thanks to the profits from pharmaceutical corporations.

The nine new billionaires have a combined net wealth of $19.3 billion, enough to fully vaccinate all people in low-income countries 1.3 times.

The CEOs of Moderna and BioNTech top the list of nine individuals who became billionaires on the back of the rollout of vaccines against Covid-19.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel is the richest new ‘vaccine billionaire,’ followed by Ugur Sahin, his counterpart from BioNTech. Each is now worth over $4 billion. Others on the list include three Moderna investors, the chair of a firm contracted to manufacture and package Moderna’s product, and the three co-founders of the Chinese vaccine producer CanSino Biologics.

Eight others, whose wealth had already topped the billion-dollar benchmark when the pandemic hit, have seen their wealth grow significantly. They include people linked to China’s Chongqing Zhifei Biological and Sinopharm, India’s Cadila Healthcare and the Serum Institute of India, and holders of BioNTech stock.

Vaccine billionaires are being created as stocks in pharmaceutical firms rise rapidly in expectation of huge profits from the COVID-19 vaccines over which these firms have intellectual ownership control.

“These billionaires are the human face of huge profits many pharmaceutical corporations are making from the monopoly they hold on these vaccines,” said Anna Marriott, the health policy manager at charity Oxfam, a member of the People’s Vaccine Alliance. “We need to urgently end these monopolies so that we can scale up vaccine production, drive down prices, and vaccinate the world. What a testament to our collective failure to control this cruel disease that we quickly create new vaccine billionaires but totally fail to vaccinate the billions who desperately need to feel safe.”

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of another Alliance member, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, said it was “obscene that profits continue to come before saving lives,” as patent holders refused to share their technology.

Heidi Chow, Senior Policy and Campaigns Manager at Global Justice Now, said:

“As thousands of people die each day in India, it is utterly repugnant that the UK, Germany and others want to put the interests of the billionaire owners of Big Pharma ahead of the desperate needs of millions.

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, said:

“While the companies making massive profits from COVID vaccines are refusing to share their science and technology with others in order to increase the global vaccine supply, the world continues to face the very real risk of mutations that could render the vaccines we have ineffective and put everyone at risk all over again. The pandemic has come at a terrible human cost, so it is obscene that profits continue to come before saving lives.”

The nine new vaccine billionaires, in order of their net worth are:

Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO (worth $4.3billion)Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech (worth $4 billion)Timothy Springer, an immunologist and founding investor of Moderna (worth $2.2bn)Noubar Afeyan, Moderna’s Chairman (worth $1.9 billion)Juan Lopez-Belmonte, Chairman of ROVI, a company with a deal to manufacture and package the Moderna vaccine (worth $1.8 billion)Robert Langer, a scientist and founding investor in Moderna (worth $1.6 billion)Zhu Tao, co-founder and chief scientific officer at CanSino Biologics (worth $1.3 billion)Qiu Dongxu, co-founder and senior vice president at CanSino Biologics (worth $1.2)Mao Huinhoa, also co-founder and senior vice president at CanSino Biologics (worth $1 billion)

 The £300,000 saved in a cost-cutting exercise during the refurbishment of the 24-storey Grenfell council block between 2014 and 2016 that led to combustible aluminium panels being substituted for the planned non-combustible zinc on the exterior of the block has cost the council over £500m, £406m on its response and recovery efforts in almost four years since the disaster,  in addition to the costs to the taxpayer of the ongoing public inquiry, which hit £117m by the end of March this year, most of which was taken up with lawyers’ bills.

“For too long our politicians, leaders & corporations have fed us the SAME lies, the SAME broken promises, the SAME too-little-too-late solutions, the SAME destructive fossil fuels. But we know that if we keep doing things the SAME way, we are doomed.” Official account of the UN Envoy on Youth, Ms Jayathma Wickramanayake .

The Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN) has put leaders and policymakers on notice that they are not willing to listen to the same conversations, suggestions and unmet promises as it launches a massive youth mobilisation campaign, with the hashtag #samesucks. 

 Billionaire Charles Koch’s foundation has bankrolled three conservative legal groups leading the court battle to eliminate prohibitions against tenant evictions during the Covid-19 pandemic in America.

At the same time, Koch’s corporate empire has suddenly stepped up its real estate purchases during the pandemic – including making large investments in real estate companies with a potential financial interest in eliminating eviction restrictions.

 Between 2017 and 2019, the Charles Koch Foundation contributed almost $7.7m to three conservative organizations, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Pacific Legal Foundation and the New Civil Rights Alliance have been pushing federal courts to strike down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) eviction moratorium, which is designed to protect millions of Americans from being thrown out of their homes during the pandemic. The groups have so far won two rulings. But since the Covid-19 pandemic began, Koch Industries has been ploughing money into real estate.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the billionaire’s corporate conglomerate “is emerging as a major real-estate investor during the pandemic, using its robust cash reserves to buy properties at beaten-down prices and betting on a longer-term recovery”.  Koch Real Estate Investments made a $200m preferred-equity investment in Amherst Holdings LLC’s single-family rental business. Koch Real Estate Investments began a financial relationship with Ladder Capital Corp., culminating in a $32m equity investment in December. 

In February, the Texas Public Policy Foundation convinced a federal judge in Texas to declare the CDC’s eviction moratorium unconstitutional. In March, a federal judge in Ohio sided with the Pacific Legal Foundation, ruling that the CDC “exceeded the scope of its authority” with its eviction ban.

Charles Koch funded eviction push while investing in real estate companies | Koch brothers | The Guardian

 The Gaza Strip is often described as besieged as it is blockaded by land, sea and air by Israel.

A similar tactic is now being extended to the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem which was the centre of street protests and demonstrations against the eviction of Palestinians from their houses.

Israeli NGO Ir Amim said in a Wednesday statement for about two weeks Israeli police cordoned off the Kerem Al’ajoni section, or the eastern part of Sheikh Jarrah, where hundreds of Palestinians under threat of forced expulsion live. A heavy presence of police and paramilitary forces blocks access to the area, it said. 

“The closure of the neighbourhood is seen as an intentional brazen move by the Israeli authorities to suppress Palestinian mobilisation and deprive the residents of Sheikh Jarrah of the freedom of expression and the right to protest against their forced displacement,” it said.

Palestinian families are living inside “a cordoned-off military-like zone. They are subject to ongoing arbitrary harassment and aggressive police measures, marked by forced entry into homes and the use of stun grenades, skunk water, and rubber-tipped bullets against neighbourhood residents”.

 Israeli police have been preventing non-residents from entering the neighbourhood, which has been closed off. Palestinian residents have limited their movements and are mostly staying at home, since if they leave the neighbourhood Israeli authorities sometimes will not allow them to return, claiming they have orders it is a military zone. Jewish-Israeli settlers are allowed to move freely. Restrictions are not imposed on supporters of Jewish settlers living there,

Iskafi from one of the Palestinian families facing eviction, said, “They put three to four soldiers at the door of each of our houses to keep us locked inside. Whenever we tried to get out they said to us: ‘You stay inside or we will beat you.’ ”

Palestinian writer Mohammed el-Kurd from Sheikh Jarrah posted on Twitter a video and photos on Tuesday showing Israeli police spraying streets with “skunk water … an intense, chemically manipulated liquid that sticks on your skin for a week if it came in direct contact”.

Sheikh Jarrah is ‘under a siege,’ Palestinian residents say | Al-Aqsa Mosque News | Al Jazeera

 92% of candidates standing for the Vietnam’s 500-seat National Assembly are Communist Party members.

Of the 868 candidates, 74 are independents. Independents must be vetted by the Vietnamese Fatherland Front, which the party essentially controls.

The economic reforms of Doi Moi brought the arrival of Vietnamese billionaires.

In 2018, income share held by highest 10% for Viet Nam was 27.5 %. Viet Nam income share held by lowest 10% was at level of 2.5 % in 2018. 

 Hamas and Israel agree a ceasefire.

Image thanks to

Neither Israel, Nor Palestine: No War but the Class War | Leftcom

There are 171 billionaires in the UK, 24 more than a year ago.

 The combined wealth of billionaires in Britain grew by more than one-fifth.

The richest person is Sir Len Blavatnik.  He increased his wealth by £7.2bn during 2020. The increase in Blavatnik’s £23bn over the past 12 months was mainly down to his investment in the Warner Music record label, which floated on New York’s Nasdaq stock market in June.  In the US, Blavatnik mainly gave to Democratic politicians before 2014, but his spending then shifted to the right, with donations of millions of dollars to Republican causes and a $1m donation to Donald Trump’s inaugural committee.  He owns a mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens that has been valued at £200m.

Property magnates, David and Simon Reuben, were listed as Britain’s second-wealthiest, with a combined fortune of £21.5bn.

 Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the Sunday Times and other media interests, was not included on the basis that he is based in the US, but his $23.5bn fortune, according to Forbes, would have placed him third.

The gains reaped by the billionaire class came in a year that the government was forced to step in to pay the wages of millions of Britons, funded by borrowing unprecedented in peacetime. At the same time governments and central banks have stepped in with huge fiscal and monetary interventions that have sustained, and in many cases added to, the fortunes of the wealthy.

 Solar, wind and tidal power are renewable but what is needed to convert those resources into electricity — minerals like cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, and the rare-earth elements (REEs)  are not. Some are far scarcer than oil, and capitalist competition and conflicts over control of those vital resources may well persist.

Electric vehicles uses substantial amounts of copper, and require cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, and rare earths for their engines and batteries.  According to the IEA, a typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional oil-powered vehicle. These include the copper for electrical wiring plus the cobalt, graphite, lithium, and nickel needed to ensure battery performance, longevity, and energy density (the energy output per unit of weight). In addition, rare-earth elements will be essential for the permanent magnets installed in EV motors.

 Wind turbines need manganese, molybdenum, nickel, zinc, and rare-earth elements for their electrical generators.

For the time being with wind and solar power accounting for only about 7% of global electricity generation and electric vehicles making up less than 1% of the cars on the road, demand is being met by supply. However, the International Energy Agency (IEA), in its report, “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions,” predicts the demand for lithium in 2040 could be 50 times greater than today and for cobalt and graphite 30 times greater if the world moves swiftly to replace oil-driven vehicles with EVs. Potential sources of them are limited.  In other words, the world could face significant shortages of  vital raw materials materials. 

“As clean energy transitions accelerate globally,” the IEA report noted ominously, “and solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars are deployed on a growing scale, these rapidly growing markets for key minerals could be subject to price volatility, geopolitical influence, and even disruptions to supply.”

“Today’s supply and investment plans for many critical minerals fall well short of what is needed to support an accelerated deployment of solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. 

The most critical minerals, lithium, cobalt, and those rare-earth elements, production is highly concentrated in just a few countries, a reality that could lead to the sort of geopolitical struggles that accompanied the world’s dependence on a few major sources of oil.  Just one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), currently supplies more than 80% of the world’s cobalt, and another — China — 70% of its rare-earth elements.  At present, approximately 58% of the world’s lithium comes from Australia, another 20% from Chile, 11% from China, 6% from Argentina, and smaller percentages from elsewhere. A U.S. firm, Lithium Americas, is about to undertake the extraction of significant amounts of lithium from a clay deposit in northern Nevada.  Four countries — Argentina, Chile, the DRC, and Peru — provide most of the copper. In other words, such future supplies are far more concentrated in far fewer lands and hands than oil and gas. Already the Socialist Standard has drawn attention to the focus on Greenland for its resources.

Many promising ore sources lie in countries like the DRC, Myanmar, Peru, and Russia where such conditions hardly apply. For example, the current turmoil in Myanmar, a major producer of certain rare-earth elements, has already led to worries about their future availability and sparked a rise in prices.

China may not produce significant amounts of cobalt or nickel, but it does account for approximately 65% of the world’s processed cobalt and 35% of its processed nickel. And while China produces 11% of the world’s lithium, it’s responsible for nearly 60% of processed lithium. When it comes to rare-earth elements, however, China is dominant. Not only does it provide 60% of the world’s raw materials, but nearly 90% of processed REEs.

there is no way the United States and other countries can undertake a massive transition from fossil fuels to a renewables-based economy without engaging economically with China.  Efforts will be made to reduce the degree of that reliance, but there’s no realistic prospect of eliminating dependence on China for rare earths, lithium, and other key materials in the foreseeable future. If a Cold-War-like stance toward Beijing arose or if the USA were to try to “decouple” its economy from that of the China, as advocated by many “China hawks” in Congress, the United States would have to abandon its plans for a green-energy future.

Either a future in which capitalists begin fighting over the world’s supplies of important minerals or simply abandoned their plans for a Green New Deal and let the planet burn.

Adapted from here