New COVID-19 surge driven by KP.2 and KP.3 variants

Bill Shaw

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to sicken millions of people, with a growing surge driven by the newly evolved KP.2 and KP.3 variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The surge impacts multiple countries, including the US, Australia and the UK.

In Australia, COVID is surging along with two winter respiratory viruses, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Surveillance data show increases in the numbers of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, nursing home outbreaks, and healthcare provider absences due to illness, as well as increased levels of the virus in wastewater.

In the United Kingdom, hospitalizations due to COVID-19 are up 24 percent in the past week. In addition, the percentage of COVID-19 tests that are positive has risen from 8.4 to 10 percent.

According to Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, “This is a wakeup call. The virus hasn’t gone away and is certainly not a seasonal infection.” 

In the United States, there are 15 states seeing high or very high levels of the virus in sewage, according to the CDC. The CDC maintains a map of current virus levels, shown below, which it updates on a regular basis.

COVID-19 Current Wastewater Viral Activity Levels Map (Source: CDC) [Photo: CDC]

The 15 states are concentrated mostly in the Southern and Western US and include the nation’s three most populous states: California, Texas and Florida. In California, the surge comes earlier than experts anticipated, with current cases of COVID-19 already nearing last summer’s peak. California’s percentage of COVID-19 tests that are positive is 7.7 percent, exceeding the national average of 6.6 percent.

With COVID-19 surging in California, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass proposed banning the wearing of masks. This follows proposed mask bans in New York and the passage of this reactionary measure in North Carolina. 

The mask bans have nothing to do with their stated purpose of “public safety,” but instead are retaliatory measures aimed at suppressing widespread demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza. Their goal is to intimidate protestors by stripping them of anonymity. Indeed, the proposed mask ban in New York is broadly supported by several Zionist groups.

A few days after proposing the mask ban in LA, Mayor Bass herself contracted COVID-19. Her office announced that she will be working remotely, something denied to the vast majority of American workers.

In Hawaii, there are very high levels of the virus in sewage, and there is a statewide average test positivity rate of 16.7 percent. The city of Honolulu has an even higher test positivity rate at 20.1 percent. The number of hospitalizations for COVID-19 in Hawaii, 126 per week, is the highest level in the state since last August. In response to the surge, Kaiser Permanente and other healthcare systems in Hawaii have resumed masking requirements for all healthcare providers and staff.

The surge in Hawaii coincides with a major event held on the island of Oahu from June 6 to 16. FestPAC is the largest celebration of indigenous Pacific Islanders. Ironically, it had been postponed from 2020 due to the onset of the pandemic. Over 500,000 people from 28 island nations converged on the small island for the 10-day event.

Given the confluence of the event and the emergence of the new viral variants, which have been shown to escape existing immunity, it was a recipe for widespread transmission of the virus. The test positivity rate among festival attendees during the event was 13 percent. The state department of health offered testing and N95 masks to attendees.

Texas and Florida, despite having high and very high levels of the virus in wastewater, have test positivity rates of 5.5 and 4.1 percent respectively, below the national average. However, these states have been at the forefront nationally of dismantling their public health infrastructure, especially as it relates to COVID-19. Thus, the stark contrast between their wastewater levels of virus and other traditional public health metrics is to be expected when the virus is spreading uncontrolled in their regions.

This COVID-19 surge is driven by the emergence of two new viral variants called KP.2 and KP.3. At the end of March, these two variants made up less than 4 percent of cases in the US. Per the most recent data on June 22, they together are projected to make up 53.9 percent of cases, with KP.3 comprising 33.1 percent of cases, while KP.2 comprises 20.8 percent. Over the same time period, the previously dominant JN.1 variant dropped from 52.9 percent of cases to a projected 1.6 percent of cases.

In the United Kingdom, KP.2 and KP.3 currently make up 22 and 44 percent of cases, respectively. In New South Wales, Australia, KP.2 and KP.3 together make up over half of cases.

Early data have shown that immunity to previous variants provides less protection against KP.2 and KP.3. A new preprint which is undergoing peer review confirms early analysis of the new variants. Namely, antibodies developed by either vaccination against, or infection with, previous viral variants do not “neutralize” the new viral variants as effectively as they do prior variants. Neutralization means the antibodies bind to the virus in such a way as to prevent it from infecting cells.

Thus, the spread of these new variants is occurring because they “escape” pre-existing immunity. This phenomenon is typical of viruses that are not eradicated: They continue to evolve into new forms to overcome pre-existing immunity in their host populations.

The emergence of the new viral variants and the consequent surge of COVID-19 that is currently underway has been enabled by a ruling class indifferent to the suffering caused by the virus. To push their genocidal agenda, the ruling class is further destroying what little protections individuals have available to them by imposing cruel mask bans that disproportionately impact society’s vulnerable elderly and immunocompromised people.

Zelensky replaces general at the behest of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion

Jason Melanovski

President Volodymyr Zelensky has replaced Ukraine’s Joint Forces Commander Lt. General Yuriy Sodol with Brigadier General Andrii Hnatov at the behest of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Sodol was also in charge of ground forces along the frontline in the eastern Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov (Kharkiv) regions, where Ukrainian forces have continued to incrementally lose territory to Russia for the past year.

Andrii Hnatov [Photo by Ministry of Defense of Ukraine / CC BY 4.0]

Following his dismissal, Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda obtained a letter from Bohdan Krotevych, Chief of Staff of the Azov Brigade of the National Guard, that had been sent to the State Investigation Bureau of Ukraine (SBI) and published its key points.

In the letter, Krotevych blamed Sodol for the loss of Mariupol, a major shipping port now under Russian control.

In addition to poor planning and communication attributed to Sodol, Azov did not receive “a single extra cartridge prior to the defense of Mariupol,” according to Krotevych. He also blamed Sodol for having killed “more Ukrainians than Russians” due to his use of undermanned and outgunned counterattacks. Krotevych wrote that “the Lieutenant General commands the troops ‘inadequately’.”

For a junior officer such as Krotevych to publicly criticize a senior commander during war time would be highly unusual and grounds for discipline, as the Kyiv Post reported: “In most NATO armies an officer making public charges in wartime would have been arrested for insubordination—at least.” But to date, Krotevych, an open neo-Nazi, has not been sanctioned. On the contrary, bloggers with hundreds of thousands of followers that are allied with Zelensky repeated Krotevych’s charges, arguing the Azov officer had an excellent point, and Zelensky himself responded to Krotevych by dismissing Sodol. 

Zelensky’s bowing to the Azov Battalion on the appointment of a key general underlines both the highly unstable situation and the reactionary character of his regime. Under conditions of growing anti-war sentiments and an ongoing bloody debacle at the front, Zelensky is relying ever more heavily on far-right forces, allowing them to call the shots.

Although Ukraine is constantly touted as a bastion of “democracy” by the NATO war propaganda, in reality, fascist forces such as the Azov Brigade have been given extraordinary powers at the highest levels of the state. This policy has been encouraged by the imperialist powers which have played the central role in promoting and arming Azov. 

Azov Battalion soldiers with Nazi flag. [Photo by Heltsumani / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Earlier in June, the United States lifted a ban on sending weapons and training to Azov under the Leahy Law, which prohibits the US government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces that may have committed human rights violations. “This is a new page in the history of our unit,” Azov said in a statement following the news of its now official assistance from United States imperialism.

“Eligibility for US assistance will not only increase Azov’s combat effectiveness, but, most importantly, will help save the lives and health of the brigade’s personnel,” the unit said. “Azov is becoming more professional and more effective in defending Ukraine against the invaders.”

The State Department justified its decision by blaming Russian disinformation, which “has actively worked to discredit” the unit. It also stated that while vetting Azov for military assistance they “found no evidence of Gross Violations of Human Rights” committed by the 12th Azov Special Forces Brigade. Around the time that the ban was lifted, the elite Stanford University welcomed the Azov Battalion at its Slavic Department and removed the Azov Battalion from the website of its “Mapping Militants Project, an influential government-funded initiative that tracks extremist groups. 

Francis Fukuyama (left) with Arsenyi Fedosiuk, Julia Fedosiuk and Kateryna Prokopenko. [Photo: Facebook page of the Ukrainian Student Association at Stanford]

While American news outlets such as CNN and NBC uniformly claim that Azov had “moved on” from its neo-Nazi background and attributed its former stigma to “Russian disinformation,” the truth is that its leaders continue to support neo-Nazism.

The organization traces its heritage back both to Nazism and far-right Ukrainian nationalist organizations, such as Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and the Ukrainian Insurgency Army (UPA), which were responsible for the massacres of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles, as well as Ukrainians during World War II. Its founder Andriy Biletsky, previously the leader of the fascist paramilitary Patriot of Ukraine organization, is an outright white supremacist who in 2010 stated that the mission of Ukraine is to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].”

Despite the State Department’s assurances regarding Azov’s supposedly sparkling human rights record, between 2015 and 2016, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights connected Azov with war crimes, including mass looting, unlawful detention and torture.

As for Krotevych, who personally intervened to remove Sodol, X user and Azov investigator Moss Robeson revealed that Krotevych recommended that new Azov recruits read a 1953 memoir by Nazi war criminal Albert Kesselring and has clearly not “moved on” from neo-Nazism, as suggested by the pro-NATO Western media.

At the same time, the removal of Sodol also speaks to ongoing intense conflicts within the Ukrainian ruling class and military leadership. Sodol himself was reportedly an “old school” member within the leadership of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and promoted by former top General Valery Zaluzhny. Meanwhile his replacement Hnatov is younger and part of Zelensky’s plans of “cleaning house and replacing Soviet-trained senior officers with a new, younger generation of generals,” as the Kyiv Post reported. Zaluzhny, who reportedly refused to order major attacks the presidential administration wanted, was himself removed in February after months-long public conflicts with the president.

Short-lived military coup fails against Arce in Bolivia

Andrea Lobo

Bolivian President Luis Arce named a new military high command on Wednesday in the wake of an abortive military coup launched by the former commander of the Army, Gen. Juan José Zúñiga. 

Bolivia's President Luis Arce with Gen. Juan José Zúñiga on the Day of the Army in December 2022. [Photo: Min. Defensa Bolivia]

In one of the most short-lived attempts in Bolivia’s long history of coups, just over four hours passed between Zúñiga’s declaration of his bid to overthrow the government and his arrest at 7 p.m. (local time). 

On Tuesday, Arce deposed General Zúñiga from his post for threatening to detain former President Evo Morales if the latter seeks another term in the August 2025 elections.

A day later, Zúñiga led hundreds of heavily armed soldiers with faces covered to surround the former government palace, Palacio Quemado, which is adjacent to the new building in the capital, La Paz. 

At the Plaza Murillo in front of the palace, Zúñiga declared, “There will be a new cabinet of ministers, surely there will be changes, but our State cannot continue like this. We want to recover our homeland.”

An armored vehicle was then slammed into the gates of the Palacio Quemado, and the soldiers invaded it with rifles and shields.

Inside the building, Arce unsuccessfully ordered Zúñiga to remove the troops.

Protests and a general strike had been called by Arce, his ministers, Evo Morales and the main union body, the Bolivian Workers Central (COB). Hundreds of demonstrators began gathering around the Plaza Murillo to tell the heavily armed soldiers to “Get out!” 

Morales cited reports that snipers had been placed around Plaza Murillo as proof that the coup had been prepared beforehand.

While the character of the agreement—and concessions—will become clear in the following days and weeks, a dominant faction of the military reached a deal to keep the elected President Arce in power, for now.

Arce was allowed to return to the government headquarters, the Great House of the People, and name a new military high command in a televised ceremony. The new top commander, Gen. José Wilson Sánchez, then took the podium and ordered all mobilized troops to return to their barracks.

Zúñiga drove back to the military headquarters in one of the eight armored vehicles that participated in the mutiny, and the troops cleared the plaza, dropping tear gas canisters behind them.

An arrest warrant was issued against Zúñiga, who was then detained while claiming on live television that it had all been a “self-coup” planned by Arce himself to improve his popularity. 

On Thursday morning, Zúñiga and his alleged co-conspirator Vice Adm. Juan Arnez Salvador, the former head of the Navy, were formally charged with the charges of terrorism and armed uprising.

Zúñiga was appointed by Arce, who described him recently as “the people’s general,” an echo of similar declarations by Salvador Allende in the run-up to his own overthrow in 1973. It remains to be seen whether Bolivia follows the Chilean pattern, in which an abortive coup served as a dry run for the real thing, which imposed a blood-soaked military dictatorship.

The explosive context leading up to the coup attempt

The failure of the coup attempt marks a new stage in the economic and political crisis gripping Bolivia ahead of the 2025 elections, where the major drivers are the escalating third world war led by US imperialism against Russia and China and the deepening crisis of global capitalism. 

Morales and the MAS were first elected in 2005—and again in 2009, 2014 and 2019—following a series of popular protests against inequality, including the 2000 “Cochabamba water war” and the 2003 “natural gas war” that had toppled five presidents. With the aid of pseudo-left organizations, Morales channeled the upsurge behind his election. 

Taking advantage of a boom in oil and other commodity prices, the Morales-MAS administration carried out partial nationalizations of oil and minerals and limited increases in social spending which resulted in a lowering of the poverty rate from 61 percent in 2005 to 36 percent in 2023, while increasing profits for global corporations and making timely payments to global finance capital. The country’s GDP tripled.

But, as early as 2014, the Morales administration responded to the end of the commodity boom, which had been caused mainly by Chinese growth, by adopting austerity measures to pay back the rapidly growing government debt. This brought to a halt the social improvements and was accompanied by police repression against working class protests. 

Having lost confidence in his ability to suppress popular opposition, sections of the Bolivian oligarchy and US imperialism backed a military coup that overthrew Morales, only two weeks after the October 2019 elections, on the basis of fabricated claims of vote fraud. 

A massive uprising against the coup, centered in the urban centers of El Alto, around La Paz, was brutally crushed by the military and police with numerous massacres. 

Unable to quell the opposition and facing a worsening global economic situation, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the coup regime led by Jeanine Áñez decided to call elections in October 2020 and allow the MAS to return to power under Luis Arce, a former minister of Morales. 

In the last two years, however, amid the ongoing pandemic, the eruption of the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, and the escalating US-led economic war and preparation for military conflict against China, Bolivia’s crisis of bourgeois rule only deepened. 

In this context, the country’s key minerals, especially the world’s largest lithium reserves, have become a key target in the emerging re-division of the planet between major powers. 

At the same time, the country’s gas and oil reserves have begun running low and increased exploration is not yielding significant results. In the months immediately before the latest coup attempt, the country had been mired in shortages of fuel and dollars. 

A 75 percent drop in the price of lithium in the past year, mainly due to lower-than-expected electric vehicle demand and the economic war tariffs against China, explosively worsened Bolivia’s economic outlook. 

Reflecting a conflict between factions of the ruling class in response to this crisis, the MAS was riven by a rivalry between Arce and Morales over control over the party and the 2025 presidential candidacy. Both factions have spent months launching allegations of unconstitutionality, corruption, alignment with the far-right and US imperialism and “soft-coup” preparations. Morales convoked major roadblocks greatly worsening the supply of fuel and other goods. 

Last December, the Constitutional Court ruled that Morales was not allowed to run for reelection in 2025, although a Congress with tens of thousands of supporters in Villa Tunari on June 10 ratified his candidacy.

A major factor in these conflicts within the ruling class has been getting a share of the proceeds from future lithium projects. In April, Alberto Echazú, an ally of Morales and his key official in charge of launching the lithium industry, was arrested on charges of approving contracts detrimental to state finances, while Morales has denounced Arce’s son for making corrupt deals with Elon Musk. All these claims are murky and not backed by strong evidence.

Wednesday’s events, however, were preceded most immediately by discussions of a MAS “Unity Congress” and a suspension of demonstrations backed by Morales.

Morales’s ally and former interior minister Carlos Romero said earlier this month: “The former president Morales is doing everything possible to contain a social mobilization, there are social mobilizations of all kinds, for dollars, for fuel, for the increase in prices of the family basket; for the economic crisis to increase once more is what we do not want.”

A meeting on June 11 between Arce and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow led to the announcement of a partnership to “industrialize” Bolivian lithium production starting in 2025 by the state-owned companies Yacimientos de Litio Bolivia (YLB) and the Russian Uranium One Group. 

At the same time, Chinese companies have played the main role in developing lithium projects within Bolivia, while the Chancay port that is set to open in November in Peru is expected to greatly facilitate the transportation of Bolivian minerals to China. 

There was also an agreement to import Russian oil, in the context of unrest among consumers and transportation employer groups over shortages. On June 14, Arce deployed the military to gas stations across the country to oversee purchases, ostensibly to prevent hoarding and contraband. Bolivia spends over $1 billion yearly to subsidize fuel imports. 

Hours before the coup, however, transportation employers reached an agreement with the government which canceled planned roadblocks along major highways and border crossings to protest taxes and shortages in fuel and dollars in the economy. 

Even though the US corporate media, the Bolivian far right and allies of Morales have given credence to the claim of a “self-coup,” and this possibility cannot be immediately discounted, the context and events leading up to the coup attempt points to US imperialism as the main force interested in overthrowing Arce. 

Unable to secure a US puppet regime in the 2019 coup, Washington is eager to try to elevate the role of the military, push politics to the right and secure control over Bolivia’s natural resources against its rivals, above all China. 

In the week before the coup attempt, the Arce administration focused its allegations of coup plotting against the US Embassy, which Washington denied. The Bolivian Economy Minister declared last week that the shortages and recent protests were part of “a soft coup against the economy” being hatched at the US Embassy.  

On Tuesday, in an interview with El Deber after his firing, the coup leader Zúñiga declared: “Our homeland is once again under attack by internal and external enemies that seek division, destabilization and hatred among Bolivians in order to take control of natural resources for the benefit of petty interests and power groups that respond to the caudillismo.” This is a thinly veiled reference to the competition between factions of the ruling class over lithium.

During the coup itself, General Zúñiga demanded the liberation from jail of the leaders of the fascistic 2019 coup, including Jeanine Áñez, the fascist Luis Fernando Camacho and military officials—all closely associated with Washington.

Suspiciously, the US Embassy in Bolivia did not publish a statement until after the arrest of Zúñiga, and more than five hours after the coup was launched, writing on X: “We reject any attempt to overthrow the elected government and demand respect for the constitutional order.” 

The South American country with 12 million people has seen 36 completed military coups in its two centuries since breaking from Spain. It has also been involved in 12 wars against neighbors and other conflicts that left it landlocked and made it lose more than half of its original territory.

Bolivia is a case study in the failure of the capitalist ruling class in backward economic countries to secure its independence from imperialism or secure democratic forms of rule, no matter how radical the pretensions of the ruling bourgeois parties.

Australian inflation statistics highlight cost-of-living crisis

Mike Head

Official inflation figures released this week further exposed the Australian Labor government’s claims to be alleviating the soaring cost-of-living being experienced by working-class households.

Striking nurse at Sydney rally on March 31, 2022.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data revealed that inflation jumped to 4 percent in the year to May, from 3.6 percent in the month before. By another ABS measure, trimmed mean inflation accelerated to 4.4 percent, from 4.1 percent.

Prices rose far more sharply than either measure for costs affecting workers’ families. High petrol prices meant fuel costs were 9.3 percent up, power bills rose by 6.5 percent and there was a 5.2 percent jump in housing costs, including a 7.4 percent increase in rents and a 4.9 percent rise in home-building costs.

Among the other items showing the biggest jumps were insurance, up 14 percent, medical and hospital expenses 7.3 percent, and secondary education 6.1 percent.

By contrast, in its recent national minimum wage decision, the Fair Work Commission granted 2.6 million low-paid workers only a 3.75 percent, or $33.10-a-week, rise from July 1.

This government-backed ruling, plus the continued imposition of sub-inflationary pay deals by the trade union bureaucrats, makes a mockery of the government’s pretence that real wages are finally rising after years of falling, let alone Labor’s 2022 election pledge of “a better future.”

The latest figures shattered Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s claims that his government’s cost-of-living measures, outlined in May’s budget, are easing the burden on households. Nevertheless, the day after the statistics were released on Wednesday, he still told a business-backed “State of the Nation” conference hosted in parliament house: “Inflation is down. Annual real wages growth is back.”

The inflation figures also raised the spectre of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) imposing another interest rate hike, on top of 13 since May 2022. Such a rise would intensify the financial stress for the millions of households paying off home mortgages. These rises are supposedly inflicted to fight inflation, but their actual purpose is to induce a slump and drive-up unemployment in order to suppress workers’ wage demands.

After the RBA board’s June meeting, at which it held the cash rate at 4.35 percent, the bank’s government-appointed governor Michele Bullock warned that the board was prepared to “do what is necessary” to get inflation back to its 2.5 percent target by mid-2026. 

Economists at Citi, Deutsche, UBS, Judo Bank and Morgan Stanley now predict a 14th rate hike. Overall, the financial markets priced in a one-in-three chance of the central bank lifting the 4.35 percent cash rate to 4.6 percent at its next monthly meeting in August.

Some other banks delayed their predictions for any mortgage relief by six months to May 2025, which would be after the latest date that the government could hold the next federal election. That increases the possibility of Albanese calling an early election in a bid to scrap back into office, even as a minority government, before the economic and social crisis worsens further.

Although the monthly Consumer Price Index results, such as those released for May, are more limited and volatile than the quarterly ones produced by the ABS, the latest results confirm a trend. Headline inflation is running at its fastest rate since November, and underlying inflation has been higher than predicted by the government and the central bank for five months.

This is by no means just an Australian crisis. From Kenya to Turkey, and across Europe, America and Asia, billions of people worldwide are confronted with soaring prices. These are primarily triggered by the US-NATO war in Ukraine against Russia, the US and allied support for Israel’s genocide in Palestine—part of a broader war to control the resource-rich Middle East—and US-led tariff and other economic warfare measures against China.

The sky-rocketing cost of living, combined with austerity measures demanded by the financial elites and authorities, is creating intense discontent and explosive social and class tensions, as witnessed by the mass opposition and deployment of the military onto the streets of Kenya.

Recent reports in Australia point to rising financial pain in working-class households, compounded by the increasing threat of job losses.

• Last week, a report by finance marketplace Compare Club said four out of five Australians were suffering high levels of bill stress. It reported that more than half of consumers were being forced to cut back on essentials, and the use of buy-now-pay-later products had jumped 28 percent among late bill-payers.

• Reserve Bank figures this month showed that credit card debt attracting interest has climbed for five months in a row to reach $17 billion. Based on the average credit card interest rate of 18.3 percent, that equated to a $3.2 billion annual interest bill.

• The latest Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) statistics last week showed overdue mortgages have almost doubled in the past 18 months. The value of loans 30–89 days past due climbed to 0.66 percent in the March quarter, and total “non-performing home loans” to 0.95 percent of all mortgages, or nearly 32,000 households.

• Job vacancies are at their lowest level since 2021, dropping by 17.7 percent over the past 12 months, as measured by the ABS. Capital Economics chief Asia-Pacific economist Marcel Thieliant said his firm expected the official unemployment rate to rise from 4 percent to 5 percent by 2026. That would mean some 200,000 job losses over the next 18 months.

In his speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) “State of the Nation” conference in Canberra on Thursday, Albanese again desperately talked up “cost-of-living measures” starting from Monday July 1, including $300 energy bill subsidies, freezing the cost of subsidised medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and “Stage Three” income tax cuts.

For most people these are pittances compared to soaring bills. With the lion’s share of all these schemes going to the wealthiest households, the cost-of-living crisis will only deepen for the working class. Moreover, the cut to tax revenues, on top of massive military spending, will mean harsher cuts to health, education and other essential social services.

The response of the ruling class and its media to the latest inflation figures has been to demand that the federal, state and territory Labor governments, presently in office across mainland Australia, enforce even greater cuts to social spending and real wages, and higher “productivity,” that is, speed up of workers.

Speaking for employers, Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said it was “essential that governments help to contain inflation.” An Australian editorial backed RBA governor Bullock’s declaration that average wage growth at around 4 percent “was not consistent with returning inflation back to target without a lift in productivity.”

This was combined with backing for higher interest rates to lift the jobless rate and suppress workers’ struggles. The Australian Financial Review said the RBA board “should not hesitate to do what is needed to maintain its inflation-fighting credibility.”

Kenya’s Ruto withdraws IMF-Finance Bill in attempt to stem social explosion after massacre of anti-austerity protestors

Kipchumba Ochieng

Kenya’s President William Ruto announced the withdrawal of the Finance Bill 2024 Wednesday, terrified of the mass opposition sparked after Bloody Tuesday when police gunned down dozens of austerity protestors on the streets of Nairobi.

The Bill, dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), included severe tax hikes on a population already facing soaring food and fuel prices and high unemployment, amid the ruling classes’ opulence and corruption.

Protests against the Finance Bill have morphed into an insurgency. Demonstrators targeted not only Ruto’s blood-soaked regime, but the entire 60-year-old post-independence edifice backed by the US and NATO imperialist powers.

Millions protested across the country in 37 of the 47 counties, cutting across tribal divides. Led by youth, they chanted “reject” and “Ruto must go”.

The day ended with a massacre.

According to the Police Reforms Working Group, at least 53 deaths were recorded and hundreds injured due to live ammunition. In the Githurai area on the outskirts of Nairobi, 30 were killed when police went on a shooting spree . The other 23 deaths occurred in Nairobi and across the country.

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The repression was brutal. To find a comparable crime committed by security forces in a single day, one would have to look back to the 1969 Kisumu massacre, when President Jomo Kenyatta—Kenya's first post-independence leader—ordered police to open fire on a crowd during his visit, resulting in dozens of deaths.

Tuesday’s slaughter is a warning of the character of the US-funded deployment of Kenyan police in Haiti, the first batch of which landed yesterday in the Caribbean nation tasked with terrorizing the population.

In seventeen hours, Ruto went from threatening anti-protestors with mass violence to making a conciliatory speech and announcing he was withdrawing the bill.

On Tuesday night, he described the protests as “treasonous events” led by “abettors of violence and anarchy,” vowing to deploy the whole state apparatus to “secure the country and restore normalcy”. He announced the deployment of the Kenya Defence Forces to support the police in intensifying the repression.

The following day, he said, “Following the passage of the bill, the country witnessed widespread expression of dissatisfaction with the bill as passed, regrettably resulting in the loss of life, destruction of property and desecration of constitutional institutions.” Sending his condolences to the families of those butchered by his security forces, he said he would “decline to assent to the bill.”

Ruto would instead engage “with young people of our nation to listen to their issues and agree with them on their priority areas of concern.” He proposed “a multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder engagement” in the next two weeks to discuss “matters relating to the content of the bill as well as auxiliary issues raised in recent days on the need for austerity measures and strengthening our fight against corruption.”

Kenyan President William Ruto gives an address at the State House in Nairobi, Kenya Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Despite some sections of the population viewing this as a victory, Ruto intends to work out the best way to impose IMF austerity in collusion with the opposition Azimio la Umoja coalition and the trade union bureaucracy led by the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU).

Ruto announced that Parliament, Judiciary and county governments had been directed to work with the Treasury to undertake the budget cuts and austerity to ensure “We live within our means”. As the bourgeois press reported, rejection of the bill would open a Sh200 billion ($1.5 billion) revenue hole, resulting in cuts of the same magnitude in health, education, and social expenses.

Ruto is following the script of the IMF, which warned in January that, despite “unrest [that] could re-emerge in connection with protests against higher cost of living, need to raise more taxes and electoral processes,” the Kenyan government would have to “remain committed to reforms under the programme.”

Ruto now depends on the loyalty of the opposition and the trade union bureaucracy.

Francis Atwoli, COTU secretary general for two decades, organised a press conference yesterday urging “His Excellency the President to suspend the finance bill, and to appoint a commission of inquiry to examine the demands of Generation Z, Millennial young men, and other Kenyans. I want to tell Kenyans that if the country went down, it would not go down only with Ruto, it would go down with everybody. And as I’ve said before, It’s better to have a bad government than not to have one. Because anarchy is the worst thing that anybody should experience.”

His reaction is another indication that the trade unions function as an industrial police force for the government and big business. They will not oppose Ruto’s deadly violence and austerity. Rather, Atwoli insisted, “Kenya is a hub of economic activities in this region, and we must protect it at all costs. We must support the President and the government to ensure that this country remains peaceful.”

The opposition is led by millionaire Raila Odinga and has no fundamental differences with the Ruto government’s economic programme. Odinga’s concern is that the current government is incapable of implementing the required austerity measures in the face of rising opposition.

Odinga, who has been virtually silent for a week since the protests started, reacted to Ruto’s repression with calls for “a fresh start and dialogue” with the opposition. He has got his wish.

Kalonzo Musyoka—the leader of the Wiper party, which is and part of Odinga’s coalition, and who regularly acts as Azimio la Umoja spokesperson—stated that 'It’s not too late for Ruto to decline the Finance Bill and send it back to Parliament for its withdrawal.'

Ruto, Kalonzo, and Odinga have worked for decades within the Kenyan political establishment, occasionally even within the same party and government. They all reside in the affluent neighborhood of Karen in Nairobi, part of what Oxfam reported as the 0.1 percent of the population (8,300 people) which own more wealth than the bottom 99.9 percent (more than 44 million people).

Odinga has dedicated his career to derailing mass movements of workers, youth and sections of the middle class against the Kenyan establishment. In the 1990s, amid mounting opposition to the hated regime of Western-backed Moi regime, Odinga, despite being tortured by Moi in 1982, chose to support him. He merged his then National Development Party with Moi's hated KANU party and served as his energy minister.

In 2007, after then-President Mwai Kibaki stole the election from him, Odinga called off mass opposition and entered into government as Second Prime Minister, even though his supporters had been gunned down by security forces. Post-election violence resulted in over 1,200 deaths and displaced half a million people. Ruto, then an ally of Odinga, played a criminal role, whipping up ethnic violence for which he was indicted by the International Criminal Court.

In 2017, following another disputed election involving Uhuru Kenyatta, Odinga again made a deal amid widespread anger. Last year, he intermittently mobilised protests against Ruto’s Finance Bill 2023 to defuse opposition, ultimately calling them off when they threatened to intersect with strikes by civil servants, doctors, and teachers.

Kalonzo, like Ruto, started his career under Moi’s police state and was foreign affairs minister (1993-1998), Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly (1988-1992) and National Organising Secretary of KANU, the only legal party under Moi, as workers, students and left-wing opponents of the regime were killed and tortured.

Ruto is hoping to deactivate the mass upheaval. Protests, however, are expected on Thursday, as hundreds of thousands of users supported hashtags of #Resign #RejectingFinanceBill2024 #Resignation #RutoMustGo #Roadtostatehouse on Twitter/X.

The Kenyan ruling class is terrified. As the Business Daily noted yesterday, “Demonstrations in Kenya have typically been mobilised by political leaders who have been amenable to negotiated settlements and power-sharing agreements [in reference to Odinga], but the young Kenyans taking part in the current protests have no official leader and have been growing increasingly bold in their demands”.

Yesterday, Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua organised a press conference and said “Please I beseech you as you father please my sons and daughter make an announcement and call off the protest.”

Internationally, as former Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed of Pakistan, where similar IMF measures are being implemented, stated yesterday, “They don’t know that the film running in Kenya could also be repeated in Pakistan. Prepare for it, the nation will make you accountable… it will not wait for any leader.”

At least 21 dead in terrorist attacks in Makhachkala and Derbent, Russia

Lev Novitsky

Head of Dagestan Republic Sergei Melikov, center, visits the damaged Kele-Numaz synagogue in Derbent on Monday, June 24, 2024. [AP Photo/The Telegram Channel of the head of Dagestan Republic of Russia]

On the evening of June 23, terrorist attacks were carried out in the Russian cities of Makhachkala and Derbent, located in the impoverished North Caucasus republic of Dagestan on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The population of Dagestan is ethnically diverse but predominantly Muslim.

The attackers targeted two Orthodox churches, two synagogues, one of which was set on fire, and a traffic patrol post (one of the units of the traffic police). The attack took place on Orthodox Holy Trinity Day, one of the main holidays of Orthodox Christians.

According to the latest figures, at least 21 people were killed and 26 others injured. Among those killed were 16 policemen and five civilians, including one Orthodox priest. Five suspected terrorists were killed on the spot.

All media reports indicated that the attacks were well organized and the attackers themselves used foreign-made weapons in the attack, including at least one assault rifle.

Notably, among the attackers were the sons and two nephews of Magomed Omarov, a local official from the ruling United Russia party in Dagestan. Before the terrorist attack, Omarov was the head of one of the districts of the Republic of Dagestan and the secretary of the local branch of United Russia. He has now been arrested. He has already been prosecuted for hooliganism, but it is likely that he will also face a case under the article on aiding and abetting terrorism. 

One of the nephews of Omarov who perpetrated the attack was, until 2021, the head of the district branch of the parliamentary party “Just Russia.”

As of this writing, no organization has claimed responsibility for the attacks. The Kremlin has only just begun investigating the attack, and has not yet formally charged any state intelligence service or terrorist organization. However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on June 25 that the missile attack on the beach in Sevastopol, which killed four people, and the terrorist attacks in Dagestan were likely synchronized.

Everything indicates that the imperialist powers were involved in the attack which serves their war aims and strategy in several respects. It comes on the eve of the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., on July 9-11, and as NATO is preparing a direct entry into the war against Russia in Ukraine. At the end of May, the NATO countries approved strikes with weapons supplied by them far into Russian territory. This directly jeopardizes the civilian population in Russia, especially of the Kursk, Belgorod, Voronezh and Rostov regions.

The United States and other NATO members have repeatedly claimed that they will not cross certain ”red lines” in order not to turn the conflict in Ukraine into a full-fledged world war, but then each time NATO member states have crossed these very “red lines” that they had drawn themselves. Even in an article before Biden’s decision to authorize U.S. weapons strikes on Russian territory, the New York Times claimed that Biden was unlikely to take such a step, but Biden did just that.

Given all these facts, it is logical to assume that the attack of militants in Dagestan was in the interests of the United States to destabilize the situation in Russia and in particular in the republics of the North Caucasus in order to weaken the Putin regime’s position in the war with Ukraine and disperse its forces on the internal front.

Already, the NATO powers have de facto opened up a second front in the war, within Russia itself. In March, a major terrorist at the popular Moscow City Crocus Concert hall took the lives of at least 145 people. As the WSWS and the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists have documented, the attack had the fingerprints of US imperialism and its proxy, the Ukrainian regime, all over it. The WSWS explained the goals pursued by US imperialism with such attacks as follows:

The aim is three-fold: First, to embolden opposition to the Putin regime within the oligarchy and state apparatus; second, to provoke a military response by the Kremlin that can serve as the pretext for a further escalation of the war by NATO; and third, to foster ethnic and religious tensions within Russia that would destabilize the regime and facilitate the carve-up of the entire region by the imperialist powers.

All these three goals are also met by the terrorist attacks in Dagestan. In targeting Orthodox Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, the attackers clearly sought to inflame religious and ethnic tensions. Nor is the location of the attacks a coincidence. Dagestan is one of the most diverse but also most impoverished regions in Russia and has been afflicted by the impact of the decades-long war waged by the Kremlin against separatists in neighboring Chechnya.

In October 2023, Makhachkala airport was the site of anti-Semitic riots that broke out after the arrival of a flight from Tel Aviv. At the time, a statement by the YGBL, condemning the riot, noted: 

Indeed, one cannot rule out that Western special services were involved in inciting the riots, seeking to undermine stability in Russia itself. The instigation of ethnic and nationalist conflicts and tensions, especially among the country’s large Muslim population, has long been part of the imperialist strategy to carve up Russia. The Financial Times reported that a channel previously associated with Ilya Ponomaryov, a leading figure in the pro-NATO opposition in the Russian oligarchy who has coordinated incursions of Russian territory by Ukrainian neo-fascist militias, had helped incite the riot.

Through such incitement and terrorist attacks, the imperialist powers and their proxies in the oligarchy are seeking to take advantage of and intensify the discord in the Russian elite. The ultimate aim is to weaken and eventually topple Putin’s regime, putting a puppet regime in its place.

The fact that local officials with ties to the ruling United Russia party as well as one of the main “loyal” opposition parties, Just Russia, were directly and indirectly involved in the attack, testifies not only to the reactionary character of the ruling class. It also shows that there are violent conflicts within the ranks of the Russian oligarchy. If at the local level there are such extremists and conflicts among officials, what does the situation look like at the highest echelons of power?

The Putin regime has emerged out of the Stalinist destruction of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism as a Bonapartist regime. In order to protect the interests of the oligarchy, it is maneuvering between different factions within the ruling class, between the working class and the oligarchy, and between the national interests of the oligarchy and the interests of imperialism. But both the relentless escalation of the war by imperialism and the growing social tensions within Russia itself increasingly undermine the basis for such maneuvers. In recent weeks, Putin initiated a far-reaching purge of the army, putting much of its leadership under the control of economists loyal to him, as well as the secret FSB special service.

The Putin regime, besieged from all sides, is sitting on a ticking time bomb. The strikes on Sevastopol beach and the terrorist attacks will further exacerbate contradictions among the various factions of the ruling class and among the elites of the national republics. The openly NATO-backed opposition is emboldened by the ever more direct intervention of NATO in the war, and its systematic efforts to destabilize the Putin regime and will, in its turn, intensify the longstanding preparations for a regime change. The ultra-nationalist faction, on the other hand, will become more insistent in demanding that Putin take decisive measures in the war in Ukraine, including and up to the deployment of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, separatist tendencies within republics such as Dagestan and Chechnya will intensify as well.