Maduro declared winner of presidential vote, as Washington escalates drive for regime change in Venezuela

Andrea Lobo

The National Election Committee (CNE) in Venezuela declared the re-election of President Nicolás Maduro early Monday by a margin of 51.2 percent against 44.2 percent for right-wing challenger Edmundo González. 

Venezuelan troops carry ballot boxes in ceremony ahead of the Presidential elections, July 24 [Photo: @cneesvzla]

The electoral body blamed a cyberattack for delays but said it counted 80 percent of the votes and that these show Maduro’s victory to be “irreversible.” As of this writing, the CNE website is still down, and no further results have been published. 

As expected, the Biden administration, its puppet regimes in the region, and the US-funded Unitary Platform have refused to acknowledge the results. In a response clearly coordinated beforehand, US imperialism is instead using the elections to escalate its efforts for regime change. 

Washington has repeatedly employed failed attempts to kidnap and kill the Venezuelan leadership, brutal sanctions to starve the population into submission and threats of a military invasion—all aimed at pressuring sections of the Venezuelan military and ruling circles to oust the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Despite earlier statements by opposition officials concluding that irregularities in the voting process had been rare and insignificant, opposition leader María Corina Machado immediately claimed the results announced by the CNE were the product of a massive fraud. The Unitary Platform had access to 40 percent of voting center reports, she said, and these gave Gonzalez 70 percent of the vote. 

While demanding that the CNE show the records from all polling stations, Machado made clear that the exact results are really beside the point. Her main appeal was to the military leadership, subtly arguing that the large vote for the opposition makes clear that Maduro can’t secure its interests or capitalist rule any longer. 

Machado declared: “Today we defeated them in votes all over Venezuela, but also the members of the Plan República [military oversight of the elections], the military-citizens know it, they were there in the front row, they saw the people with joy and hope, organized in a civic, peaceful way. They know it and the duty of the Armed Forces is to enforce the popular sovereignty expressed in the vote.” 

She concluded by warning of future actions “in the coming days.” 

The key to understanding the political crisis in Venezuela is that neither the PSUV regime, US imperialism nor its proxies give a second thought to the democratic will of the Venezuelan people or to resolving the humanitarian catastrophe.

All contenders in the election represent factions of the capitalist class associated with foreign powers that are squabbling over access to the profits from exploiting Venezuelan workers and the world’s largest oil reserves. 

The overall strategy of Washington was summed up in plain terms by Geoff Ramsey of the Atlantic Council, a think-tank with close ties to the US intelligence apparatus. “This isn’t over,” he wrote, “Maduro has to convince the ruling elite that he can keep things under control, but both he and the military know that he can’t govern a country in flames. He’s effectively inviting the biggest loyalty test he’s faced in years. I doubt Venezuelan elites are eager for six more years of repression, sanctions, and economic catastrophe.” 

Shortly after the preliminary results, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken predictably expressed “serious concerns that the results announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.”

Speaking for a power that has installed more dictators than any other—from Pinochet and Videla to Suharto and countless others— and that employs proxy wars and invasions as preferred policies for securing geopolitical and corporate interests around the world, Blinken said in a menacing tone: “The international community is watching this very closely and will respond accordingly.”

Earlier during the day, US Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris wrote on X, “The will of the Venezuelan people must be respected.” 

Blinken and Harris would be hard-pressed to find a less democratic society than the United States, where a group of billionaires have purchased control over all institutions and media and enforce its interests through bipartisan tyranny. With the acquiescence of the Democratic Party, the US Supreme Court not only stole an election in 2000, but has now turned the American president into a king above the law. 

The threat of international action beyond the sanctions that have already devastated the Venezuelan economy poses a real threat that a new front of the expanding third world war will erupt in Latin America. For US-NATO imperialism, Venezuela is already a key battlefield in its efforts to undermine Russia, China, and Iran, all of whose governments maintain economic and political ties with Caracas and have already congratulated Maduro.

The regime of Argentine President Javier Milei—a defender of the fascist-military dictatorship under Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla—has been assigned the role of spearheading the response of pro-US forces to the Venezuelan elections. This operation follows months of meetings between Milei  and other Argentine officials with the leadership of the CIA and Pentagon. 

Nothing else could better express the predatory and anti-democratic character of US interests in the region than its partnership with these forces. 

On Monday, Argentina led a meeting and joint statement with eight countries (Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic and Uruguay) echoing the “serious concerns about the conduct of the presidential elections” in Venezuela. The document then demands a “full review of the results.”

It is worth adding that fascistic billionaire Elon Musk re-tweeted a statement by Milei denouncing a “fraud” in Venezuela. Musk added lamely, “Shame on Dictator Maduro.”

In a signal of what is to come, Milei’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich rallied thousands of Venezuelan opposition supporters to effectively lay siege to the Venezuelan Embassy in Buenos Aires on Sunday. 

While not signing the Argentine statement, the pseudo-left Presidents Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Gabriel Boric of Chile, as well as the Brazilian President Lula da Silva, made similar appeals, casting doubt on the results and submissively joining the US-led push for regime change. 

For its part, the PSUV has sought to preempt moves from outside or within the state apparatus to carry out a coup. Colectivos, gangs of loyalists on motorcycles, and supporters were called to protect the presidential Miraflores Palace in Caracas on Sunday night and celebrate a victory hours before the results were announced. 

Having previously warned of a civil war and bloodbath, Maduro told a meeting of international observers on Saturday evening, that “the Militia is the secret weapon of the doctrine of national defense, of the war of all the people.” This was a call to armed and trained pro-government forces who act as an extra-constitutional unit of the army to stand by in case sections of the military turn against his regime.

This was followed by a statement by Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino: “Count on the Bolivarian Militia for all the battles to come!”

Even while insisting that the military will not be an “arbiter” of the elections, Padrino ordered the deployment of 388,000 military, police and other security officials to patrol polling stations, guard and transport all electoral material and “guarantee order at all costs”.  

This was an affirmation that, after all, the military will intervene to secure bourgeois rule, even if that means settling the election results.

In Tachira, a historically pro-opposition state bordering Colombia, men with face masks are shown in numerous videos using stun grenades and live ammunition against crowds. There are confirmed reports of the death of one man, Julio Valerio García, and several injured. 

Venezuela stands on the verge of civil war, even deeper economic misery, and becoming an active front in an imperialist world war. It is high time for workers to draw far-reaching conclusions. 

The fact that an unknown stand-in for Machado—a creature of the CIA, an extreme right-winger and proponent of US sanctions and even invasion—could plausibly have defeated Maduro is an indictment of the entire Bolivarian project and the pink-tide regionally.

The Chavistas have been unable to respond to US imperialist aggression and the crisis of capitalism other than by shifting aggressively to the right, relying increasingly on police state repression and becoming direct servants to the oil companies and Wall Street.

With US imperialism weakened and discredited like never before and with factions of the ruling class at each other’s throats, any revolutionary movement that represented the interests of the working class would use this juncture to fight for power and further the socialist revolution internationally.

But there is no revolutionary or genuinely left-wing alternative in Venezuela. Instead, at one point or another, all organizations claiming to fight for workers channeled popular opposition behind Chavismo, whose main role has always been to preempt any independent political intervention of the working class.

Hugo Chávez, a lieutenant coronel, won prominence in 1992 after leading a failed coup against the unpopular presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez. Two years later, amid an unraveling financial crisis and low oil prices, President Rafael Caldera freed Chávez from jail, seeing him as a useful figure to contain massive opposition against IMF austerity diktats, privatizations, high inflation, and the hated bipartisan system under the Puntofijo Pact, which Caldera had himself engineered in 1958. Chávez would win the election in 1998 having campaigned for years across the country for a constitutional assembly, along with democratic and social reforms.

World economy “stuck in a low gear”

Nick Beams

Key data released last week show that hopes of a recovery in the euro zone economy for the second half of this year, after stagnation for 2023 and the first six months of this year, have taken a significant hit.

The purchasing managers’ index (PMI) compiled by S&P Global fell to a five-month low of 50.1, barely above the level of 50 which is the boundary between expansion and contraction. This was mainly as a result in weaker growth in services and falls in manufacturing in Germany, the region’s largest economy.

The PMI for services fell from 52.8 to 51.9 while that for manufacturing went from 45.8 to 45.6.

In its report on the PMI results, the Financial Times (FT) noted that the results for Germany were “noticeably weaker than forecast.”

“The German PMI reading fell from 50.6 to a four-month low of 48.7, signaling a contraction of the country’s business activity. German factory output fell at the fastest rate for nine months.”

Vincent Stamer, an economist at the German Commerzbank, told the FT the “weak figures put a question mark over a noticeable economic recovery expected by many forecasters for the second half of the year.”

Others have used stronger language. Pointing to a sharp fall in German manufacturing Norman Liebke, an economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank, told the Wall Street Journal: “This looks like a serious problem.” He noted a “steep and dramatic” drop in manufacturing output.

Echoing these comments, the chief economist at the Hamburg bank, Cyrus de la Rubia, told the FT: “It’s unsettling how steadily companies are slashing jobs month by month.”

Franziska Palmas, an economist at Capital Economics said the euro zone could slide back into contraction after some limited growth in the first part of the year.

“Germany’s underperformance since the energy crisis is persisting,” she told the Journal.

President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, at a press conference after an ECB governing council meeting in Frankfurt, Germany on January 25, 2024. [AP Photo/Michael Probst]

In her remarks on the decision of the European Central Bank earlier this month to hold interest rates steady, president Christine Lagarde said the “risks to economic growth are tilted to the downside,” noting that manufacturing had “declined in the past few months” and investment remained “weak.”

The European experience is the expression of what is a growing trend in the major economies. Last week Deloitte Access Economics warned that if the Reserve Bank of Australia lifted interest rates in response to higher inflation it could tip the economy into recession and that without the effect of tax cuts, which came into effect on July 1, the economy would be on its way there.

Surveying the global economic outlook at a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers held in Rio de Janeiro last week, International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Kristalina Georgieva said the global economy was “stuck in a low gear” and the meeting faced a “sobering outlook.”

Global growth is predicted to reach 3.2 percent this year and 3.3 percent in 2025, “well below the 3.8 percent average from the turn of the century until the pandemic. Meanwhile, our medium-term growth projections continue to languish at their lowest in decades.”

The effects will hit the working class and the poorest sections of society the hardest.

“New IMF analysis,” she said, “suggests that periods of stagnation lasting four years or more tend to push up inequality within countries by almost 20 percent—considerably higher than the increase due to outright recession.”

Many economies, she noted, were facing “severe fiscal pressures” and in developing countries “debt-servicing costs are taking up a bigger share of tax revenue.”

Apart from the marked slowdown in the so-called advanced economies, another major area of concern is China. Since the financial crisis of 2008, China has been the mainstay of global growth. But its rate of economic expansion has now slowed markedly.

The official target rate is around 5 percent—the lowest in more than three decades—and there is considerable doubt as to whether even this much lower rate will be achieved. Even if it is reached the IMF has forecast that Chinese growth will continue to slow over the medium term.

The US economy, the world’s largest, appears to be the exception to the rule having recorded an annualised growth rate of 2.8 percent in the second quarter. This was well above expectations of a 2 percent rise and a significant jump from the rate of 1.4 percent for the first three months of the year.

However, there are warnings that this increase, which has been largely based on consumer spending, will not be sustained. Last week the University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment fell to its lowest level since November.

“High prices continue to drag down attitudes, particularly for those with lower incomes,” the director of the survey said.

Companies ranging from appliance makers to airline companies have reported a fall in demand.

The latest results from the so-called beige book of the US Federal Reserve have suggested that the US economy is slowing. In June, five out of the 12 Fed districts reported flat or declining activity in June as compared to three in May.

There is also evidence of a slackening labour market with the unemployment rate for June rising to 4.1 percent, up from 4 percent the previous month, and now at its highest level since November 2021.

Notwithstanding the higher growth numbers, there are warnings about the longer-term direction of the US economy.

Commenting on the latest GDP numbers to the FT, Citigroup economist Veronica Clark, said the Fed would be “encouraged” by them. But she added: “If you look at other monthly data, the trend is still that consumption is slowing and there are concerning signs in the labor market data.”

The signs of a slowing economy are building pressures on the Fed to start cutting interest rates. While this is not expected to be announced at the Fed’s meeting this week, the remarks of chair Jerome Powell will be examined for indications that a rate cut has been put on the agenda for its September meeting.

The chief US economist at TS Lombard, Steven Blitz, has warned that if the Fed does not soon lower interest rates “we will get a recession later this year.”

The 2024 Paris Olympics COVID-19 superspreader event

Benjamin Mateus

The normalization of massive police presence targeting the working class in Paris during the 2024 Olympic games has gone hand in hand with the normalization of mass infection with COVID-19. At the Paris Olympics, all public health precautions have been cast to the wind.

Millions of people, including 2 million tourists from abroad, are expected to visit the various venues being held across France to watch 11,310 athletes from 206 countries competing in 48 different sporting events. More than 45,000 riot and military police are deployed on the ground, water and air, with helicopters, drones and snipers at the ready, placing Paris in a state of siege. 

Security patrol in front of the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, ahead of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, July 26, 2024. [AP Photo/John Locher]

Before the games started, five of Australia’s women water polo players tested positive for COVID-19. This was followed by several as yet unidentified members of the Belgian Olympic delegation. This led to mounting concerns among workers that the Olympics will lead to a massive superspreading event, particularly as mutations to the virus have accelerated transmission.

A group of volunteer workers at the Olympics issued a public statement on the Médiapart website threatening to resign en masse if public authorities did not address the COVID-19 threat. Demanding policies of masking, vaccination, ventilation and air purification, they wrote: “Covid-19 pandemic threat denial is not an antidote to contamination.”

They added:

We have been enthusiastic in the preparation of the Games as international volunteers. However, we are more and more worried at the lack of any action from the organizers to address the epidemic of Covid-19 that is still going on across Europe and the world. We demand effective sanitary measures against the virus, to protect the inhabitants of Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis, the athletes, the public, and the volunteers. If no steps are taken, we will collectively resign of our assignments, and will not show up on the Oympic and Paralympic sites we have been staffed.

While French authorities and the Olympic organizers have not acknowledged the COVID-19 threat, the same summer surge in France is well underway that has impacted neighboring countries since June, including Germany and Italy, as a result of waning population immunity. The impact of the virus at the recent Tour de France, which took place from the end of June to July 21, should be seen as a warning of things to come at the Olympics. 

The entire event was plagued by COVID-19 infections among the elite riders, four of whom had to drop out to recover from their infections, while others continued to ride and place other competitors at risk. No protocols were established ahead of the multi-day racing event. Only near the end of the event, on July 14, did Amaury Sport Organization, the main organizer of the cycling event, ask journalists to don masks when interacting with the riders and their support staff.

Yet the Paris Olympics are proceeding without any significant public health safeguards, even after the catastrophic experience of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics that were postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic.

At that time, amid mass protests and concerns about the potential consequences of allowing the games to proceed, Olympic organizers held the event with hardly any spectators to watch the games, at a cost of $6 billion in public money. Still, Japan saw a massive wave of infections that late summer and early fall. The Tokyo COVID-19 Monitoring Committee meeting held on August 20, 2021 warned: “Infections will rampage through the nation to a disastrous level. This is an emergency.” 

And indeed, after the 2021 Olympics, the surge of infections across Japan accelerated, and health authorities soon abandoned any pretense of trying to keep the Omicron strain from running rampant in the population. More than 80 percent of all the official 75,000 COVID-19 deaths in Japan occurred after the Olympics. This was in keeping with the official practice, promoted in the United States by Anthony Fauci, of using the Omicron strain as a “live virus vaccine.”

The pandemic has claimed over 27 million excess deaths, and the number of people afflicted with Long COVID runs in the hundreds of millions. The current, utter contempt of the authorities for public health threatens disastrous consequences. Beyond the obvious implications to the population, elite athletes who have come to Paris to represent their countries in these sporting events face a formidable risk that an infection may very well end their hopes to compete or win a medal. 

Indeed, a 2023 study in the Annals of Medicine found that aerobic performance of elite football players remained lowered for weeks after a COVID-19 infection, noting, “SARS-CoV-2 infection has been shown to induce capillary flow disturbances, which are shown to shorten blood transit times through the remaining, patent capillaries, thereby limiting oxygen uptake. So, these capillary disturbances are expected to reduce the endurance capacity of elite players.”

The contempt for the health and well-being of athletes and the broader public is inseparable from the grotesque social inequality of contemporary society. Le Monde provided a glimpse of the siege-like state forced on the population before the opening ceremony, writing:

More than 40,000 barriers lining the streets of Paris, security perimeters forbidding any access to the Seine without a QR code, hundreds of police and gendarmerie patrols, and closed metro stations: Rarely in peacetime has the French capital experienced such high levels of security.

The entire two-week sporting event will cost upwards of €9-10 billion, of which only a third will be covered by sponsors. The rest will be appropriated from the public, that is to say, in their large majority working people who will be forced to fork over their earnings to a spectacle to which they have not been invited or welcomed. 

Marie Léon, a 38-year-old mother of two living near the Stade de France in the working class suburb of Saint Denis, bitterly told AP, “You will see, there will be police officers blocking us from getting there anyway. From my window, I can listen to the roars and cheers of the Stade de France. That will be the only way I’ll be included in the Olympics.”

Much has been made of the novel character of the setting for the Paris Olympics, which are taking place largely in the river Seine or in temporary facilities and seating built around the river. In reality, this choice also exposes the authorities’ complete contempt for the public.

Breaking with tradition of opening the Olympics in sporting venues, the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games was held as a boat parade down the Seine. Around 10,500 athletes boarded an armada of 85 boats at Pont d’Austerlitz, its name commemorating Napoleon Bonaparte’s military victory against Russian and Austrian forces in 1805. The boats sailed west for 6 kilometers before reaching the Trocadéro esplanade across the river from the Eiffel Tower, where the official protocols took place, and the Olympic cauldron was lit.

Along this scenic route, with the iconic Notre-Dame and the Louvre as backdrops, 320,000 spectators filling 124 grandstands were packed together for hours on Friday, despite rain that left them soaked. 

After having attended a soirée at the Élysée Palace, more than 100 heads of state greeted the disembarking athletes amid performances by Céline Dion and Lady Gaga. US President Joe Biden, recovering from his third bout with COVID-19 at home under close medical observation, was substituted by his wife Jill. In all, more than 15,000 performers and behind-the-scenes technicians produced a gaudy spectacle on a budget of €120 million for the evening festivities.

For the athletes, however, the reliance on the heavily-polluted Seine River as a venue for the swimming portion of the triathlon event poses a major health threat. The spending of a whopping $1.5 billion on building wastewater facilities to treat polluted water from storm surges failed to cleanse the river, with rain forcing officials to cancel a training session on Sunday. The Seine continues to present unsafe levels of bacteria, including E. coli and enterococcus that could produce dangerous illnesses in swimmers, but officials nevertheless plan to go ahead with the triathlon Tuesday.

Australian, Chinese and other teams announced they would design special treatments to administer to their swimmers to minimize the chances of contracting serious illnesses after participating in the Olympics.

New Zealand health system faces steep funding cuts, possible privatisation

John Braddock

Last week the health minister in New Zealand’s right-wing National Party-led government, Shane Reti, announced he was replacing the board of Health NZ Te Whata Ora with a commissioner. The sudden move, Reti declared, was due to “serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook.”

New Zealand Minister of Health Shane Reti [Photo: Facebook/Shane Reti]

Reti claimed the country’s public health system is headed towards a $1.4 billion deficit by the end of the financial year with “overspending” of $130 million per month. In a post-cabinet press conference on July 22, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said there was a lack of “performance management” at Health NZ, which he described as an overly centralised system with a “massive bureaucracy” and financial mismanagement.

Luxon claimed it was “not an issue of lack of funding,” but that the failures “require an urgent and significant intervention.” He pointed to the government investing an additional $16.3 billion into the health system over the next three budgets.

Posting on social media, Reti claimed that the deficit could not be blamed on “underfunding” by the present government. “This is not a money problem,” he declared, but was “thanks to Labour’s botched reforms.” The reference was to the previous Labour government’s restructuring which amalgamated 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) into the single agency Health NZ.

The commissioner, Lester Levy, has been appointed to impose swinging cuts to the fragile health system, eliminating the deficit by focusing on “cost efficiencies” and stopping the monthly “overspend.” Levy is a former chairman of three Auckland region DHBs. An ex-pathologist, he has served on a series of corporate boards while founding and heading a private hospital. There are widespread fears that his real task is to prepare the health system for privatisation.

In April, Health NZ ordered “emergency measures” to clamp down on expenditure, claiming it could not go into the new financial year in deficit. It instructed hospitals to address “personnel related costs” including an end to working double shifts, limitations on replacing sick staff and forcing doctors and nurses to use their accumulated leave, leaving hospitals desperately understaffed.

The claim there is “no lack of funding” is a blatant lie. Although the health allocation went up by 2.9 percent in the budget, inflation is running at 3.3 percent and population growth 2.6 percent. According to Council of Trade Unions economist Craig Renney, prior expenditure commitments mean the real net increase is only 0.4 percent. Health economist Peter Huskinson wrote in New Zealand Doctor that health spending per person will reduce by 3 percent over the next year.

Conditions in the health system have deteriorated dramatically over the past decade. Following the global financial crisis of 2008, the then-National Party government effectively froze wages for nurses and other health workers and starved hospitals of funding for staff, building upgrades and other resources. Levy told a parliamentary committee in 2018 that over the previous five years resourcing of hospitals had not kept pace with population growth of 9.4 percent, an 18.8 percent increase in emergency department admissions and 15 percent rise in in-patient discharges.

Nothing was resolved with the election of the Labour Party-led government in 2017. A sellout pay agreement settled by the NZ Nurses Association (NZNO) maintained low wages, with an increase of just 3 percent per year for 2017-2019 for most nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants. Funding to increase staff numbers was a meagre 500 places nationally, maintaining conditions of severe understaffing.

The decision by the last Labour government to end its COVID-19 elimination strategy in late 2021 and adopt a policy of mass infection, has led to more than 4,300 avoidable deaths and 42,400 hospitalisations, exacerbating the crisis of unmet need. Official figures show that in December 2023, 68,179 people were waiting longer than four months for a first specialist appointment—the number almost doubling since September 2022—and 30,757 were waiting longer than four months for a procedure.

Christchurch surgeon Phil Bagshaw told the Post last week: “The health system has been seriously underfunded for decades. Anybody who thinks they can come in and make sweeping changes to the system should talk to the doctors and nurses who are working themselves to exhaustion to keep a failing system going.”

Recently doctors at Rotorua Hospital’s emergency department were told by letter the region was moving to a “single roster” with the department at Taupo Hospital, which is in danger of closing due to a shortage of five doctors. Senior clinicians said they were “blind-sided” by the “bombshell” directive, which involves a two-hour round trip or overnight stays.

Staff shortages at Rotorua Hospital are so dire that patients are being sent back to the emergency department from other wards, according to the junior doctors’ union. In April, it was reported that the children’s ward was missing a third of its beds as winter hit because Health NZ had halted an upgrade partway through to “review costs.”

Under Labour and National governments repeated strikes involving nurses, doctors, midwives, laboratory workers and allied health workers have erupted over the atrocious conditions in the health system. They were, however, kept isolated from each other and limited to one or two days by the union bureaucracy who pushed through deals that failed to address the staffing crisis, unsafe working hours and low pay.

Levy last week falsely described Health NZ as “totally bloated.” Speaking to Radio NZ (RNZ), he emphasised: “We have to reduce the size of the organisation in order to allow the organisation to be financially sustainable over time.” Health NZ must “live within its budget,” he declared, adding “we need to do more with the resources we’ve got rather than just constantly asking for more resources [be]cause we need to provide more value.”

As many as 3,000 jobs may now be axed. RNZ reported that, according to a leaked letter, the time frame is “brutally fast.” Jobs of two national directors and their support staff will go, while a freeze on filling vacancies—including at the clinical coalface—will be maintained until the “financial freefall” is turned around. “The mood among staff is “shock and dismay,” RNZ reported.

The cost-cutting is being instigated amid a sweeping assault on the public sector as part of the far-right National Party-ACT-NZ First government’s austerity agenda. Over 6,000 public service jobs have already been axed as Finance Minister Nicola Willis imposes annual spending cuts of $NZ1.5 billion, up to 7.5 percent in each government department.

There is deep hostility to the government’s agenda, with its massive attack on the social position of working people while handing millions in tax cuts to the wealthy and a layer of privileged landlords. When Willis presented the budget in May, thousands protested in major centres and many regional locations while in the capital, Wellington, a crowd estimated at 5,000-7,000 descended onto parliament grounds.

The corporatist trade unions, however, have made clear that nothing will be done to defend any jobs. Far from mobilising an industrial and political campaign across the working class, they are already enforcing the cuts, including by corralling workers behind whatever paltry exit provisions may be on offer as they are ushered out the doors.

The Public Service Association and E tū, the principal unions in the public sector, have meanwhile channeled widespread opposition into the legal system claiming that the sackings have been executed outside employment contract provisions. These legal cases change nothing—the sackings still proceed but now with the collaboration of union bureaucrats who ensure that the correct “process” is followed, while each group of workers is kept isolated from others.

Fears that the assault is a prelude to wholesale privatisation of health care are well-founded. Health is the country’s biggest public agency, employing 90,000 staff with a budget of $NZ28 billion and assets of $25 billion. The government’s far-right coalition partner ACT is currently ramming through a privatisation model in education that will see the establishment of up to 80 publicly funded, privately run Charter Schools, designed to operate entirely independently of the public system. This is just the beginning.

German national rail operator Deutsche Bahn announces 30,000 job cuts

Ulrich Rippert

At its annual press conference on Thursday, the Deutsche Bahn Executive Board announced massive job cuts. “We want to reduce our workforce by around 30,000 full-time employees over the next five years,” said Deutsche Bahn CFO Levin Holle at the presentation of the half-year results.

Deutsche Bahn train [Photo by Mirkone / wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Deutsche Bahn (DB) cites high losses in almost all business areas as the reason for these job cuts. In the first six months of the year, the company had a loss of €1.2 billion. This was unacceptable, the state-owned enterprise said. CEO Richard Lutz first cited the strike waves of recent months as the cause and then also spoke of major construction sites and extreme weather as additional cost factors.

In reality, the announced jobs massacre is a deliberate political decision by the coalition government comprising the Social Democrats (SPD), Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens. Deutsche Bahn AG is a 100 percent state-owned company. There are several state secretaries on the management and supervisory boards, and all important decisions are made via the Federal Ministry of Transport, where the FDP calls the shots. “The balance sheet figures show the urgent need for action,” commented Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing on the figures. Deutsche Bahn “must become more economical and competitive,” he stressed.

The announced job cuts are part of a comprehensive rationalisation plan, which also includes the closure of so-called “unprofitable lines.” Rail services are to be further reduced, particularly in rural areas and structurally weak regions. Lutz told the press on Thursday that no decision had yet been made on the closure of unprofitable routes. However, news magazine Der Spiegel reported on a “secret paper” and has already named a number of specific railway lines that were planned for closure.

In other words: While the effects of climate change are becoming ever more drastic and the Deutschland-Ticket, a relatively low-cost monthly ticket that enables unlimited local travel, shows that many people want to travel by train—also for environmental reasons—the German government and the DB management are ruining the most environmentally friendly means of transport in the name of profit and personal enrichment. At the same time, the rationalisation plan is exacerbating the social divide in the country by leaving remote areas even further behind and commuters to fend for themselves.

What is more, such extensive staff cuts will change work processes, increase workloads and increase the risk of catastrophic accidents for employees and passengers. The number of fatal accidents at work on the railways has already increased significantly in recent months.

There is no doubt that the announced job cuts and the planned route reductions are part of a comprehensive attack on the working class. The huge increase in defence costs is being financed at their expense.

The same ruthlessness with which the coalition government has driven up energy prices and pursued a ruinous industrial policy is now being applied to the railways. The announced redundancies must be seen in the context of the ongoing jobs massacre in all industrial sectors. In the last few days alone, 14,000 job cuts have been announced at technology manufacturing company ZF, 500 at Bosch, 4,000 at battery manufacturer Varta and 10,000 at enterprise software firm SAP.

And as everywhere else, the German government and Deutsche Bahn are relying on the trade unions in their attacks on employees.

The job cuts will be “organised in a socially responsible manner” and redundancies for operational reasons will be “avoided wherever possible,” the union heads say. This means that the job cuts have already been discussed and agreed with the trade unions and their works council representatives.

The announcement that “initially, above all,” it is the white-collar sector that will be rationalised is also part of a pre-arranged fix. With regard to the administrative redundancies, the Executive Board is relying on the German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL), which has long denounced the administrative apparatus as a “bloated bureaucracy.” If the redundancies are then extended to the train drivers, the Executive Board will rely on the EVG railway and transport union, which accuses the train drivers of trying to gain privileges for themselves.

In an initial statement, the GDL also said it felt the job cuts were justified. However, only “if they take place in the administration and not in the direct area,” a GDL spokesperson said.

The EVG, on the other hand, criticised the extent of the planned redundancies, but made clear that there was nothing wrong with “putting processes and structures in the company to the test and questioning them.”

Both unions are working very closely with the management and have a key role in playing the employees off against each other and dividing them in order to prevent a joint fight in defence of all jobs.

Railway workers must prepare for a struggle that is directed against the DB board, the federal government and both trade unions.

Even though the Deutsche Bahn floatation on the stock market ultimately failed due to the global 2008 financial crisis, its transformation into a profit-oriented public limited company has led to the disintegration of the infrastructure and the current crisis.

In 2007, we analysed in detail the transformation of the railways from a state-owned service company into a profit-oriented global logistics group. Our assessment at the time has been fully confirmed. We wrote:

The aim of the privatisation is to transform a national service built up over decades with taxpayers’ money into a globally operating logistics enterprise and a lucrative asset for private investors. Such a step presupposes low levels of wages and social conditions. The high levels of profits expected by the private investors can only be achieved at the expense of the workforce and the quality of a service that, up until now, has been carried out by the railways as a public service.

We drew attention to the fact that the transformation of state railways into internationally active private companies is a pan-European development that has been driven forward under the leadership of the European Union and has had disastrous consequences in all countries.

Holiday season, Euro 2024 tournament, music festivals, and lack of vaccines fuel UK COVID wave

Ioan Petrescu

The UK is in the middle of a new COVID-19 wave, driven by the summer holiday season and exacerbated by large-scale sporting events, such as the UEFA Euro 2024 football tournament.

Other summer events such as Taylor Swift concerts, Glastonbury and other festivals have exacerbated the spread. Swift is playing to almost 700,000 people just at her Wembley Stadium residence in London in June and August.

The lifting by previous Conservative governments, with the backing of the then opposition Labour Party, of any measures for protecting the population—such as mandating the wearing of masks and organising a comprehensive testing and contact-tracing campaign—guarantees that many people will succumb to the disease or be left with the debilitating effects of Long COVID.

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(Labour leader and now Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer attends a June 21 Taylor Swift concert at Wembley Stadium during the general election campaign).

There were 3,557 COVID cases in the week ending July 17 according to the official UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) dashboard, a 4.5 percent increase from the previous week and approximately three times as many as in March this year. Deaths have risen by 20 percent week on week and stood at 197 on July 12 and 2,797 people were admitted to hospital with COVID in the final week of June.

Since there is no comprehensive testing campaign—with COVID levels only measured in the general population from mid-November to mid-March, for the winter infection survey—all data in the rest of the year is based either on people self-reporting their positive tests or tests conducted on hospital admission. Official numbers must be considered a severe undercount.

Supporting this, high street healthcare retailer Superdrug reported a 319 percent spike in sales of its COVID lateral flow tests, alongside a 297 percent increase in cold and flu relief sachets, suggesting a surge of illness across Britain.

This summer’s COVID wave was massively boosted by the month-long Euro 2024 football tournament (June 14-July 14), in which millions of people across the continent gathered crowd together in large groups, often in enclosed spaces such as pubs, while shouting and cheering. A similar phenomenon was observed in the summer of 2021 during the delayed Euro 2020 tournament.

During the final alone between England and Italy on July 11, 2021, the number of people catching COVID was “between six and nine times higher than what would otherwise have been expected”, according to a study by Oxford and Warwick Universities, published in the journal Science. The study found significant additional infections from Euro match days in 11 other European countries. Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at University of Warwick, told the i newspaper: “Any situation where folk are crowded together in poorly ventilated spaces provides an opportunity for the virus to spread.”

Given Britain’s larger population, in the week to July 7, its 17,800 cases were high compared with other European countries. However per head of population countries in southern Europe where millions flock each year for a summer break such as Portugal, Greece and Cyprus, have a higher infection rate.

A lax attitude to the virus, with no public education as to its implications, is encouraged by the government and the media. Among the main media outlets in the UK, only the twin publications the Independent and the i provide some coverage, albeit on an irregular basis, on the spread of COVID. Elsewhere, coverage is sporadic at best or non-existent. The nominally liberal Guardian has no article covering the recent wave of COVID infections in Britain.

The coverage that still exists promotes a generally criminal complacency towards the deadly and debilitating disease, such as this quote from Professor Mark Woolhouse in the Independent: “Over the coming decades, we will shift to a situation where most people are exposed to Covid—possibly several times—when they are young. This will not cause a significant public health problem— healthy young people were never much affected by Covid—but it will result in a build-up of immunity that will make them much less vulnerable when they are elderly and frail.”

This ignores the fact that rather than “building-up” immunity, repeated infections have been shown to increase the risk of serious illness, including Long COVID, a debilitating condition that has been dubbed the “pandemic within the pandemic”.

Its effects were highlighted recently in a study by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). An estimated 3.3 percent (2 million) people living in private households in England and Scotland were experiencing self-reported Long COVID (symptoms continuing for more than four weeks after a confirmed or suspected coronavirus infection that were not explained by something else). Long COVID symptoms adversely affected the day-to-day activities of 1.5 million people (74.7 percent of those with self-reported Long COVID), with 381,000 (19.2 percent) reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been “limited a lot”.

In addition, 56.4 percent reported that symptoms worsen following “mental and/or physical effort”. The most common symptom reported as part of an individual’s experience of Long COVID was weakness or tiredness (54.0 percent) followed by shortness of breath (43.7 percent), difficulty concentrating (39.4 percent) and muscle ache (36.7 percent). People between 45 and 54 years old were the most likely to report Long COVID, followed closely by those between 55 and 64 and those 35 and 44. The incidence of Long COVID was significantly higher among working people, as opposed to those unemployed or self-employed. The most affected workers were those in the teaching and education sectors, who were approximately 1.5 times as likely to be suffering from Long COVID than the average.

The COVID wave is fueled by the domination of a new set of virus variants, collectively known as FLiRT variants—after the technical names for their mutations. This is the term being used to describe a whole family of different variants—including KP.2, JN.1.7, and any other variants starting with KP or JN—that appear to have independently picked up the same set of mutations in a process called convergent evolution. They are all descendants of the JN.1 variant that has been dominant for the past several months.

These new variants are better at evading antibodies from previous infections or from vaccines. While they do not seem to cause a more severe infection than previous variants, the constant mutations encouraged by the continued unchecked spread of the virus means capitalist governments are playing “Russian roulette” with the lives of billions.

While not a substitute for comprehensive masking, testing and contact tracing programmes, vaccines are also helpful in dealing with the virus by the lowering the risk of severe infection and of Long COVID. The UK government has failed to ensure even this measure of protection for its population. As the WSWS previously covered, the heavily restricted spring booster campaign has ended, and the only way for workers to obtain a COVID vaccine is to pay exorbitant prices at private providers (as high as £100). Given the ongoing cost of living crisis and misinformation campaign, most workers will be left without even this protection.

Most vaccines available in pharmacies were developed to combat the XBB.1.5 variant and will have lower efficacy against virus variants circulating today. Highlighting the speed at which the virus mutates, compared to the ability of private companies to develop and manufacture vaccines, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has just approved a new JN.1 COVID-19 vaccine for adults and children, when the JN.1 is on the way out and increasingly replaced by the new FLiRT variants

The evolution and rapid global spread of the new variants of the virus is a product of the ruling class’s refusal to address the pandemic.

Bangladeshi government launches witch hunt after police kill hundreds of student protesters

Wimal Perera

According to the latest media reports, at least 201 people have been killed and over 4,500 others arrested during the Hasina government-ordered state attacks on student protesters over the past eight days. The mass demonstrations, which were led by the Students Against Discrimination, began on July 1, after a Bangladesh high court re-instituted a discriminatory quota system for public sector jobs which had been scrapped in 2018.

A student, injured in clashes with police and paramilitaries, being carried on a stretcher to a hospital, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saturday, July 20, 2024 [AP Photo/Rajib Dhar]

Under this divisive system 30 percent of public service jobs were allocated for the relatives of “freedom fighters”—those who fought for the establishment of Bangladesh in 1971—10 percent for women and those from underdeveloped areas of the country, 5 percent for ethnic minorities and 1 percent for physically challenged people. The remaining positions would be chosen according to the current merit system.

The largely peaceful protests took a violent turn when thugs from Hasina’s Awami League-controlled Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), assisted by police, attacked Dhaka University students.

As students intensified their campaign across the country, police stepped up the violence, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition at the students, killing dozens and injuring thousands more. On July 19, Hasina ordered a curfew, deployed the military with “shoot on sight” orders and shut down the internet.

Hoping to quell the escalating nationwide unrest, the Hasina government on Monday issued a gazette changing its quota system so that 93 percent of new public sector recruits would be based on merit. Quotas for “freedom fighters” and their relatives would be reduced to 5 percent and 2 percent for other designated groups.

While the government eased its curfew to a few hours daily this week, allowing banks, government offices and garment factories to begin operating on Wednesday, the internet is not yet fully restored while police raids and arrests are ongoing.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina continues to threaten student activists, falsely accusing them of being aligned with the opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami.

Addressing an Editors Guild meeting on Wednesday, Hasina accused the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami of being behind last week’s violence. According to the Daily Star, she told the meeting that “the recent mayhem [was] designed to cripple the country’s advancement and prosperity.”

The right-wing BNP and the Jamaat e-Islami, a communalist organisation which opposed the establishment of Bangladesh, had nothing to do with the student protest movement. Hoping to capitalise on the mass support for the protesting students, the BNP did not decide to “support” the students until July 18. BNP governments, which came to power twice in the 1990s and in 2001, were just as hostile as Hasina’s Awami League administration to workers and the poor during their rule.

Last week, Hasina toured parts of Dhaka, observing property destruction, including at the Television Bhaban studios in Rampura and the Mirpur-10 metro rail station, which she blamed on the protesters. The people of Bangladesh, she declared, “have to expose them [those involved] and bring them to justice.”

Hasina’s comments have been widely denounced on social media. A BBC report quoted one X/Twitter user who said: “We lost [hundreds of] students. But PM Sheikh Hasina had the time to go ‘cry’ for a metro rail, not for the people who won’t return ever again.” Another denounced the prime minister for “shedding crocodile tears for a railway track” but remaining silent about those killed by the police. Others observed that she had not visited any of the families of the students shot dead by police.

Journalists for the UK-based Guardian witnessed Rapid Action Battalion police forces using a helicopter to fire teargas at crowds and the army using light machine guns against unarmed demonstrators. Amnesty International has confirmed that police and paramilitary forces also used shotguns, assault rifles and grenade launchers.

A July 25 editorial in the Dhaka-based New Age reported “indiscriminate firing by law enforcement personnel” with scores killed and several thousand wounded. Many, it said, were “still in a critical condition,” including those who had lost their eyesight.

While Students Against Discrimination paused its protests twice this week, first on Monday and later Wednesday, it held a press conference on Tuesday, making eight demands of the government.

These included restoration of internet services, a withdrawal of the curfew, security for all coordinators of the student movement, the reopening of residential halls at education institutions and the withdrawal of all police from campuses. The organisation also wants an “apology to the nation” from Hasina “for the mass murder of students” and the sacking of the home minister and education minister.

There are ongoing reports on abduction and torture of student activists by police with many others going into hiding, fearing persecution and police raids. Nahid Islam, a Students Against Discrimination coordinator, told the Guardian on July 23 that he was seized by more than 20 police officers. “They took me somewhere I couldn’t recognise and then put me in a room where they started to question me and later torture me, first mentally and then physically,” he said.

Abdul Hannan Masud, another protest coordinator, told the media that the organisation was planning to form emergency health forces to “ensure proper treatments to around 15,000 protesters who were injured across the country.”

Responding to calls this week by United Nations Human Rights chief Volker Turk for an “independent investigation” into the government attacks, Bangladesh State Minister for Broadcasting and Information Mohammad Arafat cynically told Al Jazeera that the government had tried to “de-escalate the tension.”

Arafat declared that “third-party” actors, including “extremists and terrorists,” had fueled the student protests and that the government had formed an independent judicial committee that would ensure “everyone responsible for any of these casualties can be brought to book.”

These are patent lies. The Hasina regime responded to a wave of student protests against the public sector job quota system from April to July in 2018 by unleashing terror by police and the BCL. While it was forced to scrap the quota system it systematically witch-hunted and persecuted the student activists.

As a Frontline Defenders report on June 2020 noted: “Long after the protests stopped, many student activists, their friends and family members continue to face surveillance, intimidation and harassment, effectively silencing future dissent.” Citing several instances, it noted: “A prominent activist was attacked eight times after the protest movement ended. Another protest organiser has been routinely stalked by members of the National Security Intelligence.”

Key props of the Hasina government during the latest student protests have been various Stalinist parties who align themselves with one or another section of the ruling elite in Bangladesh.