Britain ratchets up NATO’s war drive against Russia

Robert Stevens

Britain is to deploy warships to the Black Sea this month. Central to NATO’s provocations against Russia, the deployment is part of unprecedented military operations and war games exercises being conducted in the Mediterranean, Black Sea, Middle East, Indian Ocean and South China Sea.

The HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier with seven helicopters visible onboard at Portsmouth harbour. May 1, 2021 (credit: WSWS media)

In April, Russia began to amass substantial military forces near the Ukrainian border, after the Ukraine regime—armed to the hilt by Washington—endorsed a strategy to “recover” Crimea. Following the far-right 2014 coup in Kiev, which was supported by the US and the European Union (EU), Russia annexed the strategically vital peninsula.

On April 21, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that he was “ready” for war with Russia and that the population would “stand to the last man” amid threats of supportive action from the US and other NATO powers. A day later, the Kremlin began to pull back troops and military equipment from the border.

As tensions escalated in the Black Sea, the UK ramped up its presence in the region, with RAF Typhoon jets based in Romania, armed with Paveway bombs and Brimstone missiles, taking part in a NATO Black Sea region “air policing mission”.

Last month, the London Times, citing “senior naval sources”, reported that a number of warships will “peel off” in the Mediterranean from the main Carrier Strike Group force being led by the aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, and head through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea. Warships involved are to include a “Type 45 destroyer armed with anti-aircraft missiles and an anti-submarine Type 23 frigate.” The Times reported, “RAF F-35B Lightning stealth jets and Merlin submarine-hunting helicopters are to stand ready on the task group’s flag ship, the carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, “The UK and our international allies are unwavering in our support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Giving more details on its Carrier Strike Group mission of “record size and scope,” the MoD announced last week, “The UK Carrier Strike Group will be NATO’s first 5th generation Carrier Strike Group, underlining the UK’s leading role in the Alliance. CSG21 [Carrier Strike Group 21] will participate in NATO exercises such as Exercise Steadfast Defender, and provide support to NATO Operation Sea Guardian and maritime security operations in the Black Sea.”

The conflict between Ukraine and Russia and the interests of competing imperialist powers have transformed the Black Sea region into a powder keg that could ignite a worldwide conflagration.

The new head of the UK’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, is on record as having told Russian President Vladimir Putin that if his military had engaged Ukraine’s, there would have been a “huge price” to play.

Speaking to Times Radio and the Sunday Times, Richard Moore, who took over as MI6 head last October said, “The Russians are in absolutely no doubt of where the UK stands on this issue. And they are in absolutely no doubt of where the [US] Biden administration stands on this issue, because channels are open.”

Referring to Russia engaging in a “pattern of reckless behaviour,” Moore added, “It is why we have co-ordinated so closely with our allies to make sure we are getting firm messages back to President Putin.”

The threats are in line with the designation of Russia by Boris Johnson’s government in its Integrated Review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, as the “the most acute direct threat” to the UK and the Euro-Atlantic region.

In the subsequent “Defence in a Competitive Age” defence review, also published in March, Russia was again singled out as posing “the greatest nuclear, conventional military and sub-threshold threat to European security.” The review stated, “Russia is the most acute threat in the region and we will work with NATO Allies to ensure a united Western response, combining military, intelligence and diplomatic efforts.” It pledges to work within the alliance to “deter nuclear, conventional and hybrid threats to our security, particularly from Russia.”

In his interview, Moore attempted to reignite the Skripal affair that dominated UK politics during 2018. Theresa May’s and then Johnson’s government claimed, based on unproven allegations and with no concrete evidence, that agents of the Kremlin attempted to assassinate the double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a deadly nerve agent, Novichok. “I still get angry about Salisbury [where both were poisoned] because I know how near we came to very significant casualties,” Moore said.

He solidarized with the right-wing opponent of Putin and stooge of the imperialist powers Alexei Navalny, citing “the thousands of protesters on the streets of well—not just Moscow—of a number of cities” as proof “that there is a deal of disaffection with Mr Putin.”

Moore described Russia as “an objectively declining power economically and demographically.” He speaks for senior political and military figures who are actively contemplating and planning for war with Russia and China, one that would be fought using nuclear weapons.

Russia still retains at least 4,500 nuclear warheads assigned for use by long-range strategic launchers and shorter-range tactical nuclear forces. As of 2019, its armed forces comprised almost one million active-duty personnel, the fourth-largest in the world, and over 2.5 million reservists.

Appraising Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal in March, the Bulletin of the Economic Scientists wrote, “Of the stockpiled warheads, approximately 1,600 strategic warheads are deployed: just over 800 on land-based ballistic missiles, about 624 on submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and 200 at heavy bomber bases. Another 985 strategic warheads are in storage, along with about 1,912 nonstrategic warheads. In addition to the military stockpile for operational forces, a large number—approximately 1,760—of retired but still largely intact warheads await dismantlement, for a total inventory of approximately 6,257 warheads.”

Further evidence of the war danger surfaced this week with the MoD revealing that HMS Queen Elizabeth will be central to Royal Air Force raids in Iraq and Syria to be conducted as part of Operation Shader—the UK’s six years long intervention in those countries on the pretext of fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The MoD said, “This will be the first time UK fighter aircraft are embarked on an operational aircraft carrier deployment since 2010 and will be the largest number of F-35Bs [fighter jets] ever to sail the seas.” It boasted, “F-35B Lightning fast jets will be the cutting edge of the Carrier Strike Group’s (CSG21) formidable power in the air.”

Minister for the Armed Forces James Heappey MP added, “This is a prime example of the UK Armed Forces stepping forward with our allies to confront persistent threats around the world. It is Global Britain in action.”

The Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender leaves the naval base in Portsmouth harbour for exercises in Scotland prior to deploy to the Indo-Pacific region. May 1, 2021 (credit: WSWS media)

At the G7 Foreign ministers meeting in London this week, Dominic Raab attacked Putin and demanded an end to his “brinkmanship sabre-rattling on the border of Ukraine, the cyber-attacks and misinformation and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, that was not just a human rights abuse but a use of chemical weapons on Russian soil”.

Raab said he and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “discussed a whole range of security issues—Iran, Afghanistan, continuing concerns about Russia, in particular on the border with Ukraine.”

Blinken warned that “if Russia chooses to act recklessly or aggressively, we’ll respond.”

Addressing the Russian “threat” this week, Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Mike Wigston told PA, “Anything is possible and the world is an increasingly unstable place.”

Noting that the F-35B Lightning jets would be deployed over Iraq and Syria, PA asked if they could also be redeployed against Russia. Wigston replied, “A couple of wise old admirals I was chatting to a few weeks ago said to me ‘never ever expect a carrier deployment to go to plan. Something will always come up.’”

Gunboats dispatched to Jersey in UK/French fishing rights conflict

Thomas Scripps

A degrading jingoistic spectacle played out this week between the UK and France over fishing rights in the waters around Jersey.

Up to 60 French fishing vessels blockaded the island’s St Hellier’s port for several hours Thursday, overseen by two Royal Navy gunboats and two French military vessels.

Jersey is the largest of the Channel Islands and home to just over 100,000 people. Located 14 miles from the French Normandy coast and 85 miles south of the UK, it was brought under the English/British crown with the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, remaining so when King John surrendered his claim to the Duchy of Normandy in 1259.

HMS Tamar on April 27 2021, prior to being sent to Jersey (source: Wikimedia Commons-Forces News)

The island is not formally part of the UK but a self-governing Crown Dependency whose defence is the UK’s responsibility. Like the other Channel Islands, Jersey uses its strange constitutional status to operate as a tax haven, with a zero percent default corporation tax rate and flat 20 percent income tax rate. The Corporate Tax Heaven Index gave the island a “haven score” of 100 out of 100 in 2020, ranking eighth worst in the world.

Following Brexit, European Union (EU) fishing boats wanting to fish within 12 miles of the UK coast, including Jersey, need to receive a license and must prove that they have fished in those waters previously—for at least 10 days over a 12-month period within the last three years. Seventeen out of the 41 larger French boats who applied have not received licenses, with British authorities claiming they have not been able to provide the necessary details. UK Conservative government Environment Secretary George Eustice blamed the European Commission and said licenses would be issued “as soon as they have provided that data”.

Those who have received licenses also say that the UK has introduced additional conditions on how they are allowed to fish, which they claim will drive two-thirds of them out of business.

The French fisheries ministry said it considered these conditions “null and void”, commenting, “If the United Kingdom wants to introduce new measures, it must notify the European Commission”. Commission spokeswoman Vivian Loonela said it had indicated to the UK “that we see that the provisions of the EU/UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement, that we recently agreed… have not been respected.”

Late last month, French fishermen protested by setting up burning barricades blocking lorries laden with UK fish, unloaded in France, from reaching seafood markets. They threatened to “blockade” Jersey to prevent it receiving supplies. A freight ship, the Commodore Goodwill, was briefly trapped in the harbour before being allowed to leave.

The British and French governments responded by escalating the situation, using it as a platform to strut their nationalist credentials. Britain despatched HMS Severn and HMS Tamar to the scene, each equipped with heavy weaponry. A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said they were being deployed “to conduct maritime security patrols”. France sent the Athos and the Themis on a “patrol mission” to “guarantee the safety” of the French flotilla.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke with Jersey officials yesterday morning to reiterate “his unequivocal support for Jersey”, according to a Downing Street spokesperson. Rear Admiral Chris Parry told the Daily Mail, “If they don't like something locally in Normandy or Brittany they always go and blockade something or somebody. I think they're forgetting the Royal Navy is the group that's really good at blockading people.”

Former head of the Royal Navy Lord West told Times Radio, “If they wanted to move a couple of fishing boats, you would no doubt be boarded by Marines and you would arrest the people involved and then hand them over to the local police to be dealt with.

“After you have arrested some, their boats are impounded and that’s normally the thing that makes fishermen be very careful.”

The Labour Party lent support to this militarist posturing. Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey commented, “The threats on Jersey are completely unreasonable. The Navy's experience in sensitive situations will help reassure residents and protect Britain's broader national interests.”

In France, Europe Minister Clement Beaune has declared, “We won’t be intimidated by these manoeuvres.” David Sellam, head of the Normandy-Brittany sea authority, threatened, “We're ready for war. We can bring Jersey to its knees if necessary.”

Earlier this week, Maritime Minister Annick Girardin told the French parliament, “In the (Brexit) deal there are retaliatory measures. Well, we're ready to use them. Regarding Jersey, I remind you of the delivery of electricity along underwater cables. Even if it would be regrettable if we had to do it, we'll do it if we have to.”

Ninety-five percent of Jersey’s electricity is provided by France via undersea cables.

This provoked hysterical comparisons in the British government to the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands during the Second World War. “At least the Nazis kept the lights on”, wailed the Telegraph, paraphrasing a government source. Whitehall claims to be reviewing the UK’s energy links with France in response to the threats, considering routing undersea cables through the Netherlands instead.

The British media reveled in the nationalist filth spewing out from both sides of the Channel. The Daily Mail issued the headlines, quoting fishermen on either side, “We’re ready for war”, “Our new Trafalgar”, and “This is an invasion”. It was joined by the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror in publishing variations of “Boris sends gunboats to Jersey” on yesterday’s front page.

Lord Daniel Hannan, a leading figure in Brexiteer Conservative circles, pushed a war on two fronts in his piece in the Mail, “Emmanuel Macron, the new Napoleon? No, he's a Poundland Putin”.

Michael Hookem, former deputy leader of the UK Independence Party, wrote in the Express, “EU thought we'd cave on fish but Brexit is about standing up and fighting back”. The Telegraph warned of future conflicts in its editorial, “French belligerence is only the start of the fishing industry's worries”.

The immediate turn to threats, denunciations and the deployment of the military in a minor dispute over fishing is a product of the imperialist powers’ ever-deeper descent into nationalist reaction.

Brexit expressed and advanced a sharp nationalist turn in world politics, with the Brexiteers, led by Johnson, leading the way to a bullish championing of the national interest, into which all class divisions were supposedly dissolved. This campaign has only intensified, as the Conservative government attempts to consolidate a patriotic political front at home in support of an increasingly aggressive trade and military policy abroad—aided every step of the way by the Labour Party.

France’s tit-for tat response over Jersey shows the European powers can offer no progressive response, with each aggressively pursuing their national agenda within the framework of the EU.

With geostrategic competition and class tensions massively intensified by the pandemic, outbursts of chauvinism will become routine.

President Bukele grabs dictatorial powers in El Salvador

Andrea Lobo

Last weekend, the president of El Salvador, 39-year-old Nayib Bukele, consolidated his control over all branches of government by replacing the judges of the Constitutional Court and the attorney general, who had opposed his power grab.

Exploiting mass opposition to the austerity and social inequality presided over by the parties that ruled El Salvador since the end of its civil war in 1992—the far-right National Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the ex-guerrilla Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN)—Bukele has been able to secure massive votes.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele (gov.sv)

His party, New Ideas (NI), won a two-thirds supermajority of 58 seats in the unicameral Legislative Assembly in the February 28 elections. This compared to 14 seats for ARENA and only four for the FMLN. Moreover, New Ideas won 58 percent of all mayoral races. By gaining control of the Constitutional Court and attorney general’s office, Bukele has removed the last institutional checks on his power.

Throughout his term, Bukele has also cultivated support in the National Police and military by attacking opposition parties for resisting massive loans to build up the security forces. This culminated on February 9, 2020 with a military occupation of the Legislative Assembly led by Bukele.

He has also exploited a sharp drop in homicides during his term—which was due to a multitude of factors—to insist on granting greater powers and resources to the police and military, despite their long record of death-squad activity.

Imitating Trump and other fascistic forces, he has sowed hostility toward an amalgam of all shades of political opposition together with gang members, journalists, some figures of the local business elite and the Jewish billionaire George Soros.

His surge in popularity is tenuous and largely based on a one-time $300 pandemic stipend last year, an unfinished new hospital for COVID-19 patients, and the administration of almost 1 million vaccine doses, a much faster rollout than in neighboring Central American countries.

El Salvador, however, saw the largest increase in official poverty in 2020 across Central America, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America. This has been reflected in an exponential increase this year in Salvadoran migrants detained at the US-Mexico border. Moreover, the entire Central American isthmus is seeing a devastating surge in the pandemic.

A section of the media and political establishment internationally have denounced Bukele’s assault on “democracy.” Luis Almagro, head of the Organization of American States and Washington’s main coup organizer in the region, claimed that Bukele “could go down the road of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia.”

However, Bukele has only exposed the façade of democracy that US imperialism and the local oligarchy imposed following the end of the civil war in 1992. The opposition to Bukele’s actions from sections of the ruling elite is the result of fears that he will only inflame social anger, alienate certain business groups or lean too much on China, which has provided most of El Salvador’s vaccines.

As Bukele has repeatedly made clear, the shift toward dictatorship in El Salvador is aimed against working class resistance to the diktats of finance capital.

In fact, he hired the same ultra-right Venezuelan politicians involved in the US-backed regime change operations against President Nicolas Maduro to run the New Ideas electoral campaign, as reported by the right-wing outlet Globovisión.

In dismissing the country’s top judges, the New Ideas legislators pointed to rulings preventing Bukele from decreeing economic reopenings without legislative approval during the pandemic. “They are basically taking away our power to re-start the economy,” declared Bukele at the time.

The reopenings, ultimately backed by all political parties, were carried out after a meeting with a faction of the country’s traditional oligarchs headed by the billionaire Roberto Kriete, the richest Salvadoran. These are the same long-time backers of the political parties Bukele claims to oppose. Nonetheless, the president announced that he had reached a “consensus with a very representative group of the great national business leaders.”

In an interview with Diario El Salvador this week, Kriete backed Bukele’s handling of the pandemic and called on him to use his new powers to go on the offensive: “Modernize the banking laws, modify the Commercial Code, modify everything that has to do with incentives … eliminate bureaucracy, eliminate procedures and really give a chance to the business sector, local as well as foreign.”

The Bukele administration has also acquired immense loans, incurring interest payments to the financial vultures that are expected to absorb up to 35.6 percent of the country’s tax revenues this year. The ruling elite will do everything possible to place the full weight of these costs upon the backs of the working class.

In preparation for mass repression, Bukele has used the pre-trial hearings over the 1980 El Mozote massacre to reassure the police and military. With an estimated death toll of 1,000 civilians, this was the largest single massacre in Latin America during the 20th century. The atrocity included troops throwing babies in the air for target practice as part of the fascist operations against left-wing opposition to the US-backed military-controlled dictatorship.

The Bukele administration has blocked any judicial access to the secret military files regarding the El Mozote massacre. Last September, with demeaning hostility toward the Salvadoran masses, he “declassified” files on national television that turned out to be copies of files already made public and lacking any relevant military information.

In a separate media stunt, he visited El Mozote in December to promise economic aid and rant against the former administrations as well as the lawyers of the victims for allegedly profiting from the massacre. He traveled to El Mozote on one of Kriete’s helicopters.

On April 22, the US Embassy in El Salvador reaffirmed its support for the Bukele administration, reporting that the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) had donated $431,911 worth of protective and hospital equipment to El Salvador, in addition to $25 million in other US donations. “For more than 50 years, SOUTHCOM has focused its efforts on developing ties and strengthening its alliance with El Salvador,” the embassy report states.

President Joe Biden himself, as a US Senator, had feigned opposition to unqualified military aid to the Salvadoran junta, only to then “broker compromises to ensure that funding was approved, such as his 1983 ‘amendment to require that training of Salvadoran troops by U.S. trainers be carried on outside of El Salvador,’” as reported recently by the Intercept.

During a closed-door meeting on Monday with foreign diplomats, Bukele compared opponents of his takeover of the Constitutional Court to “the tens of millions of people who thought it was fine to burn Jews in an oven” in Nazi Germany. This comment, which sparked widespread condemnation, can only be interpreted as an expression of callous indifference to the historic crimes of fascism.

The pandemic as well as the hurricanes and droughts, exacerbated by climate change that have ravaged Central America, have exposed the inability of capitalism to meet the most basic needs of the working masses. The response of both the Salvadoran ruling elite and US imperialism is a headlong drive toward dictatorship.

Executives at Canada’s Loblaws food retail giant gorge on bonuses, while condemning grocery workers to poverty wages

Carl Bronski

As grocery store workers at the food retail giant Loblaws contend with the COVID-19 pandemic, low-wages and precarious employment, the company that controls Canada’s largest grocery store chain is making money hand over fist. On Wednesday, Loblaws reported first quarter profits for 2021 were up by a massive 30 percent compared to the first quarter of 2020.

Striking Dominion supermarket workers (Unifor)

The lavish payments made to company executives for 2020 were also recently announced. With overall food purchases slightly up due to an increase in at-home cooking during the pandemic, top executives met 90 percent of their personal compensation targets and were rewarded with bonus payments across the board. This included total compensation packages of $3.55 million for Loblaws Executive Chairman Galen G. Weston Jr. and $6.4 million for departing company President Sarah Davis.

As if intentionally seeking to add insult to injury, Loblaws unveiled an “appreciation bonus” for workers, which ranged from a risible $25 for part-time workers—the vast majority of the company’s store workforce—to $175 for full-time staff.

The Loblaws conglomerate is the largest retail food distributor in Canada, employing some 200,000 workers. It is owned by the Weston dynasty, the third richest family in Canada. Aging company oligarch Galen Weston Sr., who died last month, oversaw a family empire worth C$13 billion. The patriarch liked to split his time between a spacious downtown Toronto residence, a private island in Georgian Bay, holdings in London, England and family compounds in Florida and the Bahamas.

The lavish compensation of the Weston executive team was not an unusual occurrence. In one snapshot of corporate fortunes taken between March and September 2020, Canada’s billionaires got $37 billion richer during the pandemic’s first 6 months.

Canada’s three main grocery outlets drew the ire of grocery workers across the country, when in a highly provocative and apparently coordinated move, they announced that they were scrapping a $2 per hour COVID-19 pandemic “premium” or bonus last June. Loblaws, the Metro supermarket chain and Empire, the parent company of Sobeys, IGA, Safeway and other chains, introduced the bonus in late March 2020. They did so to dampen worker anger and anxiety about being exposed to the highly contagious and potentially lethal coronavirus in their workplaces while the country was in near total lockdown. Additionally, it was recognized that if the bonus was not introduced, grocery stores would struggle to get workers to show up because they would have been able to earn more on the government’s poverty-level Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).

The worker bonus was touted by corporate bosses and the mainstream media alike as an example of the ruling elite’s recognition of supermarket workers as “heroes.” This was a crucial element in the fraudulent narrative that everyone was pulling together in the face of the pandemic—a narrative that has been promoted by the trade unions, as they herd workers back into unsafe nonessential workplaces. Indeed, across the top of the homepage of the Canadian Labour Congress there is a banner that reads: “In Canada, we’ve weathered the pandemic by sticking together and supporting each other.”

In reality, while workers received a few crumbs in emergency support, the federal Liberal government and Bank of Canada handed over more than $650 billion to the financial markets, banks and big business.

Last summer, Weston management worked to impose further givebacks on grocery workers. 1,400 grocery workers at the conglomerate’s Dominion stores network in Newfoundland and Labrador rejected a rotten contract that their union, Unifor, had endorsed and went out on strike in August. The rejected tentative deal only provided for a $1 per hour raise, gradually dispersed over the life of a proposed three-year contract.

When the strike began, 83 percent of the Dominion workforce was made up of low-wage part-time employees with no or minimal benefits. Fully three-quarters of the workers made less than $14.00 per hour, with a majority of the part-timers labouring at or just above the provincial poverty-level minimum wage of $11.65 (since raised by the province to $12.15).

The strike in Newfoundland was the first grocery contract dispute in Canada since the beginning of the pandemic. But in the 2021–22 period, contracts covering workers at 2,400 other Loblaws outlets will expire. Loblaws was therefore determined to crush the strike in Newfoundland and force the acceptance of the miserable contract offer in order to set a nationwide benchmark.

In this, Loblaws management enjoyed the support of Unifor. The union systematically isolated the Newfoundland strikers, refused to call for solidarity strike action by other grocery store workers, and restricted its activities to sending a few regional union reps to the strikers’ picket lines. When the capitalist courts predictably imposed injunctions on workers barring all but the most token picketing, Unifor rolled over and accepted them without a fight.

After a bitter 12-week strike with workers left isolated by their union and attacked by the police and the provincial courts, Loblaws with union acquiescence pushed through a deal almost identical to the one that the workers had overwhelmingly rejected before the strike began.

Backdated to October 2019, the new contract provided a paltry pay increase of $1.35, now spread over four years. But only full-time workers and part-timers with more than five years seniority received the full $1.35. In a further insult, Dominion management “threw in” a store gift card. Most workers received cards worth just $50 or $100, with the few remaining high seniority full-time staff receiving $500 cards.

As the World Socialist Web Site noted at the time, “(T)here is no question an appeal for job action in support of the striking Dominion workers would have won powerful support among workers across Canada—beginning with the hundreds of thousands of supermarket workers, including many at other Loblaws outlets, whose contracts have or will soon expire.

“But such a working class counteroffensive was precisely what Unifor was determined to prevent. A close ally of the federal Liberal government, (Unifor President Jerry) Dias and the Unifor apparatus have responded to the pandemic and the eruption of the greatest crisis of global capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s by deepening their anti-worker corporatist partnership with big business and the state.”

The connivance of the trade unions in the destruction of jobs, wages and benefits in the grocery industry reached a new low with the sellout and defeat of the Newfoundland strike. But the attacks on grocery workers’ living standards have a long and sordid history. In 1990, the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) set a miserable precedent with Loblaws in Ontario when it gave away the principle of across-the-board wage increases in favour of a new wage structure tied to hours worked. The floodgates were opened for a steady destruction of full-time jobs in the industry.

Then in 1993, UFCW executives organizing workers at Alberta’s Safeway network convinced workers that the company would close stores if they did not swallow wage and job cuts and accept the company’s right to employ a virtually unlimited number of part-time workers. That major concession was followed up with a similar deal rammed through after a bitter three-month strike at 63 A&P-owned Miracle Food Mart stores in Ontario. By the mid-1990s, retail food market chains from coast to coast had created a precarious-employment, poverty-wage, minimum-to-no-benefits regime throughout the industry, with the unions now openly acting as junior partners of the corporations.

With backing of unions, Pennsylvania public universities to slash over 1,500 jobs

Douglas Lyons

The Board of Governors and chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) is moving forward with a restructuring plan that will merge six universities into two. The result will be the slashing of thousands of jobs and the erosion of the quality of education, even as tuition continues to rise.

PASSHE consists of 14 public universities across the state, enrolling over 95,000 students and employing over 11,000 workers and faculty. It ranks 48th in the nation in terms of public expenditure on higher education.

William Pitt Union at the University of Pittsburgh. (Photo: pitt.edu)

Enrollment in PASSHE has been decreasing since the Great Recession, declining by 21 percent, as students seek other opportunities to find careers without being weighed down with boatloads of debt. Last year, officials estimated revenue loss of $52 million due to declining enrollment and refunds issued to students who refused to attend schools that unsafely reopened.

Cuts will happen at every university, including the to-be merged universities of Mansfield, Lock Haven and Bloomsburg on the one hand and California, Clarion and Edinboro on the other.

Sworn in by Democratic Governor Tom Wolf in 2019, the current chancellor, Dan Greenstein, a former employee of the public-education-attacking Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said, “I’m talking about [a] fundamental transformation and redesign” of the state system. Last summer, the first round of cuts hit professors, adjuncts and school employees. According to the plan revealed at the end of last month, this was only the first bloodletting of the forthcoming jobs massacre.

According to a new study done by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 809 faculty positions will be cut by 2023, reducing faculty staffing from the 2019 level of 5,069 to 4,260, a 16 percent cut. Combining those job cuts with non-teaching staff layoffs, at least 1,531 workers will be given their walking papers, resulting in a 14 percent decline in systemwide employment. The student-faculty ratio will skyrocket on average by 15 percent.

The most cuts will happen at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), where 383 workers will lose their jobs, followed by Edinboro University with 236 and Shippensburg University with 185. The impact will be felt in the university communities, with one report describing the effect of the merger “as comparable to the ongoing experiences in Pennsylvania with factory closures and job destruction.”

At no point has Greenstein proposed to cut his own pay and benefits or the large sums of cash university presidents receive, nor has he asked the state government to provide more funds for PASSHE. Greenstein’s annual salary is a $380,000 a year, while university presidents make from the mid-$250K to almost $400K a year—4 to 6 times more than an average professor. The chancellor’s budget proposal for 2023 will reduce funding by $44.2 million, compared to 2019 levels.

Students and parents hoping that tuition will become more affordable for working-class families won’t find anything in this draconian plan to reduce costs. According to the Northeast Proposed Implementation Plan Report, “one integration goal is to reduce the cost of degree attainment by 25%.” But, as the report then states, “This goal does not assume primarily a reduction in tuition.” Instead, it proposes to “reimburse student wages off-campus” and promote summer job opportunities.

The burden on families of sending their children to a PASSHE school is well-known. The director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, Marc Stier, noted, “Those universities which were once the engines of social mobility in Pennsylvania have become much less effective at that task as tuition has gone up, making PASSHE schools less accessible to working people.” Moreover, as a percentage of median income for families, the cost of a Pennsylvania four-year-degree is now the second least affordable in the country, tying Alabama.

Far from defending the rank-and-file membership, the unions, have not moved one muscle to parry the blows coming from Greenstein and Wolf.

The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 13, representing more than 65,000 in the state and more than 3,000 at PASSHE, issued a mildly written press release opposing the job cuts to save face with their rank-and-file members. At the same time, the union said it is “not opposed to any changes at all to the system” and “is ready to work with PASSHE leadership towards a better outcome for all involved.” To put this two-faced language differently, the unions plan to let job and benefit cuts happen if they can be equal partners in this new scheme.

The Association of Pennsylvania State College & University Faculties (APSCUF) staged an impotent online rally. Opening remarks were given by Jamie Martin, the president of APSCUF. Her indifference to the lives of educators and students was clearly stated when she attacked the “hybrid learning” model of Greenstein’s plan, and demanded a return to in-person learning. “We need face-to-face courses,” he stated.

Later in this talk session, she bragged about the amount of money she has saved PASSHE by offering early retirements, cutting benefits and firing workers: “I feel as if we’ve done quite a bit to help the system save money … last year we offered an enhanced sick leave payout program … the system came to us talking about the need to reduce number of faculty and we entered into an agreement with them. We had 258 total members retire. 219 of them received the incentive … 39 didn’t. That will increase savings!”

She also touted the fact that APSCUF will save $40 million dollars next year by forcing its members to take an early retirement, some of whom won’t receive the package, and that the last contract had a pay freeze and a “significant number of members” were laid off. “We will continue to do what we can for cost savings!” she declared at the end.

India reports almost 4,000 daily COVID-19 deaths as the country faces severe vaccine shortages

Benjamin Mateus

The current surge in COVID-19 infections throughout India has no precedent in the entire course of the COVID-19 pandemic. A new record of daily cases was set just yesterday when the toll reached an astronomical high of 412,618, accounting for nearly half of the 850,000 global cases reported.

A worker sprinkles fuel on burning funeral pyres of COVID-19 victims at an open crematorium set up at a granite quarry on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India, Wednesday, May 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

The number of deaths in India from the coronavirus was also the highest ever reported for the country, reaching 3,980. By every account, these numbers are vastly understated, given India’s archaic and dysfunctional official registry for documenting mortality.

Globally, the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases is approaching 160 million, while reported deaths stand at 3.26 million. For 10 successive weeks, daily COVID-19 cases throughout the world have been climbing steadily. This appears to have reached a new plateau last week with an increase of only 0.13 percent from the previous week.

Deaths, however, continue to rise. Yesterday, worldwide, there were 14,567 deaths tallied. South America accounted for 4,418 of these, as Brazil and many Latin American countries continue to face repeated surges of new infections followed by deaths that seem unending. Meanwhile, North America and Europe have reported 1,303 and 2,809 deaths respectively, down from their peaks just a few months ago.

Asia reported 5,713 deaths, with India contributing the lion’s share to this grim statistic, a complete inverse of the developments, in the first year of the pandemic, when Europe and the US appeared as the epicenters of the pandemic, and the poorer countries were relatively less affected.

The reversal of fortunes for the US and Europe is by no means because of a change in tactics or implementing scientific and critical public health measures. Instead, the imperialist centers have taken advantage of possessing well-developed pharmaceutical industries which, with massive government funded, rolled out effective vaccinations much more quickly than initially expected.

The ensuing policy of vaccine nationalism means to inoculate the population and declare the pandemic finally over, while the most tragic and ominous developments continue in Latin America and Asia (as well as in the poorer sections of the advanced regions themselves).

Across the world, there have been 1.21 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines given thus far, predominately favoring high-income nations. The US has administered 250 million doses, fully vaccinating 32.3 percent of its population, with at least 45 percent having received one dose of a vaccine.

While supply issues and rare vaccine-related blood clotting complications perturbed immunization efforts throughout the EU in February and March, the recent drive has seen over 160 million doses so far administered, with the proportion of the population vaccinated reaching over 35 out of 100 people. Though India has itself delivered 160 million doses from its sizeable pharmaceutical industry, this represents barely more than 10 percent of the population. Only 30 million are fully vaccinated, representing just over 2 percent of the population.

In both the United States and the EU, the combination of mass vaccination and mass exposure to the virus means a considerable proportion of the population may have achieved some level of immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, lessening the number of people who are “naïve” to the virus and making new large-scale outbreaks less likely.

Significantly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently estimated that approximately 115 million people in the US had been infected by COVID-19 as of April 14, 2021, more than triple the official figure of 30 to 35 million. Combined with the more than 100 million vaccinated, and allowing for some overlap between the two groups, this means that at least half the US population, and far more than half of all adults, carry some antibodies to COVID-19.

This is the underlying cause of the well-publicized declines in certain regions of the United States, even while significant outbreaks continue in Florida, Texas, Michigan and other states. In Southern California, Los Angeles County, once the American epicenter, reported only 170 cases and 15 deaths yesterday.

But for India, which represents almost 18 percent of the world’s population, much of its population remains unvaccinated and entirely susceptible. Currently, 21.48 million cases of COVID-19 and 234,000 deaths have officially been reported in India.

Despite halting the export of vaccines to concentrate on the domestic front, the vaccination program is struggling due to problems caused by supply issues, leading to the flare-ups of national vaccination wars as competition between states for these treatments grows heated. India has even approved Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine for use, with the arrival of the first shipment this week.

Dr. Chandrakant Lahariya, a New Delhi physician as well as an expert in vaccines, public policy, and health care systems, told CNBC on Wednesday, “Even if the projected supply was available, India has opened the vaccination to a far bigger population than probably any setting can expect the vaccines (to cover). It is essentially an outcome of a limited supply and vaccination policy that is not mindful of supplies. No amount of advanced planning could have assured that sort of supply, which is needed now with the opening of vaccination for 940 million people in India.”

Despite possessing the world’s largest vaccine manufacturing capacity—these include the Serum Institute of India and Baharat Biotech, which manufactures Covaxin—the Indian government is being severely criticized for allowing millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses to be exported to Europe and the UK. The two manufacturers, combined, are barely manufacturing 100 million doses per month.

Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of the Serum Institute, which makes the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, told the Financial Times that the vaccine shortages were expected to continue until the end of July. The company had not boosted capacity earlier because “there were no orders, we did not think we needed to make more than one billion doses a year.”

After criticism was laid against the company for price gouging, he promptly tweeted: “As a philanthropic gesture on behalf of @SerumInstIndia, I hereby reduce the price to the states from 400 to 300 rupees per dose, effective immediately.” Just two weeks ago, Jairam Ramesh, a senior politician and former federal minister to the main opposition party, had tweeted his dismay that “the central government will continue to pay 150 rupees per dose for Covishield (the AstraZeneca vaccine). This is not cooperative federalism. This will bleed dry the already reeling state finances. Atrocious!”

So much for a philanthropic gesture. Even as experts warn that the actual death toll may be five to 10 times higher than official figures, profit concerns predominate. These reactions and developments are part and parcel of Indian capitalism and characteristics of its subordinate role within the imperialist system as a whole.

The World Trade Organization’s General Council has taken up the issue of temporarily waiving all intellectual property protections on COVID-19 vaccines to facilitate a broader manufacturing base for these vaccines and their distribution, which are presently shackled by legal as well as physical constraints on the number of vaccines that can be produced. These have the support of the World Health Organization and more than 100 countries, who are desperately looking to begin vaccinating their populations who remain immunologically naïve to the coronavirus and constrained by public health impediments to fully opening their commerce.

Yesterday, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced that the Biden administration “believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines.” However, even if such measures were eventually accepted, all parties involved know that, unlike the speed with which the vaccines were developed, negotiations and actual implementation would face repeated delays and bureaucratic impediments.

Vaccine manufacturers remained defiantly oppositional. Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath, chief executive of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization trade group, told AP, “Handing needy countries a recipe book without the ingredients, safeguards, and sizable workforce needed will not help people waiting for the vaccine.” Stephen Ubl, president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, noted, “The US decision will sow confusion between public and private partners, further weaken already strained supply chains and foster the proliferation of counterfeit vaccines.”

Ceasefire reached in deadly border conflict between Central Asian republics

Andrea Peters

A ceasefire has been declared in the border conflict that erupted last week between the Central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. According to press reports, a total of 54 people died on both sides and hundreds more were injured. The Kyrgyz side reported 36 dead, including at least two children.

The two states, impoverished former republics of the Soviet Union, share a 1,000 kilometer frontier, of which about 40 percent is disputed. The zone is situated in the water-rich and fertile Fergana Valley, a region over which neighboring Uzbekistan also lays claims.

Map of Central Asia

The latest round of fighting began in late April, with villagers in the Tajik province of Sughd and the Kyrgyz province of Batken throwing projectiles at one another. Regular troops stationed on both sides quickly became involved, using guns and mortars to assault one another. Hundreds of homes and other structures were torched in the fighting, including schools and a kindergarten.

Kyrgyz residents claim that the Tajik military deployed an attack helicopter. Roadblocks temporarily cut off part of Kyrgyz territory from the rest of the country. The Kyrgyz government in Bishkek evacuated 60,000 residents, although that order has been lifted since the May 1 ceasefire took hold.

Russia, which has military bases stationed in both countries, indicated its willingness to mediate between the two sides, and Vladimir Putin will meet with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon on May 8.

At the center of the conflict are competing claims over the Kok-Tash reservoir, a body of water drawn from the Isfara River, which is essential for irrigating agricultural lands and maintaining pastures along both sides of the border. Population growth in the Tajik and Kyrgyz neighboring provinces is putting pressure on the essential but limited natural resources in the area. The situated has worsened since 2014 when Kyrgyzstan started development projects, including the building of roads, which threatened to cut off Tajik access to the reservoir.

The disastrous economic situation in both countries has intensified the long-standing conflict, in which clashes have erupted repeatedly over the last two decades. Kyrgyzstan’s GDP fell during 2020 by 9 percent due to the impact of the coronavirus, which has infected nearly 97,000 people in the country of less than 6.5 million. Tajikistan, with a lower rate of infection but larger population, is still posting economic growth, although it has slipped from 7.5 percent before the pandemic to just 2.2 percent last year.

Both countries have now racked up large budget deficits. Their economies are heavily reliant on remittances from citizens working in low-wage, highly exploitative jobs in Russia. Money sent home from those working abroad accounts for 28 percent and 33 percent of Kyrgyz and Tajik GDP, respectively. In a vicious anti-immigrant action aimed at deflecting social anger inside Russia, the Kremlin recently declared that all the Central Asian countries must get their undocumented citizens out of Russia by mid-June.

The ceasefire declared earlier this week between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will do nothing to resolve the long-term conflict. On Wednesday, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov made a point in his annual address to the nation of stating that the country had “to create an army composed of well-prepared and properly equipped divisions ready to carry out military actions.”

The cross-border conflict in the Fergana Valley is the direct product of the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1991. Over the course of Soviet history, the boundary lines of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan were redrawn on several occasions, including in the 1920s and the 1950s. Despite the changing map, united in a single country, the populations of the two republics moved back and forth across the internal borders and made shared use of the region’s resources.

When Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan spun off into independent states, the corrupt ruling elite in each newly formed country claimed whichever version of the former Soviet map—the one from the 1920s or the one from the 1950s—would give them the most. Each side has endlessly whipped up ethnic chauvinism in an effort to channel popular frustrations over widespread poverty behind their respective economic and geostrategic agendas.

The region has long been the object of imperialist meddling, with the United States playing a central role in the 2005 Kyrgyz “Tulip Revolution,” through which it sought to bring to power a regime more subservient to Washington. The outcome has been years of political upheaval, instability and violence. As part of the war in Afghanistan, the US has developed close relations with the Tajik government and Bishkek has received significant funds from the US as part of the “war on terror.” More recently, the region, which has significant economic ties to China, has been further destabilized by the US-led confrontation with Beijing.

German government playing with fire by lifting restrictions and extending special rights to vaccinated citizens

Marianne Arens

An incessant debate about special rights for those who have received a COVID-19 vaccine or recovered from an infection is being conducted in the German media. Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn announced on Tuesday that as soon as Saturday they will enjoy several exceptional freedoms. The considerable attention paid to this issue is aimed above all at facilitating the opening of the tourist sector and all areas of the economy. In the midst of the third wave of the pandemic, this amounts to playing with fire.

Intensive care (Photo: Calleamanecer / Wikimedia)

Over 3.5 million people in Germany have been infected by SARS-CoV-2, and more than 84,000 COVID-19 patients have lost their lives. Almost 20 million people around the world are currently infected with the coronavirus. In Germany, there are currently around 300,000 active infections, of which 4,800 patients are gasping for breath in intensive care units. Hundreds of patients lose this battle every day, dying an entirely unnecessary death.

Politicians prefer to ignore these horrifying figures and facts. Instead they claim, like Social Democratic chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz, that the fact that around 30 percent of the population has received their first vaccine gives “already a sense that things will be better during the summer.” The vice chancellor made these comments on Monday on the ZDF show “What next, Mr. Scholz?” “The vaccine pace is accelerating rapidly,” he said. “We’ve already come a long way.”

Scholz, like all other leading politicians, is conveying a completely false sense of security. Only 8 percent of the population has received two vaccine doses, which is far removed from any reliable protection from the virus across society as a whole.

On NDR’s coronavirus podcast, Sandra Ciesek, head of virology at Frankfurt’s University Hospital, warned that any prediction about the coronavirus pandemic is “vulnerable to disruption.” The vaccine campaign must be continued for at least another four weeks before the rate of those vaccinated would approach 50 percent, and further openings could be even contemplated, she said.

In connection with the current incidence rates, the vaccination figures indicate an even greater danger for those not yet vaccinated, above all, workers and young people. For them, the risk of infection is much higher than in the first and second waves. This is because infections among those over 80 contributed considerably to the overall incidences. Today, amid the third wave, the situation is very different. A significant portion of the elderly is now vaccinated. While an incidence of 100 no longer represents a great threat to them, it poses an even greater threat to younger and middle-aged workers.

COVID-19 infections remain high. A glance at the coronavirus map reveals the staggering fact that inspite of vaccinations, only a handful of districts and cities across Germany have had incidences below 50 infections per 100,000 inhabitants within the past seven days, which was once the upper limit for openings. The upper limit before the so-called “federal emergency brake” takes effect, an incidence of 100, is surpassed in the vast majority of districts.

Opening up under these conditions is like allowing the first gust of wind to revive the embers of a fire.

This is what happened in India, a country of 1.3 billion people, where daily infections had declined to around 9,000. The government assumed that the pandemic was over; restrictions were lifted, and they resorted to a policy of “herd immunity.” But when a new, so-called double mutant emerged, new infections rose exponentially. Currently around 400,000 people are being infected every day, and people are dying in the street because hospitals can no longer treat them and provide them with oxygen.

These parallels are of absolutely no concern to the politicians and journalists in Germany. They are much more concerned about the next round of openings, first in the tourist industry, and then for society as a whole, while businesses have been open throughout. People who have received two doses of the vaccine and those who have recovered from a COVID-19 infection will soon be able to visit a hairdresser, shop, restaurant or gym without a negative coronavirus test. They will also be allowed to travel without quarantine and with no negative test to other countries. The government agreed to these measures on Tuesday, and they will pass the lower and upper houses of parliament by the weekend.

Numerous people are warning against these new regulatory exceptions, not least because vaccine passes are extremely easy to falsify. Those who have to deal with the pandemic first hand on a daily basis, such as doctors and nurses in intensive care, ambulance drivers and workers in elderly care facilities, are extremely concerned. They have been working for over a year under incredibly difficult conditions. Now in the third wave, they are confronted with significantly younger patients and the new, more infectious virus variants.

ICUs are packed to capacity and threatened with collapse. This was revealed in a recent case in the Salle-Orla district in the state of Thuringia. A seriously ill patient could not be transferred in time to the ICU in Schliez because all beds were occupied. The 66-year-old cancer patient died in the ambulance while waiting to be admitted. The district in the southeast of Thuringia currently has an incidence of 530 new infections over the past seven days per 100,000 inhabitants.

The conditions in ICUs were also examined in an episode of the ARD programme “FAKT” on Tuesday evening from the Saale district in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. A doctor at the Carl-von-Basedow Hospital in Merseburg, Dr. Sven-Uwe Hake, confirmed that growing numbers of younger patients are being admitted. “Shockingly, it’s affecting people aged under 30. They are as old as my children,” he said. This has become routine and a “sad reality.”

Dr. Karsten zur Nieden, head of the ambulance service in Halle, commented on the government’s plans for lifting restrictions. “As a doctor who cares for extremely ill COVID-19 patients every day,” he doubts whether now is the right time. “There is no real recovery, and we must fear that if we open up too early, we will pay dearly for it later,” he said.

The virus has an ever clearer social profile. The more precarious jobs, the greater the risk faced by individuals. Cramped working and living conditions and a lack of restrictions help the virus to accelerate, and the pandemic has vastly increased social inequality. While the stock markets increase, and companies, banks and the superrich enrich themselves on multibillion-euro state “bailouts,” workers and the poor are bearing the brunt of the pandemic.

Repeated major outbreaks are occurring in workplaces, schools and child care facilities. One recent example is an outbreak on the Thiermann asparagus farm in Diepholz, Lower Saxony. Numerous infections were first identified in the district’s child care centres, before mass tests returned about 120 infections among the 1,000 employees. Mainly Romanian seasonal workers were infected by the British variant B.1.1.7 in Diepholz. So as not to interrupt the harvest, the notorious workplace quarantine was imposed on the asparagus farm.

The working class bears the main burden of the pandemic, while the rich are in a much better position to protect themselves. The most well-known example of this currently is the low-income neighbourhood of Chorweiler in Cologne. The incidence rate is over 500. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 963 people have been infected. In the villa district Hanhwald, not a single infection has recently been recorded.

Chorweiler also disproves the standard propaganda about alleged vaccine scepticism among workers. Since Monday, a mobile vaccine bus has been used to inoculate residents. The response surpassed all expectations. People have been waiting patiently every day in long queues that stretch around the entire square for an opportunity to get vaccinated.