New Zealand nurses prepare more strikes as healthcare crisis worsens

Tom Peters

About 30,000 nurses, healthcare assistants and midwives in public hospitals around New Zealand voted earlier this month to hold another three nationwide strikes. The members of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) held an eight-hour strike on June 9 after rejecting a derisory pay rise offer of just 1.38 percent. The District Health Boards’ offer was effectively a pay cut relative to inflation and contained nothing to address the staffing crisis in hospitals.

The Labour Party-led government announced a wage freeze in May for the next three years for the vast majority of public sector employees, including healthcare workers and teachers. The government is imposing severe austerity measures to make workers shoulder the burden of the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nurses protesting outside parliament. (Credit: WSWS Media)

Workers in New Zealand, as in other countries, are seeking to fight back. The main obstacle they confront is the unions, which support the government and function, as they do in every country, as the industrial police force for the state and corporations.

The first 24-hour strike is scheduled for July 29, followed by an eight-hour strike on August 19 and a 24-hour strike on September 9. In announcing these deliberately spread-out dates, the NZNO made clear that it is allowing time to return to negotiations with the DHBs, cobble together another sell-out deal and cancel the strikes.

On July 6 a union spokesperson said recent negotiations had “given us some hope a resolution can be found around pay and safe staffing.” No details were given to support this claim.

The union bureaucracy is using similar tactics as in the 2018 dispute. Then, the NZNO cancelled one of two scheduled strikes and presented nurses with multiple offers that were essentially the same—a wage increase of just 3 percent per annum, combined with empty promises of better staffing. The aim was to wear workers down, isolate them and convince them that no better deal was possible. The NZNO’s 2018 deal set a benchmark for similar sellouts of doctors and teachers.

Three years later, the result is a worsening crisis in the healthcare system. Even though New Zealand has so far not experienced a major outbreak of COVID-19, the country remains extremely vulnerable, with only one tenth of the population fully vaccinated. The virus is spreading more rapidly than ever worldwide, with catastrophic consequences across Europe, in Indonesia, Fiji and many other countries. Through sheer luck, New Zealand avoided an outbreak last month when an infected person visited from Sydney, Australia, where the highly infectious Delta variant is has since surged.

Numerous reports show that NZ’s hospital system is already overwhelmed with winter-related illnesses, revealing that nothing has been done to prepare for an outbreak of COVID-19.

The severe staffing shortage is placing both hospital workers and patients at risk. The government’s border restrictions, some of the harshest in the world, have contributed to the crisis, since a significant proportion of New Zealand’s health workforce are immigrants.

According to the NZNO, Auckland City Hospital has nearly 400 nursing and healthcare assistant vacancies. Last month, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons told Stuff that nationwide “shortages in just about every part of the hospital system, from specialists and technicians through to administrative staff, are seriously affecting patient care at all levels.” Surgeries, including for cancer patients, are being routinely delayed and cancelled because of the shortage of staff and beds.

On July 9, the Taranaki DHB told Radio NZ (RNZ) that Hāwera and Taranaki Base hospitals had “reached critical levels of demand” with “very high occupancy,” including cases of RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus).

The potentially deadly RSV has spread throughout New Zealand in recent weeks. Government statistics show there were 688 confirmed cases in the week to July 4, up from 538 cases the week before. The New Zealand Herald reported last week that 22 children were in intensive care or high dependency units with RSV or other respiratory viruses. A 63-year-old Auckland woman reportedly died on July 12, possibly from RSV-related complications.

Christchurch Hospital and Burwood Hospital have experienced record numbers of patients in the past week. To try and prevent the spread of RSV, the hospitals have limited visitor numbers.

Earlier this month the Counties Manukau DHB and Auckland DHB warned of longer waiting times for emergency care, and told patients to seek help from a general practice if possible. On July 1, RNZ reported that 11 sick babies were “being cared for in a playroom at Middlemore Hospital [in South Auckland] because it has run out of space in the regular wards.”

Stuff reported that Wellington Hospital’s emergency department was seeing “overcrowding at record levels.” The crisis has been escalating since March, with the department “often exceeding 100 percent occupancy.” DHB spokesperson Joy Farley said higher volumes of patients across the hospital meant emergency patients had to wait longer to be admitted to wards.

“It’s just unmanageable. It’s a ticking time bomb. Patients are going to die, especially the ones in the corridors,” one nurse told Stuff.

On July 12, TVNZ reported that patient Emma Maguire was told by Wellington Emergency Department staff that there was a seven or eight hour wait for her to get an X-ray for a suspected broken leg. She went home instead of waiting, potentially causing further injury. ED staff have issued a Provisional Improvement Notice to hospital management, saying that last Tuesday they were unable to see all patients, and there were no systems in place to manage patients safely.

Health Minister Andrew Little was booed off the stage by healthcare workers outside parliament during the June 9 strike, while trying to defend the government. He has recently feigned concern for nurses, telling Newstalk ZB on July 7 that nurses “have been undervalued for so long.”

In fact, the government has rejected nurses’ demand for an immediate pay increase of 17 percent. As in 2018, Labour is again telling healthcare workers it does not have enough money to fix the crisis in the health system.

The government says it is working on a “pay equity process” to lift nurses’ salaries to a level comparable to male-dominated professions with similar workloads. This has been promised for more than three decades, but never implemented. In 2018, the NZNO cynically exploited the government’s vague pay equity pledge as an argument to vote for its sellout deal.

The crisis in the health system is the result of decades of underfunding, which has gone unopposed due to the unions’ suppression of any resistance by the working class. Before 2018, there had not been a nationwide strike by nurses since 1989.

A real fight against government and corporate austerity requires new organisations: rank-and-file workplace committees run democratically by workers themselves. The International Committee of the Fourth International is calling for an international alliance of such committees, independent of and opposed to the corporatist trade unions and the entire political establishment, including Labour and its allies.

Above all, workers need to fight on the basis of a socialist perspective to abolish the profit system and place the resources of society under workers’ control. The government’s lie that there is no money for decent healthcare services should be rejected with contempt. The tens of billions of dollars hoarded by the super-rich and the banks must be redirected into hospitals, schools and other vital public services.

120 million people pushed to extreme poverty by COVID-19 pandemic

Kevin Reed

In addition to four million deaths worldwide from COVID-19, between 119-124 million people were pushed back into poverty and chronic hunger and 255 million full-time jobs were lost from the pandemic, according to a United Nations (UN) report published on Tuesday.

The figures come from the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021, which said the pandemic had created major setbacks for efforts to eliminate poverty. In releasing the report, UN Under-Secretary-General Liu Zhenmin said, “The pandemic has halted, or reversed, years, or even decades of development progress.”

A woman looks to a homeless Lebanese man who sleeps on the ground at Hamra trade street, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Prior to the pandemic there were 700 million people going hungry and 2 billion people suffering food insecurity. The UN data shows that an additional 83–132 million people likely experienced hunger during the pandemic in 2020.

Life expectancy, which had been increasing, has also been reduced as the pandemic halted or reversed progress in health care and posed major threats beyond COVID-19. Meanwhile, the mortality figures and true impact of the pandemic remain incomplete due to a lack of accurate data in many parts of the world.

The pandemic is intensifying inequalities within and among countries and impacting the most vulnerable people and the poorest countries hardest. The UN report reveals the extent of the unprecedented and devastating impact of the coronavirus on the world’s working class and poor population over the past year.

The report examines the status of seventeen indices on a global scale and says in the Foreword—signed by UN General Secretary António Guterres— “More than a year into the global pandemic, millions of lives have been lost, the human and economic toll has been unprecedented, and recovery efforts so far have been uneven, inequitable and insufficiently geared towards achieving sustainable development.”

Among the other indices examined are a rise in gender inequality, a decrease in the availability of clean water and sanitation, a decrease in affordable and clean energy, a reduction in investments in infrastructure and an intensification of the exploitation of children.

Every one of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—which were defined by the UN six years ago along with targets set for each to be achieved by 2030—showed a marked deterioration over the past year. Although the word “capitalism” does not appear in the 68-page UN report, its summary of the devastating conditions facing billions of people on the planet in the past year is an indictment of the response of the profit system and the ruling establishment to the COVID-19 health crisis.

The data is also a statement of bankruptcy by the UN itself, a global capitalist institution established after World War II and sponsored by the US as the hegemonic imperialist power, to address any of the fundamental social needs of the world’s population.

While the UN refers to increases in wealth inequality throughout the pandemic, the UN carefully avoids any discussion of the amassing of vast fortunes by the financial elite and the increase in the number of millionaires and billionaires during the pandemic. It is a fact that the ruling elite in every country took advantage of the public health crisis to secure for themselves a greater share of the wealth of society than they possessed before the start of the pandemic. Part of this increase in the fortunes of the rich—fueled primarily by the injection of trillions into the financial markets by the central banks—has been an intensification of the exploitation of the working class by deepening the attack on wages, working hours and reductions of benefits.

Indicating that the pandemic actually accelerated economic and political tendencies already present in the world situation prior to its outbreak, Secretary Guterres states, “Regrettably, the SDGs were already off track even before COVID‑19 emerged. Progress had been made in poverty reduction, maternal and child health, access to electricity, and gender equality, but not enough to achieve the Goals by 2030.”

In a section entitled “Views from the pandemic: stark realities, critical choices,” signed by Zhenmin, the report says that since the start of second year of the pandemic, “it is abundantly clear that this is a crisis of monumental proportions, with catastrophic effects on people’s lives and livelihoods.”

The UN report is based on “the latest available data and estimates to reveal the devastating impacts of the crisis on the SDGs” and was prepared by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in collaboration with more than 50 international agencies.

Significantly, the UN analysis points to the contradiction between the international collaboration within the scientific community in the development of “life-saving vaccines and treatments in record time” and the global inequality in vaccine distribution. As Zhenmin writes, “as of 17 June 2021, around 68 vaccines were administered for every 100 people in Europe and Northern America compared with fewer than 2 in sub-Saharan Africa.”

The figures on the rise of global extreme poverty in the past year are particularly important as both the right-wing and liberal defenders of capitalism have held up the previous two decades of declines in these figures as evidence of the viability of the profit system. The UN report says that the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty—the number of people living on less than $1.90 per day—“fell from 10.1 percent in 2015 to 9.3 percent in 2017.”

The UN’s projection data shows that the share of extreme poverty went from 8.4 percent in 2019 to 9.5 percent in 2020 and will rise to more than 10 percent in 2021. While the conclusion drawn by the UN is that the rise in extreme poverty shows the “importance of disaster preparedness and robust social protection systems,” the return of a dramatic rise in poverty is a demonstration of the failure of capitalism and a harbinger of revolutionary struggles by the working class on a world scale.

The UN report is a vindication of the analysis provided by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) since the pandemic began in the early months of 2020. On February 28, 2020, the ICFI issued a call for a globally coordinated emergency response to the pandemic through the mobilization of the working class to “make available the resources required to contain the spread of the disease, treat and care for those who are infected, and secure the livelihoods of the hundreds of millions of people who will be affected by the economic fallout.”

The statement warned that the economic damage from the pandemic “could exceed the scale of the 2008 financial crisis” and that “the response of ruling elites and the governments they control to the crisis combines incompetence with a criminal level of indifference.”

Before governments throughout the world raided the federal treasuries with unlimited trillions of dollars in “stimulus” to prop up the investment portfolios of the financial oligarchy, the ICFI statement called for “financial support and income compensation for all those impacted by the economic consequences.” The statement also warned that “the major capitalist governments, led by the US Federal Reserve, have allocated virtually unlimited sums of money to drive up the market value of equities” following the 2008 crash and that the “working class must demand that governments impose emergency taxes on the fortunes of the oligarchs to the extent required by the emergency.”

Record inflation in US leads to double digit increases in basic consumer goods

Jacob Crosse

On Tuesday the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), released the latest consumer price index (CPI) data from June, which showed that prices for basic consumer goods and services continue to rise at historic rates. The BLS reported that the CPI rose 0.9 percent from May, nearly double what Wall Street analysts had predicted, leading to a year-over-year CPI increase of 5.4 percent, the highest in 13 years.

The core inflation growth statistic, which just measures the increase in consumer goods, minus energy and food, showed a 4.5 percent year-over-year increase, which is the highest since 1991.

A woman carries a box of food away as hundreds others impacted by the COVID-19 virus outbreak wait in line at a Salvation Army center in Chelsea, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Driving the soaring increase in the CPI is the rising cost for energy commodities such as fuel oil and gasoline, which the BLS recorded rising 44.2 percent in the last year. Used car prices are also showing an unprecedented rise in prices, jumping 10.5 percent in June, which follows a 7.3 percent increase in May and 10 percent in April. New car prices also rose 2 percent in June, the biggest increase since May 1981.

The meteoric rise in car prices is being driven by two main factors: a global semiconductor shortage, components used in nearly every modern electronic device and a so-called labor shortage. Major car companies, such as General Motors, have lamented the fact that workers are unwilling to work in COVID-19-infested factories for the $16.67 an hour offered to new hires under its agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.

The labor contracts signed by the unions have long included raises at or below the rate of inflation and lump sum payments instead of increases in hourly wages. The contract proposed by the UAW at Volvo Trucks would provide an average annual raise of only 2 percent over six years for the top-paid workers at the factory. With the annual rate of inflation at over 5 percent, this would result in a nearly 20 percent cut in real wages over the life of the contract.

Rising prices have been one of the major factors in the growth of the class struggle, including the five-week strike by Volvo workers who have rejected three UAW-backed contracts and are demanding substantial raises and a cost-of-living escalator, a demand abandoned by the UAW long ago.

As the corporatist trade unions and companies conspire to depress wages and increase profits, workers are finding it difficult just to afford basic food items, leading to an increase in food insecurity across the US. Some 20 million adults are without enough to eat as of mid-June, according to data collected by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, while the latest US Census Bureau survey found that 42 million US adults reported not being able to afford the types of food they want to eat last month.

Food price changes since February 2020 (Insider)

The BLS found that the price of beef rose by 4.5 percent in June, while eggs, pork and ham all rose by 3.1 percent. Milk prices also increased by 0.5 percent, potatoes increased by 1.5 percent. The price of fruits and vegetables have increased by 6 percent since February 2020, while cakes, cookies and bread have all jumped over 4 percent in the same time period.

To give a sense of the rapid increase in prices within the last two years, below is a list of staple items with the average June 2019 price listed first, followed by June 2021.

* Gasoline has increased by 32 cents from $2.83 a gallon to $3.15, an 11.3 percent jump. Earlier this month, AAA said prices would rise another 10-20 cents by the end of August, meaning it will cost $53.28 to fill up a standard sedan and $86.58 for a pickup truck.

* A pound of boneless, skinless chicken breast rose by 27 cents from $3.08 to $3.35, a 9.0 percent increase.

* Average rent has increased by 5.1 percent, from $1,712 to $1,799.

* A pound of ground beef cost $0.67 more than it did two years ago, from $4.20 to $4.87

* The average household electric bill has increased by 4.2 percent, or roughly $5.00 from $121 to $126

While the national average for rent has increased by 5.1 percent in the last two years, just this year alone, apartments.com found that rent prices are up 7.5 percent this year, three times higher than the normal average rate of increase.

Over a dozen cities have seen a 10 percent jump in rents over the past year according to Zillow, a real estate website. From February 2020 to May 2021 rent prices in Stockton, California have increased by $268. In Boise, Idaho the average increase is $236 a month, followed by Ventura, California ($229) Phoenix, Arizona ($195), Fresno, California ($193), Sacramento ($184) and Stamford, Connecticut ($180).

As rent, food, energy and consumer goods increase in prices, real average weekly earnings for workers have completely stagnated, leaving many with hard choices as to what bills to pay, or who gets to eat.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Pamela Porter, 68, of Fort Worth, Texas spoke on the difficulty of making ends meet on a fixed income. “I’ve noticed food prices going up. And gasoline. Oh my. That shot through the roof,” said Porter, who just received a notice that her rent is rising by $40 a month, to $780. The increase in rent, said Porter, “could definitely impact my ability to buy groceries and buy my medicine. I’m not going to even mention car repairs. Life shouldn’t be this hard.”

Despite the financial squeeze being placed on millions of workers and their families, the Biden administration has no intentions of re-upping the Centers for Disease Control eviction moratorium, which is scheduled to end in less than three weeks.

Similarly, Biden and the Democrats, beholden to the same financial oligarchy as the Republicans, have indicated there will be no extension on federal unemployment benefits, including the $300-a-week booster, which is set to expire September 6.

While some companies have been forced to offer one-time bonuses to new-hires to fill some 9 million available jobs in the US, BLS data shows that real earnings for workers in the US have flatlined for over a decade, with average weekly earnings down 2.2 percent from May 2020 to May 2021. The only reason the figure is not higher is because the BLS found that there has been a 0.6 percent increase in the average work week.

Earning of all employees, private sector, January 2011-May 2021

Overall, the Labor Department found that average hourly earnings increased by 0.3 percent from May, bringing the total to 3.6 percent over the year, nearly 2 percent less than inflation. The modest wage gains some employers have given are not permanent, with many companies already rescinding pandemic-related bonus and shift premiums.

Speaking to CNBC, David Weliver, founder of the personal finance site Money Under 30, explained that it is very unlikely that wages will be able to keep pace with inflation. “There’s going to be a lag,” Weliver said. “The prices at the gas pump or grocery store may change very quickly but you might not get that raise for a year.”

The miniscule increase in wages has led to complaints from the financial oligarchy and its media mouthpieces of a “dreaded spiral” in which increased wages will drive inflation and vice versa. The ruling class fears that a “wages push” by the working class could lead to a collapse of the inflated stock market, which depends on the continued suppression of workers’ wages.

The struggles by workers at Volvo, Frito-Lay, Warrior Met Coal, ATI, ExxonMobil, St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts and other locations are an initial sign of the explosive battles by the working class that are on the horizon, in the US and internationally, against the social inequality produced by capitalism and the corporatist trade unions and big business parties that enforce it.

Commonwealth Professional Fellowships 2022

Application Deadline: 9th August 2021

The deadline for submitting references is 16:00 BST on Monday 30 August 2021.

About the Award: Commonwealth Professional Fellowships are for mid-career professionals from low- and middle-income countries to spend a period of time at a UK Host organisation working in their sector for a programme of professional development.

Purpose: To provide professionals with the opportunity to enhance knowledge and skills in their given sector, and to have catalytic effects on their workplaces.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Mid-career professionals (with five years’ relevant work experience) working in development-related organisations in low and middle- income Commonwealth countries.

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

Number of Awards: Up to 25 fellows (in total)

Value & Duration of Award:

Each fellowship provides:

• Approved return airfare from the Fellow’s home country to the UK
• Stipend (living allowance) payable monthly (or pro rata) for the duration of the award at the rate of £1,704 per month, or £2,115 per month for those at organisations in the London metropolitan area (at 2020/21 rate)
• If a Fellow declares a disability, a full assessment of needs and eligibility for additional financial support will be offered by the CSC. See the CSC disability support statement for more information
• Arrival allowance of up to £22 (at 2020/21 rate), including an element for warm clothing
• For the Girls’ Education programme a £1,000 travel allowance to facilitate attendance at events
• Reimbursement of the standard visa application fee
• Flat rate contribution of £800 to the costs of the Host organisation relating to the administration and support of the Fellow, setting up of appropriate meetings, any materials required, and incidental travel for the Fellow during the award (to be paid to the Host organisation on receipt of an invoice).
• Fees can be agreed for costs associated with Fellows attending short courses/conferences as well as travel to visit other UK organisations where this forms an integral part of the Up to a maximum of £3,000 can be agreed for awards of three months (to be paid to the Host organisation on receipt of an invoice)

Full justification must be given for the amount being claimed.

Host organisations should bear in mind the restrictions set out in our <guidance on claimable costs> (link will be added on Monday)

The Girls’ Education Fellowships are designed to:

• Begin on 15th January 2022
• Run for three months
• Promote collaboration across host organisations with each host holding an engagement event for the full cohort of Fellows

How to Apply: We welcome enquiries for organisations working in Girls’ Education that are interested in becoming Fellowship Hosts. More information and details of how to contact us about this programme are available through the links below.

• Information for prospective Hosts.
• Information for prospective Fellows.

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Huawei HMS App Innovation Contest 2021

Application Deadline: 5th September 2021 (UTC+8)

To Be Taken at (country): The contest will be held in Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, Latin America, and China, respectively.

About the Award: HUAWEI Developer is a platform ecosystem that integrates various services and resources for developers to develop and promote their apps. After registering and being verified as a HUAWEI Developer member, developers can access complete services from development and testing to promotion and monetization. Aimed at providing quality experiences for end users, HUAWEI Developer looks forward to achieving a win-win situation with all developers.

Type: Contest

Eligibility:

• Open to global developers. You only need to register a HUAWEI ID and complete identity verification.
• You may not participate in the contest if you are under the age of 18.
• Employees of Huawei and its affiliates and their immediate relatives should not sign up for the contest.
• You can participate in the contest on your own, or as part of a team. For a team, all members must belong to the same competition region before participating in the contest in this region.

Selection Criteria: Judges will review works on the basis of the following framework:

• Business value: Has substantial commercial potential, with sustainable business models that indicate clear market positioning and a target user base.
• Design, technology, and user experience: Features a distinctive visual design that incorporates user-friendly characteristics, and meets universal user requirements for a stable, responsive, broadly compatible, and privacy-conducive app.
• Innovativeness: Comes endowed with innovative design and/or technological attributes, which represent a clear improvement over those in existing apps.
• Social value: Benefits society at large, by improving the allocation of public services, or addressing social problems. This can involve enriching the lives of individual users or facilitating industry-wide development, and span a wide range of fields, such health care, education, transportation, the economy, and the environment.

Value & Number of Awards: Huawei has set aside US$1 million from the Shining Star Program as prize money for the contest. Up to US$200,000 will be allocated for the following award winners in each participating region:

• US$15,000 each for 5 Best App
• US$15,000 each for 3 Best Game
• US$15,000 each for 3 Best Social Impact App
• US$5,000 each for 1 Most Popular App
• US$2,500 each for 12 Honorable Mention

Winners are also eligible for a treasure trove of enticing incentives:

• HUAWEI AppGallery promotional resources
• Huawei cloud resources

How to Apply:

(1) Sign in to HUAWEI Developers with a valid HUAWEI ID (register for a HUAWEI ID if you do not have one, and complete identity verification) and click Sign up. If you are a team leader, click New team and enter the team information. If you are a team member, click Join us and enter the name of the team you wish to join.
(2) Create your work and integrate HMS Core. For details about HMS Core, please refer to HMS Core.
(3) Click Submit work on the contest details page, enter the app name, ID, and description, and upload the APK and app introduction document.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

PTCIJ Climate Change Media Fellowship (Paid) 2021

Application Deadline: 16th July 2021.

About the Award: The Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), through its Natural Resources Programme (NAREP), is pleased to invite journalists, media professionals, researchers and analysts for its inaugural climate change media fellowship across west Africa.

NAREP aims to strengthen the capacity of media and civil society to carry out deep and impactful reporting as well as advocacy around issues relating to natural resources, extractives and climate change.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: The fellowship which will last for three months is open to journalists, policy analysts and researchers working around climate change-related issues in any of these English-speaking West African countries: Ghana, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• Training and mentorship opportunities for fellows
• Monthly stipend and data allowance
• Media appearances on topical climate change issues

How to Apply: Please note the following Guidelines:

• Pitches/research proposals must be centred around climate change in West Africa (you can focus on a country)
• Applicants must have relevant experience in investigative reporting, research, or policy analysis.
• Female journalists/researchers are encouraged to apply.
• Applicants living with disabilities are encouraged to apply.
• Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.

Click here to apply.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

The Assassination of Jovenel Moise: What Next for Haiti?

Seth Donnelly

Today, the people of Haiti are facing down the US-backed dictatorship of the ruling Haitian Tet Kale Party (PHTK) that came to power through the fraudulent election of Michel Martelly in 2010 and maintained its grip on power through the fraudulent election of Jovenel Moise in 2016, what Haitian activists refer to as electoral coup d’etats. Both elections were held under UN occupation and sponsored by the US government. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton detoured from her trip to the Middle East at the height of the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt and personally intervened to put Martelly into power. Similarly, the US State Department immediately heralded the 2016 elections as legitimate and subsequent US administrations, first Trump then Biden, continued to prop up the Moise regime diplomatically and financially.

The July 7 assassination of Jovenel Moise by a professional kill squad does not alter US support for the PHTK regime. Unless there is massive opposition by the US public and members of Congress, expect the Biden Administration to continue to support the current PHTK regime led by Prime Minister Claude Joseph or whoever else emerges within this regime to assume power during this transition. Expect the Biden Administration to provide ongoing funding for its brutal security forces. These central points should not be obscured by escalating media speculation regarding “who did it”, particularly in the aftermath of arrests of ex-Colombian soldiers and several Haitians with US ties such as Christian Emmanuel Sanon.

What Are the Characteristics that Define the PHTK Regime Under Both Martelly And Moise?

The PHTK regime is a puppet dictatorship installed and maintained by the US government and UN occupation forces, in coordination with members of the Haitian upper class, operating against the interests of the impoverished majority of the Haitian people. The following are central characteristics of the regime:

1. Engaging in pervasive corruption and the massive looting of public funds.

2. Facilitating land grabs and the dispossession of Haitian farmers, including by Moise himself to enlarge his personal banana republic, as well as the plunder of Haiti’s vast natural resources (gold, petroleum, bauxite and more) by domestic oligarchs and foreign corporations. The “open” investment climate supported by the PHTK regime is noted in this 2018 US State Department Report on “doing business in Haiti”.

3. Waging a war on the poor majority and the popular, grassroots Lavalas movement through horrific massacres in poor neighborhoods such as Lasalin and Bel Air, violent gentrification, and targeted assassinations and rapes of human rights activists. These gross human rights violations perpetrated by the regime are also documented by the International Human Rights Clinic of the Harvard Law School in its April 2021 report Killing with Impunity: State-Sanctioned Massacres in Haiti.

What Were the Limits of Moise’s Effectiveness as a Puppet Ruler?

1. Moise proved incapable of containing the massive, grassroots uprising to establish a truly popular, democratic government. Since Moise took power, the Haitian people have taken to the streets by the hundreds of thousands, again and again, facing live ammunition, tear gas, arbitrary arrest, torture, rape, and extrajudicial killings by the Haitian National Police (HNP)– trained by UN occupation officials in Haiti and by the US police, including the NYPD. The HNP have likewise been funded by the US government to the tune of millions of dollars per year, with US funding increasing under the Trump Administration, a move correlating with increasing human rights violations by the HNP. The Biden Administration has likewise continued this support for the police force clearly implicated in massacres and gross human rights violations. Despite such US training and funding of the HNP, Moise has been unable to keep “law and order”. Huge protests continue to erupt. At the same time, regime-backed paramilitaries (“gangs”) like the G9 death squad, led by former policeman Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, continue to terrorize the poor people of all ages in Port-au-Prince through a reign of kidnappings, torture, rape, and killings. G9 and paramilitary violence have displaced thousands of people who have been forced from their neighborhoods after their homes have been burned down and their relatives and neighbors have been massacred.

2. Moise recently clashed with members of the small, powerful Haitain upper class, such as Reginald Boulos and other oligarchs. This clash reflected intra-elite squabbles, as Moise was using his political power to consolidate his hold in ways reminiscent of the Duvalier dictatorships.

3. There was growing opposition inside of the US Congress to the Biden Administration’s ongoing support of the Moise regime, as reflected by this April 26th letter from 68 members of the US House of Representatives to the Biden Administration, noting that the Moise regime “lacks the credibility and legitimacy to oversee a constitutional referendum… or to administer elections that are free and fair.” In the aftermath of this letter, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced, as reported on June 9, that the US would no longer support the plan by the Moise regime to augment its power through holding a bogus “referendum” this summer to weaken the Haitian Constitution. Despite this policy reversal, the Biden Administration nonetheless continued to support the regime to illegally stay in power and manipulate elections scheduled for this next September. The US has allocated extensive funding for these sham elections which will include the referendum, in violation of the wishes of the Haitian majority. Moreover, the Biden Administration called for more US funding for the Haitian police, despite the clear record of gross human rights violations linked to the police. Yet this support by the Biden Administration for Moise was facing mounting political opposition in Congress.

What Drives US Foreign Policy Towards Haiti?

In his speech “Beyond Vietnam: a Time to Break the Silence” given in the Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated: “All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before.” He protested the fact that the US government stood on the wrong side of this revolution, in Vietnam and elsewhere. Nowhere is this more graphically illustrated than in Haiti.

US policy towards Haiti, as elsewhere through the “Third World”, has been remarkably consistent over the 19th, 20th, now 21st centuries, based on three pillars: 1) a white supremacist opposition to genuine decolonization and national liberation by Black and colonized peoples; 2) the Monroe-doctrine mindset of the US as the police officer of the western hemisphere in particular and the world in general; and 3) the elevation of US business and local upper class interests above the basic human rights of the poor majority, along with the elevation of capitalist exploitation over popular democracy.

In 1804, Haitians waged a successful revolution against one of the most powerful European empires of the time, emancipating themselves from slavery and colonialism, becoming the world’s first Black republic and the first nation to permanently ban slavery. It can be said that the Haitian Revolution was the most radical assertion of the right to have rights in human history. Fueling hope, resistance and rebellion among enslaved people throughout the Caribbean and the United States, the newly independent Haitian government offered asylum and citizenship to any African who escaped slavery. The independent Haitian government invited people of African and Indigenous origins who were fleeing oppression to come and live in Haiti. Freedom fighters such as Simon Bolívar and liberation movements throughout the Americas were given material support by the Haitian government on the condition that they abolish slavery if they came to power. Haiti stands at the very center of the world struggle to end slavery.

Haiti’s freedom posed a great threat to the system of slavery in the US and the Americas. The white supremacist leaders of the United States attempted to strangle the new nation at its birth by instituting a worldwide boycott against Haiti. France took similar action, forcing Haiti to pay reparations to French slave owners for the property they lost when slavery ended. This “property” was the human beings who had been enslaved. The debt was not paid off until the 1940s, by which time banks in the United States had taken over the collection process. Over time Haiti paid France $21.7 billion, an extortion that has been aptly called the greatest heist in history.

In the 20th century, Haiti became a virtual colony of the United States, beginning in 1915, when the U.S. Marines were sent by President Woodrow Wilson to occupy the country. More than 20,000 people were killed by the marines. During 19 years of occupation Haitians put up fierce and protracted resistance, and Black activists in the United States were in the forefront of solidarity with the Haitian struggle. The NAACP denounced the invasion, as did the Garvey Movement. NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson detailed the crimes committed by US occupying forces in “The Truth About Haiti: An NAACP Report” (1920) published in The Crisis. The marines finally left Haiti in 1934, leaving in their place the notorious Haitian Armed Forces to violently protect foreign corporations and the Haitian elite by smashing all opposition.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, the US government supported the brutal dictatorships of “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who tortured and killed thousands of Haitians. The popular mass movement that came to be known as Lavalas (The “flash flood” of the people), succeeded in toppling the Duvalier dictatorship and electing Jean-Bertrand Aristide as President of Haiti. Twice, the United States supported coups to overthrow the elected government, in 1991 and 2004. Ever since this last coup, Haiti has been occupied by the United Nations, as authorized by the UN Security Council, at the behest primarily of the US, France, and Canada. Under this occupation, the people of Haiti have been engaged in a fierce struggle against a series of puppet dictatorships installed by the US. What is important to recognize now is that the current PHTK regime is the institutional manifestation of the 2004 coup, an attempt to make the coup permanent, with or without Jovenel Moise.

Solidarity Is Needed Now More Than Ever

Today, the people of Haiti are struggling courageously to establish their own transition government of Sali Piblik (public safety) drawing on dedicated professionals and activists from all sectors of Haitian society, a government capable of stabilizing society and attending to people’s most pressing needs, while organizing truly fair and free elections. In this struggle, Fanmi Lavalas, the party of the Lavalas movement, remains a vital force, based on speaking to the needs of the poor majority. The Haitian people have not forgotten what Lavalas could accomplish during the brief period of real democracy before the US coup of 2004 hurled the country back into misery. During this brief period of real democracy, more schools were built than in the previous 150 years of Haitian history, healthcare was expanded, affordable housing was constructed, cooperatives were formed, the dreaded army was disbanded, women’s rights were expanded, along with so many more achievements. And all of this was done with a tiny national budget while the US attempted to economically strangle Haiti by cutting off aid and loans. In contrast, the PHTK regime has been fully backed by the US and had a budget 14 times greater, yet it can only show deepening poverty and misery for the masses of people, including a doubling of acute severe childhood malnutrition, along with widespread massacres and gross human rights violations– all made possible by the USA. As Fanmi Lavalas put it in a statement on March 2nd, 2021:

“Indeed, today’s reality clearly lays bare the truth. If there had not been a February 29, 2004 kidnapping coup d’etat, today we would not have a government of kidnappers that causes each and every Haitian citizen to go about with his or her own coffin. Yes, ever since the 2004 coup d’etat, the masses have never ceased to experience more and more suffering. Massacres, repression, misery, starvation, unemployment, bullets, tear gas, kidnapping… and more. The criminals have not stopped stealing the lands of the peasants. If we can’t go to school, can’t eat, can’t have decent housing, if we don’t have potable water to drink, if we don’t have security, if they are kidnapping us, it is a direct consequence of the 2004 kidnapping coup d’etat.”

All progressive-minded people in the US need to make the struggle of the Haitian people central to our own struggles. We need to organize solidarity protests everywhere we can and pressure our members of Congress to do the following:

1. Cut off all US aid for the Haitian police once and for all.

2. Stop the Biden Administration’s support for the PHTK regime regardless of who the new figurehead becomes.

3. End US support for sham elections and the Constitutional referendum organized by the PHTK regime.

4. Support the right of the Haitian people to form, through their own popular movement, their own transition government free from US interference. No US military intervention in Haiti.

The Danger NATO Poses to Americans

Jacob Hornberger

Imagine a massive nuclear exchange between the United States and China. That obviously would not be a pretty sight for the people of either nation. As the mushroom clouds arose over both nations, imagine thinking to yourself: “All this because of a socialist road.”

According to an article in the London Daily Mail, the governments of China and Montenegro entered into an agreement in which China agreed to build a road for Montenegro that would extend to the Serbian capital of Belgrade. The road is only partially built and is now being called the “road to nowhere.”

China financed the road with a $1 billion loan to Montenegro. The first installment on the loan is due this month. But there is a good chance that Montenegro, “whose debt has soared to more than double its GDP,” will have to default.

The loan agreement entitles China to seize land within Montenegro, so long as it isn’t owned by the military or used for diplomatic purposes.

What does all this have to do with a nuclear war between the United States and China? 

If Montenegro defaults and, for whatever reason, refuses to permit China to seize its collateral, China might well invade the country to enforce its loan agreement. 

What does that have to do with the United States?

In 2017, Montenegro became a member of NATO. Under NATO’s membership rules, NATO members, including the United States, are bound to come to the defense of other NATO members in the event that a non-NATO nation attacks them. 

I can’t help but wonder how many Americans realize that they have had their lives and fortunes pledged to the defense of Montenegro. For that matter, the same holds true with respect to all the other members of NATO, which are as follows: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, and United Kingdom.

What’s amazing is how this process works. No one came to Congress and asked whether the American people were willing to sign a treaty with Montenegro that committed American lives and fortunes to the defense of Montenegro in some future war. My hunch is that if that had happened, enough Americans would have risen up to successfully oppose such a treaty.

Instead, all that had to be done was to have NATO bureaucrats approve Montenegro as a new NATO member. No approval of the American people was needed at all. The lives and fortunes of the American people are determined by bureaucrats in Brussels, Belgium, where NATO headquarters are located.

This is nuts! As recently as 2020, NATO bureaucrats agreed to admit North Macedonia into the organization. North Macedonia? Where the heck is North Macedonia?

Why do the American people continue to go along with this junk? Do they have such low regard for their own lives and fortunes that they are willing to subject themselves, their families, and their money to the whims of faraway foreign bureaucrats? Or do they just feel too helpless to stand up and say no? Or is their passivity just part of the overall deference-to-authority mindset that is inculcated into Americans in public (i.e., government) schools?

Let’s assume that there was no NATO and that China then attacked Montenegro to enforce its road loan agreement. How many Americans would travel to Montenegro to give their lives in the defense of Montenegro? 

Answer: None! Not one single American, including the most ardent interventionists and anti-communists and including every member of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, would go to Montenegro to defend the country, 

Why should the United States be part of an organization in which foreign bureaucrats are deciding when and under what conditions the American people are going to war? Why shouldn’t Americans be free to decide which wars to enter on an individual war-by-war basis?

Our nation’s Founding Fathers, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, warned against these types of “entangling alliances.” Today’s Americans would be wise to heed their words and withdraw the United States from NATO, that old Cold War dinosaur, before it’s too late.