Wildfires rage across Greece as austerity hobbles firefighting effort

Katerina Selin

“Hell,” a “nightmare,” and a catastrophe of biblical proportions: these are just some of the expressions from residents and journalists as they struggle to describe what is happening before their eyes in Southern Europe. The forest fires across the Mediterranean region have continued to rage over recent days, especially in Greece, where the situation is totally out of control.

While the solidarity and spirit of sacrifice are tremendous, with residents and firefighters waging a bitter struggle day and night against the fires, rage is mounting over the lack of action by the right-wing New Democracy (ND) government, which is responsible for this crime against humanity and the environment.

A dangerous heat wave with temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius and numerous fires have swept the country. The fires in Attica north of Athens have been temporarily suppressed, but they left behind skeletal shells of burned-out houses, charred trees and dystopian landscapes covered in ashes. At least 1,300 electricity poles have burned.

A man runs as fire burns trees in Kirinthos village on the island of Evia, about 135 kilometers (84 miles) north of Athens, Greece, Friday, Aug. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Thodoris Nikolaou)

Firefighters are currently battling a blaze on the southern Peloponnese peninsula, including the regions around Mani and Olympia, and on Greece’s second-largest island, Euboea. Two fires broke out on the island of Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea on Sunday.

The northern parts of Euboea, an idyllic region with pine forests, mountainous villages and small beaches and bays, have been transformed into an inferno. One week ago, a fire erupted in the village of Limni before rapidly spreading across the north of the island. “If no help is sent, we will be burned alive. The fire is coming on two fronts, and there is no way out, only the sea. We are thousands of people. Where are we supposed to go?” a terrified resident said on Saturday to Open TV. More than 2,000 residents of the northern region have been evacuated. Many people had to flee from their villages to the town of Istiaia, where around 10,000 people are holding out.

The fire reached the village of Pefki and nearby villages on Sunday evening. Flames shot 100 meters into the air, consumed the forest and attacked the houses. Since the villages are surrounded by the fire, residents fled to the beach. Under a dusty red cloud, 400 residents found refuge on a ferry. The traumatised people were even forced to pay for tickets on some of the first evacuation trips. Only after outrage on social media did the government order the shipping companies to operate for free.

Desperate residents directed angry appeals and despairing pleas for help to the government. Litsa Efstathia, a resident from Pefki, told Open TV that there were no preparations, clear orders or support from the air against the fires. “We have not seen a single plane. Today is the fifth day. Nothing. Are there no planes to extinguish the fires? All of northern Euboea will burn down. Residents are trying to save themselves and fight. Everyone here is beside themselves with anger. We appeal, no we demand that aircraft come.”

Since Greece has a lack of operational personnel and firefighting planes due to decades of austerity measures, the firefighting service has been totally overwhelmed by fires breaking out all over the country. A large percentage of the force was deployed on Thursday and Friday to combat the fire approaching the capital Athens, with the result that few aircraft were deployed to Euboea, allowing the fires to spread unhindered.

Residents everywhere have sought to save themselves and protect their villages from the flames by all available means. They have tackled smoldering sections of forest with buckets of water and transformed their cars and small trucks into auxiliary fire engines to help extinguish the blazes.

The mayor from Istiaia, who initially downplayed the fires, was also beside himself with anger. He warned Open TV on Sunday, “Today we expect total destruction by fire here. We are alone. The fire brigade only gives us ridiculous evacuation plans. The villages are burning or are only being saved by the residents’ self-sacrifice. Aircraft must now be deployed to stop our region from burning. It is a disgrace to the country what is happening here. We have not extinguished a single front.”

While other countries like France, Ukraine, Cyprus, Croatia, Sweden and Israel have already sent help for the Greek emergency services, Germany only responded after a week. According to the Interior Ministry, units from the THW aid organisation and fire brigades from North-Rhine Westphalia and Hesse will be sent to Greece.

The fact that the German government has watched without taking action while Greece is ablaze is shocking but not surprising. It was the German government that has imposed with ruthless brutality the European Union’s austerity measures on Greece’s working class over the past ten years.

Responsibility for the systematic neglect of the catastrophe prevention system and infrastructure, together with the bleeding dry of public sector budgets, lies with the Greek and German ruling class. For them, the concern about saving human lives and protecting the environment is merely a bothersome expense that cuts across their profit-making interest.

These policies are supported by all parties, including the ND, social democratic PASOK and pseudo-left Syriza, leading to a series of avoidable wildfire disasters. In 2007, flames raged in the Peloponnese, Attica and Euboea. The inferno in the resort town of Mati under the Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras in 2018 claimed over 100 lives.

The government’s priorities are underlined by the 2021 budget. The defence budget is increasing by one-third from last year to a total of €5.5 billion. The entire rearmament plan over the coming years is comprised of €11.5 billion. In addition, the government pumped another €30 million into the police to control the universities. Large sums of money flowed to pro-government media outlets, which are controlled by Greek oligarchs.

By contrast, savings are being made in health care and wildfire protection. Of the €17.7 million for fire protection requested by forest fire centers this year, the government approved just €1.7 million. Fire departments are hopelessly under-resourced, even though the government claims that the number of personnel has risen by 15.6 percent since 2018. In a country like Greece, which struggles with wildfires every year, this is a drop in the bucket.

Disaster protection infrastructure is also totally inadequate. Expenditure rose in 2021 from €400 million in 2018 to €616 million, the government boasted. But it remains silent on the fact that disaster protection is also responsible for conducting the coronavirus measures and contact tracing. Alongside the heat wave and catastrophic fires, the spread of COVID-19 is accelerating with over 3,000 cases per day.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has sought to divert attention away from the political record of his government by referring to the higher power of climate change, which created the exceptional emergency situation. But the reality is that it is the capitalist nature of their policies, like the ruling class around the world, that have both produced the environmental crisis to begin with and created the extent and misery of the fires.

The forest fire crisis is not restricted to Greece, but is striking new areas. In Italy, fires are spreading in Sicily, Apulia and Calabria. In the Balkans, Bulgaria, Albania and Kosovo are also affected.

In Turkey, forest fires now largely brought under control raged for 10 days. In the area around Mola, up to 60,000 hectares was burned as of August 6. Up to 36,000 people had to be evacuated. On Friday, residents in Milas protested in Mugla province against the forestry minister Bekir Pakdemirli. The police arrested a woman who shouted, “Where were the firefighting aircraft? The people’s houses are burned, shame on the government! The government should resign!”

Another hot spot is Russia. A state of emergency has been declared in many areas. Sakha, in the country’s northeast, has been hit especially badly. Observers describe the fires as the worst they’ve ever seen. A total of 180 fires are currently burning. Already destroyed are 1.3 million hectares of forest and several villages have been evacuated. In the city of Sarov in Nishny-Novgorod Oblast, an even larger catastrophe looms. There, the flames are threatening the national nuclear weapons research center.

The wildfire disaster is a direct product of climate change produced by the capitalist profit system, which threatens the future and lives of millions of people.

The International Panel on Climate Change will release today the initial stages of a report warning that the current wildfires and heat waves are only just the beginning. The Mediterranean region, with 500 million inhabitants, is a hot spot for climate change. The IPCC projects here a more rapid increase in average temperatures than in any other region, according to AFP.

By 2050, a further 93 million people could be affected by heat waves, with more than 20,000 heat-related deaths each year. Global warming will lead to ever more extreme weather events: droughts and heat waves like now in the Mediterranean on the one hand, and storms and floods on the other, as was recently seen in Germany and Belgium.

French health unions file strike notices against mandatory vaccination

Anthony Torres

In the context of protests called by the far right against the Macron government’s “health pass,” the health wing of the Sud trade union has filed a notice for indefinite strike action by health personnel against the law. Protests were held again on Saturday, involving approximately 240,000 people across the country, according to the government’s own figures, including approximately 17,000 in Paris. On Thursday, the Constitutional Council published a statement that the government’s law was legal, including the requirement that health personnel be vaccinated.

The healthcare branches of Sud and the General Federation of Labour ( Conféderation générale de travail —CGT) are demanding the “ending of compulsory vaccination” for health care workers and the “freedom to choose” for every individual whether or not to be vaccinated. In a statement, Sud denounced sanctions against health workers who refuse vaccination: “The exemptions open a dangerous precedent. They permit the employer to carry out sanctions (suspension of work contract and of pay), for a reason that should fall under medical secrecy and the jurisdiction of occupational health and safety.”

In addition to the repeal of the health pass and ending compulsory vaccination, Sud’s statement includes other demands, including for a minimum wage of 1700 euros, the reopening of closed beds or the unconditional recognition of coronavirus infection as an occupational disease for all health staff and social workers.

Anti-vaccine protesters march during a rally in Strasbourg, Saturday, July 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)

In Marseilles, Sud and the CGT have published notices for an unlimited strike at the Marseille Public Assistance hospital beginning August 4 and the Édouard Toulouse hospital beginning today. In Lyon, Sud Santé has also published a strike notice, which began on July 29. In Corsica, in Bastia, the CGT of the hospital centre of the Haute-Corse municipality filed a strike notice on Friday, July 30, while a rally was held the same day.

There is legitimate anger among nursing staff against the criminal policy of “herd immunity” that has been pursued by the Macron government and the European Union. The pandemic has brought the health system to the brink of collapse as a result of the austerity policies of successive governments, sacrificing the lives of health care workers. Macron’s “health pass” is part of a policy pursued by the ruling class throughout the European Union to impose a return to work and school reopening, allowing the virus to spread in defiance of scientific recommendations.

However, the policy of the trade union bureaucracies is reactionary, diverting the anger of health workers behind an anti-scientific, anti-vaccine perspective advanced above all by the extreme right, which advocates for an unchecked spread of the coronavirus.

Compulsory vaccination against many diseases, including COVID-19, is not an attack on democratic rights. It is part of the social gains obtained by the struggles of the working class in the 20th century, which have improved working-class life expectancy. Vaccination against the coronavirus is a basic requirement of public health and self-defence of the working class, including health care workers.

The fight against the pandemic and police dictatorship is an international one, which must be conducted scientifically through the mobilisations of workers independently of the trade unions, which are in the thrall of the financial aristocracy. The strike notice filed by the CGT and Sud occur under conditions of demonstrations called by neofascists Florian Philippot, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and Marion Maréchal Le Pen against vaccination and for the lifting of all health restrictions.

This phenomenon is not isolated to France; all over Europe, far-right forces are organizing demonstrations against the health restrictions advocated by scientists.

In Italy, in Milan, Turin, Rome, Naples and other cities, several thousand people took to the streets this weekend at the call of the far-right party Fratelli d’Italia to demonstrate against the requirement of a Green Pass for certain activities from August 6.

In Germany, in Berlin, hundreds of hostile people defied the ban on demonstrations and gathered illegally in the streets of the city on Sunday, causing scuffles with the police. They were politically dominated by far-right and fascist forces who openly display their attitudes via Third Reich war flags and anti-Semitic symbols.

Sud falsifies the origin of the demonstrations called by the far right to conceal their alignment with the political activities of neofascists across Europe. It claims to call for workers “to participate in the social mobilizations and the defence of freedoms that are being built and that have nothing to do with the rallies initiated by the extreme right and conspiracy movements, which we are fighting against.”

Notwithstanding the fact that Sud and the CGT call for workers to join separate rallies, in parallel with those of the extreme right, the protest movement as a whole against Macron’s law has been initiated by the far right.

Moreover, the site Permanent Revolution, which is close to the Sud trade union, admitted that the anti-vaccine demonstrations were called by the far right: “While the far right was able to intervene and call for a mobilisation, the general tint of the demands is marked by confusion, expressing an initial politicisation. A politicisation that is marked by the discrediting of the claims of the government, which has opened up space for doubts, some of them legitimate, about vaccination.”

Explosive anger is rising across Europe and internationally against the ruling elite, which has refused to take the necessary health measures to stop the pandemic. An international health and political crisis has developed, with the possibility of an independent intervention by the working class to impose a scientific health policy. In March 2020, it was the spontaneous walkouts by workers across Italy and Europe that imposed a strict lockdown to allow workers to shelter in their homes.

The CGT and Sud are trying to line up angry and desperate health care workers behind the far right, to prevent a fight for a scientific policy against the virus.

The anti-vaccine campaign of the neofascists, encouraged by the financial aristocracy, is aimed at enforcing a further turn to the right in official politics, so that the billions of euros that are required to vaccinate the population will not be diverted from the corporate bailouts adopted by the EU. Indeed, the trade union apparatuses will be well compensated via the bailout funds that pass via the major corporations and their labour relations “social partners.”

Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government to ban Castilian nationalist party

Alejandro López

The Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is moving to ban Izquierda Castellana (Castilian Left), a separatist-nationalist party active in central Spain.

The outlawing of a political party claiming to be socialist, republican and internationalist is part of an escalating campaign by the European ruling class on free speech and democratic rights, intensified with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Terrified at growing social opposition to “herd immunity” policies and bank and corporate bailouts which have left over 1.1 million dead across Europe, the ruling class aims to suppress all forms of opposition.

Podemos is playing a leading role in this attack on democratic rights. Drawn from the affluent middle class and based on the anti-Marxist postmodernist identity politics of race and gender, it is entirely devoted to protecting the privileges its members enjoy in the existing order. Podemos will use all means at its disposal to crush social opposition, as it carries out policies of austerity, war, and police repression, as well as the criminal “herd immunity” policy which has already led to the deaths of over 100,000 people in Spain of COVID-19.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (PSOE), second left, walks next to Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, second right, and First Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, left, at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Jan. 14 2020. (Image Credit: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

This also constitutes a warning on the reactionary role that Podemos’ international allies like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Unsubmissive France (LFI) and the German Left Party will play. Were they to come to power, they would implement the same anti-democratic policies as Podemos.

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) opposes the persecution of Izquierda Castellana (IzCa). It has unbridgeable political differences with IzCa, which promotes Castilian nationalism, seeking a “united Castille” involving Cantabria, Castile and León, Madrid, La Rioja and Castile-La Mancha. This works to divide workers along national lines, amid a decades-long promotion of Basque, Catalan and Galician separatism, and the whipping up of Spanish chauvinism.

Nonetheless, IzCa’s persecution is an attempt by the Spanish bourgeoisie to intimidate political opposition, set a precedent of groundless bans of political parties, and install a police-state climate.

On Friday, IzCa published a statement describing the attempted ban. It explains that the National Court, descended from the Public Order Court set up under the fascist Franco regime to punish “political crimes,” has notified them about a resolution sponsored by the PSOE-Podemos Ministry of Interior, through the Solicitor General of the State. The resolution “calls for the ‘extinction’ of Izquierda Castellana, that is, its disappearance as a legal political organisation.”

IzCa explains that the Ministry of Interior “is resorting to administrative tricks, arguing that IzCa’s statutes do not comply with the changes introduced by the Organic Law 3/2015 legislative reform of March 30, on the control of the economic-financial activity of Political Parties.”

Such tricks are ludicrous. Spain’s main opposition party, the conservative Popular Party, has been illegally financed by corrupt deals with big business for over two decades, and has never been threatened with a ban. In 2018, the Gürtel case demonstrated that the PP kept off-book accounts, stemming from a sweeping kickbacks-for-contracts scheme affecting scores of local and regional PP officials who awarded no-bid contracts to business networks. This money was then used to finance political campaigns and provide a lavish lifestyle to select politicians.

According to an official investigation, the PP had “a financing system outside the legal economic circuit” between 1990 and 2008.

“It is paradoxical,” IzCa states, “that a political organisation that … never in its entire history requested or received any subsidies from the state, will be outlawed based on such reasons, especially when most of the political parties that ostensibly breach the law and regulations on such matters are not even warned of such a possibility.” The ban, IzCa adds, is part of an increasingly repressive policy of the Interior Ministry, “accentuated since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

IzCa is an alliance of Stalinist, feminist and petty-bourgeois Castilian nationalist groupings founded in 2002, including Comunero Left, Popular Castillian Unity, Revolutionary Castillian Youth, Castillian Women and a hard-line Stalinist group, the Communist Party of the Castilian People, which left soon afterwards.

An earlier attempted ban on IzCa was closed by the National Court in 2008. Its leaders, now-deceased former leader Doris Benegas and current general secretary Luis Ocampo have repeatedly been targeted. In 2012, Benegas was arrested on suspicion of organising an anti-government demonstration, the so-called Surround the Congress protest. In October 2014, Benegas was arrested at an anti-monarchy protest in Madrid, held for 24 hours and prosecuted. In that trial, prosecutors requested a year and a half in prison. Finally, Benegas and two others were acquitted.

The principal target of the PSOE-Podemos government’s groundless threat to ban IzCa, a bankrupt organisation that poses no threat to Spanish capitalism, is not so much IzCa as the broader rise of political opposition in the working class. IzCa serves only as a pretext to try out methods of political repression as strikes, protests and broader opposition to “herd immunity” policies and bank bailouts mount among workers.

Podemos has stepped up its efforts to create not the “radical democracy” it promised, but a police state. The threat to ban IzCa takes place on the six-month anniversary of the jailing of Stalinist rapper Pablo Hasél on charges of insulting the Spanish state and the Bourbon monarchy. Hasél is the first musician imprisoned in Spain since 1978 and the fall of the fascist regime led by Francisco Franco.

Podemos has escalated internet censorship, whipped up a MeToo witch hunt against opera singer Plácido Domingo and implemented a fascistic anti-migrant policy. This has led to the drowning of over 2,000 migrants off the Canary Islands, a surge in violence against migrants across Spain and reports of sexual abuse of dozens of minors at PSOE-Podemos government-run migrant concentration camps.

The working class must oppose these authoritarian moves, beginning by opposing those who are ramming them through: Podemos and its pseudo-left hangers, which while posting solidarity statements with IzCa, continue to provide Podemos with a “left” cover.

This includes Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left), formerly affiliated with the Committee for a Workers’ International, which posted a statement against the “antidemocratic action,” one more “proof of the authoritarian and reactionary character of the regime of 1978, but also of the drift to the right of the current Executive.” It forgot to add that IR acts like a faction of Podemos. In last May’s elections in Madrid, it proudly stated it distributed 120,000 leaflets, organised 70 campaign tables and produced 80 large banners calling for a Podemos vote.

Anticapitalistas, which left the PSOE-Podemos government last year to better suppress social opposition from the outside, has yet to publish a statement, or even an article on its online paper Poder Popular. Instead, it posted an empty, one-sentence tweet from its regional branch of Castilla y León, stating: “The Regime of [19]78 will not be able to bend the will of the people who take control of their future… We are still together, not a step back.”

The Morenoite Revolutionary Workers Current posted a statement criticising the ban and calling for a “united front in defence of democratic rights and against the repression by the self-named ‘progressive’ government and the Monarchical regime.” It did not mention whom this united front would include. However, the Morenoites have a long record of seeking alliances with satellites of Podemos like the Revolutionary Left and Anticapitalistas.

COVID catastrophe fuels unrest in Southeast Asia

Mike Head

Popular disaffection is rising across Southeast Asia as millions of people, mostly impoverished, suffer the worsening impact on lives and livelihoods of the failure of capitalist governments throughout the region and worldwide to protect society from COVID-19.

Home to more than 650 million people, Southeast Asia has become an epicentre of the global Delta surge that has resulted from the corporate profit-driven policies by which governments have refused to impose, or prematurely lifted, safety restrictions, allowing more virulent mutant strains to spin out of control.

Across the region, the disaster has been compounded by the near-collapse of chronically underfunded health care systems, lack of access to vaccines and widespread losses of jobs and incomes.

People wait to have medical oxygen tanks refilled outside the Naing oxygen factory at the South Dagon industrial zone in Yangon, Myanmar, Wednesday, July 28, 2021. (AP Photo)

One of the most severely affected countries, Indonesia, last week passed a damning milestone—100,000 officially confirmed COVID-19 deaths.

Just days earlier, President Joko Widodo eased restrictions on July 29, allowing small businesses and some shopping malls to reopen. To appease the financial elite, Widido lifted the already limited lockdowns, even in the worst-hit areas, such as Jakarta and Bali, despite warnings by health experts that this would lead to a resurgence of infections.

Virologists also warned of the potential for new variants to emerge, which has occurred when the virus has been allowed to run rampant in countries with large populations. “The decision doesn’t seem to be related to the pandemic, but to economics,” Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist at the University of Indonesia, told Reuters.

It took 14 months for Indonesia to exceed the 50,000-death mark at the end of May, and just over nine weeks to double it. Despite a fall from July’s peak of more than 57,000 new daily infections, the Health Ministry is still recording more than 1,700 new deaths of COVID-19 every day.

As in other countries, these figures are believed to be a substantial undercount. Low testing rates and a lack of contact tracing means many thousands of deaths are going unrecorded.

Since the beginning of June, more than 2,800 people have died at home, according to LaporCOVID-19, a non-government virus data group. Some of those deaths were counted in official figures but others were not.

“They were rejected by the hospitals, so they went back home and did the self-isolation at home with limited access to medicine, no oxygen and no monitoring from doctors until they died,” Ahmad Arif, one of LaporCOVID-19’s founders, told Associated Press (AP).

The World Health Organisation said hospitals remained in need of isolation rooms, oxygen supplies, medical and personal protective equipment, as well as mobile field hospitals and body bags. Indonesia’s vaccination rate remains at less than 8 percent.

The world’s fourth most populous country has now recorded more than 3.6 million COVID-19 cases since March 2020. An immense social crisis is developing. East Java’s child protection agency revealed last week that 5,082 children in that province alone had lost one or both parents to the virus. Some estimates suggest that figure nationally could be as high as 35,000.

About 30 percent of Indonesia’s 277 million people are officially regarded as living in poverty as a result of the pandemic, soaring from less than 10 percent in 2019.

In Thailand, facing a rising tide of opposition to its calamitous pandemic response, the military regime of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha is trying to use emergency decrees to outlaw dissent.

Last week, as the country’s confirmed infections and deaths hit record highs, the regime moved to block online reports that may “instigate fear,” even if true. Alleged offenders could be jailed for up to two years.

The health ministry said the new cases had exceeded 20,000 per day for the first time, with deaths nearing 200 daily. By last Wednesday, total cases had reached 672,385 and 5,503 deaths.

The public healthcare system is breaking down. As hospitals filled up, the authorities scrambled to set up ad hoc isolation wards in airport terminals, warehouses and decommissioned railway carriages. One hospital resorted to renting freight containers to store dead bodies after its morgue ran out of room.

Only about 6.5 percent of Thailand’s 70 million people were fully vaccinated as of Thursday. In recent weeks, protests have demanded Prayuth’s resignation. In July, police used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon against demonstrators in Bangkok.

The regime last week tightened partial containment measures in the capital Bangkok and several high-risk provinces, and said the rules were likely to remain in place until the end of August.

There is a political crisis in Malaysia, which reported 20,889 new COVID-19 cases last Friday, breaking its record for daily infections for a third consecutive day. The cumulative total number of infections now stands at 1,224,595, according to the health ministry.

This figure is also far below the reality. Deputy health director-general Chong Chee Kheong said 80 percent of COVID-19 cases who were “brought in dead” were never diagnosed with the disease. Out of the 1,000 deaths reported weekly, about 80 to 100 were “brought in dead” and the number of such cases had been rising over the past few weeks.

Thousands of contract doctors staged a walkout on July 23, demanding permanent postings and better pay. “Almost 150 medical staff have resigned this year because they are fatigued with the current system,” a doctor told Reuters at a protest in the capital Kuala Lumpur. The doctors said an offer by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to extend their contracts did not go far enough.

Facing growing unrest, the government last week said it would no longer use the number of recorded daily infections as a metric to ease safety curbs for states once they entered the second phase of a “national recovery plan.”

Muhyiddin has refused to quit, despite losing the support of some members of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the biggest bloc in his unstable ruling alliance, and faces a no-confidence vote in parliament next month.

The Delta variant is also ravaging Myanmar. Daily cases, taken as an average over seven days, have risen from around 5,000 to 6,000 over the past month, and deaths have reached about 350 a day, but limited testing indicates that this is a gross underestimate. The share of tests that return positive results has exceeded 35 percent since mid-July, which suggests widespread, uncontrolled transmission.

Officially, just over 7,500 people have died from COVID-19 since the February 1 military coup, but few people are treated at public hospitals, so the real death toll is unknown. In recent weeks funeral homes and crematoriums have been overwhelmed.

The inability of many people to work safely, coupled with a shortage of oxygen, medicine and a properly functioning hospital system, is fueling the health crisis. Exacerbating it is the arrest of more than 150 doctors and nurses, who have been at the forefront of a civil disobedience movement. Another 600 medics are estimated to have stopped working after the junta issued warrants for their arrests.

After having contained the virus for much of the pandemic, Vietnam is facing its worst outbreak, with Ho Chi Minh City and surrounding provinces accounting for most new infections.

The government reported 8,324 new infections last Friday, up from 7,244 cases on Thursday, taking the pandemic total above 193,000. It reported 296 additional coronavirus deaths on the same day, raising the country’s death toll to 3,016.

Only 820,000 people have been fully vaccinated, or less than 1 percent of the country’s 98 million population, according to official data.

About a third of Vietnam’s 63 cities and provinces are under coronavirus restrictions. The capital Hanoi will extend them until August 22, its health ministry said last Friday, warning of new clusters of infections detected in the city of more than 8 million people.

In the Philippines, cases are now averaging about 8,000 a day, with deaths rising to around 200 a day. Chaos overtook several COVID-19 vaccination sites in Manila last Thursday as thousands of people tried to receive a shot before the capital headed back into a partial lockdown for two weeks.

With around 1.6 million COVID-19 cases and more than 28,000 deaths, the country has the second-worst record in Southeast Asia after Indonesia. Just 9.3 percent of the 110 million population have been fully vaccinated. In an attempt to divert blame from his government, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to arrest people who do not get a vaccine.

Many people are out of work, unable to buy food and other essential items to survive, but the government has offered only paltry support payments of $US20 to $80 per fortnight to low-income households.

The utter indifference and nationalist program of governments in the imperialist centres has been epitomised by the Australian government’s offer of limited assistance to neighbouring Indonesia. Canberra has promised just 2.5 million vaccine doses and $A12 million worth of ventilators, oxygen cylinders and testing kits. During the past five years, Australia’s development budget to Indonesia has more than halved, from around $600 million in 2014–15 to less than $300 million this year.

Australia: Major hospitals cancel surgeries as they strain under Delta outbreak

Gary Alvernia

As Sydney’s population faces around 300 new daily cases of the COVID-19 Delta variant, actions by major hospitals to cancel surgeries reflect the rapidly rising burden on the public hospital system in Australia’s largest city.

Last week the Royal Prince Alfred, St. Vincent’s and Liverpool hospitals all suspended category 3 surgeries, considered “non-urgent/elective” by New South Wales (NSW) Health, the state authority responsible for managing Sydney’s public system. The measures were required due to an increasing proportion of intensive care unit (ICU) beds being occupied by COVID patients, and a loss of available staff from COVID exposures.

Hospitals in southwest Sydney have been particularly affected, as the working-class region of over one million inhabitants bears the brunt of the current outbreak. As well as Liverpool Hospital, nearby Campbelltown Hospital suspended elective surgeries three weeks ago after hundreds of staff were forced to isolate.

People queuing for coronavirus tests at Royal Melbourne Hospital last year(Credit: WSWS)

Additionally, Fairfield and Bankstown-Lidcombe hospitals have similarly confronted a loss of 400 healthcare workers, and concerns now exist for the biggest hospital in Sydney’s west, Westmead Hospital, which reported a positive case among a member of staff. While the Westmead worker was fully vaccinated, transmission risks mean that 36 other staff have been required to isolate.

NSW Ambulance has been reported to be at breaking point due to the increased workload. Hundreds of paramedics are in isolation. Last week, a lack of available beds resulted in ambulances containing COVID patients ramping outside Westmead Hospital.

The Delta mutant that is driving the outbreak in Sydney, as well as smaller outbreaks throughout Australia, is deadlier and more contagious than previous COVID variants. It is particularly dangerous in Australia because of its disastrous vaccination program. The country has among the lowest rates of inoculation for the advanced capitalist countries, with many healthcare workers unvaccinated.

By August 8, the NSW outbreak had already caused 28 deaths, including a man in his 20s, and a woman in her 30s, both reported as previously healthy. Due to inadequate protective equipment and a lack of isolation rooms, hospitals are serving as sources of transmission, with tragic consequences. Five deaths were attributed to an outbreak at Liverpool Hospital. One health worker told SBS news: “A lot of nurses [are] refusing to go to the COVID wards or just calling in sick, non-stop.”

By the same day, 362 COVID-19 patients had been admitted to hospital, with 58 people in intensive care, 24 of whom require ventilation. This already represents a significant strain on existing ICU capacity in the state, which has only 930 beds for a population of over eight million people. As noted by Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society vice-president Dr Mark Nicholls in comments to the Sydney Morning Herald: “Intensive care is a finite resource, and even under normal circumstances, it’s almost full.”

ICUs are necessary for managing the sickest patients with life-threatening medical conditions, including (among others) post-surgical patients, victims of traumatic injuries, cancer patients, and organ transplant recipients. Any substantial increase in COVID patients needing ICU beds will divert critical resources from these patients.

Nor is the cancellation of elective procedures a trivial matter. While not required immediately to save a person’s life, category 3 surgeries include joint replacements for mobility, eye surgeries to prevent blindness, and even certain cardiac surgeries to prevent heart attacks. As a result of COVID outbreaks in the past 18 months, elective surgery waitlists have already been prolonged. These delays most severely impact the working class, as many cannot afford to pay exorbitant costs for private treatment and must rely on the increasingly beleaguered public system.

The developing hospital crisis, in what may yet be an early stage in this current outbreak, exposes the criminal character of calls to “live with virus,” championed by the Australian ruling elite. When asked at a media conference about the dangers, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard replied “of course” the system was under stress, but claimed it was being managed.

Hazzard sought to blame members of the public “not complying with the public health orders.” No evidence has been provided for allegations of widespread “non-compliance.” However, NSW Chief Medical Officer Kerry Chant admitted that workplaces are the main source of transmissions in Sydney. Those infections are inevitably spread to workers’ families in the highest density working class areas of the western and southwestern suburbs.

Blame can squarely be placed on the Liberal-National Party Coalition state government of Premier Gladys Berejiklian. It has pursued a policy of only limited lockdowns, with the overt support of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and tacit backing of the opposition parties, Labor and the Greens.

Rejecting hard lockdowns called for by epidemiologists and infectious diseases experts in order to protect business interests, Berejiklian allowed the present outbreak to spread, allowing factories to continue operations and construction work to resume, despite workplaces fueling community transmission.

The dangerously inadequate lockdown, accompanied by only paltry support for unemployed workers facing financial ruin, has been maintained with the support of the opposition Labor Party and the trade unions, which have joined hands with employers to demand further exemptions from workplace closures.

A similar hospital crisis is developing in Brisbane, the capital of the northern state of Queensland. With just over 100 cases over the past week from its Delta outbreak, the state Labor government of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has conceded that the health system is buckling, even as it ends a week-long lockdown with active cases present.

Hundreds of health workers are in self-isolation, including the entire cardiac surgery department at Queensland Children’s Hospital. This is due to the majority of infections being among school children, causing a risk to their parents, many of whom are health workers.

Queensland’s Labor government is aware of the crisis it has created. In June the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the largest hospital network in Brisbane was forced to cancel elective surgeries for two weeks due to bed shortages, despite no significant COVID outbreaks at the time.

Even before the COVID crisis, public hospitals were at the breaking point, a product of decades of cuts to public healthcare by both Liberal-National and Labor governments. Waiting lists for most category 3 surgeries were one year or greater, and hospitals, particularly in rural and remote regions, were understaffed and underfunded, resulting in a greater number of preventable deaths.

These conditions have sparked stoppages by hospital workers. Last year, nurses and midwives took strike action at Blacktown Hospital, in Sydney’s west, and senior obstetricians threatened mass resignations over serious deficiencies in obstetric services, leading to the avoidable deaths of 4 new-born babies in just 18 months.

In June, hundreds of nurses and midwives in Sydney and across NSW walked off the job over ongoing staff shortages, excessive overtime and lack of clinical staff, as well as the state government’s cap of 1.5 percent on public sector pay increases this year—a real wage cut.

Yet the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association, refused to mobilise its 72,000 members across the state in a united struggle, and has instead ensured that industrial action has remained confined to individual hospitals, across different days and for different lengths of time.

Health workers cannot leave their protection, or that of their patients, in the hands of the unions or governments. They must form rank-and-file action committees, independent of the unions, to fight for the necessary safety measures and for the urgent pouring of funds into the public hospital systems.

Russian flight attendants carry out sickout against dangerous working conditions at Rossiya Airlines

Clara Weiss

Flight attendants in Russia took part in a series of sickouts in late July and early August at the Rossiya Airlines, forcing the cancellations of dozens of flights. In Russia, airline workers are by law prohibited from officially going on strike.

Workers are infuriated over miserable pay, woeful understaffing and the massive spread of the coronavirus exacerbated by company policies. Flight attendants are forced to fly for weeks on end without a break, with one flight attendant passing out on the job because of extreme exhaustion. Because of the insufferable conditions, an average of 20 flight attendants are quitting their jobs every day.

Rossiya, a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned Aeroflot company, refuses to acknowledge that a strike took place. However, in a sign of extreme nervousness, on Thursday it announced “loyalty premiums” of 25,000 rubles (about $340) for its employees, provided they are fully “available for scheduling” between August 5 and September 10.

Rossiya Airlines Airbus A319-100 (Image credit: Marvin Mutz/ Wikipedia CC2.0)

Aeroflot kukhnia (Aeroflot kitchen), a popular channel for airline workers on the Russian social media site Telegram, which has covered the strike and published information on working conditions, has called upon workers to reject the offer and on passengers to boycott the airline. It also called for the removal of responsible managers whom it described as “potential murderers.”

Aeroflot kukhnia, apparently run by flight attendants, obtained the internal document outlining the new policy, which is circulating with no signature, no stamp, and “not even the name and position of those who worked it out and confirmed it,' according to the channel. “Overall, it does not have any legal legitimacy and not a single flight attendant will be able to contest or demand anything on this basis.”

Based on the document, workers would only receive the sum if they are fully “available for scheduling” regardless of their state of health, in other words, even if they are infected with COVID-19. Thousands of Russian airline workers have fallen ill during the pandemic, especially over the summer, when the country experienced a massive surge caused by the highly infectious Delta variant.

According to the aviation workers union, a staggering one third of the total workforce of flight attendants have either been infected or are recovering from COVID-19. Russia is still recording an average of well over 20,000 new cases per day, the fourth highest number in the world. In spite of this, virtually all public health measures have been lifted as vaccination rates stall, as is the case in western Europe and the United States.

“How dangerous will it be for the average passenger to fly with Rossiya, especially for those who are immuno-compromised?” Aeroflot kukhina asked. “This is not even manslaughter, but an entirely different article of the criminal code.”

In an earlier post explaining the reasons for the strike, the channel noted, “Not a single flight attendant has seen the salary that management has now been promising for five years. 80,000 rubles [$1,089] is a fairy tale even for those flying more than 100 hours. For 70 hours of flight time, you’ll get 50,000 rubles [$680] and even that is not guaranteed.” Instructors who have to teach new flight attendants are paid only for 40 hours of work but often work up to 80 hours or more. The channel added that workers were subject to “constant slander by management. You are no one, you are meat.”

A central grievance of flight attendants is also that the company routinely forces them to work in violation of safety rules, endangering their own lives and those of passengers. But in the case of accidents, it is the workers who face legal repercussions.

On social media, the sickouts won significant support. One airline worker wrote, “Great job. That’s what needs to be done, it cannot be everyone by themselves, but we must act together as united brothers in aviation. To hell with all those who scare and insult you. The fight is now in the open, fear nothing, you are correct. Period.”

Russia’s airline industry is notoriously unsafe, and plane crashes that kill hundreds of people are a regular occurrence. The unsafe conditions in the airline industry are stark example of the consequences of the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism.

Nationwide, Even before the pandemic, more than four workers died on average in work-related accidents each day, for a total of 1613 deaths in 2019, one of the highest industrial mortality rates in the world. The official figure for work-related, non-fatal accidents is 23,000. However, a recent investigation by investigative journalism outlet Istories found that the real number of safety-related accidents in Russian industries are between 22 and 44 times higher than officially reported.

The flight attendants’ strike no doubt has provoked enormous concerns in the ruling oligarchy. It is a clear indication of growing social and political opposition in the Russian working class amidst an upsurge of working class struggles internationally. In late June, autoworkers at the PSMA Rus’ plant in Kaluga engaged in a work stoppage to protest the unbearable heat at the factory.

The flight attendants’ strike comes just a few weeks before Russia’s parliamentary elections in September. Well aware of the explosive conditions created by the pandemic, the Kremlin has worked out an agreement “For safe elections,” according to which candidates are not allowed to address the pandemic. The agreement was signed by the ruling United Russia party, the Greens, the far-right Rodina and Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and a few other parties.

As it has around the world, the pandemic, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Russia, has played a catalyzing role in fueling the class struggle. And, as everywhere, the unions are playing a critical role in suppressing any struggles by the working class in defense of their interests and their lives.

The Russian unions across aviation and other industries have maintained conspicuous silence about the sickouts, seeking to isolate the strikers. The union of flight attendants has not even condemned the “offer” by the company for workers to endanger their own lives and those of passengers for a miserable 25,000 rubles.

The trade unions in Russia have all emerged either directly out of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s official unions or out of attempts by layers of the bureaucracy and middle class to set up so-called “independent” unions to gain a larger share of the spoils in the process of privatization. They are complicit in the social catastrophe that capitalist restoration has wrought and are integrated into the state and various oligarchy-controlled political parties.

IMF offers crumbs to poorer countries

Nick Beams

To the accompaniment of overblown rhetoric and after months of haggling, the International Monetary Fund has agreed to try and boost the finances of low- and middle-income countries as they struggle to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic amid lack of access to vaccines and already inadequate public health services.

Last week it signed off on a $650 billion expansion of its Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) program. SDRs have no conditions attached and do not have to be repaid, enabling countries to employ them without making compensatory cuts to public spending. But the decision will make little difference to the worsening situation confronting many countries as they face a continuing slowdown in the growth of their national income.

This was acknowledged, at least indirectly, by the IMF itself in its latest update to its world economic outlook. It cut the forecast for growth for emerging-market and less-developed countries, reversing the trend that has prevailed over the past two decades and more.

Kristalina Georgieva of the International Monetary Fund (Source: imp.org)

However, this did not stop IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva from talking up the SDR expansion when she announced it.

She said it was a “historic decision—the largest SDR allocation in the history of the IMF and a shot in the arm for the global economy at a time of unprecedented crisis.

“The SDR allocation will benefit all members, address the long-term global need for reserves, build confidence and foster the resilience and stability of the global economy. It will particularly help out most vulnerable economies struggling to cope with the impact of the COVID-19 crisis,” she continued.

These claims are contradicted by the very structure of the allocation. The expansion of SDRs, the equivalent of newly printed money, will be allocated to the IMF’s 190 members in proportion to their share of the global economy. This means that only $275 billion will go to emerging and developing economies, with the rest allocated to the world’s major economies.

Furthermore, it is estimated that only 8 percent of the new money will go to countries that are classified as “highly debt vulnerable.”

Debt is a problem across the board. According to the Institute of International Finance, average government debt in large emerging market economies rose from 52.2 percent of gross domestic product to 60.5 percent in 2020—the largest increase on record.

The IMF itself has reported that more than half of emerging and developing countries had inadequate finances to meet the pandemic and had been forced to deplete their foreign currency reserves to combat it.

Many of these countries operate under the threat that a tightening of financial conditions in the US and other major economies would see the reversal of capital inflows, further escalating their economic and financial problems.

There have been calls for richer countries to channel their allocation of SDRs to poorer countries and Georgieva said the IMF was seeking to advance those efforts. But given the record on the allocation of vaccines against the coronavirus, which shows that poorer countries have received only a tiny fraction of what is needed, there is little prospect of any meaningful movement on this front.

One of the most significant effects of the pandemic on less developed countries is in the tourist industry.

According to the UN’s World Tourism Organisation, global international arrivals for the first five months of this year were, on average, 85 percent down from their levels in 2019, compared to a reduction of 65 percent for the same period in 2020.

In the Asia-Pacific region, now being hard hit by the Delta variant, there has been a 95 percent fall in arrivals compared to 2019 levels. Chinese tourism to the region has virtually ceased. The dependence of many of these countries on foreign visitors is exemplified by Thailand where 20 percent of GDP and employment is generated by tourism.

Luiz Eduardo Peixoto, an emerging-markets economist at BNP Paribas in London, told the Financial Times that the situation this year was worse than predicted.

“Last year, there was an assumption that in 2021 we would see a rebound,” he said. But the drop in number last year was close to the most pessimistic scenario because “we didn’t get a recovery during the [northern] winter—quite the contrary. This year, things are not recovering as expected.”

Viewed within a longer term historical perspective, the IMF’s latest intervention via SDRs could well be described as the case of a criminal returning to the scene of the crime and seeking to expunge vital evidence.

One of the main reasons health services in less developed countries are in such parlous condition and why debt levels are so high—constricting the spending on vital health services—is the impact of so-called “structural adjustment” programs imposed on them in an earlier period by the IMF.

First imposed in the 1980s and then continuing into the 1990s and the present century, countries that sought assistance from the IMF were required to meet strict conditions including the privatisation of public services, deregulation of financial markets and reduction of social spending, including on health.

Between 1980 and 2014, 109 out of 137 developing countries had to enter at least one structural adjustment program.

A recent article by Adele Walton in the UK Tribune magazine pointed out that some 25 countries were spending “more on debt than healthcare, education, and social protection combined in 2019, meaning the intense strain of an international health care crisis has left swathes of populations without access to essential services and resources.”

The measures imposed by international finance capital via the IMF have had a particularly significant impact on two of the countries that have been hardest hit by the pandemic, South Africa and India.

According to Walton’s article a study in South Africa has found “privatisation to be the primary cause of deprivation of most of the population’s access to health care.”

In India, privatisation of health care “significantly reduced the government’s capacity to prioritise public health needs over private profit interests.” And the lack of resource coordination had “cataclysmic consequences for the country when it experienced oxygen shortages at the height of its second wave.”