U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declares 23 species extinct

Philip Guelpa

A small portion of the death toll inflicted on the earth’s biosphere by human-induced climate change and destruction of natural habitats was acknowledged officially in a recent announcement by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which changed the status of 23 species (including 11 birds, eight freshwater mussels, two fish, a bat and a plant) from endangered to extinct under the terms of the Endangered Species Act (1973).

These species include the ivory-billed woodpecker, the Bachman’s warbler, and the Kauai O’o, a Hawaiian forest bird. This is the largest single group of species designated as extinct since the act went into effect, a reflection of the increasing pace of extinctions. In the nearly 50 years since the law was passed, only 11 species in the US had previously been determined to be extinct.

Ivory-billed woodpecker, now extinct

By contrast, a conservative estimate (National Wildlife Federation, 2018) suggests that in the US alone at least 150 species have already gone extinct and another 500 are likely to have suffered that fate. One-third of US species are considered “vulnerable,” with one in five “imperiled.” A total of more than 1,600 species are currently listed as endangered.

The impact of the Endangered Species Act on the rate of extinction is limited and decreasing. The inclusion of new species to the protected list is extremely slow. A 2016 study found that species waited a median of 12 years to receive safeguards, during which time they continued to be under stress. At least 47 species have gone extinct while being evaluated for listing as endangered. News accounts play up the removal of 54 species from the endangered list, supposedly because they are now “safe.” The accelerating rate of extinctions, both in the US and worldwide, indicate that such moves are cosmetic at best.

The significance of this latest finding goes well beyond the loss of these particular forms of life. It represents only a tiny fraction of the ongoing sixth global mass extinction of lifeforms on this planet, the first to be caused by humans.

The speed and scope of this process, along with the other devastating impacts to the environment (e.g., rising sea levels, environmental pollution, raging wildfires and floods, global warming) caused by uncontrolled human activities, of which species extinction is only one part, threaten to render the planet unlivable in the not too distant future.

The earth’s ecosystem is formed by the dynamic interaction of a huge variety of biological and physical components, constantly affecting and being affected by each other. The diversity of these elements and their complex interactions tends to have a stabilizing influence on the system as a whole. Change is a constant, at varying rates at different times and in particular sub-components. Over time, species adapt or become extinct, and new ones arise. When changes result in the reduction in diversity of species from the complex of interactions that create the environment (i.e., the reduction in biodiversity ), this tends to make the system as a whole less stable.

An example of the interdependence of species is one of the species now declared extinct. The ivory-billed woodpecker, a relatively large bird, creates its nests by excavating cavities in the trunks of dead trees. Once the young have reached maturity, the nests are abandoned, then to be appropriated by other species, including wood ducks, eastern bluebirds, opossums, gray squirrels and honeybees. The loss of the woodpeckers has likely lessened the opportunities for suitable nesting spots for these species.

The rapid loss of a growing number of species now occurring accelerates the rise of instability. The rate at which these changes have occurred over the last several centuries is unprecedented in human history.

Since the end of the last Ice Age, human society has developed in the context of a relatively stable set of environmental conditions (of course, with regional and temporal variations). These conditions provide what have come to be known as “environmental services,” such as fairly predictable seasonal cycles of temperature and precipitation, and the contribution of a variety of animals (e.g., pollinating insects and birds) to the growth of crops, to name but a few.

The disruption of this environmental context at an ever-accelerating rate will soon threaten massive failures that will impact billions of people. In recent decades, the widespread occurrence of wildfires, floods and droughts at an unprecedented scale, as well as the increasing rate of extinctions, are signaling this process. Worldwide, millions of people have already been forced to become “climate refugees” due to changes that have made their local environments unable to support pre-existing ways of life, compounded by the effects of armed conflicts.

A further and very consequential impact of habitat loss is the increasing proximity of wild animals with human populations due to the latter’s incursion into previously undeveloped areas, raising the potential for the spread of zoonotic (animal-derived) diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic is likely an example of this process.

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity recently concluded that, worldwide, up to 150 species may go extinct every day. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that over 6,000 species are critically endangered.

This is a worldwide process which cannot be effectively addressed within the confines of the nation-state system. As the abject failure of capitalism to cope with either the pandemic or climate change have dramatically illustrated, this system is not only incapable of mounting effective responses to these existential crises, but is, in fact, compounding and accelerating their effects.

In contrast to past centuries, humans now have the scientific knowledge and technological capacity to confront and effectively control the range of dangerous environmental impacts, including the loss of biodiversity, that threaten catastrophe in the near future. The only obstacle is the insanely destructive drive of the capitalist system to prioritize private profit above human survival. The only social force that can bring an end to this system is the working class, by implementing a rational, scientifically based socialist reorganization of society.

Verdi trade union calls off strike at Berlin’s Charité hospital

Markus Salzmann

On 7 October, Germany’s Verdi trade union ended the almost month-long strike by nursing staff at Europe’s biggest university hospital, the Charité in Berlin.

A contract is due to be negotiated within five weeks based on a vaguely formulated document whose key points include a few cosmetic improvements for workers. In ending the strike, Verdi is deliberately sabotaging the ongoing strike by workers at the Vivantes hospital group.

The agreement was welcomed effusively by both the union and Charité management. Verdi negotiator Melanie Guba described the agreement as a “big step” and “milestone of relief” for Charité health workers. Verdi had demanded the establishment of minimum staffing regulations, less intense workloads and improved training conditions. These issues were “now being addressed based on this result,” the union official said.

“This is the contract that now settles everything satisfactorily,” declared Verdi representative Dana Lützkendorf at an appearance with the Charité management. Carla Eysel, Charité board member for personnel and nursing, was also “very pleased” with the result and referred to the ultimate contract as a “milestone.”

The political parties that control the Berlin Senate (a coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Left Party) also expressed their pleasure at the end of the strike.

Franziska Giffey (SPD), whose party is largely to blame for the disastrous conditions in the city’s state-owned hospitals, called the result a “very positive signal.” Even Berlin’s neo-liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) had nothing but praise for the agreement.

In fact, the key points of the contract thus far revealed make clear that it will neither lessen the overworking of nursing staff nor increase the quality of patient care.

According to the agreement, 700 additional nursing staff are to be hired over a period of three years. Even the 1,200 extra staff originally demanded by Verdi would have been insufficient to guarantee adequate care. Now this demand has been reduced by almost half and extended over a period of three years, during which the demands on nursing staff will certainly increase much further.

Moreover, the joint statement by Verdi and the Charité does not refer to full-time positions, but only employees. Currently, many employees have just part-time positions. And even if this provision were to be fulfilled over the extended period of time laid down in the agreement, it would amount to a mere drop in the ocean.

Another key point refers to so-called “stress points.” For every five understaffed shifts that are worked, health care employees are to be awarded one point, which can be converted into eight hours of free time to compensate for the additional stress.

However, workers will receive a maximum of only five days off per year, and the measure is more likely to entrench permanent overworking rather than end it. When a nurse works double (to compensate for an absent colleague), he or she will receive less than two hours of free time in exchange. This means that understaffing will remain much more profitable than employing the prescribed number of nurses.

Given the reality of unbroken overwork, limiting the scheme to five days means it is unlikely to be used to any significant extent. Already, most nurses have a huge backlog of overtime that can hardly be reduced due to lack of staff.

Another point to be included in the contract is staffing ratios. So far, staffing ratios of 1:1 for intensive care units, 1:10 for regular day duty and 1:17 for night duty have been mentioned. Whether these ratios will be reflected in the contract is questionable. On the other hand, it is already common practice to ignore agreed staffing ratios, sometimes for weeks.

Other points concern the use of trainees, the possibility of sabbatical years and changes to duty scheduling. No concrete information on these issues is available, and, as usual, the contract negotiations are taking place behind closed doors.

Workers should not be misled by the vague and totally insufficient promises of improvements. In 2016, Verdi hoodwinked Charité workers and agreed a deal on health protection and minimum staffing—again dubbed “historic” by the union. The deal ended a series of strikes and protests.

At the time, Verdi negotiator Meike Jäger, who is also deputy chairperson of the supervisory board of Vivantes and a member of the supervisory board of the private Rhön-Klinken, declared fulsomely: “At last we have succeeded in putting a stop to job cuts, especially in nursing, by limiting any further deterioration in minimum staffing levels with binding benchmarks.”

In fact, the agreement was not worth the paper it was written on. Since then, the situation has become increasingly dire, with nursing staff overwhelmed with extra work. Verdi was able to force staff at Europe’s largest university hospital to keep quiet for a short time with its vile manoeuvre, but the latest contract is to be valid for three years so as to make sure that further strikes will be illegal over that period of time.

Since the beginning of the strikes at the Charité and Vivantes clinics, Verdi has been working towards a quick agreement with management but has confronted enormous anger and militancy on the part of health workers. Now the union wants to use the end of the strike at Charité to weaken the industrial action of Vivantes workers and quickly close down their strike as well.

Vivantes nursing staff have been on strike since 9 September, demanding improved working conditions, while employees at the company’s subsidiaries are demanding better wages. The joint strike at the two big hospital groups in the German capital has demonstrated the power of workers and made clear they face the same problems. Last Tuesday, workers at the Asklepios health clinics in Brandenburg also voted for an indefinite strike to secure wage raises.

The strike at Vivantes is continuing and more than 2,000 people, including many nurses, protested in Berlin on Saturday for more staff and better working conditions. The protesters marched from the Urban Clinic in Neukölln to Willy Brandt House, headquarters of the SPD.

Verdi representative Susanne Feldkötter cynically justified the ending of the strike at the Charité to the newspaper Neues Deutschland with the words: “One strike less means we have more strength for the other industrial action.” In reality, Verdi is now working flat out to sell out the Vivantes strike and ensure the perpetuation of the existing miserable working conditions and poor wages.

At Vivantes, no agreement has been reached to date due to the group’s unscrupulous management, which, even under conditions of the coronavirus pandemic, has made “offers” that would result in worse conditions for the workers.

Verdi announced plans to suspend the strike at the Vivantes subsidiaries on Thursday, arguing that contract negotiations would resume on that day. This agreement was reached under the auspices of former SPD state premier Matthias Platzeck. Verdi and the Berlin SPD chose Platzeck as moderator after he was appointed as mediator at Charité-Facility-Management (CFM) at the beginning of the year and was instrumental in pushing through a miserable agreement against workers there.

The threatened sell-out at the Charité and Vivantes clinics once again highlights the treacherous role of the trade unions. Health workers must build independent action committees which they control, rather than the highly paid Verdi functionaries. This is the only way to expand the struggle for decent wages and good working conditions.

US-EU rift over relations with China widens after AUKUS pact

Alex Lantier

Recent weeks have seen mounting conflicts between Washington and the European imperialist powers over China. Last month, Australia suddenly repudiated a €56 billion French submarine contract to sign instead the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) alliance targeting China, and European countries this month successfully overrode US accusations that IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva improperly promoted China in official reports.

When French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire arrived in America for this week’s G-20 finance ministers’ summit in Washington, the New York Times largely asked him about China. The Times wrote that it is impossible to “mask stark differences on China and other issues” between America and France. Le Maire asserted that US and European Union (EU) policies towards China are fundamentally incompatible.

The U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG-52), front, and the guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) underway in the the South China Sea on 18 April 2020. (Wikimedia Commons)

“The United States wants to confront China. The European Union wants to engage China,” he said. Washington, he added, sees China as a threat and does not “want China to become in a few years or decades the first superpower in the world.” Asked if this meant a divergence between America and Europe, he replied, “It could be if we are not cautious.” To avoid US-EU conflict, he said, Washington must agree to “recognizing Europe as one of the three superpowers in the world for the 21st century,” together with the United States and China.

Workers must be warned: deep, historically rooted conflicts between the world’s most powerful imperialist states, that twice in the 20th century led to world war, again threaten to erupt. It is thirty years since the 1991 Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union deprived the NATO powers of a common enemy. Today, amid a horrific social and economic crisis caused by the criminal official handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, profound conflicts over economic and military interests are driving US imperialism and the European powers apart.

Le Maire said the “key question now for the European Union” is to be “independent from the United States, able to defend its own interests, whether economic or strategic interests.” Such independence, he added, “means to be able to build more capacities on defense, to defend its own view on the fight against climate change, to defend its own economic interest, to have access to key technologies and not be too dependent on American technologies.”

The Times listed demands presented by Paris to Washington through Le Maire. One is that the Biden administration end steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by the previous Trump administration. France, the Times wrote, also wants “greater American commitment to independent European defense ambitions … as well as evidence of American respect for European strategic ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Washington’s signing of AUKUS behind the EU’s back only underscores, however, that it has no intention of respecting EU ambitions or of accepting a role as co-equal of anyone. Maintaining US global primacy has, in fact, been US policy throughout the post-Soviet era.

A 1992 Pentagon strategy paper asserted that US national security required Washington to convince “potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role,” and to “discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order.”

Already after Trump’s election, however, the EU powers had signaled a more antagonistic military posture. In 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel commented amid Trump’s first tour of Europe as president that “we have to fight for our own future ourselves.” The EU announced multibillion-euro plans for independent EU weapons and armed forces.

Washington has since been weakened by its championing of a disastrous “herd immunity” response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has left millions dead worldwide, and the humiliating collapse this summer of its Afghan puppet regime in Kabul. The French finance minister’s role in criticizing US policy is not accidental, given longstanding French criticisms of US handling of the dollar. These criticisms have only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last year, the IMF became the focus of a battle between Washington and the EU, which demanded IMF subsidies for Africa to deal with the pandemic, which US officials opposed as a threat to its monopoly of printing dollars. With Georgieva’s support, the EU and African countries ultimately overcame US opposition. This month, 15 African states, including Nigeria, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Senegal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, signed a letter in the Paris-based monthly Jeune Afrique endorsing Georgieva against Washington.

Calling her an “invaluable partner,” they wrote, “Georgieva played a decisive role in the unprecedented issuing of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) equivalent to US$650 billion, providing liquidity and cash buffers to many countries in need. She fought to promote multilateralism …”

Inter-imperialist rivalries over the profits to be extracted from China, Africa and beyond are ever more clearly acquiring a military dimension, however, and the risk of war is growing rapidly. France’s Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS) think tank recently published a report on the AUKUS alliance and the Indo-Pacific. It wrote that AUKUS demonstrates US “mistrust towards Europe (not only France) which Washington cast aside, notably because it is not hard-line enough towards Beijing and also tends to compete commercially in the Chinese market.”

It dismissed US attempts to mend fences with France: “US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, flanked by Australian officials, trying to temper French indignation (‘France is a vital partner … we want to take every opportunity to reinforce trans-Atlantic cooperation on the Indo-Pacific’) fools no one. This is the pursuit of a strategic agenda based on and seeking to reinforce the marginalization of the European Union.”

Noting the “imbalance between Europe’s means and its ambitions,” the FRS called for a military buildup: “Promoting effective strategic autonomy (while preserving necessary trans-Atlantic solidarity), European sovereignty in its various dimensions, and a will to power in a universe where force rules is now absolutely urgent. Deceiving oneself with words is useless, we have just had that proven to us. … France needs a global China strategy not limited to the Indo-Pacific (due to a lack of inter-ministerial coordination, Paris has no clear view on the ‘New Silk Road’ program).”

The FRS made clear that this entails rising strategic tensions inside Europe, notably with Britain. “To imagine that the fact that Europe is still England’s leading trading partner after Brexit means that Britain is tied to the EU is an illusion that has (at least partially) been dispelled. … London’s role in AUKUS and its industrial participation in the future Australian nuclear submarine program must lead to broader reflection on the future of Franco-British strategic relations,” it wrote. It added that this “could impact the 2010 Lancaster House accords” on UK-French military collaboration.

The force emerging as the alternative to the disintegration of the international institutions of world capitalism is the international working class. Strikes and protests are mounting worldwide against super-exploitation, social inequality and massive unnecessary deaths caused by the official response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Significantly, Le Maire told the Times he fears “inequality divides” and warned, “a new ‘Yellow Vest’ [protest] movement remains possible everywhere within Europe.”

Workers face the bankruptcy not of individual politicians or governments, but of an entire social system. While US war threats against China are the most aggressive and reckless elements of imperialist foreign policy, the EU powers are not fundamentally different. They are planning the diversion of hundreds of billions of euros into weapons programs, social attacks on the workers, and cultivating a militaristic “will to power,” in the FRS’s words.

Malian president accuses Paris of secretly arming terrorist groups to provoke war

Alex Lantier

In a statement made last Friday to the Russian news service RIA Novosti, Malian Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga accused the French government of secretly arming Islamist terrorists to maintain the conflict in the country and justify the French military occupation.

Maiga’s statement, about which the French press has maintained a deafening silence, is an indictment of the French state and its NATO allies. Two French presidents, François Hollande of the Socialist Party and Macron, and their allies have been waging war in Mali since 2013. Yet Maiga, installed in power by the Malian army that enjoys the support of Paris, accuses them of using criminal methods to justify a bloody war in his country.

Moreover, the same Islamist terror networks have committed attacks in Paris and across Europe, which Hollande and Macron used to justify a state of emergency and conduct a violent crackdown on strikes and “yellow vests” in France. Maiga’s accusation compromises all the official justifications for this reactionary offensive against the working class in Europe.

Maiga blamed French forces that arrived at the beginning of the war in Kidal, in the north of the country, where several militias hostile to the central Malian power in Bamako were active. “France created an enclave in Mali, it formed and trained a terrorist organization in Kidal,” he said, adding: “Having arrived in Kidal in 2013 during the offensive against the armed groups in the northern regions, France prohibited the Malian army from returning to Kidal.”

He continued: “Ansar Dine, the leader of an international terrorist organization, a branch of Al Qaeda in Mali—the French took his two deputies to form another organization… The Malian government so far does not have authority over the region of Kidal. However, it was France that created this enclave, a zone of armed groups trained by French officers. We have proof of this.”

To back up his accusations against Paris, Maiga recalled that the war in Mali started from conflicts between militias that fled Libya after the war waged against that country by Paris, London and Washington in 2011 in alliance with Al Qaeda. “You know, the terrorists first came from Libya,” he said. “Who destroyed the Libyan state? It was the French government with its allies.”

Maiga also responded to Macron’s threats to slow the withdrawal of French troops and the arrival of Russian forces requested by the Malian regime. Macron had said he wanted France to “withdraw (its) military bases as soon as possible,” but then claimed that this withdrawal would require a total transformation of Malian state policy: “This implies a return of a strong state and investment projects, so that young people do not turn, as soon as the terrorist groups return, to the worst.”

Calling this comment “blackmail,” Maiga said, “This blackmail cannot weaken our determination to protect our territory, our country. This blackmail will not be a reason to stop cooperation with reliable partners like Russia… If we conclude an agreement with Russia, practice shows that it is a reliable partner. We are a sovereign state and that gives us the right to cooperate with any state in the interest of our people. This is our only goal!”

Maiga’s accusations against Paris are not simply based on information from the Malian state, but also on the words of senior French officials. Indeed, the former French ambassador to Mali and Senegal, Nicolas Normand, had already criticized the war in Mali—Operation Serval and then Operation Barkhane—in 2019, in terms that support Maiga’s accusations on several points.

Normand highlighted the power granted by Paris to militias and especially to the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), linked to various Al Qaeda networks including Ansar Dine. Interviewed by Radio France Internationale, Normand had said that Operation Serval sought:

to prevent the various jihadist groups gathered together from surging southward … toward Bamako. The problem is that France then thought it was distinguishing between good and bad armed groups. Some were perceived as political, and others were perceived as terrorist. And the French army went looking for this group—it was the MNLA at the time—these Tuareg separatists, from a particular tribe that was a minority among the Tuaregs themselves, the Ifoghas… It was given the town of Kidal. And then, subsequently, there were the Algiers agreements, which put these separatists on a kind of pedestal, on a par with the state, so to speak.

Normand coolly described the class strategy of French imperialism to win the loyalty of the most privileged social strata in northern Mali.

Calling the Tuareg nationalist rebellion in Azawad “a defense of the feudal privileges of a minority of Tuaregs in the Kidal region,” he pointed to the “inter-Tuareg rivalries… The Imghad group was pro-Bamako, [and sought] to resist the feudal power of the Ifoghas nobility, which was separatist in large part in order to resist democratization—the power of numbers, and the equality of status between the nobles and the third estate.”

This strategy, while it may have paid off for a time in forging links between Paris and Tuareg elites, became an obstacle to Paris’ attempts to dictate an end to the conflict. In the face of rising opposition to the French war from the Malian population, Normand argues, it left Paris allied with a small, privileged elite that also had an interest in maintaining the conflict. Referring to the Algiers accords signed in 2015 with Paris’ support, Normand said:

The problem with the Algiers agreement is that the signatories were given a very advantageous status and all sorts of material benefits. … In addition, the outcome of the agreement is disarmament and elections. And this minority Ifoghas nobility has no interest in elections. Because at that time, they would undoubtedly be swept away by the non-Ifoghas majority… In Kidal, the Ifoghas are in the minority, and they have all the power now.

Normand argued that Paris should strengthen its control over northern Mali by sponsoring negotiations among Tuaregs. He cited Ghana, “a successful example, where traditional chiefs have retained some local powers, land and legal [authority]… So, we can learn from that.”

In reality, the wars in Libya and Mali were and are dirty wars, conducted behind the backs of the French by a financial aristocracy seeking to oppress Africans by dividing them, in order to better rule. They have gone hand in hand with the construction of a police state in France itself, attacking social rights—labor codes, pension and unemployment entitlements—in order to exploit workers in France, and responds to popular opposition with police repression.

French troops must leave Mali and Africa, and Maiga’s accusations must be investigated to establish Paris’s responsibility for terrorist actions.

The lessons of Sri Lanka’s ongoing three-month teachers’ strike

Pradeep Ramanayake

On October 12, three months after nearly 250,000 teachers began their online education strike for decent salaries, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse again rejected their demands in a meeting with union leaders.

Rajapakse has promised to pay just one-third of the teachers’ salary demands and in two stages—the first in January 2022 and the second in 2023. The union leadership, which did not oppose this during the meeting, said they would announce their decision the following day, after a “lengthy discussion” among themselves.

Joint teachers protest outside Colombo Secretariat on July 23 [WSWS Media]

While the unions had been hoping to end the strike with false claims of “some kind of a victory,” they were compelled to announce, amid massive opposition by teachers to any sellout, that the industrial action will continue.

The government is moving to prematurely reopen schools on October 21, following months-long closures because of COVID-19. The teachers’ unions are desperately appealing for a resolution of the salary issue before then.

These developments confirm that the ongoing industrial action of 250,000 government schoolteachers and principals across the country—the longest strike in Sri Lanka in recent times—has reached a critical juncture.

For the past three months, teachers have witnessed consistent refusals by the government to grant a salary increase. The Rajapakse government has responded to every discussion with the unions by declaring it cannot meet teachers’ demands because “the economy has collapsed as result of the pandemic.” Government representatives have warned teachers not to ask for “a pound of flesh… like Shylock.”

In parliament last week, Education Minister Dinesh Gunawardene said the ongoing teachers’ salary crisis would be resolved in the 2022 budget but he was “not ready to make the mistake of revealing budget secrets by informing the House of the salary increments to be given to teachers and principals.”

Rajapakse’s response to union officials on Tuesday, however, makes clear what the “budget secrets” about teachers’ salaries are. This year’s Appropriation Bill, indicates that the 2022 budget allocation for education is just 1 billion rupees (about $US5 million), which is not enough to fulfil the government’s so-called salary increase “promise.”

Instead of addressing teachers’ demands, President Rajapakse is actively working with pro-government trade unions to force a shutdown of the strike. On October 6, Murutthettuwe Ananda, a pro-government Buddhist monk and leader of the Public Service United Nurses Union (PSUNU), held an “all-party conference” as teachers held nationwide protests in pursuit of their demands.

Ananda told the conference that he had been contacted by the Sri Lankan president and prime minister and advised “to intervene in teachers’ problems.” The sole aim of this intervention, of course, was to break up the teachers’ strike. This was revealed when Ananda urged teachers two days ago to “report for duty on the 21st, without hindering government’s preparation to bring children’s education back to normal.”

Along with these manoeuvres, the government has unleashed repressive measures against teachers. Dozens of teachers have been arrested at previous protests and some have been summoned to the Criminal Investigation Department and to give statements.

Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekara has also threatened to “suppress the teachers’ strike in the way we destroyed terrorism.” He declared that the government’s response to teachers was “too mild” and promised “severe action” in the future. The government and mainstream media are also attempting to whip up public hostility against teachers, declaring that their wage demands are “unjustified during the pandemic” and falsely claiming that “the education of children has collapsed because of the strike.”

Despite the ongoing witch-hunting and government threats, the alliance of teachers’ and principals’ unions, which includes the Ceylon Teachers’ Union, the Ceylon Teachers’ Service Union led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and the Frontline Party-controlled United Teachers’ Service Union, continues to hold discussions with government authorities, desperately seeking any sort of concession in order to end the strike.

From the outset, the alliance agreed with the prime minister’s statement that teachers’ demands could not be met straight away because of the economy. They then accepted the government’s proposed paltry wage rise—just one third of teachers’ demand—and asked that it be paid in one instalment, in an attempt to appease teachers.

Over the past 24 years, successive Sri Lankan governments, including the current Rajapakse regime, aided and abetted by the unions, have rejected teachers’ wage demands. As a result, teachers are now among the lowest-paid public sector workers in Sri Lanka, and just as they did in the past two and half decades, the unions are preparing another betrayal.

Although the teachers are fighting for a decent living salary, their struggle brings them into conflict with the government’s attempts to impose the burden of the worsening economic crisis onto the working class and the oppressed. Sri Lankan finance minister has directed all ministries to slash expenditure, including no salary incentives for employees and the hiring of new recruits. The government is overseeing massive increases in the price of essential commodities.

The ongoing teachers’ strike, along with walkouts and protests by health workers over the slashing of a pandemic-related monthly allowance, demonstrations by petroleum workers against overtime payment cuts, and upcoming action by the masses against the unaffordable cost of living are part of a growing movement of the working people against government austerity.

Colombo’s escalating social assault on the working class is in line with the actions of governments all around the world accompanied by a turn to autocratic forms of rule. The Rajapakse government’s imposition of a state of emergency and essential service orders are part of its moves towards a presidential dictatorship based on the military and the promotion of fascistic forces.

The Teacher-Student-Parent Safety Committee (TSPSC), which was established under the political guidance of the Sri Lankan Socialist Equality Party (SEP), is the only organisation which has explained that the way for teachers to win their demands is to rally the rest of the working class in struggle against the government’s entire big-business program.

This analysis has been proven correct, time and time again. Bankrupt claims by the trade unions that the government can be pressured into granting teachers demands have come to nothing over the past three months.

As the TSPSC statement explained on July 26:

The struggle against Colombo’s attacks, and the defence of living and social rights, requires a political struggle against the government and the entire capitalist system. The unions are utterly hostile to such a fight.

Teachers cannot allow their strike to remain under the control of the unions. They must take their struggle into their own hands.

We urge teachers to build independent Teacher-Student-Parent Safety Committees at every school, to rally parents, students and other sections of the working class, as well as the oppressed, to defend free education.

On this basis, the TSPSC initiated discussions among teachers, gave voice to their opposition on the World Socialist WebSite, recruited advanced layers to the TSPSC and held an online public meeting attended by a significant number of striking teachers.

In contrast to the unions, which downplay the real dangers of government-prepared repression, the TSPSC issued a statement condemning the government attacks and called on other workers to defend the teachers’ struggle. In line with this, TSPSC members participated in Health Action Committee meetings to discuss the necessity for such a united struggle.

Australian Labor Party’s decay further revealed at anti-corruption hearing

Mike Head

Further evidence of the advanced rot of the Australian Labor Party, the country’s oldest party of capitalist rule, emerged this week during hearings by the Victorian state Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC).

On Monday, the opening day of an IBAC public hearing, a key senior federal Labor parliamentarian admitted “stacking” local party branches by paying for bulk false memberships, hiring taxpayer-funded “ghost” electoral staff who did no work because they were deployed for the use of party factional powerbrokers, and participating in rigged party ballots.

Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews (Screenshot ABC News)

Anthony Byrne, who is deputy chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, testified that he had been involved in such activities for more than 22 years—ever since he entered parliament in 1990. Asked by counsel assisting the inquiry, Chris Carr SC, whether he had been involved in branch stacking, Byrne said: “I certainly have.”

Byrne said he used a “kitty” to pay for party memberships, and estimated that he had paid about $2,000 in annual membership fees during the past five years alone.

Some of the evidence provided a picture of how extensive ballot-rigging is inside the Labor Party. Faction bosses altered ballot papers to ensure the election of their candidates for pre-selection for parliamentary seats or for party conference delegates.

If branch members voted for the wrong candidate, reissued ballots were re-completed to support the preferred candidate, signed off and submitted to the party’s head office. When Carr asked Byrne if about 40 percent of the ballots issued in his Melbourne southeastern electorate of Holt had to be reissued, he replied: “I wasn’t aware it was such a huge figure.”

Another means of boosting votes was to have members sign envelopes containing blank ballot papers. These would be collected by ministerial and electorate staff, completed and submitted to the head office.

The inquiry was shown a text message from Byrne to faction powerbroker Adem Somyurek asking him to send over one of Somyurek’s parliamentary staff members, Adam Sullivan, to complete ballot papers.

“We have 210 ballot papers that need to be filled out today from what I’ve just heard,” Byrne texted. “I think we need Sullivan to come to my office to complete otherwise they won’t be done. “Then papers need to go to head office.”

The text was believed to have been sent during delegate elections for the 2018 Labor Party national conference. Byrne told the inquiry: “If you’re saying that somebody else filling in that ballot paper is forgery then that’s forgery.”

IBAC’s “Operation Watts” is a joint investigation with the Victorian Ombudsman into branch stacking, misuse of parliamentary staff for political purposes and misuse of public money, granted by the state Labor government to community associations, to fund party political activities.

When IBAC commissioner Robert Redlich asked how “nothing seemed to have altered” after a 2018 Ombudsman’s report had criticised the party for misusing public funds to pay staff members to perform such factional work, Byrne said the practices had been enmeshed in the party’s fabric since the 1990s. “I don’t think the system ever stopped,” he said.

Byrne’s testimony quickly triggered the resignation of a former right-wing factional colleague, state Child Protection Minister Luke Donnellan. That made Donnellan the fourth Victorian state cabinet minister to quit over the current IBAC allegations, which were first aired in June 2020 by Nine Entertainment media platforms.

However, Labor’s federal leader Anthony Albanese has refused to call for the resignation of Byrne, who is closely connected to the US and Australian intelligence and military establishment through his role on the parliamentary security committee. Albanese insisted that the IBAC “process” had to be completed first. He even denied any knowledge of the branch-stacking, despite last year’s media exposures.

Significantly, IBAC commissioner Redlich thanked Byrne for his testimony. Byrne hosted secret cameras in his office for the Nine Network operation, filming Somyurek and his staff members enrolling and paying for bulk party memberships. Reportedly, at least 4,500 of Labor’s claimed 16,000 members in the state of Victoria were falsely registered this way.

Massive inflation and manipulation of party membership numbers and votes is far from new in the Labor Party. Two decades ago, a report by former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke and ex-New South Wales (NSW) Premier Neville Wran described it as a “cancer” eating away at the party. Despite such token damage-control operations, the branch stacking has only gotten worse, and the party’s actual membership has continued to collapse.

For decades in fact, Labor has been a rotted-out hollow shell. It has virtually no real working class members, just parliamentarians, staffers, union officials and careerists. That enables branch stacking by factional powerbrokers and allied trade union bureaucrats to control pre-selections for parliamentary seats and access to other lucrative posts. Similar methods are used to inflate union memberships, which also have shriveled, in order to give union bosses voting blocs at party conferences.

Somyurek’s power base, for example, was an alliance formed in 2018 between right-wing factions and associated unions and an “Industrial Left” grouping of supposedly militant unions, such as the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union.

Much more may yet emerge from the IBAC inquiry. A major concern in ruling circles, after more than a decade of political instability, is to fashion a political instrument able to fully impose the assault they demand on working class jobs and conditions—an offensive intensified as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Yesterday’s editorial in the Murdoch media’s Australian demanded that Albanese stop “ducking questions” about Byrne’s evidence and “clean up” the Labor Party. “Business as usual will not be good enough,” it warned.

The Liberal-National Coalition also has been wracked by rampant branch stacking for years. After decades of declining living and working conditions and worsening social inequality, public support for these twin formations of capitalist rule has plunged.

That is why both parties jointly pushed through the federal parliament on August 26 new anti-democratic electoral laws that seek to de-register parties, like the Socialist Equality Party, that currently have no members in parliament.

The IBAC process also could be used to threaten the survival of the Victorian state Labor government of Premier Daniel Andrews, unless it continues to rapidly “reopen” the economy for corporate profit-making, despite record COVID-19 Delta infections. In neighbouring NSW an anti-corruption inquiry was used to replace Gladys Berejiklian as state premier with Dominic Perrottet, who has quickly accelerated the lifting of pandemic safety measures.

IBAC is simultaneously conducting another investigation, behind closed doors so far, into dealings between the firefighters’ trade union and the government of Andrews, who is reportedly part of that inquiry.

French President Emmanuel Macron insults Algeria, provoking diplomatic crisis

Anthony Torres

French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent restriction of visa access from the Maghreb, combined with his insulting of the anti-colonial struggle of the Algerian people, are aimed at legitimizing French colonialism and inciting neo-fascist chauvinism. His actions have provoked a major diplomatic crisis with Algeria and the recall by Algiers of the Algerian ambassador to France.

A statement from the Algerian presidency in response to Macron’s comments said: “Following the undeniable remarks that several French sources have attributed by name to the President of the French Republic, Algeria expresses its categorical rejection of the inadmissible interference in its internal affairs that constitute the said remarks.” This is the second time Algiers has recalled its ambassador to Paris since May 2020, after the broadcast on the France5 television station of a documentary on the “Hirak,” the mass protest movement against the Algerian military regime that began in February 2019.

A family watches French President Emmanuel Macron's televised speech, Monday April 13, 2020, in Lyon, central France. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

This diplomatic crisis began on September 29. French government spokesman Gabriel Attal announced on Europe1 that the granting of visas by France would be “tightened within a few weeks for nationals of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, who ‘refuse’ to issue the consular passes required for the return of immigrants turned away from France.” The visa restriction, which blocks the movement of people wanting to travel to France to see their families, affects millions of people of North African origin in France itself.

In 2018, the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies reported that there were 1.9 million immigrants from the Maghreb in the country, as well as 2.4 million direct descendants born in France to at least one parent from the Maghreb, in addition to the grandchildren of immigrants from the Maghreb, estimated at 821,000 in 2011. This makes a total of 5.1 million people of North African origin in France.

The French ambassador to Algeria, François Gouyette, was summoned to the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and notified of “a formal protest by the Algerian government following a unilateral decision by the French government affecting the quality and fluidity of the movement of Algerian nationals to France,” according to a statement from the ministry.

On September 30, receiving a delegation of 18 young French people of North African origin, dual nationals and some Algerians, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that the “the post-1962 Algerian nation was built on a memory rent.” This was a reference to the heroic and bloody struggle of the Algerian people against the French colonial regime during the Algerian war (1954-1962).

Calling Algeria “a politico-military system that was built on this memory rent,” Macron attacked “an official history” that had been “totally rewritten,” and which according to him “is not based on truths” but on “a discourse based on a hatred of France.” He questioned the historic legitimacy of Algeria: “Was there an Algerian nation before the French colonization? That’s the question… I am fascinated at the ability of Turkey to completely forget the role it played in Algeria and the domination it exercised.”

Four days later, Algiers recalled its ambassador to France for “consultation” and closed its airspace to French military aircraft. In 2013, French airplanes had permission to fly over Algerian territory to fight the war in the Sahel launched with the French intervention in Mali, with which Algeria shares a 1,300-kilometre desert border.

Cynically, Macron reacted to this Franco-Algerian crisis by claiming that he wished there could be an “appeasement.”

But he then defended his earlier statements, saying: “I have the utmost respect for the Algerian people, and I have really cordial relations with President Tebboune. But we have started a work, with the report that we asked [historian] Benjamin Stora to do … with the French and Franco-Algerian youth, and I will continue this work. There will inevitably be other tensions. These are only stories of wounds. The problem is that many people are irreconcilable toward one another. But we are all together in the same country, and therefore we must have a national project that embraces us.”

Stora had been personally commissioned by Macron in July 2020 to prepare a report on the “memories of colonization and the Algerian people.”

The provocations of Macron and his government against Algeria are a warning to workers both in France and the southern shore of the Mediterranean. In fact, it is Macron who is “totally rewriting history” through his statements, seeking to cover up the crimes committed by French imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the crimes already committed or in preparation in France’s neocolonial wars in the 21st century.

Contrary to Macron’s arrogant assertions about Algerian society before French colonization and even before Ottoman rule, there were various forms of “statehood in this territory of the central Maghreb,” according to historian Gilles Manceron. Manceron adds: “The fact that Algerian national sentiment only became generalized at the time of the war is a reality. But this is like the feeling of belonging to the French nation, which only really took hold after the Revolution.”

French domination of Algeria was reactionary and criminal. France colonized Algeria and the whole of the Maghreb, making its inhabitants second-class citizens, repressed under the discriminatory provisions of the Indigenous Code. During the war for independence, French imperialism tortured and killed en masse, crimes reminiscent of those committed in occupied France a decade earlier by the Vichy collaborationist regime.

Out of 10 million Algerians, France detained 3 million in internment camps and killed half a million. Twenty-five thousand French soldiers died during the war and over 60,000 were wounded. In addition, the French special forces and police assassinated political leaders and pro-independence demonstrators in mainland France. Paris nevertheless suffered a humiliating defeat in the war, in the face of the courage of the Algerian workers and oppressed.

Macron’s statements underscore the nature of the political forces that Macron is nurturing as he pursues a policy of spreading the coronavirus, waging neo-colonial war in the Sahel, and violently repressing strikes inside France.

They underscore his alignment with the extreme right-wing circles who are openly nostalgic for French Algeria. The same forces played a central role in the 1958 putsch that brought General Charles De Gaulle to power and established the Fifth Republic. These pro-“French Algeria” forces sought to change French policy through attacks and an attempted coup d’état after De Gaulle decided to negotiate Algerian independence with the Algerian National Liberation Front.

Now, against the backdrop of rising working class anger at the criminal management of the coronavirus pandemic by the state, the political descendants of this milieu are openly waving the threat of a coup d’état, in the form of a letter written by retired generals close to the family of retired General Pierre de Villiers. Macron’s calculations of their electoral influence in the 2022 presidential elections are no doubt connected to his decision to provoke a crisis with Algiers.

Global energy price surge hits workers

Gabriel Black

Global energy prices have surged this month, compounding inflation and putting further strain on working-class households throughout the world.

Natural gas prices have recorded some of their largest ever increases on record. Both the European and Asian benchmarks for natural gas reached record highs last week. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), they are up by almost 1,000 percent, compared to where they were a year ago—effectively going vertical, in their price increase, the last few weeks.

People take part in a protest against the increase of the price of electricity in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. Banners reads in Spanish: "No to electric robbery" "Electricity at a fair price". (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Coal, which remains a cornerstone of the global economy, has seen massive price increases. Imported coal in the EU is up 420 percent compared to a year ago, according to the IEA. In China, home to 30 percent of global industry, coal prices have reached all-time highs, more than doubling this year.

The price of electricity is surging around the world as well. Dependent, in many places, on the price of both coal and natural gas, electricity prices have risen the most in places like Germany or Spain, which rely on these fuels. The price of power is up by over 500 percent in Germany compared to one year ago, their highest on record.

Crude oil prices are rising as well, however, not by the extremes that coal and natural gas have risen in Asia and Europe.

The price of Brent, the most widely used oil benchmark, has doubled over the last year.

In the United States, average gasoline prices have risen by $1.10 per gallon at the pump. They now average $3.27 nationally, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA). The US crude benchmark (West Texas Intermediate) rose to $80 per barrel, the highest since 2014. Meanwhile, natural gas prices have increased 112 percent in the US since January, causing fears of a bitter winter.

The global surge in energy prices only adds to the already considerable inflation that has occurred last year.

In the US, consumer price inflation is up 5.4 percent from a year ago. That means that every worker has received an equivalent of a 5.4 percent wage cut on whatever they earn, compared to a year ago. If anything, this is a low assessment as the index does not adequately consider the soaring cost of rent and housing.

Food costs have increased 12.6 percent over the last year in the US. It increased by 1.2 percent just last month alone.

Yesterday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised global growth estimates downward in response to these surging costs. The downward revision came also in response to the dysfunction that is occurring in global logistics.

Around the world there are significant crises emerging at major ports and supply hubs. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of massive container ships—each with 20,000 containers or more—stand, waiting outside its two ports (Long Beach and Los Angeles). Videos posted to social media give a sense of the magnitude of the crisis. Hundreds of thousands of containers are backed up in ports awaiting truck drivers, and dozens of container ships wait to be unloaded. All of this ricochets across the supply chain, backing up production.

Several major exporting nations have already significantly cut back industrial production as a result, laying off workers.

Industrial production in Germany declined by 4 percent in August, compared to the previous month. The German car multinational Opel announced it would halt its operations, in response to both the rising cost of electricity and the semiconductor shortage.

Similarly, in Sweden, the economy shrunk by 3.8 percent in August. In particular, shortages and logistics dysfunction pushed manufacturing output down 4.5 percent. The Volvo Group, which was the seat of a critical strike of workers earlier this year, announced it would shut down production in September, citing the semiconductor shortage.

China’s economy will slow this quarter. Surging power costs, the breakdown of massive property developer Evergrande, and general economic dysfunction globally, will all contribute to China scoring just 5.1 percent growth this quarter (down from 7.9 percent the previous quarter). Car sales in China have fallen 20 percent over the last year, indicating pressures confronting better off sections of the working class and its middle class.

The collective mess (energy prices, supply-chain disruptions, food prices, declining industrial output, etc.) spells danger for global capitalism.

The rise of inflation comes as workers in most corners of the globe have sought to challenge their employers. In the US a number of significant strikes, labor actions, and “no-votes” on sell-out contracts have occurred. In particular, 10,000 workers at John Deere just overwhelmingly voted down a concessions contract which the United Auto Workers (UAW) tried to foist on them.

While the wealth of the global financial oligarchy is at all-time highs, evading taxation as it pleases, workers from all countries are stuck in the tightening grip of inflation. Energy and food prices disproportionately affect the poor, because they spend a larger share of their income on them.

The reasons behind high energy prices and the reasons behind the global supply dysfunction

point back to one thing, the inherent anarchy of the capitalist economy.

The IEA has warned for several years on the mismatch between global energy investment and global energy demand. Even before the onset of COVID-19, the agency urged governments to support measures to dramatically enhance investments, particularly in renewables. However, locked in competition and driven by short-term decisions, it is impossible for global energy companies to rationally plan their future. COVID-19 only made worse these pre-existing problems.

Another cause of rising energy prices has been extreme weather events, such as the heavy rains in China and Hurricane Ida. However, such events are the predictable, increasing outcome of climate change, something capitalist politicians have no intention of seriously combatting.

Of course, the other great cause, COVID-19 and its ongoing devastation, is likewise the product of the capitalist system. While a known, science-based plan exists to eradicate the virus, governments throughout the world are giving up on any plan to significantly slow, let alone stop, the spread of the virus. A systematic global effort to eliminate the virus could succeed in a matter of weeks, but the capitalist press, in its profit-driven, nationalist logic denies the very possibility of doing so, suggesting everyone “live with the virus.”

A chief investment officer at Crossman Global Investments told CNBC that he did not expect inflation to be going away any time soon. He stated, “Hopefully, we start solving our supply shortage problem. But when the dust settles, inflation is not going back to zero to 2 [percent] where it was for the last decade.”

This same fear motivated the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to warns the US Fed and other central banks to prepare plans to deal with extreme inflation. They said that there was “high uncertainty” around the issue and urged central banks to begin easing unprecedented injections of cash into global financial markets.

On Wednesday, the Fed responded, suggesting it would begin to draw back its monthly $80 billion injections into financial markets during November. However, such a move threatens to disrupt the mechanisms which keep US markets afloat—risking the bursting of any number of new toxic debt bubbles that have emerged since the 2008 financial crisis.