P&O resumes sailings with workers on £1.82 an hour

Robert Stevens

Downing Street was directly involved in P&O’s sacking of 800 ferry workers last Thursday. The Johnson government’s lies that it had no prior knowledge are in tatters.

The crews were sacked via a three-minute Zoom call. Workers were removed from their ships by paid balaclava-wearing, handcuff-trained thugs.

The Pride of Hull ferry at the P&O terminal at Hull stating under its name that it is registered in Nassau in the Bahamas (WSWS Media)

The Evening Standard reported Saturday, “Despite previously claiming to be unaware of plans to sack staff, [Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s] spokesperson confirmed some officials had been informed by P&O, a day before it was announced on Wednesday.”

The Sunday Times provided details showing that such massive attacks on livelihoods are never simply devised just by the companies involved, but pitch workers against the government and the state. A briefing memo drawn up by a senior government official was circulated across Whitehall a day ahead of the operation. The memo declared, “We understand that P&O Ferries have an intention to try and re-employ many staff on new terms and conditions or use agency staff to restart routes; they estimate disruption to services lasting 10 days.”

The brutal action was necessary as “These changes will align them [P&O] with other companies in the market who have undertaken a large reduction in staff.”

According to reports, P&O is paying replacements from India, the Philippines and Ukraine as little as £1.82 an hour. The UK minimum wage is £8.91 for workers aged over 23.

P&O has already been able to resume some of its main routes, with the Liverpool-Dublin ships back to normal by Saturday. The Rail, Maritime and Transport union said that “two P&O ships on the Liverpool-Dublin route which have been crewed with Filipino Ratings… were on contracts which paid a basic rate of $3.47 per hour.” The RMT also reported that “P&O ferry crews at Dover have been replaced by Indian seafarers being paid $2.38 an hour.”

The RMT, the Nautilus union and the Labour Party claim to be leading a heroic struggle to defend the sacked workers. But this assault on workers’ livelihoods has been taking place in the ferry and shipping industry for years, with the complicity of the trade unions.

Even the type of attack mounted last Thursday was already carried out by Irish Ferries in 2005. Irish Ferries ‘reflagged’ to Cyprus three Irish Sea ferries to drive down labour costs and conditions. It offered redundancy to a third of its workforce so as to replace them with lower-paid workers from central and eastern Europe. On November 24, 2005, the company hired security guards to board the Isle of Inishmore in an attempt to seize control of the vessel. New staff also boarded the ferry at the same time.

The mass firings sparked a 20-day strike, which was ended by the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union reaching a three-year agreement with Irish Ferries that accepted redundancy for hundreds of its members and their replacement by agency workers employed by a Cyprus-based recruitment firm. The foreign crews were paid the minimum wage of just €7.65 (£5.19) per hour and the union promised no further industrial action.

The main complaint of the RMT and Nautilus is that P&O did not consult them on how to get rid of the workers. Had P&O done so, the result would have been the same. Less than two years ago, as the pandemic hit, P&O was able to shed 1,100 jobs by making them redundant with the complicity of the RMT.

Ferry companies have exploited for years the fact that UK employment laws exempt shipping companies from paying the national minimum wage if the crew does not reside in Britain. Companies routinely register their ships in foreign countries, enabling them to flout any employment laws. In 2019, P&O Ferries reflagged its ships from Britain to countries including Cyprus and the Bahamas.

On Tuesday, RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch revealed more than he intended about what the union knew and had not opposed. He explained, “We were due to have a meeting with the business on Friday, then on Thursday they sacked all our members.”

Labour MP Karl Turner admitted, “P&O has accepted previously in meetings with me and the RMT, they’ve said $2.40 an hour (£1.82).”

On the [Hull-based] Pride of Rotterdam, “they work eight weeks on and two weeks off,” he said. “They do 12-hour shifts with a short break to eat… They get terrible multioccupancy-type accommodation in Hull, very often staying in hostels for about £9 a night. Some have been known to pitch tents for a fortnight.”

Media reports from January 2020 show that the RMT knew that P&O had recruited around 100 Filipino workers to displace workers mainly hailing from Portugal and Lithuania, to set a new benchmark for low pay at £1.74 an hour (less than £70 a week). Lynch said pathetically that the union had raised the issue at the time with Tory government ministers, who view such conditions as a benchmark for every UK firm.

The pay levels being imposed by P&O have been sanctioned by the International Transport Federation and International Labour Organization. Yesterday, ITV News Business and Economics Editor Joel Hills tweeted, “The ITF/ILO minimum recommended rate for an Ordinary Seaman (OS) - usually the lowest rank on a ship - is $15.9/day - or $1.99/hour for an 8 hour shift.” Hills tweeted an image of a document headed, “ITF ILO Minimum Wage Scale”, “applicable from January 2021.”

Loading Tweet ...

Tweet not loading? See it directly on Twitter

He noted, “P&O reportedly wants to cut its wage bill in half. Offering agency crew from India £1.80/hour (well below UK min wage of £8.91/hour) would be legal and, I’m told, competitive. Other ferry operators also use non-UK crews - from countries like Poland and the Philippines.”

The essential basis of corporate policy is the exploitation of national divisions in the working class fostered by the trade unions. Under conditions in which workers are employed by global entities such as P&O’s owners DP World, the nationalist agenda of the trade unions results in an endless spiral to the lowest international benchmark.

DP World, based in the United Arab Emirates, are pioneers in the exploitation of workers in free trade zones, such as the Jebel Ali Free Zone (Jafza) set up in 1985. Jafza now hosts over 8,000 companies generating billions in profits. The vast wealth accrued by the Gulf State’s oligarchs depends on the exploitation of migrant labour housed in labour camps on miserable wages. P&O proves that such conditions are now being brought to Europe.

The nationalist campaign by the trade unions over the sackings is summed up by their call for Conservative Transport Secretary Grant Shapps to demand that P&O/DP World “stop this attack on the jobs and livelihoods of 800 British Seafarers” and “Save Britain’s Ferries”. This attempt to maintain pay levels in the UK without fighting to raise wages for workers in every country only guarantees the destruction of everyone’s living standards, with companies able to easily recruit a replacement workforce.

China continues offensive against the spread of Omicron BA.2 subvariant

Bryan Dyne

For the past three weeks, mainland China has been attempting to suppress an outbreak of coronavirus subvariant Omicron BA.2 that is concentrated in Jilin province, but has spread to much of the country. During that time, the official data from the National Health Commission (including both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases originating inside the country) show fewer than 35,000 cases and only 2 deaths.

Over those same three weeks in Hong Kong, there have been 830,000 recorded cases and at least 5,200 deaths. Worldwide, there were just under 33.5 million cases and more than 127,000 deaths.

A woman holds a floral bouquet during an official memorial was held for victims of coronavirus in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province, Saturday, April 4, 2020. With air raid sirens wailing and flags at half-mast, China held a three-minute nationwide moment of reflection to honor those who have died in the coronavirus outbreak. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

The sharp contrast between coronavirus cases and deaths in Hong Kong and mainland China, as well as between China and the rest of the world, is a demonstration of the deadly differences between a policy of “living with COVID-19” and fighting for a “Zero-COVID” policy.

The outbreaks in China remain centered in Jilin, located in the northeastern part of the country, including 1,494 new cases yesterday. Residents of the province have undergone several rounds of mass testing, those found to be infected are isolated under medical supervision, and lockdowns of schools and nonessential businesses for an estimated 51 million people have been imposed to curb the spread of the virus.

Chinese officials have mobilized an immense amount of resources to contain the outbreak, treating as a major emergency figures that would be hailed as “progress” in any American state. In a press conference Thursday, Wang Hesheng, Deputy Director of the National Health Commission, noted that “the national overall testing capacity has exceeded 40 million … per day.”

Hesheng continued, “The epidemic in Hong Kong has taught us a particularly profound lesson, and it is also an example that if the vaccination rate of the elderly is low, the mortality rate of severe cases will be high.” One of the further responses to the current outbreak in China is a renewed drive to vaccinate the elderly, particularly in rural areas where vaccination rates are relatively low.

He also stated that, “China’s anti-epidemic practice shows that adhering to ‘dynamic zero clearance’ is the epidemic defense line that our country with a population of more than 1.4 billion must currently defend, which is the best practice of the concept of people first and life first, and also the greatest contribution to the international fight against the [pandemic].”

Daily new cases in China as efforts are made across the country to stem the spread of Omicron BA.2. Data source: China National Health Commission

The ability to maintain such a policy, however, has been challenged above all by the continued circulation of the coronavirus and emerging variants around the globe, including Omicron. In the weeks leading up to the current wave, often half or more of cases detected in a given day were imported from outside the country, the highest proportion since the start of the pandemic.

According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), during the ongoing wave of infections from Omicron, first its BA.1 subvariant and increasingly BA.2, an estimated more than 2 billion people have been infected worldwide since last November. In effect, the virus has had over 2 billion opportunities to mutate and evolve into an even more transmissible and deadly variant, which could emerge at any point.

China also faces growing pressure to abandon its Zero-COVID policy by Western policymakers and the corporate media. The New York Times complained that “lockdowns could wipe out the already razor-thin profits of many factories.” In an attempt to overcome these economic losses, Reuters reports that companies such as Apple supplier Foxconn and Tesla are forcing workers to eat, sleep and work on site in order to maintain production quotas.

Much was also made about the two deaths that were reported on Saturday, while the fact that these were the first two deaths reported from the pandemic in almost two years was only noted in passing. In contrast, the total number of deaths on a given day in just the United States alone, which was more than 1,000 a day less than a week ago, is not mentioned at all in the American media.

A March 11 report from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), however, makes clear the immense danger of the reopening of China being called for from outside the country. The study focused on models developed using data collected from Guangdong province in 2011 and measured the impact of removing non-pharmaceutical interventions (testing, isolation, lockdowns) from efforts to contain the virus. In the “coexistence” scenario reported, the same as what exists outside China, the study notes that there could be an estimated 12.9 million cases and 121,000 deaths in Guangdong alone in just one year.

Extrapolated to the rest of China, the findings of the study indicate that the scrapping of Zero COVID could cause roughly 1.35 million deaths from COVID-19 in the rest of 2022 alone. In other words, the call by the Times and its ilk to protect profits is in reality a call for the mass infection and death of the Chinese population.

Alongside demanding such a slaughter, Western media outlets have essentially stopped reporting coronavirus cases and deaths in their own countries. The coronavirus tracker of the Times and the Guardian are both “below the fold” while that of the Washington Post has been reduced to a link. Last week the Times cut back its newsletter to subscribers of updates on the pandemic from once a day to every other day, supposedly because this coverage had become less urgent. Headlines are instead dominated by hypocritical denunciations of the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine.

No mention is made of the daily death toll in the United States, frequently over 1,000, or the more than 5,000 dying each day worldwide. If the virus is mentioned at all, it is to claim that the current wave is over and that even basic protections such as masks should be permanently done away with.

The spread of BA.2, however, is already reversing the decline in case numbers in country after country. The more transmissible subvariant of Omicron has already spread across most of the world and has become or will become soon the dominant variant of the virus where it exists. The United States CDC reports that BA.2 already comprises at least 38 percent of current cases in the Northeast and roughly 23.1 percent of cases across the country. The percentage of cases that are determined to be BA.2 has been doubling every week for the past four weeks.

A similar trend was witnessed in the weeks before the surge of the Omicron variant. In response, the Biden administration worked diligently to dismantle the last vestiges of coronavirus mitigation measures, including closing down testing stations, obscuring COVID-19 death reporting and promoting the delusions that masks are largely unnecessary and that schools can be reopened safely. In just four months, an estimated 200,000 people have died, including hundreds of children.

Massive increase in COVID-19 in Austria after protective measures ended

Markus Salzmann

The number of COVID-19 infections is reaching new records every day in Austria after almost all protective measures were lifted on March 5. Despite this, the last remaining quarantine regulations were abandoned Monday. This development underlines the inhuman character of a policy that prioritizes profit over the life and health of people.

On Friday, more than 50,000 new infections were reported for the third day in a row. With 51,112 cases, the number of infections reached the third highest level since the beginning of the pandemic. The Ministry of Health again expects more than 50,000 infections a day this week. The 7-day incidence is 3,600 infections per 100,000 inhabitants. Almost 450,000 people are actively infected, of whom 3,040 are receiving treatment in hospital. Between 20 and 30 people die on average every day.

Johannes Rauch (Greens), Austrian Minister of Health (Photo: BKA/Florian Schrötter

The total number of people who died of COVID-19 now stands at 15,344. Among the almost 9 million inhabitants of the country, 3.4 million infections have been officially registered since the beginning of the pandemic. The number of unreported cases is undoubtedly much higher. Hospitals are treating 297 more people than a week ago, 207 of them receiving intensive care.

Since March 5, clubs and restaurants throughout the country have been open without restrictions. There are no longer any attendee limits at events. The mask mandate was completely abolished with few exceptions. Other than in hospitals and nursing homes, there are no longer any access restrictions.

To cover up the extent of the infections, the government, a coalition of the right-wing conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Greens, will severely restrict free tests from April 1. Only five PCR tests and five antigen tests are available free of charge per person per month. There will only be exceptions for people in hospitals or nursing homes, the elderly and people with symptoms.

As of Monday, all quarantine regulations will cease to apply. Since previously vaccinated contact persons were already exempted from quarantine, the latest relaxation also applies to unvaccinated contact persons. Exceptions apply only to restaurants and event attendees.

From the middle of the week onwards, health workers who have tested positive will continue working. This means that in hospitals and nursing homes, the sick and infirm will be exposed even more than at present to the risk of infection, not to mention the threat of further virus spread among the staff themselves. The number of infections and deaths in the health and care sector will continue to increase as a result.

As of last Friday, employees in the state of Lower Austria who test positive are allowed to resume work in health and care facilities if they have been symptom-free for only two days.

The government justifies the measures on the grounds that there is an extreme shortage of personnel in hospitals and nursing homes, as many employees are infected with COVID-19 and must be quarantined. The fact that this was caused by the previous relaxation of protective measures is deliberately concealed.

Health Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens) is hypocritical about the health situation. Talks with hospital operators and social service organisations have given him cause for concern, he claims. “The operations can only be maintained with difficulty,” said Rauch.

In fact, conditions are catastrophic. For example, at the state hospital in Baden-Mödling all scheduled admissions and procedures had to be cancelled for at least two weeks. The hospital cited the high staff shortages as a reason. Of the 22,000 employees of Lower Austrian state hospitals, 1,812 were reported sick with a confirmed infection or as contact person on Friday. According to the Baden-Mödling hospital, there is no end in sight to this development.

In Vienna, under pressure from the hospitals, Mayor Michael Ludwig (Social Democrats, SPÖ) was forced to severely restrict visits to hospitals and nursing homes. For example, only one visitor per patient per day is allowed in hospitals, and two people per day in facilities for the elderly. Ludwig admitted that the number of patients was rising rapidly. In addition, there are widespread staff absences.

The 2G rule, which states that someone must either be vaccinated or recovered, will also continue to apply in the catering sector, as will the mask requirement in retail, according to the mayor of Vienna. However, these measures are far from sufficient to curb the spread in a sustainable manner.

The announcement by Health Minister Rauch that the abolition of mask mandates in public spaces will be reversed from the middle of the week will also have no significant effect in view of the mass spread of the virus.

This is especially true if mask mandates are not reintroduced in schools—a major driver of the pandemic. According to Rauch, he is still in talks with the Ministry of Education on how to proceed. Minister of Education Martin Polaschek (ÖVP) is a strong advocate of a radical policy of mass infection in schools and rejects outright any protective measures for pupils and teachers.

Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) and Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler (Greens), who have adopted the policy of lifting all protective measures, are indifferent to the catastrophic consequences of the unchecked mass infection of the population. Their response to the current crisis is to focus on calls for rearmament and militarization.

The increase in the army budget to 1 percent of GDP (€4.3 billion) per year has already been decided. It currently stands at 0.74 percent (€2.7 billion). There are calls in the military leadership for an increase of €6 billion to €10 billion over the next 10 years.

Eurofighter jets are currently being upgraded. The Ministry of Defence confirmed this following a request from the APA news agency. The fighter planes are to be equipped with night vision and identification capability, electronic self-protection and radar-guided missiles.

As in Germany, the Greens play the leading role in militarization. Thus, Kogler declared his support for the reintroduction of compulsory military exercises, which can last for several months. This would extend the six-month military service accordingly. The exercises were abolished in 2006. “This debate must be conducted,” Kogler demanded.

The war in Ukraine is now serving as a pretext for implementing long-held rearmament plans. Russia’s attack on Ukraine had “brought about a change” in the views of the Greens on the federal army, Kogler remarked. Due to the new threat picture, there will have to be investment in defence, he said.

Germany deploys more combat troops to Eastern Europe

Gregor Link

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine serving as the pretext, Germany is sending additional combat troops to Eastern Europe as part of a comprehensive NATO buildup. The danger of a full-scale imperialist war against Russia thus continues to grow.

Last Wednesday, an extraordinary meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels decided on a “long-term strengthening of the eastern flank” of the military alliance. At the same time, Germany’s Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) began moving anti-aircraft missiles to Slovakia, the exact number and location of which has not been disclosed. A new NATO battlegroup is to be established in the country under German leadership.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz , right, gets informations during a visit to the Bundeswehr Operations Command in Schwielowsee, Germany, March 4, 2022. (Clemens Bilan/Pool via AP)

Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht (Social Democratic Party, SPD) spoke to the press of a “dramatically worsened security situation” that required a “credible deterrent” and “rapid reaction capability.” Addressing Russia, she threatened, “We Germans clearly stand by Article Five.” Any incursions into Alliance territory would have “catastrophic consequences” for the Russian government and country.

On Tuesday, by a large majority, the Slovakian parliament had given the green light for a massive expansion of the NATO presence in the country. Up to 2,100 NATO soldiers, including 700 from the Bundeswehr, are to be stationed in Slovakia, which borders western Ukraine. In addition to the German troops, who make up the largest contingent, another 600 soldiers are expected from the Czech Republic, 400 from the United States, 200 from the Netherlands and 100 each from Poland and Slovenia.

The US Patriot system plays a central role in the strategic calculations of all NATO frontline states, as it can engage enemy aircraft and cruise missiles and enemy tactical ballistic missiles. The Patriot guided missile systems create a mobile “protective dome” in which their own forces can operate unhindered. A Bundeswehr fact sheet speaks of an “enormous range of up to 68 kilometres” and states that up to five targets can be engaged simultaneously.

Germany’s troop deployments to Slovakia are part of an immense military build-up by the Western military alliance against Russia. Under the umbrella of NATO’s Enhanced Vigilance Activities (eVA) initiative, they serve to build up rotating multinational combat units like those already established in the Baltic states and Poland during the Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) initiative after 2016.

The existing eFP battlegroups are regarded as a provocation by Russia, as they are tantamount to a permanent stationing of operational combat forces in Eastern Europe, in contradiction to the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997. In Lithuania, the battlegroup established in 2017—which is also under German command—corresponds to a deployment of 1,200 soldiers and includes, among other things, armoured infantry and anti-aircraft guns. It was reinforced in February by a further 350 Bundeswehr soldiers from the artillery, reconnaissance and NBC defence sectors.

Now, under the leadership of the Bundeswehr, such a battlegroup is also being established in Slovakia. Slovak Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad, who belongs to the right-wing “protest party” OĽaNO, hailed the deployment of NATO troops as the “biggest step in the defence of Slovakia since its independence.” Germany’s Defence Minister Lambrecht declared that they were ready to “increase our commitment as well.”

During the eVA, a battlegroup under French leadership has already been established in Romania. Among others, the German and Italian Air Forces as well as the British Royal Air Force are participating in the Romanian NATO mission Enhanced Air Policing South. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, Lambrecht had immediately arranged for the German contribution to the mission to be doubled. A total of six Eurofighters from Tactical Air Wing 74 will continue to guard NATO airspace in southeastern Europe until at least the end of the month.

In addition, according to the Bundeswehr, a German A400M tanker aircraft left the Jordanian airbase in Al-Asrak on Monday to be used “temporarily” for air refueling missions “on NATO’s eastern flank.” Until now, the Bundeswehr tanker had been supplying fighter jets of the anti-ISIS coalition in its air strikes against Iraqi and Syrian targets in international airspace for years.

Subsequent troop deployments are already being prepared. According to the German Ministry of Defence, the meeting of NATO ministers served, among other things, to make “long-term, strategic adjustments to the alliance’s deterrence and defence capabilities on its eastern flank.” In a “special format” consisting of “like-minded states,” the defence ministers of the European Union as well as Finland, Georgia, Sweden and Ukraine discussed a “further build-up of capabilities” in Eastern Europe.

The resulting “readjustment of the strategic orientation of the Alliance’s capabilities” would, “alongside the decision on the NATO Strategic Concept 2022,” be the central topic of the NATO Summit of Heads of State and Government to be held in Madrid at the end of June.

Lambrecht stressed in Brussels that the “further military reinforcement of NATO forces on the eastern flank” must be characterised by strategic “staying power” in order to counter Russia for months. In other words, the German ruling class, which waged a war of extermination against the Soviet Union in World War II, now sees itself as at war with Russia again and is arming itself accordingly.

Only hours before Lambrecht announced the troop deployments to Slovakia, the German cabinet—comprising the SPD, Greens and Liberal Democrats (FDP)—officially decided to allocate a gigantic Bundeswehr special fund of 100 billion euros. This is the largest German rearmament drive since the fall of the Nazi dictatorship. The first item to be announced was the procurement of 15 Eurofighter fighter jets and up to 35 US stealth bombers, and new acquisition plans have been leaking out every day since.

For example, aviation magazine Flug Revue reported on Friday that the Bundeswehr has commissioned the Polaris aerospace company to build and flight test a demonstrator of the “Aurora” hypersonic system. According to the manufacturer, the reusable multi-purpose space plane will be able to be used for a wide variety of “defence-related mission scenarios,” including “suborbital/hypersonic missions” with “payload capacities of several tonnes.”

East Timor’s presidential election goes to second round

Patrick O’Connor

Presidential elections in East Timor on Saturday saw a large vote against the incumbent Fretilin President Francisco “Lu-Olo” Guterres, who received just 22.16 percent. He won two and a half times as many votes, 57 percent, in 2017.

Fretilin billboard for President Guterres [WSWS Media]

The result reflects both bitter infighting within the Timorese ruling elite as well as escalating hostility among poverty stricken ordinary people towards the entire political establishment.

Turnout plummeted, from 71 percent of the electorate in 2017 (which was itself the lowest since East Timor’s formal independence in 2002) to just 44 percent. Reports are emerging of voters being denied ballots if they had registered in a different district from where they attempted to vote. These issues may have exacerbated the turnout decline, but there is little doubt that widespread disaffection and opposition to the establishment parties provoked significant abstentionism.

Former president and prime minister José Ramos-Horta won 46.58 percent of the vote, far higher than any of the other 15 candidates. Under the Timorese electoral system, a second-round vote is triggered if no candidate wins more than 50 percent. This will be contested by Guterres and Ramos-Horta on April 19.

The last presidential election, held five years ago, required only one round, with Guterres winning 57 percent of the vote. This came after he was both nominated by Fretilin, Timor’s oldest bourgeois nationalist party, and supported by former president and prime minister Xanana Gusmão and his National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) party.

A Fretilin-CNRT “national unity” government governed the country from 2018 to January 2020. The coalition blew up when President Guterres refused to swear in several CNRT parliamentarians nominated as ministers, because of corruption allegations. An enraged Gusmão manoeuvred to head a CNRT-led administration, but a Fretilin-led coalition instead ousted him and his supporters from power.

For the last two years, Gusmão has campaigned against the government throughout East Timor. The former guerrilla leader during the struggle against the Indonesian occupation between 1975 and 1999 has postured as a humanitarian “man of the people,” organising food aid and other charity projects. He has also issued demagogic appeals to the young people—with those under 30 comprising around 70 percent of the population—and their concerns over continued unemployment and poverty.

The social crisis has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s response to it. East Timor has not been as badly affected as other former colonial countries. There have been a total of 22,800 confirmed cases, with 129 deaths. This year, daily confirmed cases spiked at 178 (on a 7-day rolling average) on February 14, but have been in the single digits for most of this month.

While the real numbers are certainly higher, a worse situation was prevented by border controls imposed over the last two years and relatively stringent public health measures, including lockdowns, enacted when infections spiked during different “waves.” The government failed, however, to provide adequate resources and compensation for people affected by lockdown and other measures—including university students in Dili who were prevented from returning to their home villages but then went hungry while isolating in their accommodation without any food or basic supplies being provided.

Gusmão has denounced all public health restrictions, at the same time promoting various conspiracy theories about COVID-19, including the lie that it is no worse than the flu.

Ramos-Horta won Gusmão’s endorsement last January, after explicitly agreeing to the condition that if elected he will quickly disband the parliament and trigger new elections. If, as appears likely, Ramos-Horta wins the second round of the presidential election, the government will be dissolved a year earlier than scheduled. Gusmão hopes to again become prime minister as head of a CNRT-led administration that locks Fretilin out of power.

Regardless of the immediate outcome of the presidential and parliamentary contests, the Timorese ruling elite is confronting an unprecedented crisis.

The bourgeois nationalist perspective of developing a supposedly independent East Timor has proven completely bankrupt. Ever since achieving formal sovereignty 20 years ago, the small half-island of less than 1.5 million people has been dominated by major transnational corporations, above all the oil and gas giants, and finance capital, represented through the World Bank and IMF. While a tiny layer that comprises the Timorese elite has enriched itself, the vast majority of workers and rural poor continue to endure enormous poverty.

The economy has been underwritten by oil and gas revenues that have comprised more than 90 percent of state revenue over the last two decades. Now, however, this vital source of money is under threat as the energy fields dry up. The major Bayu-Undan fields are expected to be exhausted within the next 1-2 years. Long-promised riches from the untapped Greater Sunrise gas field have little prospect of ever eventuating as Australia’s Woodside Petroleum and other energy giants refuse to commit the necessary capital.

In desperation, the Timorese government has pursued other projects over the last two years. These have included offering the near-empty Bayu-Undan fields as a site for the untested “carbon capture and storage” technology for Australian gas corporations seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Smaller oil exploration projects have also been undertaken on the Timorese mainland and just offshore, though these have so far proven unviable commercial projects.

The threatened collapse of state revenues coincides with a sharpening of global geo-political tensions. Dili has long attempted to balance its relations between the US and China. The Timorese military, for example, accepts hardware and equipment from Beijing while also engaging in regular training exercises with American Marines and other forces. Such hedging is becoming increasingly untenable, with US imperialism stepping up its aggressive encirclement of China.

Both Washington and its close ally Canberra have long standing ties with Ramos-Horta, and are no doubt hoping that he wins the presidency and tilts Timorese foreign policy in line with their interests. Ramos-Horta notoriously hailed the 2003 US illegal invasion of Iraq, and in 2006 was installed as Timorese president courtesy of an Australian government- and military-led “regime change” operation against a previous Fretilin administration led by Mari Alkatiri.

Russia threatens rupture of diplomatic ties with US amidst growing frictions within the oligarchy

Clara Weiss

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the US ambassador Monday and issued a protest note, threatening the rupture of US-Russian diplomatic ties because US President Joe Biden called Russia’s Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, stands with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov before their meeting, Friday, Jan. 21, 2022, in Geneva, Switzerland. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

In its statement, the Foreign Ministry stated that Biden’s statement had “put Russo-American relations to the brink of collapse.” The ministry also warned the ambassador that Russia would respond with harsh resistance to the “hostile actions” of the US.

The statements by the Kremlin came clearly in response to the massive intervention of NATO in the Ukraine war—the military alliance has shipped billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to the Ukrainian military and neo-Nazi forces—and an open economic war against Russia.

Both the economic and military warfare are accompanied by stepped-up efforts at regime change in Moscow. The US has long built up figures in Russia’s oligarchy and upper middle class, most recently the now imprisoned Alexei Navalny, a far-right Putin critic, falsely presenting them to a US audience as “democratic” opponents to the Putin regime, to prepare the ouster of Putin through methods of a palace coup within the oligarchy and state apparatus.

The goal is to install a regime that would grant imperialism direct access to Russia’s vast raw material and social resources, and no longer represent an obstacle to the geopolitical ambitions of imperialism in Europe and Asia.

The outbreak of the war has produced a rapid breakup within Russia’s ruling oligarchy and the upper middle class. Claims by Ukrainian intelligence that a “coup” is underway with Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the secret service, the FSB, discussed as the potential replacement for Putin have not been independently confirmed. But there are many indications that these frictions extend well into the state apparatus.

Several oligarchs that have traditionally been close to Putin, including Oleg Deripaska (net worth $2.2 billion), Mikhail Fridman ($12.2 billion) and Pyotr Aven ($4.4 billion), have publicly denounced the war and called for it to end. Socialite Ksenia Sobchak ($5 million), the goddaughter of Vladimir Putin and a former presidential candidate, has also joined the “billionaires and millionaires for peace” coalition.

Hundreds of thousands of members of Russia’s upper middle class have left the country, most of them for the Baltics, the Caucasus and Israel. This includes Russia’s most famous talk show moderator, Ivan Urgant, who makes an estimated $5.6 million a year, and many academics from the country’s most prestigious institutions.

There has also been a wave of resignations in Russia’s state-owned media, including Russia Today and TV Channel 1. In a widely publicized incident, Maria Ovsiannikova, a former editor at Channel 1, made a public protest against the war during the prime time news show.

Following her protest, Ovsiannikova was interrogated for 14 hours and received a 30,000 ruble fine, at the time the equivalent of about $275, barely qualifying as a slap on the wrist. In a video on social media, Ovsiannikova had called on people to join the anti-war protests and expressed support for Alexei Navalny.

She has since been able to give interviews to many international outlets, including the German DerSpiegel and CNN. The treatment given by the Kremlin to Ovsiannikova is an indication that the Russian government is well aware of the fact that her positions are shared by substantial sections in the ruling class and upper middle class.

While most outlets affiliated with the pro-US liberal opposition—including Ekho Moskvy and the TV channel Dozhd’—have been banned and a strict regime of censorship imposed, the business paper Kommersant, Russia’s equivalent of the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times, has run several stories and pictures on social media that indicate that at least sections of its editorial board oppose the war.

Last week, the newspaper’s Twitter account posted an interview with Russia’s head of military intelligence, Sergey Naryshkin, with an image of Naryshkin in front of a poster saying “Nuremberg”—a not-so-subtle allusion to suggest he was responsible for war crimes.

The vice-head of Kommersant ’s parent company, Andrei Kolesnikov, has written multiple articles on Putin’s major speeches on the war that, while abiding by all censorship rules, were couched in a sardonic and scathing tone, making clear that Kolesnikov opposed Putin’s line.

Contrary to their rhetoric, the political aim of these forces is everything but “peace.” They are advocating not an “end to war,” but an alignment of Russia with NATO. This would be accompanied by regime change operation which would not only mean further dictatorial and austerity measures directed against the working class, but also likely involve civil war and the breakup of the country along regionalist, ethnic and religious lines.

Putin’s pro-imperialist critics are not speaking for the millions of workers who are barely making a living, are opposed to the war and are now facing unemployment and possible starvation because of the sanctions. Rather, they represent sections of a very wealthy upper middle class and oligarchy that has emerged out of the restoration of capitalism and the destruction of the Soviet Union, and confronts the working class with bitter hostility.

Russia is one of the most unequal societies in the world. As of 2020, the country’s 10 percent owned 87 percent of the country’s entire wealth; a figure that has no doubt increased during the pandemic. Whatever the sharp frictions within these layers over the Putin regime’s reckless turn to war, they essentially represent the same class interests.

There is little question that Washington is playing the most active role in furthering conflicts within Russia’s ruling elite and upper middle class. Ovsiannikova has been celebrated as a hero by the same bourgeois Western media that has supported the 13-year-long illegal persecution and torture of Julian Assange.

The former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, now a fellow of the right-wing Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is tweeting regularly in Russian, openly appealing to sections of the oligarchy and Russian generals to turn on Putin.

The Putin regime has responded to the staggering economic and political crisis produced by the war by taking its promotion of Great Russian chauvinism and militarism to a new level. In a meeting last week with leading regional politicians, Putin warned that anyone who opposed the “military operation in Ukraine” (the term “war” is forbidden in Russia) would be considered a “national traitor” and face imprisonment.

On Friday, he appeared at the Luzhniki sports stadium in Moscow to an audience of 80,000 people. Speaking for eight minutes in front of banners “For a world without Nazism” and “For Russia,” Putin presented the war as a necessary step to prevent “a genocide” against Russians and one that ensured the “unity” of the nation.

Using the rhetoric of “blood and soil” and quoting from the Bible, he praised Russian soldiers for fighting and dying “shoulder to shoulder.” He ended his speech, which was interrupted by loud chants of “Russia, Russia, Russia,” by referencing the 18th century Tsarist naval commander Fedor Ushakov: “He once said that these thunderstorms [of military battle] would glorify Russia. This is how it was in his time; this is how it is today and will always be!”

At the event, neither Putin nor anyone else was wearing masks, ensuring the rally was a superspreader event. Though declining from the horrific Omicron surge in January and February, the pandemic is still taking a colossal toll. New cases top 20,000 a day and over 1 million are estimated to have died (out of a population of 140 million). Yet the Kremlin, like governments around the world, is using the war to make the pandemic disappear from the news, dropping even the most limited mitigation measures, and thus ensuring a future rise in cases and deaths.

Workers must reject both the bogus “peace” faction of Russia’s oligarchy, which seeks a direct alignment with US imperialism, and the reactionary Great Russian chauvinism and militarism of the Putin regime.

White House plans major escalation of NATO’s proxy war with Russia

Andre Damon

One month since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden will this week begin a tour of the continent in an effort to mobilize the NATO powers in a major escalation of the conflict against Russia.

US soldiers line up during the visit of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis at the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase, near the Black Sea port city of Constanta, eastern Romania, Friday, Feb. 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

The meetings, including those of NATO and the European Council, will seek to galvanize “international efforts to … impose severe and unprecedented costs on Russia,” the White House said.

Ahead of Biden’s trip, NATO military officials have been discussing plans, to be announced at the summit, to vastly expand the positioning of NATO forces on Russia’s borders in Europe as part of an effort to put the continent on a war footing, including potentially doubling the US troop presence in Europe.

The series of meetings being held this week are councils of war. They include, according to the White House:

• On Monday, Biden held a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to discuss “providing security assistance to the brave Ukrainians who are defending their country from Russian aggression.” The same day, the European Union announced that it would send an additional €500 million in weapons to Ukraine
• Later that evening, Biden addressed the CEOs of America’s largest corporations to “discuss the United States’ response to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war with Ukraine.”
• On Wednesday, Biden will arrive in Brussels, Belgium, to attend a meeting of the European Council, which will also include UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, despite the UK’s exit from the European Union.
• On Thursday, Biden will attend a NATO summit focused on “ongoing deterrence and defense efforts in response to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine.”
• On Friday, Biden will travel to Warsaw, Poland, where he will hold a bilateral meeting with President Andrzej Duda. Last week, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki proposed the deployment of a NATO “peacekeeping mission” to Ukraine.

This series of meetings was preceded by clear signals by the White House that, despite statements from Ukraine that it is pursuing negotiations with Russia, the United States has no interest in finding a diplomatic solution to the war.

On Thursday, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “From where I sit, diplomacy obviously requires both sides engaging in good faith to de-escalate.” He added, “The actions that we’re seeing Russia take … are in total contrast to any serious diplomatic effort to end the war.”

Following these statements, Biden seemed to do everything he could to personally antagonize Russian President Vladimir Putin, referring to him as a “thug,” a “dictator” and a “war criminal.”

Under conditions where a war is raging out of control, killing hundreds of people, and nuclear tensions are at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, these statements are a deliberate effort to escalate tensions. The Kremlin will see them as a US declaration of intent to carry out regime change in Russia or massively escalate US involvement in the war.

In response to what Russia called “insults,” Russia’s foreign ministry announced that it had summoned US Ambassador John Sullivan to declare that “Russian-American relations [are] on the verge of rupture.” The “rupture” of relations between states generally signifies that war is imminent.

Indeed, Biden’s whirlwind tour of Europe in an effort to mobilize the United States’ European allies for war has been carefully prepared by extensive military discussions.

The Wall Street Journal reported: “U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met at NATO headquarters last week with his counterparts from other alliance members to discuss beefing up forces even further. They directed military planners from all of the NATO members to draft plans that are likely to be discussed when President Biden meets with other alliance heads of government in Europe this week.”

“I expect there will be a rough doubling of the U.S. presence,” Douglas Lute, a former US ambassador to NATO and a retired Army lieutenant general, told the Journal.

The United States has deployed more than 15,000 additional troops to Europe since the outbreak of the war, and the US troop levels in Europe have reached over 100,000—the first time this figure has been surpassed since the end of the Cold War. If, as Lute suggests, the number of US troops deployed in Europe will double, this would mean the dispatch of 100,000 more US troops to Russia’s borders.

The Journal wrote: “Troops deployed in Eastern Europe will likely be augmented with more ground units equipped with tanks, other armored vehicles, artillery and attack helicopters, instead of the primarily light infantry forces that are already positioned close to NATO’s eastern borders, current and former officials said.”

The greater significance and implications of war generally emerge as it develops. While the US succeeded in goading the Russian government to take the first shot, it is clear that the war in Ukraine is the first stage of a much broader conflict. Having provoked the Russian government into a desperate and disastrous invasion of Ukraine, the United States is using the war to reassert its global hegemony, building a war coalition for what the United States has termed “great power conflict” targeting not only Russia, but China as well.

On Friday, in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden threatened China with unspecified “consequences” if it provided any material support to Russia. A day earlier, Blinken declared that the US would “not hesitate to impose costs” on China.

This bullying language was turned into open military threats as Biden prepared to set off to Europe. U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Adm. John C. Aquilino staged a press conference to the Associated Press aboard a military surveillance aircraft plane over territory claimed by China. “Should deterrence fail,” he declared, “my second mission is to be prepared to fight and win.”

The preparations for world war are being carried out behind the backs of the American population. Biden pledged to end America’s “forever wars,” promising to “close this period of relentless war” and initiate “a new era of relentless diplomacy.” Instead, the Biden administration is carrying out the greatest military escalation since the launching of the “war on terror” in 2001.

In the United States, the 2023 military budget is expected to total $800 billion: $60 billion more than the $740 billion authorized for fiscal year 2022. There are calls for an even more rapid funneling of money into the US war machine.

The bill for this massive expansion of military spending will be paid by the working class. It will be utilized to attack the living standards of the working class, criminalize working class political opposition and distract attention from the massive surge of COVID-19.

The reckless military escalation threatens to spiral out of control, potentially precipitating the first use of nuclear weapons since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War.

Macron presents militarist, class war program in French presidential elections

Samuel Tissot & Alex Lantier

On March 17 in Aubervilliers, Emmanuel Macron presented his program for the French presidential elections of April 10 and 24, 2022. It calls for military rearmament and deep social austerity, remaining silent on the COVID-19 pandemic despite the new wave of infections that is unfolding.

French President Emmanuel Macron delivers his speech during a presidential campaign news conference in Aubervilliers, north of Paris, France, Thursday, March 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

An examination of Macron’s program confirms that the war NATO has waged against Russia in Ukraine since the Russian invasion represents an attempt by the imperialist ruling classes to drastically restructure the world. Presenting his program, Macron referred to the war in Ukraine: “The project that I am presenting to you today is obviously anchored in the moment that is ours, that is to say, that of the return of tragedy to history.”

His program confirms the Marxist adage that to wage war against foreign rivals, the bourgeoisie also wages war on the working class at home. Amid the militarization of Europe, while Berlin triples its defense budget this year to €150 billion, Macron is calling to raise the French military budget to €50 billion and strengthen the police forces. To finance this, Macron plans to cut spending on pensions and unemployment benefits by €50 billion.

Despite Macron’s ritual evocation of “sovereignty”, “progress” and “humanism”, it is clear that NATO’s push towards a world war against Russia is inseparable from an attempt to impose deeply regressive changes on workers across Europe.

On the military front, where Macron calls for preparing France for “a high-intensity war,” he is accelerating policies he had already proposed or decided:

• The increase of the military budget from €40 to 50 billion, or 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product, was foreseen by the military planning law for 2019-2025 adopted in 2018.
• The creation of a universal military service was endorsed by a law passed in 2018, as mass “yellow vests” protests against social inequality broke out.
• The creation of a military “national guard” to assist police forces inside France was raised by his government, by the neofascist candidate Marine Le Pen and by Unsubmissive France candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

During his first term, Macron vastly strengthened the police to violently assault strikes and authorized the army to fire on the “yellow vests.” This policy of militarizing France internally is directly bound up with preparation for “high-intensity” wars, that is, wars like the current NATO-Russia war aiming to secure French imperialism’s place in a capitalist redivision of the world.

Macron, widely hated by workers during his first term as “president of the rich,” defines his social program as follows: “It consists of doing, in the next five years, what we did in the last five.”

In fact, the program escalates attacks on workers. In line with his repeal of the Wealth Tax during his first term, Macron wants €15 billion in tax cuts, half of which will go to corporations. The reduction in unemployment insurance and, above all, the increase in the retirement age to 65 correspond to reforms imposed during his first term, but which he did not dare to implement during the pandemic due to mass social opposition.

Other reforms, however, correspond to major new attacks aimed at a reactionary transformation of society. Macron wants to force welfare recipients to work 15 to 20 hours a week to receive benefits. He is returning to his January proposal to give more “financial autonomy” to universities, an expression which he explained by brutally declaring, “We will not be able to long remain in a system where higher education has virtually no price for almost all students.”

Macron wants to turn the unemployed and the poor into superexploited labor and adopt the Anglo-American model of university financing. Instead of paying a few hundred euros in tuition fees to get a mostly publicly funded education, students will have to borrow thousands of euros each semester to pay for it, finishing their studies in debt to the tune of tens of thousands of euros or more.

Macron also calls to deport any asylum seeker whose application is rejected—thus signaling that in a second term, he would continue the attacks against working class neighborhoods and Islamic or immigrant organizations carried out during his first term.

Macron’s program effectively ignores the COVID-19 pandemic and does not even mention the name of the disease. It has infected more than 24 million people and caused 140,000 deaths in France and 1.7 million in Europe and regularly infects around 100,000 people per day in France as a new wave of the BA.2 variant devastates Europe. Macron’s silence in his program indicates that he plans to continue his government’s current refusal to take any measures to stop the spread of the virus.

Nonetheless, it is clear that the pandemic has lastingly undermined French capitalism. The European stimulus packages adopted during the pandemic enriched France’s propertied classes to the tune of hundreds of billions of euros. European states financed these transfers of money to the super-rich by massively expanding their debts, with France’s debt rising from 90 percent to 115 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). French capitalism is effectively bankrupt, even if this is not typically acknowledged, undermined internally by the obscene fortunes of its ruling elites.

The presidential elections mark in France the historical crisis of capitalism that is being played out on a global scale with the NATO-Russia conflict. While European governments turned to austerity after the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, they joined NATO wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Mali and beyond. Now a new stage of this crisis is emerging. NATO’s threats against Russia, a nuclear-armed power, go hand in hand with turns towards military-fascistic forms of rule and the impoverishment of the working class.

Macron’s attempt to blame his militaristic policy on the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces is a cynical dodge. The invasion of Ukraine is a reactionary action that divides Russian and Ukrainian workers. But NATO played the central role in provoking this invasion, arming Ukraine and refusing to offer security guarantees demanded by Russia.

Macron in fact denounced this policy shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic began, insisting on the need to do precisely the opposite of NATO’s current policy. Speaking to the British magazine the Economist, he criticized the dependence of European finance on US management of the dollar and denounced NATO’s aggressive policy towards Russia.

“What we are experiencing is for me that NATO is brain-dead,” Macron said, adding: “That the United States is very hard towards Russia is a form of administrative, political, and historical hysteria. ... If we want to build peace in Europe, rebuild European strategic autonomy, we need to reconsider our position with Russia.”

Now, “brain-dead” Macron is aligning himself with Washington’s “political hysteria” against Russia, risking nuclear war, in order to intensify the militaristic and anti-worker policies he pursued throughout his term.

The fact that Macron is nonetheless currently in first place in the election polls, with 31 per cent of the vote in the first round, does not reflect popular support for his policies, but the bankruptcy of the rival candidates and the sclerosis of the French ruling elite. After decades of austerity and war by the PS and its pseudo-left satellites, no candidate presented by the media as “left” enjoys broad support among workers. Workers’ opposition to Macron’s policies of NATO war and mass COVID-19 infection finds no expression within a corrupt political establishment.