Tunisian president assumes dictatorial powers amid deepening social unrest

Jean Shaoul

Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed dissolved parliament last week, after more than half its members voted to repeal the draconian powers he had given himself after mounting a coup last July.

The powers included the suspension of parliament, the designation of ministers and chairing of the meetings of the council of ministers, the use of presidential decrees to pass legislation and dissolution in February of the Supreme Judicial Council that deals with judicial independence and assumption of control over the selection and promotion of judges.

Demonstrators in Tunis, Tunisia, Sunday, July 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Hedi Azouz)

Saïed’s latest move was made against a vote that while not legally binding is the most open sign yet of the bitter infighting within Tunisia’s political elite. It sets the stage for an intensification of the country’s political and economic crisis.

Last year he sacked the Islamist Ennahda Party government, suspended parliament, stripped legislators of parliamentary immunity and deployed the military to guard state buildings. This followed months of protests over police brutality, economic hardship and the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 28,000 people of the country’s 12 million population. He went on television to warn that the military would not hesitate to use force against those who opposed his coup, a clear threat to the working class.

Saïed banned dozens of judges, politicians and businessmen from traveling and put others under house arrest. He shut down the National Anti-Corruption Authority and sidelined the Independent High Authority for Elections. He appointed Najila Bouden, a professor of geophysics, to head a government and abolished the 2014 constitution. Saïed said he would hold a referendum in July this year on a new constitution to be drafted by a panel of experts—after a public online consultation process—that is widely expected to strengthen the powers of the presidency. The referendum, set for July 25, would be followed by parliamentary elections on December 17.

In the event, less than 10 percent of voters took part in the consultation, indicating the widespread hostility to the president and his policies. The two largest parties, Ennahda and the Free Constitutional Party, both also deeply unpopular, have rejected Saïed’s plans for a July referendum and called for elections to be held within the legally mandated 90 day period after the dissolution of parliament.

Kais Saïed, President of Tunisia, on 26 February 2020. (Photo by Houcemmzoughi badoo)

Following the ouster in 2011 of long-time autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Riyadh, Saïed, a former law professor and establishment figure with conservative views, entered politics, becoming president in 2019.

Saïed’s long-planned actions were the prelude to setting up a presidential dictatorship, aimed at maintaining the venal Tunisian elite’s grip on economic and political power in the face of mounting unrest among workers and young people. The major imperialist powers issued pro forma statements urging him to respect the constitution. The Tunisian General Labour Movement (UGTT), the largest union, called on him to “guarantee the constitutional legitimacy of all actions taken in these difficult times.”

In the eight months following his coup, the economic situation has worsened. The OECD’s report, Tunisia 2022, published on Monday, stated, “Tunisians are facing the worst crisis in a generation, as COVID-19 hit an economy that was already slowing down.” The pandemic had led to a severe economic contraction, particularly in the tourism and service sectors. Unemployment has risen from already high levels—particularly among Tunisia’s young population of whom more than one third are aged 15-29. Poverty is on the increase. Shortages of sugar and rice are widespread.

Public finances have collapsed, with some public sector wages paid late in recent months. This prompted the government to turn to the International Monetary Fund for a loan that would require privatising its state-run companies, slashing its public sector wage bill, imposing new taxes and increasing existing ones and taking the axe to bread subsidies under conditions of widespread food shortages. But any such loan, which would need the buy-in of the main political parties and the UGTT, is unlikely to be agreed before the summer, which may well be too late to prevent a collapse of the currency, late or non-payment of state salaries and the country’s ability to import basic state-subsidised foodstuffs.

Leader of Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda party House Speaker Rached Ghannouchi, center, arrives for questioning at the judicial police headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia, Friday, April 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Hassene Dridi)

The loan is further imperilled by Tunisia’s response to the US/NATO provoked war in Ukraine, as Saïed tries to maintain relations with Russia which Tunisia relies on for tourism and trade, without antagonising the United States and Europe, whose financial and diplomatic support are crucial to keep the economy afloat. While Tunisia voted in favour of the UN General Assembly resolution denouncing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it has refrained from publicly denouncing Russia. In welcoming the new Russian ambassador to Tunisia a few days later, Foreign Minister Othman Jerandi stressed a desire to strengthen the relationship between the two countries.

This year has seen numerous demonstrations protesting social and economic conditions, with the total number of demonstrations in the eight months since Saïed’s July coup topping those that preceded it.

Last month, 13 Tunisian and international rights groups reported on a leaked draft law that would give government authorities huge powers and discretion to interfere with the formation, funding, operation and freedom of expression of NGOs and civil society organisations, reinstating many of the restrictive regulations of the repressive Ben Ali regime. Human rights groups have warned of growing repression of journalists and activists by a president who promised to uphold rights and freedoms won in the 2011 uprising.

Turning reality on its heels, Saïed has accused the legislators of “an attempted coup” by holding an “illegal” meeting and defended his decision to dissolve parliament as a defence of the state. The justice minister has reportedly ordered an investigation of those who took part in the online session “for conspiring against state security.” Rached Ghannouchi, the parliamentary speaker of the assembly and head of the Ennahda Party, the largest with one quarter of its 217 seats, said that the Terror Crimes Investigation Unit had summoned him and at least 20 legislators from Ennahda and other parties for questioning.

Saïed could again bank on the UGTT’s support. Secretary-General Noureddine Taboubi has long called for the politicians to set aside their differences and hold a “national dialogue” before the elections, saying, “We have to get over the difference of considering what happened last 25 July as a coup or not.”

He had called for Saïed to dissolve parliament and applauded him when he did so, stating that it was a response to an effort aiming to “destabilise the country and lead it to a wave of legitimacy conflicts.” On April 1, he held talks with Saïed and agreed on the need for a “partnership” to overcome the economic crisis.

The major powers have largely remained silent, with the European Union (EU) keeping the financial taps flowing to prevent the country’s collapse. On the same day Saïed dissolved parliament, the European Commission announced it would lend Tunisia €450 million in budget support this year, following a meeting between Saïed and EU enlargement commissioner Olivér Várhelyi in Tunis.

The events of the last 11 years since the protests that toppled the Ben Ali regime have demonstrated that without the working class intervening independently of all the political parties and trade unions the ruling elite will, under the cover of a “technocrat” as in Tunisia, Lebanon and Iraq, or a military figure as in Egypt, resort to increasingly repressive means to maintain the rule of the kleptocracy.

Chinese authorities complete COVID testing for Shanghai’s population of 25 million in less than one day

Benjamin Mateus

China’s Global Times reported that Shanghai had accomplished “mission impossible” Monday—the PCR testing of all 25 million-plus people in one day. Placing this figure into context, it is 10 times higher than all the tests conducted in the United States on January 10, 2022, when Omicron was surging across the country.

City officials said that the massive first-of-its-kind public health initiative was completed ahead of schedule at around 7 p.m. Monday. The previous day a city-wide antigen testing was conducted as a prelude to the PCR testing of the population.

A medical worker collects sample swab sample from residents in a lockdown area in the Jingan district of western Shanghai, China, Monday, April 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Chen Si)

On Monday, 13,354 new COVID cases were reported, a significant jump from 9,000 on Sunday. However, these are attributed to the more robust testing that identifies all the sources of infection in China’s financial capital. Of these, only 268 were symptomatic. Overall, China’s mainland reported 16,590 cases, a single-day high during the current Omicron surge. In Jilin province, the trend of daily cases is on the decline as lockdowns continue.

The two-phased lockdown that began more than a week ago in Shanghai morphed into a city-wide lockdown last Friday when lockdown measures were extended for the east side of the city across the Huangpu River due to the rising number of confirmed COVID cases.

Throughout March, following the explosion of cases in Hong Kong, Chinese health officials documented a growing number of community transmissions throughout most provinces in China. Yet, Shanghai had resisted employing more stringent measures to minimize the impact of the pandemic on the economy until health officials raised concerns about the growing unrecognized spread of infection.

The implementation of the lockdown in Shanghai signaled to the Chinese people and the international financial markets that the Politburo’s commitment remained to “a now-globally unique strategy—fine-tuned across outbreaks from Xi’an to Shenzhen—of attempting to completely eliminate local cases no matter the economic and social costs,” as characterized by the Financial Times (FT).

Given recent experiences with the massive surge and deaths in Hong Kong and, in general, with the deadly impact of the virus allowed to take flight across the globe, elimination remains popular with the Chinese population. Yet, it is being met with vicious denunciation in the bourgeois press.

Daily COVID cases China March 1 to April 5, 2022. Source WSWS.

On this issue, the World Socialist Web Site recently noted that the Financial Times, “Speaking for the city of London, Wall Street and the global financial oligarchy that once controlled Shanghai and aims to establish neocolonial domination over all of China, [the FT Editorial Board] denounces lockdowns and all other public health measures that impinge on the production of profits but have saved millions of lives in China.”

In short, they deem Zero-COVID an untenable prospect and demand that China begin a plan of action to end the elimination strategy and learn “to live with the virus.” Beijing, however, is not presently willing to concede defeat and acquiesce to these stipulations that would see millions of its inhabitants suffer the same deadly consequences.

It would be essential, in that regard, to take a brief account of the pandemic in the US over the last two years.

Over 1 million Americans have officially perished from their infections. However, as Scientific American recently noted, “This toll is likely an undercount because more than 200,000 other excess deaths go beyond typical mortality rates, caused in part by lingering effects of the disease and the strain of the pandemic.” COVID has become the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in the US.

Nyesha Black, director of demographic research at the University of Alabama, speaking with Scientific American, said, “We will see the rippling effects of the pandemic on our society and the way it impacts individuals for generations.” Three-quarters of all the dead in the US have been among people 65 years and older, representing a critical part of the intergenerational family structure among the working class. Indeed, one out of every 74 people in this age bracket has been wiped off the face of the earth by a preventable disease.

Nearly one-quarter of all COVID deaths occurred among working-age Americans. As J Scott Davidson, CEO of the insurance company OneAmerica said in December 2021, “We are seeing right now the highest death rates we have ever seen in the history of this business. Death rates are up 40 percent over what they were pre-pandemic,” calling it “a one-in-200-year catastrophe.”

These deaths will have a lasting tragic impact on the lives of the youngest. It has been estimated that over 243,000 children have lost a “caregiver” to COVID, which includes 194,000 who have lost one or both parents.

Jennifer Dowd, a demographer at the University of Oxford, told Scientific American that “a lot of us demographers have just been tallying the losses, and it kind of snuck up on us, the scale of it all. We never thought it would keep going like this.” And even still, the long-term consequences on health and mortality have yet to be ascertained. Meanwhile, US politicians are wrangling over a few billion dollars in COVID funding while almost a trillion is to be made available for war-making.

For China, a co-existence strategy would have equally devastating consequences. Those 80 years of age and over, the most vulnerable, are the least vaccinated. And a considerable number of those 60 to 80 have only received two doses. With an immune evading virus and waning immunity, the virus would run like a massive tsunami wave through densely populated megacities across the mainland. The present attempts to bring Omicron under control attest to the difficulties faced by Chinese authorities.

Currently, China remains the only country that has continued to wage a campaign against the virus by mustering all available national resources to extinguish every outbreak through mass testing, tracing primary and secondary contacts, and isolating and treating the infected—all fundamental cornerstones of pandemic response.

The Chinese authorities mobilized all their national resources to test every person in Shanghai. As Reuters explained, “The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on Sunday dispatched more than 2,000 medical personnel from across the army, navy and joint logistics support forces to Shanghai … about 38,000 healthcare workers from provinces such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and the capital Beijing have been dispatched to Shanghai, according to state media, which showed them arriving, suitcase-laden and masked up, by high-speed rail and aircraft.”

Many had compared the current initiative to events in Wuhan in February of 2020, when the country faced its last real threat from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The current testing strategy in Shanghai will inform the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and health authorities of the public health measures’ effectiveness and direct immediate actions to attempt to eliminate the virus from the city. However, as the FT noted, only three of 31 provinces have reported zero cases. Outside of Shanghai, Jilin, and possibly Hebei provinces, case numbers remain under 100 per day though almost half are seeing a rising trajectory.

The challenge and fundamental weakness of China’s Zero-COVID policy is its national character. The current relentless nature of the outbreaks may very well drive the ruling class of China to be more concerned about its economic standing and insist on the futility of elimination. In collaboration with their international brothers and sisters, the Chinese working class must resist abandoning elimination and demand a globally coordinated action. The fundamental reality remains that there is no national solution to the pandemic, which remains in its acute phase, despite more than two years it has been allowed to run rampant across the globe.

Peruvian government deploys army, locks down Lima, then rescinds order as cost-of-living protests swell

Eric London

Late Monday night, Peruvian President Pedro Castillo deployed the army, initiated a state of emergency and declared an all-day curfew Tuesday in the capital of Lima and the neighboring port city of Callao as protests over the rapidly-increasing cost of living spread across the country. Later Tuesday, as it became clear that the curfew would only trigger deeper protests, Castillo lifted the curfew.

What began eight days ago as a management-supported strike by truckers over the rising cost of fuel has now developed into a broader movement involving small farmers in the country’s impoverished central highlands region, as well as youth and workers in Lima. Inflation in Peru hit a 26-year high Friday, with the cost of consumer goods rising 1.5 percent over the prior month due to the war in Ukraine.

A transportation strike in Huaycan on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, Monday, April 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Although Peru is located 8,000 miles from Ukraine, rising prices caused by the war, US/EU sanctions against Russia and breakdown in supply chains have triggered social protest by workers all over the world. Similarly explosive protests are taking place in Sri Lanka, and large demonstrations and strikes have taken place in Sudan, Albania, Iraq, Tunisia, Britain, Brazil, Turkey, Egypt, Spain, the United States, Canada and elsewhere.

In a midnight address to the nation Monday night, Castillo—a former teachers’ strike leader who won election in 2021 by posturing as left-wing—announced a total ban on public movement in Lima and Callao and ordered millions of people to stay in their homes, barring all but those in essential sectors from leaving even to go to work or make necessary purchases. The shutdown order also bans public assemblies and does not exempt COVID vaccination sites.

In his hastily-announced speech, Castillo said, “In order to re-establish peace and internal order, the cabinet of ministers has agreed to declare the immobilization of the citizenry from 2:00 a.m. until 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, April 5.”

He ordered protesters to “respect public and private property” and said the size of the demonstrations reflects anger over “demands that were not paid attention to for a long time, that were aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and now by the conflicts in the international situation.”

The order means a third of the country’s population will miss a day of work. Juan Gutierrez, a 45-year-old garment worker, told Al Jazeera: “Do you know what it means to lose a day? We have to work to eat.” On Tuesday afternoon, the Castillo government announced it was considering expanding the lockdown beyond Tuesday and implementing it on a national scale. Then, hours later, Castillo abruptly canceled the curfew, only adding to the spiraling political crisis as it became clearer that the curfew was only causing deep anger.

Over the weekend, a deal reached between the government and trucking and agricultural industry leaders failed to stop the protests, which had previously been limited to truckers and taxi drivers. The deal not only included the temporary elimination of most gas taxes, but also cuts to food prices and a 10 percent increase to the national minimum wage, which will now be the equivalent of $332 per month.

The announcement of a deal took place after thousands protested Friday in the city of Huancayo, Junín, roughly 150 miles from Lima. Protesters demanding the lowering of prices were met with brutal state repression. The size and militancy of the demonstrations in Huancayo were notable because the city is a stronghold of the ruling Peru Libre party and many demonstrators explained that they themselves had voted for Castillo, whose approval rating has sunk to the mid-20s.

In the southern city of Ica, impoverished agricultural workers descended on much-hated highway tollbooths and burned them down. Schools in many regions were closed Friday due to protests. A total of five people have been killed thus far.

Blockades of most major highways continued on Monday while spontaneous and socially explosive protests over food shortages took place for the first time in Lima, the third largest city in South America, with a population of 11 million and one of the world’s foremost megacities. Significant demonstrations took place in numerous working class districts of the city as viral videos show people breaking into grocery stores in search of food.

In an indication that the movement is gaining support among industrial centers of the working class, the main trade union organization, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP) is attempting to preempt a wildcat strike movement by announcing a general strike for Thursday, with demonstrations throughout the country and a march to the presidential palace in Lima.

In a press release announcing the strike call, CGTP General Secretary Gerónimo López warned of growing social unrest, declaring that “the people are demanding that the government follow through on its campaign promises by raising the minimum wage to a level that conforms with basic family spending needs.”

Fears that protests will spread further were expressed by right-wing congressperson Jorge Montoya, who told the media Monday that the state of emergency and curfew were necessary because masses of impoverished Peruvians were preparing to “come down from the hills and sack the city, not only here [in Lima] but also in different places throughout the country. The capital is an emblematic site and it must be protected.”

Sections of the Peruvian ruling class who are hostile to the Castillo government from the right have attempted to use the crisis to press for his removal from office. Two parliamentary efforts to bring down Castillo have failed in recent months. Castillo beat his right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former dictator Kenji Fujimori, by a razor-thin margin in last year’s election amid a hysterical anticommunist campaign in the corporate press. Since coming to power, Castillo has worked with the banks and foreign finance capital to implement austerity and has repudiated promises of social reform.

But the right-wing press has made clear that it’s frustration with Castillo is based on his inability to stop the protests. In an editorial Tuesday, the business daily El Comercio blamed Castillo for denouncing the protesters as paid provocateurs, a tactic that only galvanized popular support for the protests and “exacerbated the violence in places like Huancayo.”

The editorial criticized Castillo’s justice minister, Félix Chero, for mocking the impact of Tuesday’s all-day curfew on the city’s working class for fear it will trigger even larger protests. When asked how Lima’s impoverished residents will find food if they are required to stay in their homes, Chero said, “I don’t think anyone will go without eating, because this is one day.” El Comercio warned, “This comment, in another time and place, would have added fuel to the French Revolution.”

There is growing concern in the media outlets of the major imperialist countries over the growth of protests in places like Peru and Sri Lanka.

“Surging Prices Threaten Governments Everywhere,” warned Bloomberg Tuesday in an article referencing the imposition of a curfew in Lima. “While citizens in some countries may be fine with paying more if it helps pressure Russia to stop the war, plenty of others will simply blame whoever is in charge. That’s a risk for all world leaders, no matter what they think of Putin.”

In an article titled “Fuel protests prompt Lima curfew as Ukraine crisis touches South America,” the Guardian wrote of Castillo on Tuesday, “The schoolteacher from a peasant farmer family narrowly won the election last year with the backing of the rural poor. Now many of his former supporters, among them farmers and transport workers, are driving the protests into their second week, while the government strives to bring prices down.”

The New York Times also published an opinion piece Tuesday that stated: “Before the war, roughly 811 million people around the world did not have enough to eat. That number could increase tremendously this hunger season, the time between spring planting and fall harvest when food often runs out. The war’s many implications are distressing. Food crises often lead to social unrest, conflict, failed governments and mass migrations. For example, some researchers point to rising food prices as a driver of the Arab Spring upheavals in 2011.”

All indications are that the economic and social crisis in Peru will escalate in the weeks ahead. Peru imports 1.2 million tons of fertilizer a year, over half of which comes from Russia. On March 19, the country declared a state of emergency over food insecurity caused by the rising cost of fertilizer.

Strikes and protests over the rising cost of living are growing throughout Latin America. A strike movement is developing in Brazil among teachers and other sections of the working class, while the Argentinian government announced Tuesday a 6,000 peso cash payment (USD $52) to pensioners to address rapidly increasing food prices.

Profiting off of the pandemic, CEO pay increased to record levels in 2021 while workers’ wages fell

Kevin Reed

In the second year of the pandemic, the chief executives of the top US corporations are on track to set new compensation records while the wages of their workers were reduced. This is the conclusion drawn by several analyses of pay data submitted by a group of S&P 500 corporations to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as part of their annual filing requirements.

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that median pay for CEOs rose to $14.2 million last year, up from a record $13.4 million in 2020. The report said that half of the companies reported median wages for their workers increased in 2021 by 3.1 percent. However, this is less than half of last year’s inflation rate of 6.7 percent, and it means that these workers took an effective paycut.

The Journal report noted, “Most CEOs received a pay increase of 11 percent or more, and pay rose by at least 25 percent for nearly one-third of them.” It also reported that for one-third of the companies, median employee pay declined last year.

These figures are based on a review by the Journal of “pay data for more than half the index from MyLogIQ LLC.” MyLogIQ is a provider of SEC compliance services and has access to the government agency public filings database.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

The CEOs of nearly half the companies reporting were paid 186 times that of median workers in 2021. The Journal report says, “That is up from 166 times in the year before the pandemic and 156 times in 2018, the first year that nearly all S&P 500 companies reported median employee pay.”

The compensation data is provided to the SEC by the corporations as part of the disclosures mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 which was passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis sparked by the collapse of the mortgage-backed securities markets on Wall Street. The CEO compensation figures include the value of stock awards along with salary, cash bonuses, perks and retirement benefits.

The Journal’s report goes on to air the complaints of business executives that the pay ratio data is a “blunt instrument that offers little meaningful insight.” The corporate representatives also criticize the reporting requirements because the SEC rules “give companies significant leeway on how they rank workers globally to identify the median employee,” and the pay for median workers is determined “using the same rules that govern reported CEO pay.”

Also on Sunday, the Financial Times (FT) reported that the pay data is “raising the prospect of fresh clashes with investors and employees as the gap between their earnings and those of their staff widens to a historic multiple in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

The FT’s analysis—based on information from the data company Equilar—said that CEO pay ratio shot up to 245 times that of a median employee in 2021 compared to 192 times in 2020, the largest one-year increase since the start of the disclosures in 2018. The report attributed the record gap to the stock market rally that “delivered far larger windfalls to bosses than to their employees.”

The FT also pointed out that the jump in CEO compensation was the result of bonuses that were paused or cut in 2020 during the pandemic. This makes clear that the reductions in executive compensation during the initial economic shocks of the coronavirus were little more than public relations window dressing as workers were suffering widespread unemployment and expanding poverty, as well as sickness and death from COVID-19.

It did not take long for the process of capitalist wealth accumulation for the super-rich to resume on a higher level than anything achieved prior to the pandemic. Meanwhile, some US corporations never bothered to slow down the growth of increasingly grotesque wealth inequality throughout the pandemic. At the grocery store chain Kroger, for example, the CEO pay ratio was 909 times that of a median worker’s wages in 2020, and the company has yet to file with the SEC for 2021.

A third study published on March 29 by Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance based on the Equilar data reported on the early trends in executive compensation showed that CEO pay had “bounced back strongly from pandemic ‘woes’.” The report showed that CEOs in the top 75th percentile increased by 22 percent last year from $16.8 million to $20.5 million, and the pay ratio increased by 42 percent from 307.5 to 437 times a median worker’s wages.

Significantly, the Harvard report also showed that for all categories—25th percentile, median and 75th percentile—the median employee compensation was reduced from 2020 to 2021. The steepest decline was among the lowest income group, the 25th percentile, where compensation was cut by 25 percent from $44,946 to $33,493. When inflation is added to this reduction, the wages of the lowest paid employees of the top 500 companies in the US were cut by more than 30 percent.

The data reported by approximately one-half of the S&P 500 companies shows that the US financial elite have not only taken advantage of the pandemic to dramatically increase their wealth through the unprecedented rise of the stock market fueled by a massive infusion of cash into Wall Street by the Federal Reserve Bank. The corporations have also used the social devastation caused by the criminal response of the US government to the public health crisis to intensify the exploitation of the working class by slashing wages.

The Wall Street Journal report highlighted the compensation of Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel Corporation, who earned a package worth $179 million, which is 1,700 times the pay of its median employee who was identified as “a program manager in Malaysia” who earned a total of $104,400. The Journal said Intel justified Gelsinger’s windfall because it “reflected his experience, the challenge of transforming Intel and $50 million in compensation he gave up by leaving business software company VMware Inc.”

Another featured compensation program was that of the private equity firm KKR & Company, which paid its co-CEOs Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall approximately $559 million and $523 million respectively. A KKR spokesperson told the Journal, “The vast majority of the compensation is performance-based stock that will have to more than double in value for the stock awards to fully vest.”

Canada commits to purchase F-35 fighter jets, vows massive defence spending hike in April 7 budget

Roger Jordan

Canada’s Liberal government has announced that it plans to purchase 88 F-35 fighter jets from the giant US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, and will significantly hike military spending in its 2022 budget, scheduled to be presented this Thursday.

The minority Liberal government is assured parliamentary support for both measures, thanks to the three-year “confidence-and-supply” agreement struck between Prime Justin Trudeau and New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh March 21. Outside of parliament, this governmental alliance will rely on the corporatist trade unions to suppress working-class opposition to war abroad and austerity for public services at home.

The Trudeau government and social-democratic NDP politicians, with the support of much of the corporate-controlled media, are claiming their political partnership will “deliver for Canadians” by creating a “better, more prosperous future.” In reality, the only constituencies the Liberal-NDP alliance will deliver for are Canadian big business and its military. Behind rhetoric about making dental care available for all, “strengthening health care” and “making parliament work for Canadians,” the Liberals and NDP will work to ensure that Canadian imperialism’s war machine gets the funding and equipment required to continue its provocative role in NATO’s proxy war with Russia, while enforcing “fiscal responsibility,” i.e., public spending restraint, at home.

The Liberal-NDP deal coincided with a massive escalation of NATO’s proxy war against Russia, in which Ottawa is playing a major and particularly aggressive role. Since NATO goaded Putin into invading Ukraine, the Trudeau government has sent tens of millions of dollars of offensive weaponry to Kiev, whose military forces are rife with far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis, and boosted Canada’s military presence in the Baltic and Black Sea regions.

An F-35B Lightning combat aircraft flies off the coast of England on July 1, 2016. (Photo by SAC Tim Laurence)

The measures the Trudeau government is now taking to greatly expand the Canadian Armed Forces’ capabilities are aimed at ensuring Canadian imperialism can continue to wage war around the world in alliance with its US military-strategic partner for decades to come.

Lockheed Martin describes the F-35 stealth fighter jet as the “most lethal, survivable and connected fighter aircraft in the world.” Its key features include “enhanced electronic warfare,” “advanced sensors,” and “advanced 5th-Generation weapons capability.” The price tag for Canada’s 88 jets will be about $15 billion. This sum is about equal to what the federal government, which has far and away the greatest fiscal powers and resources under Canada’s constitution, provided the provinces and territories in 2020, under the Canada Social Transfer, to pay for social assistance, post-secondary and early childhood education and other social services.

But the F-35 purchase is only the tip of the iceberg.

By supporting the Liberal government through June 2025, the NDP is ensuring that it can enact a large chunk of the 70 percent hike in annual defence spending the Liberals pledged in June 2017 that they would implement over nine years ending in 2026. Under this plan, the current defence budget of around $23 billion will to rise to about $32 billion over the next four years. The additional funds are committed to funding, among other things, a new fleet of warships and armed drones.

However, due to the advent of a new era of “strategic competition” between the great powers—i.e., the Canadian-backed US military-strategic offensives against Russia and China—these huge planned military spending increases are now being dismissed as grossly inadequate by the military top brass, the most influential ruling class think-tanks, and the government itself. Defence Minister Anita Anand has boasted that she has brought before cabinet various plans to increase Canada’s defence spending to 2 percent of GDP and more. NATO is currently pressing all member states to raise defence budgets to at least 2 percent of GDP forthwith.

To meet this goal, Canada would effectively need to double defence spending from its current $23 billion level. Parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux told CBC that while Canada’s current defence spending equates to 1.39 percent of GDP, an additional “$20-25 billion” annually would be needed to keep the budget above 2 percent of economic output if the effects of economic growth and inflation are taken into account.

On top of this, there is strong support within the top echelons of the military and foreign policy establishment for a massive investment in modernizing NORAD, the North American aerospace and maritime defence command, a Cold War bilateral Canada-US continental defence structure. Canada’s contribution to modernizing NORAD’s “early warning” surveillance system in the far north is estimated at $11 billion.

However, the key issue now being discussed within the Canadian ruling class and military-security establishment is the need for Canada to join the US ballistic missile defence shield and otherwise assist in developing the means to “take out” “over the horizon threats”—that is to prepare to wage “winnable” nuclear war against Russia and China.

The NDP has repeatedly reiterated its full-throated support for this mad rearmament drive, which can only be understood as the Canadian ruling elite’s preparation to be a major belligerent in a third world war, as it was in the two imperialist world wars of the last century. NDP Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Heather Macpherson noted recently, “We have seen our military be decimated over [the] long-term. This is not something that has just happened. We have not provided the tools that our soldiers, our men and women in uniform, need to do the jobs that we're asking them to do safely.”

The NDP, no less so than the Liberals and Tories, is also fully on board with the reckless drive to war with Russia, which threatens to trigger a global conflagration. The NDP used a recent opposition day in parliament to table a motion aimed at making the sweeping economic sanctions against Russia “more effective.” Party spokeswoman for national defence Lindsay Mathyssen said, “Economic sanctions are a strong tool we have to hit at Putin where it will hurt him most, his wealth. However, sanctions won’t have the desired effect if the government is not willing to enforce them properly.” She demanded a public blacklist of Russian owners of Canadian assets, a move that would no doubt be used to further intensify the hysterical anti-Russia war fever in the upper middle class.

In reality, the price for sanctions will be paid for by working people in Russia, Ukraine, and around the world as the cost of key commodities and basic necessities shoot up under conditions where wages remain stagnant.

Canadian imperialism’s vast rearmament program will come at the expense of the working class. The tens of billions in additional war spending to be clawed out of public spending and workers’ wages will be added to the hundreds of billions looted from public funds by the corporate elite and financial oligarchy during the pandemic, when the Trudeau government orchestrated the transfer of over $650 billion to big business and the banks virtually overnight. Like the ruling elite’s huge outlays to wage war, the bailout of the super-rich during the pandemic was fully endorsed by the NDP and trade unions, who ensured that all popular opposition to the ruling elite’s back-to-work/back-to-school drive was sabotaged and suppressed.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has explicitly stated that additional funding for the military will mean budget cuts elsewhere. During her fall fiscal update in December 2021, Freeland pledged to impose “fiscal guardrails” to ensure that the government spending conducted during the early stages of COVID-19 was reduced and Canada could work towards a balanced budget.

Behind the blather in the corporate media about major new spending commitments to placate the NDP, the reality is that both the Liberals and New Democrats fully endorse the framework of austerity for public spending and low taxes for the corporate elite that has dominated political life for the past three decades. There are no plans to reverse the savage cuts to health care, education, social housing and other critical social services that have seen inequality and poverty in Canada rise to unprecedented levels. On the contrary, cuts in these areas will have to be intensified to pay for the massive military budget and subsidies for the so-called “green,” “clean energy” economy, from which corporate Canada hopes to reap multi-billion-dollar profits in the years to come.

The Liberals and NDP will rely on the trade union bureaucracy to suppress working class opposition to this class war agenda. The Canadian Labour Congress has declared its whole-hearted support for the confidence-and-supply agreement, with its president Bea Bruske enthusing in The Hill Times that “hope and optimism shines through the gray fog” in Ottawa thanks to the Liberal-NDP deal. It was a “welcome antidote to the noxious partisan rhetoric of recent weeks and months,” she asserted.

The meaning of this remark is unmistakable. Bruske, the union bureaucracy and the NDP are determined that no “partisan” divisions emerge on the ruling elite’s waging of war abroad, huge rearmament for the military, and austerity for public spending. To this end, the unions will keep sabotaging workers’ struggles, like the Teamsters’ sellout of the courageous struggle by 3,000 CP Rail workers on the very same day that Trudeau and Singh announced their agreement.

Corporate media parrots the Azov Battalion

Jason Melanovski

Over a month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Western corporate media now uncritically passes on information sourced from the fascist Azov Battalion.

During the 2014 United States-backed coup of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the general stance of Western media towards Kiev was uncritical, downplaying or ignoring the leading role fascist forces played in bringing down the Yanukovych government.

Armored vehicles of the Azov regiment in Mariupol [Credit: Wanderer777/CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia]

These forces, including the Svoboda Party and the Right Sector, out of which the Azov Battalion emerged, openly place themselves in the traditions of Nazi collaborationist organizations like the OUN-B and the UPA, which were responsible for the massacres of tens of thousands of Jews, Poles as well as Ukrainian civilians during World War II.

So blatant was the presence of prominent neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine that following the 2014 coup and outbreak of civil war in the eastern Donbass region, several media outlets such as Time, USA Today, the New York Times and others released stories admitting that indeed, the most dedicated soldiers within Ukraine’s Armed Forces were neo-Nazis.

In a 2015 USA Today article titled “Volunteer Ukrainian unit includes Nazis,” Azov Battalion spokesman Andriy Diachenko admitted that 10 to 20 percent of Azov’s members were neo-Nazis.

Time magazine noted in a January 2021 article “How a white-supremacist Milita uses Facebook to Radicalize and Train New Members,” that Azov’s neo-Nazi ideology and history were undeniable.

Regarding Azov founder Andriy Biletsky and his former Patriot of Ukraine group, Time reported that “Biletsky’s nickname within the group was Bely Vozhd, or White Ruler, and his manifesto seemed to pluck it’s narrative straight from Nazi ideology. Ukrainian nationalists, it said, must ‘lead the white nations of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen,’ a German term for ‘subhumans,’ with roots in Nazi propaganda.”

Even though the US was funneling billions of weapons into Ukraine’s military and paramilitary, Azov-related articles often attempted to distance the United States from the backing of Azov. Thus, a 2015 New York Times article on Ukraine’s far-right militias attempted to reassure its readers by uncritically reporting that “Americans are specifically prohibited from giving [military] instruction to members of the Azov group.”

A since deleted post on the website of the Azov Battalion, showing its members with representatives of the US and Canadian military in 2017

In reality, pictures show that US officers have long been involved in training members of the Azov Battalion.

Now, with NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, all such pretences by the media have been abandoned. The Azov Battalion is integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard and is now playing a prominent role in the war, especially in Mariupol, a predominantly Russian-speaking city in southern Ukraine, control over which is of key strategic significance.

As the Western media plays a critical role in distributing imperialist propaganda on the war, “information” from the Azov Battalion is now propagated directly to Western audiences—often with no mention of its ties to neo-Nazis.

NBCs chief foreign policy correspondent Richard Engel led the way in whitewashing Azov when in early February he showed the Azov Battalion training Mariupol residents in the use of weapons and first aid. Despite the fact that Azov’s use of a Wolfsangel insignia, which is associated with Hitler’s SS in the Second World War, was clearly identifiable, Engel failed to mention Azov at all.

On March 22, CBS News published a defence of Azov titled “The Azov Battalion: How Putin built a false premise for war against ‘Nazis’ in Ukraine.”

In the article, CBS quoted Ruslan Leviev, an analyst with the Conflict Intelligence Team, as an expert in its defence of Azov.

Leviev flatly lied to CBS: “There are no Nazi battalions in Ukraine.”

“There is (the Azov) regiment … There are (estimated) several thousand people who are in this regiment. It is indeed a group where many members adhere to nationalist and far-right views. But a lot of people also join it because it is one of the most prepared and fit-for-war units,” Leviev assured CBS.

Later, on April 1, CNN featured a video on the Erin Burnett Upfront show of Azov Battalion Captain Bohdan Krotevych claiming that Russian forces had created “mountains of corpses on the streets,” noting that Krotevych is part of “ultra nationalist far-right battalion.”

But this disclosure had no impact on Burnett, who repeated Krotevych’s accusations as a statement of fact. Burnett also relayed Krotevych’s claim that the Mariupol bombing had killed 400 people, 100 more than the widely quoted figure of 300 dead.

On March 29, CNN published a story titled “A far-right battalion has a key role in Ukraine's resistance. It’s neo-Nazi history has been exploited by Putin,” defending Azov as an “effective fighting force” and downplaying its neo-Nazi ideology as a matter of the past.

After covering the myriad fascist violent incidents, and quoting at length from its leaders, the article denounces any questioning of the information coming from Azov regarding the war, such as the bombing of the Mariupol theatre as “Russian disinformation.”

Despite going to great lengths to sanitize Azov, the story was too truthful for the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, as parliament member Serhiy Taruta published an open letter and on Facebook called on CNN to quit publishing “Russian propaganda.”

Serious questions remain regarding the bombing of the Mariupol Theater, which Russia has accused Azov of blowing up as a false flag operation to elicit support for a no-fly zone in Ukraine. Whatever the nature of the bombing, it was quickly seized upon by Western media outlets and governments to call for an intensification of the anti-Russia war drive.

As Max Blumenthal reported on the GrayZone, Azov photos of the theatre bombing were quickly disseminated through western media outlets with no disclaimer that they were taken by a neo-Nazi militia.

Azov Battalion Deputy Commander Svyatoslav Palamar has been widely used as a source on the situation in Mariupol, including by CNN, the NewYork Post and the Telegraph. Again, no mention is made of Azov’s neo-Nazi ideology.

Blumenthal also noted that the western media reporting on the bombing was largely based on tweets from Kyiv Independent reporter Illia Ponomarenko, who has admitted to being “consecrated” into the Azov Battalion.

Ponomarenko has built a large following on Twitter since the beginning of Russia’s invasion and serves as a conduit for Ukrainian war propaganda back to western audiences.

Twitter post of dead Russian soldiers by Illia Ponomarenko

A cheerleader for Ukrainian nationalism and war, Ponomarenko regularly posts gory photos of dead Russian soldiers and calls for NATO to intervene in the war on Ukraine’s behalf, thus assisting a social media campaign by Ukraine’s armed forces and the far-right that directly violates the Geneva Convention for the humane treatment of prisoners of war.

Notably, Ponomarenko’s employer, the newly created Kyiv Independent receives its funding from western imperialism, including the US’s National Endowment for Democracy and the EU’s European Endowment for Democracy.

More recently, photos of the apparent killing of civilians in Bucha first appeared on the social media accounts of figures such as Ponomarenko and the far-right “activist” thug Serhii Sternenko. The photos and reports were then fed to Western media outlets, which again seized upon them to call for increased sanctions against Russia and the prosecution of President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal.

Photo captions by the New York Times indicate that Azov Battalion soldiers were among the first to enter Bucha on April 2 after Russian forces left the town on March 30. Despite this fact, claims of a wanton Russian massacre are promoted uncritically while those calling for investigation before judgement are smeared as “Russian trolls.”

US workers and poor suffer widely disproportionate death toll from COVID-19, study finds

Kate Randall

As the US death toll from COVID-19 climbs above 1 million, the government and its mouthpieces in the media continue to perpetuate the myth that deaths from COVID-19 are a generally natural phenomenon that authorities have been all but powerless to stop. According to this lie, SARS-CoV-2 has spread and killed without concern for the socioeconomic status of its victims.

However, a new report exposes the grim reality that among the more than 81 million Americans who have been infected by the deadly virus, the poor and those living in low-income communities have been far more likely to die. During the repeated COVID-19 waves that have struck down hundreds of thousands over the last two years, death rates were as much as five times higher in the poorest counties than in those with the highest median incomes.

The report was produced by the Poor People’s Campaign in partnership with economists at the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network led by Jeffrey Sachs. Analyzing statistics from more than 3,200 US counties, the report compares the poorest 10 percent of counties with the richest 10 percent. And the results are staggering.

The study clearly shows that it is the working class—the low-paid, the unemployed, those in “essential” workplaces, those without health insurance, the rent-burdened—who have been disproportionately and devastatingly impacted by the pandemic.

Children and their caregivers arrive for school in New York, Monday, March 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

As the authors write: “The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated preexisting social and economic disparities that have long festered in the US. Widespread and unequal distribution of wealth, income and resources prior to the pandemic created the conditions for many of the negative outcomes associated with the virus.”

In other words, the immense class divide in US society has been further demonstrated by the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on the millions of people who live in impoverished counties across America. Government policies have created poverty, hunger, hyper-exploitation on the job, unemployment and deplorable living conditions that have created the prime conditions for COVID-19 to fester and kill.

The report divides US counties into deciles, each representing approximately 10 percent of the population by income. It also provides valuable interactive maps and graphics that chart the course of the pandemic in these counties.

In the poorest decile, in which 42-94 percent of people live in poverty, the death rate is near double that of counties with less than a fifth of people live in poverty. Approximately 31 million people live in the poorest decile of counties studied.

Mingo County, West Virginia, is one of the lowest income counties in the US, with 52.41 percent of the population living under 200 percent of the federal poverty guideline, which stands at about $36,000 for a household of two. The Appalachian state has been devastated by unemployment and the opioid crisis.

Mingo County’s COVID-19 death rate is 470 per 100,000, ranking it in the highest quarter of counties. The county is 95 percent white and media income is $32,746 with over half of its residents living under 200 percent of the poverty line. The official unemployment rate currently stands at 7.5 percent. The Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, in neighboring Logan County, was a massive labor uprising as part of the drive to unionize miners which saw the US military deployed to enforce martial law and arrest hundreds of workers.

In the Bronx in New York City, 51 percent of county residents live under 200 percent of the poverty line. Over 60 percent of residents are rent-burdened, paying more than 30 percent of household income towards rent. It is one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the US. Of its 1.4 million residents, 55 percent are Hispanic, 29 percent black, 9 percent white and around 5 percent Asian. It has a COVID-19 death rate of 538 per 100,000, which is among the highest death rates in the country. Many Bronx residents work in Manhattan, servicing New York City’s wealthy elite.

By contrast, in Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the richest counties in the US, the median income stands at $124,831, with 15.1 percent of people living below the 200 percent poverty line. The COVID-19 death rate stands at 115 per 100,000. Fairfax revolves around professional service and technology, with many employees working for the US government. The county hosts several intelligence agencies, including the CIA. It is also headquarters to seven of the Fortune 500 Companies.

Nearly three-quarters of the counties with the lowest median incomes and highest percentage of people living in poverty are in the country’s Southeast and Southwest.

Wilkinson County, Mississippi, in the Deep South, has a median income of $27,313. More than 60 percent of people there live below 200 percent of the poverty line. The COVID-19 death rate stands at 510 per 100,000 people. About two-thirds of the county’s population is African American.

In Gila County, Arizona, in the Southwest, 44.68 percent of residents live below the 200 percent poverty line. The COVID-19 death rate is 641 per 100,000 people, one of the nation’s highest. The county is 77 percent white and 15 percent Native American. Eighteen percent are Hispanic or Latino.

The COVID-19 death rate in McKinley County, New Mexico, is 786 per 100,000 people. The median income is $33,834, and more than 61 percent lives below the 200 percent poverty line. Three-quarters of the county’s population are Native American.

According to the report, the two most deadly periods for the pandemic have been the “third wave,” of winter 2020-2021, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all deaths to date, and the ongoing Omicron wave, accounting for nearly 20 percent of deaths so far.

During the third wave, deaths rates were 4.5 times higher in the group of counties in the decile with the lowest median income compared to those with the highest median income. Deaths rates were five times higher in the poorest counties during the Delta variant phase, while the Omicron phase has seen a death rate nearly three times higher in counties with lower median incomes.

While vaccination rates tend to be higher in wealthier counties, vaccination status does not explain all the variation across income groups, as in almost every decile, county vaccine coverage ranges from 85 percent or higher to under 5 percent.

The report aggregates data by connecting information about COVID-19 deaths to other demographic features, including income, race, health insurance status and other characteristics. It demonstrates the connections between poverty, race and the pandemic and seeks to show how “poverty, age, gender, race, ethnicity, disability and class intersect with COVID-19 outcomes.”

As the county examples above demonstrate, however, it is class that is driving the misery of the COVID-19 pandemic. The poorest counties, which have suffered the most and seen the most deaths, vary widely by ethnic make-up, with socioeconomic class being the overriding factor.

As the report correctly states on the pandemic, “While US billionaires increased their wealth by $2.1 trillion, or by 70 percent, many Americans faced eviction, hunger, and record unemployment.” As in all aspects of social life, it is the working class that has been the main target of SARS-CoV-2, driven by the criminal policies of the ruling elite and the two big-business parties.