Will China’s “Zero COVID” Policy Become a Big Liability for Xi?

Amy Gadsden

There’s no shortage of issues to keep Chinese premier Xi Jinping from sleeping at night: the threat of a real estate market collapse, Chinese provinces adjusting growth targets downward because of COVID, his decision to align closely with Vladimir Putin and Russia’s barbaric attack on Ukraine, a birth rate that’s hit a 61-year low…

But perhaps the greatest concern for Xi is COVID-19’s threat to his reappointment for a third term as Communist Party chairman at the 20th Party Congress expected later this year.

Natural disasters have often led to political change in China. The July 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed more than half a million people by some estimates, was seen by many as an indication that Mao Zedong had lost legitimacy — or the “Mandate of Heaven” — as the ruler of China. His death a few weeks later only affirmed these superstitions.

Whether by superstition or simple discontent, Xi is worried that dissatisfaction with his government’s handling of COVID might weaken him in the run-up to the Party Congress. That’s why he and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are working furiously to ensure the success of his “Zero COVID” policy, especially until the Party meets in the fall.

China is not a democracy and dissent is not tolerated, but public opinion nevertheless matters. Xi is in a tough spot as the spread of the Omicron variant strains efforts to maintain the Zero COVID policy. The Shanghai government’s heavy-handed response to an outbreak has generated condemnation from citizens who are angry about empty store shelves, a lack of access to health services, shoddy isolation facilities, and — most draconian of all — policies that separate infected children from their parents.

At a certain point, this discontent may spill over into questions about Xi’s handling of the country.

China’s top disease experts are starting to admit privately that the Omicron variant threatens the viability of the Zero COVID policy. Can the Communist Party shut down cities and provinces for weeks and months at a time following every outbreak? Can it keep borders closed indefinitely? The looming social and economic costs of the Zero COVID strategy are becoming clearer, and Xi has no long term plan beyond keeping the virus at bay until the Party Congress.

After the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan in December 2019, Chinese citizens were willing to endure significant limits on personal freedom and movement to maintain low to non-existent COVID levels in the country. The Wuhan lockdown in early 2020 forced 11 million people into their homes on the brink of China’s most celebrated holiday, the Lunar New Year.

Deprivation was significant, and signs of popular dissatisfaction began to appear on social media. But these were quickly silenced, and the Chinese people heralded victory over COVID in the spring of 2020 just before the rest of the world plunged into the seemingly endless winter of the pandemic.

In the nearly two years since, China has implemented some of the strictest international and travel restrictions in the world, all aimed at keeping COVID from entering the country. It has deployed high tech methods (like tracking and symptom checkers) as well as low tech methods (like work units and neighborhood committees) to ensure compliance with virus protocols and routinely locked down neighborhoods, and even whole cities, when cases emerge.

This strategy had largely worked — until recently.

In February, China had 136,000 cases and 5,700 deaths, with much of that registered during the crisis in Wuhan. Less than two months later that number had grown to just shy of 1 million cases and over 13,000 deaths.

While China’s numbers are still far fewer than the United States, as well as neighbors Japan and Korea — all of which have smaller populations and stronger health care systems than the PRC — the increases are causing alarm for many in the country. Hong Kong witnessed an alarmingly high death rate per capita in March, killing mainly the city’s elderly. And China is still refusing to make available more effective mRNA vaccines to its population because of what many see as “vaccine nationalism” on the part of the authorities, who continue to favor the country’s homegrown vaccine.

Until recently, many Chinese citizens accepted the government’s strict public health measures as a price they have been willing to pay for their health. But the spread of the Omicron variant threatens to outmatch China’s prevention strategies — and that’s keeping Xi Jinping awake at night.

Xi knows that he and the Party are responsible for China’s experience with COVID-19. As the rest of the world moves to COVID endemicity, the prospects of maintaining a “Zero COVID” state in China are dimming. While an uncontrollable national outbreak would surely pose a threat to Xi’s leadership, maintaining this strategy may prove just as menacing.

On Ukraine, the World Majority Sides With Russia Over U.S.

John V. Walsh

2014 saw two pivotal events that led to the current conflict in Ukraine.

The first, familiar to all, was the coup in Ukraine in which a democratically elected government was overthrown at the direction of the United States and with the assistance of neo-Nazi elements which Ukraine has long harbored.

Shortly thereafter the first shots in the present war were fired on the Russian-sympathetic Donbass region by the newly installed Ukrainian government.  The shelling of the Donbass which claimed 14,000 lives has continued for 8 years, despite attempts at a cease-fire under the Minsk accords which Russia, France and Germany agreed upon but Ukraine backed by the US refused to implement.  On February 24, 2022, Russia finally responded to the slaughter in Donbass and the threat of NATO on its doorstep.

Russia Turns to the East – China Provides an Alternative Economic Powerhouse.

The second pivotal event of 2014 was less noticed and in fact rarely mentioned in the Western mainstream media.  In November of that year according to the IMF, China’s GDP surpassed that of the U.S. in purchasing power parity terms (PPP GDP).  (This measure of GDP is calculated and published by the IMF, World Bank and even the CIA.  Students of international relations like economics Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, Graham Allison and many others consider this metric the best measure of a nation’s comparative economic power.)   One person who took note and who often mentions China’s standing in the PPP-GDP ranking is none other than Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

From one point of view, the Russian action in Ukraine represents a decisive turn away from the hostile West to the more dynamic East and the Global South.  This follows decades of importuning the West for a peaceful relationship since the Cold War’s end.  As Russia makes its Pivot to the East, it is doing its best to ensure that its Western border with Ukraine is secured.

Following the Russian action in Ukraine, the inevitable U.S. sanctions poured onto Russia.  China refused to join them and refused to condemn Russia.  This was no surprise; after all Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China had been drawing ever closer for years, most notably with trade denominated in ruble-renminbi exchange, thus moving toward independence from the West’s dollar dominated trade regime.

The World Majority Refuses to Back U.S. Sanctions

But then a big surprise. India joined China in refusing to honor the US sanctions regime.  And India kept to its resolve despite enormous pressure including calls from Biden to Modi and a train of high level US, UK and EU officials trekking off to India to bully, threaten and otherwise attempting to intimidate India.  India would face “consequences,” the tired US threat went up.  India did not budge.

India’s close military and diplomatic ties with Russia were forged during the anti-colonial struggles of the Soviet era.  India’s economic interests in Russian exports could not be countermanded by U.S. threats. Now India and Russia are now working on trade via ruble-rupee exchange.  In fact, Russia has turned out to be a factor that put India and China on the same side, pursuing their own interests and independence in the face of U.S. diktat. Moreover with trade in ruble-renminbi exchange already a reality and with ruble-rupee exchange in the offing, are we about to witness a Renminbi-Ruble-Rupee world of trade – a “3R” alternative to the Dollar-Euro monopoly?  Is the world’s second most important political relationship, that between India and China, about to take a more peaceful direction?  What’s the world’s first most important relationship?

India is but one example of the shift in power.  Out of 195 countries, only 30 have honored the US sanctions on Russia.  That means about 165 countries in the world have refused to join the sanctions.   Those countries represent by far the majority of the world’s population.  Most of Africa, Latin America (including Mexico and Brazil), East Asia (excepting Japan, South Korea, both occupied by U.S. troops and hence not sovereign, Singapore and the renegade Chinese Province of Taiwan) have refused.  (India and China alone represent 35% of humanity.)

Add to that fact that 40 different countries are now the targets of US sanctions and there is a powerful constituency to oppose the thuggish economic tactics of the U.S.

Finally, at the recent G-20 Summit a walkout led by the US when the Russia delegate spoke was joined by the representatives of only 3 other G-20 countries, with 80% of these leading financial nations refusing to join!  Similarly, a US attempt to bar a Russian delegate from a G-20 meeting later in the year in Bali was rebuffed by Indonesia which currently holds the G-20 Presidency.

Nations Taking Russia’s side are no longer poor as in Cold War 1.0.

These dissenting countries of the Global South are no longer as poor as they were during the Cold War.  Of the top 10 countries in PPP-GDP, 5 do not support the sanctions.  And these include China (number one) and India (number 3).  So the first and third most powerful economies stand against the US on this matter.  (Russia is number 6 on that list about equal to Germany, number 5, the two being close to equal, belying the idea that Russia’s economy is negligible.)

These stands are vastly more significant than any UN vote.  Such votes can be coerced by a great power and little attention is paid to them in the world.  But the economic interests of a nation and its view of the main danger in the world are important determinants of how it reacts economically – for example to sanctions. A “no” to US sanctions is putting one’s money where one’s mouth is.

We in the West hear that Russia is “isolated in the world” as a result of the crisis in Ukraine.  If one is speaking about the Eurovassal states and the Anglosphere, that is true. But considering humanity as a whole and among the rising economies of the world, it is the US that stands isolated.  And even in Europe, cracks are emerging.  Hungary and Serbia have not joined the sanctions regime and of course most European countries will not and indeed cannot turn away from Russian energy imports crucial to their economies.  It appears that the grand scheme of U.S. global hegemony to be brought about by the US move to WWII Redux, both Cold and Hot, has hit a mighty snag.

For those who look forward to a multipolar world, this is a welcome turn of events emerging out of the cruel tragedy of the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine.  The possibility of a saner, more prosperous multipolar world lies ahead – if we can get there.

UK: University and College Union shelves national strikes for a year

Henry Lee

Following four weeks of strikes in February and March over a long-running dispute over pay and conditions in UK higher education (HE), University and College Union (UCU) General Secretary Jo Grady, has published a 38-page “new strategy and plan of action”.

With RPI inflation at 9 percent and the employers’ association offering only a 2.75 percent pay rise for most HE workers, the “new strategy” is to tell UCU members to stand down and suffer.

Jo Grady (Credit: UCU)

The report is littered with bombastic rhetoric, introducing “a more radical strategy to win” and insisting “This isn't just a 'fight', or even four 'fights'. It is a war.” Grady warns, “If we keep doing the same thing with only minor tactical tweaks, we will not win.” But the “same thing” that will not be repeated is any industrial action.

After complaining that the employers are “refusing to give our union anything resembling a victory” sell-out to its members, Grady comes to the point: the union needs to recruit new members and build up its resources, which “means not taking further action in the new six month mandate.”

The trade unions have spent decades developing strikebreaking tools to suppress the class struggle, and Grady proposes to bring every single one of them to bear against higher education workers. In the introduction she proposes to overrule the strike votes of members in 37 universities and suspend disputes until new ballots are arranged in April 2023.

Regarding motions submitted to the April 20 special higher education conference, Grady endorsed those calling for bureaucratic “mapping exercises”, an “online consultation” and other marketing activities to draw in members to pay dues but delay any fight for better conditions. Another motion backed by Grady proposes to invite the Universities and Colleges Employers Association to conciliation talks at the government’s Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. The role of ACAS “conciliation” historically is to work out a deal favourable to the employers which will be promoted as a “reasonable compromise” by the unions.

Another technique used to block any fight is fruitless appeals to the Labour Party. Citing as a positive example the fact that pay deals in the FE sector in Wales since 2019 have been above inflation, with UCU figures showing an average annual pay increase of 2.75 percent from August 2018 to August 2021 while annual price rises averaged 2.5 percent, Grady celebrates how “This has been achieved without industrial action—thanks in part to the fact that there is a Labour government in Wales and the UCU Wales office has developed a strong relationship with policymakers.”

This is the same right-wing party currently hiring scabs in a dispute with refuse collection lorry drivers in Coventry, while 2.75 percent has been adopted as the employers’ benchmark in England. The employers portray this as a concession because in January, emboldened by their corporatist relationship with the UCU, they only offered 1.75 percent.

Indicating that the UCU will take up no fight against plans to complete the transformation of universities into profit-making centres, Grady writes, “The Tory government's plans for higher education also present a massive potential obstacle to success… The domestic and public funding landscape is going to get worse in the foreseeable future, not better,”

The union bureaucracy specialises in presenting sellouts as decisive victories. Grady highlights “successes” she hopes to emulate. After boosting the pitiful deal in Wales, she refers to an “improved pay offer” won in Northern Ireland this January, and “improved offers” accepted at numerous colleges across England. The deal accepted in Northern Ireland was for a mere 2 percent for 2020 and 2 percent for 2021, a significant real-terms cut. After Weymouth College in England offered a 2.2 percent pay rise, Grady called for others to follow its example.

Strikes that UCU members have voted for throughout the USS pension dispute have been throttled by Grady in the same way as her widely despised predecessor Sally Hunt, who stood down following a mass rebellion by lecturers after her attempt to foist a rotten deal on them. After the employers succeeded in forcing through their long-sought pension cuts in February, followed by just five days of strikes called by the UCU, many workers are drawing the conclusion that there can be no serious struggle waged within this organisation.

Staff and students on the picket line at Kings College London during the recent strikes (WSWS Media)

Grady felt the need to acknowledge the impact of the union’s long history of betrayals. Despite over a decade of real-terms pay cuts, “only a small minority of staff eligible to be UCU members currently are UCU members,” she writes. Only around 30 percent of eligible workers were members of the UCU, far lower than the average union density in the public sector, which was 51.9 percent in 2020.

Confirming that the vast majority of HE workers have no confidence in the union, Grady wrote that in the 2021 ballot over pay and conditions, counting those who were not union members, “The total across all branches in the ballot was 9% of eligible staff voting for strike action” and that even many of the branches which joined strikes “saw 10% or less of their eligible staff voting to strike.”

It is especially difficult for the UCU to recruit the most exploited workers in HE, who have experienced deals announced by the union as “victories” that left the system of fixed-term contracts and low pay intact. Grady admitted, “UCU does not have high density amongst precariously employed and lower paid staff. If anything, membership demographics appear to be shifting more towards the higher paid and more securely employed end of the spectrum as time goes on.”

The inability to recruit poses a problem for the union bureaucracy. In the year ending August 31, 2021, the UCU pulled in over £22 million (£22,173,779) from members “contributions and subscription”. Over half of this income (53.8 percent) was creamed off by the union bureaucracy in terms of “remuneration and expenses of staff” (£11,948,283). Over £9 million (£9,028,314) went on the salaries and wages of the union’s officialdom. Grady coins in £140,213 in basic salary and pension contribution, plus expenses, putting her among the highest earners in Britain.

Grady sees workers outside the union only as a source of potential income, to be targeted with “a programme of properly planned, properly resourced, proactive recruitment” while the expensive matter of calling strikes is suspended.

Grady’s rival faction in the bureaucracy, the UCU Left, politically led by the Socialist Workers Party, offers no genuine opposition to the undermining of HE workers’ struggles. While referring to the new plan as a “surrender document”, the UCU Left continued to bolster a discredited UCU, writing, “Reading this document, you wouldn’t have thought that the union had just recorded overwhelming majorities for strike action and ASOS [action short of a strike].”

Before Grady published her new plan, and after having pretended to oppose the previous strategy of isolated regional strikes, the UCU Left suggested the low turnout in the ballot may be beneficial, as, “Hitting a minority of institutions can work to our advantage by causing splits among the employers”.

After Grady published the plan, a UCU Left statement went to extraordinary lengths to justify why members were not voting in strike ballots, declaring, “Members do not vote for a variety of reasons, as anyone who has engaged with a Get the Vote Out (GTVO) campaign can report, from lost papers to house moves and pre-arranged leave.”

The UCU Left and SWP only represent rival lower-ranking bureaucrats fighting got more lucrative positions. Candidates backed by the UCU Left in February’s elections to the National Executive Committee (NEC) were in large part branch secretaries, chairs and presidents.

At its April 20 “Four Fights conference” UCU officials voted down a motion calling for “UK-wide escalation of the ongoing strike action to indefinite strike action”. Instead, they backed a further 10 days of strikes to be held in “late May”, i.e, at the end of term. The UCU has still not named the date for any action.

As a harmless alternative to industrial action, Grady’s faction is for an exam marking boycott “in the coming months.” For all the UCU Left’s bluster, they only add the proviso that a marking boycott should be funded by “Members in non-striking branches” who “would be more than willing to contribute to sponsor colleagues.”

Members not taking part in a marking boycott should be asked to donate one day's pay each week to the union, whose funds would therefore be safeguarded! Their other proposals is “for a ballot over the summer” (when everyone is on holiday) that “could see us all ready to take on the employers right at the start of the autumn term.”

Mélenchon turns back on his voters to negotiate with French social democrats

Kumaran Ira

After receiving 22 percent of the vote in the first round of the French presidential elections, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) party is opening talks with the Socialist Party (PS). This turn to a discredited big-business party, which has always repudiated in deeds the cynical references to socialism that it made in its election propaganda, is a warning: Mélenchon is not trying to mobilize his voters, but to push them to the right and into a dead end.

Last Tuesday, LFI and the PS met at LFI headquarters to try to reach an accord on the June 12-19 French legislative elections. The PS National Council had suitably adopted a resolution calling for unity of all “left” forces, before announcing it was temporarily suspending talks with LFI on Friday. As for LFI, it is negotiating with the PS while calling to build a “Popular Union” with Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV), a party that openly supported President Emmanuel Macron, but also the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) and the Pabloite New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA).

LFI’s decision to seek an alliance with the PS again exposes the unprincipled character of Mélenchon’s maneuvers. In the run-up to the April 24 presidential runoff between Macron and neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen, the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES), the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), campaigned for workers and youth to boycott a fraudulent election between these two extreme-right candidates. The PES explained that only an irreconcilable rejection of both candidates would prepare workers for the struggles to come against the next president.

Mélenchon already declared himself ready, before the April 24 second round, to serve as prime minister under either Macron or Le Pen. “I ask the French people to elect me as prime minister” by electing “an LFI majority” in the legislative elections, he told BFM-TV on April 19. Asked whether he would serve either under Macron or the neo-fascist Le Pen, Mélenchon replied that this matter was of “secondary” importance.

LFI is turning its back on millions of its voters in the working class and youth to instead maneuver with the PS, which has responded by suspending negotiations with LFI and denouncing it as a threat to the European Union.

Former PS President François Hollande, who was so hated after five years in office that he did not dare run for a second term in 2017, criticized the planned LFI-PS alliance. “The PS must be true to its own history,” he claimed, criticizing LFI’s program: “This places in question the very history of socialism.”

Hollande indicated that any PS-LFI alliance would be founded on a repudiation of the promises of social reforms LFI made in its program. “If programs are designed to be put in practice,” Hollande said, “this would mean that the next government would ... disobey European treaties? A next government, were it to be formed, if it had a majority, would it leave NATO? Would it no longer aid the Ukrainians by giving them military equipment?”

Former PS Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who retired from public life after being eliminated from the second round of the 2002 presidential election by neo-fascist candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, adopted a more conciliatory position, speaking to Le Parisien. Jospin said Mélenchon’s “duty is to build an alliance,” but that he is “not sure that certain themes and the style of LFI will build a majority on the left.” Nevertheless, Jospin proposed that the PS find “an electoral accord with the entire left.”

Jospin stressed his concern over the 2022 election collapse of the PS and the Gaullists, the two tendencies that dominated official French politics in the period after the May 1968 French general strike. PS candidate Anne Hidalgo and Valérie Pécresse, the candidate of the Gaullist The Republicans (LR) party, were both eliminated with less than 5 percent of the vote.

“Emmanuel Macron built behind him a heterogeneous conglomerate without any clear identity. He did everything to set up another confrontation with the far right, which he considered easier to beat,” Jospin said, stressing his fear of the “disintegration of our political system.” He added, “Abstention is considerable, and the far right has grown even further. The two parties that, on the right and the left, controlled the democratic debate of earlier times and offered political alternatives to the country, have been marginalized.”

Jospin laid out the cynical calculations of a layer in the PS that aims to use LFI’s presidential vote to give itself a new face and stabilize an unpopular political establishment. Indeed, PS Party Secretary Olivier Faure made similar arguments. Criticized Tuesday night at a PS national committee by a PS minority critical of allying with LFI, Faure said such an alliance was the only way to prevent the PS from being absorbed into Macron’s party, The Republic on the March (LRM).

Faure said, “If you think the PS is dead, that there is nothing to be done, that you no longer are on the left, then leave. Join LRM. Otherwise, stay and struggle together with us. It will transform us.”

Faure’s arguments are lies coming from a party that, over four decades, has imposed austerity and war on the workers. He aims to make voters forget, among other things, the reactionary presidency of Hollande, the anti-worker labor decrees of its El Khomri law, its anti-democratic state of emergency, and its pillaging of society in the interests of the banks. The question that is truly posed by the proposed LFI-PS alliance is not what the reactionary PS is trying to do but, rather: why is LFI negotiating with it?

The PES has explained that LFI is objectively in a powerful position. Having won the working class districts of major cities, it could mobilize masses of workers in strikes against an unpopular president who was elected only because he was facing an even more unpopular, neo-fascist rival; against surging prices that are ruining workers; and against NATO war targeting Russia. Such strikes could not only shut down the French economy, but also initiate a struggle of the international working class against capitalism and imperialist war.

But LFI, a petty-bourgeois party based in layers of academics and trade union bureaucrats, is hostile to launching a struggle against imperialism. It rejects the Trotskyist perspective advanced by the PES, preferring its nationalist conception of a “citizens revolution” in a new “era of the people,” which entails a parliamentary deal with the reactionary PS. Instead of mobilizing its voters against war and austerity, LFI presses them to take as good coin the cynical promises of the PS.

Manuel Bompard, LFI’s representative in talks with the PS, hailed “positive” discussions with PS spokesman Pierre Jouvet. “We did not feel we were speaking with the same PS as two-three years ago,” Bompard said, adding that there is “no problem arising in discussions that seems insurmountable” with the PS, including “on pensions or the European question.”

Bompard made clear that the PS aims to make the French people forget the policies it carried out in power: “It clearly has a desire to present the appearance of a break with the PS of François Hollande; they had no difficulty to promise to abrogate their El Khomri law, to build a new Sixth Republic, to block price increases, which for us are critical issues.”

LFI lawmaker Mathilde Panot speaking to Sud Radio stressed that such alliances were at the heart of LFI’s strategy in the legislative elections: “We can use these legislative elections which, by the way, are a way to also overthrow the presidential monarchy in which we live, to make Jean-Luc Mélenchon prime minister, not only to place Mélenchon in the Matignon palace, but to really put our program in action.”

The conception promoted by LFI that it can put a progressive program into practice under a Macron or Le Pen presidency is another political lie. The argument, which lulls workers to sleep amid the danger of war and far-right dictatorship, aims above all to regroup all of the current or former allies of the old PS-PCF Union of the Left formed in 1972, to block a movement of workers and youth to the left.

Jospin and Mélenchon have long sought to unify Stalinist and social-democratic forces and their political satellites to build capitalist governments and attack the workers.

Both men began their political careers in the Organisation communiste internationaliste (OCI) as it broke with the ICFI, whose section today is the PES. After splitting the ICFI and repudiating Trotskyism in 1971, the OCI backed the Union of the Left. Jospin and Mélenchon both were members of the OCI and the PS, ultimately working closely with PS President François Mitterrand. Jospin became prime minister and Mélenchon a minister in the PS-led “Plural Left” government of 1997-2002, whose unpopularity led Jospin to be eliminated in the 2002 presidential election.

East Timor’s presidential election won by Jose Ramos-Horta

Patrick O'Connor

Jose Ramos-Horta won the second, run-off round of East Timor’s presidential election that was held April 19.

Jose Ramos-Horta [Image: Facebook screenshot]

Ramos-Horta received 62 percent of the vote, defeating incumbent Fretilin President Francisco “Lú Olo” Guterres with 38 percent. Turn out was 75.2 percent. The former prime minister and president will return to office next month, with the presidential swearing in ceremony scheduled for May 19.

Ramos-Horta becomes head of state amid an escalating economic crisis wracking the impoverished country, and with sharpening geo-strategic tensions in the region fueled by US imperialism’s preparations for war against China.

East Timor has been hard hit by the global supply chain and inflation crisis. Its economy was already negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with a massive economic contraction. Asian Development Bank figures showed -6.8 percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth for 2020, and positive growth of just 1.8 percent in 2021.

Costs of living are now escalating. The Tatoli state news agency reported Friday that in just a few weeks, the price of a 25 kilogram bag of rice has increased from US$10 to US$14, a 40 percent hike. Two litres of cooking oil now costs US$4.50, up from US$2.50, an 80 percent increase. Inflation will fuel poverty and hardship in East Timor, already one the world’s most impoverished nations, where the rural poor suffer recurring “hungry seasons.”

Dili residents lining up to receive remittances from family members working overseas [WSWS Media]

On April 13, just a few days before Horta’s election, the Fretilin-led coalition government announced new subsidies for oil and diesel fuels aimed at freezing prices for public transport operators, including land, water, and air transport, and for private consumers using fuel for agriculture and fishing.

This measure is directed towards preventing the emergence of social unrest and political opposition. It threatens, however, to further worsen East Timor’s budget crisis. More than 90 percent of all public revenue derives from oil and gas extraction—but the sole major field in operation, Bayu Undan, is nearly dry and is due to cease operations from next year. Two decades after East Timor received formal sovereign independence, outright state collapse is threatened unless alternative revenue streams are developed.

Ramos-Horta’s election is likely to see renewed focus on the enormous untapped oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea’s Greater Sunrise, worth tens of billions of dollars.

Ramos-Horta ran for president after receiving the backing of former president and prime minister Xanana Gusmão. The two ran a virtual joint ticket, appearing at campaign events together and appearing on Ramos-Horta’s billboards and related election material. When last in office, Gusmão promoted the Tasi Mane mega-project, aimed at preparing for the construction of a pipeline from Greater Sunrise to East Timor, where he wanted a processing plant to prepare the energy reserves for export. In southern Timor, Gusmão ordered the construction of multi-lane roads, an airport, and sea port.

These have gone unused for years. Both the Australian government, and Woodside Petroleum, which operates Greater Sunrise and has a 33 percent stake in the field, flatly refused to consider a pipeline to East Timor. Canberra insisted this would be too costly, and instead urged existing pipelines to processing facilities in the Australian city of Darwin be used. The standoff coincided with a global decline in oil and gas prices, and in 2020 Woodside wrote down the value of its stake to zero, effectively indicating its disinterest in developing the project.

The consequences of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine has, however, changed the calculations.

The Australian Financial Review reported on April 22 that Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill said that “serious consideration” ought to be given to Greater Sunrise. O’Neill explained: “If Russia were to go out of the Western energy system for the long haul [i.e., be subjected to indefinite US-European sanctions], that would have consequences for our long-term thinking around demand and pricing. I think there is tremendous opportunity: Australia has been a tremendous exporter of oil and gas for decades.”

The Woodside executive still insisted that processing natural gas in East Timor would be unviable, and this is likely to remain a point of sharp dispute between Canberra and Dili. The Energy Voice publication suggested that Greater Sunrise’s oil reserves may be extracted first, before the issue of the gas processing is resolved.

The Greater Sunrise question is being considered in the context of Washington’s aggressive confrontation of China. Solomon Islands, a relatively short distance from Timor, recently signed a security agreement with Beijing, to the fury of the Australian and American governments.

Ramos-Horta has long been close to the US and Australia. His election has nevertheless been accompanied by concerns within sections of the western foreign policy establishment that Beijing will increase its influence within East Timor, potentially including intervening in the Greater Sunrise development. The Australian Financial Review published a comment last Tuesday, “The sun is set to rise over East Timor,” by Grant Wilson, head of Asia Pacific at data analytics firm Exante Data. Wilson insisted, “If Australia does not support East Timor in developing the Greater Sunrise gas field, after the diplomatic mishandling of a security pact with Solomon Islands, China will.”

Ramos-Horta’s election is likely to trigger further political instability in East Timor. He received Gusmão’s support only after explicitly committing to dissolving the parliament and triggering elections for a new government in the event he won.

Gusmão and his National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) were locked out of power in May 2020, when Fretilin and the smaller Democratic Party and KHUNTO formation formed a majority coalition. Elections are not due to be held until next year, but Gusmão is desperate to return as prime minister and he expects Ramos-Horta to utilise constitutional provisions to dissolve the parliament and force an early poll.

These presidential power provisions, however, have several caveats and conditions. Moves to dissolve the Fretilin-led government may trigger another constitutional crisis in East Timor.

NATO prepares to repress mass protests at June 2022 war summit in Madrid

Alejandro López

The NATO powers are preparing mass repression against anti-war protests at NATO’s Madrid summit on June 29-30. The summit’s host, Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, is to spend €37 million and deploy tens of thousands of police to turn downtown Madrid into a fortress. This makes a mockery of NATO’s claim to be defending “human rights” and “democracy” by waging war against Russia in Ukraine.

The Madrid summit is particularly important for NATO. It will approve NATO’s next Strategic Concept, outlining its mission in the coming decade. The world’s largest military organization, led by Washington, responsible for millions of deaths and the devastation of countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, is set to lay out war plans targeting nuclear-armed Russia and China.

Anti-riot police fires a rubber projectile towards protesters during a strike organized by metal workers in Cadiz, southern Spain, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021. [AP Photo/Javier Fergo]

Earlier this month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the summit “will guide the Alliance as we adapt to a new security reality. It will address the implications of Russia’s aggressive actions, and our future relationship with Moscow. For the first time, it will also need to take account of China’s growing influence and coercive policies on the global stage, which pose a systemic challenge to our security, and to our democracies.”

Fifty delegations will attend, including from non-NATO-member states like Ukraine, and Sweden and Finland, which are already serving as unofficial NATO proxies against Russia. The ruling elites in both Scandinavian countries, which maintained formal neutrality after World War II, have seized on the war in Ukraine to join NATO. Also attending will be Japan, a non-NATO member, now at the center of US-NATO’s anti-China partnerships in the Asia-Pacific.

Last October, when it was announced Madrid would host the summit to mark the 40th anniversary of Spain’s entry into NATO, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Madrid “would have all the capabilities” to “guarantee security” at a “historic moment” for NATO.

In reality, besides plotting war against major nuclear-armed powers, the Madrid summit will mainly be a show of force targeting domestic opposition to war.

El Mundo reports: “For several days there will be many traffic cuts and exclusive itineraries and lanes will be enabled for the transfer of diplomatic delegations, some of them with up to 1,500 members. Security will be another of the challenges of the meeting, as 30 international leaders will come to the capital to stay in the city’s most luxurious hotels and will be fully shielded during those days.”

Moreover, it added, NATO is “designing air security plans, cybersecurity plans against possible digital and computer attacks by hackers and special plans in response to the call for massive protests by groups and organizations.”

The Spanish Interior Ministry will deploy 12,000 police officers to Madrid, who will join another 12,000 officers from the capital region and 1,000 city police. In total, Madrid will be a fortress with 25,000 cops.

A de facto state of exception in Madrid is being prepared against mass protests. Madrid city’s Department of Public Safety and Traffic will deploy 50 tow trucks, 100 patrol cars and 500 motorized agents to check the streets through which the delegations will pass. “Any car that hinders the path of visitors will be removed,” municipal sources told El Mundo.

A Spanish Interior Ministry report calls for emergency purchases of security equipment, indicating: “The security of the event will be one of the most delicate and important points,” as “several organizations and social groups are already announcing protests, as happened in previous summits.”

Spain is to buy 6,000 tasers, each firing four to six shots. In addition, the government plans to buy security equipment valued in €1.9 million, including 100 metal detector arches, 10 parcel inspection scanners, 1,050 personal cameras and 40 CCTVs.

The preparations to suppress opposition to war underscores the class character of NATO’s imperialist war against Russia. As NATO intensifies a horrific conflict with Russia, that threatens to escalate into nuclear war, it is also preparing to repress social opposition at home. The war is intensifying the social and economic crisis in every country and has already provoked mass protests and strikes internationally, including across Europe.

Earlier this month, workers at the Greek railway company TrainOSE in Thessaloniki refused to transport NATO armored vehicles to the Ukrainian border. The vehicles had arrived on US cargo ships at Alexandroupolis port in northern Greece. They were to be sent via Romania and Poland to Ukraine. TrainOSE threatened to sack workers, but they could not get agreement to move the train. Ultimately, the company had to recruit scabs to move the train, and eight strikers were arrested.

Polls show two-thirds of Greeks say that shipping war material to Ukraine puts Greece at risk of war with Russia.

In Italy, workers have protested the transfer of arms and ammunition to Ukraine from Italian seaports and airports disguised as humanitarian aid to Ukraine. On March 14, cargo workers at Pisa airport refused to load ammunition and weapons delivered under boxes tagged as “humanitarian” cargo. Airport workers then refused to send the weapons to Ukraine via Poland. The following day, nearly 2,000 people marched in protest in Pisa.

On March 31, dock workers of the Italian port of Genoa organized a 24-hour strike against the usage of the port for weapons shipments.

In the face of a tidal wave of government and media propaganda demonizing Russia, surveys show 61 percent of Italians oppose raising defense spending. According to an Ipsos poll, 40 percent believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not the only one to blame for the conflict.

In Spain, tens of thousands of truck drivers went on a 20-day strike over fuel price hikes amid the NATO war drive targeting Russia and its energy exports. Despite similar mass anti-Russian propaganda in Spain, one poll found that 47 percent of Spaniards oppose the PSOE-Podemos government’s plan to more than double the defense budget from €10 billion to €24 billion. Only 45 percent said they supported the planned increase.

Growing working class opposition to imperialist war must now be unified into a powerful international movement. This opposition, however, must be developed independently of and in opposition to pseudo-left parties such as Spain’s ruling Podemos party and their political and trade union allies internationally.

This week, the spokeswoman for Podemos, Isa Serra, cynically questioned the huge budget destined to NATO’s summit, saying “There are many important challenges at this time, such as social rights, equality and the fight against climate change for which we believe we should host a summit, rather than a militaristic summit like this.” The leader of a party which has implemented savage austerity then added, “Faced with the war in Ukraine, at this time, the Government and our country could do much more if we were to host a summit for peace.”

In fact, Serra’s government has moved aggressively against Russia, stationing 800 troops in Eastern Europe against Russia, including a detachment of 130 airmen and four Eurofighters; three warships in the Black Sea; and sent weapons to the Ukrainian army, including to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Just days before Serra’s comments, Sánchez flew to Kiev to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. There, Sánchez promised a new batch of 200 tons of ammunition and military supplies to Ukraine.

German court shuts down trial of right-wing extremist professor Jörg Baberowski in exchange for payment of €4,000

Christoph Vandreier

Two days prior to the scheduled beginning  of the trial of the right-wing extremist professor Jörg Baberowski for bodily injury and property damage, which had been scheduled for months, the Berlin District Court announced it was shutting down the proceedings. The decision included Baberowski’s agreement to make a €4,000 payment to the non-profit organization KINDerLEBEN. Even though the payment by Baberowski amounts to an admission of guilt, the immediate consequence is a devastating political signal that declares violence against dissenting students by a right-wing extremist professor to be a trivial offence.

Baberowski, who teaches Eastern European history at Humboldt University in Berlin, destroyed large quantities of student campaign material from the International Youth and Students for Social Equality on January 30, 2020, physically attacked student Sven Wurm, and threatened him: “Should I punch you in the face?” The vandalism, the threat and the act of violence are documented on video and have never been called into question.

Jörg Baberowski at the Frankfurter Buchmesse in 2014 (Photo: Ordercrazy/Wikipedia)

The prosecutor's office had already issued a penalty order for bodily injury and property damage in June last year on the basis of the clear facts, but Baberowski challenged this, resulting in the hearing being scheduled for April 27. The public prosecutor's office repeatedly refused to close the case, most recently in February of this year, because it was a clear case and a serious attack on the democratic rights of the student body.

Baberowski is a central figure within the far-right milieu. He spreads xenophobic hate speech, downplays violence against refugees and relativizes the crimes of the Nazis. In February 2014, he claimed in Der Spiegel that Hitler was not vicious and that the Holocaust was comparable to shootings during the Russian Civil War.

Baberowski has tried twice to silence his critics in court, but he failed each time. The Cologne Regional Court found that his statements offered a sufficient basis to describe him as a “right-wing extremist,” a “racist” and “glorifying violence.” The District Court of Hamburg ruled that describing Baberowski’s statements  about Hitler as a “falsification of history” was permissible.

After his legal failures, Baberowski became increasingly aggressive towards dissidents. In 2020, two student senators denounced him for publicly defaming them as “left-wing radical fanatics” and “incredibly stupid” after they had made factual criticisms of his proposed “Center for Research on dictatorship.”

When professors at Humboldt University criticized the head of the Lit publishing house for his support for the anti-refugee “Declaration 2018,” Baberowski cursed them as “denunciators” and compared their behaviour to the Nazi boycott of Jews, saying he was reminded of “dark times.” Baberowski wrote that his critics were saying, “Do not buy from the outcast!” Finally, he threatened them with the words: “The humiliated and excluded will remember who put them in the pillory.”

Baberowski also repeatedly clashed with students from the university group of the IYSSE. He insulted them, among other things, as “dirty denunciators,” “fascists” and “mentally ill people.” His attacks culminated in the violent act in question. This was not an act of affect, but a systematic attack on his critics.

Baberowski tore down several IYSSE posters for the student parliament elections from a board for student notices. The video shows that when he is caught in the act, he slaps the mobile phone out of the hand of student parliament deputy Sven Wurm, who studies at Baberowski’s history institute, and threatens him. This act of violence was aimed at intimidating students and preventing them from exercising their democratic right to promote their political views.

The fact that this attack will not result in further punishment is not only a slap in the face for the victim, but an attack on all student critics who objectively criticize the right-wing radical positions of their professors. Violence against dissenting students by right-wing professors is in effect being declared a petty crime that is not worthy of criminal prosecution.

The fact that this is a political and not a legal decision is already evident from the public prosecutor’s office decision to reject a halting of proceedings in February. The 180-degree turn only came a few days before the scheduled court date, and after Wurm had engaged a lawyer and requested to be considered a co-plaintiff on March 28 of this year.

Clearly, the prosecution wanted to avoid a process in which political issues were addressed. In response to a request from the WSWS, the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office has not yet been able to provide any other reason for its decision.

There is no doubt that this about-face was due to political influence. The Social Democrat/Left Party/Green state government in Berlin, like the university administration, repeatedly backed the right-wing extremist professor.

Sabine Kunst (SPD), the long-standing president of Humboldt University, even described Baberowski’s violent outburst against Wurm as “understandable in a human sense.” An official complaint against Baberowski, which Wurm already filed on February 5, 2020, was simply ignored by Kunst.

Wurm then filed a complaint against Kunst with the then ruling mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller, and the state secretary for education. In the explanatory statement, he referred not only to the support for Baberowski’s violent act, but also to a long list of previous incidents in which Baberowski had threatened students and colleagues, and where Kunst had backed the right-wing extremist professor.

Wurm also mentioned that he had drawn the attention of the HU President to the fact that a close collaborator of Baberowski’s was a neo-Nazi in his youth known in Hanover who, together with right-wing terrorists, participated in a demonstration against the Wehrmacht exhibition. “Kunst did not do anything to protect us students from such teachers,” Wurm wrote, summing up:

“There is no harmless explanation for this clear chronology. Ms. Kunst systematically covered up Baberowski’s repeated verbal and physical violence against students and suppressed necessary criticism of the right-wing extremist professor. She is thus responsible for a climate of intimidation in which students are prevented from criticising the right-wing views of professors. This is incompatible with a democratic university.”

The state government also refused to comment on the administrative complaint and forwarded it to Edelgard Bulmahn (Social Democratic Party, SPD), who chairs the HU Board of Trustees. Bulmahn brushed aside all accusations and blandly declared that “there is no official misconduct by the President of the HU.” With regard to the unanswered supervisory complaint, she referred to the fact that the criminal proceedings against Baberowski were still ongoing and that it would therefore be inappropriate for the university to handle a supervisory complaint against Baberowski.

Despite Baberowski's fully documented crime, the SPD/Left Party/Green state government, together with university management, backed the right-wing extremist professor. This scandalous trivialisation of right-wing violence is now also reflected in the shutting down of the proceedings at the district court. The shift of the prosecutor’s office must be seen against this background.

Ukrainian government continues campaign of domestic oppression

Jason Melanovski

As the NATO proxy war against Russia rages in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian government is carrying out a campaign of domestic repression against alleged “collaborators” and “traitors” in order to bolster its pro-war agenda and eliminate any opposition that may favor a negotiated peace with Moscow to end the war.

Last week the Kyiv Independent reported that “a hunt for alleged collaborators is underway in recaptured parts of the country.” The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) along with the national and local police, territorial defense units and the State Emergency Service, are leading the hunt for suspects.

A Ukrainian soldier stands near an apartment ruined from Russian shelling in Borodyanka, Ukraine, Wednesday, Apr. 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

According to the Kyiv Independent, the SBU had already arrested 33 suspects in Kiev by April 7, and by April 15, over 300 alleged collaborators had been arrested.

It is unclear how the SBU is able to deduce exactly who collaborated with the Russian forces other than relying on the testimony of neighbors. 

Such an approach leaves the door wide open for the settling of petty grievances between neighbors and the arrest and jailing—or perhaps worse—of innocent Ukrainians who are not enthusiastic supporters of a NATO-backed war that is destroying large parts of an already impoverished country.

The report comes on the heels of the revelation that Kiev was supplied with  advanced face-scanning technology by the American firm Clearview AI and that such technology was already being used to identify dead Russian soldiers and scan the faces of Ukrainian citizens in order to find “traitors.”

In a government-dictated hunt for potential “traitors,” misidentification is also far from impossible as Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project told Reuters. 

“We’re going to see well-intentioned technology backfiring and harming the very people it’s supposed to help,” Cahn said.

A street-level campaign of vigilante lynchings is already being carried out with the support of Ukraine’s Armed Forces who are either direct participants or observers in the attacks on Ukrainian civilians. 

The Kyiv Independent also reported approvingly on the arrest of leading pro-Russian political figure Viktor Medvedchuk, who was apprehended on April 12. He had attempted to disguise himself as a member of Ukraine’s Armed Forces and has now been charged with treason. 

Medvedchuk, an oligarch and friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was previously arrested for “high treason” in May 2021 and placed under house arrest. He then fled at the onset of Russia’s invasion. His capture was celebrated by the Kiev government as a propaganda victory against Russia.

Western capitalist press outlets such as Newsweek reported on Medvedchuk’s capture simply as the justified arrest of a “pro-Putin ally,” purposely obscuring the fact that Medvedchuk led Ukraine's second largest political party by parliamentary seats that had begun to poll close to or was even ahead of Zelensky’s ruling Servant of the People party in pre-invasion political polls.

Moreover, no evidence has been published, indicating how exactly Medvedchuk supposedly collaborated with the Russians. Nor has it been explained why he remained in Kiev days after the attack, putting his life in certain danger, if he really did know of the impending invasion beforehand. 

Medvedchuk’s party, the Opposition Platform—For Life, was banned in March by Zelensky along with 10 other opposition and left-wing parties. These parties had denounced the Russian attack but were also calling for immediate negotiations to end the war. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly offered Moscow to exchange Medvedchuk for captured Ukrainian soldiers. So far, Moscow has refused to publicly discuss the exchange of its supposed stalwart collaborator.

Anatoly Shariy, a popular YouTube blogger who is critical of the Kiev regime and its various right-wing nationalist militias, has likewise been targeted by Zelensky and the SBU since the beginning of the war. Speaking with MPN News, Shariy reported recently being made aware of an assassination attempt by the SBU after receiving an obviously staged email from a friend looking to pin down Shariy’s daily whereabouts. Despite living abroad since 2012, Shariy’s address and personal details were even published on the Myrotvorets (Peacemaker) online database with names of supposed “enemies of the state.” Since the beginning of the war, Shariy has been subject to protests and harassment by right-wing thugs outside his home in Spain.

A former supporter of Zelensky during his presidential campaign against former President Petro Poroshenko, Shariy has also been accused of “treason” and had his political party, the Shariy party, banned by Zelensky’s order in March.

What all of these persecuted political figures have in common is support for a negotiated settlement to end the disastrous proxy war between NATO and Russia that is being waged in Ukraine and that has already cost the lives of tens of thousands.

Meanwhile, the imperialist powers and the Zelensky government continue to offer their full support to Ukraine’s neo-Nazi militias, such as the Azov Battalion who are being hailed as “heroes” for continuing to occupy the Azovstal factory in Mariupol despite the destruction of the entire surrounding city. On Thursday, it was revealed that Ukraine’s other prominent neo-Nazi militia, the Right Sector, had been fully integrated into Ukraine’s Armed Forces as part of its Special Operations Forces.