Baby formula shortage leaves millions in need across United States

Alex Findijs

The severe shortage of baby formula across the United States continues to affect millions of families. Nationwide, there is a 43 percent deficit of infant formula, with some states and metropolitan areas seeing more than 50 percent of normal supply missing from grocery store shelves. 

People wait in line during a baby formula drive to help with the baby formula shortage Saturday, May 14, 2022, in Houston [AP Photo/David J. Phillip]

Prices have risen by an average of 18 percent with increasingly common reports of price gouging emerging around the country. 

Baby formula is a critical food product for millions of infants. Around three-quarters of all infants in the United States receive formula within their first six months, and many require it as their primary form of nutrition. 

The shortage has been developing over the past two years as the pandemic disrupted supply chains, resulting in a roughly 20 percent shortage at the beginning of this year. 

The issue was made significantly worse though when Abbott Nutrition was forced to close one of the nation’s largest formula manufacturing plants in Sturgis, Michigan. The plant was shut down in February after a bacterial outbreak in baby food sold by Abbott caused illness in at least four infants, killing two of them. 

Abbott issued a voluntary recall of products made at the facility and shut it down as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted an investigation into the outbreak.

The company claims that the strain of bacteria found in the infected infants was not discovered at the plant. However, an FDA investigation conducted from January 31 to March 18 found multiple health issues in the facilities. 

According to the report, the FDA found evidence of the dangerous bacteria Cronobacter sakazakii “in medium and high care areas of powdered infant formula production” and that Abbott “did not ensure that all surfaces that contacted infant formula were maintained to protect infant formula from being contaminated by any source.” The FDA’s investigation has so far identified five different strains of Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria in the plant. 

Additional revelations about the health violations made by Abbott were revealed in a whistleblower report provided to the FDA by a former Abbott employee at the Sturgis plant. The report accused management of falsifying records and health procedure documents, releasing untested formula for sale, taking active steps to prevent the discovery of bacteria in products during an FDA audit in 2019, and failing to take proper measures to resolve long standing issues with the safety of the products produced. 

Notably, the report stated that Abbott insisted on using paper documentation rather than electronic in order to better falsify and hide documentation from regulators. 

The closure of the Sturgis factory due to these persistent problems set fire to a manufacturing and supply chain tinder box in the United States. 

Abbott is one of four companies that produce 90 percent of all baby formula sold in the United States. Foreign imports are aggressively limited, with a tariff of 17.5 percent designed to protect domestic producers, who manufacture 98 percent of the nation’s supply. 

These producers are then offered near monopoly control over entire states through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC. The WIC program provides affordable infant formula to families in need through a rebate program contracted between the state government and a single company. 

Through a bid system, companies like Abbott compete to secure exclusive rights to sell baby formula to WIC participants, who are only allowed to purchase formula from one company. The contract is secured through a rebate to the state, typically upwards of 85 percent. This causes the company to take a loss on formula sold through WIC but is offset through the preference to place their products on store shelves and dominance over the market. 

WIC sales make up about half of all infant formula purchases, meaning that any company able to secure a contract is virtually guaranteed to control the market in an entire state. A recent analysis of WIC programs from 2006 to 2015 found that when a company secured a WIC contract its sales of eligible products increased by 300 percent. The study also noted a “spillover” effect, where sales of non-related products by the same manufacturer also increased substantially. An additional 2004 study by the Department of Agriculture found that WIC-contracting companies raised their prices after securing the contract. 

These programs have resulted in the extensive market consolidation in the hands of a few companies and in a few plants. Abbott currently holds contracts in at least 31 states, which it provides formula to from just five factories. With the Sturgis plant closed, its capacity to provide to all its contracted states has been severely limited. 

Abbott and the FDA reached a deal Monday to restart production within the next two weeks pending the company meeting certain requirements. However, company officials have noted that it will take another six to eight weeks for formula to reach shelves once production resumes. 

This time scale will leave millions of families without a critical source of nutrition for their children. Not only do many mothers have difficulty with breast feeding for various physical reasons, but the vast majority of working class mothers are restricted from breast feeding due to social and economic constraints. 

The United States federal government does not guarantee paid family leave, and many employers do not even provide unpaid leave without new mothers risking losing their jobs. Without the time and structural support for breastfeeding, American mothers are made far more dependent on formula than in other Western countries. 

According to the aid organization Save the Children, the percent of mothers breastfeeding their infants at six months in Norway is 99 percent compared to just 44 percent in the United States. Mothers in the US receive no paid maternity leave, while mothers in Norway are given at least 36 weeks of paid maternity leave. 

Simply put, the more time a mother is allowed to spend with her child the more able they are to breastfeed. If they are not provided that time, they are forced to concede substantial financial resources to do so. 

According to an analysis by the business news outlet Quartz, a woman working 50 hours a week and making $60,000 a year could lose up to $14,250 in order to breastfeed her child for just the first six months. 

The response of the ruling class to this crisis has been woefully inadequate. The FDA took months to begin its investigation of Abbott and waited longer still to take action against the company. The Biden administration has issued only a terse list of promises to increase foreign imports and domestic production and to “cut red tape.” 

President Joe Biden has stated that there is “nothing more urgent we’re working on than that right now.” This can hardly be taken seriously. While Biden has pushed Congress to approve $40 billion for weapons shipments to Ukraine, he has so far made no such demands to prevent hunger among infants. 

For their part, the fascistic fear mongers in the Republican Party have concocted conspiracy theories that migrants detained at the Southern border are the cause of the shortage, calling on the Biden administration to cease shipments of baby formula to detention centers, in violation of federal law. Such calls are effectively demands for the forced starvation of migrant children. 

Turkey threatens veto as Finland, Sweden to join NATO against Russia

Barış Demir

Amid the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has indicated his concerns and opposition to moves by Finland and Sweden to join NATO. For a new country to join NATO, all 30 member states must be unanimous in supporting it.

On Friday, Erdoğan said: “We are following developments regarding Sweden and Finland, but we don’t hold positive views.” Referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the Turkish state bans as terrorist, he added, “the Scandinavian countries, unfortunately, are almost like guesthouses for terrorist organizations. PKK, DHKP-C are nested in the Netherlands and Sweden. I go further; they also take part in the parliaments there.”

Erdoğan also referred to rising tensions in the Aegean and Mediterranean with French-backed Greece: “The [Turkish] governments before us made a mistake regarding over Greece’s [return] to NATO. You know the attitude that Greece has taken towards Turkey by backing NATO, so we do not want to commit a second mistake in this regard.” He was referring to the Turkish military junta’s approval of Greece’s return to the alliance’s military wing after the NATO-backed coup in 1980 in Turkey.

Erdoğan maintained this stance yesterday. Regarding today’s visit of the Finnish and Swedish delegations to Turkey, he said: “They will come to Turkey on Monday. Will they come to persuade us?” He continued, “First of all, we would not say ‘yes’ to those who imposed sanctions on Turkey to join NATO, a security organization, during this process.”

US officials have indicated they are confident that Erdoğan will ultimately capitulate to pressure from the NATO imperialist powers to admit Sweden and Finland into NATO.

“If that’s what they [Finland and Sweden] choose to do, I’m very confident that we will reach consensus on that,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters after a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Berlin on Sunday. He said, “I don’t want to characterise the specific conversation that we had either with the [Turkish] foreign minister or within the NATO sessions themselves, but I can say this much: I heard almost across the board, very strong support (for Sweden, Finland) joining the alliance.”

The Finnish and Swedish governments refer to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to justify joining NATO and abandoning their long-standing policies of official neutrality. This provocative move, essentially planned in Washington, Berlin and London, forms part of decades of NATO expansion, which provoked Russia into its reactionary invasion of Ukraine. The entire Scandinavian region is to be transformed into a potential war zone in a conflict with Russia.

All these attempts raise the danger of the Ukraine war escalating into a direct military conflict between Russia and NATO and a nuclear world war. However, the reaction of Erdoğan, who is the head of a country that has NATO’s second largest army and has been supporting the NATO expansion against Russia for decades, has nothing to do with principled opposition to NATO or war.

Ankara supports NATO’s Ukraine policy, including the far-right coup NATO organized in Kiev in 2014, and supplies critical Bayraktar TB2 armed drones to the Ukrainian army.

However, Ankara does not participate in the economic embargoes and sanctions against Russia. Moreover, it criticizes the policies of NATO powers, especially the US and Britain, to continue or even expand the war in order to weaken Russia.

There is mounting concern in Turkish ruling circles at the scope of NATO’s war on Russia. NATO officials have made clear they intend to forcibly break up Russia—notably seizing Crimea, which Russia counts as its sovereign territory—and topple President Vladimir Putin. The Turkish ruling elite is no doubt deeply concerned at the prospect of NATO-Russian war and of a bloody disintegration of Russia, just north of Turkey.

Last month, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu warned: “Until the NATO meeting, we thought the war would not last long. However, after the NATO meeting, an opinion emerged. There are countries that want this war to continue. Their aim is to push Russia back.”

Turkey has broad military-economic ties with Russia. It purchased S-400 air defense systems from Russia despite US objections, and obtains nearly one-third of its natural gas directly from Russia via pipelines. Russia is currently still building the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in Mersin. Turkey also imports most of its wheat from Russia. Moreover, Russian tourists are critical for Turkey’s hospitality industry to provide much-needed foreign exchange reserves.

While fearing the war’s consequences for Turkey, the Turkish bourgeoisie also sees US moves to escalate the war drive as an opportunity to advance its regional interests and bargain with the major imperialist powers. “We did not close the door for Sweden and Finland to join NATO,” Erdoğan’s spokesperson İbrahim Kalın commented, revealing Ankara’s pragmatist bargaining approach.

However, a Turkish veto of Sweden and Finland joining NATO would pose a serious challenge to the US-led imperialist war drive against Russia, and could place Erdoğan once again in the gunsights of Washington and Berlin. The two leading NATO powers backed a failed 2016 coup attempt, plotted by officers who tried to assassinate Erdoğan during the coup.

Ankara wants its NATO allies to stop supporting the Kurdish nationalist People’s Defense Units (YPG) in Syria. Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu said, “The reason for Turkey’s stance is quite clear. NATO is not a union, not an organisation. NATO is an alliance. What does this require? It is not just a matter of security; it requires shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity. Especially when there is a threat to security in any area. Unfortunately, the countries we mentioned openly support PKK-YPG terrorist organizations.”

Turkey is in conflict with the US on this issue. While Washington supports the YPG as a proxy force in its ongoing occupation in northern Syria against President Bashar Assad’s government, Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist organization and part of the PKK. The Turkish ruling class considers it of strategic importance to prevent the emergence of any Kurdish state led by the YPG on its borders. For this, Ankara has repeatedly invaded Syria since 2016, occupying parts of the country.

However, NATO’s ongoing regime-change war in Syria which began in 2011 threatens increasingly to bring Turkey into conflict with Iran, another country targeted by Washington. Turkey recently held talks with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the main powers in Washington’s anti-Iran axis, while Syrian President Assad held talks with the UAE and Iran.

Unconfirmed reports claim that Russia has begun to reduce its presence in Syria due to the Ukraine war, and Iranian-backed forces have settled in these regions. This indicates a growing risk of direct confrontation between Iran-backed militias, which Israel regularly targets in Syria, and Turkish armed forces in the country.

Amid all these events, there is an upsurge of the international class struggle amid a surge in food prices, which have risen with the Ukraine war and NATO sanctions against Russia.

Mass protests erupted in Iran last week after the government announced an end to subsidies on basic foodstuffs. In Turkey, where high costs of living have become unbearable for millions of workers’ families, 2022 started with a wildcat strikes wave.

US hosts special ASEAN summit as conflict with China deepens

Ben McGrath

Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met for a special two-day summit with US President Joe Biden in Washington last week as part of a diplomatic offensive against China.

For US imperialism, the meeting provided an opportunity to escalate its confrontation with Beijing in the Indo-Pacific even as it prosecutes the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Moscow. However, disagreements were evident within ASEAN over the US agenda.

The ASEAN-US Special Summit in Washington DC, 2022 (Photo: Facebook/ASEAN)

The ASEAN-US summit took place May 12 and 13, and was the first to be held in Washington in the organization’s 45-year history. It was also the second special summit held in the US following a 2016 meeting hosted by then President Barack Obama in California.

Biden exploited the summit to again accuse Beijing of planning an unprovoked invasion of Taiwan, comparing it to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In reality, the US is goading and antagonizing Beijing over regional territorial disputes and Taiwan, just as the US and NATO deliberately provoked the war in Europe.

Calling the meeting the launch of a “new era in US-ASEAN relations,” Biden told assembled leaders that “the breadth of our discussions reflects just how vital the Indo-Pacific and ASEAN region are to the United States of America, from our perspective.”

Without explicitly naming China, Biden stated that US was seeking “an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, stable and prosperous, and resilient and secure.” Washington regularly demonizes Beijing declaring it to be a threat to the “free and open” Indo-Pacific and to the so-called “international rules-based order.”

Washington’s real fear is that China’s economic expansion constitutes a threat to US global domination—that is, the post-World War II order in which it set the international rules to meet its own economic and strategic interests.

The joint statement released after the meeting struck a similar note, stating, that the US and ASEAN “share relevant fundamental principles in promoting an open, inclusive, and rules-based regional architecture, in which ASEAN is central, alongside partners who share in these goals.”

In fact, Washington, for more than a decade, has stoked tensions in the region between China and ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The US Navy has repeatedly staged provocative “freedom of navigation operations,” sending its warships into waters claimed by China around islets under its control.

The ASEAN-US joint statement made several references to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the SEA (UNCLOS), which the US has never ratified, indirectly justifying these naval provocations. “We are dedicated to maintaining peace, security, and stability in the region, and to ensuring maritime security and safety, as well as freedom of navigation and overflight and other lawful uses of the seas as described in the 1982 UNCLOS,” it stated.

The aim of such denunciations, veiled or otherwise, is to paint China as a threat to “freedom” in the Indo-Pacific region while allowing for the development of Washington’s military plans with its allies. In particular, the US and Australia have denounced a security agreement recently signed by China with the Solomon Islands and issued barely veiled threats of regime-change against the government of the small Pacific Island state.

Biden pledged $150 million to ASEAN during the summit to try to offset the $1.5 billion in development aid pledged by Beijing to ASEAN in November. The largest allocation was $60 million towards military cooperation in the South China Sea. This includes dispatching a US Coast Guard ship to the region to work with ASEAN-member fleets, on the pretext of preventing illegal Chinese fishing.

However, there are broad differences among the ASEAN countries in their stance towards Russia and China. So while both were undoubtedly discussed behind closed doors, public statements avoided direct condemnations. Only Singapore has imposed sanctions on Russia. Vietnam and Laos abstained from passing a UN resolution in March condemning Russia over Ukraine. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have adopted more neutral positions.

On Ukraine, the summit’s joint statement did not follow the US in condemning the Russian invasion. It reaffirmed “our respect for sovereignty, political independence, and territorial integrity” and reiterated “our call for compliance with the UN Charter and international law.” It called for “an immediate cessation of hostilities” and a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Similar divisions exist among ASEAN members about fully lining up with the US-led war drive against China. Prior to the summit, Kurt Campbell, the US Indo-Pacific coordinator, publicly declared that Taiwan would be on the agenda and hypocritically claimed that the US wanted “to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.” However, no reference to Taiwan appeared in the summit’s joint statement.

Amalina Anuar, a senior analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore, told Al Jazeera, “[I]f we’re talking about persuading ASEAN members to align with the US, it’s doubtful that ASEAN members would move away from neutrality. ASEAN and China are in the same neighborhood and are interdependent in many ways, not least economically. ASEAN is not looking to exclude China from the regional architecture because of this.”

Cambodia in particular has close relations with Beijing while Indonesia is heavily reliant on Chinese investment. In addition, the leaders of both Myanmar and the Philippines were absent from the summit, with the former excluded following a military coup in 2021 and the latter going through a leadership change. The new Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration in Manila appears likely to follow in the footsteps of outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte in developing closer relations with Beijing.

To offset these economic relations, Washington is working on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which Biden plans to formally launch during his upcoming trip to Asia this week. The IPEF, announced last October and similar to the defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is meant to put US trade and interests at the center of economic relationships in the region. The administration intends to implement its plan through executive orders rather than risk facing Congressional opposition.

At the end of this week, Biden will travel to Northeast Asia where he will meet with new South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on May 21 in Seoul and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on May 23 in Tokyo. The following day, Biden will take part in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) summit—a quasi-military alliance directed against China—with Kishida and the leaders of India and Australia.

Finland and Sweden formally announce application for NATO membership

Jordan Shilton

Swedish Social Democratic Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson formally announced Monday that Stockholm will submit an application to join NATO. The move followed a parliamentary debate in which almost all parties voted in favour of the move. The Greens and ex-Stalinist Left Party, which have helped keep the Social Democratic minority government in power for the past eight years, voted against.

Sweden’s decision came one day after Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Prime Minister Sanna Marin confirmed Sunday that Helsinki will apply for NATO membership. Although a parliamentary vote is necessary to finalise the process, this is seen as a formality since Niinistö and Marin represent the two largest parties, the conservative National Coalition Party and the Social Democrats.

Helsinki and Stockholm’s formal applications to join the aggressive Western military alliance were prepared in close consultation with the major imperialist powers. Washington, Berlin and London see in NATO’s expansion the opportunity to open up a second front in their drive to bring about regime change in Moscow and reduce Russia to the status of a semi-colony of Western imperialism.

Representatives of NATO and the imperialist powers sought to cover up this reality over recent days with Orwellian propaganda about “democracies” coming together in a “defensive” alliance to ensure “security” in Europe.

Speaking after a three-day G7 foreign ministers meeting on Saturday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock claimed, “Every democratic country should be happy that democracies with strong defence capabilities will make the joint alliance stronger.” She added that NATO is not pushing both countries to join. Instead, these two “strong democracies” are joining in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Baerbock then hosted a NATO summit in Berlin, where foreign ministers from NATO’s 30 member states joined their colleagues from Finland and Sweden to consult on a “very, very fast” approval of the membership applications, as Baerbock put it. “Their membership in NATO would increase our shared security,” added NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

In reality, there is nothing “democratic” about Sweden and Finland’s decision to join the world’s most aggressive military alliance, which has been responsible for spreading death and destruction from the Balkans to Afghanistan and Libya over the past three decades. The move has much more the character of a conspiracy engineered by the most powerful imperialist states, above all, Britain, Germany and the United States. Together with their accomplices in the Finnish and Swedish ruling elites, they are rushing to present the population of the region with a fait accompli: that they now live on a new frontline in a rapidly escalating military conflict with Russia.

As late as March, Andersson stated that Sweden would not join NATO, declaring that it would destabilize security in the region. Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist remarked the same month, “Sweden’s membership in NATO means fundamentally changing the security line. This affects the safety of our immediate region.”

According to an analysis by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, which is aligned with Germany’s Free Democratic Party, “Finnish diplomats in Brussels started informal discussions with the defence alliance on 25 February, the day after the war started, and government officials have been on a diplomatic whirlwind tour ever since.”

At a NATO meeting attended by Finnish and Swedish officials on February 26, participants discussed special intelligence-sharing arrangements for both countries with NATO. “They need to be fully informed because of their strategic position for Russia,” a diplomatic source told EURACTIV.

Politico likewise described the “intense schedule of meetings at home and abroad” over recent weeks. Marin and Andersson travelled to a German cabinet retreat near Berlin in early May to obtain pledges of military support from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who heads a government engaged in the largest rearmament programme since Hitler’s Third Reich. Meanwhile, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde traveled to the US and Canada to make arrangements with the Biden administration and Trudeau government.

The imperialist powers are eager to bring Sweden and Finland into NATO not only due to their relatively well-equipped militaries but, above all, due to the countries’ geostrategic location. Finland shares a 1,300-kilometre border with Russia that is within striking distance of St. Petersburg. Swedish membership in NATO would leave Russia totally encircled by NATO members in the Baltic Sea and make it easier for the alliance to supply its battlegroups in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the event of an attack on Russia.

The two membership applications must be approved by all 30 NATO members before Finland and Sweden can join. This could prove to be a stumbling block in the imperialist powers’ drive to conclude the membership process as soon as possible. On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his opposition to Helsinki and Stockholm joining the alliance, saying they were “guest houses for terrorist organisations.” Erdogan accused Sweden and Finland of supporting the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) against which Ankara has waged a bloody military conflict for decades. Finland and Sweden have dispatched delegations to Ankara for talks aimed at resolving the dispute.

The political establishments in Helsinki and Stockholm have been striving to become NATO members for well over two decades. In the mid-1990s, Finland and Sweden joined NATO’s “Partnership for Peace” programme, which was a key instrument in the US-led military alliance’s aggressive expansion up to the borders of Russia in the Baltic region and in Eastern Europe. Finland and Sweden went on to send troops to support the neocolonial occupation of Afghanistan, while Swedish fighter jets participated in NATO’s savage bombardment of Libya.

In 2017, Finland and Sweden then joined the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), a British-led military alliance of Baltic and Nordic countries aimed explicitly at Russia. The goals of the alliance were to enable NATO members to launch military attacks without the delays required for consultation within the military alliance and engage non-NATO members in joint military exercises with NATO equipment.

Russia’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine—which was intentionally provoked by the transformation of Ukraine into a NATO member in all but name after the US- and German-backed Maidan coup in 2014—was seized upon by the imperialists, and the plan for NATO expansion involving the Swedish and Finnish governments has long been in the works. The main obstacle was always strong opposition to the military alliance among the Swedish and Finnish populations, but this was overcome through a sustained barrage of pro-war propaganda and a vicious anti-Russia campaign portraying the nationalist Putin regime as the main aggressor.

As Petteri Orpo, head of the conservative National Coalition Party in Finland, put it during a recent trip to Washington for consultations with Biden administration officials, “For 16 years, we have supported NATO membership, and now it’s possible. Thanks, Putin.”

A striking feature of the pro-war consensus that has emerged within Finnish and Swedish ruling circles as they prepared to join NATO is that it was led primarily by the Social Democratic parties, who owed their considerable popularity for much of the 20th century to their professed opposition to war and military violence.

Marin’s Social Democrats, who currently head the government in Helsinki, voted at a national executive meeting on Saturday by a 53-5 vote with 2 abstentions for NATO membership. At a similar meeting held a day later by Sweden’s Social Democrats, who currently govern in a minority tolerated by the Greens and Left Party, Andersson obtained agreement from the party executive. Reflecting the significant skepticism towards NATO that still exists, the Social Democrats felt compelled to pledge that if Sweden’s application is accepted, the party will “work to ensure that Sweden expresses unilateral reservations against the deployment of nuclear weapons and permanent bases on Swedish territory.”

Just four days earlier, Andersson hosted British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who confirmed London’s readiness to provide Sweden with military assistance as part of a mutual security pact. Asked if this would include nuclear weapons, Johnson told the media, “When it comes to our nuclear deterrent, that’s something we don’t generally comment upon, but what I’ve made clear is that it’s up to either party to make a request, and we take it very seriously.”

Tacit approval from the ex-Stalinist and pseudo-left parties has played a no less important role in suppressing opposition in the population. Li Andersson, leader of the Left Alliance and Education Minister in Marin’s government, declared last week that while she personally opposed joining NATO, she saw no reason to resign from the government if Finland filed an application to join.

Sri Lankan prime minister demands more sacrifice from working people

Peter Symonds

In a special address to the nation, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe bluntly outlined the dire economic situation confronting the country. He warned that “the next couple of months will be the most difficult ones in the lives of all citizens,” and insisted that the population “must prepare to make some sacrifices.”

Ranil Wickremesinghe [Source: United National Party Facebook]

Wickremesinghe made the statement late yesterday on the eve of today’s parliamentary session, where a vote of support for the new prime minister is due to take place. He was only appointed by President Gotabhaya Rajapakse last Thursday amid an unprecedented economic, social and political crisis engulfing the country.

The president’s brother, Mahinda Rajapakse, resigned as prime minister on May 9, after weeks of mass protests and strikes demanding the resignation of both Rajapakses and an end to the social disaster facing working people. Prices for essentials, including food, fuel and medicines, have skyrocketed. Chronic shortages have produced long queues, and lengthy power outages occur every day.

The turmoil in Sri Lanka is a particularly acute expression of the global crisis of capitalism that has been produced by the criminal “let it rip” pandemic policy of governments around the world, now compounded by the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

Sri Lanka’s tourist industry has collapsed, remittances from Sri Lankans working overseas have slumped by 61 percent year-on-year and tea exports to the major markets of Ukraine and Russia have dried up. The country’s central bank has declared a temporary default on the huge foreign loans of more than more than $51 billion. The lack of foreign exchange has meant that imports of fuel, medicines and basic food items cannot be paid for.

Wickremesinghe’s appointment was a desperate bid to buy time for the ruling class as negotiations are underway with the IMF and creditors. His speech yesterday was aimed at convincing them that his government will take the harsh austerity measures they require, and bludgeoning working people into “sacrificing” for the nation.

Wickremesinghe offered no relief for workers or the poor, millions of whom are struggling to put food on the table, obtain medicines or pay for transport to go to work. Instead, he emphasised the depth of the economic crisis to justify the harsh measures that he intends to take.

In November 2019, he said, Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange reserves were $US7.5 billion, but “today, it is a challenge for the treasury to find $1 million… To ease the queues, we must obtain approximately $75 million within the next couple of days.

“At the moment, we only have petrol stocks for a single day,” he threatened. While a diesel shipment arrived on Sunday, more will be needed in the coming days. “A quarter of electricity is generated through oil. Therefore, there is a possibility that the daily power outages will increase to 15 hours a day,” he continued.

“Another grave concern is the lack of medicine,” Wickermesinghe said. “There is a severe shortage of a number of medicines including medicine required for heart disease as well as surgical equipment. Payments have not been made for four months to suppliers of medicine, medical equipment, and food for patients.”

In a revealing comment, Wickremesinghe declared his intention to sell off the Sri Lankan Airlines and then noted that even with the sale there would be huge losses to be paid. “You must be aware that this is a loss that must be borne even by the poor people of this country who have never stepped on an airplane,” he said.

The remark is an open confirmation that the working people are going to be compelled to bear the brunt of the capitalist crisis—to pay off the huge loans incurred for the benefit of the wealthy corporate elite. The prime minister also foreshadowed further large price hikes for fuel and electricity, saying that government subsidies were no longer affordable.

Wickremesinghe concluded his address by declaring that “these facts are unpleasant and terrifying” but promising that the “tough times” would be short, and that a rosy future was ahead if everyone pulled together. He painted himself as a martyr to the nation, ready to tread a dangerous and difficult path.

What a fraud! Wickremesinghe has been installed to do the bidding of Sri Lankan big business and the IMF and foreign creditors. As prime minister on five previous occasions, he is notorious for his imposition of pro-market restructuring and for his pro-US orientation. His appointment was welcomed by the US ambassador to Colombo.

Wickremesinghe has spent his first few days in office huddled in discussions with diplomats from the US, Japan and China, while holding closed door talks with government and opposition figures in a desperate effort to pull together a majority for the parliamentary vote today.

His lack of any popular support is underscored by the fact that he is the only representative of his United National Party (UNP) in 225-seat parliament. The UNP split in 2020, with the majority of its members forming what is now the main opposition party, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya. The SJB has indicated qualified support for a Wickremesinghe government but has refused to enter its cabinet. As of yesterday, only four ministers had been appointed to the Wickremesinghe cabinet—all members of President Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP).   

Even if Wickremesinghe gains a parliamentary majority today, his government will inevitably lurch from crisis to crisis as it seeks to impose intolerable new burdens on working people. Anti-government protests are continuing at Galle Face Green in central Colombo. Protest leaders have opposed Wickremesinghe’s appointment, reflecting far broader distrust in the manoeuvres being carried out in the political establishment.

Rejecting the main demand of the protests, President Rajapakse has flatly refused to resign and retains sweeping powers, including to dismiss the government and impose police-state measures. In the wake of a general strike of millions of workers throughout the island on May 5, he imposed a nationwide state of emergency, connived with his brother to orchestrate a violent attack on protesters at Galle Face Green, then exploited the eruption of anger to institute a curfew and mobilise the military onto the streets.

In comments to the WSWS, Wije Dias, chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka, condemned Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s call for working people to make an unending series of sacrifices in the name of the country.

SEP General Secretary Wije Dias [WSWS Media]

“The Socialist Equality Party strongly urges the working class, rural poor and youth of all communities, Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim, to reject Wickremesinghe’s appeal, which he makes on behalf of the international bankers and the local capitalist leaches who have bled white the Sri Lankan people, under different bourgeois governments for the last 74 years, since the bogus independence.

“It is a totally different outcome from what protesting workers, small farmers and youth expected when they occupied the streets with their mass protests and one-day general strikes. They wanted an end to the shortages and high prices of fuel, gas, milk powder and the outages of electricity which have become intolerable under the capitalist profit system.

“It is the trade unions and their pseudo-left allies, all of which have a long history of treachery, that are consciously blocking the victory of the mass struggle by spreading false illusions in bourgeois parliamentary democracy and thus continue to sustain capitalist rule.

Morbid Matters: Estimating COVID-19 Mortality

Binoy Kampmark

COVID Dead Body

It has dominated news cycles, debates and policies since 2020, but COVID-19 continues to exercise the interest of number crunchers and talliers.  While the ghoulish daily press announcements about infections and deaths across many a country have diminished and, in some cases, disappeared altogether, publications abound about how many were taken in the pandemic.

The World Health Organization, ever that herald of dark news, has offered a revised assessment across of the SARS-CoV-2 death toll associated either directly or indirectly with the pandemic.  Between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, the global health body suggests that the mortality figure is closer to 14.9 million, with a range of 13.3 million to 16.6 million.

The number considers excess mortality, the figure reached after accounting for the difference between the number of deaths that have occurred, and the number expected in the absence of the pandemic.  It also accounts for deaths occasioned directly by COVID-19, or indirectly (for instance, the pandemic’s disruption of society and health systems).

The impact, as expected, has been disproportionate in terms of which countries have suffered more.  Of the excess deaths, 68% were concentrated in 10 countries – Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Peru, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States.  Middle-income countries accounted for 81% of excess deaths; high-income countries, for 15%, and low-income countries, 4%.

The United States, if only for being ascendant in terms of power, wealth, and incompetence in dealing with the virus, finds itself in the undistinguished position of having lost a million people.  “Today,” remarked President Joe Biden, “we mark a tragic milestone here in the United States, one million COVID deaths, one million empty chairs around the family dinner table, each irreplaceable, irreplaceable losses, each leaving behind a family, a community forever changed because of this pandemic.”

Chief Medical Adviser to the President, Anthony Fauci, rued the fact that “at least a quarter of those deaths, namely about 250,000” might have been saved by vaccinations.  He also warned about the ugly prospect of a resurgence in numbers, and not bringing “down our guard”.

In light of such figures, WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reiterates the line he and his colleagues have done so for months.  Pandemics demand more “resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises, including stronger health information systems”.  His organisation “was committed to working with all countries to strengthen their health information systems to generate better data for better decisions and better outcomes.”  Much of this will be wishful thinking.

Figures, certainly when they concern matters of mortality, can become the subject of bitter dispute.  COVID-19 has proved no exception.  In Africa, 41 of 54 countries reported insufficient data.  Some countries have released incomplete data sets; others, none to speak of.  This meant, inevitably, that the WHO’s Technical Advisory Group for COVID-19 Mortality Assessment could only model the missing figures to fill gaps.

As a result scrapping and arguments over methodology duly emerged.  India, for one, has very publicly objected to the way the WHO has approached the compilation, communicating its concerns in no less than six letters between November 2021 and March 2022 and in a number of virtual meetings.  Concerns have also been registered by WHO Member States, including China, Iran, Bangladesh, Syria, Ethiopia and Egypt.

The case with India is particularly telling, given WHO modelling showing 4,740,894 excess deaths, almost triple that of New Delhi’s own figures.  Such figures imply, as epidemiologist Prabhat Jha of the University of Toronto claimed back in January, that the authorities were “trying to suppress the numbers in the way that they coded the COVID deaths.”

In an indignant statement from the Union Health Ministry released early this month, much is made of “how the statistical model projects estimates for a country of geographical size & population of India and also fits in with other countries which have smaller population.”  This constituted an unacceptable “one-size-fits-all approach and models which are true for smaller countries like Tunisia may not be applicable to India with a population of 1.3 billion.”

The WHO model also returned two highly varied sets of excess mortality estimates when using data from Tier 1 countries and when using data from 18 Indian states that had not been verified.  “India has asserted that if the model [is] accurate and reliable, it should be authenticated by running it for all Tier 1 countries” and the “result of such exercise may be shared with all Member States.”

WHO assistant director general for emergency response, Ibrahima Soće Fall, concedes that any accurate picture is only as complete as the data provided.  “We know where the data gaps are, and we must collectively intensify our support to countries, so that every country has the capability to track outbreaks in real time, ensure delivery of essential health services, and safeguard population health.”

The degree of fractiousness that persists in public health shows that sharp fault lines remain in each country’s approach to the pandemic problem.  Disunity and factionalism, petty nationalism and self-interest, remain imperishable, even at the direst of times.  And all governments, given the chance, will err on the side of inaccuracy rather than risk acute embarrassment.

UK’s role confirms Sweden/Finland NATO membership planned for years

Robert Stevens

British imperialism has played a critical role over the last decade in deepening co-operation with Finland and Sweden as NATO “partners”, culminating in their decisions this week to formally join the military alliance.

In September 2014, David Cameron’s Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition hosted a summit of NATO in Wales that founded the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF). Originally facilitated by Britain as the “framework nation”, it consisted of seven NATO allies which would assemble military forces among the northern and high regions of Europe. The “rapidly deployable force capable of conducting the full spectrum of operations, including high intensity operations” would “facilitate the efficient deployment of existing and emerging military capabilities and units.” In 2021, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said of its remit, “The JEF is able to operate wherever in the world any two of its members choose to deploy together.”

There was no attempt to conceal the target of the JEF. Outlining a “NATO Readiness Action Plan” the summit declared, “It provides a coherent and comprehensive package of necessary measures to respond to the changes in the security environment on NATO’s borders and further afield that are of concern to Allies [emphasis added].” By that time, after well over a decade of NATO encroaching ever closer to Russia’s western border, “NATO’s borders” were a few hundred miles from St Petersburg and Moscow.

UK Challenger 2 tank in action during Exercise Arrow, a Joint Expeditionary Force exercise held in Finland earlier this month. (Credit: Defence Equipment & Support/Twitter)

The Wales summit was held following the 2014 Maidan Square pro-Western coup in Ukraine, involving fascist forces, that led to the overthrow of the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and installed Petro Poroshenko.

In response, Russia annexed the Crimea and sent military forces into the eastern regions of Ukraine. The NATO summit declared, “This violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is a serious breach of international law and a major challenge to Euro-Atlantic security,” adding, “Russia’s aggressive actions against Ukraine have fundamentally challenged our vision of a Europe whole, free, and at peace.”

The JEF was envisaged initially as a 10,000-strong force, with the Financial Times reporting at the time that it was created “to bolster NATO’s power in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.”

The original seven countries were Britain, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Norway. It was made clear that the JEF was a NATO force in all but name. As an article in the Belfast Telegraph noted in relation to this year’s JEF operations, “The force uses NATO standards and doctrine so it can operate in conjunction with the alliance, the United Nations or other multinational coalitions.”

It was critical for the ratcheting up of provocations against Russia that Sweden and Finland join the JEF. Both signed up in 2017. With their inclusion, the JEF became fully operational in 2018 when it began holding a series of military exercises and wargaming operations both independently and together with NATO.

The importance of the JEF for US and British imperialism as a Europe-based military force formally operating outside the orbit of the European Union (EU) was summed up by the Washington think tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). It noted last October, “The integration of the JEF Baltic Protector maritime task force into the U.S.-led BALTOPS 2019 exercise—an annual NATO-led exercise running since 1972—shows the potential utility of JEF in a nutshell: independent and flexible, but NATO-capable and scalable. As one Royal Navy commodore puts it, the JEF is a ‘force of friends, filling a hole in the security architecture of northern Europe between a national force and a NATO force.’”

In March 2021, the UK Ministry of Defence published its “Defence in a Competitive Age” review following its Integrated Review of foreign and defence policy. Central to British imperialism’s post-Brexit agenda, during a period of “Great Power conflict”, was “further developing the JEF (with Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and from spring 2021, Iceland) so that it offers these countries flexible options for managing sub-threshold competition as well as responding to crises, and improving its interoperability with NATO.”

On July 1 last year, Finland’s role as a leading force within the JEF was made clear by its hosting, for the first time, a meeting of JEF Defence Ministers.

Joint Expeditionary Force defence ministers meet in Finland (Credit: UK in Estonia/Twitter)

At this year’s JEF Summit, held on February 22 at Belvoir Castle in England, tensions with Russia were stoked further. The 10 defence ministers of the participating countries declared that the JEF is “a group of like-minded and proactive nations, with shared purpose and values, and a common focus on security and stability in the High North, North Atlantic and Baltic Sea region.” They were united against “the build-up of Russian forces on the border with Ukraine, and further incursion in the Donbas region.” Two days later Russia invaded Ukraine.

The summit confirmed the participation of the JEF alongside NATO in a series of anti-Russian exercises, which involved Finland and Sweden. These would take place in April, May and throughout 2023. UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace declared in an April 29 Ministry of Defence statement that they would see “our troops join forces with allies and partners across NATO and the Joint Expeditionary Force in a show of solidarity and strength in one of the largest shared deployments since the Cold War.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson performs a posed handshake for the media as he greets the President of Finland Sauli Niinisto before their meeting inside 10 Downing Street, in London, Tuesday, March 15, 2022. Johnson on Tuesday hosted a meeting of the leaders of the the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), a coalition of 10 states focused on security in northern Europe. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) noted, “The exercises will see 72 Challenger 2 tanks, 12 AS90 tracked artillery guns and 120 Warrior armoured fighting vehicles deploy to countries from Finland to North Macedonia….

“Troops from B Squadron of the Queen’s Royal Hussars have deployed to Finland this week to take part in Exercise Arrow. They will be embedded into a Finnish Armoured Brigade, with participation from other partners including the US, Latvia and Estonia. The exercise will improve the ability of UK and Finnish troops to work alongside each other as part of the JEF, deterring Russian aggression in Scandinavia and the Baltic states.”

The statement announced details of Exercise Hedgehog, now underway, which involves Finnish and Swedish forces joining US and UK forces in NATO war games over the next weeks, including in Estonia, whose border with Russia is just 150 kilometres from Saint Petersburg.

The Belvoir Castle Summit was followed by another high-level JEF summit, held on March 14-15 in London and at the UK prime minister’s residence, Chequers. It was attended, the Economist reported, by “six leaders and other representatives of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF)”. The magazine described the JEF as Boris Johnson’s “anti-Russia coalition,” noting, “The British-led Joint Expeditionary Force is moving quickly against Russia.”

Johnson described the following day what took place at the Chequers meeting, the magazine reported. “We agreed that Putin must not succeed in this venture,” he said. The Economist continued, “They agreed to ‘co-ordinate, supply and fund’ more arms and other equipment requested by Ukraine. And they declared that JEF, through exercises and ‘forward defence’, would seek to deter further Russian aggression—including provocations outside Ukraine that might stymie NATO or fall under its threshold.”

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (sixth from left) hosts other Joint Expeditionary Force nation leader in London on March 15. Another meeting of the leaders was held at the UK prime minister’s country residence, Chequers, the previous evening (Credit: screenshot of video clip—Boris Johnson/Facebook)

The importance of the JEF operating as a nominally non-NATO military force was again stressed. It was a “high-readiness force focused on the High North, North Atlantic and Baltic Sea regions… Unlike NATO, it does not need internal consensus to deploy troops in a crisis: Britain, the ‘framework’ nation, could launch operations with one or more partners. As one British officer puts it: ‘The JEF can act while NATO is thinking.’”

Under conditions of incessant provocations against Russia, including the funneling of vast tranches of armaments to Ukraine, the JEF was to play a pivotal role.

The Economist noted that its nominal non-NATO status “makes it especially useful in murky circumstances. ‘It’s there to respond flexibly to all sorts of contingencies, maybe [those] that fall short of an Article Five threshold,’ says Mr Johnson, referring to NATO’s collective-defence clause. JEF matters because, although Article Five covers ‘armed attack’, it is unclear whether lower-level or ambiguous provocations, such as the unmarked Russian soldiers who seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, would meet the threshold.”

The Economist cited Martin Hurt of the ICDS defence think-tank in Estonia explaining that the JEF is a “valuable complement” to NATO. “In the case of an attack in northern Europe, he says, JEF, alongside American forces, has the potential to become a first responder.”

Therefore, commented the Economist, “JEF has also become an important diplomatic and military instrument in responding to Russia’s war in Ukraine. British officials say that only a few weeks ago a London summit built around the force would have been unthinkable.”

Johnson said that the JEF “consists of the countries that were fastest off the blocks, with us, in sending direct military assistance to Ukraine.” The Economist noted that as the meeting took place, “Nine out of ten members are now supplying weapons (Iceland, which lacks a standing army, is the exception).”

Britain has provided Ukraine with more than 5,000 Next Generation light anti-tank (NLAW) weapons. These are developed and built in Belfast by Thales UK—a subsidiary of the French global conglomerate—from an original design by the Swedish defence giant Saab-Bofors.

Last month the MoD launched the UK’s Defence Contribution in the High North, which declared, “The Army has increased its cold weather training, including as part of its enhanced Forward Presence deployment in Estonia, where Army cold weather doctrine has been tested and refined alongside the Estonian Defence Forces. Army exercising with JEF partners, including Finland, Norway, and Sweden, enhances its cold weather capabilities, building on Royal Marine and Joint Helicopter Command expertise in the High North.”

Following the Belvoir Castle summit, the World Socialist Web Site wrote: “The defence ministers’ statement emphasised, ‘The JEF is designed from first principles to be complementary to NATO’s Deterrence and Defence posture.’ That the JEF also includes two non-NATO members, Finland and Sweden, blows out of the water the lies of the US and its allies that the incorporation of Ukraine into NATO is a distant prospect, which Moscow is exaggerating in order to excuse its own aggression. The JEF’s military architecture already exists for Ukraine to be fully integrated into anti-Russia operations well before it is granted NATO membership.”

Within just three months, Finland and Sweden’s de facto membership of NATO will rapidly become de jure, with the JEF playing a crucial role on behalf of US and British imperialism in propelling their agenda aimed at regime change in Russia and the dismemberment of that vast country.