Poor families in northern Sri Lanka flee to India to avoid hunger

Sudan Muruganandan

Reports indicate that dozens of poor families from northern Sri Lanka have fled to southern India, including Tamil Nadu, in the past four months to avoid hunger.

Rising prices and shortages of essentials such as food, medicines and fuel, and daily power cuts, have created unbearable social conditions for workers, youth and the poor throughout the island. This has produced an ongoing wave of protests since April with millions of workers participating in general strikes on April 28 and on May 6 to demand the resignation of President Rajapakse and his government and an end to the economic hardship.

Protest march by Jaffna university students on April 4, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

Residents of Sri Lanka’s North and East, who are still struggling with devastation of the 26-year bloody communal war that ended in May 2009, have been hard hit by the unprecedented economic crisis sweeping the country.

According to the media over 80 people had migrated from these areas to India by boat in an attempt to escape starvation in Sri Lanka.

* On May 2, a family of five, including a mother with a two-month-old infant, travelled to the Tamil Nadu coast in a fibreglass boat.

* April 25, fifteen people from Mannar crossed to Tamil Nadu by fishing boat.

* On April 10, a total of nineteen people, in two different groups, travelled in separate fibreglass boats to shallow waters near Dhanushkodi at the south-eastern tip of Pamban Island in Tamil Nadu. One group of ten, including two infants, were from Trincomalee, while the other group were residents of Mannar and Jaffna.

The boat owners generally leave the migrants a short distance from the Indian mainland, fearful that the Indian Navy will seize the boats. Passengers are compelled to make their own way shore, expecting to be arrested by police and moved to a refugee camp. Another group of 20 migrants which arrived by boat at Dhanushkodi are currently being held at the Mandapam refugee camp.

Kodiswaran, who travelled to India with his wife, told the Daily Thandi about the worsening social conditions that forced them to flee.

“I made a living as an agricultural worker in Sri Lanka but because of the non-availability of seeds and pesticides for farming, we lost jobs. My wife is three-months’ pregnant but it was not possible to take care of her in these economic conditions. We decided to come to India after paying the boat fare with the money we got from mortgaging all her jewellery,” he explained.

A fisherman’s wife explained to World Socialist Web Site reporters some of the difficult living conditions facing poor families. “A fisherman cannot afford the cost of goods with his small income and now there is a shortage of kerosene [used for boat engines]. The cooperative outlets only provide three litres of kerosene per person a week, with a litre costing 100 rupees [$US28 cents]. Outside shops sell a litre of kerosene for 250 rupees,” she said.

“Many poor people are now helpless without any source of income. Our weekly income is around 3,000 rupees but what can be done with this amount? If you want to purchase a packet of Anchor [brand name] milk powder, you also have to buy four yogurt cups. A packet of milk powder alone costs 850 rupees. Medicine shortages mean that kids can’t even get a Panadol pill for a fever or a cold,” she said.

The fisherman’s wife explained that families had no alternative but to borrow money just to purchase basic needs. “Everyone in our village is unable to repay these loans. Money lenders’ harassment is increasing. Our identity cards are snatched away,” she added.

Sivasangari, a young refugee, told the BBC’s Tamil Service on March 23, that she undertook the dangerous journey to India because of the dire social conditions in Sri Lanka.

 “The cost of our one-day meal is 2,000 rupees and if you add meat and fish to the meal, it’s about 3,000 rupees. My husband is a day labourer who earns about 1,500 rupees a day. How can you feed children on that amount? We’ve received no help from the government so that’s why we decided to risk death at sea to come to India with my brother’s family.

“An hour after leaving Sri Lanka, the boat engine developed a mechanical fault. We struggled to stay alive in the middle of the sea with the kids for 37 hours without water to drink and food to eat until the engine was repaired. Life in Sri Lanka is a challenge from the moment we wake up in the morning and until going to bed. Many more like us are hoping to come to India,” she said.

Poor Sri Lankan families who fled to India in late March were brutally separated from each other by Indian authorities and imprisoned. In 2012, India banned Sri Lankan refugees from entering the country, punishing them as illegal immigrants.

Confronting widespread popular opposition to these inhumane measures, the Tamil Nadu government has not arrested recent refugees but placed them in refugee camps previously established during the Sri Lanka civil war. The new arrivals are virtual prisoners with no social or democratic rights.

Young people previously born and raised in these camps are deprived of Indian civil rights and not allowed to get decent jobs in the public or private sector, even if they have a bachelor’s degree. Thousands of illiterate youths have been forced to work as day labourers. Suicides are common in these camps.

Recent media reports describe Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. K. Stalin’s response to the recent arrivals as “kind.” These claims are false. Indian authorities, in fact, have reinforced their coastal patrols to block the entry of the Sri Lankan refugees.

Sri Lanka’s Tamil nationalist parties, including the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), support Rajapakse’s austerity measures while voicing hypocritical concerns about the plight of people. The TNA leadership has called for Colombo to implement the International Monetary Fund (IMF) debt restructuring measures, declaring, “The Tamil people are used to this kind of suffering,” a reference to the hardships suffered during the civil war.

Similarly, all of Sri Lanka’s parliamentary opposition parties, including Samagi Jana Balawegaya, fully back the IMF program. President Rajapakse recently appointed United National Party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Sri Lankan prime minister to impose even more the IMF’s brutal austerity attacks on workers and the poor.

This includes privatisation of state-owned enterprises, harsh government spending cuts and higher taxes, which will slash jobs, wages and pensions and drive up the costs of essentials.

The economic collapse in Sri Lanka is a sharp expression of an escalating crisis of global capitalism. The working class must take initiative and rally the poor, uniting Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim workers and build action committees in every workplace and suburb, independent of trade unions and capitalist parties.

Strikes mount across Spain against spiraling cost of living

Alejandro López

The class struggle is erupting in Spain. Strikes by tens of thousands of workers have broken out in industry after industry to demand higher wages amid spiraling inflation, better working conditions and replacing temporary work with full-time jobs.

The strikes take place after talks over the Fifth Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC) between the trade unions, the Podemos-linked Workers Commissions (CCOO) and the social-democratic General Union of Workers (UGT) and the Confederation of Spanish Employers Organisations (CEOE) broke down.

The AENC is a sort of “agreement on collective agreements” setting out a nationwide framework for contracts and pay raises. Currently, both the unions and the CEOE agree that wages should rise less than the current 8.3 percent inflation level. The unions are demanding 3.5 percent increases in 2022, 2.5 percent in 2023 and 2 percent in 2024, while the CEOE demands workers allow inflation to eat away their purchasing power even faster. This means the unions are in reality negotiating how much of a real wage cut they can impose on their members without provoking a social explosion.

The unions have since threatened strikes and protests “company per company” to “fight” for these cuts to their purchasing power. Currently, 9 million workers in Spain work without or under an expired collective agreement on working hours, calendar and salary.

The “company per company” strategy, however, effectively sabotages any attempt to unite workers struggles across different industries, regions and pay scales. This is clear in the strikes that have already broken out.

In a Coruña province, 16,000 metalworkers went on strike on May 5, 12 and 18-19, authorised by the CCOO and UGT unions. They are demanding the recovery of purchasing power, salary review clauses to protect purchasing power, the extension of these rights to workers from subcontracted companies, the limitation of temp work and the regulation of toxic, painful and dangerous work.

The UGT and CCOO have called 20,000 metalworkers on an indefinite strike in nearby Cantabria starting June 2. They make no attempt to unite the steelworkers in Coruña and Cantabria. In Cantabria, the unions claim, the aim is to “to pressure” Pymetal, the region’s big business association in the metal sector. Pymetal wants a 2 percent wage increase in 2021, 2 percent in 2022 and 2.25 percent in 2023, way below the current 8.3 inflation levels.

The unions are demanding wage increases equal to inflation, but are calling their own policy “extreme” and preparing to betray it as soon as possible. They claim the long delay in the Cantabria strike, meant to avoid it intersecting with the Coruña strike, gives Pymetal “more than 15 days of margin” to address “injustice” of the industry.

On May 13, the unions called for a national strike of call centre workers for wage increases, in a sector where average monthly wages are €800 ($845) for a 30-hour week. According to the unions, almost 85 percent of the 120,000 workers went on strike. Over the past three years, workers in the sector have lost an estimated 16 percent of their purchasing power. After this, the unions said they will call a one-day strike one day a month until a new collective agreement is signed, but they are demanding only a token salary increase.

On the same day, around 11,000 workers in the textile, general and leather and footwear sectors in the Basque country went on a strike called by the Basque-nationalist trade unions. Hundreds of protesters marched in Bilbao, the region’s capital. Collective agreements have not been reached since 2015 for the textile sector, 2018 for leather and 2007 for footwear.

Last Wednesday in Barcelona, hundreds of taxi drivers took to the streets in one of the most important demonstrations in the ride-hailing sector’s history in Catalonia. The protest brought together nearly 4,000 vehicles. Taxi unions and associations want the ratio of taxis to ride-hailing services to be set at 30 to 1. Dozens of taxis have filled the three central lanes in the heart of Barcelona's Gran Via and then moved on a slow march to the Parliament of Catalonia.

Also in Catalonia, teachers have been carrying out weekly stoppages against decades of austerity in the public education system by successive Catalan-nationalist regional governments and the latest reactionary decision of the Supreme Court to require that 25 percent of classes be held in Spanish.

In the Madrid region, 11,000 doctors called off the 10-day-long strike against temp contracts, which exceed 50 percent of total employment. CCOO and UGT had already betrayed the strike, but other unions and medical associations continued the strike to demand 3,000 fixed contracts. In the end, the strike was sold out after the region accepted 2,500, amid mass anger among striking doctors who wanted to continue the strike until its demands were won.

In recent weeks, smaller strikes have erupted throughout the country, involving hundreds of workers. This includes workers at Osakidetza hospitals and mental health clinics in the Basque country, old folks homes in Navarre, cleaning workers in Bizkaia, public transport workers in Terrassa and Ourense and factory workers at the LGC factory in Cordoba. In Barcelona, 200 workers at H&M clothes retailer called several strikes to demand a salary bonus for languages.

Calls for new strikes are mounting. Ryan airpilots and cabin crew may strike this summer, in Spain and other European countries.

At Correos, Spain’s state-owned postal services company, CCOO and UGT have called for a strike on June 1, 2 and 3 against the dismantling of the public postal service.

The upsurge of the class struggle in Spain is part of an emerging international movement of the working class against inflation and rising inequality, accelerated by the NATO-EU war on Russia and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the US, a series of powerful strikes and social protests have broken out across different industries against the intolerable social conditions and breathtaking levels of social inequality. In Sri Lanka, mass anti-government protests and strikes are calling for the toppling of the country’s repressive executive presidency.

As the WSWS noted: “[W]orkers internationally are confronting not only individual bosses or corporations, but powerful global financial institutions backed by the world’s governments, police and armies.”

In Spain, workers face the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, which violently represses strikes. In last year’s strike by 22,000 metalworkers in Cádiz, the government sent riot police and armoured vehicles. Against last month’ drivers strike, the government launched a brutal crackdown, arresting and fining hundreds of strikers and deploying over 23,000 police—the largest deployment ever against a strike in Spain.

But besides the police and the army, the PSOE-Podemos’ main weapon against the class struggle is the trade unions, which isolate strikes, accept real wage cuts and keep production going.

Biden’s trip to Asia prepares for military confrontation with China

Peter Symonds

Even as his administration is ramping up its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, President Biden is on his first visit to Asia, colluding with major allies and strategic partners to step up the US-led confrontation with China, to economically weaken it and prepare for war.

Biden’s trip to South Korea and Japan—US imperialism’s chief military allies in East Asia—will culminate in a meeting tomorrow of the leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a strategic grouping directed against China that includes the US, Japan, Australia and India.

U.S. President Joe Biden, center right, with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, center left, speaks at the Combat Operations Floor of the Osan Air Base, Sunday, May 22, 2022, in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

Immediately prior to departing for South Korea, Biden met with Finnish and Swedish leaders at the White House to discuss their bids to join NATO to strengthen the alliance against Russia. In Seoul on Saturday, he signed off on the $40 billion military aid package for Ukraine with the aim of enmeshing and weakening Russia through a protracted war.

From the outset of the Ukraine war, the Biden administration has made not the slightest pretense of enlisting Beijing as a mediator in negotiations to end the conflict. Rather, Washington has denounced China for refusing to condemn the Russian invasion, threatened economic sanctions, and accused Beijing, without a shred of evidence, of preparing to invade Taiwan.

The New York Times claimed that the purpose of Biden’s trip was “to demonstrate that the United States remained focused on countering China, even as his administration stage-managed a war against Russia in Europe.” There is nothing defensive, however, about the escalating US military build-up and associated demonisation of Beijing.

Biden’s talks with newly-elected South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol underscored the purpose of the trip as a whole—to restart major joint military exercises, boost South Korea’s military capabilities and consolidate key supply chains, such as semiconductors, to restrict any economic reliance on China in the event of conflict.

Both South Korea and Japan are longstanding US military allies and house vital American bases that are integral to the Pentagon war planning. While the supposed North Korean threat is the pretext, the consolidation and boosting of these alliances is directed against China. The two countries house US anti-ballistic missile systems that are a key element in US strategic preparations for a nuclear war. Significantly, discussions are underway in both countries about the stationing of US medium-range nuclear missiles on their territories.

Employing the language of war, a senior US defense official told the Defense One website last week that Biden’s trip was “proof positive” that the US could maintain both fronts in Europe and Asia. “Everybody’s focused on Ukraine, and we understand that, but that doesn’t mean that we’ve stopped working with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, doesn’t mean we stopped our air and naval activity in the Indo-Pacific,” the official said. 

The US has continued its naval provocations in the South China Sea under the guise of “freedom of navigation” and as recently as May 10 sent a warship through the narrow strait between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland.

The Biden administration’s focus on Taiwan in discussions in Asia is particularly sinister. In the same way that it goaded Moscow into a war in Ukraine as a means of bogging down the Russian military in a protracted conflict, the US is seeking to exploit Taiwan as a potential quagmire for the Chinese armed forces.

Taking up where Trump left off, Biden has provocatively undermined the longstanding One China policy, under which the US de facto recognises the Chinese Communist Party regime in Beijing as the legitimate government of all of China, including Taiwan. When formal diplomatic relations were established with China in 1979, the US cut diplomatic ties with Taipei, downgraded contracts and removed all military forces from the island.

Over the past year, Biden has dropped the previous barriers to top level meetings, acknowledged that US military “trainers” are stationed in Taiwan, and increased US naval activities through the Taiwan Strait and neighbouring waters. When China responded by increasing its air activity near Taiwan, Washington accused China of preparing to invade.

Indeed, the US is consciously arming Taiwan for a war of attrition against any Chinese invasion, insisting that it buy weapons for asymmetric warfare against a much larger Chinese military. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told a congressional hearing in April that Taiwan could draw an important lesson from Ukraine as a “nation in arms.”

“If your opponent tries to invade you, and every military age man [and] woman is armed, and they have a little bit of training, that can be a very effective use,” Milley said. And, one should add, especially if they are armed to the teeth with billions of dollars of sophisticated American weaponry and supplemented by crippling economic and financial sanctions.

Charles Edel, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday that the US strategy in the Ukraine war provided a good “template” the administration can build on when thinking about how to protect Taiwan from a potential Chinese invasion.

In reality, the US is not considering how to defend Taiwan but how to use the people of Taiwan as cannon fodder in a war with China.

Biden’s trip to Asia underscores the fact that US imperialism is recklessly pursuing a strategy aimed at securing control of the strategic Eurasian landmass and its resources and preventing any challenge to its global hegemony by Russia or China, which the US regards as its chief threats. In its historic decline, Washington is driven to resort to military means to shore up its dominance.

For more than a decade, starting with President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia,” the US has sought to undermine and encircle China diplomatically, economically and militarily. Now engulfed in an unprecedented social and economic crisis at home and the re-emergence of class struggles, the Biden administration has plunged Europe into war and is preparing the same in Asia, threatening the world with a clash of nuclear-armed powers.

Acutely conscious of what is looming, General Mark Milley warned cadets graduating from the US Military Academy West Point on Saturday to be prepared for world war. “The world you are being commissioned into has the potential for a significant international conflict between great powers. And that potential is increasing, not decreasing,” he said.

Berlin: Judiciary bans pro-Palestinian demonstrations

Markus Salzmann

The police and judiciary in Berlin have banned all Palestinian demonstrations on “Nakba Day” in the capital city. The Administrative Court and the Higher Administrative Court confirmed the bans involving five demonstrations due to take place in the Berlin districts of Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Berlin-Mitte on May 13, 14 and 15. The demonstrations had been planned long in advance.

The courts’ reasoning for the blanket bans was the fear that the protests might involve anti-Semitic slogans, incitement to violence and/or acts of violence. Last Friday, the Higher Administrative Court justified its confirmation of the bans on the same baseless grounds. According to the court, its prognosis was justified based on previous events, and that those registering the demonstrations had not sufficiently distanced themselves from persons holding anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic views.

Over the weekend of May 14-15, more than 1,100 police officers were mobilised to enforce the bans using all means possible. Several arrests were made at spontaneous, small demonstrations.

The ban on demonstrations is a fundamental attack on the freedom of assembly and expression. It contradicts constitutional principles and is purely politically motivated.

On May 15, Palestinians around the world commemorate the so-called Nakba (catastrophe). In the course of the founding of the state of Israel, Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed in a wave of violence from 1948 onwards and about 800,000 Palestinians were displaced. To this day, the majority of the Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip and in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and other countries live under abominable conditions, subject to constant brutal oppression by the Israeli state.

This year, the Nakba was marked by the murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The well-known Al Jazeera reporter had reported from the Middle East region for decades. On May 11, she was murdered by an Israeli sniper with a bullet to the head as she stood at a roundabout wearing a helmet and jacket clearly marked Press. She had been reporting on the constant raids by Israeli security forces in the West Bank town of Jenin. The circumstances of her death indicate a planned murder.

Israeli police confront mourners as they carry the casket of slain Al Jazeera veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during her funeral in East Jerusalem, Friday, May 13, 2022. [AP Photo/Maya Levin]

When mourners carried her coffin out of St. Joseph Hospital in East Jerusalem the following Friday, they were attacked by Israeli security forces. The troops snatched away Palestinian flags and brutally beat the bearers, causing them to nearly drop the coffin. Al Jazeera broadcast the shocking scenes live as soldiers used rubber bullets and stun grenades against the crowd gathered outside the hospital morgue. The incident sent shockwaves worldwide.

The claim by Berlin police that the demo ban was intended to prevent anti-Semitic insults and riots is clearly a pretext. The ban also applied to an event planned for Friday evening by Jewish Voice, a Jewish organisation that campaigns for Palestinian rights.

The group Palestine Speaks criticised the ban as an “attack on freedom of assembly and expression” which “alarmingly opens the door for unlimited state repression against any opposition in Germany, be it for Palestinian human rights, anti-racism or refugee rights.”

In the Berliner Zeitung, lawyer Ralf Michaels argued that the bans would “pervert the fundamental right to freedom of assembly.” He regarded the explanation of the police, i.e., that they wanted to prevent violence by “groups of people with a Muslim background,” as unfounded.

The ban was clearly directed against any criticism of Israel. Germany has long been an important ally of the Israeli government and explicitly supports its brutal oppression of Palestinians.

It is noteworthy that the Berlin Senate—an alliance of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Left Party—had held to fund a “Solidarity against Hate” rally originally planned for May 15. The event, which was then cancelled following massive public criticism, was aimed at legitimising the brutal policies of the Israeli government. The flyer posted on social media featured a donkey with the Amnesty International logo on its backside. The human rights organisation had been critical of the Israeli government’s apartheid policy.

The ban and verdict must be seen above all in the context of the war in Ukraine, the growth of German militarism and increasing popular resistance to both.

Just one week before the ban on the Palestine demonstrations, the Berlin police, at the behest of the Red-Red-Green Senate, issued an order banning Soviet flags from commemorations of the anniversary of the liberation from fascism. Among those affected were survivors and relatives of victims of the Holocaust and the Nazi war of extermination as well as opponents of war who gathered at memorial sites and historical buildings.

Once again, reality was turned on its head. The ban on Soviet flags was justified with possible “conflict potential” or even “glorification” of the Ukraine war. The real reason was to criminalise commemorations addressing the greatest crimes committed in human history, at a time when the German government is pouring record sums into military rearmament and sending tanks and heavy artillery to Ukraine for the war against Russia.

The Berlin Senate and its police adopt a completely different stance towards far-right demonstrations. They are not only authorised, but downright supported. Coronavirus deniers and the supporters of far-right parties have been able to freely spread their inhuman ideology in disregard of all mitigation measures. They were protected by the security authorities. Today, the pandemic policy of the extreme right is official government policy.

Also noteworthy in this respect is an incident in Zwickau, Saxony, where the city had been planning an intercultural festival called “Zwikkolör” on the main market square on May 14. The festival was cancelled at short notice after the Administrative Court of Chemnitz approved the holding of a right-wing extremist rally by the “Volksstimme Bürgerbündnis Zwickau” at the same location. The court argued that the freedom of assembly (of the right-wing extremists) guaranteed by Germany’s Basic Law took precedence over an intercultural event with the “character of a festival.”

The ruling class promotes the far right and suppresses left-wing protest because it fears resistance to militarisation and social cuts. The Ukraine war is linked to a dramatic deterioration in the living conditions of the broad masses around the world.

Last month, the World Bank estimated that food prices will rise by 22.9 percent this year, mainly due to an increase in global wheat prices. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices for foods such as sugar, dairy, cereals and vegetable oil, is nearly 30 percent higher than in April 2021.

Workers are under the constant threat of wage cuts, job losses and social attacks. The retirement age is to be raised to 67 by 2029, and there are already new demands to raise it to at least 70.

Massive resistance is developing against these developments. In justifying its ban on demonstrations, the Berlin court explicitly cited the “high level of mobilisation” on Nakba Day. It was referring to the fact that last year more than 10,000 people took part in a demonstration on Nakba Day to protest against Israel’s murderous air attacks on Gaza. All protests against war and oppression are to be stopped at all costs.

US military delivery of baby formula from Germany does little to stem supply crisis

Kevin Reed

A US military airplane transported 75,000 pounds of imported baby formula from Ramstein Air Base in Germany to Indianapolis, Indiana, on Sunday amid the catastrophic nationwide shortage crisis of infant food in America.

Crew members of an Air Force C-17 unload a plane load of baby formula at the Indianapolis International Airport in Indianapolis, Sunday, May 22, 2022. [AP Photo/Michael Conroy]

The batch of baby formula, which was trucked from Switzerland to Germany, is the first shipment flown into the US from Europe as part of the Biden administration’s emergency Operation Fly Formula. The Department of Agriculture said on Saturday that “additional flights will be announced in the coming days.”

The corporate media is doing its best to present the arrival of three brands of powdered formula that are hypoallergenic as a significant measure to address the crisis. For example, CNN has been broadcasting over and over again for hours its video footage of 132 pallets being taken off the military C-17 cargo plane by servicemen driving forklifts and loading them onto FedEx trucks.

However, the amount of formula in the shipment from Germany will make just 500,000 eight-ounce bottles of baby food and does not even begin to address the magnitude of the crisis. According to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the Biden administration’s Operation Fly Formula shipment will feed a few thousand children for just one week. Meanwhile, there are approximately 1.2 million babies that get their formula through the federal government’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).

The dire conditions facing families from the crisis are beginning to emerge in news reports. CNN reported that a doctor at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, said that two young patients were admitted because the special formula they need is out of stock, and they cannot tolerate replacements.

The CNN report also said that clinical dietitians at Medical University of South Carolina Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital in Charleston “reported that at least four babies were recently hospitalized for complications related to the ongoing formula shortage.” Three of the four babies were hospitalized due to intolerance to formula that they had been fed by parents because of the shortages. The other child became sick when a caregiver attempted to mix their own formula.

According to the data tracking firm Datasembly, nearly 45 percent of baby formula products were unavailable in the US for the week ending May 15, up from 43 percent the previous week. On Thursday, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf told the House Appropriations Committee that families should get relief “soon” due to increased output from manufacturers and the military deliveries. When pressed, Califf said that the crisis would get better “gradually” and it “will be a few weeks before we are back to normal.”

But formula manufacturers and retailers say that it could take months for supplies to recover because the reasons for the crisis remain unresolved. Baby formula shortages started as early as 2020 when the pandemic began, and supply chains were disrupted. Shipping delays and longer lead times for raw materials and packaging multiplied and compounded upon each other, causing limited supplies on retail shelves across the US over the past two years.

Then, in February of this year, Abbott Labs was forced to halt operations at its biggest factory in Sturgis, Michigan, which is responsible for one-fifth of all US baby formula production. The $200 billion medical devices and health care company—which makes the popular Similac baby formula product—has previously refused to acknowledge that its factory was contaminated with bacteria and responsible for illness and death among infants that were fed with its products.

On Saturday, the Washington Post published a perfunctory corporate-speak “apology” from Robert Ford, chairman and CEO of Abbott Labs, that said the FDA had found “a bacteria in our plant” but that there was not “any connection between our products and the four reported illness in children.”

Ford did reveal that “some children have been hospitalized because of the lack of EleCare, a specialized formula for children who cannot digest other formulas and milks.” Although he said that this is “tragic and heartbreaking,” Ford did not offer any immediate solutions to the catastrophic situation other than to say, “it is consuming my thoughts and those of my colleagues.”

Instead, Ford said, “we wish we could provide them the formula they need today and are working to identify ways to do so,” and “we will prioritize EleCare when manufacturing resumes.” The conclusion of Ford’s statement emphasized the consent decree between Abbott Labs and the Biden administration to reopen the Michigan production facility.

The consent decree issued by the US Justice Department on May 16 concludes the government investigation into the role of Abbott Labs in producing a contaminated product in exchange for the reopening of its baby formula factory. The agreement amounts to corporate blackmail in which Abbott Labs avoids prosecution and admission of guilt, even though FDA testing found Cronobacter bacteria at the Sturgis factory because of the supply shortage crisis.

Whatever the phony expressions of concern from CEO Ford, the fact is that Abbott Labs has been preoccupied with the megaprofits it has been earning from pandemic-related products and abandoned any investment or development of the less lucrative baby formula operations. John Wallingford, a former baby formula executive and now an industry consultant, told the Wall Street Journal that the largest baby food manufacturers also make higher profit medical devices and health care products.

Wallingford told the Journal, “Companies that manufacture infant formula have to struggle to get investment for upgrading or building a new facility because they’re competing with dollars that will go to other, higher margin products.”

The baby formula supply crisis in the US and the government response to it are clear expressions of the breakdown of the capitalist system. Millions of families are struggling to feed their newborn babies, infants and toddlers because profits come before human life in America. As has been demonstrated throughout the coronavirus pandemic, in a society that is run by billionaire elites—such as those who control the $35 billion international pediatric nutrition industry—their stock portfolios and wealth accumulation are more important than the lives of millions of working class people.

“False positives”: The cold-blooded murder of over 6,400 poor civilians by Colombian military assassins between 2002 and 2008

Cesar Uco & Don Knowland

In testimony given in recent weeks before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP), thus far 21 Colombian military personnel, including high echelon officers, and one civilian have pleaded guilty to having committed atrocious crimes against the civilian population in Colombia. The case is known as that of the “false positives,” a phrase used to describe civilians recruited from the most distant and poorest villages in order to pass them off as guerrillas and then shoot them.

The aim of this atrocity was to inflate the death toll in order to deceive the Colombian people as to the military’s success in the war against the guerrilla Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (the FARC), which based itself on retrograde Maoist and Guevarist conceptions of peasant war. The murders described occurred between 2002 and 2008, during the far right-wing presidency of Álvaro Uribe.

Plan Colombia and “false positives”

The revelations of the cold-blooded murders of 6,402 young peasants and unemployed people must be understood in the context of Plan Colombia, an agreement signed in 1999 between Colombian President Andrés Pastrana and US President Bill Clinton to fight “narcoterrorism.” Between 2000 and 2005, Plan Colombia received $2.8 billion from the US. Later on, the US Department of Defense increased that sum to $4.5 billion.

Additionally, in 2005, the George W. Bush administration, after meeting with President Uribe, requested $463 million in additional funds from the US Congress for Plan Colombia, and $90 million through the IMF. By then, Uribe and Bush had become personal friends.

While the war against the Colombian guerrillas was being waged, the US government issued to the Colombian Army a “certification” in Human Rights.  This “recognition” of the work of Uribe’s executive qualified it for an additional $62 million from the US for the fight against 'narcoterrorism.' 

These were the years in which the Colombian military carried out the 'false positive' murders.

This past week, the Spanish newspaper El Pais wrote: “[T]he militaries’ accounts of how they deceived unarmed peasants and poor, unemployed young people in need of work, and how they murdered them, dressed them in camouflage and put a gun in their hands, [show this was done] to meet the demands of their superiors to produce casualties in combat.”

Although the SJP has been taking testimony only since April 2022, this unpunished crime was already made known internationally a year ago. In February 2021, France24 described these “illegitimate deaths presented as combat fatalities,” and added that “the majority were carried out between 2006 and 2008, during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe, the political mentor of current President Iván Duque.”

That same month, the Guardian revealed that “Soldiers were rewarded for the manipulated kill statistics with perks, including time off and promotions.” 

BBC NEWS also alluded to what the court has now described as a “macro-criminal phenomenon”—that “around 1,500 military personnel were allegedly involved.”

The statements of the first 21 army personnel to declare themselves culpable

The SJP took the testimony of a recruiter, Alexander Carretero Díaz, the only civilian charged, who described how he carried out the recruitment of innocent civilians for these murders: “I am the person who brought all your loved ones from various parts of Colombia, I am guilty, I declare myself responsible for having brought people from Soacha, from Gamarra, from Bucaramanga, from Aguachica to hand them over to the Army to be killed.'

Carretero Díaz continued: “I am responsible for having lent myself [to this scheme], knowing what was going to happen to their loved ones; I am more responsible because they told me to convince different people.”

The voices of “false positive” mothers

The Colombian newspaper El Universal published powerful statements of relatives given before the SJP.

Carmenza Gómez, mother of Víctor Fernando Gómez, 23, who disappeared on August 23, 2008 and was found dead on August 25 in Ocaña, Santander, exclaimed: “I do not come to speak only for my son, I come to speak for thousands of victims who are not here today, but our voice is their voice, because they cannot speak, because they are afraid, because they are threatened, as they did with the mothers of Soacha.”

Idalí Garcerá, a mother and head of her household, spoke of the disappearance of her son from Cundinamarca in 2008: “I have been here for 14 years to find out about my son who disappeared in the Ducales neighborhood, in Soacha, on August 23, 2008. I have fought a lot and alone. ... I need to know who were those people who asked for results for their own benefit, we all need to know that and the country in general.”

Zoraida Muñoz, another mother from Soacha, pleaded with the witnesses to clarify precisely what happened: “Before this happened to me, I had no enemies. My enemies are the National Army ... You should not do anything with children or young people, because they already carry an accursed cross.”

Gloria Martínez, another victim of the war, stated: “The whole truth has not been revealed. ... You keep privileged information according to the position you held, you have repeatedly said that you want this history not to repeat itself, but I ask you: have you already returned the decorations, the awards you were given for these murders?”

The massacre of innocents: A continuing military pattern in Colombia

Colombia’s capitalist elite waged a five-decade-long bloody civil war against the FARC guerrilla movement until September 2016, when the Peace Accords were signed between the Colombian government and the FARC. FARC turned in its weapons in 2017.

That struggle, and the one against the much smaller ELN (National Liberation Army) Colombian guerrillas, resulted in over 250,000 killed and over 7 million displaced civilians.

It is apparent that atrocities that were the norm have continued even after the creaky peace with the FARC.

The crimes of the “false positives” returned to the front page after Colombia’s current president and Uribe protégé Iván Duque admitted on March 28 to military misconduct that is now known as the “Putumayo massacre.” 

Duque reported what he called a routine military operation in Puerto Leguízamo, Putumayo Department, which borders on Ecuador and Peru, against armed assailants as part of the #SinTregua [no truce] offensive against “narco-terrorist structures” that resulted in 11 deaths.  Duque claimed those who were “neutralized,” i.e., killed, belonged to illegal armed groups, including FARC dissidents, the relatively small numbers who did not buy into the peace accords.

However, testimonies of the survivors and victims of the family members state that persons killed were civilians. According to the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (Organización Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas de la Amazonia Colombiana, OPIAC), the army arrived dressed in black and wearing hoods at a local market where individuals were raising funds for neighborhood needs, opening fire in an indiscriminate manner. The soldiers then manipulated the corpses of civilians to make them look like combatants.

BBC NEWS reported that a joint independent investigation by Colombian media Vorágine, El Espectador and Cambio concluded that Colombian military forces had tampered with evidence at the scene of the alleged fighting before investigators could arrive. After the investigation, these media concluded that what happened was a “massacre.”

Plainly, “false positive”-style military activity routinely continues as a practice in Colombia. 

And despite the devastating and harrowing events recently narrated by the military in the “false positives” case, former President Uribe last week haughtily issued a communiqué entitled “The Truth Commission or the political lie.” In it Uribe says that the crimes against Colombia’s poor civilians and peasants are perfectly justifiable.

A larger Latin America pattern and the complicity of US imperialism

The atrocious nature and scale of the “false positives” crimes in Colombia bring to mind the atrocities committed by the dictatorships of Pinochet in Chile and Videla in Argentina, among others. None of the crimes in these countries would have been possible without complicity and direct pressure from the US government.  

As Philippe Nassif, the advocacy director for Amnesty USA, rightly put it, “The United States’ role in fueling ceaseless cycles of violence committed against the people of Colombia is outrageous.” 

Uribe remains arrogant and defiant because he knows he acted in coordination with US imperialism, which continues to deem Latin America as its “backyard” for exploitation of the population and resources.

The World Health Organization to meet urgently to review the global spread of monkeypox infections

Benjamin Mateus

A committee of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Infectious Hazards with Pandemic and Epidemic Potential (STAG-IH) was to meet yesterday to review the sudden explosion of monkeypox cases across the globe. 

More than 130 cases of known (80) or suspected (50) monkeypox cases are under investigation spanning 12 non-African countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, as well as Canada, Australia and the United States. 

This 2003 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virions, left, and spherical immature virions, right, obtained from a sample of human skin associated with the 2003 prairie dog outbreak. [AP Photo/Cynthia S. Goldsmith, Russell Regner/CDC]

Only one of these confirmed cases has been linked to travel from Nigeria, a country known to have endemic monkeypox. The man, who developed a rash on April 29, flew to the UK on May 4 and informed authorities of his symptoms. He was immediately isolated, and the blisters were sampled and sent for PCR testing at Porton Down science park, which confirmed the infection on May 7.

What has public health officials concerned is that cases are geographically dispersed across Europe, the Atlantic and as far as Oceania. They suspect that the disease has been spreading undetected for some time. These developments shouldn’t come as a surprise, as all social restrictions against COVID have been lifted and international flights have begun carrying hundreds of millions of passengers this year. Meanwhile, public health efforts have been decimated by two years of non-stop waves of infections. 

The WHO regional director for Europe, Dr. Hans Kluge, noted, “Monkeypox is usually a self-limiting illness, and most of those infected will recover within a few weeks without treatment. However, the disease can be more severe, especially in young children, pregnant women, and individuals who are immunocompromised.” It remains to be seen if previous infection to SARS-CoV-2 will predispose people to complications from monkeypox.

Genomic sequencing of the current strain of the monkeypox suggests it is the less severe West Africa clade (genomic family), with a case fatality rate of less than one percent, or the mild version. The clade from the Congo basin carries a ten percent fatality rate. However, n article published in Nature yesterday stated, “Exactly how much the strain causing the current outbreaks differs from the one in western Africa—and whether the viruses popping up in various countries are linked to one another—remains unknown.”

Dr. Raina MacIntyre, infectious disease epidemiologist and monkeypox expert at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said that answers to these questions are critical in explaining if the sudden rise in cases is a byproduct of a mutation that allows the monkeypox virus to transit more efficiently than the ancestral versions. It would also answer if the outbreaks can be traced back to a single origin.

The deputy director of the CDC’s division of high consequences pathogens and pathology, Jennifer McQuiston, said earlier in the week about the monkeypox epidemic, “[While] we’re seeing this expansion of confirmed and suspect cases globally, we have a sense that no one has their arms around this to know how large and expansive it might be. And given how much travel there is between the United States and Europe, I am very confident we’re going to see cases in the United States.”

Currently six people are being monitored who were close contacts of the man who flew back to the UK from Nigeria. Another man in Massachusetts with confirmed monkeypox had been in Quebec, where several cases have been confirmed. Another man currently at Bellevue Hospital is being investigated for infection, according to the New York City Health Department.

The disparate cases imply undetected spread has been taking place. Usually, the disease manifests in lesions that begin on the face and spread to the other parts of the body, forming into blisters that burst, then scar, leading to the pathognomonic (disease-specific) skin lesions. The consequence here is that monkeypox does not go unnoticed to the infected person or others. If the monkeypox virus is spreading asymptomatically, that would have significant public health ramifications.

Health authorities have also been perplexed by the fact that most of the cases have been among young and middle-aged men, many of whom are gay or bisexual and have sex with men (GBMSM). MacIntyre told Nature she suspects “that the virus was coincidentally introduced into a GBMSM community, and the virus has continued circulating there.” Such reports will certainly lead to stigmatizing this community once more, as with HIV.

However, Dr. Kluge warned, “As we enter the summer season in the European region, with mass gatherings, festivals and parties, I am concerned that transmission could accelerate, as the cases currently being detected are among those engaging in sexual activity, and the symptoms are unfamiliar to many.”

Vaccines against smallpox offer 85 percent protection against monkeypox, as the variola virus is very similar. However, smallpox vaccination ended in 1980 when the disease was eradicated, meaning that those younger than 45 are unvaccinated and thus fully susceptible to the monkeypox virus. This of course includes all children, who are not less severely infected, as they have been so far with SARS-CoV-2 virus. Also, decades of waning immunity to smallpox have likely made the elderly vulnerable again.

Public health authorities are attempting to assure the public that ample supplies of smallpox vaccines, including antiviral treatments against monkeypox virus, are available. But instead of employing these in mass vaccination campaigns, healthcare workers would utilize a method called “ring vaccination,” where close contacts of infected patients would receive these treatments. However, this implies a program of contact tracing would be necessary to detail every chain of transmission.

Countries are beginning to secure contracts with the maker of the smallpox vaccine, Bavarian Nordic, a Danish company. On Wednesday, the company said BARDA (the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for the Strategic National Stockpile) had exercised a $119 million option to manufacture the freeze-dried doses of Jynneos (smallpox and monkeypox vaccine live, non-replicating) in 2023 and 2024 to replace the current stock of bulk vaccine, according to Fierce Pharma.

They also said, “U.S. company Emergent BioSolutions also has an FDA-approved smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, which isn’t available in the EU. Emergent nabbed an award worth up to $2 billion to deliver ACAM2000 to the Strategic National Stockpile over 10 years.”

German Chancellor Scholz’s government statement: Rearming for war against Russia

Johannes Stern

Germany is playing a prominent role in the NATO proxy war with Russia and thus accepts the risk of a third world war. The government statement made by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz to the federal parliament on Thursday morning and the ensuing debate made clear how aggressively German imperialism is behaving once again, 77 years after the end of the Second World War.

In his speech, Scholz bluntly explained the war aims of Germany and NATO: A military victory over nuclear-armed Russia. “We all have one goal: Russia must not win this war. Ukraine must survive,” said the chancellor. This is the aim with “everything we do. With our sanctions against Russia, the reception of millions of refugees in the European Union, the humanitarian, development and economic assistance to Ukraine and, indeed, the supply of weapons, including heavy weaponry.”

After initial hesitation, Germany is delivering weapons to Ukraine en masse. Der Spiegel reported on Wednesday, “in the past two weeks alone, 2,450 RGW 90 anti-tank weapons, 1,600 DM22 anti-tank missiles and 3,000 DM31 anti-tank mines have arrived in Ukraine” and “been distributed to units of the local army.” This was confirmed by Ukrainian government sources.

The list of German arms deliveries gets “ever longer with the latest tranche,” commented the news magazine. Previously, Berlin had already “delivered anti-tank weapons, armored vehicles, millions of ammunition rounds of various calibres and explosives to Ukraine.” On the lists, in addition, “there are also 15 bunker-breaking weapons, so-called bunker fists, or remote detonators for explosive devices.”

At the end of April, Germany’s parliament officially decided to deliver heavy weaponry to Ukraine. Since then, this has moved ahead at full speed. On Wednesday, the Social Democrat-led Ministry of Defense announced another “circular exchange” with the Czech Republic. The German army provided Prague with “15 Leopard 2 A4 tanks” and “also took over the training of Czech soldiers,” the ministry announced on Twitter. In return, the Czech Republic supplied tanks of Soviet design to Ukraine.

A similar circular exchange has already been agreed with Poland and Slovakia. At the same time, Germany is also pushing ahead with the delivery of tanks and other heavy equipment from its own stockpiles. Among other things, 50 anti-aircraft Cheetah tanks and seven self-propelled howitzer 2000s will be delivered to Ukraine. The delivery of 88 Leopard 1 combat tanks and 100 Marder artillery tanks is also being prepared by the German arms giant Rheinmetall.

In line with the official propaganda, Scholz tried to portray the massive arms deliveries as de-escalating peace measures. “Helping a brutally attacked country to defend itself is not an escalation, but a contribution to warding off the attack and thus ending the violence as quickly as possible,” he claimed. Nor is anything being done “that will turn NATO into a war party.”

Chancellor Scholz at the May Day rally in Düsseldorf

This is a lie and an absurdity in several respects. On the one hand, Scholz is well aware that the growing military support for Ukraine poses the risk of a nuclear third world war. On April 22, he told Der Spiegel that “every effort must be made to avoid a direct military confrontation between NATO and a highly armed superpower such as Russia, a nuclear power.” The issue is “preventing an escalation that leads to a third world war.”

On the other hand, “NATO has in fact long been a war party,” and not only since the Putin regime invaded Ukraine. The imperialist powers have been waging war for decades in order to assert their economic and strategic interests. The wars of aggression and regime-change operations in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, which all violated international law, have in the last 30 years destroyed entire countries and killed millions of people.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the NATO powers have systematically encircled Russia with the aim of turning the resource-rich country into a semi-colony that they can dominate and exploit. In 2014, Washington and Berlin orchestrated a right-wing coup in Ukraine to install an anti-Russian regime in the former Soviet republic. Subsequently, the Ukrainian military and far-right militias in the country were systematically upgraded. Moscow's invasion on February 24, 2022 was the desperate response of a reactionary capitalist regime to NATO’s offensive.

Today, Germany is no more a “peace power” than it was on the eve of the First and Second World Wars. Together with the United States, it is the most aggressive imperialist actor. The ruling class is using the war in Ukraine provoked by NATO to implement long-cherished plans for armament and emergence as a great power.

The focus is on the massive rearmament of the German army. “We will secure and strengthen our own defence capability,” Scholz announced in parliament. For this, “the military needs the special fund of €100 billion.” He added that “good talks” are also ongoing with the opposition parties to obtain the necessary majority “to anchor the special fund in the Basic Law.”

A key goal is the strengthening of Germany within NATO and militarising Europe under German leadership. “With the special fund, we are sending a clear message to friends and allies,” Scholz explained. As Europe’s “most populous and economically strongest nation,” Germany is “serious when we talk about the duty of assistance and collective defence.”

In the future, “our defence systems and our investments must also be coordinated more closely and agreed upon at the European level.” The key is “more efficiency and more complementarity ... to integrate the European defence industry more closely,” and thus “take a big step towards the future in the direction of a common European defence.” He added that “the necessary steps” will be discussed at the EU special summit at the end of the month.

German tanks arriving at Sestokai station, Lithuania, Feb. 24, 2017, for the deployment of the German-led NATO battlegroup (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

Berlin’s war and great power plans, which also aim to strengthen Germany against the US and China, are supported by all parties in parliament. In the debate, spokespersons from all political groups sought to outdo each other with calls for more arms supplies for Ukraine, tougher economic warfare against Russia and a more aggressive German rearmament programme.

The leader of the parliamentary group of the Greens, Katharina Dröge, underlined that the former pacifists are today the leading militarists. “Our message to Putin is: we will never stop supporting Ukraine,” she insisted. “Our support applies as long as it is necessary. Yes, that means the supply of heavy weaponry, because Ukraine must be able to defend itself. And that means adopting further economic sanctions packages.”

Christian Dürr, the chairman of the Free Democrats’ parliamentary group, also praised the Federal Government’s war policy, which has an increasingly dramatic impact on the lives of millions of people: “As part of the traffic light coalition, we have indeed started a new era here. We deliver weapons to war zones. We are breaking off economic relations with a former trading partner. We are investing heavily in our army. That has never happened before.”

The “opposition leader” and leader of the Christian Democrat/Christian Social Union parliamentary group, Friedrich Merz, called for a faster implementation of the promised arms deliveries. At the same time, he assured Scholz that his parliamentary group “is with you on what you said in your government statement on 27 February, namely €100 billion for the military and, in the long term, more than 2 percent of our GDP each year for defence.”

Alice Weidel, the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany, described “Russia’s war of aggression” as “a catalyst that has exacerbated the crisis and exposed the shortcomings of our military and security policy.” She called on the Federal Government to “actually invest the €100 billion earmarked for the German army in our own army.”

The Left Party is also part of the war conspiracy. Putin “should not win the war,” demanded the leader of the Left Party’s parliamentary group, Amira Mohamed Ali. At the same time, she warned against never-ending arms deliveries. From the Left Party’s point of view, Russia is to be brought to its knees primarily by economic warfare. “Sanctions must be directed against the economic power base of the Putin system,” demands a motion from the party executive for the upcoming party congress.