Russia, NATO and the Future of Neutrality

John Feffer

Neutrality was once an attractive option in Europe.

Switzerland made non-alignment look almost sexy, with its ski resorts, excellent chocolates, and secure banking system. Then there was Sweden, which refused to join NATO or subordinate its military policy to Moscow, offering instead to broker peaceful compromises between east and west as well as north and south. Austria, divided into four occupation zones after World War II just like Germany, embraced neutrality as the last foreign troops exited the country in 1955. It has sent peacekeepers around the world and offered Vienna as a neutral place for negotiations, like the ones that produced the Iran nuclear deal.

During the Cold War, non-alignment emerged as a third path between Soviet-style communism and American-style capitalism, between two nuclear superpowers, between a poorly delineated East and West. So many countries were eager to go down this path that they formed a new bloc, the Non-Aligned Movement, at the Bandung Conference in 1955, with Yugoslav leader Tito as one of its prime movers.

The end of the Cold War rendered non-alignment moot. Even France, which had left NATO in 1966 because it refused to relinquish control of its military strategy and nuclear weapons, returned to the fold in 2009. And yet some form of neutrality limped along in Europe. A number of countries still rejected formal NATO membership even if, like Sweden and Finland, they were increasingly coordinating their security policy with the alliance.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has ended even this attenuated sense of non-alignment.

This week, both Finland and Sweden have formally requested NATO membership. The leaders of these countries are not right-wing, male chauvinist militarists who have been just waiting for an opportunity to reverse their countries’ longstanding policies. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson are both dynamic Social Democrats who are not making these decisions lightly.

These new addition to NATO won’t mean a great deal on a practical level. The 30 current members of the alliance don’t really need what few weapons and personnel these countries possess (though Finland, because of its conscription policies, can count on a rather large number of reservists). Sweden has pledged not to host any nuclear weapons or NATO bases. Finland won’t attach such conditions to membership but will likely follow suit in practice.

Russia has offered a rather muted reaction to the announcement. Russian President Vladimir Putin was careful to say that the Kremlin has no beef with either country and that it’s not worried about their accession to NATO. He did point out that Russia would respond if NATO sent any significant infrastructure to the countries, which explains why Sweden took pains to disavow both bases and nuclear weapons.

But this northern expansion of NATO, even if it doesn’t add much to the alliance or trigger a dangerous retaliation from the Kremlin, is still a profound change for Europe.

After all, it basically drives a final stake through European non-alignment.

The Jolt of War

Whenever NATO faces an existential crisis, war comes along like a dose of smelling salts to revive the alliance.

At the end of the Cold War, NATO seemed like a relic well worth mothballing. The Warsaw Pact was gone, the Soviet Union was on its way out, and there seemed no good reason for NATO to exist. A perfectly good inclusive security arrangement had been in place since the mid-1970s—the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe—so NATO should have bowed out gracefully with a lavish retirement party.

Instead, NATO strategists started talking about “out-of-area” operations that would involve dispatching troops to the Middle East and North Africa to engage in various missions. The first Gulf War might have served that purpose nicely, but the George H.W. Bush administration instead opted for an ad hoc coalition including several NATO members to push Iraq out of Kuwait.

The war in Yugoslavia that was meanwhile gathering force put paid to the notion that Europe was an entirely peaceful region. NATO became increasingly involved as the conflict spread to Bosnia, ultimately engaging in its first-ever combat mission in 1994 when it shot down four Serbian jets while enforcing a no-fly zone. Later that year, at the request of the UN, it launched its first air strikes against Serb targets. In 1999, NATO engaged in a three-month bombing campaign against Serbia to stop its intervention in Kosovo.

The war in Yugoslavia and the debate over out-of-area operations provided NATO with a patina of relevance that distracted from its quite obvious obsolescence. Indeed, the Clinton administration relied on this patina to push through its proposal to expand the alliance eastward, which required overcoming concerns from the left that expansion would antagonize Russia and criticism from the right that the president was bending over backwards to build cooperation between NATO and the Kremlin. Eastern European countries showed various levels of enthusiasm for joining NATO. They no longer feared Russia, at least not the version presided over by Boris Yeltsin. But they saw NATO membership as a first step toward what they really wanted: accession to the European Union. And the military upgrades that NATO promised were seductive as well.

For half a century, the alliance was in a constant state of preparedness to defend against an attack that never came. During the Cold War and in the immediate post-Cold War era, no country invoked the collective defense mechanism of the Charter’s Article 5. Nor was it easy to forge consensus on NATO missions beyond collective defense. In general, NATO has proven to be an extraordinarily unwieldy institution, composed of very diverse members (for example, Turkey and Iceland). For most of its existence, the alliance met, talked, conducted studies, spent money, engaged in military exercises, but didn’t actually fight. The war in Yugoslavia changed all that, and so of course did September 11.

In the wake of the attacks of September 11, NATO invoked Article 5 and came to the “defense” of the United States by joining the attack against Afghanistan as part of Operation Resolute Support. Even here, though, there was not unified opinion. Several NATO countries contributed troops outside of NATO structures. Even in the United States, Donald Rumsfeld was worried that NATO involvement would somehow diminish U.S. control over the operation. By the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, NATO would play no overt role with some NATO members, like Germany, vocally against the war.

The Gulf War, the Yugoslav wars, the attacks of September 11: these all revivified NATO by adding out-of-area operations, actual combat missions, and participation in the “war on terrorism” to its repertoire. Along the way, NATO wandered quite far from its original focus on collective defense.

Even with these new capabilities, however, NATO struggled. Over the last decade, Turkey began buying weapons from Russia. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was more aligned with Putin’s illiberal philosophy than with the prevailing orthodoxy in Brussels. And Donald Trump, irritated by the apparent reluctance of NATO allies to “share the burden” of collective defense, was threatening to pull the United States out of the alliance.

But once again, war has given NATO new purpose. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a stark reminder of why these countries created a transatlantic bond. Ukraine, not being a member of the alliance, had no recourse to the mechanism of collective defense. The tiny Baltic countries, on the other hand, remained inviolate despite their modest militaries.

With a storm raging on the European frontier, it’s no wonder that Sweden and Finland have decided to huddle under the canopy of NATO rather than trying to keep dry under their relatively small umbrellas.

The Future of Neutrality

Prior to his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin did whatever he could do to promote non-alignment in Europe. He cultivated political friends who challenged NATO (like France’s Marine Le Pen), who railed against Eurocrats in Brussels (like Viktor Orbán in Hungary), and who could play a disruptive role in existing institutions (like Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in NATO and the Council of Europe).

But as soon as Russian troops crossed into Ukraine, Putin hath murdered non-alignment. Regardless of the success or failure of the operation, the Russian president must have known that even his closest European friends would have to choose sides and they weren’t likely to choose his.

Which suggests that Putin had already written off Europe prior to the invasion. All of his investments into the politically heterodox—mostly on the far right but some on the left such as Syriza in Greece—had come to nearly naught. The Western European far right had not marched to power in the wake of Donald Trump’s surprise victory in 2016. And Trump himself went down to defeat in 2020.

For years, Putin criticized liberalism but maintained political and commercial ties with the West. But especially after Trump’s defeat and the emergence of serious anti-government protests in Belarus, Putin’s rhetoric began to shift toward castigating the West in general. In the lead-up to the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian leader began to associate Kyiv’s deviations with its supposed Western puppet masters. Putin subsequently framed the invasion not as a small skirmish on the frontiers of Russian influence but a civilizational clash with a unified ideological foe.

In other words, Putin anticipated that NATO would draw together and even enlarge in the wake of the invasion. He no longer saw much merit in exploiting the fault lines in the Western camp. It’s why he hasn’t raised much of a fuss about Finland and Sweden joining the alliance. Their accession only strengthens his argument that the West is, without exception, unified against him.

Now firmly in the anti-Western camp, Putin hopes to create a united front with China, with India, with all countries that have rebelled against the hegemonic pretensions of the West. He is aided in this effort by the fact that much of the world has refused to send support to Ukraine or sanction Russia.

But joining an anti-Western alliance anchored by the Kremlin? That’s a step too far for all but the likes of Bashar al-Assad, Kim Jong Un, and Daniel Ortega. Unlike in Europe, non-alignment remains an attractive option for much of the Global South. That kind of neutrality, however, will not in the end favor Russia. Neither the formerly non-aligned of Europe nor the currently non-aligned of the Global South are interested in furthering Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions.

UK Chancellor Sunak enters Sunday Times Rich List: The face of oligarchic rule in Britain

Simon Whelan

In December 2020 the World Socialist Web Site described the multi-hundred millionaire Conservative government Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak as “the living embodiment of government in the service of the financial oligarchy… of rule of, by and for the oligarchy.”

The staggering wealth of Sunak and his wife Akshata Murthy has now elevated them into this year’s Sunday Times Rich List. Their joint wealth is valued at an incredible £730 million.

Akshata Murty (left) and Sunak (right) at an event in 2018 (Credit: Rishi Sunak/Facebook)

This only ranks them a relatively modest 222 posting out of the top 250. However, they are closing fast on being able to enter the top 200 (requiring £861 million this year.) A top 100 position requires at least £1.8 billion.

The chancellor nevertheless joins the upper echelons of UK based super-rich, who are wallowing in grotesque wealth, while he refuses to lift a finger to offer respite to millions of struggling families. The Times acknowledged that Sunak and Murthy were ranked on their list a day and a half after the chancellor warned, that for the British population, “The next few months will be tough”.

It won’t be tough for Sunak and company on the Rich List.

The Sunak’s jointly own four domestic properties; a Grade II-listed Georgian manor house in the village of Kirby Sigston, near Northallerton, in his Richmond constituency, bought for £1.5 million in 2015; a five-bedroom townhouse and an apartment both in South Kensington, London, with records showing the townhouse was last sold for £4.5 million in 2010 and is now worth at least £7.5 million (Kensington and Chelsea is the wealthiest district in the UK.) Last year they were granted permission for a £400,000 extension to the Richmond manor to include a leisure complex with a gym, pool and ballet barre.

Their property portfolio also includes a $7.2 million (£5.5 million) penthouse apartment in Santa Monica, California with views over the Pacific Ocean.

As a government minister Sunak has the free use of a taxpayer-owned apartment in Downing Street, London and at Dorneywood, a grace-and-favour mansion in Home Counties Buckinghamshire.

Never before has a British front-line politician appeared on the rich list since the newspaper began charting and celebrating the fortunes of the super-rich in the late 1980s. That Sunak and his wife rank amongst the super-rich marks a quantitative degeneration of bourgeois rule and is stark confirmation of oligarchic domination over every facet of life in Britain.

Sunak and Murthy’s debut follows the exposure in April of how she had claimed “non-domicile” status in the UK, allowing her to legally avoid paying taxes on the annual dividends she receives from an almost $700 million stake in the Indian based IT company Infosys, co-founded by her billionaire father, NR Narayana Murthy. Infosys is among the biggest companies in India and currently operates in around 50 different countries, including the UK, where it profits from public sector contracts.

Headquartered in Bangalore, Infosys reported revenues of more than $11.8 billion in 2019, $12.8 billion in 2020, and $13.5 billion in 2021.

The Times noted that Murthy’s has received “about £54 million in dividends [from her Infosys holdings] over the past seven and a half years.” Some of the profits were reaped from lucrative £50 million taxpayer-funded contracts secured in the UK, including while Sunak was chancellor. A Daily Mirror investigation revealed last month that Infosys received “£15 million working for the Care Quality Commission, the regulator of UK care homes. In 2019, it won a £5m contract with the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, and this year secured a £25m IT contract from the Tory-run East Sussex County Council. Infosys is among companies that shared £100m in public sector contracts between 2015 and 2021. It was also one of nine partners in a £10m contract with Tory-run Westminster City Council last year.”

One journalist noted, “The Sunak’s fortune is put down to her [Murthy’s] huge stake in Infosys, and his huge mistake in not having taxed her on the dividends.”

After swelling public anger, Murthy decided under duress to pay UK taxes after stating it was “not compatible with my husband’s job as chancellor”. Murthy’s unpaid taxes alone, the WSWS noted, would cover the April energy bill price hikes of nearly 29,000 UK households.

While people starve as hunger soars, with 250,000 UK households predicted to slide into destitution next year because of soaring food and energy bills, the latter-day aristocrats are unmoved. Among the British companies that Murthy has investments in are gentlemen’s outfitters New & Lingwood, which sells silk dressing gowns for £2,500 and measures Etonians for their tailcoats.

This is a society headed for a social explosion.

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak addresses the Confederation of British Industry on May 18, 2022 (Credit: Rishi Sunak/Twitter)

The declared wealth and income of the super-rich is always minimised and access to the true figures is legally opaque. The Rich List “measures identifiable wealth, whether land, property, racehorses, art or significant shares in publicly quoted companies—bank accounts to which we have no access and small shareholdings in a private equity portfolio are excluded.” Sunak and Murthy would have debuted sooner on the STRL, but the newspaper noted it was only finally able to confirm Murthy's stake in her father's business over recent months.

As an MP and chancellor, Sunak's government salary is £151,649. That alone places him within the top 1 percent of the wealthiest in society. But this is loose change to the chancellor, who was a multimillionaire in his mid-twenties. Sunak worked for Goldman Sachs bank and a hedge fund run by British billionaire Sir Chris Hohn before entering parliament in 2015. Last year Hohn paid himself £343 million in annual dividend payments after doubling profits at his hedge fund, the largest ever yearly payout to a boss in British history.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a pauper compared with the Sunaks, hence his vociferous protests about his Prime Ministerial annual income of £161,000 keeping him in penury.

There are several others within his cabinet he will look at with envy. Education Secretary “Nadhim Zahawi, his wife and their companies have built a £100 million property portfolio” with “more than half bought while Zahawi served as a government minister”, Wales Online noted in April. “The Zahawis personally own five residential properties worth at least £17m three in London, one in Warwickshire and one in Dubai.”

Brexit Opportunities Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg’s net worth was “well over £100 million”, according to a Spear's Wealth Management assessment in 2019. His Somerset Capital asset management firm brought him a dividend payment of around £800,000 in 2020, with profits for distribution listed at £14.9 million.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has accrued around £8 million. A former financier he worked for 18 years in the sector, including at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City. Wales Online noted, “Javid applied for and held non-domicile status for six years during this banking career which allowed him to avoid paying tax in the UK on overseas earnings.”

This year’s list includes a record total of 177 billionaires, up by six since last year. The total wealth of the UK’s billionaires has also jumped to £653 billion, compared with £597.3 billion in 2021 and £490.7 billion in 2020.

The list is headed by Sri and Gopi Hinduja and family, with a net worth of £28.472 billion, the highest in the list’s 34-year history. The Hinduja’s wealth comes from sources including oil, finance, IT and property. Runner up, and up two places and £7 billion in the list, is Sir James Dyson and his family with a net worth of £23 billion.

Not only are the rich getting richer, but they are doing so faster than ever. The rich list calculated the wealth of this year’s UK based 250 richest was more than the combined wealth of the top 1,000 entries only five years ago.

New Zealand Labour government’s budget imposes new burdens on working class

Tom Peters

On May 19, the Labour Party-led government in New Zealand, which includes the Greens, announced another pro-business budget. It will continue and deepen the assault on working people’s living standards while diverting billions to the military and doing nothing to stop the disastrous spread of COVID-19.

New Zealand Finance Minister Grant Robertson addressing parliament (Image: Grant Robertson Facebook)

The budget was delivered in the context of surging global inflation—annual inflation in New Zealand is 6.9 percent—and signs of growing anger among working people. On May 16, 10,000 low-paid healthcare workers held a nationwide strike. Today, disability and aged care workers have protested across the country after the government indicated that 65,000 of these workers would receive a pay rise of no more than 70 cents an hour over 18 months.

The economy is highly dependent on exports of dairy and other agricultural products and vulnerable to supply chain disruption. According to Treasury forecasts, which are always overly optimistic, the economy will grow by just 0.1 percent in each of the second, third and fourth quarters of 2023.

Economists from BNZ bank predict that the country will go into recession due to rising interest rates and inflation. The housing bubble, a major source of speculative investment, is expected to collapse, with some economists predicting a price drop of 10 to 15 percent.

The ruling class is clearly nervous about the leftward shift and increase in workers’ struggles internationally. Finance Minister Grant Robertson declared that the budget was “driven by how we can support New Zealanders’ overall wellbeing” and “deal with the cost-of-living pressures,” while taking a “responsible fiscal approach to keep a lid on debt.”

The media has trumpeted “record” new spending of $6 billion over the next year, however, Robertson himself noted that nearly 70 percent of the new operating allowances were focused “on just meeting cost pressures,” rather than growing public services.

The central figure touted by the government and media was a $1 billion “cost of living” package. This is a series of meagre one-off handouts, including a payment of $350 to approximately two million workers who are paid less than $70,000 a year. This is to be paid out over three months at the rate of $27 a week. Those receiving welfare, the poorest members of society, are not eligible.

Robertson told Stuff that the “temporary and targeted” payment will not “pay every inflationary cost that people have got,” but a bigger payment would pose an “inflationary risk.”

The payment is a drop in the bucket. Infometrics, an economics consultancy group, estimated in February that for the average household “the cost of essentials rose by around $70-$100 per week between December 2020 and December 2021.” This included a $50 increase in rents, driven by housing speculation and a flood of cheap money into the banking system thanks to the Reserve Bank’s quantitative easing measures.

According to Newsroom, NZ has the least affordable housing in the OECD, with 61 percent of people spending more than 40 percent of their income on rent. There are 25,000 people on the emergency waiting list for public housing.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government, like governments internationally, has used the pandemic to hand tens of billions of dollars to big businesses, propping up their profits. At the same time, it has imposed a wage freeze across the public sector and refused to address the crisis of under-staffing in the health and education sectors.

Now, amid the worst public health crisis in living memory, the government is increasingly acting as though the pandemic is over. Significantly, the “cost of living” payment is being paid for by dismantling the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, which had been used to fund lockdowns earlier in the pandemic.

Robertson boasted in his budget speech that New Zealand had “come through COVID not just with a low mortality rate, but also with our economy as one of the strongest in the world.” The entire political establishment, along with the media and the pro-capitalist trade unions, have adopted the position that the population must “live with” escalating COVID cases and deaths.

Having ditched its previous elimination policy, which kept the country nearly virus-free for most of 2020 and 2021, the Ardern government has abandoned lockdowns and other public health measures. It has adopted the criminal policy of mass infection.

There are now more than 1,050 COVID-related deaths, the vast majority of which occurred just in the last three months, following the reopening of schools. Hospitals are in a perpetual state of crisis, overwhelmed with COVID cases and related staff absences.

The government is providing $11.1 billion more operational funding for health over the next four years, which Minister Robertson called the “largest investment ever in our health system.” Last year, however, the Council of Trade Unions noted that it would take $2 billion in increased spending each year just to maintain the current inadequate level of health services. The level of unmet need has expanded dramatically, with the government revealing earlier this month that the number of people forced to wait longer than four months for hospital treatment had increased from 15,000 in early 2020 to nearly 36,000.

Much of the health funding will be used to carry out a bureaucratic restructure aimed at abolishing the District Health Boards and creating a new centralised agency, Health NZ, to manage the system.

A new Maori Health Authority is being established, with $188 million allocated to it so far to commission health services specifically for Maori patients. This new race-based bureaucratic structure will lead to a more complicated and divided system, without actually improving services.

The media has largely buried the fact that billions of dollars are being diverted from social spending to the military, police and security agencies. New Zealand, as an ally of US imperialism, is integrated into the reckless drive towards war against Russia and China. Already, the Ardern government has sent dozens of NZ troops to Europe to assist the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.

Defence Minister Peeni Henare boasted that since taking office the Labour government has “committed $4.5 billion to 12 major defence capability plans—the largest capability investment Defence has ever received.”

This year’s Defence Force capital expenditure is $1.56 billion, an increase of 16 percent. This includes funds to upgrade New Zealand’s two navy frigates. Funding for the army and navy will increase by 13 percent and 10 percent respectively, according to the Janes website.

The two spy agencies, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), have received an extra $46 million and $26 million respectively over four years. Newsroom reported: “Since 2017/18, the combined budgets of the organisations have more than doubled to $343 million.”

The government claims that this is needed to stop terrorism, pointing to the March 15, 2019 attack by fascist gunman Brenton Tarrant. In fact, the agencies carry out mass surveillance of people in New Zealand, across the Pacific region and more broadly as part of the US-led Five Eyes intelligence network.

Police will receive an extra $562 million over four years to boost officer numbers by about 400—a total increase of 1,800 compared with when Labour took office in 2017. Some of the new funding will also go towards training more officers to use firearms. The prison system will receive an additional $198.3 million, including funding for 518 more corrections staff.

The government aims to deal with the social crisis that it is presiding over with repressive “law and order” measures and state surveillance. At the same time, the ruling elite will seek to promote nationalism and militarism to divert workers’ hostility and anger onto China and Russia.

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.