Elisabeth Borne named French Prime Minister: Macron launches assault on the workers

Alex Lantier

On May 16, President Emmanuel Macron named Elisabeth Borne prime minister. Friday evening, Borne announced the composition of her government, in continuity with Macron’s first term. While the bourgeois media is predictably hailing the nomination of a woman to the post, it is a sign that Macron is planning an all-out attack against the working class in his second term.

Elisabeth Borne [Photo by Jacques Parquier]

In her previous role as director of strategy under Macron for the French National Railways (SNCF) and earning more than 25,000 euros a month, she tore up the regulatory statutes of rail workers. She thus sabotaged rail workers’ wages, who were paid ten times less than her remuneration. And above all, it was as Minister of Labour during the COVID-19 pandemic that she elaborated the health protocols in July 2020 put in place after France’s first lockdown.

These politically criminal protocols have been a disaster. Whilst the pandemic was largely under control at the end of the lockdown, with only a few hundred daily cases, the protocols allowed a massive resurgence of the virus. The cost in lives of this policy, replicated throughout the EU, has been monumental. More than 117,000 of the 148,000 deaths from Covid-19 in France and 1.6 million out of 1.8 million in Europe date from after the adoption of the protocols drafted by Borne.

The nomination of Borne constitutes a pledge by Macron to the financial aristocracy to continue with his socially regressive policies, even as she lines up behind the war policy of NATO in the Ukraine against Russia, threatening an escalation into a Third World War. Unsurprisingly, the ruling class is concentrating public attention on Borne’s identity as a woman, as political cover under which to pursue this reactionary policy.

During the handover ceremony of power from her predecessor Jean Castex, Borne tried to attract support from the middle-class feminist milieu. “I dedicate this nomination to all the little girls”, she declared. “Nothing must stop the fight for women’s place in society.” Borne added that she was “very moved” and that she “saved a thought for Edith Cresson,” the only other woman to have occupied the post of prime minister in France.

Since then, Borne has issued a policy based on ecology and modernization. She has renewed most of the senior right-wing ministers, with Bruno Le Maire at the Finance Ministry (2nd highest ranking in the order of precedence among ministers) and Gérard Darmanin third at the Interior Ministry. Former Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is being replaced by Catherine Colonna, a right-wing diplomat who reportedly played a role in formulating policy during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and on Brexit.

For the Ministry of Education, Borne tapped Pap Ndiaye, a Franco-Senegalese historian of the United States’ black population who teaches at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences(EHESS) and supports the Black Lives Matter movement financed by corporate America.

In the second round of the presidential elections, the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES) called for a working class campaign to boycott both candidates, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, rejecting both candidates. The PES declared that a government formed by Macron would not be a democratic alternative to Le Pen. The decisive question was to arm workers with an irreconcilable opposition to both candidates in order to prepare them for the struggles they will have to lead against the next government.

The reactionary social and health policies announced by Borne, within the framework of the military foreign policy promoted by Macron and NATO, vindicate the position of the PES. Moreover, it is clear that the nomination of Borne and Ndiaye, hailed by the media as a sign of openness, will not stop or even significantly slow the accelerating slide of Macron to extreme right positions.

As Macron installed Borne as prime minister, Darmanin continued his repressive anti-Muslim campaign. As a sympathizer of the far right Action française who sponsored the “anti-separatism law” targeting Muslim associations, he wants to legally invalidate a local bylaw of the city of Grenoble allowing women to wear burkini swim-suits.

The half-hearted attempts by the media to present Borne as a sympathetic personality based on feminism only reveal how racial and gender politics serve as a cover for anti-democratic and authoritarian policies.

The media is promoting the difficult childhood of Borne, the daughter of a couple of pharmacists in Paris who received state support after the suicide of her father when she was 11 years old. This tragic experience in Borne’s life arouses much more sympathy, however, than the conclusions she seems to have drawn from that event.

In effect, she used the Ecole Polytechnique and the Socialist Party (PS) as mechanisms for social climbing at the expense of the workers. Having joined the PS in 1987, she made a career on the boards of major corporations, notably the SNCF railways and Eiffage. During a TV program in 2021, she explained that she was concerned about her “financial independence” after the death of her father: “I hung on and was able to get admission to an engineering school where I was paid by the State, and that was a real relief.”

Thus the feminist media promotion of Borne is centered on an attempt to calm workers’ anger and strangle the class struggle by selling the illusions of wealthy technocrats like Borne struggling to get their place in the sun.

Edith Cresson, the PS prime minister under the presidency of François Mitterrand in 1991-1992 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, declared on BFM-TV that it was “high time” to name another woman prime minister. She thanked Borne for referring to her, saying, “In a very short speech, she found the means to express something that really moved me.”

In fact, the role of Cresson only underlines the reactionary character of the PS and the attempts of pseudo-left forces like Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his “New Popular Union “ with the PS to sell the latter as a progressive party on feminist grounds.

Cresson was an activist in the Convention of Republican Institutions (CIR), a party led in the 1960s by the ex-Vichy collaborators François Mitterrand and Charles Hernu, which played a central role in founding the PS in 1971. She was in office during the first Gulf War against Iraq and the launching of the European Union with the Mastricht Treaty. Cresson was hated by workers due to her policy of wage freezes. She also was criticized for denouncing homosexuality as “different and marginal” and dismissing the Japanese people as “ants.”

Today, Cresson saluted Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel, right-wing female politicians who imposed draconian austerity on the workers. The nomination of Borne, Cresson said, is “an event because France is what France is, the political establishment is what it is, but in another country this is not an event. Neither about Mrs. Thatcher nor Mrs. Merkel nor in Portugal, where a woman was named prime minister long before me, did anyone cry out that it was something extraordinary.”

In truth, the nomination of Borne as prime minister is not extraordinary and changes nothing fundamentally. While NATO intensifies its war against Russia in Ukraine, Macron is launching an offensive at home against the working class, to slash pensions, and unemployment benefits and to undermine publicly funded universities, while leaving workers continually exposed to COVID-19. This is preparing ever more explosive confrontations between Macron and the working class.

Who is responsible for starvation and rising food prices?

Eric London

At the prompting of the Biden administration, the world’s capitalist politicians, CEOs and bought-off journalists have let flow a deluge of crocodile tears over the global food crisis, which they claim was singlehandedly created by Vladimir Putin.

Addressing a well-fed crowd at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Monday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen professed a newfound concern for the “fragile countries and vulnerable populations” that will “suffer most” from rising food prices. The crowd of billionaires applauded self-righteously when the former German defense minister blamed Russia for “shamefully” profiting off of hunger. Heads nodded gravely when she urged the audience to provide “the World Food Program with the supplies it badly needs” to alleviate the threat of mass starvation.

Rank hypocrisy. Six months ago, UN World Food Program President David Beasley issued a “one time appeal to billionaires to help fight famine,” which explained that if the world’s richest people donated a mere $6.6 billion of their collective $13.1 trillion in wealth (or 0.04 percent of the total), world hunger could be eliminated in 2022 and millions of lives could be saved.

This request predictably fell on deaf ears, and in the next six months, in a modern world of breathtaking technological progress, 4.5 million human beings died in the most ancient way imaginable. Every year 9 million people starve to death with hardly any attention from the capitalist media, which only drags up the dead when trawling for war propaganda.

The real source of mass starvation and world hunger is capitalism. This week, Oxfam issued a report detailing the massive growth of social inequality over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 20 million people. Oxfam reported that one new billionaire “has been minted on average every 30 hours during the pandemic,” including 62 individuals who made their money profiting off of rising food prices in the agribusiness industry. “Corporations and the billionaire dynasties who control so much of our food system are seeing their profits soar,” the report read.

For example, when von der Leyen denounced Vladimir Putin for “using hunger and grain to wield power,” there were two men in attendance—David MacLennan, CEO of Cargill, and Brian Sikes, the company’s COO—who may have joined in the applause. But according to the Oxfam report, the combined wealth of the Cargill family increased by $14.4 billion since the start of the pandemic, enough to feed the world’s hungry twice and still have billions left over.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, there is no limit to the number of lives the capitalist class will sacrifice rather than part with even the smallest fraction of its wealth. The architects of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia are similarly prepared to sacrifice the lives of billions of working people—both through hunger and nuclear catastrophe—in order to subjugate Russia and conquer its wealth.

As for the present rise in food prices, the US government and its imperialist allies are primarily responsible. Joe Biden has repeatedly stated the US government’s aim is to ensure a “long and painful war,” and the spike in food prices is in large part a response to US-led sanctions. As a result of the prolongation of the war, as the foreign minister of Egypt told the Financial Times, “millions will die.”

One industry expert told the UN Security Council last week, “This is seismic. We stand the risk of an extraordinary amount of human suffering.” According to a May 23 report by the Eurasia Group, 400 million people have been made food insecure in just 90 days, bringing the total to a staggering 1.6 billion. The same report explains that if the war continues, global food prices will rise 45 percent this year, an unprecedented increase.

The $40 billion military aid bill passed by the US Congress this month is intentionally aimed at prolonging the war and will massively intensify the food crisis by interrupting planting seasons. The pennies that the bill directs for “humanitarian” aid are mere window dressing. Almost all of it will end up in the pockets of corrupt officials and criminals, just like the “aid” provided by the US during the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Every politician and every organization which supported this bill has voted to take food out of the mouths of millions of working people across the world. This includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman, the Democratic Socialists of America, and international “left” groups like the International Socialist League, the French New Anti-Capitalist Party and the world’s Green parties. In their support for the war, they have indelibly marked themselves as enemies of the working class, for whom the war is having a catastrophic impact.

The intensification of the food crisis is throwing masses of workers into the class struggle. Massive levels of social inequality and the constant pumping of money into the financial markets have created runaway inflation that are driving up the costs of all products and basic necessities.

David Beasley, the director of the World Food Program, recently warned, “We are already seeing riots and protesting taking place as we speak—Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru. We’ve seen destabilizing dynamics already in the Sahel from Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad. These are only signs of things to come.”

Mass protests have now broken out across Iran, where a 300 percent hike in flour-based staples has provoked demonstrations coinciding with strikes of workers in cities like Tehran, with a population of 8.5 million. Ongoing protests and strikes of a nationwide character continue to take place in Sri Lanka, Peru and elsewhere.

In every country, the trade unions serve to brake the class struggle and bar workers from waging a united struggle to meet urgent social needs.

In Tunisia, the main union confederation was forced to announce preparations for a general strike in order to stave off the specter of mass wildcat action. Health care workers across the Eastern Cape of South Africa went on strike without the approval of the trade unions this month as a result of rising food prices and the disastrous impact of the pandemic on the health care system. Bus drivers in Cordoba, Argentina initiated a wildcat strike over food and other living costs.

This movement is not isolated to the developing world. Baggage handlers in Copenhagen launched a wildcat strike last weekend over the rising cost of food and other basic necessities. According to the Danish press, “The Danish labor court on Sunday ruled that baggage staff must resume work again on Monday, but that was not complied with.” Aircraft workers in Saint-Nazaire, France have launched wildcat walkouts on a daily basis over wages and increases to the cost of living.

In Britain, the Bank of England has called the cost-of-living crisis “apocalyptic.” Workers are grappling with 9 percent inflation and a record 54 percent rise in gas and electricity bills. According to an Ipsos poll, 85 percent of Britons are concerned about the impact of rising living costs in the next six months.

In this explosive context, the wildcat strike by 1,000 workers at several oil and gas rigs in the North Sea demanding massive pay increases to account for the rising cost of living is a powerful sign that workers view the trade unions as obstacles—not facilitators—in the fight against the rising cost of living. Though the strike was subjected to a corporate media blackout, one industry news report noted, “The wage revolution has started—we are not singling out one company but industry world-wide as a whole.”

French media reports document war crimes by NATO-backed Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias

Alex Lantier

Devastating eyewitness reports are revealing the broad scope of war crimes by Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias armed by NATO against Russia. They expose the criminal character of the US-NATO war on Russia and the pro-war propaganda of the entire French political establishment.

These revelations come from reports on France’s Sud Radio by Adrien Bocquet, a handicapped former French soldier who traveled to Ukraine during the war as a medic, and from Le Monde. This newspaper’s analysis of a video, which was widely seen on social media but initially dismissed by the media as Russian propaganda, supports Bocquet’s eyewitness statements.

Le Monde is politically close to President Emmanuel Macron and, like the rest of the official press, has supported NATO against Russia in Ukraine. Yet, on May 16, it confirmed the authenticity of a video published on social media showing Ukrainian militiamen firing rifles into the knees of Russian prisoners of war who were tied up and defenseless. This took place on March 25 in the village of Mala Rohan, near Kharkov.

According to Le Monde, this video was made while a unit of the Ukrainian army and three far-right nationalist militias—the Azov Battalion, Fraikor and the Slobojanshchyna Battalion—took Mala Rohan from Russian troops.

Andri Ianholenko, the leader of the Slobojanshchyna Battalion, is visible and identifiable on the video. On other videos Le Monde found on Ianholenko’s social media accounts, he publishes the traditional slogan of the Ukrainian fascists, “Glory to Ukraine,” and poses with the three Russian prisoners of war shot in the March 25 video.

Le Monde thus reluctantly admitted the authenticity of a video previously dismissed by French and NATO media as “Russian propaganda.” It treats the Slobojanshchyna fascists quite mildly, euphemistically describing the war crime documented on the video as “probable abuse committed by Ukrainian volunteers against Russian prisoners of war.” But what the video shows is a war crime by Ukrainian neo-fascism against defenseless prisoners.

Le Monde, which has been in contact with the Ukrainian far-right volunteers since April about this video, only published its analysis after Bocquet spoke to André Bercoff’s show on Sud Radio on May 10. Le Monde, like the rest of the mainstream French media, has to date been deafeningly silent on Bocquet’s claims. But it is evident that its authentication of this video retroactively lends credibility to Bocquet’s interview on Sud Radio.

Bocquet, a former soldier who was made paraplegic after an accident when he was 21 but subsequently partially healed thanks to implants on his spinal cord, briefly went to Ukraine to treat wounded Ukrainian fighters. Assigned to the Azov Battalion in Kiev and then Lviv, he returned to France to give a shattering report on this battalion and the broader Ukrainian war. He told Sud Radio:

I saw many war crimes. The only war crimes I saw during the days I was there were perpetrated by Ukrainian forces, and not by Russian forces. This does not mean that there were no Russian war crimes, but there are also war crimes on the Ukrainian side, yet no one talks about them. When I returned to France, I was really shocked. ... Between what I saw and heard on TV news reports and what I saw on the ground, it was night and day.

About the Azov Battalion, whose flag bears the Wolfsangel symbol of the Nazi SS division Das Reich that committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine and France during World War II, Bocquet said: “They are 20,000 men spread here, there and everywhere with their super neo-Nazi logo across Ukraine, but it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. And they are getting weapons from Europe.” He added:

You know what they talked about, in front of me because I understand a bit of Ukrainian and Russian, and many of them spoke English? They would crack up saying that if they ran across Jews or black people, that they would cut them up. That is what they talked about, and it really gave them a good laugh.

Bocquet stated that the March 25 torturing of Russian troops by the head of the Slobojanshchyna Battalion is in fact a regular practice of Ukrainian far-right militias against Russian prisoners. He said:

I saw captured Russian soldiers who had already been really roughed up and who were tied up. We were in a sort of hangar, and the captured Russian soldiers were arriving in little vans in groups of three or four. Each time they made the soldiers get out of the vans, the Azov fighters would ask: “Who are the officers, who are the officers?”

Each soldier who got out of the van got a bullet to the knee from an assault rifle, whereas they were defenseless and tied up. I have videos showing this. Otherwise, I would not allow myself to make such allegations, showing Russian soldiers getting bullets in the knee. ... And the ones who unfortunately decided to say, “I am an officer,” they got a bullet to the head.

Bocquet, who was with the Azov Battalion during the massacre in Bucha, denounced the cynical media propaganda that attributes the deaths only to Russian forces. He told of a confrontation he had with US journalists in Bucho whose reporting was falsifying events he was seeing. Bocquet said:

These Americans were shooting videos and saying, these are Russian bombardments and it’s landing in a park and it’s unacceptable. I went to see them, and I asked, why are you saying that? And they said, oh, don’t worry, it makes good images. Do you know what these bombings really were? In fact, there was a Russian target and a team of Azov fighters I was with who were inputting settings on a little mortar to fire off bombs. And they put in the wrong range. ... So these bombs, instead of landing 100 meters further off on the Russian equipment, landed in a little park. And they were passing this off as Russian shells.

French media have since then neither commented upon nor sought to invalidate Bocquet’s widely seen report. It underscores, however, the lack of any critical reporting on the war in Ukraine in the official media in France or other NATO countries and their downplaying of the role of Ukrainian neo-Nazism in the war.

These revelations vindicate the warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site on the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the close ties between NATO and the far-right Ukrainian regime ever since the NATO-backed putsch in Kiev in 2014. Not only Washington but also Paris and the other major European imperialist powers, who are pouring billions of euros in weapons into the Ukrainian army and neo-Nazi militias, are using the neo-Nazis to wage a dirty war against Russia.

This does not in any way change the reactionary character of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, though it does factually confirm some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims on NATO’s ties to Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Putin’s war is founded on Russian nationalism, his explicit rejection of communism and on the Stalinist bureaucracy’s 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. As Putin is allied to far-right forces in Russia and internationally, including the National Rally in France, one cannot call his war “anti-fascist.”

It is however, above all, an unanswerable indictment of the foreign policy of imperialism and of the establishment media and pseudo-left groups like the Pabloite New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) that support it. These petty-bourgeois circles have increasingly aligned themselves behind the NATO wars since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Especially since the wars NATO launched in 2011 against Libya and Syria, they have systematically presented CIA-backed wars as “democratic” revolutions.

The first substantial reports from on the ground that do not come from media sources that simply echo NATO propaganda are blowing the official presentation of the war apart. The now undeniable presence of neo-Nazis on the Ukrainian side testify to the politically criminal character of the war, the NATO governments who are waging it and the political parties that are supporting it.

Russian economic problems continue, despite ruble rebound

Andrea Peters

Russia continues to confront ongoing economic troubles, despite the fact that the country’s currency has rebounded, after a massive intervention of Russia’s central bank aimed at stabilizing it. The ruble is now trading at 56.61 to the dollar, up from a low of 121.53 in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine. In an effort to bring down the ruble’s value to somewhere between 70-80 to the dollar, about where it was prior to the war, Putin signed an order on Thursday relaxing certain capital controls.

The strong ruble, which is now worth more than it has been in the last four years, is threatening the country’s exports, as it is making the purchase of Russian goods more expensive for overseas buyers. In addition, it is increasing the size of an already-growing federal budget deficit, fueled by military expenditures and measures aimed at ameliorating the effects of Western sanctions. The country’s finance minister estimated that there will be a 1.6 trillion-ruble hole in the Russian budget by the end of this year.

Officially, Russia’s GDP is predicted to shrink by 7.5 percent in 2022. The World Bank puts that number at 11.2 percent. Real incomes, eroded by inflation, wage arrears, layoffs, and a shift to part-time employment, could shrink by as much as 9 percent, according to a recent analysis published in the business daily Kommersant. This estimate is about 3 points higher than that of the Ministry of Economic Development, which predicts that even in the best-case scenario, by 2025 Russians’ real earnings will be below those of 2013, before the first round of Western sanctions began.

The Russian economy is largely being sustained at the moment by oil and gas revenues. Western embargoes, which sent prices skyward, have yet to entirely shut the country out of the global energy market. Although the US and its NATO allies are working to increase Moscow’s isolation, with Germany just announcing that the EU is “days away” from banning Russian oil imports, China, India and other countries are stepping forward to buy up its supply.

In April, Chinese purchases of Russian goods, overwhelmingly oil and natural gas, rose to $8.89 billion, a 56.5 percent increase over a year ago. Still, Russia is selling barrels at about $10 below the market price, with consumers able to command a steep discount.

Rather than diversifying its economy or trade partners, Russia is becoming increasingly dependent on the energy sector and ties with a relatively small number of major buyers. Revenues earned from the sale of oil and gas, which rose from 1.2 trillion rubles in March 2022 to 1.8 trillion in April 2022, made up 63 percent of Russia’s budget last month. As of the first four months of this year, they account for 48 percent, as compared to 36 percent in all of 2021.

While Moscow is reaping significant profits from the surge in oil prices, Russian output is actually falling. As of mid-May, daily oil production was 830,000 barrels lower than in February. There are not enough buyers to make up for lost markets and there are significant logistical challenges with getting the goods to new locales. The infrastructure—pipelines, ports, roads, etc.—necessary to divert large quantities of supply from Europe and deliver it elsewhere do not currently exist and will take years to build.

The situation facing coal producers is emblematic of the crisis. In 2021, Russia sold half of its 440 million tons of the product on foreign markets. One hundred and ten million of that went to Europe, which has now banned purchases of Russian coal, valued at about $8 billion. Indian steelmaker Tata Steel, the largest importer of Russian coal in the country, subsequently declared it too would no longer buy. Big hopes are being placed on the Asian market, but it remains unclear how to get the goods there. As one geography professor at Moscow State University noted, one potential, albeit circuitous, route, through the Baltic Sea, may well be impossible because of the anti-Russian alliance of states arrayed along the body of water’s coastline.

In her remarks to news outlet Rosbalt, Natalya Zubarevicha declared it was possible that the situation would result in labor unrest in Kuzbass, a center of Russian coal production. Low wages, poor working conditions and continual industrial accidents have already fueled workers’ anger here. Recently, a government official described conditions in the industry as “bondage-like.” In the first quarter of 2022, the supply of Kuzbass coal for export fell by more than 10 percent.

“[Strikes] cannot be ruled out,” Zubarevicha said. “Large companies in Russia are now forbidden to fire workers. … [Workers] will not be kicked out the door, but their wages will be cut. It’s hard to say how long they will last in this way,” she observed.

Whatever temporary arrangement Russian companies have managed to secure at the moment may also be short-lived. On Tuesday, NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg threatened countries that continue to trade with Russia as well as China. “Freedom is more important than free trade. The protection of our values is more important than profit,” Stoltenberg declared, in a remarkable discovery of the moral economy.

Oleg Deripaska, one of Russia’s wealthiest men, recently said that it would be a “great success” if the country manages to keep its exports at 80 percent of their pre-war level.

Anti-Russian sanctions are hammering away at the economy in other ways, too. Compared to the same time last year, as of April Russian government revenues from outside of the oil and gas industry fell by 18 percent.  A crisis in imports, which according to the Ministry of Economic Development will decrease this year in physical terms by 26.5% and in value terms by 17.1%, is also taking a toll, as the government is losing revenues from tariffs, customs duties, and value-added taxes.

Officials currently claim that unemployment is running at just 6.7 percent, up from 4.8 percent last year. Over the course of March and April, Russia added 40,000 to the unemployment rolls, bringing the total number of people looking for work to 690,500, say government authorities.

Alexander Safonov, a professor at the finance university under the direction of the Russian government, recently described these numbers as a “crafty figure,” in an interview with Mk.ru. They do not capture the real situation caused by the mass pullout of foreign corporations from the Russian market, the disappearance of overseas purchasers, and production problems due to a lack of components and spare parts.

Many workers have been furloughed or placed on part-time schedules, which obfuscates the real extent of unemployment and underemployment. For instance, Avtozav, one of the country’s major car producers, has repeatedly idled workers over the course of the last several months, including twice in May. Recently, it extended by another seven days a temporary shutdown that was supposed to last from May 16 to 20.

In order to prevent a collapse in the labor market, the government has imposed various restrictions that limit the ability of employers—at least those not in the shadow economy—to lay off workers. Experts anticipate that as these limits expire in the coming months and economic difficulties compound, unemployment will rise into the summer and fall. Some large companies have already said they intend to let go 10 to 20 percent of their workforce.

According to one report in Kommersant, 68 percent of small and medium-sized firms have made cuts to their labor costs, with 25 percent axing salaries and 27 percent firing people. Companies are halting the payment of bonuses and cost-of-living adjustments. Job vacancies, even in industries like construction that have seen an exodus of migrant laborers, are falling.

A woman at an exchange office in Moscow, December 29, 2015 (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Total wages arrears, reports the government agency Rosstat, stood at more than 1 billion rubles as of April 1. They increased by more than 77 million over the course of March.

Inflation is rampant, with some areas of Russia seeing the price of goods and services climb by nearly 20 percent. The cost of “sanitary technology”—i.e., toilets, drains, etc.—rose by 70 percent between February and April. A recent study by the Social Opinion Fund in Russia found that 80 percent of people said prices continued to increase rapidly last month. Many, particularly those living outside of major cities, are also saying that the quality of goods—in particular, salami, preserved foods and milk products—is declining, according to a study by the Center for the Study of Consumer Behavior.

Quad summit in Tokyo ramps up confrontation with China

Mike Head

Yesterday’s face-to-face meeting in Tokyo of the leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) marked a sharp and systemic stepping up of the US-led war preparations against China.

On every front—military, economic, maritime surveillance, supply chains, and cyber and space warfare—the government heads from the US, Japan, India and Australia endorsed aggressive measures to encircle, isolate and provoke Beijing.

From left: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the Quad leaders summit at Kantei Palace, Tuesday, May 24, 2022, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The summit was a key feature of US President Joe Biden’s five-day trip to South Korea and Japan to display what the White House called a “powerful message” that, even as Washington escalates its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine by pouring in another $40 billion of weaponry and support, it is prepared to fight a war on two fronts, against both Russia and China.

Biden set the tone as the summit began. “This is about democracies versus autocracies, and we have to make sure we deliver,” he insisted. In reality, the White House war drive is about reasserting the US post-World War II hegemony over the Indo-Pacific and extending it to the strategic Eurasian landmass.

The event was dominated by Biden’s deliberate declaration at an international media conference, standing alongside Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, that the US would intervene militarily if China sought to incorporate Taiwan, which is recognised internationally as part of China.

Kishida followed suit. In formally opening the summit, he repeated previous denunciations of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and linked it to US allegations of Chinese threats to Taiwan. “We should never, ever allow a similar incident to happen in the Indo-Pacific,” Kishida said.

Regardless of subsequent White House claims that Biden’s statement did not represent a ditching of the five decades-old US policy of “strategic ambiguity” on the issue of military intervention, the shift was clear. Today’s editorial in the Australian noted: “The US President, however, has said virtually the same thing on three occasions since August last year—a point not lost on Beijing.”

The editorial said Biden’s “timely warning in Tokyo should disabuse the leadership in Beijing” of assuming that the US “would be unable to afford a two-front war.”

Notably, the US shift was welcomed yesterday by editorials in the Washington Post, which praised it as “less ambiguous and more strategic,” and the Wall Street Journal, which urged Biden to go further by including Taiwan as a nation-state member of the new anti-China economic bloc unveiled at the Quad summit.

As with the US-NATO operation against Russia, the US ruling class is seeking to goad Beijing into a reaction over Taiwan that could become a pretext for war, with reckless disregard for the risk of a catastrophic nuclear conflict.

The official Quad communiqué was bland, as is customary, and avoided overt mention of China. But its language and every initiative announced at the event were directed at accusing China of aggression and blocking Beijing strategically and economically.

The four government leaders said they “strongly oppose any coercive, provocative or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo” in the Indo-Pacific. These included “the militarization of disputed features, the dangerous use of coast guard vessels and maritime militia, and efforts to disrupt other countries’ offshore resource exploitation activities”—all accusations levied against China’s activities in the South China Sea.

The Quad leaders reaffirmed their resolve to “uphold the international rules-based order where countries are free from all forms of military, economic and political coercion.” Far from standing for “freedom,” these are code words for maintaining the “order” erected and dominated by the US and its allies since World War II.

Two new programs were unveiled at the summit. One was a “Maritime Domain Awareness Initiative.” Under the guise of cracking down on alleged “illegal Chinese fishing,” this will ramp up US-led maritime monitoring and intervention. It will connect existing surveillance centres in Singapore, India and the Pacific to track vessels across South East Asia and the entire Indo-Pacific. The use of satellite imagery and active intelligence sharing has obvious military implications.

The other initiative was an anti-China economic bloc, labelled the “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity” (IPEF). Unlike supposed “free trade zones,” this 13-member bloc is clearly protectionist, designed to bolster US and allied access to regional markets without offering reduced tariffs or greater access to US markets. The White House said it would enable the US and its allies to “to decide on rules of the road.”

The IPEF dovetails with other measures, expanded at the summit, to strengthen global supply chains—which will be vital in a war against China, the world’s second largest economy—reinforce “digital security” by excluding Chinese telecommunications companies, and develop cyber and space war capacities.

In a bid to counter Chinese investment and aid, the four leaders said they would “seek to extend more than $US50 billion of infrastructure assistance and investment in the Indo-Pacific, over the next five years.” They claimed to be “committed to bringing tangible benefits to the region,” but the real thrust is to block Chinese programs.

Moreover, the funds promised, even if provided, are drops in the bucket compared to the needs throughout the impoverished former colonial territories stretched across the strategic ocean.

Likewise, the much-promoted focus on climate change is about escalating US and allied “security” operations, especially in the Pacific, to counter Chinese moves, such as Beijing’s recent security agreement with Solomon Islands.

As if to reinforce that reality, Biden was accompanied at the summit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Indo-Pacific adviser Kurt Campbell. Last month, Campbell visited Solomon Islands to warn that the US would “respond accordingly” if its government allowed China to establish any military presence.

For all the purported and belated concern for the impact of global warming on the Pacific islands, the newly-elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, in his opening public statement to the summit, directly linked “climate action” to the “security of our region.”

Albanese’s presence at the event, and the commitments he gave there, underscored how much is at stake for the US. Biden effusively praised the Labor Party prime minister for jumping on a plane to join the summit just three hours after being sworn into office on Monday following Saturday’s national election.

It would have been a blow to US credibility if no Australian leader had attended the summit, especially given the strategic importance of Australia as a platform for any war against China, as it was for the US war against Japan in World War II.

Albanese was at pains to swear allegiance to the Quad, saying it was “an honour that this is my first act as prime minister, to attend this important Quad Leaders’ meeting here in Japan.” He was anxious to dispel any doubts in Washington about his government’s commitment, after the last Labor government pulled out of the Quad in 2008, concerned for its impact on relations with China, Australia’s largest export market.

A White House statement released following a side meeting between Biden and Albanese said the pair had also reiterated their support for the US-NATO war against Russia and the “swift progress” of the AUKUS security pact with the UK, a military alliance against China that features the supply of nuclear-powered submarines and hypersonic missiles to Australia.

“He (Mr Biden) commended Australia’s strong support for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, and the leaders agreed on the importance of continued solidarity, including to ensure that no such event is ever repeated in the Indo-Pacific,” the statement read.

That language indicates that Albanese understood and embraced the US shift on military intervention in Taiwan, despite his later nervous insistence that Australian policy had not changed.

Evidently, Biden made little progress in his ongoing efforts to strongarm the Indian government into lining up behind the US war on Russia, with which New Delhi has longstanding strategic, economic and military ties.

A White House readout of Biden’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Biden “condemned Russia’s unjustifiable war against Ukraine,” adding that the two leaders committed to providing humanitarian assistance. But India’s government made no mention of Ukraine or Russia in its readout.

Instead, an Indian foreign ministry spokesman said Biden and Modi “discussed ways to strengthen cooperation in trade, investment, technology, defence” and “concluded with substantive outcomes adding depth and momentum to the bilateral partnership.”

This was the fourth Quad summit in less than two years, following an in-person gathering in Washington last September and two virtual events. That underscores the increasing importance of this alliance, which has been revived and placed at centre stage by the Biden administration as an essential spearhead of its offensive against China.

Provocatively, US national security advisor Sullivan said Biden’s trip, capped by the Quad summit, sent a message that “will be heard everywhere” and “we think it will be heard in Beijing.”

19 children, two adults killed in Texas elementary school shooting

Chase Lawrence

Another horrific mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas Tuesday left at least 19 children and two school employees dead at Robb Elementary School. It was the 30th shooting at a K-12 school so far this year in the US and the deadliest since the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut where 20 children and six adults were killed.  

The shooting started around 11:32 a.m. local time. The district told Robb Elementary parents to stay away from the school during the day, which was put in lockdown. Children were transported to a nearby civic center from the school to be reunited with their parents afterwards.

The 18-year-old suspect, Salvador Ramos, a student at Uvalde High School, was killed in a gun battle with police, including federal Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents who responded to the shooting. Uvalde is just 65 miles from the US-Mexico border and the site of a CBP station.  

Police outside Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Ramos allegedly shot and killed his grandmother and had ditched his car before running into the elementary school armed with an AR-15 and multiple magazines. Sgt. Erick Estrada of the Texas Department of Public Safety told CNN Tuesday night that Ramos was wearing body armor and was able to fight his way past police already at the school and began going classroom to classroom. 

University Health in San Antonio said it had two patients from the shooting, a child and an adult, with their condition unknown at this time. There may be another fatality, according to State Senator Roland Gutierrez, but authorities have not confirmed it.

School shootings have occurred so far in 2022 at a rate of more than one per week. There have been 200 mass shootings so far this year, including a shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York by a fascist gunman who killed ten people.

President Joe Biden, having come back from his warmongering tour in Asia, held a nine-minute press conference where he gave perfunctory remarks, quoting scripture, calling for prayer, and denouncing the gun lobby. “So tonight, I ask the nation to pray for them, to give the parents and siblings the strength in the darkness they feel now,” he said. “As a nation, we have to ask when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?” Biden also ordered flags to be flown at half mast at all public buildings for four days. 

Once again Biden, and the political establishment more broadly, are evading the deeper, fundamental issues which give rise to the phenomenon of mass shootings.

The US indeed has the highest per capita gun ownership in the world, in no small part due to lobbying by weapons manufacturers. Former president Donald Trump, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz and other fascistic representatives of the Republican Party will be speaking at a conference of the National Rifle Association in just three days. Last year Abbott proudly signed a law which allows Texans to carry a handgun without a license or a permit. 

This, though, does not come close to explaining the mass shootings that have become a horrific part of American life. If anything, the focus of the Democrats on the gun lobby and gun control serves to obscure the real causes of these outburst of violence. 

More information will emerge in the coming days to shed light on the particular circumstances behind the mass shooting in Texas. However, the regularity of such horrific acts of homicidal violence can only be understood in relation to the social reality of the United States, which is riven by extreme levels of inequality and overseen by a ruling class that promotes violence at every turn.

In the US, over 1,000 people a year are killed by the police. Summary executions by the police continue to occur at a rate of three every day. Some of the most recent victims include Patrick Lyoya, a Congolese refugee and auto parts worker who was shot execution style after a traffic stop, and DeAnthony VanAtten, who was shot running away in the parking lot of a grocery store.

The US government under both Biden and Trump has racked up over one million deaths from COVID-19, the highest absolute death toll in the world. The Biden administration has completely embraced Trump’s pursuit of “herd immunity” and dropped all protective measures, preparing the way for the next million deaths. 

Biden is also working to escalate the US/NATO war with Russia, funneling $20 billion in arms to keep the bloodbath in Ukraine continuing. The administration is deliberately and recklessly seeking to provoke a war with both Moscow and Beijing, the largest and third largest nuclear superpowers respectively. 

This is following 30 uninterrupted years of US warfare around the world since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, where US soldiers, tanks, drones, planes and death squads are sent to impose neocolonial rule at the end of a bayonet. Millions around the world have perished at the hands of US arms during this period, with whole societies reduced to rubble. 

This is not the picture of a rational, healthy society. The mass death, wars of aggression, militarism and police killings are the product of a bankrupt ruling class, and this product finds its reflection in the massacres in schools, shopping centers and elsewhere that have become a part of daily life in America.

Turkey denounces Greece as tensions mount in NATO over war with Russia

Ulaş Ateşçi

On March 23, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan bitterly denounced the May 16 trip by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to Washington. Declaring that Mitsotakis “no longer exists” for him, Erdoğan made clear that he viewed the trip by Mitsotakis as a breach of trust with far-reaching implications for the NATO alliance.

Erdoğan denounced Mitsotakis for involving the United States in Greece’s conflict with Turkey in the Aegean Sea. “We had agreed with him not to include third countries in our dispute. Despite this, he visited the US and spoke to the Congress, warning them not to give F-16 [fighter jets] to us,” Erdoğan said. He also accused Greece of harboring supporters of the failed NATO-backedmilitary coup in Turkey on July 15, 2016 that nearly succeeded in assassinating Erdoğan.

Erdoğan also let it be known that he viewed the US building of NATO bases in Greece, targeting Russia and growing Chinese economic influence in the region, as a threat to his government. He said: “And most importantly there are nearly 10 bases in Greece. Whom does Greece threaten with those bases? Or why are these bases being created in Greece?”

As he threatens to veto US-backed plans for Finland and Sweden to join the NATO alliance against Russia, Erdoğan has repeatedly denounced NATO bases in Greece and stated that Turkey’s decision not to veto Greece’s return to NATO’s unified military command was a mistake. Last Thursday, he said: “What happened when [Greece] went back? For example, America has now established a base in Alexandroupoli,” a Greek city near the border with Turkey.

The visit of Mitsotakis to Washington undoubtedly placed significant military and strategic pressure on the Turkish government. Mitsotakis wrote on Twitter that his meeting with Biden “demonstrated how Greece/US relations are at an all-time high—in trade, investment, and defense.” He also said that “we will launch the process for the acquisition of a squadron of F-35 aircraft. And we do hope to be able to add this fantastic plane to the Greek air force before the end of this decade.”

Turkey was excluded from the F-35 program by the United States following its purchase of S-400 air defense systems from Russia after the NATO-backed 2016 coup failed.

The rising Greek-Turkish conflict and tensions inside NATO go hand-in-hand with a dangerous escalation in the Aegean Sea. Greece’s Kathimerini reported on “a large-scale Greek naval exercise, Storm 2022, which is currently underway and will be completed on May 27,” amid mutual allegations of airspace violations between Greece and Turkey. It wrote that Turkey sent a message with “two F-16s fighter jets that violated Greek airspace, reaching just two 2.5 nautical miles from the northern port city of Alexandroupoli.”

Turkey claimed Greece violated its airspace twice this week, and that it replied to those violations Friday “based on reciprocity and in accordance with” Turkish Air Force’s rules of engagement.

Kathimerini also criticized Turkey for having “resumed its practice of allowing boats packed with migrants to depart from its coast for the Greek islands in the eastern Aegean. … It was the first instance in some time that such a large number of migrants tried to enter Greek territorial waters from the Turkish coast.”

It is apparent, however, that the Aegean conflict is now bound up with the NATO war on Russia in Ukraine, and US plans for military escalation against Russia and China.

Erdoğan boasted of assisting NATO in the war against Russia in Ukraine. He said, “Even in the war in the north of the Black Sea, about which everyone likes to talk big, it is us who have given the most significant, concrete and beneficial support to Ukraine.” Turkish arms sales to Ukraine rose from $2 million in the first quarter of 2021 to $60 million in the first quarter of 2022. He added that his government “exerts the sincerest efforts to first reach a ceasefire and then to achieve lasting peace in the region by maintaining political and humanitarian relations with Russia.”

Ankara has closed the Dardanelles and Istanbul straits between the Aegean and Black Seas to both Russian and NATO warships since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The NATO-Russia war threatens workers internationally, and in particular in the Balkans and the Middle East, with a catastrophic nuclear war. Erdoğan’s statement Thursday that “the outbreak of a new world war will benefit neither the region nor the world” points to mounting concerns in the Turkish bourgeoisie over these dangers. Washington’s war aims against Russia in Ukraine—to first take back Crimea and the Donbas, carve up Russia, and install a neo-colonial regime—are similar to its policy against countries across the Middle East, including potentially Turkey itself.

The danger of a world war driven by the imperialist powers, led by Washington, cannot however be fought by bourgeois regimes like the Erdoğan government. Politically reactionary, tied to imperialism and fearful above all of the working class, it is both unwilling and unable to mobilize and unite mass opposition that exists internationally to imperialist war. That tasks falls to the working class.

While Erdoğan is threatening to veto Finnish and Swedish accession to NATO, he is only doing so in the context of horse-trading with the NATO imperialist powers to give him a green light for further attacks on the Kurdish people and military operations in the Middle East.

When Erdoğan announced that he would veto Sweden and Finland joining NATO on the grounds of their support for the Kurdish-nationalist People's Protection Units (YPG), he is targeting US policy. While Washington supports the YPG as a proxy force occupying the north of Syria against the Russian-backed government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Turkish bourgeoisie is determined to prevent the emergence of a YPG-led Kurdish state on its borders.

To this end, Erdoğan, who has repeatedly invaded Syria since 2016, occupying parts of the country, threatened a renewed Turkish invasion of Syria: “We are starting to take new steps soon regarding the remaining parts of the works which we have launched to create 30-kilometer-deep secure zones along our southern borders.”

Erdoğan has demanded that Sweden and Finland stop supporting the YPG in Syria as well as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which his government bans as terrorist groups. He has discussed this in a flurry of meetings with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and Finnish President Sauli Niinistö.

On Monday, Erdoğan said: “We have said that these countries have to choose between providing practical and political support to terrorist organizations and expecting Turkey’s consent to their NATO membership, and they have to show this with explicit signs.”

However, US officials still predict that Erdoğan will capitulate to pressure to admit Sweden and Finland into NATO. On Tuesday, Deputy US Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said Washington is “confident that Finland and Sweden will be able to resolve those [concerns] with the Turks directly.”

In reality, there are growing signs that the NATO war on Russia threatens to provoke a regional conflagration across the Middle East. Ankara’s preparations for new attacks on the YPG militias come amid claims that Russia is reducing its military presence in Syria to reinforce its forces in Ukraine. There have been several reports that Iranian forces are deploying into Syria to replace Russian troops who are being drawn off to fight on the Ukrainian front.

Yesterday, in an article titled “How the Ukraine crisis could make the Syrian civil war worse,” the Washington Post wrote: “Some might view a reduced Russian role in support of Assad’s regime as a positive development. But our assessment is that these shifts could create significant risks of renewed fighting as well as escalate tensions between Israel and Iran.”