Australia surges past seven million COVID-19 infections, 8,000 deaths

Martin Scott

The official infection total across Australia has soared past seven million, with more than 995,000 cases recorded in the last three weeks. Australia has now registered a total of 8,264 COVID-19 deaths.

More than 290 people died from the virus in the past week alone, an average of almost 42 per day. An additional 47 “historic” deaths were reported in Victoria yesterday.

Staff prepare to collect samples at a drive-through COVID-19 testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

An average of more than 46,000 new infections are recorded each day and there are currently over 340,000 active cases across the country, higher than on all but 76 days of the pandemic.

There is a vast chasm between this objective reality and the lies promoted by the entire political establishment that the pandemic is over. This was a striking feature of the recent election campaign, in which COVID-19 barely rated a mention, because all the parliamentary parties are in total agreement with the homicidal “let it rip” program demanded by big business.

Labor was silent on the pandemic during the campaign despite the infection of leader Anthony Albanese and numerous senior party members and mass opposition to outgoing prime minister Scott Morrison over his government’s handling of the crisis. This, along with the critical role of state Labor governments in spearheading the reopening drive responsible for almost 6,000 deaths this year alone, makes clear that the newly elected government will do nothing to stem the tide of mass infection, illness and death.

Despite the efforts of the parliamentary parties to keep COVID-19 off the official campaign agenda, the impact of mass infection was undeniable. Less than 24 hours before polling day, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and the federal government were compelled to expand phone voting eligibility after public opposition to the possible disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of people who had tested positive in the week before the election.

The AEC also reported staff shortages of up to 15 percent due to COVID-19 infection, forcing reduced operating hours at many polling stations. Days before the election, it was unclear whether dozens of booths in regional areas would operate at all.

The record-high rate of pre-poll and postal voting, which together made up more than half the vote, reflected widespread concern among workers that the election, held under conditions where masking requirements and capacity limits have been abolished across the country, would be a national “superspreader” event.

The current situation is particularly stark in Western Australia (WA), the last state to adopt the “let it rip” strategy. On Saturday, there were 91,162 active COVID-19 cases in WA, more than 3 percent of the state’s population. Since the WA Labor government reopened the border on March 3, the state has recorded over 660,000 infections. All but 11 of the 222 COVID-19 deaths recorded in WA since the start of the pandemic have occurred since the reopening.

Australia’s infection figures, among the highest recorded in the country at any stage of the pandemic, likely reflect only a fraction of the true rate, due to the the dismantling of organised COVID-19 testing, including the abandonment of regular surveillance tests in schools and workplaces.

As in Australia, capitalist governments around the world, with the exception of China, have increasingly moved to shut down testing and suppress reporting of infection numbers. As a result, only limited conclusions can be drawn from international comparisons.

Nevertheless, the fact that Australia consistently appears among the ten countries with the highest official weekly case numbers, according to Worldometer, reflects the devastating impact of the bipartisan adoption by Australian governments of the “let it rip” agenda. Worldometer also lists Australia as having the world’s 11th-highest COVID-19 death toll over the past seven days.

The COVID-19 surge continues as scientists and health authorities warn that that this year’s flu season promises to be among the worst in recent memory. In New South Wales (NSW), almost 12,000 people have tested positive for influenza this month, four times the figure recorded in April.

Across the state, 150 people were admitted to hospital with influenza last week. With health systems already in crisis due to COVID-19, the additional impact of widespread influenza threatens to catastrophically overwhelm the country’s hospitals.

The dangers are demonstrated by the breakdown of healthcare during the Omicron wave that began in December. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) mortality figures, the country recorded 5,052 more deaths than average—a 20.5 percent increase—in the first two months of 2022.

Already, almost 2,400 health workers in NSW and more than 3,500 in WA are unable to work due to COVID-19 infection or exposure.

Also adding to the mounting crisis is the low rate of COVID-19 “booster” vaccination. State, territory and federal governments and health authorities continue to downplay the threat of the virus and proclaim it a thing of the past, partly as a result of Australia’s high initial vaccination rate. However, this campaign of lies has contributed to a slow take-up of third doses. Just 53 percent of the population have received a third dose, although 70 percent of second doses were administered more than six months ago, meaning a growing number of “fully-vaccinated” people have little or no protection from serious illness and death.

A survey conducted by the ABS in late April found that 62 percent of respondents across the country reported that a member of their household had taken a COVID-19 test in the previous four weeks, up from 46 percent in March and 47 percent in February. Of those who said a household member had taken a test, 23 percent reported a positive result, up from 14 percent in March and 17 percent in February.

In other words, around 14 percent of households surveyed reported positive COVID-19 tests. Given the propensity of the virus to spread throughout homes, this would indicate that at least 1.5 million and up to 3.6 million people tested positive to COVID-19 during the four-week period.

One third of surveyed households with children reported that attendance at school, preschool or childcare was affected by COVID-19 in April, up from 23 percent the previous month. Almost half of these households said that this was because the child had tested positive for COVID-19.

Of the 18 percent of respondents that reported a household member’s job situation had changed due to COVID-19, 32 percent said that this was because the worker had contracted the virus, up from 13 percent in March. By contrast, the number who reported changed work circumstances because they were a close contact or because colleagues were absent remained at similar levels to the previous month.

This exposes the false and dangerous character of the slashing of close contact rules in schools, workplaces and the broader community, carried out in recent months by all state, territory and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike. These anti-scientific measures, eagerly enforced by the unions, were taken in response to the assertions of employers that healthy workers were being forced to stay at home by overzealous isolation rules.

Far from resolving the labour shortage, the herding back of possibly infectious workers and children has only deepened the crisis by massively increasing the spread of the virus.

Contrary to the criminal mantra of the ruling elite, ordinary people in Australia and globally cannot “live with the virus.” COVID-19 can and must be eliminated, but this requires that the international working class take matters into its own hands.

Sri Lankan central bank governor warns of unprecedented economic contraction in 2022

Pradeep Ramanayake

Addressing the Sri Lanka Press Club on Monday, Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe warned that the country’s economy “will contract at the highest rate than any other year in history.”

Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe [Image: CBSL Twitter]

While Weerasinghe did not provide an exact figure, the Central Bank’s annual report noted on April 30 that the estimated gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate for 2022 had dropped to 1 percent. The Central Bank governor’s remarks indicate that growth will fall into the negative.

In 2020, Sri Lanka recorded a 3.6 percent negative growth rate, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country hard with the collapse of tourism, falling remittances and declining exports. In 2020, the poverty rate, calculated at $US3.20 per person, increased to 11.7 percent of the population, up from 9.7 percent in 2019, according to the World Bank. Another 500,000 more people fell into poverty.

Twenty-one years ago, in 2001, Sri Lanka recorded 1.2 percent negative growth, as a result of the devastation caused by Colombo’s anti-Tamil communal war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam that began in 1983.

This year’s predicted unprecedented negative growth is the result of two factors: the deepening global economic crisis, and the impact of the harsh International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies being imposed on Sri Lanka. These entail restructuring the economy, including the public sector, sharp fiscal deficit cuts, privatisation and a market-driven flexible rupee exchange rate, which saw the currency free fall earlier this year.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was appointed finance minister, immediately declaring that a new “interim budget” would be announced in six weeks, and in line with the IMF’s austerity measures. The interim budget, he said, “is just about cutting down expenditure, cutting to the bone where possible, and transferring it to welfare. For instance, the ministry of health, we just can’t cut down its expenditure, and the ministry of education, it’s a limited cut down, but there are many other ministries where we can cut.”

The measures will include the slashing of infrastructure projects and other cuts that will shrink the economy with catastrophic consequences for jobs, wages and living conditions.

Explaining the deepening crisis, Central Bank Governor Weerasinghe told the Press Club that Sri Lanka could not pay for “normal imports for the next three to six months,” despite industries reporting that they had “no raw materials.”

Without dollars, the Central Bank has had to drastically curb imports, threatening the collapse of industries and huge job losses. Free trade zone investors have already warned about the plight of their investments.

The Joint Apparel Association Forum has previously reported that Sri Lanka’s apparel sector was losing around 10 to 20 percent of its orders to neighbouring India and Bangladesh, with buyers voicing “concerns over the country’s economic and political situation.” Sri Lanka’s apparel sector currently has orders only until June 2022.

Yesterday, the Sri Lanka United National Businesses Alliance warned about their increasing inability to pay wages.

“Nearly 4.5 million workers belonging to 4,500 small and medium enterprises will be in the streets protesting in the coming months over the non-payment of wages,” the lobby group declared. It also complained that the Central Bank has told the business group that it could not grant extensions on loan repayments.

On Tuesday, the Sri Lanka Petroleum Corporation and Lanka-India Oil Company, with government approval, announced a record increase in fuel prices—petrol up by 24.3 percent and diesel by 38.4 percent. These increases are in line with IMF recommendations, which wants fuel subsidies slashed and prices determined solely by the market.

The latest fuel increases saw bus fares rise by 19.5 percent, port container transport charges up by 65 percent, three-wheel taxies fares by around 20 percent and other increases to come.

These rises will drastically worsen inflation. On Monday, the Department of Census and Statistics reported that the National Consumer Price Index jumped to 33.8 percent in April, up from 21.5 percent recorded in March 2022 on a year-on-year basis. Food inflation rose more steeply to 45.1 percent in April.

Hyperinflation has drastically increased the daily living costs to dire levels. The cost of rice, Sri Lanka’s main food item, has risen by 100 percent in almost two months, making it unaffordable for many. The prices of most essential food items have increased by at least 50 percent since the beginning of the year with the cost bread nearly tripling.

Significantly, the Central Bank governor’s speech noted that “the economic crisis has also spilled into a political crisis and social unrest,” a reference to the mass protests and two general strikes over the two past months demanding the resignation of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse.

Hundreds of health workers in Kandy march in protest against thug attacks on Galle Face Green demonstrators.

Referring to the governor’s remarks about the sharp economic decline and rising social unrest, Economy Next drew similarities with the 1953 general strike and hartal (small business shutdown) in Sri Lanka. The mass industrial action and protests by the working class and rural poor was in response sharp cost of living increases, including the price of rice. While the Lanka Sama Samaja Party called the hartal, it limited the action to one-day and abandoned the continuing struggles.

Economy Next also referred to the revolutionary uprisings in Europe in 1848, describing it as a “Springtime of peoples, where monarchs were driven out and constitutional restraint established.”

The February 1848 revolutionary uprising in France resulted in the overthrow of the monarchy, spread to Germany in March, and rapidly expanded across Europe. The feudal rulers of the German states were forced to accept parliaments and constitutions. References to these uprisings are yet another indication that Sri Lanka’s ruling elite is acutely aware that the new IMF austerity measures will deepen the popular opposition and see a massive eruption of the working-class struggle that draws in the rural and urban poor.

Yesterday, Wickremesinghe declared: “Looking at the hard days ahead, there has to be protests. It’s natural when people suffer, they must protest… But we want to ensure that it does not destabilise the political system.”

President Rajapakse and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe will not hesitate to unleash brutal state repression. Although the state of emergency was allowed to lapse last week, Rajapakse ordered the military mobilised in 25 districts in the country and its territorial waters. Two anti-government demonstrations by the university students last week were viciously attacked by the police using teargas and water cannons.

Above all, the ruling elite and its government is utterly dependent on the trade unions to stop any destabilisation of “the political system.” The unions are playing a politically criminal role, betraying one struggle after another since April. The general strikes in April and May were only called to dissipate the seething anger over price hikes and daily power cuts.

The trade unions are desperately seeking to tie workers to the opposition capitalist parties—who all support the IMF cuts—and their calls for an interim government to replace Rajapakse regime.

German imperialism sets its sights on Africa

Johannes Stern

Germany’s coalition government is systematically working to increase the country’s economic, political, and military weight in Africa. Currently, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) is visiting Senegal, Niger and South Africa along with a high-level business delegation.

Scholz’s trip centred on a visit to Bundeswehr soldiers in Niger on Monday. It was the Chancellor’s first troop visit abroad. “The Bundeswehr is doing extraordinary things here and has also achieved extraordinary things under very difficult conditions,” Scholz said at the military base in Tillia.

Officially, 200 German soldiers are deployed in the resource-rich and geostrategically important country. The Bundeswehr is training Nigerian special forces as part of Operation Gazelle, which has been running since 2018 and is part of the EU’s EUTM mission.

NH90 multi-purpose helicopter of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) transports German soldiers in Mali (Photo: Defensie, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Last Friday, the Bundestag (federal parliament) decided to extend the German war missions in the Sahel. Niger is playing an increasingly central role in this, with the EUTM mission being transferred almost entirely from Mali to Niger. “The focus of Germany’s participation in the EU’s capability building in the Sahel is Niger,” read the motion passed by the federal government.

According to the new mandate, up to 300 Bundeswehr soldiers are meant to be helping improve the “operational capabilities of the security forces of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and Niger and the Joint Task Force of the G5 Sahel states.' This involves “military advice and training, including pre-deployment training” and “support.” In other words, German war policy is being extended to the entire Sahel via Niger.

Scholz made it clear in Tillia that German troops were there to stay. The mission should also be continued beyond the mandate that has just been extended, he said. The task now, was to identify “a good follow-up project.”

“Seeing the motivation of our soldiers,” Scholz said, he had the feeling they were all looking forward to it. The mission so far had been “very successful and driven forward with great passion.”

The crimes committed by the Malian army in cooperation with Russian units is cited by Berlin as the reason for the shift of focus to Niger. In this way, the German government also wants to conceal the criminal character of its own intervention. In reality, the massacres of the civilian population are being perpetrated by the same troops that the Bundeswehr has trained for years. The imperialist occupation forces are directly or indirectly involved in these crimes and have engulfed the entire region with terror and war.

Berlin also plans to continue cooperating with the publicly criticised Malian coup regime. It was “devastating that Russian mercenaries are now in Mali”, Scholz said at a joint press conference with Senegalese President Macky Sall on the first day of his trip to Dakar. Germany would continue to “live up to its responsibility” and had “therefore also decided that we will continue to support the UN mission MINUSMA.”

In fact, the Bundeswehr is increasing its MINUSMA troops in Mali from 1,100 to 1,400 soldiers, preparing for an escalation of the fighting. According to the mandate text, even more troops may be mobilised “for phases of redeployment as well as in the context of troop rotations and in emergency situations.” In doing so, MINUSMA was “authorised to take all necessary measures, including the use of military force, to accomplish the mission.”

The offensive in Africa is not, as the official propaganda would have one believe, about “the fight against terrorism” or “human rights” and “democracy.” It is about naked imperialist interests. Already during the Bundestag debate on the extension of the mandate, numerous speakers stressed that Germany must also assert its interests in the region militarily.

Germany’s presence in the Sahel is “a sign of new responsibility, a response to geostrategic challenges,” claimed the Green Party member of parliament, Merle Spellerberg. “When French troops withdraw from Mali in late summer, we will be the largest provider of troops from the global North.” With “300 new soldiers,” Germany is “closing the gap left by the French.”

Leading members of the government, such as Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), explicitly emphasised that the aim is to contain other powers, first and foremost Russia. “If MINUSMA were to withdraw from Mali, the vacuum would be filled even more by other forces,” Baerbock warned in the Bundestag. This applied “to Islamist fighters,” but “also to Russian forces.”

Why Germany wants to fill the vacuum is clear. Mali and Niger are not only geostrategically important, but also rich in raw materials. Niger is the largest uranium producer in Africa and the fifth largest worldwide. Since 2011, the country has also been one of the oil-exporting states. Other raw materials that are mined and processed locally are phosphate, gypsum, and limestone. Mali is Africa’s third-largest gold producer after South Africa and Ghana, and it has large deposits of bauxite, phosphate, and iron ore, among other minerals.

Scholz’s visit to Senegal highlights Germany’s hunger for African mineral resources and raw materials, which has been intensified by the conflict with Russia. In Senegal, it is above all the country’s gas deposits that Germany wants to secure as quickly as possible.

“I want to be very clear about this,” Scholz stressed in Dakar. “Of course, we want to cooperate with Senegal in particular not only on the issue of the future generation of energy from renewable sources ... but we also want to do so with regard to the LNG issue and gas production here in Senegal.” The two countries had begun to “exchange views on this,” he said, and would “continue this very intensively at the technical level following these talks.”

In South Africa, too, where Scholz was welcomed with military honours by President Cyril Ramaphosa in Johannesburg on Tuesday, energy interests are at stake. The trip included a visit to Sasol. The transnational petroleum and chemical company is South Africa’s second largest industrial enterprise, with more than 30,000 employees and 17 plants in different countries. Sasol is known for the construction of gas-to-liquid plants, especially in Qatar. A few days ago, Scholz agreed a comprehensive energy partnership with the emirate and the world’s largest exporter of liquefied gas.

Another motive behind the German offensive in Africa is undoubtedly the fear of revolutionary unrest. We are facing “dramatic global challenges,” warned Scholz in Dakar. The COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the climate crisis would have “devastating consequences for the African states” and “on the reality of our lives.” They endangered “the social and economic achievements that the global South has worked for.” So that “these crises do not fan new flames,” he said, Germany must “act decisively.”

Scholz’s brash posturing in Africa, like NATO’s proxy war against Russia, which Berlin fully supports, stands in the tradition of Germany’s murderous colonial and world power policies. The warmongers in the media say so openly and are demanding an even more aggressive showing by Germany in the new scramble for Africa, at the expense of the nominally allied imperialist powers.

“Germany must catch up,” is the headline of a commentary by Nikolas Busse in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Although Germany itself was once a colonial power,” “other Western countries [were] gladly given precedence, above all France,” he enthused. This can no longer be tolerated “if one wants to be a leading European power.”

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.