South Korean ruling conservative party secures victory in local elections

Ben McGrath

On June 1, South Korea held regional elections across the country for provincial governors, city mayors and various local councils. The elections resulted in a trouncing for the Democratic Party of Korea (DP), following its defeat in the presidential election in March. The results are less an endorsement of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) than an expression of mass dissatisfaction with the DP after five years in power.

Yoon Suk-yeol speaking during a news conference at the National Assembly in Seoul, March 10, 2022. (Kim Hong-ji/Pool Photo via AP)

The ruling PPP, which came to national office on May 10 with the inauguration of President Yoon Suk-yeol, took 12 out of 17 provincial governorships and large city mayorships, like Seoul and Busan.

The PPP also took 540 seats out of 872 in city and provincial councils as well as 145 out of 226 lower-level administration positions. The PPP and DP roughly split the 2,988 local council seats that were also up for election. In addition, seven National Assembly seats were contested in a by-election, with five going to the PPP and two to the DP.

Lee Jae-myung, the DP’s presidential candidate whom Yoon defeated in March, secured one of the seats in the National Assembly, running in Incheon.

Another former presidential candidate, Ahn Cheol-soo, won a parliamentary seat for Seongnam, just south of Seoul. Ahn, now a member of the PPP, typifies political opportunism, once posturing as a progressive political outsider. He has formally been an independent, a member of the Democratic Party when it was known as the New Politics Alliance for Democracy, and a leading figure in the minor conservative People’s Party, which merged with the PPP this year.

Turnout was at a near record-low for regional elections, with only 50.9 percent of eligible voters casting a ballot. This was the second lowest turnout since a 48.9 percent turnout in 2002, when both major parties were widely reviled as a result of the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis and the mass layoffs, wage cuts, and corporate restructuring that took place in its wake.

In much the same way, the entire political establishment in South Korea today stands discredited, as do the official parties in countries around the world. One eligible voter in her 30s, when asked her thoughts on the election, told the World Socialist Web Site, “I don’t think about it. It has nothing to do with me.”

Under former President Moon Jae-in and the DP, which secured a large parliamentary majority in the 2020 National Assembly elections, economic inequality grew sharply.

Government claims of a record-low unemployment rate of 2.7 percent hid the reality for many workers who had either given up looking for work or were underemployed, with the real jobless rate estimated at 11 percent at the end of 2021. Young people between the ages of 15 and 29 have been particularly hard hit, with the real youth unemployment rate regularly estimated to be between 20 and 25 percent.

The Moon government also lifted nearly all of its COVID-19 prevention measures at the behest of big business, allowing the virus to run rampant. This led to massive infection numbers, especially among children and teenagers, and more than 24,000 official deaths. Over one hundred people continue to die each week.

President Yoon and the PPP are now using the widespread anger towards the DP to declare a supposed mandate for deepening attacks on the working class.

“I take the election results as the people's call to revive the economy and take better care of their livelihoods,” Yoon said in a statement. He said that the government “will put all of its energy into stabilizing the public's livelihoods with the attitude that the first, second and third [most important thing] is the economy.”

If the South Korean ruling class is now turning to the PPP, it is because it believes the conservative party is the most capable of carrying out the assault on workers that the capitalist class is demanding as economic uncertainty grows as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the US-NATO instigated war against Russia in Ukraine.

The Bank of Korea (BOK) cut its estimated growth rate for 2022 at the end of May from 3 percent to 2.7 percent. The International Monetary Fund likewise reduced its estimate for South Korea from 3 to 2.5 percent.

Consumers also face a surge in prices. Inflation stood at 5.4 percent last month, a sharp increase from 4.8 percent in April and the first time consumer prices have surpassed 5 percent since 2008, during the global financial crisis.

The BOK is also estimating that inflation will exceed 6 percent in the second half of the year. Eo Un-seon, a Statistics Korea official, told the media, “In May, prices of petroleum products and processed foods, and personal service prices extended their high growth. The price growth of farm products also picked up.”

The Yoon administration has pledged to create a “business friendly” environment where all barriers to profit making will be torn down, including the modicum of job protections that exist. It had pledged to enforce “labor flexibility,” a euphemism for mass job and wage cuts.

The Democrats, who still maintain a large majority in the National Assembly with 169 seats out of 300 to the PPP’s 114, are not opposed to this agenda, but will seek to direct workers’ anger into political dead-ends.

The deepening social and economic crisis is fueling mounting working-class struggle.

Truck drivers in the Cargo Truckers Solidarity (CTS) union launched a strike on Tuesday, demanding a minimum freight fare to offset surging fuel costs.

They are also calling for the extension of the Safe Trucking Freight Rates System, which sets a legal minimum freight rate and will expire at the end of this year. The system is also meant to ensure safe driving, so drivers do not feel pressured to deliver goods at higher speeds just to make ends meet.

The CTS is affiliated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which postures as a militant organization, but politically backs the Democrats. CTS officials stated beforehand that most of its 25,000 members would take part in the strike, but only approximately 9,000 workers participated on the first day.

The unions are desperately seeking to isolate the emerging struggles of workers, in line with their role as a police force of governments and the employers.

The CDC raises its alert on the global monkeypox outbreak to level 2, but abruptly drops the use of facemasks for infection prevention

Benjamin Mateus

On Monday the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) raised its monkeypox alert to level two, meaning travelers should “practice enhanced precautions.” Specifically, avoid close contact with sick people, including anyone with skin or genital lesions. Additionally, the CDC asks that travelers avoid contact with contaminated material used by sick people like clothing and bedding.

The CDC had also included in their guidance the wearing of facemasks to help prevent the spread of the virus. The guidance bluntly stated that facemasks could help protect against “many diseases, including monkeypox.” However, the CDC abruptly removed this recommendation later the same day.

According to Reuters, a spokesman for the CDC said on Tuesday, “Late yesterday, CDC removed the mask recommendation from the monkeypox travel health notice because it caused confusions.” Their explanation for the about-face was that the rare disease had been mostly transmitted through sexual contact and therefore never warranted the mask-wearing precaution.

The CDC neglected, however, to explain that health care workers treating patients with monkeypox in hospitals must take precautions against airborne infection, including wearing face masks. Indeed, recent evidence that has emerged in the last decade (discussed below) suggests that airborne transmission of monkeypox is quite possible.

Keeping the mask recommendation would also underline the glaring contradiction with their guidance for COVID, a far more transmissible and far more deadly disease than monkeypox, which continues to surge across the country, under conditions where mask-wearing has been virtually abandoned.

In the month since the first monkeypox case was confirmed in a British citizen returning from Nigeria, the global epidemic has burgeoned to involve more than 36 countries where the virus has not been endemic. Though most of the cases have been in Europe, monkeypox cases have been detected in North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

According to the BNO monkeypox tracker, as of yesterday there have been 1,083 confirmed cases and 33 probable or suspected cases. The United Kingdom currently has the highest number of confirmed cases with 302, followed by Spain with 198 and Portugal with 166. No person has died of the disease thus far.

Placing the scope of this outbreak into context, the largest outbreak previous to this occurred in 2003 with 47 cases across six states in the US—Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin—from contact with infected pet prairie dogs.

According to the CDC, “investigators determined that a shipment of animals from Ghana, imported to Texas in April 2003, introduced monkeypox virus in the United States. The shipment contained approximately 800 small mammals representing nine different species … laboratory testing showed that two African giant pouched rats, nine dormice, and three rope squirrels were infected with monkeypox virus.”

The infected animals were housed near prairie dogs at an animal facility in Illinois. However, all these infections were zoonotic, and, unlike the current outbreak, no person-to-person infection was reported.

Close-up of monkeypox lesions on the arm and leg of a female child in Bondua, Grand Gedeh County, Liberia. http://phil.cdc.gov (CDC's Public Health Image Library)

The question of whether monkeypox is airborne or not has come to the fore of the current discussion. Linsey Marr, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech and an expert in airborne transmission of viruses and air quality weighed in on the topic in a long twitter threat posted on May 31, 2022.

She explained that the fact that monkeypox virus is larger than SARS-CoV-2 has nothing to do with whether it can be aerosolized. She wrote, “How far a virus can travel is determined by the size of the droplet/aerosol carrying it, not the size and weight of the virus itself.” She then added, “the monkeypox didn’t scream ‘airborne’ at me like COVID-19 did, but it may whisper. If it is occurring, it does not seem to be very efficient, at least based on past outbreaks. Things could be changing. We don’t know yet!”

In a recent studypublished in The Lancet Infectious Disease, the authors examined viral dynamics among seven previously infected patients diagnosed with monkeypox in the UK between 2018 and 2021. Three of the patients had acquired the infection in the UK. One was a health care worker who acquired it in a hospital and the other two were an adult and child within a household who acquired it from another adult who was infected abroad. 

According to the above report, monkeypox virus DNA was detected in the upper respiratory tract and their blood. Five of the patients remained in prolonged isolation for more than three weeks due to “prolonged PCR positivity.” One of the patients relapsed six weeks later. As the authors noted, “Prolonged upper respiratory tract viral DNA shedding after skin lesion resolution challenged current infection prevention and control guidelines.”

These findings have significant implications because they suggest that even after a patient has cleared their skin lesions, they may continue to shed monkeypox viral DNA from their respiratory tract. What remains unclear is exactly how much virus is released in aerosol form and how infective it is.

Marr highlighted a study from 2013 in which the monkeypox virus was aerosolized in a rotating chamber built to fit in a Class three biological safety cabinet. Viable airborne viruses were detected even after up to 90 hours of aging.

Additionally, she noted that in a laboratory setting macaques could become infected after being exposed to the monkeypox virus via large aerosols from a micro sprayer. The 2011 report she was referencing was attempting to create an animal model for infection that would replicate the primary viremia stages of the disease seen in humans in animals in real-world setting. Previously, these nonhuman primates had been infected through an intravenous infusion of the virus which would bypass the incubation and primary stages of the disease.

Though the disease is endemic to Central and West African countries, the size and geographical spread of the current outbreak has confounded public health officials. Certainly not as contagious as SARS-CoV-2, the transmissibility of the virus between humans, potential for respiratory route of infection and prolonged period of infectivity pose significant dangers to the overall health of the population.

Adding to these findings, on Friday the CDC reported that they had sequenced two genetically distinct variants circulating in the US. Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the CDC’s High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology Division, told CNBC, “While they’re similar to each other, their genetic analysis shows that they’re not linked to each other. It’s likely that within the last couple of years, there have been at least two different instances where monkeypox virus spilled over to people in Nigeria from the animal that maintains it and that that virus likely began to spread through person-to-person close contact, possibly intimate or sexual contact.”

It also means that there could very well be multiple entry points for the monkeypox virus with the potential for it to take root in the community, smoldering undetected. The dangers posed to pregnant women, children, and immunocompromised people are significant despite the existence of a battery of antivirals and vaccines.

Conditions in which international travel has become so commonplace, combined with the complexity posed by global climate change and encroachment by human populations into previously untouched natural habitats, have provided the impetus for the current outbreak.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and other international health experts have not been able to explain why there has been a sudden sharp rise in cases of monkeypox across the globe. Aside from recent large celebrations being “superspreader” events, some have speculated that monkeypox may have been spreading undetected for some time. Others have speculated that the virus has evolved for more efficient transmission between people. One can assert that all these seem plausible hypotheses working together.

Professor Andrew Read at Pennsylvania State University, who studies the evolution of infectious disease, told CNBC, “I worry a lot about if it becomes very common in humans. The potential to become more common and more transmissible through time, as we’ve had with COVID, would be very, very unfortunate.”

Considering the current COVID pandemic, the emergence of another infectious pathogen raises significant concerns about the efficacy of public health systems in the US. The complete rejection of the precautionary principle by public health officials, as displayed by their immediate turnaround on the issue of masks, underscores the dangers to the population posed by the complete indifference of the political and medical establishment to these threatening pathogens.

Chancellor Scholz in Lithuania: Germany boosts combat troops for war against Russia

Johannes Stern

Germany is playing an increasingly aggressive role in NATO’s war offensive against Russia. During his visit to Lithuania on Tuesday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Germany would increase the number of its combat troops on the ground in that country.

“We are determined that we will increase our contribution,” Scholz said at a meeting with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda and the heads of government of the three Baltic states in Vilnius. The German presence was to be developed “in the direction of a robust combat brigade.”

This means a massive expansion of the German commitment. Currently, just under 1,000 Bundeswehr soldiers are stationed in Lithuania; a brigade consists of up to 5,000 soldiers.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, right, talks with Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Andrä, commander of the multinational NATO Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) battalion at the military training area near Prabade in Lithuania [AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis] [AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis]

The entire meeting bore the character of a war summit against Russia. NATO’s war aim—to defeat Russia militarily and economically and thus ultimately to subjugate it—was openly expressed.

“Our common goal is clear: Russia must not and will not win this war!” declared Scholz. “Our goal is clear: Russia must lose this war and Ukraine must win it,” said Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins.

Nauseda called Russia a “terrorist state” towards which there could be “no dialogue or cooperation, no appeasement or yielding.” Instead, he said, Moscow’s “complete isolation must be sought” and “we must respond decisively to the Russian threat and strengthen our defences.”

He criticised French President Emmanuel Macron’s remark that Moscow should not be humiliated. “We will humiliate Russia in Macron’s sense, both militarily and economically,” he rumbled.

Scholz made it clear to members of the press that his telephone conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin were aimed at forcing Moscow to capitulate. The point, he said, was to make it clear to Putin again and again that his strategy of attacking Ukraine was not working.

Scholz then boasted about Germany’s massive rearmament. He said he was “very happy to be here today because this is a day that follows shortly on the heels of the decision that the German Bundestag made last Friday.” With a “constitution-amending majority,” he said, “a special fund for the Bundeswehr has been set in motion, comprising 100 billion euros, which will make it possible to further strengthen the German armed forces, which are already very strong.”

The increase in defence spending would enable Germany to “ensure that the Bundeswehr, which will then probably possess by far the largest conventional army in Europe, can guarantee its task of organising and ensuring common defence within the framework of NATO.” As allies in NATO, we “feel obliged to each other, and we will defend every inch of NATO territory in the event of an attack.”

Germany would continue to supply Kiev with weapons until Russia was defeated, Scholz declared. “We will continue to support Ukraine with arms deliveries.” Germany was “doing this more intensively than almost anyone else and will continue its support in the near future as long as it is necessary to be able to repel Russian aggression.”

This now apparently also involves battle tanks made in Germany. In the case of a Spanish application for an export licence for Leopard infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine, his government would “carefully examine” it, Scholz assured. At the weekend, the Spanish newspaper El País reported that Madrid was planning to supply Kiev with German Leopard 2 A4 main battle tanks and air defence missiles. The German government would have to approve their export.

Only last week, Scholz had held out the prospect of another round of massive arms deliveries as part of the adoption of the “Bundeswehr Special Fund.” Among other things, he promised the delivery of a modern Iris-T air defence system and a tracking radar.

According to Scholz, the decision was made in coordination with the US, which is also supplying Ukraine with modern missile systems that can also reach targets in Russia itself. Thus the war, which was deliberately provoked by NATO, is developing ever more directly in the direction of an open conflict between nuclear powers.

The massive war offensive refutes the official propaganda of a supposedly defensive approach “against Russian aggression,” as claimed by Scholz in Vilnius.

Indeed, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, the NATO powers have been tightening the noose around Russia. In Ukraine, Washington and Berlin orchestrated a coup in early 2014 in cooperation with fascist forces like Svoboda and Right Sector to bring a pro-Western regime to power in Kiev. Subsequently, the imperialist powers have continued to fuel the conflict.

German combat troops in Lithuania [AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis] [AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis]

The German-led “battlegroup” in Lithuania, which is now to be massively enlarged, was established in 2017, along with other “battlegroups” in Estonia, Latvia and Poland. It is already armed to the teeth. “The battlegroup is equipped with a sizable number of large vehicles, including several dozen tanks (combat, recovery, engineer, bridge-laying and infantry fighting vehicles),” reads a brochure published by the Bundeswehr Operations Command.

As part of his trip, Scholz visited German combat forces at the military training area in Prabade. According to an official report on the government website, he thanked the soldiers there “for their work, on behalf of the entire federal government.”

The martial display of German imperialism in Eastern Europe and the mobilisation of German combat units for war against Russia are part of a decidedly fascist tradition. 81 years ago, Hitler’s army, the Wehrmacht, invaded the Soviet Union and waged a war of extermination throughout Eastern Europe, killing at least 27 million people—including 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.

Despite these monstrous crimes, the imperialist powers are once again pursuing the goal of dismembering Russia and plundering its huge reserves of raw materials. In doing so, they rely on fascist forces and traditions, not only in Ukraine.

In Lithuania, the German-led “battlegroup,” which itself has repeatedly attracted attention for its neo-Nazi activities, is under the “Iron Wolf” brigade of the Lithuanian armed forces. Originally, the Iron Wolf (Geležinis vilkas) was a fascist fighting alliance founded in 1927 under the dictator Antanas Smetona. During the Second World War, members of the Iron Wolf collaborated with the Nazi occupiers and were involved in massacres of the Jewish population in Lithuania.

China warns of US-led “provocative” military actions in South and East China Seas

Mike Head

Chinese authorities this week warned the US and its close allies, Canada and Australia, of serious dangers of armed conflict arising from confrontational actions by their military aircraft in the East China Sea near Taiwan and close to Chinese facilities in the South China Sea.

Australian P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane in exercises over South Australian coastal waters

China accused the Canadian and Australian governments of acting in concert with the Biden administration, and of propagating disinformation and incendiary allegations over recent incidents that led to potentially serious aerial face-offs.

Chinese data pointed to a pattern of deliberately intrusive US, Canadian and Australian surveillance flights that could easily trigger military clashes with China, which Washington has designated as a threat to its global hegemony.

This pattern indicates moves by the US and its partners to goad China into military reactions that could provide a pretext for a US-led war, even as Washington ramps up its proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, also regarded as an obstacle to US dominance over the resource-rich and strategically critical Eurasian landmass.

One of Beijing’s state-run outlets, the Global Times, reported on June 7: “Data has shown that from February 24 to March 11, Australian military aircraft have visited the East China Sea north of the island of Taiwan six times this year to conduct close-in reconnaissance activities; Canadian military aircraft, on the other hand, were approached on several occasions by PLA [Chinese] warplanes from April to May 26 during their so-called missions to carry out UN Security Council resolutions in the East China Sea, according to a Reuters report on Thursday.

“This comes in addition to the US’ frequent close-in reconnaissance operations near China. Last month, at least 41 large spy planes of the US military were sent to the South China Sea for such operations, plus other reconnaissance activities including those on the PLA Navy’s Liaoning aircraft carrier group, according to a report by the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative, a Beijing-based think tank, on Thursday.”

This information sheds further light on the murky accusations of Chinese “aggression” issued by the recently-installed Australian Labor government and the corporate media this week, belatedly alleging that a Chinese jet “intercepted” an Australian surveillance plane over the South China Sea on May 26.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese personally levelled this serious charge against China while he was visiting Indonesia this week. “We regard the actions of China in this area as being an act of aggression,” Albanese said from Jakarta on Monday.

Albanese was in Indonesia on a three-day mission to urge its government to step up its military ties with Australia and other US allies, and to counter Jakarta’s publicly-stated concerns over a regional arms race triggered by last September’s anti-China AUKUS military pact between the US, UK and Australia.

Not accidentally, the May 26 incident occurred just two days after Albanese travelled to Tokyo, as his first act in office, to join US President Joe Biden at a summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), another anti-China coalition, this one with Japan and India.

At that summit Biden clearly told Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong to move fast to combat China’s developing economic and diplomatic influence in the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

In a detailed response to Canberra’s “intercept” accusation, China’s Ministry of Defence said the Australian air force plane was identified as a “serious threat to China’s sovereignty and security.”

Spokesman Tan Kefei provided the first information about the location of the incident, which had not been disclosed by the Albanese government. He said the Australian P-8 anti-submarine patrol aircraft entered airspace near the disputed Paracel Islands, also known as the Xisha Islands, “despite repeated warnings from the Chinese side.”

In a Chinese-language statement posted on the department’s website, Tan said: “The People’s Liberation Army Southern Theatre Command organised air and sea forces to identify and verify the Australian military aircraft and warned it to drive away.”

Tan said “the response measures taken by the Chinese military were professional, safe, reasonable and legal,” and accused Australia of “repeatedly spreading false information” and “advocating confrontation.”

“China urges Australia to stop such dangerous and provocative actions and strictly restrict the actions of its naval and air forces; otherwise grave consequences will be borne by the Australia side.”

China made a similar warning to Canada, after Ottawa complained that Chinese warplanes were harassing its aircraft monitoring North Korea. Like Albanese, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sweepingly denounced Beijing’s “irresponsible and provocative” actions.

As the WSWS noted two days ago, neither the Albanese government nor a single corporate media has asked any of the obvious questions about their “intercept” allegations: “Where exactly did this intercept occur? What was the Australian aircraft doing? Why was the incident announced ten days after it occurred? And where is the proof for the Australian version of events, including video footage?”

All these questions still remain unanswered. That, plus the context and details provided by China, further points to the conclusion drawn by the WSWS: “The absence of even a shred of evidence, combined with the concerted government-media barrage, brands the interception story as a politically-motivated provocation. Whatever occurred on May 26, the frenzied response is aimed at ramping up tensions with China and justifying Australia’s increasingly aggressive role in the Indo-Pacific.”

On Monday, another indication came of a concerted US-orchestrated drive to trigger conflicts with China in the flashpoints off the Chinese coast. The Australian navy announced that the HMAS Parramatta Anzac-class frigate had completed a “transit” of the South China Sea.

According to the navy, the warship was undertaking a two-month “regional presence deployment” to Southeast and north Asia until late July. Last week, the vessel conducted joint maritime security drills with Indonesia’s military in the strategic Makassar Strait, off southern Sulawesi—a location that also featured on Albanese’s Indonesian itinerary. The frigate and an Australian air force P-8 spy plane participated alongside an Indonesian aircraft in the exercises, which involved tracking and identifying passing ships.

The Biden administration’s hand in this heightening confrontation with China was further indicated this week. A Washington Post report, citing an unnamed Chinese official, claimed Beijing was secretly building a naval base in Cambodia. Both Cambodia and China immediately denied the claim, but that did not stop Albanese voicing concern over the media report.

“We’ve been aware of Beijing’s activity at Ream [Naval Base] for some time, and we encourage Beijing to be transparent about its intent and to ensure its activities support regional security and stability,” Albanese said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Monday rejected the Washington Post story. He accused the US of spreading disinformation about other countries while maintaining about 800 military bases around the globe and spending more on its military than the total of the next nine top-spending countries combined.

The Cambodian Embassy in Washington also refuted the newspaper’s “baseless accusation.” It said Cambodia “firmly adheres” to the nation’s constitution, which does not permit foreign military bases or presence on Cambodian soil. “The renovation of the base serves solely to strengthen the Cambodian naval capacities to protect its maritime integrity and combat maritime crimes including illegal fishing,” the statement said.

On every front, Australia’s Labor government, together with Trudeau’s Liberal government in Canada, has lined up behind Washington’s unsubstantiated claims and preparations for a catastrophic war against China. The allegations of aerial “near misses” are a warning that these war plans have already created the conditions where a miscalculation or error, even by a single pilot, could start such a war.

French health care workers mount one-day nationwide strike

Jacques Valentin & Alex Lantier

On June 7, health care workers at hospitals across France struck to protest the lack of resources, low wages and a wave of emergency room closures in public hospitals. With these workers exhausted and outraged by intolerable working conditions in the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, staff shortages are now reaching critical proportions and forcing major cuts to access to hospital care.

The strike is part of an escalating struggle of health care workers internationally against the subordination of medical care to private profit and the devastating consequences of the murderous official handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent weeks, tens of thousands of health staff have struck in Scotland, Turkey, Madrid and in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Mass health care strikes in the US states of Minnesota, California and New Jersey are unfolding as health care workers have protested the attempt to criminalize nurse RaDonda Vaught for a medical error in 2017.

In France, access to medical care is endangered as President Emmanuel Macron’s policies of austerity and mass COVID-19 infection run hospitals into the ground. Emergency wards have shut down periodically, often at night, or there is limited access in a number of hospitals. These include university research hospitals in Amiens, Angers, Bordeaux, Caen, Clermont-Ferrand, Dijon, Grenoble, Lyon, Metz, Nice, Orléans, Reims, Rennes and Strasbourg. There are also critical staff shortages in maternity wards, undermining proper pregnancy checkups and safety during births.

Doctors and nurses are warning that French hospitals are facing a meltdown without a massive injection of resources and personnel. Dr. Frédéric Adnet of Avicenne Hospital said: “Emergency wards are on the verge of collapse. It’s a symptom and a result of a profound crisis of the hospitals, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to a lack of hospital staff, one ward out of five risks being shut down this summer.”

Dr. Anwar Ben Hellal at the Versailles Hospital predicted a “catastrophic” summer, where “people will arrive in emergency rooms and find the doors closed. ... Already people are dying due to lack of oversight, staff and beds.” He added that after years of constantly working 70- or 80-hour weeks due to personnel shortages, staff were becoming utterly exhausted and leaving the profession.

WSWS reporters spoke Tuesday to striking nurses who were rallying outside the Health Ministry in Paris to protest.

Amélie and Marine

Amélie told the WSWS: “We’ve always been striking for the same reasons since the last several protests: We do not get the resources we need for public hospitals. We neither get the material nor the staff resources. That is why we are here. ... It is very frustrating, we cannot properly take care of our patients.”

“At the beginning of COVID, they said we were heroes, but now we are very clearly being abandoned,” said Marine. When Amélie noted that French nurses in public hospitals are paid €1,400 monthly and up to €2,000 monthly at the end of their careers, Marine added that starting nurses are “paid like cashiers, but lives are in our hands.”

Rachid

WSWS reporters also spoke to Rachid, who talked about the explosive anger building up among health care staff over the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rachid recalled the essential role played by low paid nurses, food processing and retail workers during the first wave of the virus. Because of the strikes and mounting public concern, they forced Macron to adopt the first lockdown. He said, “During the first wave of COVID-19, workers who were paid 1,000 or 2,000 euros faced a virus that no one knew, and they were dying all over the hospitals.

“The health workers took over in the first wave. ... But then the bureaucracy took back the power, and they continued shutting down beds,” Rachid said, adding that “no politician has taken the measure of the hospital crisis.”

WSWS reporters noted the staggering and horrific contrast between China and France. While China used a strict lockdown to eliminate the virus, in France, Macron allowed the virus to return and refused to track, trace and isolate cases. The result is that the virus surged back in France and in countries across Europe. While less than 6,000 people died of COVID-19 in China, nearly 2 million have died of it in Europe, including nearly 150,000 in France.

Rachid replied: “The image that stays with me from China during the first wave, is that they managed to build a hospital in 10 days. We were in the middle of a pandemic, and we were eliminating hospital beds.” He added, “You probably remember, you saw other health care workers using trash bags for protection, as if we were a Third World country. That is why many health care workers do not want to return to this job and why many will not return.”

He explained that the government’s palpable contempt for public health and safety is undermining support for the few remaining public health measures it is taking. While N95 or FFP2 masks are the minimum standard of protection, he said, “In my ward and for many of my coworkers, we only have surgical masks to go into rooms of COVID patients. So we find it hard to stay with a philosophy that we should wear masks, largely due to the incoherence of the government.”

He criticized the Macron administration for sacking health care workers who refused to be vaccinated but were testing negative for COVID-19, while ordering vaccinated nurses who were testing positive to return to work to treat vulnerable patients. He bitterly denounced the “flash mission” that Macron announced on May 31, setting up a committee to “evaluate” the needs of hospitals.

He said, “Look at nursing classes, they are empty like deserts. And among the few students that are there, the dropout rate is 50 percent. When they finally get to an internship, the oversight they get is so poor that they tell themselves, ‘There is no way I can have a career like this.’ So when Mister President goes and talks about a ‘flash mission,’ what a disaster. It’s yet another irrelevant thing.”

The way forward is to mobilize and unify the mounting international opposition among workers in health care and other industries against the capitalist system. The horrific conditions in hospitals in France and internationally are bound up with decades of underfunding of health care by capitalist governments of all political colorations, now vastly exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

It is impossible to reverse the accelerating collapse of health care systems without a scientific policy to halt the COVID-19 pandemic and eliminate the virus. After Macron and all European Union (EU) governments have abandoned public health measures against the COVID-19 contagion, a new wave of the virus is emerging. France sees over 140,000 cases and 200 deaths from COVID-19 each week, amid the total indifference of the Macron government.

Moreover, Macron is plunging hundreds of millions of euros into NATO’s arming of Ukrainian units and far-right nationalist militias to wage war on Russia, a nuclear-armed power, and increasingly to threaten China.

World Bank warns of soaring prices and global recession

Nick Beams

With workers around the world already on the brink from soaring prices, a leading global financial institution has warned that prices are only going to rise further, accompanied by a significant increase in unemployment.

The World Bank has warned that the global economy is falling into a prolonged period of stagflation—lower growth and even outright contraction—lasting into the foreseeable future in its latest World Economic Prospects report issued on Tuesday.

A productor prepares vegetables at an open air food market, in Ankara, Turkey, Sunday, April 17, 2022. [AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici]

In the foreword to the report, World Bank president David Malpass said: “The world economy is again in danger. It is facing high inflation and slow growth at the same time. Even if a global recession is averted, the pain of stagflation could persist for several years.”

Throughout the report, the World Bank places emphasis on the effects of the war in Ukraine in producing these conditions. But it is clear from the report itself that stagflationary trends were well underway before the outbreak of the war in February.

It has significantly reduced its forecast for global growth from 5.7 percent in 2021 to just 2.9 percent this year, a cut of nearly one-third in its forecast of 4.1 percent issued in January.

Similar forecasts of lower growth and higher inflation were made in a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) covering the major economies issued yesterday.

The World Bank report said that despite the “negative shock” to the world economy in 2022, there was “essentially no rebound” projected for next year, with growth only expected to edge up slightly to 3 percent with many headwinds, in particular high commodity prices and continued monetary tightening—the lifting of interest rates by central banks—which is expected to persist.

Moreover, even this bleak outlook is subject to various “downside risks,” including “intensifying geopolitical tensions, growing stagflationary headwinds, rising financial instability, continuing supply strains, and worsening food security.”

In the longer term, growth is expected to remain below the levels reached in the 2010s for the rest of the decade.

The report notes that the economic recovery from the last period of stagflation in the 1970s “required steep increases in interest rates by major advanced-economy central banks to quell inflation, which triggered a global recession and a string of financial crises in EMDEs [emerging markets and developing economies].”

Under conditions where the global economy is suffering from two years of the effects of the pandemic—the refusal of capitalist governments around the world to undertake science-based public health measures to eliminate it because of their effect on stock markets—the war in the Ukraine is having significant “spillover” effects.

But as the report acknowledges these effects are “magnifying pre-existing strains from the pandemic, such as bottlenecks in global supply chains and significant increases in the price of many commodities.”

Having increased debt to fund measures taken in the pandemic, there has been a significant reduction in “policy space” to deal with the effects of the war “exacerbating the exceedingly difficult tradeoffs policy makers face between supporting growth and controlling price pressures.”

In other words, whereas in the past, under conditions of a low-interest rate regime, governments could provide a stimulus to the economy by lifting spending through increased debt they can no longer do so because central banks are lifting interest rates in response to inflation.

It notes that debt was already “on an unsustainable path for many EMDEs prior to the war, and fiscal sustainability is likely to be eroded further by weaker growth prospects and higher borrowing costs.”

The World Bank report, however, does not make the essential point that the rise in interest rates will do nothing to bring down prices. Rather, it is aimed at inducing recessionary conditions to clamp down on the wage demands of workers confronted with the highest inflation in four decades which is daily cutting their living standards.

The so-called emerging markets are being hard hit. EMDE growth is expected to almost halve in 2022, down to 3.4 percent this year compared to 6.6 percent in 2021 and well below the annual average of 4.8 percent in the period 2011–2019.

Global inflation has climbed around the world and is now well above central bank targets. At the start of the price hike in 2020 and 2021 the “conventional wisdom” advanced by central bank leaders was that inflation was “transitory.”

This happy scenario has been well and truly junked with the World Bank reporting that “inflation is expected to remain elevated for longer and at higher levels than previously assumed.”

The great fear of the financial authorities is that persistent inflation will lead to a drive for higher wages and so the report warns that “central banks may be forced to tighten monetary policy more rapidly than currently expected rising price pressures under control.”

The World Bank report generally falls in behind official pronouncements that the pandemic is over—contrary to all available evidence—but it is forced to acknowledge that it “could worsen due to the appearance of new, more virulent variants.”

The extent of inflation, especially in basic commodities is highlighted by some of the estimates contained in the report.

Energy prices are forecast to rise by 52 percent in 2022, some 47 percentage points greater than previously projected. Agricultural prices are predicted to increase 18 percent this year, above previous forecasts. Fertilizer prices are expected to increase by 70 percent as Russia is the world’s largest exporter of this commodity. Metal prices are expected to increase by 12 percent, with aluminum and nickel prices having already risen by 30 percent.

The price hikes are already being felt around in world as the costs of petrol, energy, and food increase daily.

In the US, gas (petrol) prices are about to hit $5 a gallon, with similar hikes taking place around the world as families are faced with ever increasing costs to run their cars as rising transport costs are passed in the increased cost of food and other necessary consumer goods.

On the global food crisis, there was a telling comment by OECD chief economist Laurence Boone in the foreword to its latest report. She wrote that the world was producing enough cereals to feed everyone “but prices are very high.”

In its survey of the major economies, the World Bank report notes that growth is expected to “slow markedly” in 2022 to 2.6 percent. In the US “activity lost momentum” in the first half of the year—the US economy contracted at an annual rate of 1.4 percent in the first quarter—with lower growth to continue.

The growth rate for 2022 is predicted to be 2.5 percent in 2022, some 1.2 percentage points below the previous forecast, and to decline even further to 2.2 percent in 2023–24 as a result of higher energy prices, tighter monetary conditions and additional supply problems caused by the Ukraine war.

Euro area growth is expected to be 2.5 percent this year because of additional supply shocks flowing from the war, a downward revision of 1.7 percentage points from previous forecasts.

Economic activity has slowed significantly in Japan where growth is expected to be 1.7 percent this year, down 1.2 percentage points from previous forecasts.

China is predicted to grow by 4.3 percent this year, a downgrade of 0.8 percentage points, and then to expand by 5.2 percent in 2023.

These rates are significantly higher than all the advanced economies. This is despite all the hue and cry that China’s zero COVID measures were inflicting major economic damage and had to be reversed no matter what the cost in infections and mass deaths if this were done. But no mention is made of this inconvenient fact in the report.

Viewed within the context of the economic and financial developments of the past decade and a half, the World Bank report is a major indictment of the operation of the global capitalist system, though that, of course, was not its intention.

The outpouring of trillions of dollars by central banks following the crisis of 2008 created the conditions where, when the pandemic arrived in 2020, capitalist governments refused to undertake elimination measures lest they produced a collapse of the parasitic stock markets, bloated by ultra-cheap money.

Instead, notwithstanding some limited mitigation measures that have now been completely scrapped, they essentially let the pandemic rip while the central banks pumped in still more trillions into the financial system.

But the refusal to deal with COVID-19 produced a supply chain crisis setting off an inflationary spiral. This has been exacerbated the US-led NATO war against Russia in the Ukraine in order to inflict a decisive defeat and carve the country up into bite size pieces for imperialist plunder.

And now, as the consequences of these policies come home to roost in the form of rapid inflation, growing financial instability and the threat of recession, capitalist governments and their central banks have initiated a war against the working class in the less developed and advanced economies alike.

Sri Lankan prime minister declares class war policies against workers and rural toilers

Deepal Jayasekera

Addressing parliament Tuesday, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe reiterated demands that the working class and rural toilers bear the full burden of the unprecedented economic collapse which has been intensified in every country by COVID-19 and the US-NATO proxy war against Russia.

Ranil Wickremesinghe (Image: Ranil Wickremesinghe Facebook)

President Gotabhaya Rajapakse appointed Wickremesinghe prime minister after the former prime minister, Mahinda Rajapakse, was forced out on May 9 amid mass protests demanding the resignation of the president and his government over shortages, the skyrocketing prices of essentials and hours-long daily power outages. Wickremesinghe, who leads the United National Party (UNP) and is the right-wing party’s only parliamentarian, has no popular support.

Wickremesinghe highlighted the severe and worsening economic crisis confronting Sri Lanka and cited the country’s declining harvest of basic food crops in recent months.

“In a few months we will have to face serious difficulties and shortages in terms of our diets,” he said, referencing a Sri Lankan Central Bank forecast that the country’s economy will contract by 3.5 percent in 2022. Wickremesinghe went on to warn that “According to the International Monetary Fund, the situation is even worse. According to them, growth will be -6.5 percent.” He cited these figures in order to justify an intensification of the class-war policies that he and President Rajapakse are beginning to unleash against workers and the rural poor.

“Our traditional political ideologies,” must be set aside “for a short period” and “a concerted effort” made “to rebuild the country,” he declared. “The people of the whole country should play a role in this effort.”

In other words, Sri Lanka’s working masses are somehow responsible for the crisis facing the ruling class and therefore have to shoulder the burden of “rebuilding the country” and establishing “economic stability” in order to maintain the Rajapakse-Wickremesinghe government and bourgeois rule. “Our primary focus here is on economic stability but we cannot recover from this alone by creating economic stability. We need to revive the economy of our country,” Wickremesinghe said.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has made clear that implementation of harsh austerity measures is a pre-condition for an emergency loan facility he is attempting to secure in a desperate bid to temporarily avert the dire economic crisis confronting Sri Lanka. These measures include restructuring of public sector enterprises, increased taxes and drastic cuts of the fiscal deficit by slashing government sector jobs, wages, pensions and remaining subsidies.

As well as appointing Wickremesinghe prime minister, Rajapakse also made him finance minister with the specific responsibility of implementing these severe measures as quickly as possible.

On June 2, Wickremesinghe increased Value Added Tax (VAT) from 8 percent to 12 percent. The income tax net was also widened to encompass more sections of the working class, telecommunication taxes were hiked and new surcharges were imposed on certain goods.

Public sector institutions have been instructed to slash their expenditure by various means, including calling only “essential” staff to workplaces and limiting overtime payments. These moves are in preparation for cuts to jobs, wages and other limited benefits received by public sector workers.

Wickremesinghe held talks on Tuesday night with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva regarding Sri Lanka’s current economic situation. He requested a senior IMF delegation visit the country as soon as possible so that a staff-level agreement could be quickly finalised.

During his parliamentary address, Wickremesinghe also hinted at some of the economic factors driving future attacks on public sector workers. “In the current situation in our country,” he said, “the government is unable to provide funds to cover the losses of any state-owned enterprises. That debt burden can no longer be borne by the state or the state-owned banks.”

On May 29, Public Administration Ministry Secretary Priyantha Mayadunne told a meeting of his officials that public sector employees preparing to retire should not ask for pensions and gratuities “until the economy reaches $US10,000 [per capita income level].” He also complained that “the maximum bearable number of jobs in the public sector is 500,000 or at most 800,000” against the current level of 1.7 million. This means the destruction of between 50 and 70 percent of the existing public-sector workforce.

During his speech to parliament, Wickremesinghe called for the unity of all parties of the political establishment in order to impose the new austerity measures, inviting them to set aside tactical differences and support the government’s “economic, socio-political and public service reforms.”

“Let us build the country first. Let us protect our country from this crisis. Give your support to these efforts. After returning to normalcy in the country within the specified time frame, you may return to your traditional political activities,” he said.

In an attempt to counter any possible hesitation by any section of the ruling elite fearful of how the working class and rural poor will respond to these brutal social measures, Wickremesinghe referred to WWII British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

“I would like to conclude my statement by quoting Winston Churchill. ‘The pessimist sees difficulty in every situation; the believer sees opportunity in every difficulty,’” Wickremesinghe declared. “We must take advantage of every opportunity that comes our way. We will use these opportunities to build the country with confidence. We will all take full responsibility to bring the country back to normalcy.”

In fact, all the Sri Lankan parties of the political establishment, including the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), along with their pseudo-left hangers on like the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), have already demonstrated their support for the already imposed IMF policies.

None of them have opposed the VAT hikes and other massive tax increases announced last week or denounced the massive job cuts being prepared in the public sector. The SJB, JVP and TNA, moreover, have previously implemented or supported Sri Lankan governments implementing similar harsh austerity policies in the past. In fact, the SJB previously criticised the Rajapakse government for not going to the IMF sooner, while the JVP has signaled its tacit support by remaining silent over the latest IMF demands.

Workers, young people and the rural masses have already shown that they will not accept the sort of attacks on their social and democratic rights being prepared by the Rajapakse-Wickremesinghe government. The working class over the past two months has played a central role in the ongoing popular protests against the Rajapakse government, with millions of workers participating in two one-day general strikes on April 28 and May 6 and a later general strike, which began on May 9 in response to government-instigated goon attack on protesters and ended on May 11 when it was called off by the unions.

Unable to dampen down rising anger over the government’s public restructuring and privatisation measures, the Ceylon Electricity Board Engineers Union has called national industrial action, starting at midnight Wednesday, to protest changes to the Electricity Act that allow India’s Adani Group to establish wind-power projects in the north.

The Rajapakse-Wickremesinghe government has responded to the planned strike action by declaring the electricity supply and the health sectors essential services, making clear that it is on a collision course, not just with these workers but the entire working class.