Demands to escalate war against Russia as Tories back their own confidence motion

Chris Marsden

It is on the issue of war that the candidates to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister will be judged by the ruling class.

This was made clear by Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, which editorialised July 17, “Whoever replaces Boris Johnson as Prime Minister must not falter from his course until Putin is vanquished”.

Boris Johnson during Prime Minister's Questions [Photo by Jess Taylor / UK Parliament/ Flickr / CC BY-NC 4.0]

The Sun boasted that a third of Russia’s firepower has been “wiped out, thanks to Ukraine’s valiant defenders”, its “territorial gains have been humiliatingly meagre”, “Sanctions are slowly but surely choking the lifeblood from Russia’s pariah economy, and Putin’s wider strategic aims have backfired, with Finland and Norway joining a beefed-up NATO.”

It then insisted, “For all the criticisms of Boris Johnson, his robust support of Ukraine is undoubtedly paying dividends. Whoever replaces him as Prime Minister must not falter or deviate from the course he has set, until Putin is vanquished.”

Its rose-tinted military analysis combined with a demand for more bloodshed was drawn from comments to the BBC by Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Sir Antony David Radakin. The head of Britain’s armed forces said he believed Russia has “already lost” the war in Ukraine, but was still a threat to “the world order” that must be eliminated as it “continues to be a nuclear power, it’s got cyber capabilities, it’s got space capabilities, and it’s got particular programmes under water so it can threaten the underwater cables that allow the world’s information to transit around the whole globe.”

The Sun solicited an interview with the current favourite leadership challenger Rishi Sunak, which it ran under the headline, “Fighting talk”. Sunak, it reported, “has vowed to do whatever it takes to help Ukraine’s President Zelensky defeat Vladimir Putin’s invasion,” declaring in an open letter, “President Zelensky, brave citizens of Ukraine, be in no doubt the United Kingdom will remain your strongest ally.”

He promised that “his first foreign trip would be to Kyiv to offer his full support to the war hero PM in person,” while promising, “I will reinforce our policy of total support for Ukraine that Boris has so ably led. The Conservative Party will stand united together in our support for you.”

Yet to the extent that war is discussed amid the crisis gripping the Tory government, it is on their terms and with the full agreement of the Labour Party.

Amid acute class tensions provoked by the government’s murderous pandemic policies and the crushing rise in the cost-of-living, Labour cannot do anything that raises before workers the central unspoken issue that led to Johnson’s fall as party leader: the conclusion within ruling circles that he was too discredited, too hated and too incompetent to lead the UK as it escalates the war against Russia and the war against the working class at home.

On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was able to move a motion of confidence in his own government because of Labour’s refusal to move its own.

The debate that ensued reinforces the demand raised by the Socialist Equality Party for workers to fight for an immediate general election in order “to rouse opposition to the war policies of the government and to agitate for mass action by the working class to defeat the savage assault on living standards and democratic rights.”

Even the manner of its calling confirmed that Labour is as anxious as the Tories that they remain in office to avoid any public discussion on policies hostile to the broad mass of the working class, but which both parties are committed to impose on behalf of big business.

Originally, Labour wanted a debate on a motion making a no confidence vote conditional on Johnson remaining prime minister until he is replaced on September 5. Its motion stated, “That this house has no confidence in Her Majesty’s government while the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip [Boris Johnson] remains prime minister.”

This allowed the Tories to reject the motion, stating that Johnson had already resigned, and for Johnson himself to table a motion declaring, “That this house has confidence in Her Majesty’s government.”

Johnson used this to spend 30 minutes boasting of his “achievements”, including being the first government to reopen the economy during the pandemic, the first to arm Ukraine and the most bellicose against Russia. He warned that there are fears his political demise will mean the end of UK support for Ukraine’s war against Russia, saying, “The Champagnski corks will be popping in the Kremlin.”

He ended by referencing his photo-opportunity flight yesterday on an RAF Typhoon jet, saying he was at the helm for a “glorious period” but handed back the controls. That “is exactly what I will do with this great party of ours,” he boasted, after which the Tories will “coalesce in loyalty” around the new leader.

Left to the Labour Party, that is exactly what will happen.

Speaking in reply, Sir Keir Starmer focused almost exclusively on Johnson’s serial lying because he cannot identify a single major policy issue on which Labour disagrees with the government—above all on war in Ukraine.

Again and again, he tried to “embarrass” Tory MPs by citing their moves against Johnson and resignation statements. But even while stating that there were no disagreements on policy between Johnson and those now competing to replace him, he ended with a series of questions as to why the Conservatives are leaving Johnson “with his hands on the levers of power for eight weeks”.

Of the fact that Johnson’s replacement is supposed to have his hands on the levers of government until 2024, Starmer says nothing.

The Tories are so anxious to avoid public debate on their record in office and what they want to do next that two of the leading challengers, former Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, pulled out of a televised leadership debate on Sky, forcing its cancellation. They were responding to Tory despair at the acrimony of previous debates. But if the Tories fear the impact of “blue on blue” infighting and the clear hostility to all candidates expressed by studio audiences, this is dwarfed by their fear that the government’s crisis could trigger mass social opposition from below.

The same essential concern animates Labour, which shares the Tories’ agenda to the letter and wants nothing to cut across its implementation. Their aim throughout the deepening crisis of rule facing British imperialism has been to present Labour as a government in waiting should the Tory party be unable to carry on.

European heat wave devastates France

Samuel Tissot

By late Monday afternoon, 15,000 hectares of forest had burned, and 31,000 residents and tourists were evacuated from various localities in France’s Gironde area into seven emergency shelters. Forest fires are currently burning throughout the Mediterranean, across Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Greece, France, and Morocco.

Firefighters puts water on a trees at a forest fire near Louchats, 35 kms (22 miles) from Landiras in Gironde, southwestern France, Monday, July 18, 2022. [AP Photo/Philippe Lopez/Pool]

These massive fires are being driven by a record-breaking heat wave across France and Europe, the second of this year following temperatures in the high 30s°C in mid-June. Meteorologist François Gourand told the French Press Agency that conditions in southwestern France were a “heat apocalypse.” On Tuesday, temperatures are expected to reach 41°C in Paris.

Several record high temperatures were recorded across Western France on Monday. According to MeteoFrance, Brest recorded a temperature of 39.3 degrees, a massive 4.2 degrees higher than the previous record from the heat wave of August 2003. Records were also broken in Nantes (42°C) and Saint-Brieuc (39.5°C). The highest temperature recorded on Monday in France was 42.6°C in Biscarrosse, this broke the record of 41.7°C which was only set during last month’s heat wave.

Fifteen departments in Western France were under red heat wave alert until early Tuesday morning, while most of central, northern, eastern and southern France remain under an orange alert.

The Gironde region is currently facing two huge forest fires, one near the town of Landiras and the other in La Teste-de-Buch. The police prefect of Gironde, Fabienne Buccio, said on Monday that the fire is still spreading and that “the situation is not fixed.” As of Monday afternoon, over 1,700 firefighters are fighting the blazes with the support of nine water-bomber planes.

Landiras, which has 4,100 inhabitants, has been fully evacuated and the residents placed into temporary shelters. Many in La Teste-de-Buch, which has a population of over 26,000, have also been evacuated.

David Brunner, a firefighter with 30 years’ experience, leading the efforts to extinguish one of the fires told Le Monde, “It’s never-ending. I’ve never known a fire like this.” A 26-year-old evacuee from La Teste-de-Buch told the newspaper, “We’re climate change refugees.”

The fires have been ablaze since July 12, when temperatures in the area were already in the mid-30s. Since Sunday, the fires have been fanned by record-breaking temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius and gusts of over 50 kilometers per hour on Monday. Although temperatures are due to drop in the Gironde region from Monday evening onwards, the Tuesday forecast is still dry with an increased wind speed of 70 kilometres per hour on Tuesday.

Forest fires of this extent in July are highly unusual, with the peak season usually in late August. Already in France this year over 32,800 hectares have been burned in forest fires, nearly five times the 7,000-hectare average for mid-July. Across the EU nearly 350,000 hectares have burned this year—three times larger than the mid-July average. Before the traditional forest fire season even begins in August, the losses are approaching the average of 500,000 hectares that has traditionally been lost over the course of an entire year.

The spread of forest fires across Europe in July has been caused by exceptionally dry ground, following an unusually dry spring, high winds, and back-to-back heat waves. The fires in the Gironde region have been further fueled by its high concentration of maritime pines, which have very high amounts of flammable resin.

The heat wave and the fires point to the impact of climate change across Europe and internationally. Over 1,000 people have already died from heat exhaustion in Portugal and Spain over the past week. It is likely France will also see many heat-related deaths. Few measures have been taken to protect the elderly and vulnerable in France, while in many cities and regions temperatures have or will exceed the peaks reached during the two-week heat wave of August 2003, when 15,000 people in France died from heat exhaustion.

While the current fires in the Gironde appear to have had natural causes, in the middle of last month’s heat wave the French army started a five-day forest fire in the Var region while testing Caesar guns, a 10-metre truck-mounted artillery piece. Eighteen of these guns, which cost €5 million per unit, have been sold to Ukraine as part of France’s support for the NATO-led war against Russia.

Significantly, beyond the impact of the wars, the fuel burned to transport the worlds’ militaries alone accounts for 6 percent of global carbon emissions. EU armies produce 24.8 million tons of CO2 per year, with the French army accounting for over one-third of that total.

Capitalist governments around the world have refused to invest in forest fire prevention methods and proper fire-fighting equipment, which would save hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest every year, billions of euros of destroyed property, and countless human lives. Recent forest fires in Algeria, Portugal and California, which claimed hundreds of lives and destroyed entire towns, have not led to any appreciable change in policy. It is clear that the major world powers are not simply unwilling but unable to mount any effective, globally-coordinated response.

While they take utterly inadequate actions to combat global warming and protect the population, there is a blank cheque for arms and weaponry to fund NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine that threatens to escalate into a third World War. The EU collectively spent over €198 billion on its armed forces in 2020. As France spends €41 billion on war and its military machine but neglects vital infrastructure amid global warming, tens of thousands of people are forced to flee their homes from deadly forest fires.

Surge of the BA.5 Omicron subvariant sweeps Europe, North and South America, Japan

Benjamin Mateus

The International Health Regulation (IHR) emergency committee on COVID-19 met on July 1, 2022 and concluded that the coronavirus continues to be a public health emergency of international concern. Yet, across every region of the globe, outside of China, there is official disregard of the warnings raised by the World Health Organization (WHO) and indifference to the immediate and long-term impact COVID-19 will have on the planet’s population. 

In this regard, White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci’s comments to Politico on his impending retirement at the end of President Joe Biden’s term were remarkable for their frankness. “We’re in a pattern now,” he said. “If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have COVID anymore,’ then I will be 105. I think we’re going to be living with this.” Fauci is 81 years old, which means he suggests the world faces another quarter century of the COVID-19 pandemic, truly a counsel of despair.

Infections, hospitalizations and deaths have continued their climb during the summer months, with Europe being the current epicenter of the latest surges. These are being caused by the latest subvariant of Omicron, the immune-evading and highly infectious BA.5. 

Meanwhile, the daily rate of the population receiving COVID-19 vaccines doses globally has plummeted to the lowest level since boosters began, indicating that this strategy to stem infections and severe disease has been thoroughly exhausted. Despite nearly 100 percent population “immunity” from vaccines and previous infections in many countries, repeated waves of infections in quick succession are now understood to be the new reality.

Global weekly cases have nearly doubled since the end of May, with 6.3 million cases for the week ending July 4. Official deaths from COVID-19 also climbed nearly 25 percent in the same period, reaching a weekly worldwide count of almost 11,000. However, estimates of excess deaths suggest these figures are gross undercounts, in large part due to country after country having dismantled their COVID-19 trackers. While the official COVID-19 death toll globally remains at two-year lows of around 1,900 each day, daily excess deaths are seven times higher at 13,000. Notably, the “mid-range” estimate for total excess deaths, according to The Economist’s tracker, has reached 22 million.

Germany, in particular, has had little respite between Omicron waves. Daily cases bounced back up to nearly 100,000 cases this month after rapidly declining in May. Deaths are surging as well. According to the Robert Koch Institute, acute respiratory illness remains unseasonably elevated. They estimate that somewhere between 800,000 and 1.3 million people are actively infected with SARS-CoV-2. BA.5 accounts for 83 percent of all COVID-19 cases. As hospital beds are quickly filling with patients, nurses and health care workers are falling ill with COVID-19, placing additional strain on overburdened health care systems.

An intubated COVID-19 patient gets treatment at the intensive care unit at the Westerstede Clinical Center, a military-civilian hospital in Westerstede, northwest Germany.(AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Nurse Georg Goutrie, speaking with Deutche Welle (DW), said, “In Germany, we average about 13 patients per nurse; while in Holland, for example, there are only five. How am I supposed to take responsibility for 13 patients at once and still provide high-quality care?” The German Economic Institute expected nursing staff shortages of more than 300,000 by 2035. Years of pandemic on top of low wages and health care shortages will have catastrophic consequences for Germany and every other country facing a similar crisis.

France and Italy are facing similar repercussions of the policy of allowing the virus to spread without any consideration for the public’s well-being.

In Greece, amid a deepening surge of BA.5, the government last week suddenly announced a switch to weekly reporting of cases, deaths and other COVID-19 data, prompting the seven-day averages of infections and deaths to rapidly fall to zero on Sunday. Public health officials have essentially closed their books on the pandemic. As the National Herald succinctly noted, “Effectively ending a pandemic that’s still ongoing, Greece’s New Democracy government, which pulled back health measures against COVID-19, said that tourists who are infected won’t be quarantined but free to walk about.”  

The one consistent aspect of the ruling elite’s rhetoric on the pandemic has been the repeated minimization of the dangers posed to children. 

In the UK, COVID-19 hospitalizations are returning to previous highs reached during the Omicron BA.1 surge last winter, at close to 20 admissions per 100,000 people per week. Admissions of children under the age of five are soaring and constitute the majority of pediatric hospitalizations. They are only surpassed by those 65 years and older. Even if children do not die at the same rate as the elderly, the disease has an immediate and chronic toll on children.  

In the United States, hospital admissions for those under 18 will soon surpass the peaks reached during the Delta wave last fall.

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a nephrologist and epidemiological researcher at Washington University Medical Center in St. Louis who has been tracking Long COVID, noted recently that children can suffer from brain fog, fatigue and malaise, as well as dangerous consequences that include acute liver failure, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) and diabetes. The impact on their vital organs can have long-term consequences even decades later as they face the prospect of numerous repeated infections.

Eastern Europe and the United States have always trailed Western Europe by a few weeks in the impact of the pandemic. While Poland, Romania, Czechia and Hungary are seeing the emergence of new surges of infections, in the US the seven-day average in cases has been steadily climbing and the seven-day average in deaths has surpassed 400 per day. Hospitalizations are now over 40,000, and the test positivity rate has reached 17 percent. This is consistent with the rise in wastewater data that is 10 times above the lows seen at the end of March. According to former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, real daily infections could now be as high as a million per day.

The current surge of BA.5 in Japan has seen daily cases reach new pandemic highs. New COVID-19 cases had reached a single-day high of over 110,000 last Saturday, and the seven-day average soared to just shy of 90,000, close to the record of 94,000 reached on February 8, 2022. The curve in deaths is also turning up. In Okinawa prefecture, 60 percent of beds are filled, affecting the local health care system’s ability to manage other health-related issues. Hospital admissions are also rebounding in Tokyo, the capital and population center. Japanese authorities are facing the consequences of dealing with the strain on their health care systems while avoiding imposing any restrictions on activities.

South Korea, too, is in the early phase of another surge of infections after the massive wave of infections in March with the BA.2 subvariant. The seven-day average of cases is up five-fold from last month. The country, like most, dismantled nearly every mitigation measure after the first bout with Omicron. There are no immediate plans to reimplement them unless there is a “critical change,” according to Minister Han Duck-soo.

In Latin America, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, Argentina and Mexico are facing similar consequences. 

Peru, which has faced the highest per capita death toll of any country in the pandemic, has seen a sudden jump in COVID-19 cases. Health Minister Jorge Lopez estimated that under a moderate scenario, Peru could see thousands more deaths added to its already devastating figure of 213,685. 

In Guatemala, COVID-19 cases are at pandemic highs with a seven-day average in cases far above the peaks from last summer. Only 38 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, a product of vaccine hesitancy. Nancy Notz, a nurse working at a vaccination clinic sponsored by the Guatemalan Institute of Social Security, told Nature, “A lot of people still aren’t getting vaccinated as they think that it’s going to damage their health, kill them, or because their church told them not to.” Nearly a million Guatemalans have reportedly been infected, and 18,500 have died. However, these are underestimates due to the lack of testing. 

Mexico is facing a similarly precarious situation as the latest surge in infections will soon outpace the first Omicron wave. With almost 440,000 reportedly killed by infection, COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in 2020 and 2021. However, all-cause mortality was estimated at over 600,000. In a recent article published in The Lancet Regional Health Americas, there was a significant spike in deaths caused by diabetes, respiratory infections, ischemic heart disease and high blood pressures.

State of emergency imposed as parliament convenes to choose new Sri Lankan president

Saman Gunadasa

Amid spreading anti-government protests demanding his immediate resignation, acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe formalised the state of emergency he initially announced on July 13 by issuing a government gazette on Sunday. The state of emergency gives wide powers to the president to deploy the military to arbitrarily arrest and detain people, suppress protests, search private property and impose censorship.

Demonstrators outside Presidential Secretariat on 13 July, 2022

The declaration of the state of emergency takes place on the eve of tomorrow’s illegitimate vote in parliament to install a new president, after Gotabhaya Rajapakse fled the country last week in the face of the country’s largest ever anti-government protests on July 9. Wickremesinghe, who also declared last week that he would resign, was instead installed as acting president and now is one of the candidates in tomorrow’s vote.

The gazette notice justified the state of emergency claiming it to be in the “interests of public security, the protection of public order and the maintenance of supplies and services essential to life,” clearly implying it could be used against protests and strikes. Neither the acting president nor any of the other candidates vying for the post are concerned with maintaining the essentials for life. They are terrified by the mass movement that has erupted over the past three months against the social and economic breakdown that has devastated the living conditions of working people.

The declaration of a state of emergency underscores the anti-democratic character of tomorrow’s vote in parliament. In a statement published yesterday, the Socialist Equality Party denounced the so-called election “as a fraud and a conspiracy against the working class, youth and rural poor.” It declared: “The parliament does not in any way represent the political sentiments and interests of the working masses, that is, the absolute majority of society.”

Along with Wickremesinghe, opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) leader Sajith Premadasa, Dallas Alahapperuma from the Rajapakses’ Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna leader (JVP) Anura Kumara Dissanayake have announced their candidacy. Whoever is installed as president will hold the position for the remainder of the Rajapakse’s term—that is, until 2024.

Broad layers of the population are not only hostile to Rajapakse and Wickremesinghe but all of the 225 venal politicians that sit in the parliament. The vote tomorrow has no legitimacy but, whatever the outcome, is simply a reshuffling of the whole corrupt pack. All of them back the imposition of severe austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and designed to defend corporate profits and international investors at the expense of working people.

Wickremesinghe has mobilised heavily armed security forces to prevent protesters getting anywhere near the parliament complex. All the entry roads have been closed off with roadblocks, prior to today’s session to submit nominations for presidency. The security forces have been instructed to provide full protection for parliamentarians. While the rest of the country has to wait in lengthy queues for hours, the military has been told to provide parliamentarians with fuel to attend.

Wickremesinghe has also stepped up the attack on social media as well. He has instructed police to carry out a sweeping investigation on social media posts that could “influence or exert pressure” on parliamentarians in the presidential vote. This move signals a far wider crackdown on social media that has been widely used to organise anti-government protests over the past three months.

Workers, youth and rural toilers continue to defy the Wickremesinghe’s repressive measures and participate in protests. Now that Rajapakse has fled the country and formally resigned, protests centres in Colombo and regional towns have shifted their focus to demanding the resignation of Wickremesinghe. He is a longtime stooge of US imperialism and defender of IMF pro-market restructuring, who is widely despised. He is the only parliamentarian of his rump United National Party (UNP).

The trade unions and pseudo-left organisations are attempting to channel mass popular opposition behind the equally distrusted and detested opposition parties and the call for an all-party, interim government to shore up bourgeois rule.

The Inter University Student Federation (IUSF), controlled by pseudo-left Front line Socialist Party (FSP), has declared today to be a day of protest to demand Wickremesinghe’s resignation. The IUSF has called on the trade unions to join the protests, which include a march through central Colombo that could involve thousands.

Like the FSP, the trade unions have played a treacherous role over the past three months in sabotaging any political intervention by the working class. Where strikes have been called to let off steam, the trade union leaders have quickly called them off. Over the past week, the union apparatuses have threatened general strikes but none has taken place.

Their rotten politics is summed up in announcement yesterday by the main union alliance—the Trade Union Co-ordination Center (TUCC)—of “proposals from the working class” to ensure the triumph of the masses. It constituted a plea from the unions, not the working class, in line with the opposition parties for an interim government and elections within six months. Their “pro-constitutional” program is to demobilise the working class and steer opposition into meaningless elections so as to buy time for the ruling class.

Behind closed doors, the political horse-trading is continuing to secure a majority in tomorrow’s vote. The SLPP has the largest block of parliamentary votes but is deeply split after a section broke away to sit as “independents.”

Yesterday Wickremesinghe and former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, who was forced to step down in May, met with SLPP parliamentarians to try to secure their backing for Wickremesinghe instead of SLPP parliamentarian Dallas Alahapperuma. In a crude attempt to buy votes, Wickremesinghe announced that he would use public money to rebuild the homes and properties of SLPP parliamentarians destroyed or damaged in recent protests.

Military supervises distribution of fuel supplies to essential services at filling station in Wellawatta, Colombo, 1 July 2022 [WSWS Media]

In an equally crude bid for public support, the government announced a reduction in fuel prices by a negligible 20 rupees per litre, or about four percent. And, all of a sudden, Wickremesinghe declared that he is looking for the means to reduce the cost of living.

These announcements are insults to working people, as around 70 percent of families are skipping meals and face hunger and starvation. Even if they can afford to buy fuel, people have to wait for hours in lengthy queues with no guarantee they will get any. Patients have been turned away at hospitals due to shortages of staff who have to queue for fuel to get to work.

JVP leader Dissanayake told the media on Sunday that he was ready to withdraw from his candidacy in favour of a caretaker president supported by all parties who had no future political ambitions of his or her own. He did not nominate anyone in the parliamentary cesspool who had any public credibility and might fit the bill. This move is nothing but a desperate attempt to lend political legitimacy to the utterly discredited institutions of bourgeois rule.

Whoever is installed as president tomorrow, the next government will implement the draconian measures demanded by the IMF that will further slash public sector jobs, make deep inroads into public education and health that are already in crisis, increase and broaden taxes and drive up prices by abolishing what remains of subsidies. With the Sri Lankan economy already in free fall, Fitch Ratings warned this week that a recession in Europe would hit Sri Lankan exports and tourism and further exacerbate its acute foreign exchange shortage.

Europe’s “apocalypse of heat” highlights capitalism’s climate crisis

Thomas Scripps

Europe’s second heat wave this summer is setting record temperatures across the continent. Much of Southern and Western Europe will reach highs of 40-47°C (104-117°F). Thousands of people are dying, large swaths of land are burning, and harvests are being destroyed in what climate change is making an increasingly common and severe phenomenon.

Wildfires are raging across Portugal, Spain, France, Croatia, Greece and Turkey. A meteorologist described the southwest of France as an “apocalypse of heat,” and the French government has already been forced to evacuate 25,000 people, Turkey over 3,500 and Portugal over 800. Some 3,200 in southern Spain have been forced to flee what Spain’s ABC newspaper called “an avalanche of fire.”

Besides the destruction caused by fire, the heat wave is already producing a wave of heat deaths, usually by heart attack or stroke. Portugal has reported over 650 so far, with one person killed every 40 minutes between July 7 and 13. Spain has reported over 510. These numbers will soar. During the 2003 European heat wave, when temperatures reached high levels for a prolonged period, an estimated 72,000 people died across the continent, according to UN figures, including roughly 15,000 in France and 13,000 in Spain.

Compounding the danger, the vast majority of European households are not air conditioned. According to a survey by AC manufacturer Inaba Denko, 3 percent of homes in the UK and Germany have air conditioning, 5 percent in France, 7 percent in Italy, 8 percent in Portugal and 30 percent in Spain. In the UK, just 65 percent of office space and 30 percent of retail space have AC.

The response of the British government to this heat wave exemplifies the irresponsibility and reckless indifference to loss of life that characterise all of Europe’s governments. As global warming claims thousands of lives, threatens food supplies with devastating droughts and produces severe flooding, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab cynically told the British people to “enjoy the heat” and to be “resilient.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is infamous around the world for saying about the COVID-19 pandemic, “Let the bodies pile high in their thousands.” He did not even bother to attend an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday, after Britain declared its first-ever “red extreme heat warning.” The same day, rail services and airports shut down due to the effects of the heat, and hospital surgeries cancelled procedures because operating theatres were too hot to function.

Denouncing workers for wanting to shelter at home from COVID-19 and from the heat, the Daily Telegraph’s Associate Editor Camilla Tominey complained on Saturday: “Work-shy Britons have found a new reason to stay at home.”

This is a particularly stark example of the official indifference and inaction over climate change that have produced the current heat wave and drought.

After decades during which capitalist governments across the globe took no meaningful action on global warming, humanity is confronted with a catastrophe. Last November, the respected Climate Action Tracker forecast a 2.4°C rise in the world’s temperature by the end of the century based on the countries’ short-term emissions goals, well beyond the already dangerous limit of 1.5°C set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Extreme heat in Europe will rapidly become more common. A paper published this month in Nature Communications found that the continent had seen a “particularly strong increase in heat extremes,” with European heat waves “projected to increase disproportionately compared to the global mean temperature in the future.”

During last year’s wildfire season, Levent Kurmaz of Istanbul’s Bogazici University told the Independent: “It’s going to be a desert climate all around the Mediterranean by the end of the century.” By then, the Independent noted, “the climate in southern Turkey, southern Greece and southern Italy will be similar to that of Cairo and the southern Iraqi city of Basra now.”

Today, even as food prices rise sharply, crop harvests are in serious danger. Nearly half of Europe is at drought warning level and nearly a tenth at alert level. The European Drought Observatory has warned, “Water and heat stress are driving crop yields down from a previously already negative outlook for cereals and other crops. France, Romania, Spain, Portugal and Italy will need to deal with this reduced crop yield. Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia are also impacted.”

Northern Italy is suffering its worst drought in 70 years, with major rivers like the Po and the Serchio drying out almost completely. According to the country’s largest agricultural union, more than 30 percent of its agricultural production is threatened.

Another paper, published in Earth’s Future this March, found that the 2018-2020 European drought had been the worst in 250 years. Droughts as long as eight years could be expected in a medium case emissions scenario and 25 years in the worst case.

Rising ocean levels due to global warming threaten mass flooding and damage to crops and coastlines. Without enormous work on infrastructure to guard against flooding, the cost of flood damage would be massive. In 2014, the European Union (EU) estimated that this cost could rise by century’s end to 4 percent of Gross Domestic Product, or over a half-trillion dollars; in 2018, the Carbon Brief consortium estimated that cost at €961 billion.

Global warming is a critical threat requiring the planned, globally-coordinated mobilisation of humanity’s resources to avert disaster. Enormous technological, scientific and industrial resources must be dedicated to slashing carbon emissions, expanding public infrastructure, refitting billions of homes, and transforming world industry. This alone can protect lives, food supplies, and vital infrastructure and minimize the damage caused by climate change.

It has proven impossible to devise such a response within the bankrupt framework of the capitalist nation-state system, and under the diktat of the EU and the Johnson government, which are undisguised tools of the financial aristocracy and the City of London.

Instead, capitalist governments around the world are plunging trillions of dollars into building up their militaries and waging war with each other. Europe has increased its collective military spending by nearly $100 billion over the last decade, in the run-up to the outbreak of open war between US-NATO and Russia this year in Ukraine.

As they cut off natural gas imports from Russia, moreover, the NATO powers are even returning to heavily-polluting energy sources: Germany, Austria and the Netherlands all restarted coal power stations. Under the authority of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party, Germany’s climate envoy Jennifer Morgan told a recent climate conference in Berlin, “the Russian war of aggression is forcing us to take short-term decisions we don’t like.”

Zelensky dismisses head of secret service, state prosecutor general

Clara Weiss

On Sunday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky suspended the head of Ukraine’s secret service (SBU), Ivan Bakanov, and the state prosecutor general, Irina Venediktova, accusing both of allowing mass “collaboration” with Russia by officials of their agencies. Zelensky also revealed that there are 651 ongoing criminal investigations into suspected cases of “treason” among officials of both agencies.

The head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov, is a close childhood friend of Zelensky, his former adviser and the former head of the ruling Servant of the People Party. He was suspended for “failure to fulfill … official duties, leading to the loss of human life and other severe consequences or creating the threat of such consequences.” 

Ivan Bakanov / Ilina Venediktova [Photo by Editor 1098765 / Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Since the beginning of the war, tensions between Zelensky and Bakanov have run high, with Zelensky blaming Bakanov and the SBU for some of the major defeats of the Ukrainian army on the battlefield, including the fall of Kherson to Russia. There have also been several high-profile cases of defections to Russia by SBU officials, as well as arrests and charges of high treason brought against top SBU officials. 

Bakanov’s previous deputy, Vasily Maliuk, a 39-year old career SBU official, will now be the acting head of the SBU. Maliuk was involved in the July 16 arrest of Oleg Kulinich, the head of the SBU’s division for Crimea and assistant to Bakanov, who has now been charged with treason. The arrest reportedly occurred without Bakanov’s involvement and was arranged for by the Office of the President, which, according to a June report by Politico, has directed the SBU’s daily activities for some time.

Both Venediktova and Bakanov were named in last year’s Pandora papers and, like virtually all Ukrainian officials, have been involved in countless corruption scandals. 

The secret service SBU and the office of the state prosecutor are both central to Ukraine’s war effort and its campaign of domestic repression. 

In a country with a pre-war population of just 40 million people, the SBU has 27,000 employees, almost as many as the FBI, and more than any other secret service in Europe. The SBU has been in charge of a violent campaign of domestic repression, which has involved not only the banning of Ukraine’s largest opposition party, but also the mass arrest of opposition politicians, the killing of members of Ukraine’s official negotiating team, and the violent persecution of anyone opposed to the war.

According to Russian media reports, the SBU is also the nodal point for the billions of dollars of weapons that are now being pumped into Ukraine by the NATO powers for the war. The Financial Times reported last week that both EU and US agencies are increasingly concerned that many of these weapons are going “missing” once they cross the border of Ukraine, with some ending up in the hands of organized crime groups. 

The state prosecution has been centrally involved in the crackdown on suspected “collaborators” with Russia. Prior to the war, Venediktova’s office prosecuted former President Petro Poroshenko, who came into office after the Western-backed 2014 coup in Kiev, on charges of treason. Poroshenko, who has close ties to both Western officials and the far right, has repeatedly accused Zelensky of being “soft” on Russia. Poroshenko was rumored to be preparing to replace Zelensky just before the war began. Venediktova’s replacement, Oleksiy Symonenko, is a trained SBU officer.

The purge exposes the severe crisis in the Zelensky government and intense conflicts within the ruling class and state apparatus. It comes less than half a year into the imperialist proxy war in Ukraine and amidst serious setbacks and losses of the Ukrainian army. Accusations of treason are a means of purging the state apparatus of individuals whose support for the war is doubted by the CIA. Moreover, the large number of state officials now under investigation indicates the extent of broader public opposition in Ukraine—entirely concealed by the pro-war American and European media—to the US-NATO instigated war and even sympathy for the Russians.

The Washington Post noted in June that “the war in Ukraine is on track to be among modern history’s bloodiest,” as it was “killing far more soldiers per day than the typical war.” Russia, which itself has lost thousands of soldiers, claimed in April to have killed over 23,000 Ukrainian soldiers. While these figures were denied by Kiev, Ukrainian officials acknowledged in June that up to 500 men were dying in battle in East Ukraine every single day. Many more have been wounded.

Washington has pushed for the sacking of Bakanov, in particular, and is playing a major role in the restructuring of both agencies. 

The New York Times noted in its report on the sackings that “American officials said the moves reflect Mr. Zelensky’s efforts to put more experienced leaders in key security positions. U.S. intelligence agencies have been providing huge amounts of information to Ukrainian partners.”

The German Der Spiegel openly welcomed Bakanov’s dismissal as a “long overdue decision.”   

The NATO powers have long demanded that the SBU undergo a major reform as part of the country’s integration into the military alliance, and Bakanov’s appointment by Zelensky in 2019 has provoked much criticism both from NATO and Zelensky’s domestic opponents. 

The Western media and think tanks routinely note that a large number of the SBU’s employees have been trained by the Soviet-era KGB, drawing a connection between this background and the many defections to the Russian side since the beginning of the war. What is politely omitted by the bourgeois press, however, is the fact that the SBU is notorious for its infestation with far-right elements and admirers of the Nazi collaborator and Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera. 

More than perhaps any other government agency, the SBU has played a central role in the imperialist-backed efforts of the Ukrainian state to rehabilitate and promote the World War II-era fascists from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgency Army (UPA), a campaign that has now spread to the pages of the leading Western bourgeois media outlets. 

As the successor of the Soviet-era Ukrainian KGB, the SBU controls key historical archives and influences the writing of history in schools and at universities. Viktor Yushchenko, who came to power after the US-backed “Orange Revolution” in 2004-2005, appointed Volodymyr Viatrovych as director of the SBU archives who was simultaneously working as the head of an OUN-B front organization, the Center for the Study for the Liberation Movement, and publicly glorified the Nazi collaborators from the OUN-B as martyrs and heroes.

The former head of the SBU, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, who had also played a major figure in the Western-backed 2014 coup, has openly denied the role of the OUN in anti-Jewish massacres and its anti-Semitism and declared in 2015 that the SBU’s work would “build on the traditions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and UPA in the 1930-1950s.”

When Zelensky appointed his longtime ally Bakanov after his election in 2019, it was likely at least in part a largely unsuccessful attempt to keep these far-right elements in check under conditions where Zelensky faced intense pressure and mass protests by the Ukrainian far right. The Western-backed purge of the SBU will no doubt further embolden these neo-fascist forces, which are now functioning as the main shock troops of imperialism in the war against Russia.

UN report confirms Ukrainians’ use of civilians as “human shields”

Jason Melanovski

A recent UN report from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has confirmed that the Ukrainian Army, as it battles Russian forces for control of the eastern Donbass region, is purposefully putting civilians in harm’s way as “human shields.”

In March, the Ukrainian government blamed Russian forces for the deaths of more than 50 elderly and disabled residents of a care home in the village of Stara Krasnyanka in the eastern province of Lugansk. According to Ukrainian officials, a fire broke out in the facility following a supposedly unprovoked attack on the innocents by Russian forces.

In reality—in a case the report found to be “emblematic” of the war—on March 7, days before the attack, Ukrainian forces had taken up positions within the care home “as it had strategic value due to its proximity to an important road.” Previous requests by the facility to local Ukrainian authorities to evacuate residents were denied due to the fact that Kiev had mined the surrounding area and blocked roads, thereby preventing anyone from fleeing.

Two days later on March 9, as Russian forces approached the care home, the two sides exchanged fire. “It remains unclear which side opened fire first,” states the OHCHR.

On March 11, 71 patients with disabilities and 15 staff remained in the facility with no access to electricity or water, despite the continued presence of Ukrainian forces. They apparently made no effort to evacuate them in the face of an impending battle. During the morning, Russian forces, clearly aware by this time of the presence of Ukrainian military within the building, attacked with “heavy weapons,” causing a fire to break out. Some staff and residents were able to flee to a nearby forest  and were later “met by Russian affiliated armed groups, who provided them with assistance,” reports the OHCHR.

The section of the report on the case of Stara Krasnyanka concludes by stating, “According to various accounts, at least 22 patients survived the attack, but the exact number of persons killed remains unknown.”

As the UN document clearly demonstrates in the case of Stara Krasnyanka, it was the Ukrainian forces “who took up positions either in residential areas or near civilian objects, from where they launched military operations without taking measures for the protection of civilians present.” Such tactics are specifically prohibited by Article 28 of Geneva Convention IV and Article 51(7) of additional Protocol I and constitute a war crime.

But despite the role played by Kiev in these situations, civilian deaths in these contexts are described as the product of the “indiscriminate” violence of Russian “orcs.” They are widely publicized in Western corporate news outlets as further examples of an engrained Russian barbarity, which allegedly can only be prevented by sending billions more in weapons and aid to Ukraine’s government.

During the Russian siege of Mariupol, civilians accused Ukrainian forces from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion of deliberately shooting at fleeing cars and kidnapping residents in order to have them serve as human shields while they bunkered within the Azovstal plant.

In May, Natalia Usmanova, a former employee of the Azovstal plant who had taken refuge there from the fighting with her children and her husband, told Germany’s Der Spiegel that Ukrainian forces had forbidden them from leaving and later hid behind the trapped Azovstal civilians as fighting broke out.

“They (Ukrainian soldiers and Azov fighters) kept us in the bunker. They hid behind the fact that they are supposedly concerned about our safety. They shouted at us (when we tried to escape) and said go back to the bunker!” Usmanova told Der Spiegel in a video that was later taken down. A full interview with Usmanova can still be viewed here on YouTube.

As of July 12, the UN’s OHCHR has recorded 5,024 killed and 6,520 injured during the course of the NATO-provoked war.

Kiev is currently preparing a counter-attack with newly supplied Western weapons in the country’s now occupied territories in the south and east. The Ukrainian government acknowledges that ordinary people are in harm’s way.

Speaking on national television this past week, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk warned civilians in the Russian-occupied southern region of Kherson to evacuate or risk being killed by Ukrainian forces.

“It’s clear there will be fighting, there will be artillery shelling ... and we therefore urge (people) to evacuate urgently,” Vereshchuk said. She added, “I know for sure that there should not be women and children there, and that they should not become human shields,” making it clear that any deaths from US-supplied Ukrainian missiles and bombs will also be blamed on Russia.

For over eight years, starting in 2014 the NATO-backed governments of former President Petro Poroshenko and later Zelensky carried out a war against the separatist Donbass region. During the course of regular shelling and bombing , upwards of 14,000 people were killed. Both successive Ukrainian governments, with US and NATO support, brazenly refused to carry out the agreed-upon Minsk peace accords, which called for a negotiated settlement.

Sony Music Group Global Scholars Program 2022

Application Deadline:

25th July 2022

Tell Me About Award:

Sony Music Group’s (SMG) commitment to corporate giving is at the heart and soul of Sony Music Group’s philanthropic programs and activities across the globe – from the programs led by the business to the partnerships forged with artists, songwriters, and other creators. On June 5, 2020, Sony Music Group announced the launch of a $100 million Global Social Justice Fund to support anti-racist initiatives and educational opportunities around the world that foster equal rights.

As a commitment through the Global Social Justice Fund, Sony Music Group, in partnership with IIE, is pleased to announce a new global scholarship program that will propel the future careers of young, diverse talent in the music industry. This signature scholarship program aims to advance access to post-secondary education at a wide range of leading music and music business education institutions in the global community. 

What Type of Scholarship is this?

Honours, Undergrad

Who can apply?

• This scholarship is open to students who are planning to enroll full-time in an accredited college or university degree, including 3-4 year undergraduate degree programs, in music or music business-related fields of study during the academic year of 2022-2023.
• Maintain a U.S. equivalent GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale or above is required to apply for this scholarship.
• An applicant’s academic record must show potential to succeed in a college/university program in their intended music industry field.
• A demonstrated financial need.
• Applicants do not need to be accepted into a program at the time of application, but if selected for a scholarship, proof of full-time enrollment will be required before scholarship funds can be sent.

How are Applicants Selected?

Scholarship applicants will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

• Achievement and potential in music fields
• Demonstrated leadership potential and ability
• Personal character, commitment, and potential in their chosen field of study and future music industry career
• Clearly expressed financial need to support educational goals
• Academic achievement
• Career and academic goals in line with stated scholarship objectives
• Compelling references

Notification of Selection Results

• All applicants will be notified of their application status (successful or unsuccessful) by the end of September.
• The Sony Music Group Global Scholars Program is a competitive program; not all applicants will be selected as recipients.
• Recipients will need to submit verification of their full-time enrollment in an accredited college or university in order to receive their scholarship awards.
• For students in the United States selected for the scholarship, IIE will require that they submit their financial aid package information. Based on the student’s unmet financial needs, IIE will determine the scholarship amount ranging between USD 3,000 and USD 20,000.
• Scholarship recipients who are not able to produce proof of enrollment by the date indicated in the award letter will no longer be eligible and an alternate candidate will be selected.

How Many Scholarships will be Given?

Not specified

How to Apply for Scholarship?

APPLY NOW

A complete application must be submitted in English and will include: 

• Completed online application form
• A personal statement (up to 3,500 characters)
• An estimate of your expected tuition and mandatory fees to complete your degree programs during the academic year of 2022-2023; 
• Two reference letters. The letters must come from non-family members who know you well – for example, a teacher, instructor, professor, employer/work supervisor, scout leader, advisor to an extracurricular club, etc. 
• High school transcript/grade report issued by the school (for applicants from the United Kingdom or Commonwealth countries, A level, O level, GCSE, or BTEC results are also acceptable)
• Only applications completed by the deadline will be reviewed. Falsifying or plagiarizing any portion of your application is grounds for automatic disqualification. 

Visit Award Webpage for Details