Political crisis in Italy deepens

Peter Schwarz

Seventeen months after the formation of a government of “national unity” under former European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi, Italy is once again in a deep governmental crisis. Draghi announced his resignation on Thursday, but President Sergio Mattarella refused to accept it. 

Draghi will explain his reasons for tendering his resignation to the House of Representatives next Wednesday. The result of this remains unclear. Possibilities range from the continuation of the current government to the formation of another government under Draghi, the appointment of a technocratic cabinet to run government affairs until the regular elections in the spring of 2023, to the dissolution of the parliament and new elections in October.

Draghi addresses the Chamber of Deputies [Photo by governo.it / CC BY 4.0]

The immediate reason for Draghi’s resignation was the vote on a €26 billion package to alleviate the effects of inflation, which Draghi declared a vote of confidence. The Five Star Movement (5SM), the largest faction in Draghi’s all-party coalition, boycotted the vote in the Senate, the second parliamentary chamber. It is asking for more aid than provided for in the legislative package and is also opposed to the construction of a waste incineration plant, which is part of the package.

Despite the boycott of the Five Stars, Draghi won the vote—and thus also the vote of confidence—by 172 to 39 votes. In the Chamber of Deputies, where the confidence vote and the vote on the aid package were held separately, the 5SM also expressed its confidence in Draghi. Nevertheless, Draghi declared his resignation. He justified this on the grounds of a lack of confidence in his government’s work.

The conflict over the aid package is only the trigger, not the cause, of the government crisis. Italian society is deeply divided socially. All the major parties are discredited and hated, which produces tensions and conflicts. With the exception of the fascist Fratelli d’Italia they are all part of the government.

Draghi’s election as head of government in February 2021 was already due to fear of social upheaval. Prior to that, the Five Star Movement’s Giuseppe Conte served as head of government for almost three years. The 5SM emerged as an anti-establishment party after the global financial crisis of 2008, the social consequences of which hit Italy particularly hard. In 2018, they formed a coalition government with the far-right Lega, led by Matteo Salvini.

The following year, Salvini tried to force new elections to become head of government himself but failed. The Five Star Movement and the Democrats (the Italian Social Democrats), who previously fought each other bitterly, then formed a coalition government.

At the time, we provided three reasons why the hostile parties had persisted in working together: the fear of new elections, because they were concerned about a massive loss of votes and considered any interference by the masses in politics to be a political threat; the adoption of an EU-compliant budget with billions of euros in savings at the expense of the working class; and the attempt to “convince the EU and NATO that they can also rely on Italy militarily.” At that time, Salvini maintained close relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The coronavirus pandemic eventually brought down the government of the Five Star Movement and Democrats. The horrific images from northern Italy, where hospitals overflowed and military trucks carried away coffins at night after the local crematoria could no longer keep up, alerted the whole world to the danger of the pandemic and government irresponsibility.

All parties then gathered behind Draghi. In his long career, the 74-year-old had worked for the World Bank, the Italian Ministry of Finance and the US bank Goldman Sachs, as well as head of the Italian and European Central Banks. As head of the ECB, he flooded the financial markets with billions of euros and lowered the living standards of the working class through austerity dictates.

Draghi formed a government that included all the parties represented in parliament, from the far-right Lega to the Five Star Movement and the Democrats. He awarded some ministries to non-party experts. We commented at the time that what brings the divided parties together is their hostility to the working class. Italy is in a deep economic crisis and on the brink of a social explosion. Under these conditions, all parties joined together behind a head of government who “embodies European finance capital like no other.”

Only the Fratelli D’Italia, a fascist party in the tradition of Mussolini, refused to join the all-party government. It has benefited as a result. If new elections were held now, Fratelli would be the strongest party with 23 percent, according to polls. At the last parliamentary election in 2018, they only received 4.4 percent. Party leader Giorgia Meloni has long been in discussion as a possible Italian head of government.

Under Draghi, Italy’s social and economic crisis has intensified.

The official unemployment rate is 8.4 percent, which is about 2 percent higher than the EU average, and the youth unemployment rate is 24 percent. However, the actual figures are much higher. According to official statistics, more than 3.4 million people are precariously employed.

Italy is the only European country where real wages have fallen since 1990, by 2.9 percent, according to official OECD figures. But the reality is far worse. The number of those living in absolute poverty has risen to 5.6 million during the coronavirus pandemic. Official inflation is 8 percent and the price increase for energy is just under 50 percent.

Draghi has integrated Italy, which has always maintained close relations with Russia, into NATO’s war policy, with corresponding economic consequences. Like Germany, Italy is heavily dependent on Russian energy supplies, and around 40 percent of natural gas has so far come from there. Some gas deliveries have stopped, while prices are exploding.

Resistance to social attacks is growing in the working class. Spontaneous or official strikes against job losses, low wages and unsustainable working conditions occur on a regular basis. In the first half of 2022 alone, 506 people died at work. Strikes mainly affect rail and air transport, but also telecommunications, the car industry and other sectors. In April and May, grassroots unions called one-day general strikes.

Draghi’s resignation has caused great concern in the European Union. The former head of the ECB was seen by the European ruling class as a guarantor of a “stable monetary policy,” i.e., of the consequences of the economic crisis being passed on to the working class. 

It is now feared that the euro crisis, which almost brought about the collapse of the single currency a decade ago, will break out again. The spread, the interest rate differential between Italian and German government bonds, which contributed significantly to the crisis in 2010, has once again risen sharply.

In addition, the euro’s exchange rate against the dollar is at an all-time low, further fueling inflation, particularly in the energy sector, which is traded in dollars. If the ECB reacts with higher interest rates, this could drag the Italian economy further into the abyss. 

The deep economic crisis and the increasing determination of the working class not to accept the attacks any longer make the ruling elite nervous. That is the reason for the current government crisis. If it is resolved in the interests of the ruling class, this will inevitably mean further attacks on the working class, which can only be enforced by dictatorial methods. This danger is very serious, as shown by the rise of the fascist Meloni, who is portrayed by both the Italian and the European press as a sympathetic figure. A continuation of the Draghi government would also exacerbate the warfare both at home and abroad. 

In Italy, as almost everywhere in Europe, it is the Social Democrats and the trade unions who are doing everything in their power to enable the ruling class to find such a solution. Since the beginning of the 1990s, when the old Italian party system collapsed, the predecessors of the Democrats and their pseudo-left supporters have always been on hand to save bourgeois rule. Even now, they are Draghi’s most reliable supporters. The trade unions, for their part, suppress the struggles of the workers or, if this is not possible, try to restrict and isolate them.

Protests in Hungary against tax hike for small businesses amid skyrocketing inflation

Markus Salzmann

Several thousand people demonstrated in the Hungarian capital last week against a planned government increase in income tax for small business owners and the self-employed, the KATA. The tax hike coincides with rapidly rising inflation, which now stands at nearly 14 percent.

Protesters in Hungary’s capital Budapest on July 13, 2022 (AP Photo/Anna Szilagyi)

On Friday, several thousand protesters marched through downtown Budapest for the third day in a row. Thousands of people had already taken to the streets on Tuesday evening, blocking two major bridges over the Danube for hours.

Those affected by the tax increase are small business owners or the self-employed, who usually earn little more than employees. Actors, artists, journalists, bicycle couriers and others took part in the protests. About three-quarters of those hit are expecting drastic increases in their tax bills and thus a reduction in their net income. The Association of Tax Consultants predicted a reduction in net income of 20 to 40 percent. About 450,000 freelancers will be affected by the increase starting in September.

KATA was introduced in 2013; the flat tax was intended to relieve small business owners who earned no more than €30,000 a year. They deducted about €120 per month to cover taxes and did not need a tax adviser or accountant when declaring their income tax, which also saved costs.

The protests enjoyed great support, as it is clear the tax increase is only the beginning of widespread attacks on the entire population of the country.

Under the current emergency laws proclaimed by the far-right Fidesz government of Victor Orban, a legislative package was able to pass in a very short time without any parliamentary interference. Less than 24 hours passed between the submission of the draft law on Monday and its passage in parliament on Tuesday.

The legislation includes a ban on energy exports and an increase in the production output of Hungary’s Paks nuclear power plant.

Most dramatic, however, is the government’s departure from the brake on housing costs introduced more than eight years ago. At the time, Orban responded to the growing discontent of poorer sections of the population by subsidizing gas and electricity and has since used it in election campaigns to portray himself as a social benefactor.

As of August 1, every household with an annual gas consumption of more than 1,729 cubic meters and an annual electricity consumption of more than 2,523 kilowatt hours must pay the difference to the market price. This is currently nine times the tariff for gas and 6.5 times for electricity. This will mainly affect poorer households with many children, who have been spending more time at home during the pandemic and thus have higher electricity consumption.

The attacks on workers and their families underscore the class nature of the right-wing government. This is a “government of tax reductions,” Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó dubs the Fidesz regime, but only for the super-rich and large corporations. For example, the government recently vetoed an increase in taxes for large companies to a global minimum.

Already, many households can barely pay for the extreme increases in the cost of food and other essentials. Core inflation, which does not include price increases for food and energy, is 13.8 percent, according to ING, a global financial institution. Food price rises were 22.1 percent in June, with some food items increasing by 40 percent year-on-year. The last time Hungary saw such price rises was in 1998, 24 years ago. Experts believe it will be months before prices peak.

A report by broadcaster Euronews makes clear how hard inflation is hitting those who were already struggling to make ends meet before the drastic price increases. Szabina, who is raising six young children on her own and is unemployed, said, “The children haven’t been getting much fruit or sweets for a long time. It’s more important to get anything cooked at all that’s enough for six. And me.”

Without the support of aid organizations, many families would no longer get by. A newborn child can be an almost impossible challenge because of the increased cost of clothing and diapers. Andrea Vörösné Deák, reporting the rise in absolute poverty cases, said, “There are many crisis pregnancies nowadays, where it’s not sure if the mother can take the child home.”

According to the news report, people are turning to aid organizations for assistance with electricity, gas or rent much sooner than in the past. The extent of the problem caused by inflation was also shown by the fact that many more people were now turning to them for food as well.

The attacks on the population will inevitably continue to increase as the Orban government itself comes under increasing international pressure. For weeks, the Hungarian currency, the forint, has been falling against the euro, reaching ever new lows. In addition to the war in Ukraine, another reason for this is the conflict with Brussels over the disbursement of EU funds after Hungary was threatened with a cut in payments following a ruling by the European Court of Justice on the so-called rule of law mechanism. It is expected Hungary’s new debt this year will be 6 percent—one of the highest deficits in the EU.

Against this backdrop, the recent protests were only the beginning of explosive class struggles in Hungary. Across the globe, conflicts and protests are becoming more acute because of galloping inflation. The political crisis in Sri Lanka, which forced the resignation of President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, was preceded by mass protests throughout the country.

Most recently, there were mass protests in Albania. Thousands of demonstrators in the capital Tirana demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama and his government. In the small Balkan state, too, massively rising prices are causing poverty to explode, with inflation rising last month at the fastest rate in 20 years.

UK government ignores US and European concerns over Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Steve James

The British government is pressing on with its Northern Ireland Protocol Bill despite opposition from the imperialist powers on both sides of the Atlantic. None of the prospective candidates to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative Party leader and prime minister have distanced themselves from legislation denounced repeatedly as breaking international law.

The bill removes all restrictions on trade between Northern Ireland and Britain, apart from checks on goods destined for the Republic of Ireland. It authorises the British government to alter state aid, tax rules and standards regardless of the European Union and ends the authority of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in disputes between the EU and the UK. Designed to appeal to the most hardline Brexiteers within the Tory Party and to Northern Ireland’s unionist parties, the bill calls into question key components of the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU, reached only three years ago, and threatens to undermine the 1998 Good Friday Agreement setting up power-sharing after decades of “The Troubles”.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss visits local businesses in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to discuss Northern Ireland Protocol, May 25, 2022 [Photo by Simon Worth / FCDO / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0]

Brexit was an attempt to undercut British imperialism’s rivals by ripping up such restrictions on profitability that were bound up with EU membership, seeking global trade deals instead and an intensified assault on the working class.

The “hard” Brexit negotiated by the Johnson government placed the UK outside of the EU’s single market and, at a stroke, transformed the partition line brutally imposed on Ireland by British imperialism in 1921 into an external EU border. The protocol component of the Brexit agreement, seeking to avoid a border on Ireland itself, which would breach the Good Friday Agreement, allowed Northern Ireland to remain in the EU single market but, in doing so, imposed customs checks on the Irish Sea border with the UK.

The government undoubtedly negotiated this with the intention of reneging on it as soon as possible, relying on the outrage from its close allies in the hard right Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and their paramilitary loyalist extensions to force the issue. The DUP is currently refusing to allow the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly to be revived, pending abolition of the protocol, while inflaming sectarian tensions. The recent July 12 “celebrations” saw Irish nationalist politicians burnt in effigy on loyalist bonfires.

The bill has infuriated the UK’s allies and rivals in the US and EU. Shortly after its publication, the European Commission (EC) launched “infringement proceedings” against the UK for its failure to comply with significant parts of the protocol. EC Vice President Maroš Šefčovič said, “Let there be no doubt: there is no legal, nor political justification whatsoever for unilaterally changing an international agreement.” The EC cited a series of infringements—legal proceedings on which were either being launched, re-launched, or prepared—including cases to the ECJ over border post staffing and trade data.

The Biden administration has repeatedly made clear that it opposes unilateral moves against the protocol as destabilising. US corporations have trillions of dollars invested and headquartered in the Republic. Moreover, Washington views tensions between major allies in NATO’s war against Russia as dangerous.

These issues have provoked factional infighting within the Tory party, exposed when the bill was introduced to the House of Commons, June 27, by Foreign Secretary and hard-right Tory leadership contender Liz Truss.

Former prime minister Theresa May, forced out of office in 2019 by the Brexiteers and replaced by Johnson, complained that the bill is “not legal under international law, won’t achieve its aims and diminishes the standing of the UK in the eyes of the world.” She questioned whether Truss would achieve her stated aim of encouraging the DUP back into power-sharing.

Tory MP Simon Hoare, chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in Westminster also opposed it, as did former Northern Ireland Secretary, Julian Smith.

Labour’s David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, attacked the bill because it threatened to undermine NATO’s war against Russia. “The precedent that it sets is dangerous and the timing could hardly be worse,” he warned. “It divides the United Kingdom and the European Union at a time when we should be pulling together against Putin’s war on the continent, and it risks causing new trade barriers during a cost-of-living crisis.”

Citing his own dealings with US imperialism, Lammy complained, “I have been to Washington on three occasions in the past six months, and I can say that across the political divide, Republicans and Democrats have raised the issue. On my most recent visit, they were aghast; they had not seen the content of the Bill at that stage, but they were aghast at the proposition.”

Despite the alarms, the bill’s second reading was passed by a majority of 74. The bill is currently going through its committee stages.

On July 3, the German government weighed in with an unprecedented joint statement by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Greens and her Irish counterpart, Simon Coveney, warning that the bill would deepen divisions with Europe.

According to the pair, “There is no legal or political justification for unilaterally breaking an international agreement entered into only two years ago. The tabling of legislation will not fix the challenges around the protocol. Instead, it will create a new set of uncertainties and make it more challenging to find durable solutions.”

Baerbock and Coveney noted that 52 of the 90 members of the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly, from Sinn Féin, the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Alliance Party, support the protocol.

Baerbock and Coveney’s primary concern too was that the British position was undermining war against Russia. “In these difficult times, as Russia is leading a ruthless war in Ukraine, breaking with our European peace order, the EU and UK must stand together as partners with shared values and a commitment to uphold and strengthen the rules-based international order.”

Baerbock’s concern for “peace” in Europe and rules in international relations is such that the German government is currently embarking on the largest rearmament since the Nazi period with a €100 billion Special Fund for the Bundeswehr, to be spent on the most modern weaponry, while older weapons systems are poured into Ukraine. The Irish government, for its part, is moving ever closer to NATO membership, recently announcing an increase in military spending to at least €1.9 billion annually and preparing to recruit 6,000 more troops.

The protocol dispute confirms that Brexit was only one expression of deepening tensions between the imperialist powers. Although the UK, EU and US are currently allied against Russia, tensions between British imperialism and its rivals over Ireland stretch back hundreds of years. The island has historically been the back door through which the European powers have sought to exert their influence against Britain and is now economically dominated by the US, while British imperialism has hung on to its last colonial outpost in the six counties of Northern Ireland to retain influence over and prevent revolutionary threats emerging from the entire island.

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.”