New Zealand firefighters hold nationwide strike

Tom Peters

Last Friday, nearly 2,000 professional firefighters and support staff stopped work for one hour across New Zealand, in what was the first ever nationwide strike by these critical workers. 

Firefighters rally outside the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) head office in Wellington. (WSWS Media)

Firefighters held dozens of rallies in the main cities of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and in the cities and towns of Hamilton, Dunedin, New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Rotorua, Invercargill, Tauranga, Gisborne, Napier, Hastings, Timaru, Nelson, Masterton, Whanganui, Taupo and Kawerau.

The strike points to rising anger among workers over the out-of-control cost of living, including prices for food, housing and petrol, and chronic underfunding of what is an essential, life-saving service. It follows a recent strike by 10,000 healthcare workers. On August 10, the New Zealand Herald reported that Wellington ambulance workers are also considering industrial action after rejecting a 1.5 percent pay increase.

The New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union (NZPFU) has scheduled further one-hour strikes for August 26 and September 2 and 9, which it may yet try to call off. Union secretary Wattie Watson told Radio NZ that the union hoped to “resolve the situation” in talks this week with FENZ, mediated by the Employment Relations Authority.

Talks between the union and FENZ over a new pay agreement have been dragging on for about 14 months. After firefighters rejected an initial offer of a 1.5 to 2 percent pay increase in May, FENZ presented a revised offer this month that it said would amount to an increase of between 8 and 19.1 percent over the next two years, plus a lump sum of $2,000. The wage rise is not backdated for the past year, and only trainees, who currently receive close to the legal minimum wage, would get 19.1 percent. 

Spread across 2021-2023, the new offer does not keep up with the annual inflation rate of 7.3 percent, making it effectively a pay cut. This follows years of stagnant wages: the last pay increase, in July 2020, was between 1 and 3 percent (depending on the role). The union has asked for a pay rise of 18 percent over three years, which is still below inflation.

Internal Affairs Minister Jan Tinetti, who is responsible for FENZ, has stated that the offer cannot be increased. FENZ and the Labour Party-led government have refused to address other key concerns raised by firefighters about dangerous levels of understaffing, equipment that continually breaks down, and a lack of mental health support.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke with firefighters at the rally outside the FENZ headquarters in Wellington. 

A firefighter with nearly a decade of experience, Al, said FENZ was lying to the media by “saying that recruits can make $90,000 a year.” To make this amount of money a trainee firefighter would have to work nearly 100 hours a week. 

Fraser, who has been a professional firefighter for three years after volunteering for five, currently receives about $55,000 (roughly $26.45 an hour). He said he could get a higher-paying job as a truck driver, without the risks of cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) associated with being a firefighter. 

Fraser, Wellington firefighter (WSWS Media)

He said firefighters want FENZ “to acknowledge that these problems exist.” The agency was “refusing, point blank, to even put that in writing.”

Fraser explained that it was “not uncommon” for firefighters to work 100 hours a week due to the severe staff shortage. “Because of the nature of this job, we have to have four firefighters on a truck to be safe,” he said. “All of our operating standards are based on a crew of four, and every time we don’t have four on a truck, that puts us at increased risk, it inhibits our response, because we have to alter our tactics. It’s frustrating and it’s putting property and lives in danger.”

Since May this year, he said, there have been 40 separate shifts in which Wellington City Fire Station has been unable to fully staff its vehicles. 

Asked how the crisis had got so bad, Fraser blamed FENZ for mismanagement and prioritising the wrong areas. Across the country, for instance, the fire service only has five operational 32-metre ladders. Like other equipment, these appliances are not properly maintained and are constantly breaking down. One of Wellington’s two high-reaching ladders has been out of order for about two-and-a-half years.

He expected the next strike to go ahead on August 26, saying the firefighters’ strong support for such action “is a reflection of the frustration we have from not being acknowledged or valued by this organisation.”

Bill, who has been a firefighter for 39 years, said he was concerned about trucks repeatedly breaking down. Bill explained that his fire truck, which is 21-years-old, broke down while the crew was at the scene of a fire, creating a “really dangerous” situation. “We’ve got two guys on the end of a hose that rely on having a constant supply of water to protect them, and they couldn’t do that.” The crew had to call in another truck to assist them.

He believed the problem was the way FENZ was prioritising its spending. He said the agency had purchased “heaps of new trucks,” but these had proven unfit for purpose and broken down, forcing fire crews to rely on the older vehicles. 

Bill added that COVID-19 was making staffing problems worse: “Guys are doing 70 to 80 hours a week to try and keep trucks on the run. Trucks are coming off the run regularly.” 

The Labour government abandoned its elimination strategy for COVID-19 late last year, and has progressively removed public health restrictions, allowing the virus to spread across the country. This criminal decision, which was imposed on workers with the collaboration of the trade unions, has led to millions of infections and about 2,000 deaths from the virus, so far.

While firefighters are determined to fight, the NZPFU has offered unspecified concessions to FENZ in an attempt to call off the strike action. On August 17 the union revealed that it had “presented an amended set of claims which significantly reduced the overall cost of the NZPFU claim,” but FENZ did not respond. 

The union bureaucracy shares responsibility for the present crisis, having suppressed opposition from workers for decades. Workers across the country and internationally are facing the same attacks on wages and conditions, but the unions are doing everything possible to keep them isolated from each other and to prevent any movement against the Labour government and big business.

As firefighters were striking, 145 workers in Kawerau remained locked out by toilet paper manufacturer Essity. The company is trying to force them to accept a below-inflation pay rise, and the Pulp and Paper Workers’ Union has remained virtually silent on the dispute for the past two weeks.

More struggles are inevitable as workers across all industries confront soaring living costs and unsafe conditions, made worse by the rampant spread of COVID.

Greek government changes definition of COVID deaths in response to surge of disease

John Vassilopoulos

A record number of summertime COVID deaths have been recorded in Greece since the beginning of July. A total of 1,145 deaths were recorded by the end of that month, over four times more than the number of people who died during the same period last year.

According to National Organisation for Public Health (EODY) figures, August will surpass the COVID death tally recorded during the same month last year. In the first two weeks of this month, 651 people died from the virus compared to a total of 726 deaths in the whole of August 2021.

Greece has had one of the highest numbers of new deaths per capita in the world in recent weeks, surpassed only by Barbados, the Marshall Islands and Norway. All three, particularly Barbados and the Marshall Islands, have much smaller populations than Greece.

Medical staff conduct a rapid COVID test on an elderly woman in Athens, November 23, 2020. Greece has seen a major resurgence of the virus after the summer, leading to dozens of deaths each day and thousands of new infections. [AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis]

Opposed to re-introducing measures to contain the spread of the virus, the conservative New Democracy (ND) government blames the high number of deaths on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of deaths due to COVID-19, which ND now plans to ditch. The move was announced by Health Minister Thanos Plevris on August 8 in an interview with Open TV: “From now on when we report the number of deaths we will state how many died from COVID and how many died from another cause who had COVID.” On this basis, he claimed, “We did not therefore have a rise in deaths”.

As of August 14, the number of people killed by the virus in Greece stands at 32,028. The total number of recorded infections is 4,654,737—equivalent to 45 percent of the country’s population—with a fifth of those being re-infections.

The surge in infections this summer is down to the premature lifting of virtually all public health measures in anticipation of the summer tourist season. Vaccination passports to enter restaurants, bars and cafes were scrapped in May, while travelers to Greece no longer had to show proof of vaccination. Then in June mask mandates were lifted everywhere apart from healthcare settings and public transport. At the start of July, the government exempted hotels from providing special quarantine accommodation for tourists testing positive for the virus, who in any event are no longer required to adhere to the already short five-day isolation period.

The scientific veneer for the plan to redefine the way COVID deaths are recorded was provided by Gkikas Magiorkinis, an epidemiologist and medical doctor who sits on the public health board advising the government on COVID. In an August 9 Facebook post Magiorkinis downplayed the high number of deaths, stating that “more than 60 to 70 percent of the deaths are circumstantial”.

This unscientific distinction between deaths “with” and “from” COVID was refuted by Dr. Nikos Kapravelos, head of the ICU department at Papanikolaou hospital in Thessaloniki. In an interview with the Greek edition of CNN last week he said, “Those who die in our departments after two months when the virus is no longer there have been suffering from hospital infections, lung problems, a weak immune system and problems in many organs.” He emphasised, “If they hadn’t been infected by the coronavirus they wouldn’t have had these health problems.”

As to the ditching of the WHO definition this was a mistake because “people will no longer see the coronavirus as a threat, which means we will fuel those who say that the virus is bogus and just like the flu.”

In fact, this is precisely the government’s aim. In the second week of July, EODY moved to reporting coronavirus cases, hospitalisations and deaths on a weekly basis instead of daily.

EODY’s weekly report also no longer contains items previously reported, such as such as the rate of positive COVID-19 tests by region. This is an extremely valuable metric not least since the number of tests, and therefore recorded positive cases, has been steadily declining over recent weeks—enabling the government to falsely claim that the surge in cases has been receding.

The only source of testing data by region is the daily press release on the number of free rapid tests conducted by each mobile testing centre (KOMY) nationwide. Yet this is overwritten every day with no historic public record maintained.

This writer set up a programming script to harvest the historic data since August 1 in order to analyse any underlying trends. While the KOMY tests are only a small subset of the tests carried out, which places limits on the conclusions, it has nonetheless been possible to see striking regional variations on the spread of the virus at the height of the tourist season. 

For instance, while the rate of positive COVID tests conducted by KOMY centres has hovered around the 17 percent mark between August 1 and August 14, the islands of Skiathos and Tinos both consistently recorded strikingly higher rates over the same period. 

In the week beginning August 1, Skiathos recorded a 41 percent positivity rate, while the following week the rate was 39 percent. This indicates that the spread of the virus remains at a similarly high level despite the fact that, according to the latest official figures, new recorded cases on the island were a fifth lower compared to the week before. Skiathos is a major holiday destination known for its vibrant nightlife. According to the latest flight statistics from the island’s airport, total domestic and international flights at the end of July were four times greater than at the same time last year. 

In the case of Tinos, the positivity rate on the island increased from 33 percent to 36 percent over the same period. Significantly, recorded cases on the island shot up by nearly 13 percent week-on-week. This is most likely driven by the increased influx of people who make yearly pilgrimages to the “Our Lady of Tinos” Church during the run up to the August 15 Festival of the Assumption. Thousands attended this year, including prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

The data harvest also exposes the fact that Mykonos, Μilos and Santorini, all extremely popular tourist destinations, had no KOMY-run free testing facilities available for locals and tourist workers.

The last time the EODY reported on the positivity rate by region was in the July 6 daily report—one week before the switch to weekly reporting—when COVID rates for the three islands were 64.21 percent, 47.47 percent and 41.39 percent respectively. The figures underscore the criminality of the ND government which has refused access to free testing even in key tourist areas, lest its own metrics reveal high rates of infection which would cut across the commercial interests and profits of the tourist industry.

All political parties in Greece, including the pseudo-left, endorse the herd immunity agenda. No calls have been made either by Syriza, the Stalinist Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Antarsya or any other political tendency in support for an elimination strategy. Any criticisms they make centre solely on managing the pandemic and keeping infections and deaths at levels deemed palatable by the ruling elite. These forces prop up the government’s business-as-usual narrative by refusing to demand or implement, even at their own events, the most elementary safety protocols such as mask wearing.

Patients and staff at risk as UK National Health Service faces real-terms funding cuts

Rory Woods & Richard Tyler

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) has been plunged by the Conservative government into an unprecedented crisis, putting the health, safety and lives of patients at risk and exacerbating the already terrible situation facing staff.

A front-line nurse at Royal Bournemouth Hospital told the World Socialist Web Site, “Most days we are short of staff. Sometimes, even though we don’t have enough staff to care for patients in our own ward, we have to go and help on other wards. The Emergency Department is one of the places that’s been battered the most. Their admissions have surged, and they do not have enough nurses. I cannot remember a day when we worked with our full staff complement. This means patients’ treatment and care needs often go unmet.”

There are “dozens of COVID-19 patients in a number of wards and units across our trust. When we juggle for beds, it just spreads more. No proper prevention and control measures are in place. Moreover, without enough staff, it’s very difficult even to practice the limited measures we have. At one point last month, about 200 colleagues were absent due to COVID symptoms. Now it has gone down to 65, but some of my colleagues have been left suffering from Long COVID.” One of the hospital’s COVID wards was left in a “chaotic” state, they said, “This situation can cause serious harm to patients.”

National Health Service workers and air ambulance staff at a hospital in southern England, August 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

The same experience, or even worse, is repeated across the country. A damning report by the Parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee recently warned the staffing crisis in NHS England was posing a “serious risk to staff and patient safety.”

In England alone, there is a shortage of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives. The number of full-time equivalent GPs also fell by more than 700 over the three years to March 2022. Maternity services are “under unsustainable pressure,” with 552 midwives leaving the profession last year.

Ambulance services

Pressures on ambulance services are acute, with a doubling of calls since 2010 and nowhere near the necessary staff and resources in place. Last month, all ambulance trusts nationwide were placed on Black Alert—the highest escalation pressure level.

Response times for emergency 999 calls have surged, producing enormous suffering and debilitating consequences including deaths of patients.

The Independent online newspaper reported this month that police officers are being sent to answer medical emergencies. Andy Cooke, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary told the paper, “Recently, officers in armed response vehicles (ARVs) were being sent to reports of people who were having cardiac arrests because the ambulance service couldn’t cope with the demand, because they’re trained in first aid and to use defibrillators.”

According to a survey by the GMB union, 35 percent of ambulance workers have been involved in cases where a patient’s death was linked to delays in the service. The survey also found that 85 percent of ambulance workers had witnessed delays which seriously affected a patient’s recovery.

Over 80 percent of first responders felt the pressures caused them an unacceptable level of stress and 72 percent were considering leaving the service.

According to the GMB, the average response times for serious (Category 2) calls was 51 minutes in April 2022, compared to 20 minutes a year before. This means even patients with severe, time-critical cases, such as stroke and chest pain, must wait over half an hour longer than the NHS target of 18 minutes for any help to arrive. Some patients had to wait two hours.

Staff shortages in Emergency Departments, combined with a lack of beds, have seen queues of ambulances outside hospitals waiting to hand over their patients, further delaying treatment. The West Midlands Ambulance Service reported crews losing nearly 40,000 hours in June due to handover problems, with estimates for August approaching 50,000 hours.

The pandemic exacerbated a long-standing lack of resources, with the operational standard of treating, transferring, discharging or admitting 95 percent of Accident and Emergency (A&E) attendees within four hours not being met in England since 2015. Only 71 percent of patients in England were seen within four hours at A&Es last month. Some 29,317 people had to wait more than 12 hours in England, setting a new record.

NHS waiting lists

Although the numbers waiting more than two years have been reduced, thanks to a massive effort by NHS staff, there remain a staggering 6.73 million on waiting lists for elective surgeries and procedures—the figure growing by 100,000 in June alone. Of these, some 400,000 have been waiting for more than a year to have procedures for painful and debilitating, if not life-threatening, conditions.

While delays mean months of misery for millions, the owners of private hospitals have benefited handsomely. The NHS has referred thousands of patients’ operations to the private sector, while individuals have used life savings, taken out expensive loans or even resorted to crowd funding to pay for treatment.

Comparing the last three months of 2021 to the same period in 2019, before the pandemic hit, the largest increases in self-funding have been in Scotland (up 90 percent) and Wales (84 percent), whose devolved Scottish National Party and Labour Party governments have responsibility for health.

Cancer treatment

More than 10,000 cancer patients have been waiting three months for their treatments, a delay of at least a month against the target. Only 60 percent are starting treatment within 62-days of an urgent GP referral, well below the 85 percent target.

Professor Pat Price, an oncologist from Imperial College London, described the situation as “the worst cancer crisis of my lifetime.” She told BBC Radio 4, “There will be tens of thousands of cancer patients who die unnecessarily”.

NHS England would have to work at 110 percent capacity for over a year to catch up on these missing cancer treatments, according to cancer charity Macmillan.

Mental health

Tory-led governments have slashed more than 1,500 mental health beds since 2010. Combined with acute staff shortages, this has created a terrible situation for patients with mental health issues. Bed occupancy levels in mental health trusts are constantly running above 95 percent, when the safe level is 85 percent. Bed and staff shortages in a particular locality can mean people with severe mental health issues being admitted to special units several hundred miles from their homes, making visits from family members or friends impossible in many cases.

Those waiting to access community health services face massive delays. According to NHS England data, the number on the waiting list has risen to 1.2 million, up from 1.08 million at the end of 2021.

The fight for a fully funded health service

The NHS upon which millions of working people depend has been brought to the point of collapse by Tory government attacks over the last 12 years. These went ahead without the Labour Party lifting a finger in opposition.

The pandemic continues, piling more pressure on an already overburdened service. While the government refuses to implement any serious measures to suppress COVID-19, each successive wave infects millions, with large numbers hospitalised or left suffering for months, or even for life, with Long COVID. With the imminent return to schools and universities following the summer break and the onset of colder weather in autumn and winter, infections and the demands placed on the NHS will rise inexorably.

Vast sums of public money are being spent shipping tons of heavy arms to Ukraine as part of NATO’s proxy war against Russia, and on increased military spending overall. Right-wing commentators have rushed to declare the post-Cold War “peace dividend” over and put what is left of the NHS on the chopping block.

Already the NHS Confederation, which represents the various trusts, is warning that the health service faces a real-terms cut of between £4 billion and £9.4 billion this year. The NHS is being required to make “efficiency savings” of 2.2 percent, double the requirement of recent years.

The health service unions, representing well over a million workers, have overseen the degradation of their members’ pay and working conditions over more than a decade. Faced with a government-imposed 3 percent wage “increase”— more like a 10 percent cut, accounting for inflation—the unions are delaying ballots for industrial action until September or even later.

Sri Lankan government detains hundreds fleeing overseas amid economic crisis

Wasantha Ramanayake

Over 1,000 desperate people, mainly Tamils from the north and east of Sri Lanka, have been arrested this year trying to escape the food scarcity, starvation, and unemployment gripping the country, by emigrating.

Sri Lankan Tamils in Indian refugee camp (Image: Wikimedia EC/ECHO Arjun Claire)

In the latest incident, 10 people, including six women and children, were arrested on August 16 by the Sri Lankan navy in Talaimannar Sea off northern Sri Lanka. Many poor Sinhalese families have been arrested by the Sri Lankan and Australian navies while trying to get away from the worsening social conditions.

The number of migrants who travelled legally to seek employment abroad quadrupled during the first half of the year, with 32 Sri Lankans boarding a flight every hour, the Sunday Times recently reported.

The recent mass anti-government protests which forced former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse to flee the country were fueled by unbearable poverty and severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine and lengthy power cuts.

The social catastrophe, however, continues unabated with the year-on-year inflation rate reaching 60 percent in July and food inflation hitting 90 percent. The cost of food is so high that millions of Sri Lankans have had to drastically cut back their daily food intake.

Elevated into the presidency by the discredited parliament, Ranil Wickremesinghe is using state of emergency measures and the state apparatus to suppress mass demonstrations as he prepares to impose new International Monetary Fund (IMF) attacks on the masses.

Battered by Colombo’s almost three-decade communal war and the recent COVID-19 pandemic, Tamils in Sri Lanka’s north and east are among the most affected by the current economic crisis.

Quoting Sri Lankan authorities, the Sri Lankan media recently reported big increases in the number of people attempting to emigrate to Australia and India. Over 80 people fled to India during first four months of 2022, selling their possessions to pay for smugglers or rent boats.

“We were so desperate that we decided to go to Australia in a fishing trawler risking our lives because we can’t think how we could afford to buy food for our three children in this country,” said Malan (not his real name), a fisherman from the western coastal town of Chilaw.

“There’s no diesel or kerosene for fishing boats. We have no income. We could not afford higher prices we ever paid for fuel. Our lives had been devastated,” he said.

Malan, along with his wife and three children, were part of a group of 55 Sri Lankans arrested by the navy on May 20 in a fishing boat near Trincomalee on Sri Lanka’s east coast. They were attempting to sail to Australia.

“There were seven women and four children.  Only ten of us were Sinhalese and rest was Tamils,” Malan said.

While most of the passengers were fishermen, some were small shop owners who paid operators between 700,000 rupees ($US1,949) and 1,500,000 rupees ($US4,177) for the dangerous voyage. They raised the money by selling their property, taking out loans or pawning jewelry.

“Now we have lost everything. We have fallen from the frying pan into the fire. We have no money and we are heavily indebted,” Malan said, while explaining that their court cases would drag on for months.

“I have to spend more than 25,000 rupees for nearly for five of us for the court case in Trincomalee. The court case could be a torture for us, physically, mentally, and financially,” he said.

If convicted, those arrested could be given a harsh two-year prison sentence and fined. These returnees are also disqualified from applying in the future for Australian visas.

A 41-year-old Lankan woman who had fled with eight members of her family to Rameswaram, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, told Deutsche Welle (DW) that her husband could not find a job and could not afford the daily cost of food. She was worried about their plight because they are being held like virtual prisoners without any rights at the Mandapam Rehabilitation camp in Rameswaram which has been allocated for Sri Lankan refugees.

A 26-year-old a painter, who had come from Sri Lanka to India with his wife in March, echoed these concerns. “We could not do anything in Sri Lanka because of the economic crisis. If I had known that we would be held in a refugee camp like this, I would not have come at all,” he told DW.

He explained that they had been in the camp for a month, without any idea of what would happen to them. He wanted to find some work in order to provide for his family. “That is all we ask for,” he said.

According to DW, there were almost 59,000 Sri Lankan Tamils living in 108 refugee camps in Tamil Nadu, with over 34,000 refugees living outside these camps. Many of had fled the country since Colombo’s anti-Tamil war that started in 1983 and ended in 2009.

In 2012, the Tamil Nadu State government withdrew its political asylum for Sri Lankans and treated them as illegal migrants until March this year.

When local Tamil Nadu residents protested against the arrest of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers, the state government was forced to take the refugees directly to the poverty-stricken rehabilitation camps.

The hypocrisy of the Tamil Nadu chief minister’s “good-will” gesture towards these refugees is exposed by the fact that India has tightened coast guard patrols of the Palk Strait to prevent any more Sri Lankan refugees entering India.

Successive Australian governments vilified refugees arriving by boat and implemented draconian measures to prevent them from settling in Australia, including the use of the navy to turn back boats and indefinite imprisonment in offshore detention centres.

In 2012, Australia’s Labor government sent its then foreign minister Bob Carr to Sri Lanka to stop refugees fleeing from persecution, after the defeat of separatist Tamil Tigers in 2009.

The returnees were subjected to interrogation, torture, and disappearances at the hands of the police and the military. Australia’s involvement in these operations is a blatant breach of the International Refugee Convention, which recognises the right to flee persecution, and violation of the basic legal and democratic rights of Sri Lankan workers.

The Australian Border Force (ABF) recently handed over 46 “illegal” Sri Lankan migrants to authorities in Colombo. ABF regional director for South Asia Commander Chris Waters told the media in Colombo that Australian authorities had returned 183 Sri Lankans since last May. He stressed that the recently elected Labour government has not relaxed any of Australia’s repressive migration policies.

The ABF said it had returned 125 illegal Sri Lankan migrants and a boat crew to Sri Lanka between June 1 to 30, as part of Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders, a military-led border security initiative established in 2013.

To prevent any influx of Sri Lankan refugees fleeing the current economic crisis, Australia has provided Sri Lankan authorities with 4,200 GPS trackers to install on fishing vessels, the Guardian reported on June 22.

Behind the far-right book burning campaign in the US

Andy Hartmann & Chase Lawrence

Officials in Keller Independent School District (ISD), near Fort Worth, Texas, have directed school librarians and staff to temporarily remove books “challenged” this year. The list of 40 books includes the Bible and an illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary. 

In a recent statement, the district stated, “Right now, Keller ISD’s administration is asking our campus staff and librarians to review books that were challenged last year to determine if they meet the requirements of the new policy.” The statement was made after an email on the ban to principals was obtained by the Texas Tribune. 

An email was sent to district staff the day before schools reopened for the new school year calling for the removal of 40 titles from classrooms and library shelves until further review by the district. The email included an attached statement by Texas House of Representatives Chair Matt Krause from October 2021, announcing his plans to initiate an “inquiry” into the district on a 16-page list of books the legislature is calling to ban, centering on race, gender and homosexuality. 

This right-wing reactionary act of censorship has followed a long list of other such instances in Texas where books have been banned in recent years, with headlines coming out almost on a weekly basis on the most recent bans. One such instance was on January 28 when the right-wing Prosper Citizen Group (PCG) demanded that Prosper Independent School District, north of Dallas, ban more than 80 titles from its libraries, with 30 of them officially banned by March of this year.

A few of the books to be eliminated from Texas school libraries [Photo: WSWS]

Many of the challenged books in Prosper centered around sexuality and gender. Among the titles are The Music of What Happens, a Young Adult book about gay males, and The Magic Misfits, a children’s book series that includes a girl adopted by two dads.

Significantly, PCG is a political action committee originally established as one of the many far-right Republican-connected organizations, pretending to be “grassroots” groups formed by angry citizens, created to remove all mitigation measures against the spread of SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The first posts on its website railed against masking policies. 

Belying its supposed grassroots character, PCG’s campaign treasurer is James “Jim” Herblin, an accountant and Republican candidate for Texas House District 61. Herblin’s campaign site embraces the 2022 Texas Republican Party platform, which declared the Biden government illegitimate, affirming Trump’s big lie used to justify the January 6 coup.

Moms for Liberty is another far-right organization taking aim at public education. The organization with over 100,000 members across the US is one of the most outspoken conservative groups opposed to mask mandates, in addition to its right-wing censorship campaign to ban books used in classrooms or held in libraries, most recently in Florida.

Moms for Liberty also has ties with high-ranking Republican officials. Notably, the wife of Christian Ziegler, the Vice Chairman of the Florida Republican Party, is the co-director of the organization according to Media Matters. Ziegler, unsurprisingly, is an acolyte of fascistic Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, viewed as a potential Republican presidential candidate for 2024 and seeking to appeal to Trump’s fascist base.

Such right-wing groups have been given credibility by the Republicans and increasingly by Democrats and the trade unions. Notoriously, in September 2021, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten partnered with the far-right parents group Open Schools USA as part of her AFT town hall of death, which called for the removal of mitigation measures in schools as part of a program of reopening schools no matter the cost in lives.

A study released earlier this year by PEN America, a non-profit which describes itself as “a literary and free expression advocacy organization,” shed light on the extent and character of the recent book bannings. The PEN study, which took place from July 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022, documented 1,145 unique book titles banned, across 86 school districts in 26 states, and affecting over 2 million students.

Texas leads all other states in the number of bans with 713 instances of censorship. Pennsylvania had 456 bans and Florida 204. Those three states combined account for the majority of the bans. Other states with bans included Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana, Tennessee, Virginia, Missouri, Georgia, New York and Utah.

Most of the books banned center around race and gender as shown in the top six most banned, including Gender Queer: A Memoir, by Maia Kobabe; All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson; Lawn Boy, by Jonathan Evison; Out of Darkness, by Ashley Hope Perez; The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison; and Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin.

In Texas, fascistic Governor Greg Abbott instructed state agencies to develop standards to ban books with “overtly sexual” content from schools. The Republican-dominated state legislation passed HB 3979 in 2021, banning Critical Race Theory, queer studies and other perspectives based on identity politics. 

In March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB 1467 into law by, which allows banning of library books and instructional material. This has predictably emboldened the book burners in Florida. DeSantis also signed the notorious “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Former president Donald Trump has supported the banning of gender- and race-related books on numerous occasions as well. 

The Democratic Party contributes to the toxic politico-ideological environment that made the bannings possible, above all through its promotion of identity politics and its fervent opposition to class politics that would unite working people across lines of race, gender and sexual orientation.

US approves further attacks on Crimea, provides $775 million in weapons for Ukrainian offensive

Clara Weiss

Days after the latest major Ukrainian attack on a Russian military base on the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea, the US is seeking to further escalate the war with Russia by providing $775 million in weapons and ammunition for Ukraine’s offensive.

Speaking with POLITICO earlier this week, a senior Biden Administration openly endorsed the strikes and encouraged further attacks on Crimea. The peninsula was annexed by Russia in March 2014, following a US-orchestrated coup in Kiev that ousted a pro-Russian government. The official stated that the US supports strikes by Kiev on Crimea and reiterated that the US considered Crimea part of Ukraine.

So far, two major attacks have taken place on Russian military bases on Crimea, on August 9 and August 16. The first attack on the Saki airbase caused the biggest loss of Russian aviation in a single day since World War II, destroying at least seven fighter jets, each worth over $24 million. A Western official told POLITICO on Friday that “more than half” of Russia’s Black Sea fighting aviation fleet had been destroyed in the assault. A Ukrainian official claimed last week that 60 people had been killed and 100 wounded in the attack. 

The second attack on Tuesday caused an hour-long fire at a major ammunition depot and damaged railroads critical for the supply of Russian troops fighting in Eastern and southern Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the strikes on the ammunition depots, in particular, had had a visible effect on the course of the war in East and southern Ukraine. Both attacks damaged a total of at least 130 residential buildings and led to the evacuation of a total of over 3,250 of civilians.

Another series of explosions were reported in the night to Friday, including again on Crimea as well as at an ammunition depot in the Russian Belgorod region, where two villages had to be evacuated. Russian officials also reported that drones were destroyed by Russian air defense systems and a military warship in Crimea in the area of Sevastopol Bay, which is home to the naval base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

While Russia has so far been markedly restrained in its response to the enormously provocative strikes by Ukraine, Russian officials have repeatedly threatened that they would retaliate in response to strikes on Crimea, including potentially by using nuclear weapons.  

It has become increasingly clear that the attacks on Russian military bases in Crimea are part of a beginning counter-offensive by the Ukrainian military that has been prepared and funded through massive weapons deliveries by the NATO powers, first and foremost by the United States. 

In recent weeks, in addition to the attacks on the military bases in the Black Sea, Ukrainian forces have used the US-supplied long-range HIMARS rocket systems to disrupt Russian supply routes across the Dnepro and Inhulets rivers by attacking Russian-held bridges. Ukrainian troops have now also amassed near Kherson for an attempt to retake the strategic port city in southern Ukraine, which was the first major city to be taken by Russian forces after the February 24 invasion. 

On Friday, the Pentagon announced another $775 million in weapons and ammunitions supplies to facilitate the beginning Ukrainian offensive. This brings the total of direct military aid by the Pentagon to Ukraine since February 24 to $10 billion, an amount that does not include the $40 billion aid package passed by Congress in May.

According to POLITICO, the US will now for the first time be sending 15 ScanEagle surveillance drones “to help the Ukrainians spot and correct the precision artillery and rocket strikes that have taken a toll on Russian forces in recent weeks. The small drones can be moved around the battlefield relatively easily and would be invaluable in the expected push to retake the city of Kherson in the south.” 

The deliveries will also include 40 heavily armored MaxxPro mine-resistant vehicles, which were originally developed for the US occupation forces in Iraq. In addition, the Pentagon will provide fighter-launched High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles that have targeted Russian radar systems, as well as TOW guided anti-tank missile systems, sixteen 105mm howitzers and 36,000 rounds, and 2,000 rounds for the Carl Gustav recoilless rifle. POLITICO explained that the Carl Gustav is a “small anti-armor weapon used by U.S. special operations forces…which can be carried easily and is designed to work in close quarters with an enemy, is an indication that the Ukrainians expect close-in fighting in the coming weeks.”

A source told POLITICO that the US is planning to send Excalibur precision-guided artillery munitions in another tranche in the near future. 

The deliberate escalation of the war with Russia by the imperialist powers comes even as tens of thousands of soldiers are believed to have died on both sides; over a quarter of the country’s pre-war population of under 40 million has been forced to flee; and over 5,300 civilians have been killed. There are also significant concerns that fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, could lead to a nuclear disaster. After weeks in which Ukraine and Russia traded accusations of shelling the plant, Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed on Friday to arrange a mission by officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the plant in the coming days.

The developments of the past two weeks have shown beyond any doubt the true character of this war: the imperialist wars are waging a war against Russia, using Ukrainian territory as the staging ground, its troops as their proxy and the civilian population as their hostage. The Russian invasion was provoked to provide a pretext for the implementation of war plans that had long been in the making. It is now used to further a massive escalation of the rearmament of all the imperialist powers who are positioning themselves for a new imperialist redivision of the world.

While Ukraine is currently the main battlefield of the war, NATO has aggressively pushed to broaden its frontiers. Particularly dangerous are the explosive tensions around the Suwałki gap, a less than 100-kilometers-long stretch of land, which passes along the borders of NATO member states Poland and Lithuania and connects Belarus, a Kremlin ally, with Kaliningrad, an enclave on the Baltic Sea that forms part of the Russian Federation. 

Close-up of the Suwałki gap. Jakub Łuczak, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

In June, Lithuania deliberately sought to provoke a clash with Russia by blocking the transport of Russian goods from Belarus over the Suwałki gap to Kaliningrad. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Lithuanian helicopters are now accompanying many Russian freight trains crossing the Suwałki gap to Kaliningrad.

This week, the far-right Polish government of the Law and Justice Party, which has delivered more weapons to Ukraine than any country apart from the US and the UK, announced that it is planning to close its part of the Suwałki gap. Both Poland and Lithuania announced this week that they will cease to issue passports to Russian citizens (with the sole exception of diplomats). The moves have prompted angry comments in the Russian press, suggesting that the main goal of the new visa restrictions is to prevent Russian citizens from entering Kaliningrad through Suwałki gap. Some commentators are insisting that Russia had to assert its “right to the Suwałki gap.”

In an indication that the Kremlin is preparing for a potential broadening of the conflict with NATO, Russia has reportedly increased its troops deployments and missiles in Belarus. On Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that it had sent three MiG-31E warplanes equipped with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles to Kaliningrad.

Australian establishment in cover up mode over former PM’s secret ministerial positions

Oscar Grenfell

In the days since it was revealed that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison secretly appointed himself to five key ministerial portfolios in 2020 and 2021, the Australian political and media establishment has desperately sought to cover up the political significance of the measures, which amounted to nothing less than the preparations for a prime ministerial dictatorship.

Governor-General Hurley with then Prime Minister Scott Morrison, 10 April 2021 (Image: Facebook / Governor-General of Australia)

The official press is almost universally presenting the ministerial scandal as an expression of the personal proclivities and psychology of Morrison as an individual. His ministerial self-appointments are being depicted as an unnecessary excess.

Morrison himself defiantly posted Facebook memes late last week, trying to make a joke out of the affair. Senior Labor politicians have trotted out glib one-liners about Morrison and his government being “incompetent” and “unable to do their job.”

The aim is to bury any discussion of the relationship between the ministerial appointments and a broader turn to authoritarian measures by the entire political establishment during the pandemic. This included the bipartisan proclamation of an extra-constitutional “National Cabinet,” in March 2020, to manage the pandemic response in secrecy and by decree.

Equally obscured is the connection between this dictatorial turn and the policies pursued by all of the country’s governments, Liberal-National and Labor alike, which are all part of the “National Cabinet.”

The anti-democratic forms went hand in hand with the pandemic response, based on bailing out the major banks and corporations, inflicting sweeping attacks on the jobs, conditions and social rights of the working class, and undermining public health at every turn, to ensure full profit-making activities continued.

The positions to which Morrison appointed himself comprised the key levers of state power. In March 2020, Morrison was made a second health and finance minister. This was when the federal government, and the state administrations were preoccupied with stymieing public health measures that would impact on profit, and ensuring the fortunes of the corporations and the ultra-wealthy, amid a major financial crisis.

Morrison assumed the sweeping powers under conditions of major fears within the ruling elite of a social explosion, triggered by mass queues at unemployment offices and anger over official policies allowing the spread of the virus. As Morrison stated last week: “The prospect of civil disruption, extensive fatalities and economic collapse was real.”

The WSWS warned at the time that the anti-democratic measures used at the outset of the pandemic, provided a precedent for further attacks on civil liberties. In April 2021, Morrison appointed himself minister over the super-portfolio of industry, science, energy and resources. In May that year, he became a secret head of the Home Affairs ministry. Modelled on the US Department of Homeland and Security, it controls all the country’s federal intelligence and policing agencies. The same month, Morrison became a secret Treasurer, jointly controlling all government spending.

A key component of the official cover-up is the assertion that Morrison acted alone, or close to it. Liberal MPs, who have never opposed a single attack on democratic rights, have claimed they were kept in the dark over the ministerial appointments.

But information continues to drip out, indicating that Morrison’s appointments were a political conspiracy inevitably involving a wide array of co-conspirators.

The two senior Liberal MPs who are acknowledged to have known of the appointments from the outset, then Attorney-General Christian Porter and Health Minister Greg Hunt, facilitated them without objection.

Last week, former National Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce admitted being aware in 2021 of Morrison’s assumption of the resources portfolio. National Party MP and the then resources minister Keith Pitt admitted that Morrison had told him that he would take joint charge of the portfolio. Pitt said that either he or Morrison informed Michael McCormack, who was National Party leader in early 2021.

Governor-General David Hurley signed off on all the ministerial appointments. Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, together with every senior political figure in the country, has rushed to defend Hurley, insisting that he was little more than an innocent bystander. Hurley claimed he was unaware Morrison would keep the appointments a secret, despite no announcements ever being made.

The clear aim is to protect the governor-generalship, a linchpin position in the capitalist state, which, under the anti-democratic 1901 Constitution is the representative of the British Queen, as Australia’s head of state. The governor-general wields vast powers, including to dismiss governments, as occurred in the 1975 Canberra Coup.

The cover-up of Hurley’s role was undermined by an Australian Broadcasting Corporation report this morning, noting that the governor-general maintains a public diary online. It includes Hurley’s meetings with government ministers, including phone calls and private discussions.

Ministerial appointments are listed for 2020 and 2021 but Morrison’s accession to the five ministries is not mentioned anywhere. Those appointments are similarly covered up in the past two annual reports of the Office of the Official Secretary to the Governor-General, a supposedly independent government body, despite all other ministerial appointments being listed.

This morning, the Australian and the Saturday Paper both revealed that Morrison’s assumption of the health portfolio was reported, at the time, to the national security committee of cabinet. That committee includes the government’s top cabinet ministers, as well as the military and intelligence chiefs, blowing out of the water their claims of being kept in the dark.

The Murdoch media itself knew of Morrison’s appointments all along, but kept them secret from the public until now. Morrison contemporaneously informed Australian political journalists Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers as they worked on the just-released book, entitled Plagued.

In other words, Morrison’s moves, which amounted to a creeping internal coup, were an open secret throughout the political and media establishment.

Obvious questions arise. What discussions were held about Morrison’s appointments with the British monarchy and the American intelligence agencies, both of which play the most active role in Australian politics? What was the role of Australian state and government agencies?

How is it that National Party leaders were aware of at least one of the appointments, but current Liberal Party leader and then Defence Minister Peter Dutton supposedly was not? If the appointments were being widely discussed in political and journalistic circles, how could Albanese and other Labor Party leaders not be aware?

All these issues are being buried, as are the broader political issues raised by the affair. A column this morning by the Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly absurdly attributed these developments to an “ego trip” by Morrison as an individual, which had “undermined democratic principle, public trust and cabinet government.”

Kelly continued: “Morrison engaged in an unprecedented, secret and unacceptable use of prime ministerial power that must not be repeated but an activity where no harm was done to any member of the public.”

Whom does Kelly think he is kidding? Morrison, with the backing of sections of the government and the state apparatus, secretly assumed vast powers, laying the groundwork for dictatorial and emergency forms of rule. The extent to which these powers were used remains unknown, with the only evidence currently in the public arena consisting of Morrison’s self-serving assertion that he used them once as resources minister.

While Morrison was secretly the finance minister, the government engineered one of the largest transfers of wealth to the corporate and financial elite in history. The health portfolio, which he also controlled, was a key lever, together with the bipartisan National Cabinet, in the rejection of a COVID elimination strategy and, in December 2021, the open adoption of “let it rip” policies that have claimed more than 11,000 lives this year and caused some nine million infections.

The fear of mass social opposition, which underlay Morrison’s ministerial grab and the formation of the National Cabinet, is also the driving force behind the current coverup and the spate of articles, such as Kelly’s, downplaying what has occurred. In today’s column, Kelly accused Albanese of “political overkill” and warned that if he released the documents by which the governor-general installed Morrison into the five ministries, “this saga will likely take another, damaging twist.”

There is real concern in the ruling class that any further exposure of the inner workings of the capitalist state apparatus, behind the fig leaf of parliamentary rule, will deepen the public disaffection and hostility shown in the May federal election, when the combined vote for the two main parties of capitalist rule—Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition—fell to an historic low.