UK: Money for the rich, money for war, but none for education

Margot Miller

As the academic year in the UK begins, schools face an existential funding crisis in funding. School leaders already struggling to balance budgets warn of cuts to the curriculum, staff redundancies and increased class sizes.

According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, spending per pupil in 2024-25 is expected to be 3 percent lower on average than in 2010. The situation is even worse in post-16 education, with college funding per pupil in 2024-25 at 10 percent below 2010-11 levels, while sixth form funding per pupil will be 23 percent lower.

Alex Dickerson the reception class teacher, (left) leads the class at the Holy Family Catholic Primary School in Greenwich, London, Monday, May 24, 2021. [AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

The funding crisis is exacerbated by inflationary pressures triggered by the government’s response to the pandemic, and the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine—in which Britain is playing a major role and financing to the tune of billions of pounds.

Rising energy bills and the recent below-inflation 5 percent pay award for teachers, to be financed out of existing school budgets, mean that schools must lay off staff to make savings. There is already a chronic staff shortage due to excessive work overload and poor pay.

Richard Sheriff is the chief executive officer of the Red Kite Learning Trust of 13 schools in North and West Yorkshire. He told the Guardian. “In over 20 years leading schools, I have never before been faced with such a shock to our budgets. We are in the desperate position of having to look at cutting everything from school trips to teaching resources.”

At Passmores Cooperative Learning Community, a trust comprising four schools in Essex, music could be cut from the curriculum, and the price of school meals increased.

A rising number of children arrive at school hungry and cold. According to the Child Poverty Action, 800,000 children who live in poverty do not qualify for free school meals.

Sean Maher, headteacher at Richard Challoner school in Kingston, said, “I’ve been on various WhatsApp groups, and the consensus is there’s no school in the country that’s going to be able to afford these pay rises that have been passed on unfunded.”

Schools have been given a six months energy bills reprieve with the Energy Relief Scheme but still face huge bills immediately after. Bryn Thomas, the head of Wolverley CE Secondary School, told the BBC that without additional funding the school would be forced to operate at a loss after its fixed deal on energy ended in April. “If we’re not protected we’re looking at a trebling of that £125,000 bill, which will mean another £250,000 will come out of the £900,000 that we have to run our school.”

In desperation, school leaders are appealing to parents and parent/teacher associations (PTAs) for donations to plug the gap, further widening the quality of education offered to children in deprived areas compared to rich. For example, a small number of PTAs can raise at least £100,000 a year, while the average raised is £9,000.

A finance director at a small trust (group of schools) said, “I’m going to the PTA AGM in a couple of weeks’ time… Not for specific projects … just so that we can keep our core services going.” The trust sent a letter to parents asking for a £15-a-month donation.

PTA fundraising, however, has been badly hit by the pandemic. In 2021, PTAs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were only able to raise a total of £60.8 million, half their usual amount.

The plain fact is that voluntary contributions get nowhere close to bridging the growing deficit.

The Department for Education has forbidden schools restricting their hours to cope with the funding crisis with the usual hypocritical concerns about “children’s education, development, and wellbeing.” The real concern is that nothing must come in the way of the accumulation of profits, which is why the government reopened schools before the pandemic was suppressed—so parents are free to go to work.

A picket line of teaching staff at Swinton Co-op Academy in Salford, England in October 2021, where teachers were fighting excessive working hours, shorter lunchtimes, and practices changed in school without consultation [Photo: WSWS]

On September 23, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng introduced a mini-budget, saying, “For too long in this country, we have indulged in a fight over redistribution. Now, we need to focus on growth, not just how we tax and spend.”

The budget measures to be financed by government borrowing in fact represent an unprecedented redistribution of wealth to the corporations and the richest in society. According to the Resolution Foundation, someone on an annual income of £1 million will be £55,220 better off, while a worker on £20,000 will gain £157, an amount soon to be eaten up by rising inflation.

The budget follows the pandemic bailout in March 2020 in which the corporations received hundreds of billions. Government largesse, fully backed by the Labour Party opposition, knows no limits when it comes to handouts to the big business. The recent subvention to the energy companies, coupled with prime minister Liz Truss’s commitment to spend £157 billion more on the military by 2030, is ballooning government debt.

This will be paid for by increasing the exploitation of the working class and starving essential public services, including education, of funding.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, schools, health and public services suffered massive austerity cuts to pay for the government’s bank bailout. The pandemic revealed the resulting parlous state of essential public services, which will be further eviscerated.

Apart from the decrease in national insurance contributions, which benefits top earners the most anyway, the budget offered not a penny extra to address the education funding crisis.

The education unions continue to confine their response to cuts in education to futile appeals to the government. Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, pleaded that the situation “is really a matter for the government to address–something which it needs to do with a sense of urgency.”

The unions’ aim is to suppress a mass mobilization of their members. They responded to the budget with criticism in words only. ASCL leader Barton said schools faced “huge extra costs” from national pay awards “for which there is no additional funding, and energy bills, which the government’s support scheme only partially addresses”.

Dr. Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said the government was “electing to starve public services of investment and cut public sector pay whilst wasting billions on tax cuts for the wealthy and lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses… These measures will not provide the economic growth we need, and it is simply unjustified to claim that real-terms pay cuts for public sector workers are needed to keep inflation down.” 

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT union, called proposed legislation to outlaw strikes “needless and unnecessary… Trade unions are already subject to stringent laws. Government should be focused on resolving the issues that cause dissatisfaction amongst workers rather than removing their ability to object.”

Victory in Cuba – New Family Code Affirms Equality within Family Life

W.T. Whitney Jr.

Image by Juan Luis Ozaez.

The Cuban people, voting in a national plebiscite on September 25, approved a new Family Code. According to the National Electoral Council, preliminary results showed that of almost six million Cubans casting a valid ballot, 66.9% voted Yes; 33.1% voted No. The new Code was left-over business from a new Cuban Constitution approved on April 10, 2019.

The Code promises all Cubans protection of democratic and legal rights, old and new, within the context of family life. It’s a revision of the Family Code contained in Cuba’s Constitution of 1976. The impulse for a new one stemmed from recognition since then, worldwide and in Cuba, that notions of sexual diversity and gender equality are expanding.

The opportunity came in 2018. A Constituent Assembly that year undertook extensive alterations of the 1976 Constitution. In the process – It became really a new Constitution – opposition cropped up in the Assembly and in public consultations to provisions in the proposed Family Code, specifically authorization of same-sex marriages and allowance for gay people to adopt children.

The Assembly determined that the process “should be pursued in more depth.” The new Constitution ended up with a provision for creating a new Family Code later on and approving it by “attending to the results of a plebiscite” taking place in two years. The Covid-19 pandemic caused delay of the plebiscite until now.

The resulting Family Code would protect the right of same- sex marriage and the right of same-sex parents to adopt children. The first article under the title “Marriage” in the final document – there are 301 articles under that heading – states that, “Marriage is the voluntary union agreed to by two legally competent persons with the purpose of living life in common …” Similarly, provisions relating to adoptive parenting refer exclusively to “persons.” The message is that marriage does not have to require a man and woman.

The government carried out vigorous publicity efforts on behalf of the new Code. In nationally televised remarks to the country on September 22, President Miguel Díaz-Canel called upon Cubans “to participate in an action of enormous responsibility.” Catholic clergy and evangelical churches mounted opposition campaigns. The anti-government Havana Times noted that, up against distress in Cuba and sharply increased migration, the Code was just “Bla, Bla, Bla.”

The view here is that the new Code epitomizes Cuba’s zeal, revolutionary in nature, to assure that family life in Cuba is characterized by equality, democratic rights, and protection. The reach of the Code is vast. It extends to all aspects of family life and establishes principles and values fit for guiding citizens in their conduct of family relationships and the state in prescribing for family life.

The Code presented on September 25 was a 63-page document that, on line, displays 11 “titles” representing major categories, dozens of chapters, hundreds of articles, and 2283 paragraphs. Subjects that are covered, all pertaining to family life, include: protection of the rights of children, women, elderly people, persons with disabilities, and members of the LBGTQ communities; arrangement for the handling of property and money; duties and responsibilities, adoption of children and custody arrangements; the special needs and rights of elders and persons with disabilities, and, lastly, aspects of marriage and of parenting and becoming a parent.

The Family Code begins by outlining purposes. Among them are these:*

“To strengthen family members’ mutual responsibilities to assure the emotional and economic well-being of vulnerable family members, and their education and training.

*To establish love, affection, solidarity and responsibility as among the highest of family values.

*To enhance gender equality within the family and strengthen shared responsibly for domestic work and childcare.

*To broaden the range of economic activities within marriage to allow for autonomy of spouses in making decisions favorable to their interests.

*To recognize the right of grandparents, other relatives, and others involved with the children to experience harmonious communications among all family members.”

*To recognize the self-determination, preferences, and equal opportunity for older adults and handicapped persons within the family.

*To respect the right of families to lives that are free of violence and the necessity for preventative measures.”

A statement of principles appears at the beginning of the document: “Relationships that develop in the family setting are based on dignity as the most important value and are governed by the following principals, among them – equality and non-discrimination, plurality, individual and shared responsibility, solidarity, the seeking of happiness …respect, the greater interest of children and adolescents, respect for the desires and preferences of older adults and people with disabilities …”

The far-ranging collection of standards and precepts the new Code lays for family relationships look to be essential in fulfilling long-established principles of democracy and equality and new expectations for a just society. The promise offered is real equality between men and women, women’s empowerment, and support for gender diversity.

It’s equally important to emphasize the extraordinary process undertaken to develop the new Family Code. The people responsible for creating it and securing approval did so in ways that made the Code comprehensive and assured the Cuban people’s participation in the process. On display was the Cuban government’s serious purpose, dedication, competence, and inclination to democracy.

Here is the story of what happened after approval by referendum of that new Cuban Constitution in early 2019. As outlined above, the Constitution provided for the development of a new Family Code over the course of two years. The Ministry of Justice on July 16, 2019 announced the existence of an ad hoc working group that would begin the task. Joining the working group were judiciary, health, and foreign-relations officials, United Nations experts, representatives of the Federation of Cuban Women, the National Center of Sex Education, statisticians, and academicians from the University of Havana.

The working group elaborated one version of a proposed Family Code after another, and finally determined upon version 20. The Council of State on March 22, 2021 announced the creation of an editing commission to be made up of deputies to the National Assembly and representatives of institutions and people’s organizations. On completion of its work, version 22 of the proposed Code appeared on the Ministry of Justice’s web page on September 15, 2021. Expert consultations followed, taking place between September 25 and October 15 and involving representatives of 47 institutions, agencies, and organizations. Changes were made.

The National Assembly initiated discussion of version 23 of the Code on December 21, 2021. Once again provisions were altered and new ones added. The Assembly approved version 24 of the Code and submitted it to a popular consultation that took place between February 1 and April 20 of 2022.

More than six million Cubans participated in the exercise. As a result, 49 % of the proposed Code’s content was changed. In the end, 62 % of Cubans who participated expressed approval of the Code. Finally, version 25 of the Family Code moved on to the National Assembly and its approval came on July 22. The proposal now qualified for the September 25 plebiscite.

The process gave evidence of consistency of purpose, attention to detail, search for perfection, and commitment to the Code’s objectives. Cuba’s revolutionary underpinnings showed as, evidently, ideas of equal rights, fairness, and safety for all Cubans, no one excluded, had not lost their appeal.

The upshot is that Cuba’s socialist government earned even more admiration as it pursued a project difficult to begin with while simultaneously having to cope with a crisis of survival. The latter stems mostly from the U.S. economic blockade that has lasted for over 60 years. Cubans look like they arrange their affairs with a seriousness entirely lacking in the capitalist United States. There, things are left to chance as wheelers and dealers advance their interests, divisions are cemented, and dark forces have a field day.

Chancellor Scholz’s Gulf trip exposes German government human rights propaganda

Johannes Stern

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s trip to the Gulf states last weekend and his handshake with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have exposed once and for all the German government’s human rights platitudes as pure imperialist propaganda.

Handshake between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah on Sept. 24 (Saudi Press Agency via AP)

Leading government politicians and the media routinely call Russian President Vladimir Putin a “murderer” and accuse Russia of “genocide” in Ukraine to justify NATO’s war against Moscow. If these labels currently apply to states and their political leaders, they certainly apply to the Gulf monarchies.

Prince Salman himself was directly involved in the bestial murder of Saudi journalist and regime opponent Jamal Khashoggi. On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to pick up documents for his upcoming wedding. He never reappeared.

The ordeal the journalist endured before his death can only be imagined. A few days after Khashoggi’s disappearance, the Turkish government said it had audio and video recordings proving Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. It said the audio recordings showed Khashoggi being “interrogated, tortured and then killed.” The journalist had been “dismembered” alive and the body “then dissolved in acid.”

The imperialist powers, whose representatives are now making pilgrimages to Riyadh by the dozen following a brief period in which they kept their distance, are just as aware of the shocking event as they are of the fact that Khashoggi’s murderers came from Prince Salman’s immediate circle. In February 2021, the US government released a report stating that the crown prince had personally “approved” the murder.

Immediately after the report was published, Omid Nouripour, then foreign policy spokesman and now co-chairman of the Green Party, had demanded, “Germany must make it clear to the House of Saud that no normal relations with it are possible as long as a murderer who has his critics dismembered is crown prince of the country.”

Now all that is forgotten. Social Democrat Scholz made it clear on the ground that relations with Saudi Arabia are not only now “normal” for the ruling class, but absolutely essential. “We have long-standing economic and political relations with Saudi Arabia.” He said it was “therefore right and important that we continue to talk here and at the other stops on my trip about the development of the region, about the possibilities of economic relations, but also about the political challenges we face.”

By “political challenges,” Scholz means above all the intensification of NATO’s war offensive against Russia. He said he “made it very clear that it is important for us to support Ukraine in defending its own integrity and sovereignty, that we will continue to do so, and that Russia must withdraw its troops.” The NATO powers—led by Washington and Berlin—initially provoked Putin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine. Now they are escalating the war ever further—with the aim of defeating Russia militarily and exploiting the resource-rich country.

Until that happens, the ruling powers are forced to secure new sources of raw materials because of the severed energy ties with Russia. The Gulf states, which have enormous oil and gas reserves, play an important role in the calculations. “There is a great deal of investment to be made here,” Scholz explained. “It’s also about German companies playing a big role, for example, in the further development of the local economy, the use of oil and gas resources and developments in terms of hydrogen.”

The human rights crimes of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies will not be allowed to stand in the way of these plans. When Scholz was asked at a press conference in Jeddah whether he had “addressed the crown prince about his responsibility for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” he replied with his characteristic cynicism, “We have discussed all issues that revolve around questions of civil and human rights. That’s the way it should be. You can assume that nothing has been left undiscussed that needs to be said.”

If Scholz had indeed discussed all “issues of civil and human rights,” he certainly would not be back in Berlin yet. The Saudi regime’s human rights crimes alone are so extensive that it would take several days to list them. Every year, there are scores of “Khashoggis” who fall victim to the regime’s terror.

On March 12, 2022, 81 prisoners were executed in a single day. Most of them had done nothing but take to the streets against the ultra-reactionary dictatorship. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, 41 of the victims took part in the mass protests against the Saudi monarchy in 2011/12. Also, the mass execution included seven Yemeni nationals accused of supporting the Houthi rebels in Yemen, whom Saudi Arabia is brutally fighting.

If any conflict currently has a genocidal character, it is the Saudi regime’s actions in Yemen. The exact number of people killed by the systematic bombing and starvation of the impoverished country is unknown, but it numbers in the hundreds of thousands. A report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimated that as early as November 2021 the death toll stood at 377,000.

UNDP estimates that among the victims are more than 260,000 children under the age of five. They died largely from starvation and disease as a result of the Saudi blockade, which was supported by the US and the United Arab Emirates—which Scholz also honoured with a visit. The report also projects that the death toll will rise to 1.3 million by 2030. At the same time, the number of Yemenis living in extreme poverty is expected to rise to 22 million by 2030.

The German government has an accurate picture of the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia. The country is “among the countries that carry out the most death sentences worldwide,” according to a November 2020 statement by the Human Rights Committee “on the situation of human rights in Saudi Arabia,” which said the number of people killed has “increased significantly” since 2014. And further:

At least 186 people were executed in 2019. Under current and strictly applied conversion laws, changing faith and so-called apostasy can be punished by death. Children also fall under this legislation. Despite the announcement of reforms, including the abolition of the death penalty for minors at the time of the crime, executions continue to be carried out here. Alleged confessions for crimes not committed are still regularly coerced under torture. Prison conditions in Saudi prisons violate human rights standards.

The report paints a picture of medieval despotism. Human rights and civil liberties activists are being “brutally cracked down on” and the “human right to freedom of religion or belief ... is so severely restricted that it is in fact nonexistent.” Also, “other minority rights” are “massively restricted to nonexistent, including rights of sexual minorities (LGBTI persons).” In particular, “women’s rights” are also “massively suppressed” and activists are “imprisoned, mistreated and tortured because of their commitment to women’s rights.”

In Qatar, where Scholz began his trip and where the next World Cup will be held from November to December, the situation is no better. In the 10 years since the World Cup was awarded to the emirate, 15,000 construction workers have died there building stadiums and venues, according to Amnesty International. Although the 2 million migrant workers from India, Bangladesh and other Central Asian countries are exploited at starvation wages, Scholz claimed in Doha that the “legal situation of guest workers” had “improved.”

US military buildup against Russia escalates Turkey-Greece tensions

Ozan Özgür

US plans to deploy naval forces to Alexandroupoli, which serves as an important transshipment center in the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, are further escalating tensions between Greece and Turkey.

A Greek F16 fighter jet performs during an airshow at Tanagra air base, north of Athens, Sunday, September 18, 2022. [AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis]

Last week, the Greek daily Kathimerini reported that the “US Navy is interested in Alexandroupoli port,” adding, “Senior US military officials have proposed further deepening and expanding the port with a view to hosting and supplying US Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.”

These destroyers “carry guided missiles and have expanded electronic warfare capabilities.” The US deployment of these ships in the Northern Aegean Sea would be an important step to encircle Russia and increase US-NATO combat power in the region.

These plans and Greece’s ongoing aerial rearmament is creating fear in Ankara. Greece received its first two F-16 military jets from the United States last week, as part of a $1.5 billion program to modernize its fighter fleet. There are growing concerns in Ankara that Greece could have a stronger air force than Turkey in the next decade.

This military build-up on the Balkans is part of NATO's relentless eastward expansion and its militarization of Eastern Europe since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The additional protocol to the Mutual Defense and Cooperation Agreement signed between the US and Greece in 2019 included the modernization of the Suda Military Base on the Greek island of Crete, the renovation of Larissa Airport, the military strengthening of the Stefanovikeio Air Base between Volos and Larissa, and the expansion and modernization of the Alexandroupoli Port. These steps, constituting the Greek leg of the US-NATO war preparations against Russia, have largely been realized.

In addition, the US signed military cooperation agreements with Romania and Bulgaria, both of which became NATO members in 2004. US troops were deployed in military bases there which opened in the early 2000s.

These bases are of strategic importance in the US-NATO war against Russia, to arm Ukrainian forces with NATO weapons. Turkey’s decision to close the Turkish straits between the Aegean and Black Seas to all warships immediately after the war in Ukraine began, in line with the Montreux Convention, further increased the importance of the port of Alexandroupoli. Kathimerini reported: “Thousands of soldiers, tanks, helicopters and other supplies for US and other NATO forces have been quickly and effectively deployed to Eastern Europe.”

At this point, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's raised objections to the growing US military presence in Greece, in particular the Alexandroupoli base, near the Turkish border.

In May, Erdoğan charged that the nine military bases built by Washington in Greece were aimed at Turkey: “Look, Greece currently owes €400 billion to Europe. There are nine American bases in Greece right now. So against whom are these bases being established, why are these bases there? This is what they say: ‘Against Russia...’ This is a lie. ... They are not honest. Their attitude towards Turkey in the face of all this is obvious.”

Moreover, Turkish officials made bellicose statements questioning Athens’ sovereignty over the islands and making open threats on the grounds that Greece had illegally armed them. On Sunday, Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency reported: “Video footage [taken by Turkish army] showed that the landing ships carried military vehicles donated by the US to the islands of Midilli (Lesvos) and Sisam (Samos).”

Moreover, Ankara accused Athens of getting a radar lock on Turkish warplanes on NATO missions with S-300 missiles in late August and early September. In early September, Greek coast guards fired warning shots at a merchant ship in the Aegean Sea.

Ankara, which has strong energy, trade and military ties with Moscow, is concerned that the US-NATO war against Russia could harm the interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie. Turkey’s approach towards Russia is different from other NATO member states. Ankara has tried to act as a mediator, organizing a “grain corridor” from Ukraine under UN auspices or the recent “prisoner exchange” between Ukraine and Russia. While the NATO imperialist powers prepare for nuclear war with Russia, Erdoğan is calling for a “negotiated settlement.”

While Ankara continues to sell armed drones to Ukraine and opposes Russia’s annexation of Crimea, it is also strengthening its economic and political ties with Moscow and does not participate in the US-led sanctions against Russia. In fact, it has recently faced accusations of violating sanctions through banks and some ports in Turkey.

In the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, in NATO wars in Syria and Libya, Turkey has sought a deal with Russia rather than with its NATO allies. The Erdoğan government is trying to maneuver between its NATO allies and their major targets, i.e. Russia and China. The tensions caused by this policy, which feeds the drive by NATO powers such as the United States and France to strengthen military ties with Greece in Eastern Europe, already erupted once, in 2016, in a failed coup attempt against Erdoğan.

Erdoğan’s visit to Uzbekistan for the 22nd summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), after which he declared his goal of joining the organization, has further angered his allies in NATO capitals.

Erdoğan spoke to the PBS channel in New York after the 77th UN General Assembly just following the SCO summit. Asked, “You intend to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This organization includes Russia, China, and Iran. Do you want your country to be part of the east or part of the west?,” Erdoğan responded, “I have to say very clearly that we are part of the world, neither of the east nor the west... But the European Union has been stalling us for 52 years... We may inevitably be in a situation of seeking different things.”`

Erdoğan hypocritically attacked Greece, posing as a “defender” of refugees, during his speech at the UN General Assembly. Holding a photo of two children who drowned in the Aegean Sea, he said, “Greece is turning the Aegean Sea into a refugee graveyard with its unlawful and reckless push-backs. It is high time for Europe and United Nations institutions to say ‘Stop’ to these atrocities that constitute crimes against humanity.”

Responding to Erdogan in the UN, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said, ‘The boats carrying the desperate people President Erdoğan is talking about are leaving the Turkish shores in broad daylight,” and blamed Turkey for the crisis. “If President Erdoğan wants to talk about red lines,” he continued, “then I say this: Turkish claims over the sovereignty of Greece’s islands are baseless and unacceptable. Questioning the sovereignty of Greek territory crosses a red line for all Greeks.”

In reality, the Turkish and Greek governments, which have supported the imperialist wars in the Middle East and are part of the European Union’s reactionary deal against refugees, are jointly responsible for the catastrophe facing refugees drowning in the Aegean Sea, held in camps, or forced to stay in misery in Turkey.

The danger that the capitalist governments of Turkey and Greece, faced with growing working class opposition and explosive geopolitical tensions, could provoke a war is very serious. Despite the aggression of the Turkish and Greek bourgeoisies, there is no enthusiasm or support for war among the workers. According to a recent poll, 64 percent of people in Turkey believe that there is no enmity between the Turkish and Greek peoples.

British pound collapse at centre of global currency and financial storm

Nick Beams

Global currency and bond markets are being hit by a growing storm driven by the rise of the US dollar fueled by interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve, which could start to shake the financial system.

The turmoil reached a new level of intensity this week, sparked by the reaction of financial markets to the UK mini-budget which handed out £45 billion in tax cuts to the wealthy while increasing government debt by £72 billion.

People wait to enter the Bank of England in London, Tuesday, September 27, 2022. [AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

The reaction of the markets was to send the pound down to its lowest level in history. This led to a rapid sell-off of government bonds, sharply lifting their yields, or interest rates.

It was, in effect, a savage directive to the UK government of Prime Minister Liz Truss and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng that the handout to the wealthy had to be accompanied by deep cuts to government social spending, coupled with further suppression of wages.

Yesterday the International Monetary Fund (IMF) intervened to give voice to the concerns of international finance capital, issuing what the Financial Times called a “biting attack” on the government’s plan and calling for a “re-evaluation.”

The IMF said it was “closely monitoring” developments and was “engaged with the authorities” in the UK.

“Given elevated inflation pressures in many countries, including the UK, we do not recommend large and untargeted fiscal packages at this juncture,” it stated. “It is important that fiscal policy does not work at cross purposes to monetary policy.”

Like other central banks, the Bank of England (BoE) is lifting interest rates, inducing a recession, to try to clamp down on workers’ wage demands as inflation reaches its highest levels in more than four decades, now at double digit levels in the UK and threatening to go even higher. The bank is also reducing its holdings of financial assets.

But while the BoE is tightening monetary policy, the government’s handouts to the wealthy are to be financed by the creation of still more debt.

The IMF statement also showed it is focused on the development of the class struggle. “The nature of the UK measures will likely increase inequality,” it said.

The IMF is very conscious that the blatant handout of billions of pounds to the rich and super-rich, lifting inequality to new record highs, will make even more difficult the task of the trade unions in suppressing the struggle for wage increases. This struggle, now being joined by ever-wider sections of the British working class, is creating the basis for a general strike against the Tory government.

There was a near universal response from the representatives of finance capital to the UK government’s measures, insisting they had to be accompanied by cuts in government spending.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said Kwarteng was gambling with the UK’s fiscal stability to push through the tax cuts “without even a semblance of an effort to make the public finance numbers add up.”

Vivek Paul, the UK chief investment strategist for the giant global hedge fund BlackRock, said the government’s moves were “just extraordinary.” The market had delivered its verdict on the government’s fiscal plans, and it was “not a good one.”

The situation is increasingly being described as a “crisis of confidence.”

For the financial system, confidence rests on two essential components: first, a belief that its political representatives have a clear plan for the overall economy and second, they can contain the most disruptive force of all—the movement of the working class. This confidence has been battered on both fronts.

Moreover, there are fears of mounting global turbulence. This is under conditions where the crisis of the British pound is the sharpest expression of the slide in all currency values against the dollar due to ongoing hikes in US interest rates. The Japanese yen is down to its lowest level in 25 years and other currencies are falling rapidly.

Those fears are focused on the bond market where prices are falling and yields are rising at an alarming rate.

In a comment yesterday, Bloomberg columnist John Authers noted: “This isn’t at core a currency crisis, but a crisis of confidence in the bond market, which is much more dangerous. The shock to gilt yields [those on UK 10-year bonds] in the last five trading days has been epic. No shock this great and this sudden has happened before.”

So far this month, the yield on the UK 10-year government bond has risen by 1.45 percentage points, the largest ever monthly rise according to data going back to 1979. In “normal” conditions rises in the order of just 0.5 percentage points, or even less, are considered large.

Authers raised the broader implications. Ever since the global financial crisis of 2008, he wrote, “everyone in the asset markets has known that there is one great risk above all others—that at some point confidence would run out and the bond market would revolt, causing a disorderly rise in yields. Then the edifice would fall.”

That day of reckoning was delayed because the central banks could always print more money when they did not have to worry about inflation. Those conditions have now changed.

“The UK appears to be the first case of a truly disorderly bond selloff, where the moves are so swift that they affect the functioning of the financial system,” Authers wrote. The whole world had to watch what was happening in Britain because it was a “test case for the confidence game that’s likely to be repeated everywhere.”

And while King Dollar reigns supreme at this point, the US is not exempt from the rising global storm.

Ralph Bostic, president of the Atlanta branch of the Fed, in comments reported by the Financial Times, said the UK situation had increased uncertainty over the trajectory of the US economy.

“The key question will be, what does this mean for ultimately weakening the European economy, which is an important consideration for how the US economy is going to perform.”

Susan Collins, the incoming president of the Boston branch of the Fed, speaking at an event on Monday, warned that a significant economic or geopolitical event could push the US economy into a recession as the central bank’s monetary policy tightens.

In a comment published in the Australian Financial Review on Monday, columnist Karen Maley cited remarks by Michael Hartnett, an investment strategist at Bank of America. Hartnett warned that what Maley termed a “savage” fall in bond prices would leave investors with no choice but to liquidate “the world’s most crowded trades,” namely the US dollar, US tech stocks and private equity.

According to Maley, Hartnett pointed out that “the present market shares many of the same traits that led to the 1987 share market collapse: including a volatile geopolitical situation, abnormal US markets far outperforming the rest of the world, and a lack of international coordination.”

The only thing missing from the list, as Maley noted, was a currency crisis. That is now clearly unfolding, centering on, but by no means confined to, the British pound.

And it has a historical resonance. The crisis of the pound and the UK financial system at the end of the 1960s, was the harbinger of a dollar crisis that led in August 1971 to the decision by US President Nixon to remove the gold backing from the US currency and end the Bretton Woods monetary system established after World War II.

Much has changed since that time, but the crisis of the British pound could well be a warning of the demise of the entire system of fiat currencies, based on the US dollar, which has prevailed since the Nixon decision.

Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France party implodes over concocted domestic violence scandal

Samuel Tissot

In the past week, Russian and NATO officials have threatened to use strategic nuclear weapons that could claim hundreds of millions of lives in Europe. Meanwhile, France and Europe stand on the edge of a major economic and social crisis, with major energy and food shortages likely in the months ahead.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, right, and deputy Adrien Quatennens [AP Photo/Francois Mori]

Amid this crisis, however, the French media has been obsessed with the personal life of Unsubmissive France (LFI) ex-deputy leader Adrien Quatennens over the past two weeks. The scandal has set off a crisis in the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES) coalition, in which Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s LFI is the largest party.

On September 12, the weekly Le Canard Enchaîné published a leaked legal complaint lodged against Quatennens by his wife Céline, with whom he is in divorce proceedings. In a statement on September 18, Quatennens admitted to snatching his wife’s phone from her hands and slapping her once “in a context of extreme tension and mutual aggression.” The private complaint appears to have been illegally leaked by the police.

The complaint, made by Céline Quatennens to chart the deterioration of her relationship with her husband, is of a noncriminal nature. There has been no charge of physical assault or any other crime against Adrien Quatennens. Throughout the scandal, his wife’s stated wish that the issue remain private has been ignored by the media.

In response, Quatennens announced his withdrawal from the LFI leadership in a September 18 statement. Before his resignation, he was widely seen as LFI leader Jean Luc Mélenchon’s potential successor. Despite his resignation, the campaign has continued, with activists demanding he also resign his seat in the National Assembly, to which he was reelected earlier this year.

The WSWS holds no brief for Quatennens, an operative whose record reflects the bankrupt, pseudo-left politics of the LFI. He reliably supported the French war in Mali and spoke sympathetically on far-right protests by police officers in 2019.

It is apparent, however, that the French media and right-wing feminist forces around the #MeToo movement are concocting a massive scandal out of thin air. Their target is the party that carried the working class districts of most of France’s main cities in this year’s presidential elections. Calls to expel Quatennens from the National Assembly, i.e., to overturn an election based on a media frenzy initiated by the police, are deeply anti-democratic.

The goal of this operation is not to protect victims of domestic violence. It is to distract from mounting concern among workers over the war and whether they will be able to purchase food and heat their homes this winter, while entrenching the media influence of France’s #MeToo operatives.

On September 20, 500 “militant feminists” from the #relevefeminism collective, including many members of LFI and the NUPES coalition, published a letter in the daily Libération arguing that Quatennens’ withdrawal from LFI party life was insufficient. Even though he 'is not at this stage the subject of a judicial conviction,” it said, he should also be forced to resign as a deputy in the National Assembly. It claimed that Quatennens’ “confession makes him politically responsible. … The aggressors and perpetrators of violence cannot represent our political struggles.”

Top LFI officials have denounced Quatennens for domestic abuse, despite the noncriminal nature of his wife’s complaint. After Quatennens’ statement, LFI deputy Danièle Obono tweeted out a statement titled, “a slap is a violent act.” She added, “We see a world fractured by these violent acts. The class struggle is full of these violent acts. … Our friends, fathers, lovers, brothers commit these acts of violence.”

The press campaign also targeted Mélenchon. After the resignation of Quatennens, he tweeted, “Adrien decided to take it all on himself. I salute his dignity and his courage. I express my trust and affection for him.” He also denounced “police malpractice” and “media voyeurism.”

Caroline De Haas, a #NousToutes (#AllUsWomen) activist and member of the big-business Socialist Party (PS), which is also part of the NUPES coalition, denounced Mélenchon’s tweet as“a catastrophe.” French Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne, a member of President Macron’s Renaissance Party (formerly, La Republique En Marche!), stated that Mélenchon’s “extremely shocking” response “trivialized intra-familial violence.”

Révolution Permanante (RP), a website published by the pseudo-left French Morenoites, joined in the outrage of this reactionary campaign. An article attacked Mélenchon’s remarks as “largely shocking” and for having provoked a “legitimate outcry.”

The “militant feminists” of LFI, NUPES, RP and Macron’s government have found allies amongst the far right. Jordan Bardella, interim president of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front (RN), described the incident as the “moral wreckage of the left” and complained that Mélenchon was “defending the aggressor.”

On Friday, the media campaign intensified after LFI deputy Manuel Bompard commented that “a slap is never acceptable, but a slap is not equal to a man beating his wife every day.” In response, Macron’s equality minister Isabelle Rome tweeted to denounce “despicable statements that trivialize violence.” Green Party councilor and NUPES member Raphaëlle Rémy-Leleu stated that Bompard’s remarks were “making us [women] suffer.”

One might conclude from this wave of hypocrisy that France’s 35 million women are more at risk from Adrien Quatennens’ right hand than they are from the threats of nuclear war, food shortages and energy cutoffs in Europe.

In reality, not one of these official comments of outrage over Quatennens’ supposedly intolerable violence have an ounce of credibility. The Macron government and the PS waged a nearly decade-long war in Mali in which they repeatedly bombed civilians, killing men, women and children. As for Bardella, who denounces the alleged violence of the left, he is leading a party whose founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, is primarily known for torturing Algerian civilians and denying the Holocaust.

One final question is raised, however: Why has the LFI imploded in the face of the media campaign against Quatennens? It reflects the enormous influence of middle class identity politics in bankrupt pseudo-left parties like the LFI.

During this April’s presidential elections, Mélenchon’s party won nearly 8 million votes, largely concentrated among urban workers. Having narrowly missed qualifying for the second round, Mélenchon did not try to mobilize the power of his electorate against war, austerity or the indifference to COVID-19 of both Macron and his opponent, neo-fascist Marine Le Pen. Refusing to call strikes or protests, he worked to defuse the political momentum he had acquired through the vote. Indeed, Mélenchon announced that he could serve as prime minister under either Macron or Le Pen.

It was an unmistakable sign that the LFI was doing everything it could to strangle the development of opposition in the working class to France’s bankrupt ruling elites.

Now, as this establishment whips up a frenzy against Quatennens, the LFI again has no substantial opposition to propose: It has itself supported the NATO wars and the bank bailouts that are driving the surge of prices. It is therefore incapable of pointing out the hypocrisy of its right-wing critics’ denunciations of violence and moreover hostile to mobilizing the working class in its own defense.

COVID-19 infection significantly increases one’s risk of a neurological disorder

Benjamin Mateus

Last week, the latest comprehensive study on Long COVID was published in Nature Medicine, underscoring once again the recklessness and criminality of the “forever COVID” policies implemented by nearly every world government. The study examined nine categories of composite neurological disorders and found that a bout with COVID-19 increases one’s risk of a neurological disorder by 42 percent. In absolute terms, seven out of every 100 people with COVID-19 involved in the study suffered from a neurological disorder.

The nine categories of disorder evaluated included cerebrovascular, cognition and memory, disorders of peripheral nerves, episodic disorders, extrapyramidal and movement, mental health, musculoskeletal, sensory, and other neurological or related conditions such as Guillain-Barre and encephalitis, with hazard ratios for each category shown in the left-hand column in the figure below.

Risks and 12-month burdens of incident post-acute COVID-19 composite neurological outcomes compared with the contemporary control cohort. Source: Nature Medicine, open access, study by Evan Xu, Yan Xie, and Ziyad Al-Aly.

Each of the nine disorder categories saw risks elevated, with the most substantial increase affecting cognition and memory disorders. Within the nine categories are included common conditions such as strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, headaches and seizures, Parkinson’s-like symptoms, anxiety and depression, dizziness, loss of smell and taste, as well as ringing in the ears. Each of these disorders can profoundly impact one’s quality of life.

The study was led by Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the Chief of research and Education Service at Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System, a nephrologist by training and expert on Long COVID, along with Drs. Benjamin Bowe and Yan Xie. In total, 154,068 people with COVID-19 were evaluated in the study, over more than 400 days on average. They were compared with 5.6 million contemporary and 5.8 million historical controls, which provide a highly robust data set for their analyses.

In a widely-shared thread on the study on Twitter, Dr. Al-Aly noted, “Risks of memory and cognitive disorders, sensory disorders and disorders including Guillain-Barré [immune disorder in which the immune system attacks the nerves and causes weakness, in rare cases life-threatening] and encephalitis or encephalopathy [inflammation of the brain] is stronger in young adults. The effects of these disorders on younger lives are profound and cannot be overstated.”

Loading Tweet ...

Tweet not loading? See it directly on Twitter

In the discussion section of the study, the authors note pointedly, “It is imperative that we recognize the enormous challenges posed by Long COVID and all its downstream long-term consequences. Meeting these challenges requires urgent and coordinated–but so far absent–global, national, and regional response strategies.”

They warn that the burden of neurologic disease associated with COVID-19 infections will have “profound ramifications” on the health of the population, health systems, and economic productivity, including risks of “widening inequities.” These warnings have been informed by the meticulous research that Dr. Al-Aly and his team have conducted throughout the pandemic on the clinical aspects of Post-Acute Sequalae SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), otherwise known as Long COVID.

In a recent interview, Dr. Al-Aly noted that his interest in Long COVID began when he read an op-ed in the New York Times by Fiona Lowenstein chronicling her ordeal with Long COVID after recovering from her infection in April 2020. A curious and honest researcher, Dr. Al-Aly asked, “What is Long COVID?” and “Who is it affecting?” As he explained, “We took a high-dimensional approach to leave no stone unturned and characterize the post-acute sequelae of COVID-19.”

Access to the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ integrated electronic health records allowed Dr. Al-Aly and his team at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, to review the charts for over 74,000 veterans infected with SARS-CoV-2 for months after and compare them to contemporary and historical controls to address the relative and absolute risk of the impact of COVID-19 on population health.

The results were astonishing. Dr. Al-Aly recalled that the “breadth of organ dysfunction” people were experiencing shook him to his core. More concerning for him was that even those with mild symptoms that precluded the need for hospital or ICU admission were still significantly impacted.

Dr. Al-Aly and his team have also conducted the following studies that looked at Long-COVID’s impact on the cardiovascular system, kidneys, metabolic function, and mental health. In each category, the outcomes proved detrimental.

• The relative risk of acute kidney injury was two-fold higher compared to contemporary and historical controls affecting one percent of COVID-infected individuals. A small but significant minority suffered a considerable decline in kidney function compared to those without infection.
• For any cardiovascular disease, the risk was increased by 60 percent in the first year after acute COVID infection, with approximately 4.5 percent more people developing these conditions. For major adverse cardiovascular events, the absolute increased risk was 2.3 percent. Although these risks were considerable for patients admitted to hospitals with severe COVID infections, even patients with mild disease had significantly increased cardiovascular outcomes.
• Examining mental health disorders, they found that COVID-19 infection caused a 35 percent increase in relative risk for anxiety disorders and a 39 percent increase in depression. These patients were also experiencing higher use of medications to control their symptoms and opioid prescriptions. Additionally, they suffered poor sleep and cognitive declines. On this issue, Dr. Al-Aly warned, “We’ve seen early signals in our data–which I hope does not continue–of a resurgence of opioid use, specifically in people with SARS-CoV-2 infection. That demands our attention to nip it in the bud.”
• Similarly, there was a 40 percent increase in diabetes with an excess disease burden between 1 and 2 percent. Many who developed diabetes had to be prescribed medication to control their elevated blood sugars. When these are extrapolated for the population that required hospitalization, the figures are considerable at around 8 to 14 percent. Even for those with “mild” COVID-19, the absolute risk increased by 5 percent above non-infected controls.
• Earlier this year, Dr. Al-Aly and his team published a study that found that people with breakthrough infection after being vaccinated only had a 15 percent lower chance of developing Long COVID and were at increased risk of death and organ damage compared to controls who never were infected. This remained true when compared to seasonal flu, dispelling the constant reference by the bourgeois press that COVID is no more harmful than the flu.

Dr. Al-Aly has compared the tragic deaths and hospitalizations from COVID-19 to the tip of an enormous iceberg, with the massive long-term consequences associated with Long COVID lying below the water line. An umbrella term, Long COVID is more than just brain fog and fatigue. It can impact almost every organ in the body, and imaging and autopsy reports have proven the profound dangers that COVID-19 continues to pose to the population.

In their latest study, Dr. Al-Aly et al. make important observations on the long-term neurological consequences of the pandemic, writing, “Given the colossal scale of the pandemic, and even though the absolute numbers reported in this work are small, these may translate into a large number of affected individuals around the world–and this will likely contribute to a rise in the burden of neurological disorders.”

They add, “This places more emphasis on the continued need for multipronged primary prevention strategies through nonpharmaceutical interventions (for example, masking) and vaccines to reduce–to the extent possible–the risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. There is also an urgent need to develop long-term sustainable strategies to prevent mass infection with SARS-CoV-2 and to determine whether and how these long-term neurological (and other) complications could be prevented or otherwise mitigated in people who are already infected with SARS-CoV-2.”

What makes these peer-reviewed studies critical is not just their presentation of the medical dangers posed to people by the COVID-19 pandemic. They are also of a political character in that the purpose of these works has been, from the outset, to inform the public of the scale of the consequence of the pandemic policies that have been implemented. The horrific results of the pandemic are counted not only in the estimated over 20 million deaths from COVID-19 globally, but also in the tens of millions of people suffering from debilitating Long COVID worldwide.

In his Twitter thread, Dr. Al-Aly observed, “The best way to prevent Long COVID is to prevent COVID in the first place.” This speaks to the profound need for a global elimination strategy to stop the pandemic once and for all. In the absence of a worldwide anti-COVID movement, uniting workers and scientists in every country, the pandemic threatens to continue, with new variants producing wave after wave of mass infection, death and debilitation of millions more with Long COVID.