US reroutes passengers from Uganda for screening as Ebola outbreak spreads

Benjamin Mateus

As the Ebola outbreak intensifies in Uganda, the Biden administration announced last Thursday that all passengers who had been in the African nation in the last 21 days would be diverted to airports in New York, Newark, Atlanta, Chicago or Washington where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection would conduct screening to determine if they are infected.

As Politico recently noted, “The FAA could not immediately provide a list of how many flights from Uganda head stateside on a daily basis, but foreign carriers such as KLM and Emirates offer flights to multiple American destinations.”

Besides a risk assessment, visual symptoms and temperature check, the travelers’ contact information would be shared with local and state health departments. However, rather than offering Uganda the necessary expertise or the funds requested by the World Health Organization (WHO) to contain and combat the spread of the deadly virus, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra offered Ugandan Health Minister Dr. Jane Aceng Ocero a perfunctory message of goodwill, saying that the administration was ready “to support Uganda through this challenging period.”

The WHO has released $2 million from its contingency fund for emergencies and sending additional specialists, supplies and resources. But this tiny amount will hardly cover the cost of a large-scale public health intervention to stamp out the Ebola outbreaks that threatens to spill over into Uganda’s densely populated capital, Kampala. The international agency had called for $18 million, but Ugandan health officials had indicated that far more would be required to cover logistics and manpower.

Since the declaration of the Ebola outbreak on September 20, 2022 by Ugandan health officials, the number of confirmed and probable cases of Ebola infections with the rare Sudan virus has climbed to 43 confirmed and 20 probable cases, 63 in all. At present, there are no vaccines or treatments that are effective against this strain of the Ebola virus. The last outbreak with the Sudan virus in Uganda occurred 10 years ago.

WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan explained that six different vaccines are at various stages of development, and trials with either the University of Oxford or Sabin Vaccine Institute vaccines will hopefully begin in the coming weeks.

During the WHO press briefing last week, she said, “Our R&D Blueprint team, led by Ana Maria Henao, has been working very closely with the Ugandan Ministry of Health but also with other partners, including CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) and with the manufacturers. There are about six vaccine candidates available for the Sudan Ebola virus, which are mostly in very early stages of development, but three of them have some human data, some immunogenicity and safety data, and so they can actually proceed to be used in the field in a ring vaccination campaign, similar to what was done in the Ebola outbreak in DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] a couple years ago.”

With regards to the two leading candidates, she added, “There are very limited doses available, unfortunately, of both of them. There is raw material, so there has to be some fill and finish to make the product ready, and at the same time, of course, a protocol has to be developed, submitted to the Ethics Review Committee. The principal investigator has been identified, funding is being mobilized and so all the preparations are ongoing.”

There have been 29 deaths as of October 5, of which nine have been confirmed as related to Ebola. These include four health care workers, the latest a 58-year-old anesthetic officer, Nabisubi Margaret, who died on October 4 after battling her disease for 17 days at Fort Portal referral hospital. However, six more health care workers have been infected.

More concerning is that the outbreak has now spread to at least five sub-counties that include Mubende and Kassanda districts in Central Region, and Bunyangabu, Kagadi and Kyegegwa districts in Western Region, Uganda, both on a busy commercial corridor that connects Kampala to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). However, a recent report in the Monitor noted that a person suspected of Ebola died in the Northern District of Nebbi, far from the current outbreaks.

Figure 1 Map of Uganda and affected regions. Red confirmed Sudan virus. Black probable Ebola outbreak.

On October 5, 2022, a 57-year-old man died two hours after being admitted to Orussi Health Center III in the Nebbi District situated at the border of the DRC and Lake Albert. The district’s health officer, Dr. Justine Okwairworth, told the press, “The deceased presented acute signs and symptoms, especially fever, bloody diarrhea and vomiting of blood. We then became suspicious of this and collected blood samples which we forwarded and are waiting results.”

The deceased had attended a burial ceremony for a relative in the neighboring DRC where it is suspected he became infected. One of the elements of the posthumous rites and burial traditions for the displaying of grief is to wash and dress the body of the deceased, which risks infection if Ebola was the cause of death.

In the case of the Ugandan elderly man, it remains to be seen if the virus is of the Sudan strain and part of the current outbreak ,which would imply the spread is dispersed far more broadly. Introduction of the Zaire strain in this region would mean potentially two simultaneous outbreaks. Regardless, it raises further the specter of the ongoing threat posed by Ebola in the region and neighboring countries.

Since the mid-90s, there have been around two dozen outbreaks reported across Central and West Africa. The largest epidemic, between December 2013 and June 2016, was spread across Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea with local outbreaks in Nigeria, Mali, Senegal and exported to the United States, Spain, the United Kingdom and Italy. In all, almost 29,000 people were infected, and 11,310 people died from the Ebola Zaire virus. Fatality rates ranged from 57 to 71 percent.

The current fatality rate with the Sudan virus is over 40 percent, which underscores the seriousness of these infections. It is not a matter of if but when an outbreak with such pathogens will emerge more broadly across the globe. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that not only were capitalist governments unprepared for the eruption of these pathogens, but they have also gone as far as completely dismantling their public health systems to prevent any interruption in the drive to exploit the working class.

Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president for life, recently said, “I want to reassure all Ugandans and all residents that the government will quickly gain control of this outbreak as we have done before. Therefore, there is no need for anxiety, panic, restriction of movement, or unnecessary closure of public places like schools, markets and places of worship as of now.”

Meanwhile, as Aceng noted, health authorities are fighting misinformation and mistrust of the public at the epicenter of the outbreak in Mubende district. She told the press, “People are not dying of witchcraft, they are dying due to Ebola. The public should cooperate with the health workers and response teams to curb the spread of this outbreak.”

However, frontline health workers are also facing concerns about their own safety. As TheLancet wrote on Saturday, “There is also the challenge of allaying the concerns of front-line health workers regarding their safety. Trainee medics announced a strike, accusing the government of risking their lives without making adequate provision for safety gear, insurance coverage, and risk allowances.”

Dr. Gary Kobinger, a virologist and Ebola specialist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, told Nature that the vaccines and antivirals by themselves will not end the outbreak. With the geographic boundaries of spread increasing and resources overstretched, the virus “could easily find new footholds,” as is being demonstrated now. “Right now, the outbreak is at a make-or-break moment,” he said. Hopeful that the current measures will contain the outbreak, he is concerned that it could “really get out of hand.”

Australian Labor government to cut social spending to pay for tax handouts and war plans

Mike Head

It is now clear that in its first budget, due on October 25, Australia’s Labor government will retain planned massive income tax cuts for the wealthy, while starting to further slash health and disability services and escalate military spending in preparation for a US-led war against China.

Yesterday, in line with a barrage of warnings and demands from corporate media headlines and editorials, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ruled out any reversal of Labor’s pledge to implement “Stage Three” tax cuts for high-income households in 2024. This means an unprecedented bonanza for the rich, on top of two previous tax cut packages.

Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers (right) being briefed by Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy

At the same time, Labor’s already-ditched May election slogan of “a better future” has been replaced by chilling warnings from Albanese, Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Defence Minister Richard Marles of “global economic storms” and “the most challenging circumstances” since World War II.

In the lead-up to the budget, Albanese and Chalmers have sought to condition the public to expect deepening cuts to social spending. They have named three crucial areas of alleged unexpected budget blowouts—hospitals, aged care and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

Simultaneously, the pair has declared the need to ramp up military spending and pay for higher interest rates on the more than $1 trillion in government debt, which was incurred by handing billions of dollars to big business throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Increasingly, the government’s plans are dominated by the looming global recession being induced by central banks, which are hiking interest rates to stifle workers’ wage demands to cope with the soaring inflation triggered by the pandemic and the escalating US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.

Just two weeks before the budget, Chalmers will tomorrow fly to Washington for what he called “perfectly timed” talks about mounting “budget pressures.” He will meet for a “candid assessment” with US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, World Bank president David Malpass and other G20 finance ministers.

“It will be all about difficult decisions in difficult times,” Chalmers said. He warned that Australia “won’t be spared a global downturn,” further repudiating Labor’s false election promises of better times.

The “Stage Three” tax cuts will cost $243 billion over a decade. Inevitably, that means further gutting public health, education and other social programs, and imposing even greater social inequality, which has already accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Treasury estimates in August 2021, when Labor confirmed its commitment to back the cuts legislated by the previous Liberal-National Coalition government, they will benefit a dual-income household on $400,000 a year by $23,280 annually. But a single person on $30,000 will receive just $255, or $5 a week. 

This is a virtual flat tax regime, with a uniform 30 percent tax rate for all income up to $200,000 a year—about three times the median wage. Those trying to survive on poverty-line social security payments, such as aged pensioners, carers and the unemployed, will get nothing.

Today, Chalmers and Marles added the war dimension to the budget plans. They recommitted the government to raising annual military spending from 2 percent to 2.2 percent of gross domestic product, reaching $80 billion a year by 2032. That does not count the $300 billion designated for upgraded military weaponry over a decade.

This was also, they emphasised, in addition to the as-yet unstated tens of billions of dollars required to acquire and base nuclear-powered submarines and other weaponry under the anti-China AUKUS military pact with the US and UK, and to expand the size of the armed forces by 20,000 to over 100,000.

Chalmers and Marles revealed a $6.5 billion blowout on 18 existing big military hardware projects, so no doubt all these defence spending estimates will mushroom in the next few years.

Marles spoke directly in the language of wartime sacrifices. “We face the most challenging circumstances since the Second World War, compounded by the fact that the economy is facing serious pressures—and reaching record spending within Defence as a percent of GDP,” he said.

Albanese delivered a similar message of sacrifice yesterday, saying Chalmers was framing a budget in “very difficult economic circumstances.” Albanese declared the need for monetary and fiscal policy to work in concert to avoid fueling inflation. 

That is code for cutting social spending and suppressing workers’ wage rise demands, in sync with the central banks aggressively raising interest rates.

The prime minister reassured the financial markets: “Labor will always present responsible budgets. That’s what we’ll be doing in two weeks’ time.”

Labor’s targeting of the NDIS, hospitals and aged care comes on top of its support for the pre-election budget handed down by the Morrison Coalition government in March, which contained a huge cut to health spending—by $10 billion to $105 billion this year, or more than 10 percent in real terms.

This has meant less money for COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and support for doctors, aged care providers and overwhelmed public hospitals. That Labor-backed budget also imposed cuts to education, arts and climate change programs.

Albanese’s commitment to the “Stage Three” tax handouts is only a part of Labor’s wider dedication to enriching the corporate elite at the expense of the working class. After its 2019 election defeat, the party dropped its phony “fair go” slogan, which many workers did not believe in any case because of Labor’s long pro-business record.

Labor also ditched promises to adjust the “negative gearing” scheme, which rewards property investors and drives up home prices, reduce capital gains tax discounts and abolish “franking credits” refunds for investors who received dividends from their share portfolios, yet pay no income tax.

None of this is an aberration. It is entirely consistent with the party’s historic record of service to the ruling capitalist class, including on tax. The Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983 to 1996 cut the top income tax rate from 60 percent to 49 percent, and the company tax rate from 49 to 33 percent.

That was a central plank of Labor’s economic program. The trade unions enforced it as part of their prices and incomes Accords with the Labor governments and employers. The unions strangled workers’ opposition, helping to lay the basis for a vast ongoing transfer of wealth to the rich from the working class.

Today, this Labor government is relying even more on the unions, which are increasingly discredited shells as a result of their decades of betrayals. Together, they are seeking to impose far deeper attacks on working-class conditions, along with the greatest real wage cuts since the 1930s Great Depression, the government’s deadly “live with the virus” pandemic policies and preparations for a potentially catastrophic US-instigated World War III against Russia and China.

New Zealand university staff hold nationwide strike

Tom Peters

About 7,000 lecturers, researchers, tutors and non-academic staff at New Zealand’s eight universities held a half-day strike on October 6 to demand decent pay increases that keep up with the soaring cost of living.

Striking Victoria University of Wellington workers and supporters on October 6, 2022. [Photo: WSWS]

Protest rallies took place at Auckland University, Auckland University of Technology (AUT), Massey University, Waikato University, Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), Canterbury University and Lincoln University and Otago University. Staff were joined by significant numbers of students and other supporters.

According to the Tertiary Education Union (TEU), its members, and university-based members of the Public Service Association and E tū union, voted 87 percent in favour of strike action. This is an indication of the immense anger that has built up over decades of underfunding, pro-business restructuring, constant waves of staff cuts and years of stagnant wages.

The unions have called for an 8 percent pay increase, which is barely above the annual inflation rate of 7.3 percent. At present, pay offers are significantly below inflation: Auckland University, for instance, has offered 9 percent spread across two years.

The crisis facing higher education has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a precipitous drop in international student numbers. While the details vary in different institutions, pay has essentially been frozen and hundreds of staff have been laid off over the past two years. Job cuts are continuing, with AUT recently announcing 230 redundancies.

Last Thursday’s strike is part of an upsurge in the class struggle internationally in opposition to soaring living costs driven by the pandemic, the state bailouts of big business, and the US-NATO war with Russia over Ukraine. Thousands of university workers have taken strike action in Britain and Australia, among other countries.

The New Zealand strike coincided with week-long action by thousands of nurses, who refused to work extra shifts to protest against a pay cut and dangerous levels of understaffing. Firefighters have also held nationwide strikes after rejecting a below-inflation pay offer.

According to Stuff, Education Minister Chris Hipkins “was reluctant to give a viewpoint on the strike action, given the government didn’t employ university staff and were not a part of the bargaining process.” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said: “We have increased the subsidy rate from central government in order to support universities with their additional costs.”

In fact, the Labour Party-led government is starving essential services, including education, in order to maintain low taxes for the rich and to force the working class to pay for tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for big business over the past two years. This year, the government increased tuition and training subsidies for tertiary education by just 2.75 percent, well below the inflation rate. Labour has reneged on its 2017 election pledge to fund three years of free tertiary education; domestic students are eligible for just one year of fees-free study.

A lecturer in the VUW Centre for Science in Society, who attended Thursday’s rally, told the WSWS: “There’s been a persistent failure to recognise that university staff have been overworked for many years and that workloads increased during the pandemic because of things like moving online, the pressure of family life, the general anxiety of existing during the pandemic.”

Tutors, paid as little as $22.22 an hour, have been offered a zero increase from VUW for the next two years. The lecturer said: “I just want to point out the irony that the university markets its degrees as valuable and competitive to students, [who] pay tens of thousands of dollars to get a qualification from one of New Zealand’s leading universities.” Then VUW “turns around and pays [close to the] minimum wage” to postgraduate students who become tutors.

Dolores Janiewski, a lecturer in the VUW history department, said she was most concerned about tutors, “the lowest paid and most precarious staff members.” She believed the university leadership viewed staff “as a cost, and the fewer of us the better because the books look better, even though that isn’t necessarily delivering quality education. Attrition and voluntary redundancy is part of the problem: there are fewer people having to do just as much work, and as a result workloads are getting bigger, and there aren’t people to do it.”

Janiewski said VUW’s decision to dock its workers’ pay for the duration of the 4.5 hour strike was “antagonising staff even further” and showed that the university did not understand how staff work. She would still have to do the same amount of work to prepare for her upcoming lectures.

She questioned the claims that there is not enough money for a meaningful pay increase, saying: “I would really like to know how much money is being used on central administration, and what the salary scales are. What are the overheads? How much do the faculties have to subsidise the central administration?” Janiewski also said the national strike action was sending a message to the government, and she called for funding per student to increase.

Across the country, striking workers made similar statements. Radio NZ reported that one Auckland University staff member said: “They told us things would be tight during COVID, and then they’ve told us about all the profit they made… Over the last few years, in real terms, our pay has maybe fallen by 17 percent.” The university reportedly made an after tax profit of $100 million last year.

The strike revealed determination among university workers to fight for decent pay and conditions for themselves and for students. The government and university administrations, however, are relying on the unions to limit the action as much as possible and to prevent university staff from linking their struggle with that of healthcare workers, firefighters, schoolteachers and others who face the same assault on their standard of living.

The TEU’s leadership, which supports the Labour-Greens government, has called for tripartite talks with Minister Hipkins and the universities to resolve the dispute.

Highlighting the role the union has played in keeping wages down, TEU national secretary Sandra Grey told Newshub on October 4 that over the past two years it has accepted “the lowest pay increases of any workers in New Zealand, because we actually said to our employers: we understand COVID’s hard on the universities and on the polytechnics, and we did our bit.”

The immense anger among workers forced the TEU to call a nationwide strike for the first time in 20 years. However, the union’s current wage claim would still keep wages basically frozen relative to the cost of living and do nothing to make up for more than a decade of cuts.

A recent study commissioned by the TEU found that salaries fell by 10 percent at the University of Otago, 12.2 percent at Canterbury and 17 percent at Auckland University between 2007 and 2021. During this time, there were no nationwide strikes and the union bureaucracy’s typical response was to accept job and wage cuts as necessary.

German neo-Nazis remain at large after assassination attempt on journalists

Ela Maartens

In April 2018, two photojournalists were brutally attacked by neo-Nazis Gianluca B. and Nordulf H. in Fretterode, Thuringia. They suffered massive injuries, and it was only by luck that the attack did not end fatally. Although this was one of the most serious attacks on journalists in Germany in recent years, the perpetrators remain at large after the verdict was announced on September 15.

The journalists attacked, who conduct investigative work into the right-wing scene, were observing a meeting of right-wing extremists at the home of German National Party (NPD) member Thorsten Heise. When they were discovered, Gianluca B. and Nordulf H. chased the journalists in close pursuit through the streets of the region until they ended up in a ditch. Later, Gianluca B. smashed the skull of one of the two journalists using a tractor wrench. Nordulf H., Heise’s son, stabbed the other journalist in the leg with a knife.

Mühlhausen District Court (© Bubo bubo / Wikimedia Commons)

The assassination attempt on the journalists, as well as the absurdly lenient sentence handed down by the Mühlhausen Regional Court, are a serious blow to press freedom. According to Reporters Without Borders, this has been on the decline in Germany for years, and attacks from the right-wing milieu are on the rise.

At the same time, the Fretterode trial further worsens the climate created by all the establishment parties at federal and state level in recent years, in which right-wing extremists can take action against anyone who gets in their way—without having to fear serious consequences.

The verdict in the trial against the neo-Nazis reveals the extent of the rightward shift by the German judicial system. More than four years after the attack and after more than 30 days at trial, the perpetrators got off virtually scot-free. The criminal court only considered the charges of dangerous bodily harm and the damage to the journalists’ car to be proven. Nordulf H. was sentenced to 200 hours of community service under the juvenile criminal code; Gianluca B. received a 12-month suspended sentence. The theft of the journalists’ €1,500 camera equipment remains unsolved. The verdict is not yet legally binding, and both the public prosecutor’s office and the co-plaintiffs have announced an appeal.

The trial before the Mühlhausen court resembled a Kafkaesque performance in which the victims were turned into perpetrators. Presiding Judge Andrea Kortus believed Gianluca B. and Nordulf H. to have mistaken their victims not for journalists but for Antifa activists. In an interview with broadcaster NDR, Axel Kulbarsch, spokesman for the Mühlhausen Regional Court, defended the perpetrators in line with this statement: “Simply taking pictures and operating a camera” was not enough to know “that the person operating the camera is a journalist.”

In other words, in the court’s opinion, it is apparently legitimate to act against left-wing activists and to attack them in the most brutal way.

Judge Kortus did not say a word about the extreme right-wing views of the two defendants, speaking of “so-called neo-Nazis” and “two ideological camps” that were “far apart.” She also used this to justify the lenient sentence, since the attack by Gianluca B. and Nordulf H. had not been directed against journalists.

Kortus made no secret of her own convictions and articulated herself in the jargon of the neo-Nazi scene, as Kulbarsch confirmed: the defendants had been “fed up with being photographed or recorded, and therefore first of all—and this is how the chairwoman [judge] put it—wanted to send the insects away from their village.”

The neo-Nazis played down their attack as self-defence, with which they had wanted to peacefully assert the right to control their own image. The court also did not consider Nordulf H.’s statement that the reporters had tried to run him over twice to be refutable—and that this had possibly even led to the outbreak of violence in the first place. The actions of the neo-Nazis were “basically comprehensible and admitted,” according to the court.

There had also been “procedural delays contrary to the rule of law” that had led to mitigating circumstances for the defendants. Kulbarsch confirmed this to NDR: “The fact that the defendants were in the public eye and extensive reporting took place over a long period of time was taken into account by the Third Criminal Chamber as a mitigating circumstance when it came to the sentence.” The delay in the proceedings lies with the court, as the former presiding judge retired, and the replacement took a long time—for which the two accused neo-Nazis have now been rewarded.

The reasoning used by the court to justify the low sentence against the right-wing extremists is a slap in the face of the victims and a clear signal to the right-wing scene throughout the country: “We’ve got your back.”

The police’s negligent investigation extensively aided and abetted the scandalous verdict. Evidence was able to be brushed aside unchallenged, a knife in the perpetrators’ vehicle attracted no attention, and the journalists’ presumably stolen photographic equipment was searched for only once by a patrol in the semi-darkness.

Sven Adam, who defended one of the two journalists in court, called the police investigation a “systemic and structural failure.” The “charges could be tried here not because of, but in spite of, the investigative work of the local police.”

In contrast, the Thuringia state authorities reacted uncompromisingly to a complaint against the two journalists filed by Thorsten Heise. While the house of Gianluca B. was never searched and that of the Heise’s only half-heartedly, the public prosecutor’s office in Mühlhausen described the house search of one of the journalists two days before the verdict was announced as “proportionate.” A spokesman explained that the special protection of journalists ends when they are defendants and added, “We investigate without regard to the person.”

After the scandalous verdict, representatives of the Left Party-Social Democrat (SPD)-Green state government declared their dismay. Madeleine Henfling, a Green Party member of the state legislature, spoke of a “scandal” and a repeated failure of justice, trivializing right-wing violence. Dorothea Marx of the SPD told broadcaster MDR, “That the court considers the lives and health of supposed political opponents less worthy of protection than those of journalists and derives a penalty discount from that is humanly and legally wrong.”

This hypocrisy is surpassed only by the Left Party. Speaking to NRD, Katharina König-Preuss, a member of the state parliament, said, “Something is broken here on so many levels, something is crooked here, and this in a federal state that repeatedly declares, also through corresponding political representatives, that everything is being done here to take action against the right. I don’t notice that happening.”

The fact that König-Preuss “doesn’t notice anything” about the alleged “action against the right” is simply because this is not taking place. On the contrary, in Thuringia, in particular, the Left Party-SPD-Green state government, led by the Left Party, cooperates with the right-wing extremists in the state parliamentary committees and provides them with central positions. In early 2020, State Premier Ramelow even used his own vote to help far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) deputy Michael Kaufmann become vice president of the Thuringia state legislature.

The main responsibility for the political and ideological climate in which neo-Nazis can declare journalists fair game without challenge lies with the ruling class. In recent years, all the establishment parties—above all the SPD, the Left Party, and the Greens—have moved further and further to the right and have largely adopted the AfD’s program—refugee baiting, the rearmament of Germany, and allowing the pandemic to run wild.

Iranian and Turkish Moves to Join Shanghai Cooperation Organization Raise Its Profile

John P. Ruehl

While far from an alliance, the SCO is increasingly utilized for managing Eurasian affairs without traditional Western mechanisms and organizations.

Held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from September 15 to 16, the 2022 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Heads of State Council demonstrated that the SCO was continuing to evolve into a viable international political congregation independent from the West.

Beginning in the early 1800s, international organizations (IOs) began to emerge as modest arbiters of European affairs. But during and after World War II, new IOs established themselves as far more prominent actors on a global scale. The United Nations (UN), the Arab League, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and several other IOs were created to manage the affairs of their member states.

After the Soviet collapse, more IOs were created to manage the independence of new states, globalization, and regional cooperation. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), created in 1991, attempted to coordinate military, economic, and political policies between post-Soviet states. The European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU), created in 1993 and 2002, respectively, bound member states more forcefully to common economic and political norms. Other IOs, like the Arctic Council (1996) and Asia Cooperation Dialogue (2002), aimed to foster broader regional cooperation.

Most new international organizations meshed neatly with the Western-led liberal world order. But in 2001, the formation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was formally announced, and it established itself as an exclusionary outlier. Originally known as the Shanghai Five when it was created in 1996, it included China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, with Uzbekistan later joining when it evolved into the SCO in 2001.

The SCO was created partly to help coordinate a new era of peaceful relations between Moscow and Beijing and to manage their coalescing interests in Central Asian states. In addition, combatting the “Three Evils” of extremism, separatism, and terrorism were major priorities for the organization, which included data and intelligence sharing and common military drills among its member states.

Over time, the SCO began to embrace greater political and economic integration. Support for autocratic rule and limiting criticism of human rights violations set it apart from other Western-aligned IOs, with the SCO also overseeing the growth of joint energy projects, the fostering of trade agreements, and the introduction of the SCO Interbank Consortium in 2005 “to organize a mechanism for financing and banking services in investment projects supported by the governments of the SCO member states.”

But the organization’s most pressing vocation was facilitating a multipolar world order. Investing in an independent forum for economic, political, and military affairs outside of Western influence became a key component of Russian and Chinese attempts to reduce Western power in global affairs.

Russia and China have also developed complementary mechanisms to the SCO, which have helped decentralize its mission. Following the blacklisting of several Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) in 2014, for example, the Kremlin approved the creation of the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS) to replicate SWIFT and introduced the National Payment Card System (now known as Mir), while China created the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS).

These initiatives even proved attractive to states that were more aligned with the Western-led global order. India and Pakistan began SCO accession talks in 2015 and officially joined the organization in 2017. Despite relatively positive relations with the West, India and Pakistan have both faced Western criticism over human rights and democratic backsliding in recent years. India’s introduction of platforms like RuPay in 2012 and Unified Payments Interface, which eroded the traditional dominance of Visa and Mastercard in the country, also complemented SCO’s attempts to reduce Western economic preeminence globally.

At the 2022 summit of the SCO Heads of State Council, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev reiterated that the SCO was not an anti-U.S. or anti-NATO alliance. But the organization’s original motive to create a multipolar world was echoed in its Samarkand Declaration, the final declaration of this meeting, and continues to conflict with Washington’s attempts to maintain the U.S.-led world order. According to the declaration, the member states “confirm[ed] their commitment to [the] formation of a more representative, democratic, just and multipolar world order.”

This core stratagem continues to appeal to countries around the world. Alongside the leaders of its eight member states, the SCO invited the presidents of Belarus, Mongolia, and Iran as official observers to the recent summit. Having started its accession process in 2021, Iran signed a memorandum of understanding with the SCO to join the institution by April 2023.

The SCO would likely alleviate Iran’s sense of economic isolation stemming from Western sanctions, a sentiment shared by Iranian officials at the summit and something that was also noted back in 2007. Belarus has also found itself under increasing sanctions in recent years and enhanced its accession procedures to join the SCO in Samarkand.

The presidents of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Turkey were also invited to the SCO summit as special guests, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announcing that his country would seek full membership to the SCO. In 2012, Erdoğan joked to Russian President Vladimir Putin about abandoning Turkey’s EU aspirations if Russia would allow them into the SCO. Turkey’s renewed attempt comes at a time when its ties with the rest of the Western world are increasingly strained and could instigate other NATO states, and potentially the EU states, to join the SCO as well.

The SCO has also established strong relations with other IOs. Representatives from ASEAN, the UN, the Russian-dominated CIS, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) were invited to the 2022 summit. Notably absent were any representatives from the EU or NATO. Meanwhile, in 2005, the U.S. was rejected from gaining observer status, solidifying the SCO’s status as a bulwark against U.S. influence in Eurasia.

Like all major international organizations, the SCO faces systemic obstacles that hinder its effectiveness and long-term viability. At the recent summit in Uzbekistan, China’s Xi Jinping was welcomed to the country by his Uzbek counterpart, Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Putin, however, was greeted by Uzbek Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov, highlighting Russia’s strained relations with many of the former Soviet states and the growing strength of Beijing over Moscow. Unlike in the CSTO and the EAEU, Russia is not the dominant actor in the SCO, and will increasingly have to contend with China’s predominant authority.

Disputes also remain between SCO member states. India and Pakistan, for example, are afflicted with an ongoing struggle over Kashmir. China and India have their own territorial disputes and have engaged in minor violent skirmishes since India joined the SCO. Additionally, deadly clashes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan erupted during the recent summit, while admitting Armenia and Azerbaijan, both of which are SCO dialogue partners, will only further increase the number of members currently locked in their own territorial disputes.

But the SCO has consistently portrayed itself as a vehicle to supervise these issues. The leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan met for talks during the summit to assuage tensions. And since 2002, the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) has encouraged military coordination between member states, with the Indian and Pakistani militaries conducting RATS drills in 2021. More drills between them are planned for October, and while they are aimed primarily at countering unrest from Afghanistan, they are also part of SCO’s attempts to manage relations of member states.

China and Russia have also agreed to “synergize” the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the EAEU to help mitigate possible tension between them, with both Xi and Putin meeting on the sidelines of the 2022 SCO summit and pledging to respect each other’s core interests.

The SCO member states clearly believe the organization can, and has greater potential to, effectively manage their concerns and regional affairs, and its appeal continues to grow. Besides the additional SCO dialogue partners (Cambodia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt were granted the status of SCO dialogue partners at the 2022 SCO summit. Myanmar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the Maldives were also granted the status of dialogue partners.

Russian and Chinese influence will fall as more members join, which will also dilute consensus within the organization. But it remains a Beijing and Moscow-led initiative to manage world affairs and to demonstrate that the “international community” is not just the West. With almost half of the world’s population and a quarter of the global GDP, the SCO is increasingly becoming a representative of the Global South.

By pooling together other IOs into an umbrella forum, the SCO can further its goal of challenging the wider Western-dominated IO ecosystem and prevent Washington from setting the global agenda. This will require the constructive management of Russian and Chinese ambitions and the increasingly complex needs of more member states.

Eurowings pilots in Germany go on 24-hour strike

Marianne Arens

Pilots employed by the Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings went on a 24-hour strike on October 6. A large proportion of the airline’s approximately 500 flights planned for that day had to be grounded, with more than 30,000 passengers affected.

[Photo by Steve Jurvetson / flickr / CC BY 2.0]

Well over 300 flights had to be cancelled. According to the individual airports, 118 flights were cancelled at Eurowings’ main base in Düsseldorf, 61 in Cologne/Bonn, 72 in Hamburg and 64 in Stuttgart. For its part, Eurowings claimed it had salvaged “half” of the planned flights. For some of the long-haul routes, the airline used aircraft from the non-striking Austrian subsidiary, Eurowings Europe, and partner companies.

In August, a ballot among Eurowings pilots produced a result of 97.7 percent in favour of strike action, based on 90 percent participation.

The pilots are primarily fighting against the scandalous and dangerous permanent overload of work due to staff shortages. “The workload has increased considerably,” read a press release from the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) pilots union, which called for the strike action. “The employer regularly extends the working hours of colleagues to the maximum permitted.” Eurowings has been rejecting a new contract with shorter deployment times and additional days off for months.

Pilots also need adequate financial compensation for the losses due to inflation and the losses they had suffered during the coronavirus pandemic through short-time working and lost wages. During the pandemic, the airport unions, including Vereinigung Cockpit, agreed to the suspension of contractually agreed wages, the waiving of additional wage payments and massive job cuts. The Lufthansa subsidiary Germanwings was wound up. Under pressure, Lufthansa pilots alone sacrificed around €800 million.

Although Lufthansa has long since recovered the losses it made during the pandemic—with the help of a substantial government bailout—the company has not reimbursed the sums extorted during the pandemic, and its pilots continue to work under heavy pressure. This explains their current anger and willingness to strike. It coincides with a growing wave of industrial action throughout the aviation sector.

At the Rhein Main Airport, across Europe and around the world, air traffic strikes have been occurring repeatedly in recent weeks. To give just a few examples: In July, Lufthansa ground staff stopped work, while Ryanair crews held several 24-hour strikes across Europe, especially in Spain. On September 2, 5,000 Lufthansa and Lufthansa Cargo pilots went on strike. In Hanover, Swissport Cargo workers went on strike on the same day. Shortly afterwards, an air traffic controllers strike in France affected the whole of Europe. Currently, air traffic controllers are on strike in 18 African countries, including Cameroon, Mali, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast.

If pilots, cabin crews, ground workers and technicians at airports coordinated their struggles, they would unleash an enormous social power. All the more so because railway workers, dockers, bus drivers, teachers and health care workers are also angry and ready to strike, not to mention auto, metal and electrical workers. In addition, 7 million workers in Germany alone are involved in official wage struggles this autumn and winter.

Around the world, a wave of working class strikes and protests against inequality and exploitation is developing. After three years of the pandemic, increasing numbers of workers are taking up the fight against inflation, hunger and the threat of a third world war.

In all of these developments, however, workers confront the trade unions, which isolate and sell out these struggles due to their totally nationalist and pro-capitalist policies. This is true not only of mainstream unions like Verdi (public service) and IG Metall (metal and electrical industries) but also the smaller, specialist unions abundantly represented at airports, UFO (flight attendants), IGL (cabin crew) and the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC).

VC is a prime example of this policy of the unions. The pilots union is doing everything in its power to prevent a joint struggle that could really make a difference. It has lined up with the opposing side, with German business interests, the government and the Lufthansa Group, which it supports in the global trade war. In order not to harm the interests of the German-based company and its shareholders, the union strives to prevent any type of joint industrial action. VC not only separates the pilots’ struggle from that of flight attendants and ground staff but even refuses to unite the separate industrial actions carried out by Lufthansa and Eurowings pilots.

VC called off an already decided, second strike by Lufthansa pilots in September at very short notice, although at that time it was clear that Eurowings pilots in the same company were prepared to strike. Instead, the union agreed to a shabby deal with the company executive which failed to resolve any of the pilots’ problems. The same can now be expected for Eurowings pilots and the employees of other Lufthansa subsidiaries. The readiness of VC to put the interests of shareholders above those of employees has already been demonstrated by the union in the pandemic when it agreed to cut wages and jobs.

Half of Ukrainian 2023 budget dedicated to NATO proxy war against Russia

Jason Melanovski

Initial details on Ukraine’s 2023 draft $70 billion budget have revealed that half of the country’s spending for the upcoming year will be devoted to the NATO-backed proxy war with Russia. By contrast, social spending on medicine, housing and pensions will be cut massively as the country continues to run a monthly budget deficit of approximately $3 billion to $5 billion. 

According to the popular Ukrainian news outlet Strana, the government expects GDP to grow by 4.6 percent after contracting by a third this year due to the war. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian working class will be faced with an astounding 30 percent inflation rate and 28.2 percent unemployment. 

In addition, subsidies for housing will be cut by approximately $1 billion, education will be cut by approximately $800 million, and the medical budget will be cut by over $500 million, even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage. Both the national minimum wage and pension rates will remain unchanged. 

While 7.4 million out of a pre-war population of 41 million have fled the country amid the war, the cuts combined with rapidly rising inflation will amount to a noticeable decrease in social spending for the remaining population.  

Overall, the country is facing an economic disaster as the World Bank predicted on Tuesday that the economy will fall by 35 percent, contradicting Kiev’s expectations of modest growth.

Estimates put the cost for rebuilding what has already been destroyed by the war at a minimum of $349 billion, or 1.5 times the size of the Ukrainian pre-war economy. Eight months into the war, a third of Ukraine’s population has been displaced and 60 percent are living below the national poverty line. 

With 7.4 million Ukrainian refugees living across Europe, it is also unclear when or if they will return to work in Ukraine, as large parts of the country could be left without heat this winter. As Europe faces its own energy crisis, the refugees remaining in Europe are already finding it harder to find shelter and food as local hosts themselves are unable to afford the rapidly increasing cost of living.

Alisa, a 16-year-old Ukrainian refugee living in Hungary, was recently told by her hosts they could no longer afford to provide her housing after the Hungarian government raised energy prices. “Back then, they said we could stay until the end of the war, but now they’ve realised they can’t afford the energy bills. They very politely told us we had to leave,” Alisa, who had been working long shifts at a factory as a minor, told the Guardian. 

The increased rate of evictions was confirmed by Anastasia Chukovskaya, a Russian volunteer living in Budapest who heads an organization dedicated to helping Ukrainian refugees. “There is a wave of evictions now from families who say they cannot afford to be hosts,” Chukovskaya said.

Due to the significant strengthening of the dollar this year, Ukraine itself will also face “a very serious debt situation” as it has to pay its massive debt back in dollars. Despite reaching a debt service freeze with Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States in September, the country will continue to spend billions of its revenue on paying off and servicing its external debt. 

Without significant loans from the IMF and debt service freezes from its western creditors, the country would quickly be forced into default. 

Regarding the country’s financial budget being controlled by foreign creditors who are backing the war, Oleg Pendzin, the head of the Ukrainian Economic Discussion club, stated, “In general, the budget for the next year is the cost of the war ($1.21 billion hryvnias, that is, most of the country’s revenue). All expenses are due to external borrowing, that means we are talking about direct ‘eating’ of credit funds. This means that all expenses must be strictly agreed to with the main creditors.”

Whatever the final outcome of the Ukrainian budget, Strana admitted that the budget could rapidly change as the main purpose for the continued existence of the Ukrainian government is to continue the war at the behest of its imperialist backers—whatever the cost. 

As Pendzin told Strana, “All these guys who are now running to lobby for their interests should keep in mind that the bulk of the money will go to the war. It is possible that the army’s already record funding will have to be increased even more. And the rest of the expenses will be cut. Plus every penny of spending should be agreed with creditors. In such a situation, I don’t see much room for maneuver. Although, of course, there will be all sorts of ‘small’ items of expenditure that they will try to stretch out for someone.” 

The massive expenditure on the war compared with diminished social spending reveals the reactionary nature of the Ukrainian government, which has used the war as a pretext to attack the country’s working class. 

In August, President Volodymyr Zelensky approved Law 5371, the so-called labor law, which effectively stripped Ukrainian workers at small and medium-sized companies of any labor protection rules. Earlier in July, the Zelensky government passed a law permitting employers to stop paying workers forced into the military. Another law legalized zero-hours contracts, which enable employers to forbid contracted workers from taking other jobs while cutting hours to whatever benefits the company. Further draft labor laws have proposed introducing a 12-hour work day and further enabling employers to fire workers without justification. 

Such reactionary measures in addition to the war itself are largely being funded by the United States and the EU. On Thursday, the US Senate passed an emergency funding bill sending another $12.3 billion in aid to Ukraine. The aid combined with previous packages means the US has already pledged $65 billion to Ukraine, which, as the New York Times noted, “will be the highest amount of military aid the United States has committed to any country in a single year in nearly half a century, since the Vietnam War.”

Should the current rate of US funding continue, US taxpayers could end up funding more than half of Ukraine’s proposed 2023 $70 billion budget. Meanwhile, the US has signaled it will expand its industrial base as it expects the war in Ukraine “will last years.”