Fascist Giorgia Meloni heads new Italian government

Peter Schwarz

Giorgia Meloni, leader of the fascist Fratelli d’Italia, is the new head of the Italian government. State President Sergio Matarella swore in Meloni and her 24-member government Saturday morning. On Sunday, former Prime Minister Mario Draghi handed over the reins to her. Confirmation in parliament, scheduled for early this week, is considered a formality.

It is the first time since World War II that a party with fascist roots has led the government in a major European country. Such parties have been involved in governments, such as the predecessor of the Fratelli in Italy from 1994, but they have never provided the head of government. So far, a comparably right-wing government exists only in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán prides himself on having established an “illiberal democracy.”

Orbán was then also among the first to congratulate Meloni. “Today is a great day for the European right,” he tweeted. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right Rassemblement National, also sent congratulations. “All over Europe, patriots are coming to power and with them the Europe of nations we hope for,” she wrote.

The fact that Meloni’s assumption of power falls almost exactly on the centennial of Benito Mussolini's seizure of power on October 30, 1922, who exercised a brutal dictatorship against the working class for the next 22 years, gives it additional explosiveness.

Meloni, now 45, had joined at age 15 the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), which had upheld the tradition and memory of Mussolini since the end of the war and was implicated in the far-right terrorist attacks of the 1960s and 1970s. After the MSI renamed itself Alleanza Nazionale in 1994 and eventually dissolved into Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, Meloni and others formed Fratelli d’Italia in 2012 to continue the MSI’s tradition.

New Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni shakes hands with outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi. [Photo by Governo Italiano / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0]

Because they were the only party represented in parliament not to participate in Mario Draghi’s all-party government, the Fratelli, which had received only 4.3 percent of the vote in 2018, became the strongest party in the September election with 26 percent.

Meloni, meanwhile, presents herself as a pragmatic conservative politician and declares fascism, from which she has never distanced herself, to be a historical issue. But this is pure tactics. This is demonstrated not only by their party’s close ties to neo-Nazi organizations such as CasaPound, violent soccer hooligans, Mussolini admirers, right-wing networks in the state apparatus, and international far-right parties such as Spain’s Vox and the Trump wing of the US Republicans, but also by their appointments to top state and government posts.

Already last week, the Fratelli and their alliance partners, the far-right Lega and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, elected longtime neo-fascist Ignazio La Russa to the second-highest state office, as president of the Senate.

The politician, born in 1947, whose middle name is Benito, was active in the MSI for decades and was one of the founders of the Fratelli with Meloni. His private apartment is decorated with busts, medals and photos of Mussolini, which he proudly presented in a video. Just days before the September election, he had declared: “We are all heirs of the Duce.” La Russa was Italian defense minister from 2008 to 2011. He is said to have convinced head of government Berlusconi to join the war against Libya, a former Italian colony.

Lorenzo Fontana, a right-wing extremist, was also elected to head the second chamber of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. The 42-year-old Lega deputy is a member of an arch-Catholic sect and a supporter of the fascist theory of “population replacement,” according to which a conspiracy is trying to replace the majority European population with immigrant Muslims. He calls same-sex marriages a “mess that we don’t even want to hear named.”

Unlike Germany, for example, Italy does not have a written coalition agreement. But the composition of the new government, in which the Fratelli hold nine posts, the Lega and Forza Italia five each, and nonpartisan experts another five, makes its political orientation clear.

Meloni was guided by two criteria in selecting ministers. On the one hand, she tried to reassure the financial markets and prevent them from giving the thumbs down to her government, as in the case of Liz Truss in the United Kingdom.

Given the country’s high level of debt and the €200 billion it is entitled to from the so-called EU reconstruction fund, the financial markets would hardly accept Italy leaving the war alliance against Russia and the European Union. The rise in yields on Italian government bonds had already contributed significantly to the euro crisis in 2010.

Foreign and economic policy departments were therefore filled with ministers who have good international connections.

Antonio Tajani (Forza Italia), a close Berlusconi henchman, is the new foreign minister. Tajani spent almost his entire political career in Brussels. He was president of the European Parliament and the European People’s Party (the umbrella group of right-wing parties) and has excellent connections in other European capitals.

The economic and financial portfolio went to Giancarlo Giorgetti (Lega), a friend and kindred spirit of the previous head of government and former ECB banker Mario Draghi. Giorgetti is expected to ensure that government spending is further reduced and to continue Draghi’s policy of social cuts.

The Ministry of Defence is taken over by Guido Crosetto (Fratelli d’Italia), an arms lobbyist and manager of a defense company who has the confidence of the military. He is supposed to guarantee NATO that Italy remains firmly behind the war course against Russia—a stance that is controversial within Forza Italia and the Lega.

Domestically, Meloni has also sent clear signals to her fascist following, appointing notorious right-wingers as ministers and even renaming some ministries to underline her nationalist course.

Thus, the Ministry of Economic Development is now called the “Ministry of Business and Made in Italy”; the Ministry of Agriculture is also responsible for “sovereignty over food” (the preference for Italian products) and the Ministry of the Family for “natality,” for birth promotion.

Eugenia Roccella (Fratelli d’Italia), the Minister for the Family, is considered a member of the “Theocons,” the advocates of ultraconservative family policies. She agitates against abortion, homosexual partnerships, artificial insemination and living wills.

The Interior Ministry will continue the rabid anti-migration policies for which Lega leader Matteo Salvini, who headed the department from 2018 to 2019, is notorious. Meloni did prevent Salvini, considered her fiercest competitor and political rival, from making his mark again as interior minister, fobbing him off with the infrastructure ministry. She justified this by saying that Salvini is still on trial for abuse of office for illegally blocking refugee ships. He could face up to 15 years in prison. His former cabinet chief Matteo Piantedosi (nonpartisan) became interior minister in his place.

Meloni filled other posts with loyal followers. For example, her brother-in-law, Francesco Lollobrigida, a great-nephew of the famous actress, is responsible for agriculture in the government. His wife, Meloni’s sister Arianna, advances to the top of the party.

The takeover of the government by a fascist in the third largest country in the EU was met with serenity and open approval in Europe.

“I am ready and happy to work in a constructive way with the new Italian government to find answers to the challenges we face,” tweeted Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, who congratulated Meloni as the “first woman to hold this position.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also wrote on Twitter: “I look forward to continuing to work closely with Italy in the EU, NATO and G7.” Petr Fiala, the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, which currently holds the EU presidency, said: “I know their position on European integration and I believe that good cooperation is possible.”

French President Emmanuel Macron will be the first foreign politician to meet the new head of government. Macron, who was baptized a Catholic at the age of 12, travelled to Rome on Sunday for a Catholic meeting, where he will meet with the pope as well as Meloni.

Meloni’s rise and the response she is meeting in Europe is part of a worldwide shift to the right by the ruling elites. They respond to the growing resistance of the working class against social cuts, war and pandemic with two methods. On the one hand, they are trying to sabotage and paralyse it with the help of the corporatist unions. On the other hand, they strengthen ultra-right parties—such as the Spanish Vox, the German AfD or the French RN—and the state apparatus in order to intimidate and suppress the opposition.

Meloni, unlike Mussolini a hundred years ago, cannot rely on a mass fascist movement of Blackshirts. It owes its electoral success to the vacuum left by the bankruptcy of the so-called center-left parties and their pseudo-left appendages. These have played the leading role in attacking the living standards of the working class over the past three decades, supporting NATO’s imperialist wars and co-sponsoring a pandemic policy that has cost the lives of 180,000 people.

RSV and other viruses strain US children’s hospitals, filling up pediatric beds

Kate Randall

Children’s hospitals in many parts of the US are straining under the weight of unusually high numbers of children infected with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and other respiratory viruses. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia are currently experiencing this spike, with 71 percent of US pediatric beds full across the country, the highest occupancy levels seen by hospitals in two years.

Nearly three-quarters of pediatric beds are now occupied, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), although the agency does not specify the reason for hospitalization. This compares to about two-thirds of pediatric hospital beds being full on an average day over the past two years.

More than 94 percent of pediatric beds are occupied in Rhode Island, Delaware and Washington D.C., while Maine, Arizona, Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Missouri report 85 to 90 percent of beds occupied. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is limited to facilities that report such data, meaning that the situation is likely more dire than official figures.

RSV began surging in late summer, months before its typical season, which runs from November to early spring. According to the CDC, the US has been reporting about 5,000 cases per week. This is on par with last year, but far higher than October 2020, in the first autumn of the coronavirus.

This surge in cases is especially troubling given the threat of a surge in COVID-19 cases in the coming fall and winter months and the elimination of virtually all mitigation measures to fight the deadly virus. Other viruses contributing to the bed emergency include parainfluenza, adenovirus and human metapneumovirus.

Jesse Hackell, chair of the committee on practice and ambulatory medicine for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), told the Washington Post, “It’s very hard to find a bed in a children’s hospital—specifically an intensive care unit bed for a kid with bad pneumonia or bad RSV because they are so full.”

The CDC says that most children catch RSV at some point before they turn two. Symptoms are similar to the common cold and include runny nose, decreased appetite, coughing, sneezing, fever and wheezing. RSV usually resolves in a week or two with rest and fluids.

In some children, particularly young infants, however, RSV can lead to serious problems such as dehydration, breathing trouble, as well as serious illnesses such as bronchiolitis or pneumonia.

Dr. Juan Salazar, physician in chief at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, told the Hartford Courant, “I’ve never seen this level of occupancy beyond our capacity for a sustained period of time as I’m seeing it right now.” Salazar said the hospital is trying to hire pediatric nurses and is talking to the National Guard and the Federal Emergency Agency about emergency measures, such as tent facilities, to treat pediatric patients.

Salazar said beginning in June there has been a steady increase in children being admitted at Connecticut Children’s with respiratory viruses, including RSV, rhinovirus and flu. “Our hospital is full right now,” he said. “All the beds are taken and currently we have about 15 kids waiting to be admitted in the Emergency Department that don’t have a bed to go to” in the units, and at times as many as 25 children with RSV have been waiting for a bed.

Salazar and other doctors point to children born in the past three years being protected from respiratory pathogens due to separation from other children, social distancing and masking. Extremely low COVID-19 and flu vaccination rates also pose a real danger.

Salazar said another theory is that children exposed to COVID-19 have weakened immune systems. He told the Post that it’s possible that even if babies contracted asymptomatic or “mild” cases of COVID-19, the percentage of infection-fighting B-cells might have dropped, creating “a certain level of immunosuppression” when they are hit with a new virus.

As the full extent and severity of Long COVID among young children is not known, and the government does not take the syndrome’s debilitating impact seriously, health care providers are essentially flying blind in the face of the RSV outbreak.

Dr. Thomas Murray, associate medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, also in Connecticut, said RSV is common for children under three, but they are seeing significantly more cases this year. He told the Courant that Yale New Haven is seeing one to three cases of children admitted with COVID-19 and 30 admitted with RSV each day. He said RSV cases seen in the Emergency Department jumped from 57 in the week beginning October 10 to 106 the following week, though not all were admitted.

While RSV is most dangerous for children under three and the elderly, adults who come down with the infection may be unaware that they have been infected and may unwittingly pass it on to the more vulnerable. Infants and toddlers are always putting toys or other items in their mouths, potentially passing the virus on to other children. Unlike SARS-CoV-2, RSV is often spread through surfaces in addition to being airborne.

Several hospitals in the Washington D.C. area have been near capacity for weeks. On one day last week, 18 children were waiting for a room in the ICU at Children’s National.

The University of Rochester-Golisano Children’s Hospital in Rochester, New York, is seeing 20 to 30 more patients a day as a result of a crush of patients with respiratory illnesses, about of fifth of whom are infected with RSV.

Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, went on diversion for a few days in early October as a consequence of the RSV surge, meaning it could not take emergency admissions. While it is taking patients again, it is still inundated with RSV cases.

Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston is the largest pediatric medical center in the US. As of October 21, the hospital had more than 40 RSV inpatients, including several children in the ICU. RSV cases usually spike in December or January in Texas.

James Versalovic, pathologist in chief at Texas Children’s, said the early surge of RSV this year could be attributed to how different viruses interact. Speaking about how the pandemic may have changed children born in the last three years, he told the Post, “Their immune systems and immunity may have been altered in ways that we’re just beginning to appreciate.” He said that the pandemic has changed people’s “pattern of susceptibility to respiratory viruses.”

CNN reports that at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, nearly half the urgent care unit is filled with RSV cases. Hospital spokesperson Kim Brown said that between October 2 and 8, there were 210 cases there, rising to 288 a week later.

In Austin, Texas, Dell Children’s Medical Center, St. David’s Children’s Hospital and Austin Public Health said in a joint statement October 22 they were seeing a spike in respiratory illnesses and that emergency departments were “inundated with children suffering from symptoms of flu-like illnesses.”

As pediatric hospitals see their emergency departments, hospital beds and ICUs filling up with RSV patients, in the coming months hospitals across the country are seeing a triple threat of RSV, influenza and COVID-19 as state and federal governments abandon any mitigation efforts to stop the spread of these potentially deadly viruses.

Medical centers will be hard pressed to recruit sufficient numbers of nurses, doctors and other health care workers to deal with a deluge of patients, both young and old. Health care workers and ancillary staff are leaving the profession in droves due to short-staffing, overwork and low pay.

The coming fall and winter will be a medical catastrophe unless the working class takes immediate action to counter the criminal “herd immunity” policies of the government and for-profit health care institutions.

Rishi Sunak: The UK’s new, multi-millionaire prime minister

Thomas Scripps

The Conservative Party has anointed Rishi Sunak as its new party leader. Worth around £730 million, he will now become the richest prime minister in British history by far.

Sunak was nominated by just over 200 Tory MPs and declared the victor Monday after his only remaining challenger in the leadership election, Penny Mordaunt, pulled out at the eleventh hour.

Rishi Sunak leaves the Conservative Campaign Headquarters in London, Monday October 24, 2022. Rishi Sunak will become the next Prime Minister after winning the Conservative Party leadership contest. [AP Photo/Aberto Pezzali]

A swift, unchallenged coronation of Liz Truss’s replacement was what the bulk of the Tory Party had hoped to achieve, to foist the third prime minister in three months on the population and shield their crisis-ridden government from popular anger. But the thoroughly anti-democratic, right-wing leadership election has nevertheless been laid bare over the last four days by the vampire-like return of Boris Johnson from the political grave, ousted by the biggest cabinet resignation in history just six-weeks ago amid overwhelming popular hatred.

In an open insult to the millions who suffered under his “let the bodies pile up in their thousands” response to the COVID pandemic, Johnson surged towards the necessary 100 nominations to get on the ballot and claims to have reached the threshold before ending his campaign on Sunday night.

His bowing out of the contest says as much as his joining it. Johnson announced, “A general election now would be a disastrous distraction,” worrying “You can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament… Therefore I am afraid the best thing is that I do not allow my nomination to go forward and commit my support to whoever succeeds.”

Johnson lies more easily than breathing. But whether he really had enough MPs backing him to get on the ballot or he was forced into this course of action by a lack of support, and whatever his next steps, the reason for his retreat is the same.

There is enormous pressure being placed by the ruling class on the Tories to pull back from the brink and suppress the factional divisions tearing the party apart. Above all, they are tasked with not tipping the country into a general election, which might become a focus for the massive opposition in the working class to the planned agenda of “eye-wateringly tough” austerity, continued war with Russia, and continued mass infection with COVID-19.

Sunak has won the support of the bulk of the Tory party as the man best-equipped to carry forward these policies. Johnson’s chancellor, he was the second-most senior figure in the government which played a leading role in NATO’s war drive over Ukraine. He continually pushed to remove restrictions on the spread of the pandemic to free the flow of profits.

At the height of the pandemic in September 2020, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (centre) meets at 11 Downing Street with (left) Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress and (right) Dame Carolyn Julie Fairbairn, Director General of the Confederation of British Industry. London, September 24, 2020. [AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

Where Sunak is seen as an upgrade on his predecessors is on economic policy. Truss had her political throat cut by the global financial oligarchy, which tanked the British economy in protest against her plans for massive government borrowing. In Sunak, an obscenely wealthy former hedge fund partner, they have engineered her replacement by one of their own. Ultimately, the Tories who put him in office were acting on the dictates of the markets.

Current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, again brought in, by Truss, at the behest of the markets to prepare a slew of spending cuts and tax rises for an October 31 (Halloween) fiscal statement, is one of Sunak’s leading backers. He wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, “To restore stability and confidence, we need a leader who can be trusted to make difficult choices.”

Sunak’s job would be “Acting in the national interest, even when unpopular.”

Former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King spelled out what this means in an interview with the BBC. Asked if he would compare the cuts being planned to the austerity of former Tory Chancellor George Osborne between 2010-15, King replied, “In some ways it could be more difficult.”

He added, “That doesn’t make a very happy picture for the next few years, but what we need is a government that will tell us honestly there is a reduction in our national standard of living because we’ve decided to help Ukraine and confront Russia, and that means all of us are going to have to share the burden.”

Osborne’s cuts led to over 330,000 excess deaths in 2012-2019, according to “a conservative estimate” by the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH). Each was the brutal consequence of cuts to social services and an unprecedented stagnation of wages which left workers facing the worst cost-of-living catastrophe in living memory.

Sunak’s coronation is a devastating exposure of the actions of the Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer.

The Labour leader has spent the days since Truss’s resignation appealing to the Tory Party to “put country first” and help vote out the government, while promising to continue where the Tories left off in imposing austerity and waging war if necessary.

Speaking to Sky News Sunday, Shadow Levelling Up Secretary Lisa Nandy said of a vote of no confidence, “It’s entirely up to Tory MPs now… We are calling on them to put country before party and do the right thing.”

Starmer set out his right-wing pitch in an interview with the Sunday Times, making clear that Labour would make no change of direction in government, but offer the ruling class a change of personnel to provide “stability”.

Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of Britain's Labour Party makes his speech at the party's annual conference in Liverpool, England, September 27, 2022. [AP Photo/Jon Super]

He argued, “We need a serious, credible Labour government that will be the party of sound money and that is the single most likely thing to settle the market completely… there are investors with huge amounts of money who don’t have confidence in what this chaotic, shambolic party are doing.”

Warning that the Tory crisis “reduces the confidence that the markets and others have in our economy and it trashes our reputation abroad,” he added, “Talk to any business person who has travelled in the last few weeks and they will tell you”.

He summarised, “We all have a duty to reduce the risk and that is with a general election” and “an incoming Labour government, with Rachel Reeves as the chancellor, with absolutely clear fiscal rules.”

In the end, the Tories appealed to by Starmer lined up behind Sunak to make a show of a united Conservative Party. This may fall apart. Labour may yet find an audience for its appeal to Tory rebels for a no-confidence vote among disaffected Johnson supporters.

Tory MP Nadine Dorries tweeted, “Rishi and Penny, despite requests from Boris refused to unite which would have made governing utterly impossible. It will now be impossible to avoid a GE [General Election].”

Zac Goldsmith MP said, “I don’t see how we can have a 3rd new Prime Minister—& a policy programme that is miles away from the original manifesto—without going to the country.”

Another Tory MP, Chris Chope, told BBC Radio 4, “Unless we can have somebody as our leader in parliament who commands the support and respect of the parliamentary party, we are in effect actually ungovernable… a general election is essentially the only answer.”

British politics has been turned into this Byzantine system of palace coups, court intrigues and backroom deals because the real opposition, the working class, is kept excluded from political life by Labour and the trade union bureaucracy.

Millions of workers are pushing for strike action as they are plunged into desperation and poverty. Yet no more than 180,000 have been on strike at any one time—and that only for one day.

Franco-German tensions shape EU summit

Peter Schwarz

Thursday’s EU summit was marked by sharp tensions between Germany and France, who have set the tone in the European Union for 30 years.

As usual, the 27 leaders gathered in Brussels pledged their support for NATO’s war against Russia, applauded Ukrainian President Zelensky, who joined by video, and promised more arms deliveries. In addition, the EU wants to support the Ukrainian state budget with 18 billion euros in the coming year. Kiev can count on 1.5 billion euros from Brussels every month, vowed Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The summit participants, however, argued bitterly about who should bear the devastating economic consequences of the war. At the centre of the dispute was the question of how the EU should respond to the energy crisis triggered by the sanctions against Russia. Astronomical gas and electricity prices are driving millions of working families into poverty and ruining small and medium-sized businesses, while major corporations are closing plants or moving them to other countries where energy costs are lower.

Thus far, EU member states have responded to the energy crisis with national measures. They have tried to dampen the price increases sufficiently to prevent open rebellions or uprisings, and to ensure that at least some of their smaller businesses would survive. Essentially, this amounts to government support for prices and thus a subsidy of the large energy companies, which are making record profits.

French President Emmanuel Macron, left, greets German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as he arrives for an EU summit at the Palace of Versailles on March 10, 2022. [AP Photo/Michel Euler, File]

France, Italy and about two-thirds of the member states lobbied for a European gas price cap. It would mean that the EU and its members would only buy gas up to a certain price ceiling.

Germany vehemently opposes this. Chancellor Olaf Scholz justified his opposition by saying that the energy companies would then sell their gas elsewhere. What is decided must also work, he said.

“It should not mean there will be no gas afterwards,” he declared. “That doesn’t help anyone either.” He was supported by the Netherlands, which produces its own gas and imports large amounts of liquefied natural gas through its ports. He was also backed by Ireland, Hungary and some smaller countries.

Proponents of the gas price cap accuse Germany of using its economic power to gain a competitive advantage. In particular, the €200 billion energy price defence shield, which the German government adopted in September without consulting the EU to finance a gas price brake for Germany, has been met with outrage across Europe. It puts Germany in a position to obtain gas supplies even when prices are high, while poorer countries with high debt levels cannot raise such sums.

The conflict reached such intensity that French President Emmanuel Macron publicly attacked the German chancellor before the summit. “I’ve been trying to create unity for five years,” Macron said, accusing Germany of going it alone. He added, “It’s not good for Germany or for Europe if Germany isolates itself.”

Berlin and Paris cancelled a long-planned joint government meeting. Instead, President Macron and Chancellor Scholz will meet in Paris next Wednesday.

After an eleven-hour overnight session, the EU summit agreed to a formulaic compromise that accommodates both sides but leaves all concrete issues unresolved. The gas price cap has been replaced by a “temporary dynamic price corridor,” with the stipulation that it not jeopardize security of supply.

The aim is “to ensure that arbitrarily set prices do not make it impossible to obtain gas,” Scholz said.

The EU Commission is now to draw up a corresponding legislative proposal in cooperation with the specialist ministers of the member states. Joint European gas purchases should also be possible up to a certain amount.

Both Scholz and Macron expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the summit. “We have come together,” commented Scholz. Yet it is obvious that nothing has been resolved. The gas price cap is, moreover, just one of many issues dividing Paris and Berlin.

For example, there is a fierce dispute over the so-called Midcat pipeline. Berlin has long pushed to build the pipeline through the Pyrenees to supply Germany with natural gas via France, and later with green hydrogen from Spain. Paris has long blocked the project, citing possible environmental damage. Now Macron has reached an agreement with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to build a pipeline through the Pyrenees connecting Barcelona to Marseille instead.

Sharp tensions also exist over arms policy. Germany’s efforts to emerge as Europe’s leading military power are increasingly fueling misgivings in Paris. Whereas the French government had previously pushed for Germany to increase its arms spending, it is now outraged that Germany is buying US fighter jets and supplying tanks to Eastern Europe while the joint FCAS arms project falters.

There is a real problem of confidence, Stern magazine quotes French defence expert Gaspard Schnitzler as saying. “There is concern that Germany is gaining a foothold in Eastern European countries.”

Scholz’s recent proposal to build a European air defence system involving 15 countries is also seen as an affront in Paris, Schnitzler said. France, which is developing its own system with Italy, is not participating. “There is the impression that Germany is forging ahead alone,” Schnitzler added.

Differences also arose at the summit over relations with China, which summit participants discussed on Friday. The European External Action Service presented a five-page strategy paper on the issue, which advocates a confrontational course with China. It warns against “isolated and uncoordinated initiatives that could weaken our united stance.”

Eastern European EU members that are close to the US on foreign policy are pushing for a tougher stance on China. By contrast, Germany, France and Italy, some of whose companies have close ties to China and generate high profits there, are pursuing a more restrained course. Chancellor Scholz is traveling to Beijing with a large business delegation in early November, and President Macron is preparing a similar trip.

On this issue, too, the summit ended with a formulaic compromise. The EU wants to pursue a two-track approach in dealing with China, Council President Charles Michel reported. It wants to become more independent of China, but at the same time avoid a confrontational posture. Indirectly, he warned against unreservedly taking the American side in the conflict between the United States and China. The EU must develop its own strategy, he said.

The summit showed once again that the European Union embodies neither the “unity of the European peoples” nor “democracy.” It is a union of imperialist predators, each of which looks after itself. The war offensive against Russia and the associated spending for rearmament go hand in hand with brutal attacks on the working class and the exacerbation of national tensions that have already driven Europe into two world wars.

Rise in sudden deaths among young people with “mild” COVID-19 points to urgent need to end the pandemic

Liz Cabrera & Katy Kinner

More than two-and-a-half years into the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, evidence of the long-term consequences of infection and reinfection from the virus is beginning to emerge. There is an increase in sudden deaths from heart attacks and strokes among young people infected with what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) refers to as “mild” cases of COVID-19. 

The CDC defines “mild” infections as those in which individuals have various signs and symptoms of COVID-19—such as fever, cough, sore throat, malaise, headache, muscle pain, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, loss of taste and smell—but who do not have shortness of breath, dyspnea, or abnormal chest imaging. 

Kindergarteners wear masks while listening to their teacher amid the COVID-19 pandemic at Washington Elementary School on Jan. 12, 2022, in Lynwood, Calif. [AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez]

While the Biden administration, the CDC and governments around the world write off what they consider mild cases of COVID-19, it is becoming apparent that the aftereffects of even “mild” illness or sequelae can lead to hospitalization and long-term issues. This can take the form of Long COVID—a set of chronic health issues for months, years or possibly a lifetime—as well as sudden death in otherwise relatively healthy people. 

While many scientists and medical professionals are beginning to sound the alarm, the full scope of the COVID-19 sequelae is not taken seriously, as governments around the world instead push for the dropping of public health measures aimed at containing the virus, allowing it to run rampant and develop further immune-evading mutations. As a result, concerned citizens are attempting to track alarming Long COVID symptoms and increasing sudden deaths. 

One such individual, Jess, or @MeetJess on Twitter, spoke to the WSWS about twitter threads she has put together that compile dozens of recent sudden deaths of primarily younger people and a number of athletes. These threads have been widely shared with numerous commenters who have themselves noted that they have loved ones in the prime of their lives who have unexpectedly died. 

“I’m an advocate but I’m also a concerned citizen,” Jess states. “I’m not a doctor or a scientist, that’s why I want to make it very clear. I started these threads just to make people pay a little bit more attention. Also, I’m a parent, so I’m also concerned for the future of my child, whom I’ve kept home now since the pandemic has started. Additionally, I do work with seniors, mostly in the dementia and Alzheimer’s field … so I’ve always been very passionate about the rights of everybody and providing care to everybody, not just a certain population.”

She continued, “People were dying from sudden deaths before COVID, but not at this rate and not at these ages. The studies are clear that a COVID infection will increase your chances and put you at risk for stroke and cardiovascular issues. It’s a known fact, there’s scientific studies and I always post studies within each of my threads.

“When we talk about athletes, I think what we’re seeing is that a lot of these athletes that had their COVID infection ‘milestones’ are exercising 10 days later or five days later because they feel great. They’re pushing themselves and we see stories of scientific studies showing that the more you push yourself the more you put yourself at risk for long COVID, for arrhythmias and for other heart conditions.”

A few of the reports that Jess has shared on her twitter account include:

• Twenty-one-year-old Chloe Franklin from the UK, who died suddenly in February 2020 after visiting her GP for a persistent cough and difficulty breathing. The young twin was placed on a ventilator and never recovered; she died several days later from sepsis and a massive stroke. 
• On October 10, 44-year-old Giovanna Fabrica, a teacher in Villa Bartolomea, Italy, collapsed and died in front of her students. According to the school, the teacher had not suffered from any illness prior to her collapse. 
• On September 7, in the Nellore district of India, 13-year-old student Sheikh Shaheeda suddenly collapsed and died from cardiac arrest after standing up to answer a question from the teacher.

While these tragedies cannot be linked definitively to COVID-19, the increase of sudden deaths among often young and relatively healthy people points to the urgent need to dedicate funding and the world’s best scientific minds to the study of COVID-19 sequelae. These sudden deaths also throw a wrench into the conception that COVID-19 poses only a “mild” risk to the population. 

Existing research suggests that long-term risks of COVID-19 infection include strokes, heart attacks and organ damage, all of which could be behind the phenomenon of sudden deaths. 

One study published in Nature in May 2022 looked at more than 30,000 vaccinated patients. It found that patients who had experienced COVID-19 breakthrough infections prior to Omicron had a higher risk of death and debilitating Long COVID symptoms involving multiple organs (lungs, heart, kidney, brain and others) when compared to controls without evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This remained true when compared to seasonal flu, dispelling claims in the mainstream media that COVID-19 is no more harmful than the flu. 

COVID-19 has also been shown to negatively impact the cardiovascular system. A peer reviewed study published in Nature in February 2022 titled “Long-term cardiovascular outcomes of COVID-19” found that individuals with COVID-19 infections, along with other side effects, developed an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Researchers used a national health care database, studying a cohort of 153,760 people. In addition, the researchers used two separate control groups, each with over 5 million people. 

Their research showed that the risk of developing cardiovascular disease increases 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.

In addition, previous scientific findings before the COVID-19 pandemic may suggest that gene abnormalities make some people more susceptible to the development of myocarditis, a rare type of heart inflammation. As a result, some experts hypothesize that after contracting COVID-19, those individuals may be at higher risk of developing worsening heart damage that could lead to sudden cardiac deaths among young people.

Emerging studies are also showing that strokes are occurring at higher rates among young people who have been infected with COVID-19. A large research study published in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke examined 432 patients from 136 research institutions in 32 countries. Their data showed an increased incidence of ischemic stroke in young patients compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Of the patients who suffered a stroke, more than one-third of those studied were under the age of 55 and less than a quarter did not have the expected risk factors such as smoking, diabetes and hypertension. Significantly, some of the patients who suffered stroke symptoms and presented to emergency departments were asymptomatic for COVID-19, debunking the myth that mild or asymptomatic infections do not carry any risk. 

It appears that no age group is immune from the dangers of COVID-19 and even so-called mild and asymptomatic cases can result in long-term illness and organ damage that can lead to debilitation and death. Vaccination also does not prevent the development of Long COVID, further highlighting the great social crime being carried out against the world’s population as the ruling class allows the virus to run rampant, pushing the false narrative of a vaccine-only strategy that includes only a fraction of the world’s population. 

The ruling class policy of mass infection has allowed the virus to continue to mutate and become more deadly and immune-evasive. Dangerous new variants, such as BQ.1.1 and XBB, have created a growing wave of infections unlike anything seen since the start of the pandemic, concerning many scientists and medical professionals. These variants are the direct result of the unhindered spread of COVID-19, which allowed the Omicron variant to develop hundreds of immune-evading mutations. 

As a result, infections and reinfections are expected to continue to rise sharply, killing hundreds of thousands and debilitating scores more. Some of those who appear to recover from “mild” infections may find themselves hospitalized or dead weeks to months later. 

Capitalism and policies of the ruling elite have led to the deaths of 6,545,561 worldwide. While billions face the threat of infection and its possible debilitating after-effects, the US and its capitalist allies spend untold billions on the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine while scientific research and strategies to fight the pandemic are starved for funds.

Boric orders violent police crackdown on anniversary of Chile’s 2019 revolt

Mauricio Saavedra

At least 195 demonstrators were arrested at rallies on Tuesday, October 18 commemorating the third anniversary of the social explosion that shook Chile in 2019.

The police-state methods were carried out despite the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of the gatherings. The same repressive measures used repeatedly under the previous right-wing administration of billionaire president Sebastian Piñera, are today normalized by the increasingly unpopular pseudo-left government headed by President Gabriel Boric.

President Boric reviews Chile's Carabineros police. (Credit: presidencia.cl)

“Mr. Boric, a former left-wing student leader, came to power in the aftermath of the protests, having proposed a constitutional referendum as a way of channeling public discontent with the system,” wrote the Brazilian Report. “But his approval ratings stand at a meager 27 percent only six months after taking office, a Cadem poll showed on October 17. The rate sits six points below the previous reading on October 10, the previous record low.”

Boric’s crackdown also resulted in another 30 people being injured by the notorious Carabineros Special Forces, who provocatively targeted marchers with live tear gas canisters as water cannon vehicles drenched crowds with contaminated water causing skin ulcerations.

With extraordinary cynicism, Daniel Jadue the Stalinist mayor of the municipality of Recoleta tweeted “Three years on, the repression is still intact. Shocking and incomprehensible. Finally nothing has changed! How to explain Minister @Carolina_Toha that they use the same practices of Piñera?” The Stalinists hold two cabinet posts, and Camila Vallejo as Secretary General of Government is spokesperson for the Boric administration.

In the sweep, the militarized cops also arrested Carolina Trejo, a Sputnik and Interferencia correspondent, who was held incommunicado for 24 hrs. The president of the Federation of Journalists of Latin America and the Caribbean, Fabian Cardozo, told Sputnik: “We view with concern the arrest of this colleague who was doing her job. We repudiate the action of the police (and) demand her immediate release.”

Cardozo warned of an ever-growing threat to journalists from the Chilean state apparatus. Only last May Day, Señal 3 la Victoria reporter, Francisca Sandoval, was fatally wounded and two other journalists were shot by right-wing elements as Carabineros watched on.

Without a doubt Trejo was specifically singled out. Last August, Interferencia reported that police investigations had been carrying out surveillance of several journalists who had interviewed leaders of the Mapuche guerrilla organization, Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco. Trejo was subjected to wiretapping and was being shadowed for more than two years.

Undersecretary of the Interior Manuel Monsalve (Socialist Party-PS) reported on Monday that 25,000 officers were deployed “in a preventive manner to avoid disturbances to public order, public safety and acts of violence.”

The overwhelming police mobilization was designed to intimidate the population and to brutalize the protestors. Some social media sites urged people not to attend due to the danger of state-orchestrated violence, or cautioned participants to be conscious of the infamous “intramarchas,” infiltrated cops deployed in the hundreds during the 2019 demonstrations to commit crimes and incite violence and vandalism to tarnish the protestors and to provide a pretext for the violent repression that followed.

In the lead up to the third anniversary, Amnesty International revealed that while 10,813 complaints of human rights violations had been lodged at the Prosecutor’s Office in 2019, only 14 cases had resulted in convictions against state agents. Another report, submitted by the Childhood Ombudsman's Office, found that more than 3,470 children and adolescents had suffered human rights violations between 2019 and 2020. Of these cases, 74 percent corresponded to unlawful coercion committed by Carabineros—only one percent of the cases have been closed and only two cases have resulted in convictions.

Yet a week before Tuesday’s commemorations, Boric ratified the incumbent general director of the Carabineros, Ricardo Yañez, who faces charges of human rights violations including a lawsuit for his possible responsibility for the murder of journalist Francisca Sandoval. Also keeping his post is the head of the Carabineros Police Intelligence Directorate, Luigi Lopresti, a founder of the “intramarchas” units.

Following the overwhelming rejection in September of a redrafted constitution to replace the charter from the era of the Pinochet dictatorship, Boric invited to post-plebiscite discussions the centre-left, which won only 25 seats, and the right and fascistic right parties, which combined won only 37 seats in the 155-seat constitutional convention last year.

These moves are a nod to finance capital to indicate that irrespective of earlier electoral promises and the ultimate replacement of the authoritarian constitution, Boric’s administration will pursue a de-facto national unity government committed to a tight monetary policy, cutting spending and imposing “law and order”. Boric has, along with his “Pink Tide” counterparts in Peru and Colombia, also aligned Chile more closely with the Biden administration in its war drive against Russia and the pursuit of US imperialism’s hegemonic interests in the Western Hemisphere.

Boric also stacked his cabinet with members of the deeply hated centre-left coalition. Monsalve (PS), Interior Minister Carolina Tohá (Party for Democracy), Defense Minister Maya Fernández Allende (PS), Finance Minister Mario Marcel (PS-ind), Secretary General of the Presidency Ana Lya Uriarte (PS) and others are long-time operatives of a political caste, financed by the National Endowment for Democracy and other US and European imperialist think-tanks, created to save capitalism amid the sharp economic and political crisis of the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1980s.

Once in office, the bourgeois centre-left coalition imposed savage free-market policies during 24 of the last 30 years of civilian rule that helped create the fertile ground for the unprecedented anti-capitalist demonstrations that shook the Chilean ruling class to its foundations and opened up a revolutionary period characterized by the bourgeoisie’s profound crisis of rule.

That the working class was not able to take advantage of this crisis of rule was because of the role played by the pseudo-left Frente Amplio coalition, the bourgeois Socialist Party, the Stalinist Communist Party, the trade unions and the myriad Pabloite organizations that orbit them in subordinating the mass struggles to the maintenance of the bourgeois state and capitalist profit interests.

Breaking the grip of these bankrupt and anti-working class organization requires a thorough-going rejection of the reactionary national reformist and class collaborationist program that they promote— like the possibility of democratizing the capitalist state, or redrafting the constitution to resolve social inequality, or reforming the repressive institutions. The capitalist state exists solely to safeguard the interests of its master, the capitalist class.

A revolutionary period has opened up has opened up in Chile and throughout Latin America precisely because the mechanisms that have previously kept world capitalism in equilibrium are collapsing.

The economic and political crisis has become all the more acute in the nearly three years since global capitalism imposed its “let it rip” policy in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Coupled with the injection by central banks of trillions of dollars to save the parasitic financial oligarchy at the expense of the broad mass of the population, and the American and European imperialist war against Russia via their Ukrainian puppets, these objective expressions of capitalist breakdown have sparked an international supply chain crisis, precipitated rampant inflation and ushered in a resurgence of the class struggle.

As the Carabineros were preparing their brutal repression on October 18, Boric gave a televised address to the nation in which he unwittingly revealed the terror that gripped the entire political caste three years ago. Almost as a way of calming the nerves of the ruling elite, Boric began by specifically denying the anti-capitalist character of the popular demands and the revolutionary nature of the period.

“The Outburst was not an anti-capitalist revolution,” Boric said. Only minutes later he implored that “A rupture of this magnitude must challenge our views and push us to look at what we do not want to see…. I insist, once again, in Chile we face the problems of society with more democracy and not with less. And this has to be a lesson that we all have to learn together so that our differences are solved without ever again reaching the fracture that exploded three years ago today.”

The main thrust of his speech was to invite the right into a de-facto national unity coalition to prevent at all costs the emergence of another revolutionary situation.

“I want you to know that it is in the will of our government to build those bridges and not to dynamite them, with political sectors that do not think as we do and also with society.”

Official inquiry into Japanese ruling party’s ties to right-wing cult

Ben McGrath

On October 17, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that his government would open an investigation into the Unification Church, a far-right organization with deep ties to his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). These ties, coupled with anger over Tokyo’s war drive and deteriorating economic conditions, have generated widespread public anger, which the Kishida administration hopes to dissipate in what will amount to a whitewash.

Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida speaks at the NYSE, Sept. 22, 2022, in New York. [AP Photo/Andres Kudacki]

The investigation, based on Japan’s Religious Corporations Law, is focusing on the dishonest manner in which the Unification Church—a cult—collects donations, and could potentially lead to the group being ordered to disband. Many in Japan view the organization as a criminal organization, with the revelation of its close ties to numerous right-wing LDP politicians generating shock and anger.

LDP Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi reported on September 8 that at least 179 of the 379 party members in the National Diet have some connection to the Unification Church.

Speaking to the National Diet’s Lower House Budget Committee session, Kishida stated that the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) would conduct the investigation into the Unification Church. “Although large numbers of people have suffered and many families collapsed and were broken (by the organization), measures to save victims have yet to be sufficiently taken. The government takes this situation very seriously,” he claimed.

The day after announcing the investigation, Kishida said that his government would draw up a relief package bill for victims of the Unification Church and submit it to the current session of the Diet soon. Details of the package have yet to be released. Opposition parties have backed the proposed idea, with the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) and the right-wing Nippon Ishin no Kai presenting their own joint bill on October 17, aimed at supposedly helping victims of the cult’s scams.

The Unification Church is formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, though it is often referred to as the Moonies, in reference to its founder Sun Myung Moon. It was established in South Korea in 1954 and has a long history of promoting religious obscurantism while pushing an ideology virulently hostile to the working class and to socialism.

The LDP’s ties to the Moonies came into the public spotlight following the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on July 8 in Nara. The suspected assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, targeted Abe after seeing him appear in a video for a group affiliated with the cult. Yamagami reportedly wrote in a letter a day before the assassination, stating, “After my mother joined the church (in the 1990s), my entire teenage years were gone, with some 100 million yen ($US665,000) wasted.” He is currently being held for psychiatric evaluation until November 29.

However, Kishida only ordered the current inquiry into the group more than three months after Abe’s assassination. It is also being wrapped up in bureaucratic red-tape with MEXT scheduled to begin studying how to conduct the investigation on October 25.

The Kishida administration ultimately hopes the investigation will deflect the growing discontent towards his government and the LDP. An October 13 the Jiji Press poll found only 27.4 percent approved of the current administration. Kishida was already forced to reshuffle his cabinet on August 10 in an attempt to distance his government from the scandal surrounding the Unification Church.

Public anger, however, is not simply directed at the Moonies’ reactionary behavior or the LDP’s ties to the group, but at the far-right orientation of the entire political establishment that these ties represent. The working class faces worsening living conditions while Tokyo has joined Washington in a war drive against China. Japan also recently experienced its most deadly COVID-19 wave, with millions infected this past summer. Tens of thousands continue to be infected daily.

As of August, real wages had fallen for five straight months as consumer prices have risen at the fastest pace in eight years, according to the latest government figures. In August and July respectively, real wages fell by 1.7 percent and 1.8 percent over the previous year.

Kishida’s attempt to glorify Abe’s legacy of remilitarization and attacks on the working class through an unprecedented state funeral on September 27 for the former prime minister also met with widespread anger. Public opinion polling found that as many as 56 percent of people were opposed to the funeral. People taking part in protests against the funeral denounced Abe’s pro-war record, the government’s removal of COVID-19 safety measures, and the huge price tag for the event, which came to 1.2 billion yen ($US8 million).

In the investigation of the Unification Church, the government wants to ensure none of these issues are addressed. The focus on the Moonies’ dishonest practices is meant to obfuscate and distract from the LDP’s deep and longstanding ties with this and other far-right organizations on which the LDP relies for political support, especially in elections.

Speaking to the Nikkei Asia in September, Koichi Nakano, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo, called the extensive ties between the Moonies and the LDP “shocking.” He explained that in the 1990s, “The LDP got closer to the church and moved even further to the right, in an effort to differentiate itself as much as possible from the [Democrats], which seemed left-wing and dangerous.”

Other far-right groups include Nippon Kaigi, an ultra-nationalist group that counts numerous politicians among its members, including Prime Minister Kishida and large numbers of LDP members including those in the cabinet. Nippon Kaigi promotes historical revisionism, remilitarization, emperor worship, and a return to “traditional” values.

The Unification Church scandal is a further demonstration of the extreme right-wing character of the government and the fragility of bourgeois democracy in Japan. The LDP utilizes its longstanding ties to far-right organizations to prop up its unpopular rule, allowing the LDP to remain in power with supposed “mandates” from the public after each election.

By reducing the issued to one of personal ties to the cult, the official investigation is meant to hide the operations of the LDP as a whole. Undoubtedly, a more in-depth analysis of the ties of all the parties would expose a host of practices and interconnections the ruling class would like to keep from public view.