Menopause Mongering Returns, Big Time

Martha Rosenberg

Photograph Source: ד”ר אבישי טייכר – CC BY 2.5

What is the dream of drug makers? A medication that a wide swath of the population will take every day for the rest of their lives like statins, GERD drugs and, of course psych drugs for depression, ADHD and “bipolar disorder.”* So it is no surprise that drug makers have revived menopause as a “disease” for a generation of women who do not remember the first, lethal round of menopause mongering.

“Every middle-aged woman” will undergo the condition of “VMS”—“Vasomotor Symptoms, due to menopause”—trumpets a new round of menopause disease mongering online and on the radio. It’s a real disease but “no one is talking about it” blasts the campaign .** What?

But, from the 1940’s until 20 years ago, everyone was “talking” about the “disease” of menopause. In fact, in 2002, 61 million prescriptions were written for women in the U.S. for hormones to treat the so-called “disease” which was even once treated with electroshock therapy—yes ECT. Drug makers are banking, literally, on the fact that today’s “middle-aged women”—who were 25 when the first pathologizing occurred—don’t remember the first lethal dupe of menopause-as-a-disease.

Until the government-sponsored Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) found in 2002 that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increased the risk of breast cancer by 26 percent, heart attacks by 29 percent, stroke by 41 percent, and doubled the risk of blood clots, HRT was a rite of passage for U.S. women like getting their first bra or using Tampax®.  It also doubled the risk of dementia, increased the risks of losing their hearing, gallbladder disease, urinary incontinence, asthma, melanoma, ovarian, endometrial and lung cancers and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

HRT even made detecting breast cancer more difficult. A 1995 article in the journal Radiology said, “an increase in mammographic density” was demonstrated in most subjects undergoing continuous combined HRT. The therapy was such a scourge, when millions of women quit the drugs en masse in 2003, the occurrence of breast cancer fell seven percent in the U.S. and 15 percent in estrogen-feed tumors.

And HRT harm continues to this day. A 2019 WHI follow-up found that “breast cancer risk from menopause hormones may last decades” and that 19 years after using HRT, women still had a 29 percent greater incidence of breast cancer.

The Heart Break Of VMS

Why the revival? The drug company Astellas just received a new drug application for fezolinetant, a drug to treat “VMS” and selling the disease to create “demand” for a drug is a time honored drug maker tradition. It is buttressed by online “quizzes” and “symptom checkers” to help patients self-diagnose the sold condition and go to the doctor requesting the new drug. “Unbranded” advertising, in which a disease rather than a drug is sold, is often mistaken for messages from the CDC by the public which helps the sell.

VMS, says the new marketing campaign, impacts “many aspects of your life including your sleep, ability to focus, and personal relationships,” and tortures you as “your internal infernos.” “VMS can start as early as age 40 and can last longer than 10 years for some women.” Ka-ching.

Why does the FDA allow the shameless selling of diseases to sell unnecessary drugs? The same reason the government allows the FDA commissioner to have countless financial links to drug makers—literally a fox guarding the hen house.

News Media Helps the Pathologizing

It is not only drug makers who are pathologizing healthy, normal women. In February, The New York Times published a sniveling personal essay about the heartbreak of “perimenopause”—a term believed to be invented by drug makers to grow sales like “osteopenia” was coined for pre-osteoporosis to sell bone drugs.

Doctors are failing to treat the condition wrote the New York Times’ menstrual diarist which “suggests that we have a high cultural tolerance for women’s suffering. It’s not regarded as important.” What? The breast cancer, heart attacks, stroke, blood clots and ovarian, endometrial and lung cancers caused by HRT were not “suffering”? Read your medical history, diarist.

Ten years ago the New York Times Sunday magazine published another sniveling, women-are-victims piece called “The Estrogen Dilemma.” The pro-HRT article quoted five HRT “experts” who recommended the lethal treatments, the story omitting the fact that all of the quoted “experts” had financial links to hormone drug makers. Just good journalism. Several letters to the Times requesting a clarification went unheeded and the disinformation stands to this day.

Convincing healthy people they are sick makes more money for drug makers than developing and/or selling drugs for people who actually are really sick. It is appalling. Convincing healthy women that menopause is a disease that requires a drug is simply the latest example of Pharma’s business model.

*That is why effective antibiotics are neglected. They are only taken for a few days except, of course, in livestock who constitute the biggest market.

**Drug makers have discovered that giving a disease snappy initials like EPI and RA helps sell.

Humza Yousaf replaces Nicola Sturgeon as Scottish National Party leader

Steve James

Humza Yousaf has been elected leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) following a bitter campaign to select a replacement for Nicola Sturgeon, who unexpectedly resigned earlier this year. Yousaf has also become Scottish First Minister after the SNP's Green Party coalition partners backed him.

Yousaf won 48 percent of first preference votes against 40 percent for rival Kate Forbes and 11 percent for Ash Regan. After Regan was eliminated, Yousaf beat Forbes narrowly, by 52 to 48 percent. Of the SNP's 72,169 members, only 70 percent, (50,490) voted.

First Minister Humza Yousaf (front, centre) unveils his Cabinet team, March 29, 2023 [Photo by Scottish Government/Flickr / CC BY 2.0]

Yousaf's candidacy was endorsed by Sturgeon ally, and former Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, and both the current and former leaders of the SNP in Westminster, Stephen Flynn and Ian Blackford. He will continue Sturgeon's pro-business policies, camouflaged with a veneer of progressive rhetoric, lashings of identity politics, and close relations with the trade union bureaucracy. He indicated he would not continue with Sturgeon's plan that the next UK general election should be a “de facto” poll on Scottish independence, something which had alienated SNP parliamentarians under conditions in which support for independence remains a minority position among the population. One of his first decisions as first minister was to create an independence minister post as a sop to hardline nationalists within and outside of the party.

As a condition of coalition with the Scottish Greens, Yousaf intends to proceed with Sturgeon's gender self-identification bill, currently stalled by the UK government. The Bill, and the frenzy for and against it, played a part in Sturgeon’s departure. For Yousaf, it serves as a cynical distraction from the Scottish government's 2023-24 austerity budget which, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, will mean real terms fall of 1.6 percent to public services.

Cuts in Scotland are expected to be higher than in England and Wales as more areas of budgeting are devolved to Holyrood. This is because the Barnett formula, established in the 1970s to provide for a higher level of public spending in Scotland to offset geographical and social problems, applies to ever fewer areas of spending.

Born in Glasgow in 1985, Yousaf, a practicing Muslim with Pakistani and Punjabi Kenyan parents, is one of several British politicians with immigrant backgrounds who have risen to prominence. The current UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, far right Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, her equally frothing predecessor Priti Patel along with Labour Party Mayor of London Sajid Khan and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar were all born to parents who emigrated to Britain from South Asia.

The elevation of such individuals is utilised by the media and political establishment as supposedly progressive camouflage for politics that proceeds ever further to the right at the expense of the working class.

Yousaf joined the SNP in 2005 based on its then opposition to the war in Iraq, in line with the party's orientation to the European Union. By 2008, having been identified as a rising figure to be cultivated, he took part in the US State Department's International Visitor Leadership Program. Former alumni include Conservative Prime Ministers Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, and Labour’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

He was elected to the Scottish parliament in 2011. A year later, the SNP dropped its long-standing opposition to NATO while Yousaf was given a junior ministerial post. He has been a cabinet minister ever since.

He became Minister of Health and Social Care in 2021 following the resignation of Jeane Freeman after thousands of COVID deaths in Scottish care homes. In September that year, Yousaf encouraged the public to “think twice” before phoning an ambulance, a statement criticised for putting lives at risk. He then requested the Ministry of Defence to provide troops to drive ambulances. Some 500 people died in 2021 waiting for emergency treatment.

Yousaf has the backing of the trade unions. After restricting health workers in Scotland to an average 7.5 percent this year, followed by 6.5 percent next year well below inflation—Yousaf advised Westminster, “Don’t invite trade unions in and insult them by just having cups of tea and biscuits... listen to them around the pay demands that they have got, and they will meet you halfway, that has been my experience.”

Scottish Trades Union Congress leader, Roz Foyer, welcomed his election.

The winner's main opponent was Sturgeon's Finance Secretary, Kate Forbes. She is a Gaelic speaking evangelical Christian and member of the Free Church of Scotland which opposes same-sex marriage and abortion. Her manifesto was more nakedly pitched towards the small business owners who make up a significant component of the SNP, pledging to “make the Scottish economy more prosperous”, and promising to the huge Scottish food and drink industry to “reignite the fire that fueled this industry's previous success”.

As Finance Minister, Forbes published a National Strategy for Economic Transformation calling for “a culture that encourages, promotes and celebrates entrepreneurial activity in every sector of our economy.”

Forbes denounced Yousaf during a TV debate, “When you were transport minister the trains were never on time. When you were justice minister, the police were strained to breaking point. And now as health minister, we've got record high waiting times. What makes you think you can do a better job as First Minister?”. This from the minister who held the purse strings while Yousaf carried out his attacks on the living standards of workers, including slashing public services.

Yousaf responded with a flimsy pitch to position himself to her left, stating, “If change means lurching to the right, Kate, if it means rolling back progressive values, I don't think that's an option.”

Taking office Yousaf offered Forbes the much less significant rural affairs post in his new cabinet. She refused, returning to the backbenches.

The third candidate, Ash Regan, won only 11 percent of first preference votes. She had resigned from government in opposition to Sturgeon's gender bill and presented herself as the most pro-independence candidate. The former campaign manager at pseudo-left think tank Common Weal has prominently promoted the oil and gas industry and sought closer relations with former SNP leader and First Minister Alex Salmond's Alba Party. Salmond has close connections to the banks and oil industry, previously working for the Royal Bank of Scotland, including as an oil economist from 1982-84.

Various scores were settled during the election campaign. The SNP's communications chief and former tabloid editor Murray Foot suddenly resigned. Foote, who had rejected claims that the SNP had lost over 30,000 members since December 2021 as “drivel”, was left exposed when the dramatic collapse in SNP support was acknowledged.

Foote’s resignation was followed by the man deemed responsible for the dubious figures, the party's chief executive for 20 years Peter Murrell. Murrell, husband to Nicola Sturgeon, is a central figure in allegations of financial irregularities swirling around the SNP. Another Sturgeon ally forced out was Liz Lloyd, her chief of staff.

All the leading players in the Sturgeon SNP leadership’s war against Salmond have now resigned. Salmond, seeking rehabilitation from the SNP, responded to Yousaf's election by publicly praising all the candidates and calling for an “Independence Convention” to bring all the pro-independence parties, the SNP, the Greens, Alba and the pseudo-left Scottish Socialist Party, together.

Continuity with Sturgeon’s agenda “won’t cut it”, he said, warning that “constitutional issue cannot be kicked into the long grass yet again.”

Salmond knows that an increasingly fractious and unpopular SNP, which has been leading attacks on workers' living standards and social services for over a decade and a half now, must face off an ongoing and powerful strike movement in Scotland and across the UK. He is urging the party to beat the nationalist drum as loud as possible in order to build a middle-class social base for its pro-capitalist, anti-worker agenda with promises of greater personal wealth, lower business taxes, governmental position and social privileges following independence.

Israel attacks Syria and Palestinians as an answer to anti-government protests

Jean Shaoul

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have carried out a series of attacks against targets in Syria, criminal acts of aggression in defiance of international law.

Part of the US-Israeli covert war against Iran, they were carried out to support US imperialism’s efforts to counter its declining economic and political position in the Middle East and to oppose Iran, which has intervened militarily to defend the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

In this May 17, 2018, file photo, Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, listens to Syrian President Bashar Assad during their meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia. [AP Photo/Mikhail Klimentyev]

With the Syrian regime backed by Russia, Israel’s intervention is also directed at supporting the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine. It brings ever closer the threat of a broader military conflagration in the region.

According to the Syrian defence ministry, Israel launched “an aerial aggression from the direction of northwest Beirut targeting some outposts in Homs city and its countryside at 00:35 a.m.” on Sunday. The strikes injured five military personnel, reportedly hitting the T4 air base west of the ancient city of Palmyra, as well as the al Dabaa airport near al Qusayr city. This is close to the Lebanese border where Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed bourgeois clerical group, is dominant. Reuters cited sources stating that Iran has military personnel stationed alongside Hezbollah at both airports, while pro-Iranian militias have a strong presence in that area of Homs province.

Another target, according to the pro-imperialist London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, was an Iranian facility suspected of developing missiles and drones, where several Iranian-affiliated fighters were allegedly killed.

Iranian state media said that on Friday, an Israeli attack near Damascus, the Syrian capital, killed two members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In a statement issued Sunday, the Revolutionary Guards said, “The crimes of the Zionist regime will not go unanswered and they will pay for this.”

Friday’s attack followed missiles being fired from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on targets outside Damascus on the nights of March 30 and 31. While Syrian air defences downed some of the missiles, the strikes injured five Syrian soldiers and caused material damage.

Syrian security officers inspect the damage in a residential neighborhood after an early morning Israeli airstrike in the capital city of Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Feb. 19, 2023. Syrian state news reported that Israeli airstrikes have targeted a residential neighborhood in central Damascus. [AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki]

It was Israel’s sixth attack on Syria in March, with two separate attacks on Aleppo’s international airport and another on a weapons depot in central Syria that killed a Syrian officer and two Iranian-backed fighters. It follows hundreds of attacks on Syria since the start of the CIA-led proxy war in 2011 to topple the Assad regime, a key Iranian ally. While the IDF originally targeted Hezbollah’s arms convoys, it later extended to Syrian government forces, Iranian-backed fighters and Hezbollah, as well as weapons-production sites, with Israel insisting that it would not allow Iran to operate near its borders.

Syria’s civilian airports, including Damascus International Airport, and residential neighbourhoods, have been hit. The attacks on Aleppo’s airport are particularly criminal as it has been one of the main entry points for international aid trying to reach earthquake-hit zones in northern Syria. February’s catastrophic earthquake that struck Turkey has killed nearly 60,000 people, including around 8,500 in Syria, although the number of unreported cases is likely to be far higher than official figures. Millions are suffering from homelessness, hunger and terrible weather conditions in northwest Syria, with many people forced to live in emergency shelters or tents.

Friday’s attack indicates that Israel is now directly targeting the IRGC, which has taken increasing control of Iran’s foreign policy. Tel Aviv has accused the IRGC of funding both Hamas—the clerical group that controls Gaza, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—as well as Hezbollah. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said recently, “We openly declare our support for the resistance front,” a reference to the groups opposing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.

The IDF has refused to comment on the reported strikes in Syria, the third since Thursday. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, without referring to any specific targets or strikes, that Israel is “exacting a heavy price from the regimes that support terrorism beyond Israel’s borders.”

Israel’s attacks on Syria, undoubtedly coordinated with the Biden administration, support Washington’s broader predatory interests in the region, but also reflect the increasing political turmoil within Israel itself.

Last Monday night, Netanyahu, in the face of the largest outpouring of popular opposition in Israel’s 75-year history, announced a temporary halt to his plans for a coup against the country’s judicial system. The mass walkout of workers on Sunday and Monday in opposition to his fascistic government has brought Israel, as Netanyahu admitted, to the brink of “civil war.” It has been fueled by Israel’s immense economic inequality, its myriad social problems and the impact of the global capitalist crisis.

It creates the ever-greater risk that Netanyahu will take dangerous military action to create some kind of national “unity” and deflect political tensions outward towards Iran. He would be following the example provided by the US and NATO, which have incited the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine in large part to divert their mounting internal tensions towards a foreign adversary.

Netanyahu is also whipping up tensions in the occupied West Bank, in East Jerusalem and among Israel’s own Palestinian citizens. On Saturday, Israeli police shot and killed Mohammed al-Asibi—a young Israeli Palestinian resident of the Bedouin town of Hura in southern Israel who had just completed his medical studies—at the Chain Gate entrance to the al-Aqsa mosque compound in East Jerusalem. Police claim he had snatched a gun from an officer and fired it at other officers. Witnesses say he had in fact gone to help a woman involved in an altercation with the police and that the police shot him 10 times.

With the police unable to produce any CCTV footage confirming their version of events, an umbrella group of Arab leaders declared a one-day general strike across Israel in protest at the cold-blooded execution. Rallies would be held along with a mass protest during al-Asibi’s funeral against “all occupation policies, oppression and racial discrimination.”

Hours later, Israeli soldiers shot and killed Mohammed Baradyeh, a 23-year-old Palestinian motorist near the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron in the West Bank, following what they said was his attempt to ram his car into a group of soldiers. It brings to at least 88 the number of Palestinians and one Palestinian Israeli killed by Israeli security forces and settlers since the start of the year and raises fears of bloodshed during Ramadan—especially around the al-Aqsa mosque compound as Israel tightens restrictions against Palestinians in the area.

Tensions are particularly acute in the wake of the plans announced Monday that the government is preparing to establish a National Guard, a reservist paramilitary force to be used within Israel. Originally proposed by the previous government, it will be under the direct control of Jewish Power leader and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. This, along with new legislation that enables the homes of Palestinian Israelis to be searched without a warrant, will give the authorities the power to storm and search Palestinian homes at will.

It will become yet another weapon in the armoury of the far-right against Israel’s own Palestinians that Ben Gvir and ultra-nationalist and fascistic allies have for years called to be subjected to “population transfers,” meaning ethnic cleansing. It is aimed at preventing the mass protests and riots that broke out in Israel’s predominantly Arab and mixed cities in May 2021 following the pogrom-like provocations by his vigilante groups as the police turned a blind eye, with the ultimate objective of driving them from their homes.

Turkish parliament accepts Finland in NATO: The ruling elite unites in service of imperialism

Barış Demir

The Turkish parliament (TBMM)’s acceptance of Finland’s NATO membership, without a single vote against, is a clear declaration of the commitment of the entire ruling class to imperialism.

Turkish lawmakers vote in favor of Finland's bid to join NATO, late Thursday, March 30, 2023, at the parliament in Ankara, Turkey. All 276 lawmakers present voted unanimously in favor of Finland's bid, days after Hungary's parliament also endorsed Helsinki's accession. [AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici]

This move, amid the escalating war by the US-led NATO powers against Russia, is part of NATO’s decades-long aggressive eastward expansion. It turns the entire Nordic region into a potential battleground in a war with Russia and increases the danger of a world war between nuclear-armed powers.

Since the Turkish government had issued a tactical veto of Finnish membership in NATO, the overturning of this veto was seen as critical. A unanimous vote of the NATO alliance’s 30 member states is required for a country to join NATO. The Hungarian parliament also approved Finland’s NATO membership earlier this week. That left only Turkey’s approval for the application to go through.

Finland and Sweden decided to join NATO last May, amid the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government declared its opposition and threatened a veto, mainly based on allegations that these countries have supported the Kurdish nationalist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its Syrian affiliate, the People’s Protection Units (YPG). Ankara denounces both these organizations as “terrorist.” As the World Socialist Web Site previously explained, however, this was but a negotiating tactic.

In return for Sweden’s and Finland’s commitment to meet its demands, Ankara withdrew its veto on Finnish NATO membership. “We have seen that Finland has taken sincere steps to fulfill its commitments in the trilateral memorandum,” Erdoğan said at a joint press conference with Finnish President Niinistö in Ankara on March 17. However, Erdoğan accused Sweden, which has applied for NATO membership along with Finland, of “harbouring terrorists.”

On, ahead of upcoming May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections, Erdoğan’s approval of Finland’s NATO membership was a signal to his NATO allies. “The decision on Finland is a step to counter growing criticism in the West, especially in the US, that ‘Turkey is a stumbling block for the expansion of the alliance’,” the BBC Türkçe wrote, adding that the move sent a message that “we are committed to NATO.”

The protocol approving Finland’s NATO membership was adopted with the votes of all parties participating in the vote. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the fascist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), as well as the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the far-right Good Party, which lead the bourgeois opposition Nation Alliance, all voted in favor.

The Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) took part in the talks but did not vote ‘no’. The Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP), which has four deputies, also did not take part in the talks or the vote. The Labour and Freedom Alliance (EÖİ), which includes the HDP and TİP, had announced its support for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the candidate of the National Alliance, in the presidential elections on 14 May.

The CHP, behind which the pseudo-left parties have united as a supposed “alternative” to Erdoğan, enthusiastically supported Finland’s NATO membership.

Speaking to Reuters in February 2022, CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu hailed NATO, an imperialist war alliance, as a “guarantee of democracy.” He declared, “We are a part of NATO. Therefore, we cannot see ourselves outside this alliance. We have commitments in this regard. We do not see NATO only as a defence institution. Today, in the 21st century, NATO is also a guarantee of democracy.”

Kılıçdaroğlu and his Nation Alliance had won the support of Western capitals with its more openly pro-imperialist and pro-NATO stance. Speaking to the New York Times before the 2020 US elections, Joseph Biden openly declared his support for the CHP-led alliance against Erdoğan. It is no coincidence that Kılıçdaroğlu, now the Nation Alliance’s official candidate, has traveled to major NATO countries—including the US, the UK and Germany—in recent months, meeting with representatives of the political and financial elite.

The pseudo-left parties’ support for the Nation Alliance, despite its openly pro-NATO stance, exposes their support for imperialism. As for the TİP, which stood behind the Nation Alliance that the US and European imperialist powers hope will be elected, it took a deliberate decision not to oppose NATO in this historic vote.

While HDP deputy Hişyar Özsoy tried to take an “anti-war” stance in his speech to parliament, the HDP did not oppose the move. Moreover, Özsoy portrayed Helsinki’s application as a result of Russia’s “unprovoked invasion,” rather than as part of NATO’s decades-long eastward expansion: “As you know, discussions on NATO enlargement began after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Sweden and Finland, which have historically remained neutral in military alliances, are seeking NATO membership because of growing security concerns.”

The HDP’s decision to abstain rather than vote “no” exposes the falsity of this position. Özsoy justified this decision with a mealy-mouthed statement: “We never vote ‘yes’ to a military agreement, we always say ‘no’. This is the first time we are doing so in a military agreement. But this time we decided not to take part in this vote because we consider Finland’s security concerns legitimate, and we didn’t want to say ‘no’ either.”

The Socialist Equality Group in Turkey unconditionally opposes the anti-democratic repression of the Kurdish people and of HDP politicians by the Erdoğan government. However, this in no way diminishes our opposition to the HDP as a pro-imperialist bourgeois party.

HDP did not oppose the US invasions and regime change wars in the Middle East, especially in Iraq and Syria. On the contrary, the YPG, which HDP claims is leading a “Rojava Revolution,” has become the main US proxy force in Syria.

The HDP is officially represented in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. It also has close ties with the imperialist political establishment in Europe—especially the ruling German Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens, who enthusiastically support the NATO war against Russia. Because it faces a lawsuit that may result in the HDP being banned, it is running its candidates in the lists of the Green Left Party in Turkey. It is a member of the European Green Party coalition.

Amid mass protests in France, Spain’s PSOE-Podemos regime slashes pensions

Alejandro López

Last Thursday, Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government passed its pension cut through the Spanish Congress. The cuts were agreed in talks between the European Union (EU) and Spain’s main trade unions, the Podemos-linked Workers Commissions (CCOO) and the PSOE-aligned General Workers Union (UGT).

This occurs as a wave of mass strikes against austerity and inflation explodes over Europe, in France, Germany, Britain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands and beyond. Across the Pyrenees, millions of workers in France are protesting against Macron’s pension cuts, which he is trying to impose in the face of overwhelming popular opposition. Moreover, the French ally of Podemos, Unsubmissive France (LFI) party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is issuing unserious proposals to the French union bureaucracy that it should think about a general strike against Macron.

The actions of Podemos makes clear that, as in France, there is no “democratic” mechanism within the existing capitalist state for workers to make their opposition to austerity felt. Podemos is backing a cut demanded by the EU so that Spanish banks and corporations can obtain a fourth €10 billion payment from the EU pandemic bailout fund. The record of Podemos, a pseudo-left party of the affluent middle class, shows that workers in Europe cannot oppose austerity by voting into capitalist government the parties falsely marketed by the capitalist media as the “left.”

In Spain, as in France and across Europe, the way forward is to build a mass movement in the rank-and-file, independent of the union bureaucracies, and opposed to the entire political establishment, including pseudo-left parties like Podemos.

Spanish officials are boasting that other EU countries are preparing similar attacks and will model themselves on its cuts. Last week, José Luis Escrivá, minister of Inclusion and Social Security, said he is receiving calls to set up meetings from his European counterparts, including in Germany, Belgium and Romania. “I am convinced that it will be an international reference on how these reforms should be addressed in the future,” he said at a press conference.

José Luis Escrivá, minister of Inclusion and Social Security. [Photo: Ministry of the Presidency. Government of Spain]

The reform deepens the PSOE’s deep pension cuts in 2011, which increased the age of retirement by two years, from 65 to 67. The new reform will mean:

• Pensions will be calculated using the last 29 years of working life, instead of the current 25. This will mean a substantial cut to future pension levels, as workers tend to earn more at the end of their working lives. In any case, due to prior reforms, in order to collect the entire regulatory base of a pension, workers will have to work a minimum of 37 years from 2027 onwards. If you retire at 64 having contributed over 35 years, your pension will be cut by 21 percent.

• Higher salaries will contribute more to the social security system. This will be 1 percent in 2025 and will increase at a rate of 0.25 percentage points per year until it reaches 6 percent in 2045. While the PSOE-Podemos is presenting this as a tax on the rich, the truth is that it is being applied only to wage income, not to income from capital gains—which constitute the overwhelming majority of the income of the parasitical super-rich.

• In the event of “eventual excesses” of pension expenditure, the body in charge of auditing the new system, the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF), will 'identify a broad set of measures to eliminate excess net spending on pensions.' If this happens, the government will open negotiations with the trade unions and big business to 'correct, in a balanced way, the excess spending on pensions.' The law indicates that this can be achieved through 'an increase in contributions' or with 'another alternative formula to increase income or reduce spending.'

Workers will not only retire later; those who do manage to retire will receive a poverty pension. Currently, 64 percent of pensioners earn less than the minimum living wage. The largest group, 1,097,000 pensioners, receives between €700 and 750 monthly.

This latest pension cut comes a year after the PSOE-Podemos government passed a reactionary anti-worker labour law, designed by the union bureaucracies and the Podemos-led ministry of labour.

The pension and labour attacks worked out between the PSOE-Podemos government and the EU exposes the political lies told by then-Podemos leader and deputy prime minister, Pablo Iglesias. He endorsed the €750 billion EU pandemic bailout in July 2020, claiming that “this time we will not have austerity, but an ambitious plan of fiscal stimuli.”

Pablo Iglesias speaks during a parliamentary session in Madrid, Spain, Thursday October 22, 2020. [AP Photo/Pablo Blazquez Dominguez]

Germany’s parliamentary parties criminalise COVID-19 protection measures

Tamino Dreisam

Having already abolished all coronavirus protection measures, Germany’s federal and state governments are now moving to counter all measures taken in the past. This is made clear by a survey of alleged “mistakes” in pandemic policy reported in the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper, which conducted a survey of health spokespersons from all of the country’s parliamentary parties.

“The most important lesson is that we have to meet outbreaks of disease with a sense of proportion,” the Rundschau quotes Tino Sorge, health policy spokesman for the conservative CDU/CSU opposition parliamentary group. Lockdowns, school and day care closures caused “devastating collateral damage,” Sorge said, adding, “This must not be repeated.”

In similar vein, the health spokesman for the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP, part of the ruling coalition along with the Social Democratic Party and the Greens), Andrew Ullmann, said that curfews, school and day care closures were “not necessary.”

The German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) had already declared in February on German television that the closure of schools and day care centres had been a mistake.

The Left Party shares this view. Its health spokesperson, Kathrin Vogler, stated that she finds it “incomprehensible” that schools and day care centres were closed instead of equipping them with air filters. It is “better to take low-key measures early than serious ones later,” she said. She also described anti-corona restrictions for the unvaccinated, i.e., Germany’s 2G and 3G regulations, as a “stopgap solution.”

German students stand in front of chalkboard that reads "We are on strike." [Photo: WSWS]

All of these parties are, in effect, adopting the position of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose health policy spokesperson Martin Sichert describes “the entire Corona period” as a “time of excesses.” The AfD’s demand for a commission of inquiry into the official corona measures is now supported by broad layers from Germany’s other main parties.

Sorge, for example, describes “an inquiry commission or a comparable body” as sensible in order to come to terms with “the deep scars in our society.” The entire parliamentary group of the ruling FDP also calls for such a “reappraisal”—and health Minister Lauterbach agrees. “I really agree completely with every decision and if it came to such a commission, we would also participate,” he told the news portal The Pioneer.

It is quite clear that such a commission would in no way contribute to a serious investigation of the efficiency of the COVID measures taken, but, on the contrary, result in their criminalisation. This is not surprising. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the ruling class has always prioritised profit and capitalist interests over and above health and human life.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the ruling class was forced to impose certain lockdowns after facing spontaneous strikes by workers. However, it immediately lifted the lockdowns after handing out hundreds of billions of euros to the banks and big corporations as part of its so-called COVID-19 emergency package. The government then gradually dismantled all remaining protective measures.

When leading representatives of all Bundestag parties now condemn even these limited measures, which nevertheless demonstrably protected people from infection and saved lives, this reveals that in the event of a new pandemic or the emergence of a resistant mutation of the corona virus, the ruling class will refuse to take new measures and be prepared to accept even more deaths.

This is despite the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is in no way over. According to the statistics of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), which are, however, based only on voluntary corona virus tests, between 300,000 and 600,000 people in Germany are currently infected. The actual pandemic situation is even more dramatic. For example, Saarbrücken pharmacy professor Thorsten Lehr said he estimates the seven-day incidence of new infections to be between 1,000 and 2,000. That would mean that 1 to 2 percent of the population is newly infected every week.

The high number of COVID outbreaks confirms how widespread the virus remains. In medical treatment facilities there were 153 outbreaks last week, and 38 in old people’s and nursing homes.

In hospitals, the trend is no better. The adjusted hospitalisation incidence has been rising steadily in recent days and now stands at nine, which is equivalent to around 7,500 hospitalisations per week. According to the MDR media outlet, corona virus is currently the main cause of hospital admissions. Twenty-two percent of patients admitted with a severe respiratory infection have COVID-19, compared to 6 percent for influenza.

The number of COVID patients requiring intensive care is just over 1,000, and almost 100 people succumb to the virus every day.

Particularly worrying is the emergence of new mutations. While the Omicron variant caused a massive increase in infections in February last year, the Omicron sub-variant XBB, which is mainly characterised by its high resistance, has been spreading since the start of this year.

Meanwhile, the XBB mutations account for about two-thirds of infections. This is under conditions where the most recent vaccines were adapted to combat the Omicron BA.5 variant, i.e., a variant that now affects only a very small number of victims.

Scientists are particularly concerned about the spread of the XBB.1.16 variant, which has been nicknamed “Arcuturus.” Compared to the “Kraken” variant XBB.1.5, this variant has three more mutations on the spike protein that can suppress the immune system.

The Deutsche Apotheker Zeitung warns that “these mutations [are] thought to have the potential to undermine the immune defences even of vaccinated and recovered persons.” In addition, a mutation could lead to the virus being better able to enter human cells and take hold. This would make this variant even more infectious than its predecessors.

Overall, the XBB.1.16 variant has a 140 percent growth advantage over XBB.1.5. In India, its spread has already led to a 281 percent increase in infections and a 17 percent increase in deaths in 14 days.

Nine dead, 44 still missing in mine collapse in China

Jack Wang

On February 22, a coal mine collapsed in Alxa Left Banner of Inner Mongolia, a province on the northern border of China, resulting in nine deaths and six injuries, with 44 people still missing up to this day. The disaster tragically exposes the brutal working conditions faced by miners in China in the reckless drive for profits ahead of lives and safety.

A road checkpoint near collapsed open pit mine in Alxa League in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Friday, Feb. 24, 2023. [AP Photo/Ng Han Guan]

The open-pit coal mine collapsed over a large area during worktime in the late afternoon. Dozens of workers were immediately buried under the debris, along with multiple large mining vehicles. According to disclosed investigative findings, the lack of support for the upper portion of the pit led to the large scale landslide across an area of up to 400 metres.

Two workers were immediately killed on the spot, four others did not survive despite emergency medical treatment, and the bodies of three more victims were later uncovered from the debris on March 2.

The coal mine was operated by a small local company called Inner Mongolia Xinjing Coal Mining Co. This company had received more than 20 warnings and penalties over safety issues, all of which involved breaking regulations as it cut corners in pursuit of profits.   

According to a report in Alxa Daily, the company also received complaints from residents in the area over dust pollution on March 28, 2022 and was ordered by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment to rectify it.

Two months later, Xinjing Coal Mining received another fine of 20,000 RMB (about $US3,000) from local Urban Management and Law Enforcement because of the company's illegal conduct in water use.

These slaps on the wrist involving more than 20 penalties not only explain why the company did nothing to rectify the conditions that led to the horrendous disaster, but also expose the indifference of the Chinese government to work safety and the enforcement of safety standards.

After the disaster, the company’s main shareholder, Chen Fenggan, immediately hid from the media and claimed that that he had no liability for what happened. He was later compelled under pressure from the media and outraged public to issue another statement. However, he still insisted that his company would not be responsible for any compensation as the miners were subcontractors dispatched by other companies.

Data from China’s Tianyancha, a commercial platform with extensive corporate information, shows that Chen Fenggan is the company’s top executive and the one actually in charge. His attitude represents that of the company towards workers: callous indifference to lives and safety and an unwillingness to part with a penny in compensation as it relentlessly pursues profits above all else.

The company is not the only one with blood on its hands. The government authorities for drawing up and enforcing labour regulations at the regional and national level are also responsible for this tragedy.

In January last year, a news agency affiliated with the Alxa regional government published an article hailing the Xinjing Coal Mining. It lavished praise on the company for caring about and helping the impoverished in the area. A member of management hypocritically declared that corporations needed to shoulder greater social responsibilities as they are making profits and that he hoped to help more people through the company’s charity works.

According to the country’s Labor Law, the proportion employed by subcontractors in a workplace should not exceed 10 percent. However, at this mine, every worker was employed by a subcontractor. The widespread practice of hiring so-called subcontractors is used by companies to legally enslave workers. Having exploited workers till the last drop of their blood and sweat, the company simply brushed aside all responsibility and declared they were “lawfully” hired by subcontractors.

The subcontracting company involved in this disaster denied it had employed miners. It claimed it was involved only to the extent of providing some positions and that Xinjing Coal Mining should have been responsible for their safety. The subcontracting company also refused to pay any compensation. Both companies are completely indifferent to the safety and lives of workers as well as the devastation caused to their families.

The workers at the mine received no insurance at work: no medical insurance, no work injury insurance, no pensions, nothing. For some workers, their monthly wage was only 2,000 RMB ($291), barely above the local minimum wage of 1,980 RMB.

More than a month after the mine collapse, the 44 missing workers are still buried in dirt and rocks and are likely dead. Their families and children are under great pain, while the mining and subcontracting companies cold-bloodedly ignore their plight.

Just one day before the disaster, the government of Inner Mongolia issued a new emergency response plan for workplace accidents. And while the Chinese government proclaims the importance of production safety, it has only imposed trivial penalties for breaches of regulations by mining companies. Up to now, no significant action has been taken against Chen Fenggan and the two companies involved in the tragedy.

There were a total of 168 mining accidents in China last year, according to official statistics. In other words, every other day, there was a mine-related injury. These included:

* January 17, 2022: a mechanical accident due to negligence in maintenance led to the death of one worker in Ordos, Inner Mongolia.

* March 12, 2022: a mining company in Hunan Province illegally entered a closed well to carry out production. Due to the failure of a mining vehicle, a worker was crushed to death.

* April 10, 2022: three workers were suffocated to death in a mine in Shanxi Province.

Most of the 168 accidents last year, like those above, were caused by companies breaking safety regulations. Virtually all could have been avoided if it not had been for the reckless pursuit of corporate profit regardless of the health, safety and lives of workers. The Chinese Communist Party bureaucracies are the conscious accomplices in these crimes.

Surprise oil production cut in response to recession concerns

Nick Beams

In a surprise move, Saudi Arabia and other members of the OPEC+ oil group have announced a cut in production of just over one million barrels a day, to be borne mainly by the Saudis and Russia. The move appears to be a response to fears of a global slowdown resulting from the recent turmoil in the banking system.

Saudi Arabia said it would make a “voluntary” cut of 500,000 barrels a day, just under 5 percent of its production, in co-ordination with other countries.

Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud [Photo by en.kremlin.ru / CC BY 4.0]

The announcement led to a spike in the oil market when trading began for the week with both the American and global oil benchmark prices rising by 7 percent.

The decision was unusual in that it took place outside of a formal meeting of the oil-producing countries, “suggesting an element of urgency by the members taking part in the cuts,” according to the Financial Times (FT).

The market was taken by surprise. Bloomberg reported that all 14 traders and analysts it polled last week predicted no change in production. They took their lead from Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman who said last month that the OPEC+ targets set last October were “here to stay for the rest of the year, period.”

However, the financial turmoil, set off by the failure of the US Silicon Valley Bank, the second largest in monetary terms in US history, and the forced takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS appear to have changed those calculations.

There are growing concerns that the financial upheavals and the widely forecast ensuing credit crunch could trigger a slowdown in the global economy, if not a recession.

In the immediate wake of the banking crisis, oil prices fell to a 15-month low before recovering, but there are clearly concerns they could again fall if recessionary trends develop.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) cited “people familiar with the situation” who said the decision was “negotiated primarily between the Saudis and the Russians to get ahead of a global slowdown and raise prices to fund Saudi Arabia’s ambitious domestic projects and replenish Russia’s reserves.”

The Saudi regime is undertaking massive spending to try to shift the economy away from its dependence on oil and turn it into a tourist and business centre.

The Saudi press agency called the production cut “a precautionary measure aimed at supporting the stability of the market.”

Bloomberg cited comments by Gary Ross, a long-time oil consultant, who said the oil producers were being “proactive and ahead of the curve” and trying to free oil prices from the grip of macro sentiment, that is, the prospect the world economy is slowing.

The WSJ reported comments by Christyan Malek, global lead of energy strategy at JPMorgan Chase, who said: “Given the preventative nature of OPEC decisions, there is clearly something OPEC knows about the demand trend and inventories that we have yet to discover fully in overall supply and demand balance.”

The decision will increase the growing friction between the US and its long-time ally, Saudi Arabia.

In response to the decision, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council said: “We don’t think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty—and we’ve made that clear.”

Saudi noses were put out of joint by an announcement last Thursday week from US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. She said that the Biden administration was not going to move rapidly to replenish the stocks of its oil reserves which were run down in a bid to counter the rapid rise in petrol prices in the middle of last year.

Granholm told a Congressional hearing that it would take “years” to refill the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. As far as the Saudis were concerned, this was a breach of a reassurance by the administration it would make new purchases for its reserve if the price fell.

Granholm said the US wanted to get back to where it would have been but added that “it will take a few years” and “it takes longer to refill than it does to extract.”

The latest cuts come on top of those last October when the OPEC grouping cut production by around 2 million barrels a day.

Biden had made a trip to Saudi Arabia in July to promote increased production but came away empty-handed.

Instead, the Saudis announced cuts less than three months later, prompting the White House to accuse OPEC+ of siding with Russian president Vladimir Putin and warning there would be “consequences” for Saudi Arabia.

The latest Saudi move is indicative of broader economic and political shifts, which were pointed to by Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.

“It’s a Saudi-first policy. They’re making new friends, as we saw with China,” she said, referring to the recently concluded re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Iran orchestrated by Beijing.

Saudi Arabia was sending a message to the US that “it’s no longer a unipolar world.”

“We see this closely held decision as just one more indication that the Saudi leadership is making its oil production decisions with a clear eye on their own economic self-interests,” she said.