The Serbian Movement Against Violence

Mira Oklobdzija

On May 3, 2023, a 13-year-old boy entered his school in central Belgrade with a gun and opened fire. He is currently in a psychiatric clinic, and his father is in custody, accused of training the teenager to handle weapons and failing to adequately secure the pistol. Only a day later, a young man of 20 randomly fired at people in a rural area south of the capital. Altogether, 17 people have been killed and 21 wounded, most of them children or very young. One injured girl died in the hospital 10 days later.

What followed were three protests: silent marches of more than 50.000 people each. The third, the largest one on May 19, lasted long into the night, without serious incidents. Citizens peacefully walked through the city with the banner “Serbia against violence and blocked Belgrade’s most important Gazela Bridge over the river Sava. Apart from expressing grief over the lost lives, demonstrators are criticizing the government for encouraging a culture of violence and hate speech, which is omnipresent in the official media space and freely used even by the president, Aleksandar Vučić.

Protestors demanded the resignations of two ministers and the withdrawal of broadcast licenses for two TV stations that are close to the state—“Pink” and “Happy”—which promote violence and frequently host convicted war criminals and people from the underworld. Both are famous for their violent reality shows that, by some estimates, make up 60 percent of their recent programming. Protestors also demand that tabloids, sharing the same appreciation for hate speech and violence—such as Informer, Kurir, Blic, and Telegraf—be put under scrutiny.  Nearly 450,000 people have signed a petition calling for concrete actions.

A History of Protest

Protestors from the democratic opposition in Serbia often call their actions “walks.”  Like the Australian aborigines, they are performing a sort of “walkabout” in search of the soul of their country, which the Western media so often portrays as barbaric and brutal. The current “walks” in Belgrade continue a ritual journey started a long time ago. The anti-war movement organized a number of protests in 1991-1992 against Slobodan Milošević’s regime,  opposing the army’s actions in the Battle of Vukovar, the sieges of Dubrovnik and Sarajevo, and military conscription. About 150,000 people took part in the largest protest—the Black Ribbon March—in solidarity with the people of Sarajevo. Somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 people deserted from the Yugoslav People’s Army, while between 100,000 and 150,000 Serbs emigrated as part of their refusal to participate in the war. Despite these numbers, the independent media and anti-war groups from Serbia did not attract much international attention.

During  the winter of 1996–1997, students of the University of Belgrade protested against the electoral fraud attempted by the Socialist Party of Serbia of President Slobodan Milošević and demanded the return of the university’s autonomy. At the same time, opposition parties created the coalition Zajedno (Together) and organized a series of peaceful protests.

But on December 24, 1996, the government coalition Za Srbiju (For Serbia) organized a large counter-protest. Milošević told his supporters that “Serbia will not be controlled by someone else’s hand,” implying that his hand was adequate. To the chants of “Slobo, mi te volimo” (“Slobo, we love you”), Milošević responded with “I love you too.” Before, during and after the rally, supporters of the regime physically confronted the opposition. Police intervened, but not promptly enough. One person was killed, another seriously injured. Serbia seemed to be on the brink of the civil war.

A few years later, the country again approached the precipice. On August 25, 2000, Ivan Stambolić, a former mentor and political ally of Milošević, was kidnapped from his home and later executed. Milošević was accused of orchestrating the assassination. The anti-government youth movement Otpor! (Resistance) led the campaign against the administration and for a transparent democracy. To unify opposition, 18 parties formed the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition, with Vojislav Koštunica as the candidate to confront Milošević. Across two months of protests, several hundred thousand protesters arrived in Belgrade, chanting “He’s finished!” Although there was no larger escalation of violence, 65 people were nevertheless injured in the riots and two died. DOS won the elections in December with a two-thirds majority. On 1 April 2001, Serbian police detained Milošević, and he was later transferred to The Hague.

More Recent Protests

The “walks” are still going on. Promises have not been held and hate speech continues, as does the perpetual reinforcement of old nationalist myths. The rise to power of Aleksandar Vučić didn’t help. At the end of 2018, voices started to be raised against president’s authoritarian rule. First in Belgrade and quickly spreading to the cities across the country, this round of demonstrations lasted more than a year before being suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID pandemic. What provoked anger were numerous scandals involving ruling party members, information about strange arm deals and corruption, questionable electoral practices including the intimidation of voters, and violent attacks on opposition figures. Assaults on investigative journalists and pressure on independent media had again become commonplace. Freedom House reported on legal harassment and smear campaigns. But oppositional parties didn’t come with a convincing alternative program and nothing at the top changed. For his part, Vučić organized a number of rallies under the banner of the “Future of Serbia,” handsomely assisted by a pro-government media that demonized protesters as “fascists, hooligans, and thieves.”

The walks continue amid a growing crisis of democratic institutions. In 2020 Gradjanski Otpor (Civil Resistance) called for a boycott of the elections, while representatives of the academic community demanded a change in the editorial policy of the Serbian public broadcaster RTS. For the next two years the streets were often occupied by one initiative or another:  both pro- and anti-LBGT manifestations, reactions to COVID measures, actions against police brutality and in favor of media freedom. To most of these demands for change, Vučić gave his characteristic answer, calling participants criminal, foreign elements.

The biggest environmental protest (and the only successful one) started in September 2021 and lasted until February 2022. It was held in Belgrade and other locations in Serbia. Tens of thousands of people demanded that the Serbian government cancel the permission given to the Anglo-Australian corporation Rio Tinto  to explore mines near the Jadar Valley and exploit the silicate mineral, jadarite. On January 8, Prime Minister Ana Brnabić announced that the government “was close to annulling all permits given to Rio Tinto” and later confirmed that the plan had indeed been abolished. She didn’t shy away from accusing Western governments of supporting the protests.

What’s Happening Now on the Streets

In 2023, the mass protests are taking place yet again. The pro-governmental TV station Pink has reported that a “handful of haters” are harassing the people. The government proclaims that the protesters are anti-Serbian, unpatriotic, and a danger to the state. For his part, Vučić sent the demonstrators a message: “Serbia is fed up with your destruction of everything Serbian!” He informed his supporters that “sister services from the east told him that these are attempts at ‘color revolutions,’” alluding to the change of government in Kyiv in 2014.

Meanwhile, the government has issued an invitation to a May 26 counter-rally, where, according to the authorities, “the real Serbs” will pledge their fealty to the motherland and its leaders and oppose all inner and foreign enemies that are struggling to influence them.

According to the Miroslav Parovica, the president of the opposition National Freedom Movement:

The government officially announced that the system works well, and to top it all, the president of the state publicly invites his supporters to protest against the citizens of Serbia who did not accept the official version about the responsibility of video games and social networks (for the killings)… it is important to support and encourage the citizens to persevere in this silent march that will eventually win over an aggressive and hysterical government unwilling to take responsibility and show even a gram of empathy and reason.

Prominent copywriter Nadežda Milenković adds, “The authorities support … street demonstration of power, brute force, ignorance, lack of education, lack of compassion, demonization… The only thing they do not support is demonstrating decency. If you try to show the authorities what unadulterated humanity looks like, the authorities will demonstratively pout.”

The government has done one good thing: organized a mass handover of illegal arms. To date, citizens have turned in more than 13,500 weapons), from guns and hand grenades to anti-tank launchers and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. But this is far from enough. Social insecurity, underlying violence, mistrust, manipulation, propaganda, economic problems, and confusion concerning the future are all taking their toll. The president consistently glides between pro-EU and a pro-Putin positions while loudly proclaiming his independent position.

For their part, the democratic opposition and the peaceful citizens of Serbia are hoping to become a serious factor of change. But the clear and present danger is that an organized, obedient, and paid group of protesters will take the stage on May 26. They may well become violent. The government is well aware of it. Indeed, given its consistently violent rhetoric, the government might even encourage it.

Do we All need Religion? An Introspection

Santosh Kumar Mamgain

Religion is considered one of the most significant notion that determines and many times dictates the life of the people in the society. Our society is so much obsessed with the idea of religion that it starts impacting us in ways it shouldn’t. Religious beliefs is no longer a dogmatic system or system of belief in a deity or religious cult, it impacts our day to day living and influence our food choices, dressing, language, perceptions and biases, our vocation and even our mobility.

The problem here is that we no longer consider religion as a belief, but it has become a determinant and many a time ‘the’ determinant of our identity. People choose to identify themselves as individual as well as part of a community on the basis of our religion; we really support and try to mobilise ourselves with our fellow co-religionists, and detest, hate and even violently repel those who don’t align with our religious system. Is religion really so important that it has become increasingly difficult to criticise or even disagree with a religious belief and not garner a reaction from a believer? People are ready to commit a bloodbath to preserve their religion at any cost and religious beliefs have become a battleground for conflicting egos and one upmanship. Every society consider their religion as the ‘only’ gospel truth; their holy texts to be the source of salvation and universal truth and their teachers to be divinely ordained. Everyone you talk to, will tell you how their religion is a ‘way of life’, and how it is emancipating and liberating while justifying the loads of restrictions and problematic ideas by either assigning a pseudo-scientific explanation or trying to provide a ‘deeper philosophical understanding’ of those ideas that a person of limited understanding cannot comprehend.

But this idea of ‘limited understanding’ presents an interesting conundrum for its believer itself as it creates a large of ‘religious fools’, one who are barely invested with their religious literature and history of their own customs, and because of their ‘limited understanding’ become gullible to half truths and complete lies spread in the name of religion, one who get swayed by the rhetoric of religion rather than the knowledge of it, and follow blindly anyone who is ready to persuade them that he or she knows the truth. For such people, religious knowledge is derivative but as always for a believer there are no ifs and buts, all religious knowledge is ultimate and complete and thus they will be the one who will zealously rally for their religion and also the ones to react violently to anything that goes even mildly against to what they already believe or even choose to believe. And make no mistake, it has nothing to do with the educational and intellectual level of an individual. It is a matter of belief. Religious dogmas most likely stand on the pillars of willful surrender and often blind faith, and less on rational and logic.

And this is what makes us question- to what extent religion should determine our life? One can say ‘to each their own’ but does religion really provides us that space to exercise our free will? Almost all religious beliefs are based on a deontological premise, which is to say that there are inherent set of duties associated with religion which one is obliged to fulfill. The rewards are often ambiguous. We will never know to what extent our material needs like money, job, education, marriage, children is fulfilled by the grace of God and whether will be getting salvation or not? Or we are getting punished for which of our past sins? But the duties are on our face and thus unavoidable. And thus those people who don’t conform to these norms, are often seen as digressers and dissenters by the believers. Non-believers are essentially the most hated people for their failure to accept all the great things about the religions and their inability to mold their lives according to the lofty ideals of a particular religion.

Another question that arises in our mind is to what extent one should follow religious ideas, beliefs and the norms ordained by them? Is religion something that we chose for ourselves or as in most cases, we got it as inheritance from our family which was further reinforced by the society, community and people around us? But as we progress, we come in contact with people of diverse backgrounds who are beyond our own community. Should religion play any role in determining our behaviour and interaction with them? Should we try to define ourselves by our religion in spaces where religion is not required or even act as a deterrent to one’s personal or intellectual development? Unfortunately this happens too often with people carrying the insignia of their religious identities on their sleeves or head, and consciously create a barrier of identities. For the fundamentalists, the response would be to undo anything that goes contrary to the religious beliefs. Also unfortunately, the present society is plagued with a wave of revivalism wherein there has been a conscious attempt to hark back to the beliefs that originated many centuries and even millenniums ago. This pragmatic belief in the infallibility of religious dogmas in their pristine and ‘original’ form scorns at any attempt to modernise and adapt the religion according to the changing social dynamics. Are we ready to lose years and years of human development on the altar of religion? Also unfortunately yes.

To put it very crudely, Religion should play no role in dictating the personal choices of an individual. Those who believe that people should live according to the tenets of their religion are just religious fools who can’t see beyond the narrow confines of their religion. Religion is a man made construct meant to facilitate humans psychologically. It should not become an instrument of oppression. Religion is never liberating. It is coercive, oppressive and discriminatory. If you love your religion more than the right of a human to live their own life , then you are part of the oppression. Let everyone decide for themselves whether they want religion in their lives or not, and if yes, to what extent. Religion can be a wheelchair to support the spiritual endowment of an individual or society, but it should not be shoved down our throats. And this is precisely the problem with the structure of religious system in our society. We are not content with following the traditions ourselves, we take it as a mission to make everyone by hook or by crook, by manipulation, persuasion and even violence to believe in their ideas. Unfortunately, we are spiraling down as a community where religion is no longer a choice but has become a duty for all and if you don’t oblige to it, you are not worthy of living and you are a traitor in the eyes of the believers. There is no readymade solution to this problem, of we consider it one, but at least the scope to contest, discuss, debate and argue should not be narrowed down or else there will no voice to question when religions will fight a bloody battle to establish their empire. Religion should be for everyone but not everyone needs religion.

Strike wave grows in Portugal despite trade unions’ attempt to strangle it

Santiago Guillen

The beginning of 2023 has seen an escalation of class struggles against the Socialist Party (PS) government in Portugal. Amid the deepest crisis of global capitalism since the 1930s, the PS is trying to impose austerity and the costs of a war economy on the backs of the working class with the assistance of the union bureaucracies.

Protesting teachers march through Lisbon, Portugal, January 2023. [Photo: Maureen Danovsky, M. Ed @MaureenDano]

The struggle of Portuguese workers is driven by the same international crisis that has propelled millions of workers across Europe to protest against soaring prices and plunging wages. In France, this led to a direct confrontation between the working class against the Macron government.

In Portugal, strikes have spread across the entire country and to virtually all sectors of the working class. In the first quarter of the year, strikes rose by 148.1 percent in the private sector and 112.9 percent in the public sector compared to 2022. They are continuing in the second quarter, as the union bureaucracies scramble to shut off one strike after another.

Portuguese hospital technicians and assistants walked out on May 19, demanding improved working conditions and recognition of their specific expertise in the career progression system. The unions reported that more than 90 percent of the 30,000 workers in the sector joined the strike, not counting those on whom the PS government imposed a reactionary minimum service requirement.

The Portuguese Nurses’ Union submitted to the minimum services requirement. It is now trying to disperse the struggle, announcing two more strike dates, June 28 and 30, over a month after the first strike day.

Portugal’s public-sector pharmacists will strike on June 22, 27 and 30 against low wages and precarious working conditions.

Civil servants in the judicial sector massively followed a strike call, paralysing over 10,000 legal proceedings. Last month, 100 percent of cabin crew from Easyjet also went on strike. Over 380 flights were cancelled.

On Wednesday, railway workers will go on strike in support of increased pay and working conditions. The rail network operator Comboios de Portugal (CP) warned of “severe disturbances” in rail traffic between May 30 and June 1 due to the strike.

Walkouts are multiplying in the transport sector across Europe, showing the immense power of this section of the working class. This includes a ground handling strike at Italian airports on June 4, after the 24-hour general strike on May 26, which affected bus, tram services and metro lines; flight and train strikes in France, as in the June 6 protest against Macron’s pension cuts; French air traffic controllers striking since March; security staff at Glasgow airport in Britain; and Spanish pilots on May 29-30 then again on June 1-2.

The Union of Investigation, Inspection and Borders Inspectors (SIIFF) called off the strike by the inspectors of the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) after the successful May 22 strike at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado airport was joined by 100 percent of workers.

The SIIFF tried to dissipate the impact of the strike that could have paralysed all Portuguese airports and border posts, including maritime ones. It scheduled strikes on different days in May and June, and at different airports across the country.

José Luís Carneiro, minister of internal administration of Portugal, thanked the unions, stating that the lifting of the strike “was the result of a lot of work within the government, but also of a deep dialogue with the representative structures of SEF workers.” However, he warned: “This long and arduous path has not yet come to an end.”

The explosion of strikes is driven by the increasingly difficult conditions facing Portuguese workers. Inflation in 2022 exceeded records with a rise of 7.8 percent and the forecast for this year stands at 5.4 percent, numbers not seen in the last 30 years. The situation is much worse for working people, as food prices increased 20 percent over the past year, while house prices rose 18.7 percent. Rents increased by more than 20 percent, and 35 percent in major cities like Lisbon and Porto.

The fundamental issue workers face is the role of the union bureaucracies, including the PS-linked General Union of Workers (UGT) and the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers (CGTP), linked to the Communist Party (PCP). They are suppressing a unified industrial and political offensive of the working class against the PS government and the Portuguese capitalist state.

Last year, the UGT signed an agreement with big business and the PS government for raises of at most 3.6 percent for the public sector and 5 percent in the private sector—i.e., well below inflation. The CGTP did not sign this agreement, but despite leading most of the strikes it has done everything it can to isolate them, calling them in different sectors and on different dates, to prevent a unified struggle.

CGTP has now called partial strikes for June 28, a measure aiming to let off steam and then stop the mobilizations during the summer period, hoping that they will evaporate by autumn.

Discontent with these unions was reflected in the creation in 2018 of the STOP teachers union, which has been involved in teachers strikes since November. Although it defines itself as “truly democratic” and opposing signing agreements “without first democratically listening to teachers,” it has not proposed escalating the teachers’ struggle or a unified action with others industries.

Discontent over the role of the unions is leading teachers to seek to organize outside of them, highlighting the objective need for the formation of rank-and-file committees.

One 23-year-old teacher said he has “never experienced anything like this ... it was a very democratic moment. We feel that, this time, the fight is in the hands of the teachers and not the unions.” Another teacher commented, “There was a compromise not with a union but among all, because the discontent is real, people feel that the demands are fair and, therefore, we will not stop fighting.”

Terrified of rising militancy, the pseudo-left Bloco de Esquerdas (BE) and the Stalinist PCP are working to drive the movement into the dead end of pressuring the PS government. They have set up the “Just Life” movement, presenting it as an independent citizen platform, calling the PS government to address soaring inflation.

These forces, however, are widely discredited. Its first “Just Life” demonstration on February 25 gathered a few thousand, despite the great media publicity. This is far from the 150,000-strong protest in defence of teachers during the same dates.

The reasons are not hard to find. From 2015 to 2021, they supported the austerity measures of the PS government, while simultaneously working together with the unions to block any working class response. In the 2022 elections, both saw their electoral support collapse. The latest polls give them historically low percentages of the vote, at barely 5 percent each.

The threat exists that under these conditions the far right is profiting from the discrediting of the organizations falsely promoted by the capitalist media as the “left. ” The neo-fascist Chega, funded by sections of the Portuguese ruling class, is polling 13 percent, exceeding the combined vote of Bloco and PCP.

The austerity measures and corruption scandals have seen the popularity of the PS government crumble, opening the way to snap elections and the possibility that the fascists enter a right-wing-led PSD government. This would be the first time the far right would return to power after Portugal’s Estado Novo dictatorship was brought down in the 1974 Carnation Revolution.

Struggle against Macron continues as strikes break out in multiple French industries

Samuel Tissot

After months of bitter struggle by millions of workers against President Macron’s pension cuts, the French press and union bureaucracies are desperate to put the workers’ struggle against Macron and the capitalist state behind them.

After May Day, the union bureaucracies put off all further action until a June 6 “day of mobilization” against Macron’s pension cuts. In the meantime, they returned to “business as usual,” which consists of negotiating new social cuts with Macron’s government.

The mood in the working class could not be more different. After Macron forced through his law in March without a vote in the parliament, 62 percent of the population supported a general strike to block the economy and defeat Macron. At over a dozen strike days, millions of workers marched. As the cost of living continues to rise, the majority of the population remains determined to defeat the “president of the rich.”

French workers protest President Emmanuel Macron's pension attacks during the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, Sunday, May 21, 2023. [AP Photo/Daniel Cole]

In a wave of strikes in multiple industries across France, workers are seeking to continue their struggle against Macron, the banks and the corporations. In the last week, strikes have broken out or continued amongst postal workers, bus drivers, textile workers and at Disneyland Paris.

At Disneyland, between 1,500 and 1,800 workers went on a one-day strike on May 30, according to the unions.

Disneyland workers are demanding a €200 monthly wage increase, double pay for Sunday shifts, a review of the travel allowance and the end of adapted hours (where workers must take shifts either much shorter or longer than 8 hours). According to Glassdoor, waiters, performers and stall sellers at Disneyland Paris make around €16,000 a year. Last year, Disneyland Paris made an operating profit of €47 million.

In a meeting on March 26, Disneyland told union officials that they refuse to make any concessions. Nevertheless, imitating union tactics at the national level, the four unions at Disneyland Paris (the CGT and UNSA national unions, and the SIT77 and SNS local unions) are holding one-day marches to pressure the company into continuing talks with the unions.

Rank-and-file workers initiated the Disneyland struggle before the unions were mobilized to rechannel it into less threatening channels. Indeed, Damien Catel, a representative from the SIT77 union, told Actu.fr, “It was a movement started by the workers and accompanied by the unions, not the inverse.”

Ahmed Masrour, a representative from the UNSA union, added that after the May 30 action, “The ball is in the court of management. We are waiting for them to reopen the dialogue, this time with serious propositions.”

In southern France’s Aveyron region, postal workers are engaged in an indefinite strike against the publicly owned postal service that began March 31. After a reorganization of the region’s postal service on April 26, workers have been forced to work longer rounds and are continuously understaffed. This led to large numbers of parcels never being delivered.

Union officials have called for a new reorganization to address the issues. However, it is clear that without a major mobilization of the wider working class, such an organization will still be carried out on the government’s terms: with staff cuts, longer shifts and under-inflation wage raises.

In Toulouse, Tisseo transport workers are on a four-day strike, which started on May 30 and will finish today. During strike days, 12 bus routes are not running and dozens more will run with reduced service. The Toulouse tram service will also be significantly disrupted. Workers have been offered a 2.8 percent pay rise by the company, well under the 5.9 percent annual inflation rate recorded in April.

Before this year, Tisseo workers had a safeguard clause, which essentially meant their wages were adjusted for inflation. Strikers are demanding a wage increase and the reinstatement of the clause.

In Lille, a strike of 72 workers at the Vertbaudet factory in Marquette has been ongoing since March 20. Vertbaudet is a children’s clothes maker; in 2022, it made a profit of €27 million. The workers on strike make just €1,500 a month, though many of them have over 20 years’ seniority. The strikers’ main demands are a €150 wage increase and a stop to temporary hiring.

On May 16, police assaulted the workers’ picket at the Vertbaudet factory, leading to two arrests and the hospitalization of one striker. Vertbaudet has close ties to the French political elite: it is owned by a holding company run by Édouard Fillon, the son of ex-Prime Minister François Fillon. After the police assault, a CGT delegate supporting the strike was assaulted near his home by masked thugs, who also threatened his wife and son.

These incidents led to the intervention of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to call for renewed talks between the company and strikers. However, with the company refusing any wage rise, any such talks have so far not materialized.

The fact that most workers involved are women has been seized upon by the psuedo-left to promote this struggle as a primarily “feminist” issue. A tribune on the strike published by various feminist groups and individuals in Le Monde stated: “Vertbaudet workers are like millions of women, glued to a sticky floor that keeps them in devalued and underpaid jobs because of sexist management.”

Signatories included CGT chief Sophie Binet, La France Insoumise deputy Mathilde Panot, Greens National Secretary Marie Tondelier, and actress Adele Haenel, affiliated with the Morenoite Révolution Permanente website.

In reality, workers at Vertbaudet, like millions of other women in France, are under attack by employers and the state not because they are women, but because they are workers, from whom the bourgeoisie intends to squeeze massive profits. Their allies in this struggle are not the privileged middle-class feminists of the French pseudo-left and union bureaucracy, but all working men and women internationally who face the same capitalist crisis and danger of world war.

The renewed wave of strikes in France, after the union bureaucracies’ efforts to suffocate the struggle against Macron, once again exposes the role of the union bureaucracy and its supporters in the pseudo-left.

Funded with billions of euros by the government and corporations, the union bureaucracies do not oppose cuts and attacks on wages. Instead, they work to subordinate all opposition to the government and companies behind the bankrupt framework of “social dialogue” with the capitalist state—a euphemism for helping them enforce their will on the workforce.

This process is also playing out in local disputes, as can be seen in the union bureaucracies’ role in subordinating the struggle to state-led talks between the companies and union bureaucrats at Disneyland and Vertbaudet. Whenever strikes do break out, such as at Vertbaudet, the union bureaucracies refuse to pay a penny of strike pay to their members in struggle.

The ongoing struggles of French workers against the increasing cost of living is inextricably linked to the struggle against Macron’s pension cut and war. The whole of French society is being reorganized as a “war economy,” as French and European imperialism prepare for escalation in the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine. For the ruling class, this requires savage attacks on wages and social rights, like Macron’s pension cut.

Escalating assault on jobs and living standards in New Zealand

John Braddock

Following international trends, New Zealand’s Reserve Bank (RBNZ) on May 24 raised the official cash rate by 25 basis points to 5.5 percent. The decision was seen as “finely balanced” between a rise of either 25 or 50 basis points.

New Zealand Finance Minister Grant Robertson outside parliament on May 18, 2023. [Photo: Grant Robertson Facebook]

The lesser rise is regarded as favourable to the Labour government as it faces an election in October. “Labour feared the worst but got the best it could hope for,” Stuff reported.

The bank’s Monetary Policy Committee assessed that its 12 consecutive rate rises since October 2021 had taken the “sting” out of inflation. It falsely claimed inflation pressures, including internationally, have been easing. New Zealand’s official annual rate slowed to 6.7 percent in the first quarter, but food inflation, particularly hitting the working class, has ramped-up to 12.4 percent.

The RBNZ is positively glowing about the success of its purported “anti-inflation” agenda. Last November, RBNZ governor Adrian Orr was asked in parliament whether he was “deliberately engineering a recession.” He replied: “I think that is correct. We are deliberately trying to slow aggregate spending in the economy.”

The RBNZ pointed to slowing consumer spending and a falling housing market and took indications of deteriorating business conditions as “positives.” It forecast the official cash rate would stay at 5.5 percent until the end of next year, with no prospect of a rate cut before early 2025, and also forecast two quarters of negative growth, i.e., a recession, in the middle of the year.

No sooner had the announcement hit the media than one of the major banks, the ASB, lifted its mortgage rates. The bank’s housing variable rate shifts from 8.39 to 8.64 percent and another rate will rise from 8.49 to 8.74 percent. The average monthly mortgage repayment in Auckland, the country’s major city, is already $NZ4,425.

Orr has predicted that homeowners can expect to be paying an average 22 percent of their income in interest payments by the end of the year—up from 9 percent in 2021. Meanwhile, banks are creaming profits. Westpac’s income interest spiraled to $2.85 billion​​ in the six months to the end of March, compared to $1.61b​ for the same period a year ago. ANZ Bank collected $4.67b​ over the same six months, up from $2.454b the previous year.

With the cost of living crisis battering working people, more and more are sinking into debt. The use of “buy now pay later” (BNPL) schemes and credit cards for basic items is escalating.

According to Consumer NZ over 25 percent of the population have a BNPL account, with 20 percent accumulating debt on groceries, bills and fuel, while 35 percent of credit card users are doing the same. Charity organisations including food banks have seen a tripling of demand compared with three years ago when COVID first hit.

The Labour-led government has responded with a campaign offering tips on how to save money. Titled “Find Money in Weird Places,” it focuses on energy costs with suggestions such as changing washing machines to cold wash and shortening showers to five minutes. The campaign, costing $2.8 million, will feature on television, social media, in print and on bus stops and malls throughout winter.

A fresh onslaught against jobs is meanwhile underway. On May 25, Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) announced that over 200 academics, 10 percent of its 2,468 staff, will lose their jobs with nearly 60 teaching programs up for “review.” Vice Chancellor Nic Smith said the university is in “survival mode,” facing a $33 million deficit for 2023. It is predicted to run out of money completely by the end of next year.

Falling enrolments see the university only holding a 13.9 percent share of domestic students. Chronic government underfunding has not met inflation “for the better part of 15 years,” Smith said. In 2021 large-scale sackings at VUW were only avoided when a “voluntary” redundancy scheme, which around 60 staff took up, was used to reduce debt.

The assault at VUW follows similar cuts at Otago University, hitting over 200 staff, and between 200 and 1,000 jobs under threat at the national polytechnic, Te Pūkenga. Auckland University of Technology is currently working through 170 “voluntary” and compulsory redundancies announced late last year.

While falling enrolments related to COVID, particularly among high fee-paying international students, is being blamed, prime responsibility lies with the 1984–90 Lange Labour government’s “Learning for Life” agenda. This opened the door to waves of government funding cuts, abolished free tertiary education, introduced student fees and forced universities to run as competitive businesses. Subsequent governments have all followed suit.

Last week a swathe of job cuts was also announced by the Auckland Council. More than 500 job losses have been confirmed as part of right-wing Mayor Wayne Brown’s cost-cutting to address a $325 million budget shortfall. Another 200 more jobs could go once the budget is finalised next month.

Deputy mayor Desley Simpson declared that Auckland must “trim the fat” to balance its books, falsely claiming this would simply mean losing some “nice-to-have” services. Elected councillors had left it up to each organisation’s executive to decide where the savings required of them would come from, she said. 

Preparations are being made to sell the council’s 18 percent stake in Auckland Airport, the country’s largest. International investment banks will be interviewed and assessed over coming weeks for the role of “adviser” in the sale process, which would attract significant attention. However, Brown reportedly does not yet have sufficient votes on the council to proceed with the sale.

The RBNZ’s imposition of recessionary conditions is hitting private sector employment hard. According to the New Zealand Herald on May 10 economists are tipping that the unemployment rate will start escalating from here. BusinessDesk deputy head Rebecca Howard said forecasts predict up to 80,000 people could lose their jobs. The RBNZ has unemployment “peaking” at 5.7 per cent in the March quarter of 2025.

The Master Builders Association notes construction is entering a “bust cycle” as the easy credit of the COVID era dries up, and the cost of materials and labour increases. According to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), 183 construction companies had already gone bust between last August and the end of January.

One liquidator told Stuff that in 2019 construction industry failures made up about a quarter of his firm’s insolvency work. Today, they account for around 70 percent. In March, Construct Civil with 75 staff went into liquidation, along with A H Construction, which went into voluntary administration in February with over 100 staff, and Jacksco Civil with another 100 workers.

The Labour government is depending on the trade unions to keep emerging working class resistance in check. On the Auckland Council cuts, a Public Service Association spokesperson declared that the union was “concerned for the livelihoods of members who will lose their jobs. And we’re concerned for the livelihood of members who will now have to do even more work with even less support”—but made no commitment to fight for anything.

Tertiary Education Union (TEU) branch president at VUW Dougal McNeill, a leading member of the pseudo-left International Socialist Organisation (ISO), said: “We will campaign hard to stop these cuts. University management, government ministers and MPs should be on notice that our members are not about to go quietly.”

In fact the TEU, in which the ISO is embedded, has already presided over more than a thousand job cuts nationwide since the onset of the pandemic, seeking only to be involved in “consultation” over how to best implement them. The union has only requested that Labour and the VUW vice chancellor “think very carefully about the implications of these cuts and rethink their plans.”

UK’s BAE Systems announces plan to produce armaments in Ukraine

Robert Stevens

Following months of talks, BAE Systems, the UK’s main weapons manufacturer, confirmed on Tuesday that it will establish an office in Ukraine, as the precursor to building weapons inside Ukraine.

The Telegraph reported the major escalation of NATO’s war against Russia late Tuesday following a video call between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and BAE chief executive Charles Woodburn, Managing Director Gabby Costigan and Director for Cooperation with Ukraine Christian Seear.

The newspaper said “the FTSE 100 maker of Challenger 2 tanks, artillery pieces and ammunition crucial to the war against Russia” holding “direct talks with the country’s president” was “a further sign of Britain’s central role in arming Ukrainian forces.”

Zelensky said on Telegram, “We discussed the localization of production in Ukraine. We agreed to start work on opening a BAE Systems office in Ukraine, and subsequently repair and production facilities for the company’s products.

“We are interested in direct relations with your company, without any intermediaries, not only now, but also in the long term. We are ready to become a major regional hub for the repair and production of various types of products of BAE Systems and are interested in making our relations more global.”

Woodburn said, “We’re proud to be working with our government customers to provide equipment, training and support services to the Ukrainian armed forces. We’re also exploring how we could support the Ukrainian government as it revitalises the country’s defence industrial base to ensure their long-term security.”

The video conference took place following the May 24 visit by UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace to Kiev to meet his counterpart Oleksii Reznikov. A Ministry of Defence (MoD) statement said the visit followed the UK becoming “the first country to provide Ukraine with long-range precision strike capability this month… Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace said the meeting was ‘to discuss the next stages of Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s illegal invasion. The UK continues to offer both equipment, training and advice to Ukraine’s armed forces.’”

BAE supplies the bulk of the £2.3 billion in military equipment sent to the Ukrainian battlefield by the UK. It makes the Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank, Warrior infantry fighting vehicle, Terrier combat engineer vehicle and military bridging systems. It has a £2.4 billion contract with the MoD to provide all its munitions for the next 15 years. One of its factories in Cheshire, England alone can churn out 1 million munitions a day.

In an evening video address Zelensky said of BAE Systems, “It is indeed a massive manufacturer of weaponry, the kind of weaponry that we need now and will continue to need. We are working on establishing a suitable base in Ukraine for production and repair. This encompasses a wide range of weaponry, from tanks to artillery.”

BAE is central to Britain’s role as one of the world’s leading sellers of arms. Fueled by demand for its weapons in Ukraine and other war zones, the value of UK arms export licenses more than doubled to £8.5 billion in 2022. This included the £2.4 billion sale of Eurofighter Typhoons and related military equipment to Qatar. The biggest manufacturer in Britain, BAE operates in 40 countries employing 93,000 people. Valued at £27 billion, it is Europe’s largest defence contractor and was the seventh largest in the world based on now hugely surpassed 2021 revenues.

On February 23, almost one year to the day since Russia’s invasion, BAE celebrated its surge in sales and profits for 2022. It took in a record £37 billion in new orders, propelling its order backlog to £58.9 billion. It had already announced in a trading update last November that it had secured £28 billion of orders so far in 2022. Underlying operating profits were £2.5 billion—up 12.5 percent on 2021

In the foreword to its annual report, Woodburn commented, “While it is tragic that it took a war in Europe to raise the awareness of the importance of defence around the globe, BAE Systems is well positioned to help national governments keep their citizens safe and secure in an elevated threat environment.”

The report declared that “we expect the renewed importance of armoured combat vehicles in the Ukraine conflict to benefit our combat vehicles business.” So large were sales and profits that the statement declared, “This has enabled the Board to reward shareholders through the buyback of £788m of our own shares.”

Woodburn received pay and bonuses totaling more than £10.6 million last year. Commenting on the rocketing in BAE’s share value by 50 percent over the previous year to an all-time high, Chairman Sir Roger Carr stated that “it should not have taken a war for the investment community to reassess the value of BAE Systems shares, but it has.”

Among the many BAE manufactured weapons supplied by countries internationally to Ukraine is the M777 howitzer gun, which has a firing range of 14 to 24 miles, and is able to fire precision GPS-guided rather than unguided shells. Last October the Wall Street Journal quoted Mark Signorelli, a vice president of business development at BAE, declaring, “The demonstration of the effectiveness and utility of a wide variety of artillery systems is what is coming out of the Ukraine conflict.”

Ukrainian Army firing a US donated M777 howitzer, May 2022. The M777 howitzer is manufactured by BAE Systems [Photo by www.mil.gov.ua. / CC BY 4.0]

The newspaper reported, “BAE said that if inquiries from prospective M777 buyers, which include countries in Central Europe, turned into actual orders, it could lead to up to 500 new howitzers.”

Earlier this month, BAE announced it “will play a key role in helping Australia to acquire its first nuclear powered submarines”. They will be built as part of the US-UK-Australia (AUKUS) military pact, aimed at ramping up military confrontation with China. BAE said, “The three nations will deliver a trilaterally developed submarine, based on the UK’s next generation design, incorporating technology from all three nations. Australia and the UK will operate SSN-AUKUS, as their submarines of the future, with construction expected to begin this decade.”

The decision to locate armament production in Ukraine is seen as vital for British imperialism. In February the Telegraph reported, “Other European defence companies are also in talks with Ukraine, with British companies keen not to be beaten to the punch by French and German rivals. A race is on to put the UK ‘at the front of the queue’, one [defence company] executive told The Telegraph.”

In May the World Socialist Web Site noted that Germany’s “Rheinmetall has established a joint venture for the repair and construction of tanks with the Ukrainian state-owned company Ukroboronprom. The cooperation on tanks is ‘only the first step on the way to comprehensive cooperation,’ writes the Handelsblatt newspaper.”

BAE’s plans to produce weapons in Ukraine is confirmation of the fact that Britain, as the WSWS warned, is in an undeclared war with Russia.

Tensions with Russia were heightened again with the comments of Foreign Minister James Cleverly in Estonia, Wednesday. Speaking about Ukraine’s drone strikes on Moscow the previous day, he said, “Ukraine does have the legitimate right to defend itself. It has the legitimate right to do so within its own borders, of course, but it does also have the right to project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia's ability to project force into Ukraine itself.

“So legitimate military targets beyond its own border are part of Ukraine’s self-defence. And we should recognise that.”

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and a former president, responded, “The goofy officials of the UK, our eternal enemy, should remember that within the framework of the universally accepted international law which regulates modern warfare, including the Hague and Geneva Conventions with their additional protocols, their state can also be qualified as being at war.

“Today, the UK acts as Ukraine’s ally providing it with military aid in the form of equipment and specialists, i.e., de facto is leading an undeclared war against Russia. That being the case, any of its public officials (either military, or civil, who facilitate the war) can be considered as a legitimate military target.”

Growing number of elderly homeless in the US

Chase Lawrence

Nearly a quarter of a million people 55 or older are estimated by the government to have been homeless for at least part of 2019.

According to the Washington Post, “People 55 and older represented 16.5 percent of America’s homeless population of 1.45 million in 2019, according to the most recent reliable data.”

According to a 2022 University of Pennsylvania Study by Rebecca Brown, an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine, and several coauthors from the University of California San Francisco, over one-third of the homeless population are now single adults over 50, triple the figure in 1990 when it stood at 11 percent.

The government makes little effort to count the homeless. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, the only federal source of information on homelessness disaggregated by age, delayed its release of the second part of their Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress by two years, making it difficult to get an idea of the scale of homelessness among the elderly in real time.

The latest information on homelessness with respect to the elderly is from 2019, though advocates of the homeless have noted that there is evidence that it is growing, pointing to numerous examples.

The largest shelter provider in Arizona, Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS), is rushing to open an over-55 shelter in a former Phoenix hotel this summer with “private rooms and medical and social services tailored for older people.” The provider says that it served 1,717 elderly in 2022, a 43 percent increase compared to 2021.

In Orange County, California, a Medicaid plan, CalOptima Health, is creating a 119-bed shelter which will serve as an assisted-living facility for the elderly, according to Kelly Bruno-Nelson, executive director for the plan. Bruno-Nelson stated that the current shelter system “cannot accommodate the physical needs of this population.” Seniors are staying in respite centers for months in San Francisco, California, Portland, Oregon, and Anchorage, Alaska, that were intended for a short-term stay only. In Boise, Idaho, shelter operators are hiring staff with backgrounds in long-term care to help elderly homeless living for long periods in hotels.

“It’s just a catastrophe. This is the fastest-growing group of people who are homeless,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, a professor of medicine and vulnerable populations researcher at the University of California at San Francisco.

Elderly homeless contract chronic diseases much earlier than younger people, as well as suffering from geriatric problems. Poor access to care due to homelessness, and the threat of having their medications stolen or going bad outside, stress from having to weather the outdoors, as well as generally unsanitary conditions, and the difficulties created by the anti-homeless laws being passed around the country, all contribute to poor health outcomes.

A Journal of the American Medical Association study titled, “Factors Associated With Mortality Among Homeless Older Adults in California: The HOPE HOME Study,” detailed how, over an average of 55 months, unhoused people over 50 years died at a rate 3.5 times greater than their housed counterparts. The findings are consistent with previous studies in other parts of the country.

Dennis Culhane, a professor and social science researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, said that the population of homeless seniors 65 and older would double or even triple from 2017 before peaking around 2030.

This increase is driven by poverty. One half of renters over 50 spend more than 30 percent of their household income on rent, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

As the American Society on Aging Generations journal noted, “Low-income people who spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent are unable to save money, leaving them vulnerable to losing their housing when they face setbacks, such as a job loss, sickness, or death of a spouse or partner.”

In other words, homelessness is a class issue. The financial elite that both parties represent, and the upper middle class have no reason to worry about becoming homeless. The workers on the other hand, such as the homeless former autoworker that the Post interviewed, are the ones which this malady overwhelmingly affects.

Poverty, combined with the bipartisan destruction of the social safety net, spiraling inflation driven by profit-gouging (not wages) and the US-provoked war with Russia, as well as extortionary rent, are leading to thousands of the elderly being kicked out onto the streets.

The ruling class has no response to the increase in homelessness among the elderly. Indeed, hardly any media coverage is to be found on the topic. As it doesn’t fit into the categories of race or gender, the Democratic Party wing of the political establishment finds it more convenient to merely remain quiet on the topic.

The plans to attack Medicare and Social Security under the phony pretense of fighting debt, while dumping literally over a trillion dollars into American imperialism’s war machine—not to mention the nearly unlimited bailouts sunk into the pockets of the financial elite—shows the real disdain for the elderly.

If anything, the response given by the ruling elite is to step up the attacks on the elderly, foster reactionary sentiments against them (as a burden to society and the young), and ultimately to reduce life expectancy.

The corporate media has railed against the elderly, endorsing dying early. This was visible in the campaign for the pro-corporate health plan Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) in which the New York Times spearheaded this narrative. The result of Obamacare was to contribute to a decrease in life expectancy. One of the chief architects of Obamacare, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, openly advocated for a reduction in life expectancy.