Some 10,000 ground workers at Italian airports went on an eight-hour warning strike on 15 July, lasting from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. As a result, almost 1,000 flights had to be cancelled, and an estimated quarter of a million passengers were affected.
Passengers look at flight timetables at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport. [AP Photo/Andrew Medichini]
The Italian news service ANSA reported that a “surreal silence” prevailed in the terminals of Linate and Malpensa, Milan’s two airports. Roma-Fiumicino, Bologna-Marconi, Venezia Marco Polo and Caselle Torinese airports were also badly affected. In Naples, Bari, Palermo, Genoa and Venice, many planes were grounded. The strike covered the whole country from Milan to Catania.
The strike was almost 100 percent solid. At Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, 99 percent of the ground workers balloted had voted in favour of strike action, and throughout Italy the calls for a national strike were unmistakable. As a result, the unions were forced to call Saturday’s eight-hour strike covering ramp workers, ground handling and check-in services.
That the unions acted under pressure is shown by the statement of their spokesperson Sara Di Marco (FILT-CGIL) on the economic impact of the strike. She said her organisation had no intention whatsoever “to harm other colleagues” but that the workers had forced the union to go on strike after the government refused to sit down with the unions.
The transport unions involved in the strike were FILT-CGIL, FIT CISL, Uiltrasporti and UGL Trasporto Aereo. Their main demand concerned the collective agreement covering wages for airport ground service workers, which expired years ago. The contract for workers in so-called ramp handling, who load and unload the planes and handle all the luggage, dates back to December 2015 and expired six-and-a-half years ago. In that time, inflation has really eaten into wages.
Apron workers toil in appalling conditions on the blazing hot airport tarmac. Italy is currently experiencing an unprecedented heat wave, with record temperatures reaching 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit). Even with headgear, neck protection and free drinking water, there is a risk of heatstroke or circulatory collapse for these workers, who have no way to avoid the heat. In autumn and winter, they are again exposed to wind and inclement weather.
Despite their great exertions, these workers earn a pittance. According to the website Worldsalaries, the gross monthly income of those working for Italian airport service providers ranges between €1,300 and €4,150 per month, including counter staff, security guards and control and administrative workers.
Apron workers are at the lowest end of the scale. The wage of unskilled handling workers can be so low that they take home only €800 euros. On average, the wage for aircraft handlers is around €1,400 net. For a single bedroom in Rome, the typical rent is around €600 euros. In Milan, monthly living costs alone are at least €1,200.
The strike was the second to disrupt Italian air traffic this summer, following a 24-hour airport strike on 20 June. It is part of the growing wave of workers’ revolts across Europe, which the Italian government obviously understands.
Two days earlier, Italian railway workers at the state-owned railway company Trenitalia, as well as of the private Italo group, went on a 24-hour strike, fighting against persistent overtime, poor pay and staff shortages. The strike was supposed to last until Friday evening.
But Italy’s Vice Chancellor Matteo Salvini (Lega), who is also transport minister, flatly forbade the strike from continuing for a second day. In violation of the constitutionally guaranteed right to strike, Salvini also threatened the airport ground workers with a strike ban.
“I do not accept that some unions are obstructing Italy, causing inconvenience and harm to millions of Italian workers and foreign tourists,” Salvini raged. “If common sense does not prevail, I am ready to intervene, as I have already done, to prevent the total blocking of trains.”
However, he could not prevent several air crews from taking up and extending the strike on the strike day itself. Pilots and flight attendants of many airlines are also suffering job cuts and poverty-level wages, a consequence of government attacks and the merciless global competition in air transport.
Malta Air pilots, who operate Ryanair flights in Italy, went on a united strike from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on the same Saturday, and at Vueling Airline, both pilots and cabin crew went on strike from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The strike at Malta Air also affected aircraft operated by ITA Airways, the former Alitalia, which had to cancel a total of 133 flights that day.
At Ryanair, the strike meant 120 flights were also cancelled at the Brussels South Charleroi Airport in Belgium, and Ryanair said that cancellations and restrictions were to be expected on flights to and from Italy. Ryanair pilots are still struggling to get their pay back to pre-pandemic levels. The unions had accepted substantial pay cuts during the pandemic, which have not yet been recouped let alone compensated for rampant inflation.
A horrific mass shooting on July 20 in a busy part of central Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, left three people dead and 10 injured.
Police vehicles in central Auckland, New Zealand after the construction site shootings on July 20, 2023. [Photo: @PhillNewnes/Twitter]
Around 7:22 a.m., police received reports of gunshots at the Deloitte office tower on Queen Street, which was undergoing renovations. Workers fled or hid under desks and in toilets as the shooter, 24-year-old Matu Tangi Matua Reid, made his way through the building armed with a pump action shotgun. Reid killed two men aged in their forties and injured 10 more people, including a police officer, before he was apparently killed in a shootout with the Police Armed Offenders Squad around 8:00 a.m.
Construction company LT McGuiness confirmed that the gunman was employed by a subcontractor at the site. He was one of more than 100 contractors working on what is one of New Zealand’s biggest construction projects. Those he killed were his colleagues.
Police Commissioner Andrew Coster told TVNZ that the shooting was likely “related to workplace tension,” but gave no further details. One witness told the New Zealand Herald that Reid shouted “So what you going to do to me now… what can you do,” during his rampage. Some Australian media outlets report that Reid was sacked the day before, but this is unconfirmed.
Reid had previous convictions related to family violence. In March, he was sentenced to five months’ home detention for a serious assault of a woman, but he was allowed to continue attending work while wearing an ankle bracelet.
Questions remain about how Reid was able to obtain a shotgun without a firearms license and take it to his workplace. Commissioner Coster told TVNZ that police had previously searched Reid’s house “when there was a threat made that implied he might want to use a firearm and kill his family. We did not locate at any stage firearms in his possession.” He did not say when this occurred.
The government’s immediate response to the tragedy on Thursday was to reassure the media that this was not a terrorist incident and that the FIFA Women’s World Cup starting that evening in Auckland could go ahead. The Labour Party-led government has spent $55 million on the football tournament, which is expected to be watched by two billion people around the world.
In a press conference held just over two hours after the shooting, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins emphasised that the government had “spoken to FIFA organisers this morning and the tournament will proceed as planned,” with an increased police presence.
Hipkins then praised the “heroic” actions of the police, saying “we rely on our police, our frontline police, to put themselves in harm’s way to keep us safe… [and] we will all send our love and support to the New Zealand police, who are doing an amazing job.” About three minutes before the end of the 16-minute press conference, the prime minister expressed “condolence[s] to the victims and to their family.”
The tragedy takes place in the middle of an election campaign in which Labour and the opposition National and ACT Parties are all competing with each other on right-wing “law and order” policies. Speaking to Newstalk ZB yesterday, the National Party leader demanded to know why Reid was not in prison, accusing the government of seeking to “reduce the prison population, despite violent crime increasing.”
Labour, for its part, has recently announced policies targeting “youth crime,” including the construction of two new units to house “the most serious offenders” in the country’s prison-like youth justice facilities. Amnesty International and other groups denounced the policy as a further move towards incarcerating more children.
Asked by Radio NZ whether the Auckland shooting showed that police officers should be armed, Police Minister Ginny Andersen said this was a decision that the police hierarchy could make if it wanted to. At present, officers do not routinely carry firearms, but can access them from police vehicles and stations.
The political establishment has nothing to offer the working class, which is suffering from soaring social inequality and out of control prices for food and housing, except for deeper cuts to healthcare and other essential social services, along with more spending on the military, police and prisons.
The facts indicate that Reid was the product of a society that has become increasingly brutal towards its most vulnerable layers. Stuff obtained court documents revealing that he had previously been required to undergo an anger management program, and that he had at one point been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
Reid pled guilty to violently attacking a woman in September 2021, fracturing her neck through strangulation. In a victim impact statement, the woman said she thought Reid had “generational anger” and needed help; she did not want him to end up in prison.
The judge’s sentencing notes stated: “I do not want to send a young man like you, with a limited history, to prison. I think it would be counterproductive and actually set you down the wrong path.” Reid was required to report regularly to a probation officer and to undergo drug tests, but it is far from clear whether he had access to the necessary psychological and material support.
According to Stuff, “[Reid] told a probation officer his background had been troubled: there was domestic violence and physical abuse as a child; family instability and hardship; and he’d run away from home because of this. He described a disrupted education, limited employment, and being exposed to drugs, alcohol, and gang life from an early age.”
In late 2021, Reid was living in the Albany Oak Motel under the government’s emergency housing program for homeless people. Angela Huntley, manager of the motel, said: “He tried to get help, but there was not enough. He probably needed extra help in the mental health [area]. Everyone needs help, being homeless.… He must have snapped, he’d had a hard life.”
It is still not clear what exactly triggered Reid’s shooting at his workplace. It is well-known that the construction industry is highly exploitative, with a workforce, including large numbers of migrants, who are casualised and treated as disposable.
Mass shootings, while much less common in New Zealand compared with the United States, are becoming more frequent. While the circumstances vary in each case, Thursday’s shooting—like the 2014 shooting at a government welfare office in Ashburton—is clearly connected with the impoverishment of broad layers of the population and the destruction of mental healthcare services and social welfare. The decades-long assault on the working class by successive governments has produced widespread hopelessness, high suicide rates and rising deaths from drug overdoses.
The growing militarisation of society, New Zealand’s participation in criminal imperialist wars, and the demonisation of immigrants and minorities by politicians and the media, also contributes to the reactionary climate that produces violent attacks—including the fascist terrorist attack by Brenton Tarrant, who massacred 51 people in Christchurch in 2019.
On Wednesday, wealthy businessman Pita Limjaroenrat, leader of the Move Forward Party (MFP), was both suspended as a member of parliament in Thailand by the Constitutional Court and blocked from standing for election as prime minister. While the MFP won 151 seats in May’s election, the most of any party, the military-aligned establishment has essentially vetoed the party from forming government.
Move Forward Party supporters protest at Democracy Monument in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, July 19, 2023. [AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn]
Speaking in parliament on his suspension, Pita said he would comply with the court’s decision. “I believe Thailand has changed since [the elections on] May 14 and the people have already won half the battle, there’s another half to go,” he said. “Even though I’m not carrying out my duties [as MP], I’m asking my fellow MPs to look after the people.”
Pita’s suspension is a blatantly anti-democratic decision. However, it was not opposed by any MPs in the 500-seat lower house of parliament, including from within the 312-seat coalition created by the MFP after the election. That includes Pheu Thai with 141 seats.
Pita has been targeted ostensibly for holding shares in a media company defunct since 2007 called iTV, which he inherited from his father. Pita claims he attempted to sell the shares but could not find a buyer. While it is illegal for an MP to hold shares in a media company, Pita stated he reported the shares to the Election Commission in 2019 and was cleared to take his seat in parliament. For the moment, Pita’s suspension is temporary until the Constitutional Court rules on his case. He has 15 days to respond to the allegations.
The political establishment’s attack on the MFP is similar to that on the party’s predecessor in 2019, the Future Forward Party (FFP). At that time, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, who led the FFP, was also suspended for owning shares in a media company, and the party was forcibly dissolved the following year. These moves contributed to mass protests calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s government, which seized power in a 2014 military coup, and the reform of the monarchy.
After Pita’s exhortations to parliament to “look after the people,” a vote passed 394 to 312 opposing his continued standing as a candidate for prime minister. Pita was first rejected as PM in a vote on July 13, with the military-appointed Senate nearly unanimously opposed to him. With one empty seat in the Senate, Pita needed 375 votes, or a majority of both the 749-seat combined lower and upper house. He received a total of 324 votes and only 13 from senators, while the rest abstained or voted against him.
The MFP has responded, not by calling protests in defense of the democratic right to vote, but instead by caving to the military and conservative establishment. The MFP stated on Friday that it would cease attempting to form a government and yield to coalition partner Pheu Thai, which will likely put up Srettha Thavisin as its PM candidate in the next vote to be held July 27.
In an Instagram post yesterday, Pita stated: “The most important thing is not that I haven’t become Prime Minister, but setting up a government based on the will of the people who want to change the coup, stopping the inheritance of the previous government.” In practice, this is an attempt to subordinate working people to the status quo, under the claim that Pheu Thai will defend democracy.
Yet Pheu Thai may break with the MFP to form a government with parties that will meet the military’s approval. According to the Nation newspaper, Pheu Thai sources are discussing replacing the MFP with the conservative Bhumjaithai party (71 seats) and the previous ruling party Palalang Pracharath (40 seats) led by Prawit Wongsuwan, the outgoing deputy prime minister and one of the 2014 coup leaders.
Ultimately, the ruling establishment is opposed to Pita and the MFP, not on the grounds that the party genuinely stands for democracy, but because the MFP represents sections of the bourgeoisie that have been marginalized by the traditional elites and which are now seeking to further their economic and political interests.
Social and political tensions in Thailand are far sharper that in 2020 when mass demonstrations primarily of young people erupted against the anti-democratic actions of the military-backed regime.
Household debt reached 16 trillion baht ($US465 billion) in the first quarter of 2023. About 58 percent of people between the ages of 25 and 29 are in debt, as are some 90 percent of rural households. In addition, economic inequality is growing with the top 1 percent taking in 21 percent of the national income, while the bottom 50 percent get only 14 percent.
While campaigning for the May election, the MFP made populist pledges including raising the daily minimum wage to 450 baht ($US13), which was opposed by other sections of the bourgeoisie. Undoubtedly, there are concerns that Move Forward’s reformist posturing, however insincere, may stoke working-class discontent that an MFP-led government is unable to control.
Furthermore, Pita has made overtures to the United States, a formal military ally of Thailand, as Washington continually ramps up military pressure on China and other countries to fall into line with its confrontation with Beijing. China, however, is Bangkok’s largest trading partner, accounting for $US107 billion in total trade in 2022, or 18 percent of Thailand’s trade volume.
The MFP, no less than the other bourgeois parties, are desperate to prevent a resurgence of mass protests, like those in 2020 and 2021. But while those protests primarily involved students, new demonstrations could draw in workers, who in addition to declining conditions, face the growing danger of war in the region and an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic for which the ruling class has no progressive answer.
Some protests have already begun in Bangkok, though at present involving only several hundred. Tellingly, the middle-class leaders of protest groups organizing the demonstrations are calling for people to put pressure on military-appointed senators while accepting a potential Pheu Thai-led government.
Prominent human rights lawyer and activist Anon Nampa, for example, called on people to be “witnesses” to a potential Pheu Thai government so that it would not betray the people. In reality, a Pheu Thai-led government, if is finally formed, will be just as subservient to the traditional elites—the military, monarchy and state bureaucracy—as Pita and the MFP.
It is likely that Sunday’s snap national elections will bring the overtly Francoite Vox into government in Spain as junior coalition partners of their co-thinkers in the Popular Party (PP).
Forty-five years ago, the Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Stalinist Communist Party of Spain (PCE) prevented a revolutionary reckoning with the Spanish bourgeoisie by the working class after the death of the dictator General Francisco Franco. The 1978 Constitution, they promised, would be the birth of a parliamentary democracy under the aegis of the European Union and NATO.
VOX far right party leader Santiago Abascal delivers his speech during the closing campaign rally at the Colon square in Madrid, Spain, Friday, July 21, 2023. [AP Photo/ Manu Fernandez]
Decades later, the promises of democracy have been shattered by the social and economic collapse across Europe since the global financial crisis in 2008 and the ongoing financial storms, the imposition of deep, unpopular austerity measures and the war frenzy provoked by NATO’s war on Russia in the Ukraine.
Most polls show that Franco’s political heirs, the Popular Party (PP), founded by seven Francoite ministers, and the neo-fascist Vox, led by former PP member Santiago Abascal, will win the election. The PP is well ahead of the ruling Socialist Party (PSOE) but will require the support of Vox to command a majority. Vox has stated it will only accept being part of a PP-led government and no other arrangement.
The PSOE-Podemos coalition government called the election six months before scheduled, after being hammered in May’s local and regional elections and as a growing strike wave sweeps across Spain and Europe involving millions of workers. Terrified by the rising social opposition, the PSOE and Podemos are deliberately handing the initiative to the right in the hopes that a far-right government will be able to successfully crush rising social opposition at home and escalate war abroad.
Vox is a party composed of former judges, police and generals that stands in the unbroken historical continuity of Francoism. Franco’s victory during the Spanish Civil War was sealed with the mass murder of 200,000 political oppositionists and left-wing workers. Over the next four decades, thousands were arrested, tortured or murdered by the secret police. Strikes, political parties and trade unions were banned and democratic rights suppressed. Newspapers and books were censored, and higher education and good healthcare were only available to the privileged. The regime only fell in the 1970s, amid mass working class strikes and protests.
Vox seeks to escalate war abroad and at home by hiking military and police budgets to recentralise Spain, criminalise separatist parties, imprison striking workers and promote Spanish chauvinism, while clamping down on Basque and Catalan linguistic rights and scapegoating migrants. It opposes abortion and LGBTI rights and denies climate change. For the rich, it seeks to abolish taxes on income, wealth, capital gains and inheritance. In all essentials this programme is shared by the PP, which shies away from Vox’s more extreme rhetoric, only to lend a veneer of respectability to its own class war and militarist agenda.
There is nothing peculiar about Vox’s rise. Across Europe, a dangerous pattern has been seen time and again when a mass leftward shift has prompted the formation of “broad left” parties, only to see them betray and hand the initiative to the far right.
In Greece, right-wing New Democracy was sworn in last month after defeating the opposition Syriza, which imposed savage austerity from 2015 to 2019 after promising to oppose it. The new parliament has now three far-right parties, in what one analyst described as “the most conservative parliament since the restoration of Greece’s democracy in 1974”.
In Italy, 78 years after fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was shot by partisans, his political heirs, the Brothers of Italy, are back in power under Giorgia Meloni for the first time since the end of World War II.
In Germany, 90 years after Hitler seized power, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), teeming with racists, antisemites and militant neo-Nazis who repeatedly minimise the crimes of the Third Reich, is the second strongest party in the opinion polls, before the ruling Social Democrats and behind the conservative CDU. In the East, it is the strongest party, with over 30 percent.
In Portugal, the neo-Salazarist Chega (Enough) grew from one seat to 12 in last year’s national elections. It is projected to be Portugal’s third political force with 13.2 percent. According to recent polls, if the ruling Socialist Party were to call snap elections, Chega could rule with the right-wing Social Democratic Party, the first time the far right would enter power since the collapse of the fascist Estado Novo regime amid the 1974 Carnation Revolution.
Political tendencies that should have been thrown to historical oblivion are making a comeback. How is this possible in a continent that suffered the brutal horrors of fascism? Above all, amid the largest strike wave since the 1970s across the continent, how is it possible that the chief political beneficiaries of deepening opposition across Europe and internationally to the entire capitalist elite’s agenda of imperialist war abroad and class war at home are the far right?
The answer lies not in these political forces, which, unlike in the 1930s, do not command the support of a mass movement. In each instance, it is the pseudo-left—whether Syriza in Greece, the New Anti-Capitalist Party in France, the Left Party in Germany, the Left Bloc in Portugal or remnants of Rifondazione Comunista in Italy—that have acted as the midwife of the far right.
Both in opposition and in government, these forces have deepened austerity, supported imperialist war and sought to demobilise and betray workers and youth who once looked to them for leadership. They do not represent the working class but the wealthy strata of the middle class, who have benefited from the upward redistribution of social wealth presided over by the financial oligarchy. Confronted with escalating class struggles, they are dropping their social pretensions and moving sharply to the right to defend their social privileges.
In Spain, Podemos was founded in 2014 by Pabloite Anticapitalistas and various Stalinist professors, led by Pablo Iglesias. It emerged directly out of the Indignados M-15 anti-austerity protests in 2011-2012, which unfolded during the tumultuous events of the “Arab Spring” and the fall of Egypt’s military junta and after a period of major strikes and struggles by the European working class following the 2008 global capitalist crisis.
Drawing on the political connections between Iglesias and his Stalinist associates and the bourgeois nationalist regimes of Hugo Chavez in Venezuala and Evo Morales in Bolivia, in alliance with the Pabloite United Secretariat, Podemos set itself in opposition to the building of a revolutionary leadership for the working class. It proclaimed an end to traditional “top-down” leadership in a new era of “broad left” popular formations, promising to oppose the European Union from the left and a new era of popular democracy, finally completing the unfulfilled “democratic” tasks of the transition to democracy after Franco. It sought constantly to dragoon the working class back behind the social democratic PSOE, the leading party of bourgeois rule since the 1980s, and the trade union apparatus.
In 2018, amid mounting popular opposition to the PP and its repressive policies in Catalonia, Podemos organised a parliamentary maneuver, ousting the PP and replacing it with a minority PSOE government. The Podemos-backed PSOE government continued the PP’s austerity budget, showered the army with billions of euros, attacked migrants and continued the right wing’s repressive campaign against Catalan nationalism even as its various pseudo-left satellites endorsed the divisive, pro-capitalist agenda of the separatists.
2018 also saw Vox successfully capitalizing on the whipping up of Spanish chauvinist sentiment, winning 12 parliamentary seats in the Andalusian regional election and entering a regional parliament for the first time. Two years later, in the 2019 elections, Vox rose to 15 percent of the national vote and 52 lawmakers, making it the third largest political force, overtaking Podemos.
That same year, Podemos joined a PSOE-led government. For the following four years, it championed the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, slashed pensions and wages, pursued a profits-over-lives policy in the COVID-19 pandemic, and massively hiked the military budget and bailouts for major banks and corporations. It savagely attacked striking truck drivers and metal workers, imposed draconian minimum services on air crews and let migrants drown at sea.
While the pro-Podemos media presents the electoral collapse of the ruling parties as the result of the right-wing media, fake news and an anti-feminist “patriarchal” wave, the truth is that after four years in office workers have lost 8 percent of their purchasing power, mortgages and rents have risen by 50 percent and large Spanish corporations are reaping record profits. As Podemos lawmaker, then secretary of state and general secretary of the Communist Party of Spain, Enrique Santiago, boasted, “[I]n the history of Spain there has not been such a large transfer of resources from the state to private companies as the one carried out by this government.”
The role of Podemos, now rebranded as Sumar, in the electoral platform of 15 parties for tomorrow’s elections marks another bitter experience of the working class with the “broad left” parties created and championed by the pseudo-left groups and Stalinists.
Workers have been completely disenfranchised. Who can they vote for to oppose Spain’s participation in NATO’s war on Russia in Ukraine, which threatens to escalate into a nuclear war? Or the 140 billion-euro bailout fund for the banks and corporations paid for through savage austerity? Or to seek a political reckoning for the prioritization of profits over lives during the COVID-19 pandemic that led to 160,000 deaths in Spain and 12 million infections?
Sumar has made clear that it supports NATO’s war against Russia and wants to continue sending hundreds of millions of euros in weaponry and has promised Brussels 24 billion euros in cuts and tax hikes in 2024 to pay for the bailouts. It is led by Acting Deputy Prime Minister and Labour Minister Yolanda DÃaz, who imposed labour reforms that have expanded low salaries and played a key role in reopening non-essential workplaces during the pandemic, leading to mass death. On each burning issue facing workers, Sumar has the same basic position as Vox.
With the 2024 federal budget, the German government has ushered in a new era in social policy. In order to finance the huge costs of military rearmament and to continue the enrichment of a small minority, government funds for pensions, care, welfare, and public infrastructure are being slashed.
Among the many cuts that have hardly attracted public notice so far are the funds for research into Long Covid and the development of therapies and drugs against it. Instead of €100 million as originally announced, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democrat, SPD) wants to make only €21 million available for this purpose. Representatives of doctors, clinics and statutory health insurers want to raise another €20 million.
Although these are relatively low sums in the tens of millions, the consequences will be devastating. Millions of people, some of whom are seriously ill with Long Covid, will be abandoned to their fate. The massive cut in research funding is a slap in the face for all Long Covid sufferers.
Although Lauterbach claims that further money could be made available in the coming years, this is just a farce. Clinical research is so complex and expensive that it is only worthwhile if projects have permanent and stable funding. If money is only provided year by year, top researchers cannot be retained, nor necessary teams built up.
Long Covid outpatients department in Vienna [Photo by Herzi Pinki / wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0]
Long Covid is not an individual problem, but affects broad sections of the population. According to figures from the World Health Organisation, one in 30 people in Europe is affected. In Germany, that would be well over two million people. According to estimates by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), up to 36 million Europeans could have developed Long Covid in the last three years.
Depending on the estimate, between 6 and 14 percent of those infected with coronavirus develop long-term consequences. The effects cover a wide spectrum: some struggle exhausted through their everyday work and social life, others are completely unable to work. Almost all bodily organs can be damaged by the consequences, and many victims suffer for years.
In severe cases, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), only symptoms can be treated. According to figures from the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, 500,000 people were already suffering from ME/CFS in 2021.
Numerous local media have published reports from Long Covid sufferers in recent weeks. They describe how they struggle with the long-term consequences of their coronavirus infection and how doctors have no way of responding appropriately.
“I am now working full time again, but of course I also regularly have so-called crashes, breakdowns, where it literally sends me packing and I have to go on sick leave,” Bianka Kilian reports in Sachsenspiegel. “I’ve been struggling with it for two and a half years now. It is very difficult. There are phases when it’s better, there are phases when it’s extremely bad. The doctors are sometimes powerless because they simply don’t know about the disease.”
Health Minister Lauterbach, a medical doctor by training, knows very well what the consequences of his cutbacks are. “After all, we have declared the pandemic over,” he told a federal press conference. “For people with Long Covid, the pandemic is far from over. The future of Long Covid has unfortunately just begun.”
In fact, despite Lauterbach’s assertion, the pandemic is by no means over either. It is true that systemic surveillance of the virus has been discontinued. The Robert Koch Institute has not issued any Covid weekly reports since June 8 and discontinued its pandemic radar on July 1. However, indicators such as the viral load in wastewater show the extent to which the virus is still rampant.
Last week, 73 percent of wastewater sites reported an increasing viral load. The previous week, it was only 29 percent. In other countries, such as the US, sewage trackers also point to the beginning of a new wave of the pandemic.
This wave of infections is bound to be followed by another wave of people suffering with Long Covid. Lauterbach knows this. “We have to assume that many more will contract Long Covid,” he told the press conference.
Lauterbach explains the cutting of Long Covid funding to one fifth the initial proposal by citing the current budget situation. This makes it clear where the money is actually going: While the health budget will be reduced from €64.4 billion in 2022 to €16.2 billion next year, the military budget will increase to €51.8 billion plus another €20 billion from the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) special fund.
The recent deaths of two school-aged girls from influenza highlights the danger from a major surge of the virus that is currently sweeping Australia. The profit-driven removal by state and federal Labor governments of almost all public health measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has created the conditions for mass flu infection, in parallel with the ongoing pandemic.
Generic influenza bacteria as viewed through a microscope. [Photo: Microscopy by John Gallagher and Audray Harris, National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)]
Emma Schwab, an 11-year-old girl from the Sunshine Coast in South East Queensland, died from Influenza B on July 6. Less than a week later, New South Wales (NSW) Health reported the death of another young person from the B strain, a 15-year-old high school student in the state’s Central Coast region.
The tragic fatalities highlight the danger of flu, which has killed at least 134 people in Australia this year, and, in particular, Influenza B, the effects of which tend to be most severe among pregnant women and children, including those who are otherwise healthy. Children have developing immune systems which are not capable of mounting an effective response to the virus.
As of July 9, some 71 percent of Australians admitted to hospital for influenza this year were children younger than 16. Of those, 5.9 percent were admitted directly to intensive care units (ICUs). Since May 2023, at least 16 children have been admitted to ICU with life-threatening complications from influenza, which include serious heart, brain, and muscle-related issues.
In Queensland, in the first two weeks of July, 89 children were admitted to hospital for influenza, with 58 infected with the B strain.
By 20 July, 168,133 laboratory-confirmed cases of influenza had been recorded by the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS), 44 percent of which were among children under 15. Children under 5 accounted for 12.68 percent of the total, with 21,327 cases recorded, while 33,318 infections (19.82 percent) occurred in those aged 5‒9, 19,971 (11.88 percent) among 10‒14 year olds and 11,358 (6.76 percent) in adolescents 15‒19.
Although the typical Australian flu season is only at the halfway point, more than 15,000 Influenza B infections have been recorded, more than the total number in all of 2019.
Some infectious disease experts have suggested that the surge of flu infections among children is partially the result of the almost total suppression of the virus in 2020 and 2021, when COVID-19 public health measures were in place.
Like COVID-19, influenza is an airborne virus, and the implementation of measures such as masking, indoor capacity limits, remote learning and working, isolation requirements and wider access to sick leave were highly effective. In 2021, just 749 cases of influenza were recorded in Australia, while only 21,351 were detected in 2020. While the removal of public health measures led to 233,367 influenza cases being recorded last year, the B strain accounted for fewer than 200 infections.
Professor Frank Beard, associate director at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS), told the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) that, as a result, “children would be more likely not to [have been] exposed to influenza B before, as opposed to adults who have had various infections over the years, including A and B, and also vaccination which can contribute to immunity as well.”
According to NCIRS data, just 14.3 percent of children aged between five and fifteen have received flu vaccinations this year. Rates are not much higher for other age groups, with 20.9 percent coverage among 15‒50 year olds, 24.5 percent for children under five, 35.1 percent for 50‒65 year olds and 62 percent among those 65 and older.
Federal and state governments, both Labor and Liberal, have ignored the need for effective public health information, leading to much confusion over vaccine need and safety. A 2022 poll conducted by the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne found that one in three parents did not know that healthy children can get seriously unwell from the flu, while more than half were unaware that it was safe to vaccinate children for influenza and COVID-19 at the same time.
With growth in inflation and interest rates massively outstripping nominal wage increases, cost is one factor behind the low influenza vaccination rate. The federal government funds flu shots for children under five, pregnant women, people over 65 and others deemed to be at high risk, but not for school-aged children.
Vaccination providers are allowed to charge an “administration fee,” meaning in many cases “free” flu shots cost almost as much as “paid” ones. Prices are generally between $15 and $30, meaning an average family may have to pay more than $100 to get vaccinated.
In response to public concern over the infection, illness and death of children from influenza, the Queensland Labor government announced Monday that all residents of the state could receive free flu shots, without administration fees, between July 22 and August 31. The NSW Labor government refused to implement a similar measure, merely urging people to get vaccinated.
But the Queensland measure comes far too late, as it takes around two weeks after vaccination for the body to build up enough antibodies to protect against infection, while the state’s flu season typically peaks in August. The move has more to do with covering up the Labor government’s responsibility for allowing respiratory viruses, including COVID-19 and influenza to spread freely through schools and the broader community.
The severity of influenza and other respiratory illnesses, especially among children, has been downplayed for years by governments and health authorities. This has reached new heights with the campaign, spearheaded by Labor, to declare that the COVID-19 pandemic is “over,” even as hundreds of Australians continue to die every week, while tens of thousands more are infected and reinfected, and ever-growing numbers endure Long COVID.
Under the profit-driven “let it rip” policies adopted by all governments globally, in line with the demands of big business, there can be no reintroduction of the public health measures whose effectiveness in suppressing COVID-19 and influenza was proved in Australia at an earlier stage of the pandemic.
The experience of workers throughout the world since the beginning of 2020 makes clear that they cannot afford to place their health and lives, or that of their families, in the hands of capitalist governments. Public health policy must not be allowed to be determined according to the interests of corporations and the financial elite!
President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats and Republicans joined hands this week in a bipartisan tribute to the state of Israel and its president, Isaac Herzog. They repudiated suggestions that Israel is a racist state and downplayed any policy disagreements with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the actual head of the ultra-right government in Jerusalem.
Biden began the week by telephoning Netanyahu and inviting him to meet during his next trip to the United States, which is likely to be for a United National General Assembly session in September. It was not clear whether the Biden-Netanyahu meeting, long postponed, would be held at the White House or on the sidelines of the UN meeting in New York City.
US President Joe Biden with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. [AP Photo/AP Photo/Debbie Hill]
The invitation came only days after a deadly Israeli military on the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, in which at least a dozen Palestinians were killed. While Herzog was schmoozing at the White House, hundreds of thousands of Israelis were protesting against Netanyahu’s “reform” of the judicial system which would subordinate the only independent branch of the Zionist state to the demands of Netanyahu’s narrow majority in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
Netanyahu has pushed for the crippling of the Supreme Court for two reasons: to block it from disqualifying cabinet ministers for corruption convictions, such as Aryah Deri, the leader of the right-wing religious party Shas, a coalition partner, and Netanyahu himself; and to consolidate the entire state apparatus under the domination of his ultra-right coalition, which would then be able to forge ahead with such measures as the systematic dispossession of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and military strikes against Iran as well as pro-Iranian forces in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
The visit by President Herzog, a political opponent of Netanyahu who occupies a purely ceremonial position in the Israeli state, allowed Biden and the Democratic Party to put on a display of support for Israel while distancing themselves from Netanyahu and his ultra-right coalition, which includes both extreme religious parties and outright fascist groups based in the settler population of the West Bank, who advocate the wholesale expulsion of Palestinians and outright annexation of the Occupied Territories.
These differences, however, are purely tactical, although they were exacerbated by Netanyahu’s fulsome support for the US Republican Party and his open preference for the reelection of Donald Trump, an unprecedented intervention by a foreign country in US politics—and far more overt and consequential than the supposed interference by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the 2016 presidential election.
President Herzog enjoyed the full panoply of a state visit: a meeting in the White House with Biden, an address to a Joint Session of Congress, and subsequent meetings with Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
At the beginning of the White House meeting, President Biden said of Israel and the United States, “This is a friendship I believe is just simply unbreakable… As I confirmed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, America’s commitment to Israel is firm and it is ironclad.” The US supplies Israel nearly $4 billion in military aid each year.
Before Herzog’s speech, the House of Representatives voted near-unanimously for a Republican resolution declaring an unshakeable US commitment to Israel’s security and repudiating any suggesting that Israel was a racist or apartheid state. The resolution passed the House by a vote of 419-9, with one abstention.
All ten dissenters were liberal Democrats, including the members of the so-called squad, the group headed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush, all affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America. The fifth DSA member in the House, Greg Casar of Texas, voted to support the pro-Israel resolution.
The resolution was sparked by the controversy touched by the remarks of Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, at the Netroots Nation conference of liberal and pseudo-left activists in Chicago over the weekend. In response to a protest by a pro-Palestinian group, Jayapal spoke an obvious truth, that Israel is a racist state, due to its policies of discriminating against Palestinians and elevating the Jewish population above the Arabs born and raised in the same land.
After a hue and cry by pro-Zionist Democrats, who circulated a letter denouncing Jayapal, she retracted her comments and issued an apology. The Republican resolution was then drafted to throw salt on the wound. Some 195 Democrats voted for the resolution, including the entire leadership of the party in the House.
After this debacle, the stage was set for Herzog’s speech to Congress Wednesday, ostensibly to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel and the initiation of the US-Israeli alliance. A handful of Democratic representatives boycotted the speech—basically the same group that opposed the pro-Israel resolution—but the members of Congress who did attend were near-unanimous in their praise, rising repeatedly to give standing ovations to the Israeli president.
Herzog repeated the outrageous amalgam developed by Zionist groups in the last few years, according to which anyone who criticizes the state of Israel is an antisemite. “[C]riticism of Israel must not cross the line into negation of the state of Israel's right to exist,” he said. “Questioning the Jewish people's right to self-determination, is not legitimate diplomacy, it is antisemitism.”
This argument leaves out, of course, the rights of the Palestinian people, which have been systematically violated by the Zionist state, and which are under attack every day through such measures as military violence, the operation of roads and other infrastructure limited to Jews, and the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians by settlement building in the occupied territories.
To be Taken at (Country): ACI Foundation Fellowships can be awarded to anyone in the world; however, you must attend a U.S. or Canadian university during the award year.
About the Award: The ACI Foundation offers several Fellowship and undergraduate Scholarship opportunities for students and E-Members. ACI Foundation Fellowships and Scholarships are awarded annually to help students with an interest in concrete achieve their educational and career goals. The student must be considered a full-time undergraduate or graduate student as defined by the college or university during the award year. Applications will be accepted from anywhere in the world but study must take place in the United States or Canada during the award year.
Fields of Study: Structural Design, Materials, Construction
Type: Undergraduate, Graduate (Masters, PhD)
Eligibility: Each student is limited for the duration of their studies to receiving no more than one fellowship and one scholarship from the ACI Foundation.
A single online application form will be used for all the fellowships and scholarships. After answering some qualifying questions, the form will automatically display the fellowships and scholarships for which you may be eligible. Before beginning the application, have the answers ready for these questions:
Have you ever received a fellowship or scholarship award from the ACI Foundation?
When submitting the application, what is your current academic status (Undergraduate/Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD)?
When the award cycle begins in Fall 2024, what will your academic status be (Undergraduate/Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD)?
(Fellowship applicants only) If chosen as a finalist, can you attend an interview in person at the spring ACI Concrete Convention on March 27, 2023? Travel, registration, and hotel arrangements will be made through and paid for by the ACI Foundation. All travel will be contingent upon country and state restrictions at that time. If in-person interviews can not occur, the process will be virtual.
(Fellowships with Mandatory Internships) Can you fulfill a 10- to 12-week internship during the summer of 2023?
To be eligible for an award, you must be a full-time student for the entire award/school term (fall semester 2023 through spring semester 2024).
Selection Criteria: Based on essays, submitted data and endorsements, the Scholarship Council of the ACI Foundation will select scholarship and fellowship recipients who appear to have the strongest combination of interest and potential for professional success in the concrete industry.
Value of Award: Fellowship recipients will receive the following:
$10,000 USD educational stipend for tuition, residence, books, and materials;
Appropriate recognition in Concrete International magazine and on the Foundation website;
Paid travel expenses and attendance fees to two ACI conventions (must be used during the award year). Fellowship finalists must attend the Spring ACI Convention to be interviewed.
Matched with an industry mentor.
How to Apply: The application for the 2023-2024 season is now open! You can get started by reviewing the requirements in the links below. Once you have read the requirements, click one of the buttons below to start your application.
