Kenya’s President Ruto unleashes mass violence against austerity protestors

Kipchumba Ochieng

Kenya’s President William Ruto has drowned mass protests against International Monetary Fund-dictated austerity measures and high living costs in blood.

From Wednesday to Friday last week, successive protests called by the Azimio La Umoja (One Kenya Party), the main opposition party led by billionaire Raila Odinga, were attacked by police with live ammunition and teargas across Nairobi and other major cities, including port-city Mombasa and opposition stronghold Kisumu. At least six demonstrators were killed last week, hundreds left injured and over 300 arrested around the country.

Kenyan police arrest a protester in the Kibera neighborhood of Nairobi, Kenya, Wednesday, July 12, 2023. Anti-government protesters are demonstrating in a number of Kenyan cities against newly imposed taxes and the cost of living. [AP Photo/Samson Otieno]

Earlier in the month, police killed as many as 23 people during the crackdown on protests, and injured hundreds of others, including 53 children who required hospital treatment after tear gas was thrown inside their classroom by police.

Protests are now regularly outlawed, with police setting up blockades to stop marching demonstrators and refusing to provide details of the rising numbers of dead, injured and arrested.

According to the Independent Medico Legal Unit (IMLU), across twelve protests called by Azimio they have monitored since the beginning of the year, there were 68 injuries and 37 deaths due to the use of live bullets and suffocation caused by teargas. Amnesty International has documented at least 30 deaths by police action.

IMLU has warned about rising cases of “non-uniformed officers” using “vehicles with either distorted or no number plates” to “bundle protesters into car trunks and speed off to unknown locations.”

The state has also escalated repression against the opposition. Last week, Babu Owino, an opposition MP, was arrested for “conducting subversive activities”. The house of the son of former President Uhuru Kenyatta, associated with Odinga, was raided in a search for weapons. Azimio spokesman Kalonzo Musyoka is reportedly under house arrest as he held closed-door meetings with a group of imperialist diplomats from the European Union and the United States.

The two parties that make up Kenya’s “official” left have also been savagely targeted. A member of the Maoist Communist Party of Kenya (CPK), Harris Ochieng, was shot dead earlier this month and 37 of its members were detained for two nights. Members of the Kenyan Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), a section of the International Socialist League (ISL), were also arrested in protests.

The mass violence is reminiscent of the rule of pro-Western dictator Daniel Arap Moi between 1978 and 2002, when thousands of students, workers, peasants and left-wing opponents of the regime were tortured, killed and imprisoned.

Ruto’s brutality is a signal to international finance capital that he will not back down from the IMF-austerity package he imposed last month.

His Finance Bill is opposed by 90 percent of Kenyans according to surveys. It includes raising the gross sales tax from one to three percent, doubling the rate of Value Added Tax on petroleum products from 8 percent to 16 percent, tripling taxes on sales to 3 percent for small businesses, and raising income tax for high-earning employees from 30 percent to a maximum of 35 percent. It includes a 1.5 percent housing levy on employees’ pay supposed to fund housing construction for the less well-off.

These measures are being imposed on workers already suffering under the collapse of the Kenya Shilling, job losses and precariousness, and soaring inflation provoked by speculation in commodities by hedge funds, the profit gouging of major global corporations and NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine.

A third of Kenyans already suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition. Prices of key food products have risen over the past year, with staples maize, grain and flour increasing by up to 30 percent, rice and potatoes by nearly 20 percent and sugar by 60 percent.

In a cynical statement, the US, UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and others, including their stooge Ukraine, posted a joint statement by ambassadors declaring themselves “saddened by the loss of life and concerned by high levels of violence, including the use of live rounds and the destruction of property, during the recent demonstrations.”

It added, “We recognize the daily hardship faced by many Kenyans and urge all parties to table their concerns through a meaningful dialogue and resolve their differences peacefully to build the nation together, ensuring no further loss of life.”

If the imperialist powers are crying crocodile tears over the violence in the streets of Kenya’s major cities, it is only because they are concerned that the ruling class is losing control. These same countries are waging a de facto war against Russia in Ukraine that has intensified the soaring of costs of living across the world, particularly on the African continent. With its systematic military encirclement of Russia, NATO deliberately provoked the reactionary intervention of the Putin regime. Since then, it has continued to fuel the conflict, sending billions of dollars in weaponry to the Ukrainian army.

Over the past months, Germany, Japan and Washington, which seems to be sending a high-ranking representative of the Biden administration every month, concerned for its military bases in Kenya, have flocked to Nairobi to back Ruto in search of African energy and raw materials, lucrative sales markets and cheap labour. All of them are aggressively pursuing the goal of increasing their political, economic, and military influence on the resource-rich continent.

Azimio’s aim in calling protests is to contain and control rising opposition. Odinga has been calling them under mounting pressure from below and then scrambling to call them off in backdoor negotiations with Ruto and the imperialist powers. There is now a sense that he is losing his grip, with former Police Spokesperson Charles Owino stating, “If you are calling citizens to go out and demonstrate, you must be able to control them. If Raila [Odinga] cannot control his support base, the country [will] break into anarchy and violence”.

Odinga, with an estimated net worth of $3.3 billion, has refused to present any concrete demands besides starting to collect signatures on the streets to express opposition to the Finance Bill and making vague calls for Ruto to reintroduce food and fuel subsidies. He has ludicrously asked Kenyans to walk to work to “deny Ruto the fuel tax.”

He knows that more serious measures would impinge on the wealthy layers he represents and anger his imperialist backers, including the IMF, which he refuses to even mention in his speeches. Odinga is part of the 0.1 percent of the Kenyan population (8,300 people) which according to Oxfam own more wealth than the bottom 99.9 percent (more than 48 million people). Not surprisingly, 28 MPs of his party openly supported the Finance Bill.

The allies of Kenyan workers are not Raila, Kenya’s Supreme Court which has temporarily paralysed the Finance Bill, or the imperialist governments. A new socialist leadership must be built.

Parties like the CPK and the Revolutionary Socialist League are not socialist, but parties of the middle class that oppose socialist revolution. The CPK, whose leaders deserted the party and backed Ruto last year, are, like Odinga, making empty appeals to Ruto. Their main statement on the Finance Bill argues that he “must listen to the voices of the people and amend the Finance Bill 2023 accordingly. Failure to do so will only deepen the poverty and inequality that already exists in our society.”

The RSL, which supports the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, under the banner of a fight against “Russian imperialism” in defense of “democracy”, attacked the bill from a nationalist perspective. The Bill, they stated, is “counterproductive as far as national development is concerned,” promoting illusions in the Kenyan capitalist state.

In 1963, the emerging comprador bourgeoisie in the country worked with British imperialism to create a new capitalist state on the borders drawn by the imperialist powers at the end of the 19th century. First Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta promised “a country where every citizen may develop his talents to the full, restricted only by the larger aim we have of building a fair society. There will be no privileges for any minority. Equally, we shall see that no member of any group undergoes discrimination or oppression at the hands of the majority.”

Sixty years later, the broad masses see this as a fraud. An entire generation born 20 years after the end of Moi’s rule knows no life other than the gangster capitalist politics of all Moi’s hirelings—Mwai Kibaki, Uhuru Kenyatta, Odinga and Ruto.

Study shows substantial increase in childhood diabetes rates during COVID-19 pandemic

Bill Shaw

A study published last month in JAMA Network Open found that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of new cases of type 1 diabetes mellitus in children has increased far beyond expectations. The study pooled the data of 17 prior, published studies to arrive at the result. Because of the size of the pooled data analysis, the study authors could conclude with confidence that the increase is real, and that it is significant.

Type 1 diabetes is an incurable disease with dramatic consequences. It frequently degrades the functioning of the eyes, kidneys, and nerves, ultimately resulting in the failure of these organs in a significant proportion of patients. It predisposes the patient to atherosclerosis that can result in heart attacks and strokes.

In the past, type 1 diabetes shortened lifespan dramatically. Today, with modern treatments, life expectancy among sufferers of type 1 diabetes has lengthened considerably in more developed countries, but still falls approximately 8 years short of average according to recent studies. In less developed economies, the disease remains very dangerous for most patients.

The incidence rate, or the number of new cases of type 1 diabetes in children per year in the United States divided by the total population, increased by 14 percent in the first 12 months of the pandemic versus the 12 months prior, while the incidence rate during the second year of the pandemic was 27 percent higher than the pre-pandemic period.

The incidence rate of type 1 diabetes had been increasing by 3-4 percent every year prior to the pandemic, meaning that the 14 percent increase during the first year of the pandemic is 3.5 times greater than the higher bound of 4 percent. Thus, the increase in incidence rate far outstripped the expected increase based on pre-pandemic historical trends.

The study looked at two sequential 12-month periods of the pandemic to avoid suffering from a potential bias known as the “catch up effect.” This effect is caused both by barriers to accessing care resulting from the shutdown of significant portions of the healthcare system and by patient and parent reluctance to seek care. The result of the effect would be delayed diagnosis of type 1 diabetes onset in children during those periods with a “surge” in diagnoses resulting from past missed diagnoses due to patients not visiting the healthcare system.

The study avoided catch up effects by covering two, sequential 12-month time intervals where healthcare systems reopened and reluctance to seek care diminished, especially during the second year of the pandemic. Thus, any delayed diagnoses would be accounted for in the numbers and were not a significant factor in explaining the significantly increased incidence.

The study also attempted to look at the incidence rate of type 2 diabetes in children before and during the pandemic, but the data on this disorder were too limited to conclude one way or the other that there was a significant increase. Only 10 prior studies included in the meta-analysis reported on type 2 diabetes, and only one of those reported the population size (i.e., the denominator) needed to calculate incidence rate.

The results obviously beg the question of whether COVID-19 is directly responsible for the increase, and if so, what is the biological mechanism by which it does so? Notably, the SARS-CoV-2 virus attaches to the ACE2 cellular receptor in order to enter cells. This receptor appears in significant quantity on the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas that are affected by type 1 diabetes.

This process of viral entry via ACE2 receptors is known to damage beta cells, resulting in abnormal glucose levels in many COVID-19 patients. It also can cause beta-cell “exhaustion,” a state where otherwise normal-appearing beta cells fail to produce insulin.

Given that seroprevalence studies show that the vast majority of children globally have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 at least once, this would seem to be the leading candidate for explaining the massive increase in type 1 diabetes.

Another hypothesis is that COVID-19 has numerous impacts on the immune system, and type 1 diabetes is nearly always an auto-immune disease whereby the patient’s immune system destroys insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. However, the details of how COVID-19 might induce this autoimmune reaction are unclear and demonstrating such a connection requires substantial further study.

Nevertheless, the pandemic erased the seasonal pattern of type 1 diabetes onset. Prior to the pandemic, the incidence rate of type 1 diabetes was greater during winter months and lower during summer months. During the pandemic, however, the incidence rate has not significantly varied from winter to summer months, and the seasonal pattern has not returned despite re-opening of the healthcare system and the complete ending of lockdowns. These observations suggest, but do not prove, a direct effect of COVID-19 on type 1 diabetes onset.

Another hypothesis is that the measures taken to control the pandemic might have increased behaviors associated with the development of type 1 diabetes. In particular, it is suspected that weight gain in young children is associated with a risk of autoimmunity and thus development of type 1 diabetes. Children under lockdown might have had reduced physical activity levels and increased obesity, which could potentially contribute to the observed increase in type 1 diabetes. The study was not designed to provide evidence in support of or against this hypothesis, however.

The study also looked at the frequency with which new type 1 diabetes cases were associated with a condition called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) at the time of initial diagnosis. DKA is a life-threatening condition nearly always requiring hospitalization. If a child has DKA at the time of diagnosis of their type 1 diabetes, it is a potential indicator of both severity and duration of illness prior to diagnosis.

The study found that the increase in DKA at diagnosis seems to be more likely related to delays in seeking and having access to care. For example, one study included in the meta-analysis from Germany found that the frequency of DKA at initial diagnosis did not vary regionally based on varying levels of COVID-19 transmission, suggesting that uniform lockdown regulations across Germany were the main factor. Nevertheless, the evidence is not conclusive and further study is required here, too.

A key limitation of the study is that, due to the lack of information in the prior studies it had available, it could not examine the impact of access to healthcare and reluctance to seek care. Relatively few of the prior studies included variables on socioeconomic status, which is typically a proxy for access to care, especially in the United States where healthcare is not guaranteed to all.

Another limitation of the study is that the prior studies only represented certain regions of the world including North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, but not Africa. Some of this bias could have resulted from limiting to articles published in English.

An accompanying editorial to the study adds an additional hypothesis to the mix to account for any effects of COVID-19 on the increase. In particular, it mentions that COVID-19 infection might directly change the makeup of gut bacteria (also called the microbiome) in children, or the pandemic control measures might have indirectly affected the microbiome through various means. Regardless, there is significant evidence that a less diverse microbiome is associated with type 1 diabetes patients, and thus could be the mediating effect.

Given the potential enormous toll of future morbidity and mortality from excess type 1 diabetes, further elucidation of the causes of the increased incidence is imperative. The indifference of the capitalist ruling elites to the long-term effects of COVID-19 has already led to potentially hundreds of millions worldwide suffering from Long COVID.

The additional potential toll of increased type 1 diabetes compounds dramatically the crimes of the ruling class, for they bear responsibility no matter which hypothesis proves correct. The hypotheses of direct effects from COVID-19—either through direct viral injury to beta cells, through induction of autoimmunity against beta cells, or through viral-induced changes to the makeup of the gut microbiota—most obviously implicate the ruling class’s “let it rip” policies.

However, the ruling class is no less implicated via the indirect hypotheses. If the haphazard, ill-considered, poorly implemented, and arbitrarily managed lockdowns are responsible for long periods of inactivity or reduced gut microbiome diversity as causes of the increased incidence of type 1 diabetes, then the ruling class is also criminally liable. From the very beginning of the pandemic, the experience in China and other countries proved that a global elimination strategy was possible, but the prioritization of capitalist profits overrode this public health program.

Fiji government imposes “belt-tightening” austerity budget

John Braddock

Fiji’s parliament signed off on the Pacific country’s 2023-24 budget on July 13 after four days of debate. The bill to appropriate $FJ4.3 billion ($US1.94 billion), the largest ever, against projected revenues of $FJ3.7billion, was supported by all 29 government MPs while 24 opposition MPs voted against it.

Sitiveni Rambuka [Photo: Facebook]

It was the first budget of the coalition led by the People’s Alliance Party (PAP) of prime minister and former coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka. The PAP, National Federation Party (NFP) and Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) took office after last December’s election. They narrowly defeated the FijiFirst Party of former Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama who had wielded power since his 2006 military coup.

NFP leader and Finance Minister Biman Prasad boasted the budget had “fundamentally put the country back on track.” Prasad claimed that it would look after the Fijian people and ensure spending on health, education, infrastructure and social welfare was “adequate.”

The opposite is the case. In a televised state of the nation address at the end of June, Rabuka warned the already impoverished population faced a “belt-tightening” budget. After three years of economic contraction, Rabuka said, “To rebuild; it will not be business as usual... some sacrifices and collective commitment will be needed to address the troubled economy.” The prime minister admitted: “We expect that it will not be a popular budget.”

Fiji is experiencing an unprecedented economic crisis with the World Bank reporting debt levels reached nearly 90 percent of GDP last year. Inflation hit 4.3 percent in 2022, with negative economic growth due to the COVID pandemic and multiple severe tropical cyclones. As elsewhere around the globe, the economy has been further impacted by the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine.

Like capitalist governments around the world, the seven-month-old government is moving to impose the dictates of international finance capital for greater austerity measures against the working class. Over the past three years, Fiji’s workers have suffered skyrocketing cost of living, thousands of lost jobs, and fractured supply chains for food, energy and basic goods. The poverty rate was nearly 30 percent in 2020, but half the population is struggling to put food on the table.

Finance Ministry secretary Shiri Gounder said Fiji has suffered “massive losses” in national income and jobs. He told a post-budget forum in Suva that half the country’s revenue had “evaporated.” Speaking in Samoa in June, Rabuka remarked that remittances from Fijians living abroad were the largest foreign exchange earner keeping the economy afloat.

The government’s pre-budget fiscal preview was dire. It described a “triple threat:” a “very limited” capacity to borrow for essential public services, limited capacity to deal with a future economic shock and the need to “urgently find billions of dollars” for critical infrastructure “that cannot wait.” The deficit is forecast to hit 4.8 percent of GDP in the coming year, while nearly 25 percent of the budget will go to servicing debt.

A sweeping attack on the living standards of the population of 936,000 is under way. The budget imposes a raft of tax increases aimed at working people: the Value Added Tax will rise from 9 to 15 percent on food (except for 21 items that are zero rated) to raise $446 million.

There is a 5 percent increase to excise tax on alcohol and tobacco. An import excise of 15 percent will apply to carbonated drinks, ice cream, sweet biscuits, snacks, and confectionery. Motor vehicle import excise duty will increase on all new and used passenger vehicles by 5 percent.

Departure tax will increase from the current $100 to $125 effective from August and will increase again to $140 effective from January 2024.

Business responded positively to the drastic measures. Executive director of Dialogue Fiji, Nilesh Lal, said years of rhetoric about private sector-led economic growth “may never be fully realised” and government needed to take the lead role. He noted that the budget is the largest ever for collecting revenue, only warning that “any measures that take money out of the pockets of people and put that into the pockets of government can be risky.”

Corporate tax meanwhile increases from the current low level of 20 percent to 25 percent. New companies eligible for reduced corporate tax for listing on the South Pacific Stock Exchange have their tax rate increased from the current 10 percent to 15 percent. These increases will add only about $73.5 million in revenue.

Education gets the highest spend at $845 million while health is allocated $453.8 million, an increase of $58.7 million. Tertiary Scholarship and Loans Service debt—$650 million owed by more than 50,000 students—is written off, but it comes with the caveat that these students will have to save money for a bond. To defuse tensions involving other Pacific governments, a lapsed grant for the regional University of the South Pacific is restored and outstanding debts cleared.

Only $200 million of the “billions” required has been allocated for maintenance of hospitals, health centres, schools, public buildings, government quarters, roads and bridges and water infrastructure. Some 90,000 people on social welfare will receive increased monthly allowances of 15 and 25 percent, but these are from an extremely low base.

None of the expenditure in education, health and welfare will do anything to address the chronic and deepening social crisis. According to the government’s own admissions, the country’s “human capital investment needs” are staggering.

Fiji’s ranking on the United Nations Human Development Index has fallen from 78 to 99 in 20 years. Fiji significantly under-invests in health, even as it confronts major poverty-related diseases such as diabetes. The loss of skilled workers overseas has accelerated since COVID, contributing to an eroding skills base.

The government admits that this combination of threats “will continue for the foreseeable future.” Anticipating the emergence of social unrest, the police force has been allocated $183.7 million, including to recruit 100 more constables and strengthen patrols in urban and rural areas. The military gets $103.1 million compared to $94.1 million in the 2022–23 budget. Fiji’s defence budget has grown substantially over recent years despite the economic downturn, increasing from $80 million in 2018.

Amid the unrelenting attacks on ordinary people, there are growing signs of social tensions.

Most significantly, sections of the working class are seeking to fight back after a long period of quiescence imposed by the unions during the height of the COVID pandemic. Last week, 355 workers at Energy Fiji Ltd (EFL) voted in a secret ballot to take strike action. The Energy and Timber Workers Union (CETWU) confirmed the total votes cast reached 99 percent and passed the 50 percent threshold.

EFL has more than 800 workers, most of whom are covered by two unions, the Fiji Electricity Workers Association and CETWU. The workers say their demands for higher pay, retirement benefits, long service leave and other working conditions are not being met. They are also demanding long-term work contracts. All are on a three-year individual contract, and many have not had a pay raise for some years. The union is yet to announce a strike date.

Rabuka has already taken steps to boost the role of the trade unions in policing the working class. In April the government held a two-day national economic summit to create a “collective national vision.” In discussion, General Secretary of the Union of Factory and Commercial Workers Latileta Gaga highlighted ILO Convention 144 requiring corporatist “spaces at the decision-making table for trade unions, for employers and as well as for government” to work together on anything dealing with economic interests concerning workers.

Australian government’s universities report demands restructuring for big business and war

Mike Head

Last week’s interim report by the Labor government’s Universities Accord review was politically packaged, and presented by the media, as a call for greater student participation and equity. But its central thrust is a fundamental restructuring of universities to satisfy the requirements of the corporate elite and preparations for war.

Jason Clare, Australian Labor government's minister for education at National Press Club on July 19, 2023. [Photo: @PressClubAust]

“Courses must be designed with the skills needs of industry in mind,” the report insists. This would include employers being involved in setting curricula and making university degrees almost obsolete, to be replaced by “microcredentials” courses tailored exclusively for businesses.

Launching the report at the National Press Club, Education Minister Jason Clare underlined this shift. He said the review panel, which features Australia’s highest-paid CEO, Macquarie banking group’s Shemara Wikramanayake, was considering ways to “knit’’ university education with vocational training.

The report specifically nominates the “AUKUS nuclear submarine program” as a field with an “urgent need to train enough highly-skilled researchers” and for an expansion of specialist programs and qualifications.

The AUKUS military pact, which entails spending up to $368 billion to acquire US and UK attack submarines designed for use against China, is a spearhead of the Albanese government’s plans for a war economy, and this includes the universities.

In fact, the reports tells universities that they must serve the geo-strategic interests of Australian capitalism, which are concentrated on supporting US preparations for war against China, which Washington has identified as the main danger to US global hegemony. 

That includes a closer alignment with India and greater efforts to reinforce Australian domination over Pacific island states to block Chinese influence. The report states that universities must ensure that “international education supports broader Australian foreign policy objectives, for example, strengthening relationships with India and the Pacific.”

If one were to judge by the media coverage, however, the report’s principal focus was five “priority” recommendations, each accepted by the government. They included a guarantee of a government-funded place at university for all indigenous students—provided they qualify for a course. 

The other recommendations were online “study hubs” in outer suburbs and regions; scrapping the rule that stripped government funding from students if they failed half their subjects; making universities “good employers”; and an extension of the current inadequate funding arrangements into 2024 and 2025.

These proposals camouflage the core of the report, which is to demand that both teaching and research be reshaped to meet the needs of employers and the military and foreign policy push of Australian capitalism. These plans are to be fleshed out in a final report, due in December.

Anticipating opposition from staff and students, the report’s language is uncompromising and threatening: “The Review believes that bold, long-term change is required to fulfil the mission of higher education in Australia. Change in the sector must be significant. Complacency cannot be tolerated.”

Among the changes proposed are:

• cadetships, internships and short microcredential courses to be “stacked” on top of bachelor qualifications to meet constantly shifting industry skill demands 

• higher education and VET [vocational education and training] to be integrated, starting in “areas of national priority like clean energy, the care economy, and defence”

• students to undertake “work integrated learning” (WIL), that is, work placements

• “a greater number of academic staff should be chartered and/or active in the profession they are teaching.”

This last proposal means replacing academics, especially those involved in broader and critical education in disciplines such as history, arts and humanities, with vocational teachers embedded in industry.

According to the report, there is no choice about this shift. It is a “must.” In breakout quotes, the report cites the submissions made by business organisations, including the Australian Industry Group (AIG), which states: “Industry and universities must be intertwined to ensure graduates exit with the technical knowledge and generic skills needed.”

Under AIG’s concept of “degree apprenticeships,” universities would work with business owners to design and deliver teaching content, jointly assess students and award credentials.

These corporate-driven processes are underway globally. “Nationally and internationally recognised microcredentials are already being developed for this purpose,” the report states. As examples, it says New Zealand and the UK are moving down this path.

In research too, the report says far closer ties to business are required. It accuses Australian universities of lagging behind their global competitors in commercialising their activities, failing to translate research into “new processes, products and services.”

The report proposes tying PhD research students directly to the needs of companies. It hails the development of a formal “industry PhD” scheme in Australia in which PhD students “work on problems nominated by industry.” But this is not enough.

“Other countries have taken this further and have firms assign employees to PhD programs where the PhD candidate typically works under joint university/industry supervision on problems nominated by the firm.”

The report canvasses redefining universities so that institutions that provide only vocational teaching would be accredited and funded. It proposes exploring ways to “remove the requirement that all universities will carry out research.”

Even the report’s calls for greater access to universities for students from poorer backgrounds are motivated by seeking to provide the capitalist class with bigger supplies of suitably skilled labour. The report notes a glaring disparity. While 32 percent of the country’s population aged over 15 have a bachelor degree, that figure is only 17.3 percent in low socioeconomic areas, 15.2 percent in regional and remote areas and 7.4 percent among indigenous people.

Far from concern for social equality, however, or for young people to have the basic social right to education at all levels, including higher education, and exposure to critical ideas, the report’s intent is to slot youth into jobs if and when required. It states: “These additional potential enrolments would make a significant difference to meeting Australia’s skills needs.”

The report makes a passing reference to the cost-of-living crisis confronting students from working-class backgrounds. “Most students work to support themselves while they study, with around four in five domestic students now in paid employment,” it states. “The Review has heard many students struggle to balance their paid work and study commitments, as cost of living pressures, including rising rents, require them to take up additional hours.”

There is no suggestion of abolishing student fees, let alone wiping the billions of dollars in student fee debt. Instead, the report says employers could consider paying the fees of students they seek to recruit. That would be a way of bonding graduates to companies.

To impose this program—as the Rudd-Gillard Labor government did with its market-driven “education revolution” a decade ago—the Albanese government is working hand-in-glove with the trade union bureaucrats and other “stakeholders,” such as big business and the already highly-corporatised university managements.

The leaders of the two main campus unions, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), are urging university workers and students to support Labor’s review. That is because they entirely share Labor’s pro-business agenda.

The NTEU’s submission to the Accord panel dovetailed with the interim report. It called for a higher education sector that “provides the graduates with the necessary skill sets for future productivity.”

The union bureaucrats have long suppressed educators’ hostility to the increasing corporatisation of universities, blocking any unified mobilisation against it while pushing through enterprise agreements that facilitate restructuring.

Spain in election limbo after right-wing Popular Party and far-right Vox fail to secure majority to govern

Alejandro López

The right-wing Popular Party (PP) and neo-fascist Vox have failed to win an absolute majority in yesterday’s national election. As Monday approached, the PP and Vox had secured 169 seats, seven short of an overall majority, to the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Sumar’s 153.

PP leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo has said he would try to form a government, but his potential bloc of support would only win 170 seats to the PSOE-led bloc’s 172. This suggests weeks of haggling before a possible renewal of a minority Socialist Party (PSOE) - Sumar government, backed by nationalist and regionalist parties.

Alberto Feijoo, center, leader of the right-wing Popular Party, gestures to supporters outside the party headquarters following Spain's general election, in Madrid, Monday, July 24, 2023. The PP has a narrow lead in the election but without the majority needed to topple the coalition government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. [AP Photo/Manu Fernandez]

The PP went from 5 million votes and 89 seats in 2019 to 8 million (33 percent of the vote) and 136 seats. It went up 47 seats largely by consolidating the right-wing vote at the expense of the now collapsed Citizens but also Vox, whose vote declined from 3.6 million in 2019 and 52 seats to 2.8 million (12 percent of the vote) and 33 seats. In all essentials, however, Vox’ neo-fascist programme is shared by the PP from which it emerged, and which shies away from Vox’s more extreme rhetoric only to lend a veneer of respectability to its class war and militarist agenda.

The main electoral shift was an increased vote among workers and young people set on blocking Vox from entering government, the first time an avowedly Francoite party would have done so since the fall of the dictatorship and the “transition to democracy” in 1978. Turnout increased 4 percent, from 66 percent in 2019 to 70 percent yesterday—the highest participation in 15 years.

Despite its savage austerity and pro-war measures in the past four years, the PSOE, led by acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was the main beneficiary, rising from 6.8 million votes and 120 seats in 2019 to 7.7 million (31 percent of the vote) and 122 seats.

Significantly, the largest transfer of votes to the PSOE came from Catalonia and the Basque Country, at the expense of the separatist parties, as well as from voters.

Sumar, an electoral platform of 15 parties, includes the massively discredited pseudo-left Podemos, led by acting Deputy Prime Minister and Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz, won 31 seats from 2.9 million votes (12 percent of the vote). This is a loss of half a million votes compared with the 38 seats and 3.4 million votes won by these parties when standing as Unidas-Podemos in 2019—confirming the party’s downward spiral after four years of pro-war, pro-austerity measures in office.

Such is the unpopularity of Sumar that its leader Díaz had to suspend its rally in Cádiz after metalworkers broke in and jeered her down.

With a collective 153 seats, the PSOE and Sumar will require the support of nationalists and regionalist parties to secure an overall majority of 176. This includes the seven seats of Together for Catalonia, led by exiled former Catalan regional premier and Member of the European Parliament Carles Puigdemont who has become an electoral kingmaker.

Puigdemont and other members of the Catalan government were charged on October 30, 2017, with rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds for calling a referendum and then declaring independence. Puigdemont fled to Belgium. Earlier this month, he was stripped of his immunity as a member of the European parliament by the European Union’s General Court of Justice. He is now waiting for Spain’s Supreme Court to issue a new European Arrest Warrant on reduced charges.

The media is filled with speculation over what the separatist parties will demand of the PSOE for renewing their previous support, including a legally sanctioned referendum—though this is unlikely given their declining support. The right-wing press has initiated a ferocious campaign about Sanchez only being able to rule by “breaking Spain’s unity”, while Vox leader Santiago Abascal rails against a government “invested with the support of communism” and “the coup-seeking separatism and terrorism”.

There could now be a prolonged period of political paralysis and rising crisis. In 2019, it took three elections before the PSOE and Podemos agreed to form Spain’s first coalition government.

The elections have resolved none of the fundamental political issues facing workers and youth. A PSOE-Sumar government will not stop the growing danger represented by the political heirs of the fascist general Francisco Franco. Rather, the result will be used to blackmail workers into uniting behind Sánchez to try and stifle a movement to the left that has seen an eruption of struggles against his outgoing government’s pro-war and austerity policies.

Preventing the working class from intervening independently and in its own interests was the main aim of the election strategy of the PSOE and Sumar. None of the major issues confronting the working class—Spain’s participation in NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine, deteriorating social conditions in a cost-of-living crisis provoked by low wages, soaring prices and high costs of rents and mortgages, or the escalating attacks on democratic rights—were discussed. Instead, the campaign was dominated by appeals to abandon all past criticism and not allow the PP and Vox into government.

Celebrating from the PSOE’s headquarters yesterday, Sánchez cynically declared that the defeat of the “regressive block” had prevented “a total repeal of all the progress we have made in the last four years.”

“Unity against fascism” will continue to be used as a weapon against the working class, as a PSOE-Sumar government continues with policies that for the past four years have centred on supporting Spain’s participation in the NATO war against Russia, slashing pensions and wages while massively hiking the military budget and bailouts for major banks and corporations and pursuing a profits-over-lives policy in the COVID-19 pandemic.

When metalworkers went on strike in Galicia this month demanding wages above inflation, the acting government sent hundreds of anti-riot police to crush their strike using batons, rubber bullets and teargas. Against striking aircrew, it imposed draconian anti-strike minimum services.

The PSOE-Podemos has also escalated its war efforts over the past months. Sánchez travelled to Kiev and promised the EU’s support for Ukraine “regardless of the price that has to be paid”. He joined NATO’s Vilnius Summit, promising Spain would deploy 700 troops in Slovakia for the first time and reinforce its presence in Romania by 250 troops to strengthen NATO’s encirclement of Russia. There was not one interview where Díaz, or her number two, Agustín Santos, failed to proclaim their own support for Ukraine’s “right to defend itself” against “Putin’s illegal war”.

Their government also allowed 37 refugees to drown off the coast of the Canary Islands in line with the European Union’s “let them drown” policy.

Even in the 56 days since calling the snap elections after the electoral debacle in May’s local and regional elections, the interim government sent a letter to the European Union committing to €24 billion in cuts and tax increases next year.

Any PSOE-Sumar government would assume power amid the largest strike wave across Europe since the 1970s, as Spain and the NATO alliance continue to wage war against Russia in Ukraine and mount constant provocations against China. An explosive growth of inflation is bringing class tensions to boiling point. The PSOE and Sumar, articulating the interests of the affluent middle class, will move further to the right and respond with police state measures.

Protests resume against US-backed Boluarte regime in Peru

Andrea Lobo

At least 20,000 people from across Peru participated in a long-planned “third takeover” of the capital Lima on Wednesday July 19, joined by at least 95 smaller demonstrations and roadblocks across much of the country. Thousands have continued demonstrating in the following days and protests have been convoked for the Independence Day holiday on July 28 and 29.

Formation of American troops during a ceremony with Peruvian forces in Lima, Peru, July 14, 2023 [Photo: U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Bob Jennings]

Demonstrators demand the resignation of the fascistic regime under Dina Boluarte, her prosecution, the shutdown of Congress, new elections, and the freeing of Pedro Castillo, who was jailed for trumped up charges of rebellion after being overthrown in a US-backed parliamentary coup last December. Since then, the police and military have brutally cracked down on demonstrators, including with live ammunition, killing at least 70 and wounding hundreds more.

On Wednesday, the protests were attacked by anti-riot police in Lima and the town of Huancavelica, where the prefecture was lit on fire and students occupied a university. At least seven protesters and journalists were injured.

After months of localized and sporadic roadblocks and local strikes, the July 19 protests were the largest nationwide since March. The date was chosen in reference to the July 19, 1977, general strike that paralyzed Lima and several cities and led to the resignation of the US-backed military dictatorship under Gen. Francisco Morales Bermúdez.

As demonstrated by the dominant but limited contingents of indigenous peasant groups and students, the organizers in the United National Coordinator of Struggle (CNUL) and the official political opposition refuse to call for strikes and mobilize the working class in the city of 10 million. 

Amid sharp increases of the already widespread poverty and inequality, and as polls show that more than 80 percent of Peruvians reject Boluarte and Congress and want new elections, the far-right is able to remain in power thanks to the treacherous role being played by the leadership of the demonstrations and the pseudo-left. 

The CNUL is controlled by the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP) bureaucracy, led by the Stalinist Peruvian Communist Party, its protest front the National People’s Assembly, and the National Central of Peasant Rondas, which consists of autonomous indigenous patrols in charge of local security. 

For months, these organizations have worked through countless local assemblies and meetings to rein in the initially leaderless and spontaneous protests against the coup, which were dominated by agricultural and rural workers and peasants. However, the CNUL is still following the same tactics of isolated marches and roadblocks that have been swiftly and brutally dispersed by the police and military, now being trained and accompanied on the ground by US troops with the principal aim of minimizing the effects on mining and commercial interests. 

The Stalinist and indigenous leaderships have a long record of channeling opposition against various governments and the far-right behind support for one or another faction of the capitalist ruling elite that proceeds, as in the case of the Pedro Castillo administration, to attack and repress workers.

The leaders of the “takeover of Lima” ultimately represent layers of the provincial and indigenous bourgeoisie and urban upper-middle class that are offering to help contain and divert the unrest into a dead end in exchange for economic and political concessions. This is reflected in their call for a Constituent Assembly, which today would channel social opposition behind an attempt to breathe new life into Peru’s fatally discredited bourgeois political institutions, while further integrating the indigenous and middle class elites into the capitalist state bureaucracy. 

An editorial by José Carlos Requena in the right-wing daily El Comercio stressed the limited character of the “takeover of Lima” and praised the “left,” but warned that “the relief from... social convulsion could be fleeting.” Requena pointed to conditions of economic stagnation, popular opposition to Boluarte and the regime’s overconfidence, with Prime Minister Alberto Otárola boasting that people could go about their normal day during the “takeover” and even attend football games with no need for concern. 

The regime has continued to describe demonstrators as terrorists and classified all protests as threats, while also making appeals to the union leadership and pseudo-left, which have not gone unanswered. 

On May 1, Isabel “Chabelita” Cortez a former trade unionist and current legislator for the pseudo-left coalition Juntos por el Perú agreed to receive an award from Boluarte, which was widely seen as a gesture of support for the regime. A few days later, the coalition of trade unions of the state-owned company Petroperú published a statement expressing “our full-fledged support for the management and position of minister Oscar Vera Gargurevich,” referring to Boluarte’s minister of energy and mines.

Shortly after the coup, the CGTP leadership met with Boluarte and recognized her legitimacy, before taking a step back and calling for her resignation to better control the unrest. 

The counter-revolutionary efforts by these “social organizations” have emboldened the ruling class and imperialism, which seek to establish a fascistic and authoritarian regime following a prolonged crisis of bourgeois rule that has seen six presidents in under five years. 

Boluarte has dropped her promises of early elections and vows to stay in power until 2026, while Congress has concentrated in its hands powers to impeach electoral and judicial authorities. Signaling the character of the economic policies being planned, 71 percent of businesspeople approve of Boluarte, according to a recent IPSOS poll. 

Even the most basic democratic rights are being discarded. In a case related to roadblocks to the third largest copper mine in the country, Las Bambas, the Supreme Court ruled in May that all roadblocks and social protests are violent and a crime. 

Earlier this month, there were widespread expression of outrage after the Ministry of Culture held a meeting with the neo-Nazi group La Resistencia, including its leader Juan Muñico Gonzales (Jota Maelo).

After Minister Leslie Urteaga acknowledged that she approved the invitation (first claiming that it was part of an effort to have “dialogue with everyone” to further a “Peru without Racism” campaign), the government stressed that she would not be fired. The leader of the far-right Fuerza Popular party led by Keiko Fujimori and other right wing legislators defended the meeting. Diana Álvarez, a top official in the ministry resigned in protest, indicating that the meeting had nothing to do with an anti-racism campaign.

La Resistancia employs the Nazi salute and antisemitic rhetoric and operates as shock troops for the Fujimorista wing of the political establishment, carrying out threats and violent attacks against political opponents, journalists, judges and other officials. This included harassing Avelino Guillén for leading the prosecution against dictator Alberto Fujimori, Keiko’s father, over massacres carried out by his death squads. 

The Biden administration played a key role in the coup that installed Boluarte and is providing the regime with its full political and material support. US ambassador Lisa Kenna, a CIA veteran, used social media and behind-the-scenes “signals” to the military command to disobey Castillo’s orders as he sought to dissolve Congress and prevent his impeachment on the day of the coup.

Last month, clearly in anticipation of the renewed protests, the Peruvian Congress approved the deployment of more than 1,200 US troops in Peru with military equipment until the end of the year. US forces were quickly deployed across the country and have led several joint military exercises, including a 16-day “Bilateral Jungle Operations Exchange” with US Marines and the Resolute Sentinel exercises with US Air Force personnel. 

In February, Boluarte approved a $64.6 million disbursement to buy weapons for repressive operations. According to contracts reported by La República, the military bought hundreds of lethal and “non-lethal” weapons along with ammunition earlier this month from US and Israeli firms. The largest contract was for $7.9 million in anti-riot gear from a shell company called Sourcing Group Corp. based in Miami and owned by the Peruvian Sergio Pérez Pomar. This no-bid contract states that the armament is aimed at “enforcing domestic order in relation to diverse social conflicts.”

While claiming to defend “liberty and democracy” worldwide, US imperialism hopes to use the fascistic Boluarte regime to pull Peru away from its main economic partner, China, and crush any opposition from below to profit interests.

New York Times publishes graphic details of US hi-tech war with China

Nick Beams

A major article by journalist Alex W. Palmer, published in the New York Times last weekend, has revealed the extent of the high-tech war being conducted by the US against China. It has also exposed the lies of the Biden administration surrounding it.

President Joe Biden attends an event to support legislation that would encourage domestic manufacturing and strengthen supply chains for computer chips in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus, March 9, 2022, in Washington. [AP Photo/Patrick Semansky]

Last October, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), which operates within the Department of Commerce, issued a document setting out a series of controls on the export of computer chips. The article began by noting that underneath its 139 pages of bureaucratic jargon and technical detail it “amounted to a declaration of economic war on China.”

The war is now about to be intensified as it is expected that the US will shortly announce investment screening mechanisms designed to cut the amount of US money invested in Chinese high-tech areas as well as updating export controls to close loopholes that have emerged since the October announcement.

The official justification for the export controls is that they are aimed at curbing Chinese military development. On her recent visit to China, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claimed they were narrowly targeted and not aimed at the broader economy.

This fiction is exposed at the beginning of the article in a key paragraph that reads:

“With the Oct.7 export controls, the United States government announced its intention to cripple China’s ability to produce, or even purchase, the highest-end chips. The logic of the measure was straightforward: Advanced chips, and the supercomputers and AI they power, enable the production of new weapons and surveillance apparatuses. In their reach and meaning, however, the measures could hardly have been more sweeping, taking aim at a target far broader than the Chinese security state. ‘The key here is to understand that the US wanted to impact China’s AI industry,’ says Gregory C. Allen, director of the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. ‘The semiconductor stuff is the means to that end.’”

Palmer wrote that the October controls “essentially seek to eradicate, root and branch, China’s entire ecosystem of advanced technology.”

According to Allen the controls were not only aimed at preventing further advance, “we are going to actively reverse their current state of the art.”

Another indication of the extent of the US measures was expressed in remarks by C. J. Muse, a senior semiconductor analyst at Evercore ISO. “If you told me about these rules five years ago, I would’ve told you that’s an act of war—we’d have to be at war.”

Information provided in the article reveals that the semiconductor chip development is characterised by two powerful and interconnected developments: the enormous speed of technological advance and the globally integrated character of chip design and manufacture.

Semiconductor chips are tiny pieces of silicon on which are carved massive arrays of electrical circuits that are switched on and off by transistors. Invented in the 1950s, transistors made their initial public appearance in so-called transistor radios which did not require the old valve technology.

The initial chips only held a “handful of transistors. Today the primary semiconductor in a new smartphone has between 10 and 20 billion transistors, each about the size of a virus, carved like a layer cake into the structure of the silicon.”

Palmer detailed some of the unprecedented technological advances by citing the case of the Dutch firm ASML which, as a result of research and development begun in 1997, produced the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine which is used to print the layers on a chip.

“The newest version of the machine can craft structures as small as 10 nanometers; a human red blood cell, by comparison, is about 7,000 nanometers across. It used a laser to create a plasma 40 times hotter than the surface of the sun, which emits extreme ultraviolet light—invisible to the human eye—that is refracted onto a silicon chip by a series of mirrors.”

Chip production, carried out in what is known as fabs, is “the most complex manufacturing ever accomplished” and has only been made possible by the development by a highly developed international division of labour.

“The wider chip industry,” the article explained, “…is a web of mutual interdependence, spread all over the planet in highly specialised regions and companies, its feats made possible by supply chains of exceptional length and complexity—a poster child, in other words of globalisation.”

As Chris Miller, the author of a book entitled Chip War, told Palmer: “It’s hard to imagine how the capabilities they’ve reached would be possible without access to the smartest minds in the world all working together.”

However, this very development, making possible human advancement on a previously unimaginable scale, threatens the dominance of US imperialism over the global economy—a situation it is determined to try to reverse by all means necessary, including through military war as the outcome of the high-tech war it is already waging.

The global character of high-tech production means it cannot enforce its dominance by measures enacted by the US alone.

In the wake of the October decisions, it was soon recognised that, while the US controlled vital choke points of the process, other countries, including the Netherlands and Japan, as well as Taiwan, controlled other areas and had they continued to sell to China US bans would have been rendered “nearly useless.”

Hence the move by the Biden administration in January to ensure that Japan and the Netherlands imposed similar controls to those enacted by the US. The logic of this move is clear. It signifies that to enforce its dictates against China, the US must become the international policeman of high-tech development.

Within the global process Taiwan and its Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company play a pivotal role as the largest chip manufacturer, particularly the most advanced. This underscores why Taiwan has become so central to the increasing US-China tensions, as the US increasingly moves in the direction of recognising Taiwan as a separate country and not part of China.

As the article noted: “If the island’s fabs were to be captured by China, or knocked offline during an invasion, the costs to the global economy would be catastrophic.” Some US war-gamers have suggested that if China did invade “the US should destroy TSMC’s fabs to stop then from falling under China’s control.”

The tech war started under the Trump administration when it imposed chip bans against the Chinese technology giant Huawei in 2019. They had a devastating impact. In 2020 Huawei was the largest smartphone seller in the world, as well as supplying crucial components for telecommunications systems. In smartphones it had 18 percent of the market share, beating both Apple and Samsung. Its revenues plunged by nearly a third in 2021 and by 2022 its market share had dropped to just 2 percent.

The experience with Huawei opened the prospect for the advancement of the war in 2020 when the Trump administration made Huawei subject to an export-control law, the foreign direct product rule, which the article described as a “sweeping assertion of extraterritorial power.”

This meant that if a product contained American technology or software, even if it were made outside the US and never entered the country and contained no US-made components in its final form, it could still be considered an American good.

According to Kevin Wolf, a former official at the BIS: “That rule subjected all semiconductors on the planet to American law, because every foundry on the planet uses US tools at least in part. If you have one US tool and 100 non-American tools in your fab, that taints any wafer moving across the line.”

What began with Huawei has been extended under the Biden administration. In the words of Gregory Allen at the CSIS think tank: “The Trump administration went after companies. The Biden administration is going after industries.”

In fact, it could be said it is going after the whole Chinese economy. Its dependence on chips is highlighted by the fact that in April China spent more on computer chip imports than it did on oil.

Remarks by Emily Kilcrease, a former US trade official, now at the Center for a New American Security, cited in the NYT article, make clear that the whole Chinese economy is the target.

“We said that there are key tech areas that China should not advance in. And those happen to be the areas that will power future economic growth and development,” she said.

Given the integrated global character of chip production and that it is impossible for the US to bring all its operations within its borders, its tech war will run into major difficulties.

That does not mean, however, there will be any let-up. On the contrary, as the actions of the Biden administration against Japan and the Netherlands reveal, it will double down, extending its bans and restrictions to the entire globe, against friend and foe alike.

The escalation of the tech-war—the Commerce Department is preparing new controls to restrict companies such as Nvidia to sell AI-related semiconductors to China—has brought warnings of retaliation by China.

Earlier this week, China’s ambassador to the US, Xie Feng, warned that China would have to retaliate against the US measures.

“The Chinese government cannot sit idly by,” he said. “We will not make provocations, but we will not flinch from provocations. So, China definitely will make our response.”

That will not lead to any backdown by the US but rather to an acceleration of the transformation of the tech war into a military conflict.

This real and present danger—a war between two nuclear-armed powers—raises decisive political issues before the international working class.

The enormous development of computer chip technology—the result of the collaboration of scientists, engineers, and workers all over the world—is a vast expansion of the productive forces, making possible the ending for all time of hunger, misery and poverty and an unprecedented advance in the living conditions of the world’s people.

Within the framework of capitalism, it gives rise to madness. This madness is not rooted in the psyche of capitalist politicians but in the social relations of the profit system and the contradiction between global economy and the division of the world into rival and conflicting nation-states.