Post-Sanctions Russia

Ed Corcoran

Photo by Alex Zarubi

The West has initiated a wide range of sanctions on Russia, pressuring its economy with oil price caps, export restrictions, controls on Western technologies, and restrictions against foreign companies doing business there, resulting in extreme rate hikes by Russia’s Central Bank. Russian President Vladimir Putin uses the sanctions as proof of the Western threat to Russia. However, the purpose of the sanctions is not to pressure the Russian economy but to pressure the Russian government to end its war in Ukraine. The West does not want to destroy Russia, but to do what it should have done 30 years ago: integrate Russia into the industrialized world.

With its attack on Ukraine, Russia transformed what had been a great power squabble into a fundamental attack on universal values, undermining the structure of international order that is critical to global peace. So long as Russia actively supports autocratic regimes globally and continues its military operation in Ukraine, there can be no peace in Europe, indeed, no real peace globally. As such, the sanctions designed to push Russia out of Ukraine are really intended to push Russia toward democracy.

A cooperative relationship between a new progressive Russia and the industrialized world would dramatically transform the international situation. It could be a highly visible example of democratic development, strongly undercutting China’s promotion of autocracy and minimizing cyber intrusions. It would also significantly reduce requirements for military forces globally, including the possibility of major reductions in nuclear weapons. Diplomatically, collaboration with Russia could help resolve confrontations in Afghanistan, Venezuela, Belarus, Ukraine, and Syria.

Putin’s central objective is simply to stay in power, and his basic method is confrontation with the West. His central fear is not some Western intrusion, but internal transformation. NATO, now focusing on Russia as an enemy, only supports Putin’s threat narrative, while some misstep could actually result in escalation of the war beyond Ukraine’s borders.

Opposition to Putin

The Russian opposition to Putin is largely pro-democratic. Although current public opinion polls show a significant support for Putin’s policies, even more Russians support ending the war. The Kremlin worries that a Ukrainian victory could lead to the collapse of the Russian government, but it is even more concerned over potential domestic mobilizations. The government works hard to suppress direct dissent, but it is less able to stop the activities of wives of servicemen or people wanting better economic conditions. Internal groups, such Chronicles, publicize how shallow Russian support for the invasion actually is. Putin carefully controls elections but allows nonthreatening opponents to run, to provide a veneer of legitimacy. Some of them, such as Boris Nadezhdin, voice independent opinions and get significant support. They do not provide a direct threat to Putin but do demonstrate broad public support for change.

A broad range of Russian opposition groups works to provide alternatives to Putin. This includes several hundred thousand Russians, mostly young, educated, and politically active, who have recently emigrated and are now actively opposing Putin as well as maintaining connections with friends and relatives still in Russia. Opposition groups are working hard to overcome their differences to pave the way for a post-Putin era. In April 2023, they issued a Declaration of Russian Democratic Forces  and in May, a Russian Democratic Club met in Paris and brought together a coalition of Russian anti-war democratic forces. In October, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) created a “recurring contact platform” for dialogue with representatives of Russian democratic opposition forces who share Council of Europe values, fully respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and condemn Russia’s war of aggression. Participants in the meeting included representatives from a half dozen major opposition groups, including the Free Russia Foundation, the Russian Anti-War Committee, the Russian Action Committee, and the True Russia Project.

The West needs to build on PACE’s initiative to work with the Russian opposition to promote a new progressive Russia in active partnership with the rest of Europe. A good starting point would be issuing an attractive and persuasive New Russia Vision that counters Putin’s warped vision of Russian history with its aggressive forms of patriotism, Soviet nostalgia, and pride in the past. Such a vision statement has to include two major components. It must portray a modern Russia that integrates its varied ethnic groups into a dynamic and democratic society alongside traditional Russian cultural and social values. And it must demonstrate how a dynamic Russian economy could integrate with Europe and the industrialized world to provide prosperity at home and leadership on a global scale.

Integrating Russia

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made it clear that America wants stable and cooperative relations with Moscow, that a peaceful, secure, and prosperous Russia is in America’s interests. But what does a post-sanctions Russia to look like?

The central task is doing what should have been done 30 years ago: integrate Russia into the industrialized world, focusing on collaborative political, social, and economic actions while actively inviting Russians to join in development efforts. A ceasefire in Ukraine would be a good starting point and would be well received by the majority of the Russian people. But the West needs to make clear that ending the war and lifting sanctions means restoration of Ukraine’s sovereign control over its own territory. The West needs to actively work with Russian opposition elements to widely distribute this view to the Russian people as part of a broader New Russia Vision countering Putin’s medieval version of imperial dominance.

NATO could outline a potential shift of resources from military to developmental use. Instead of using 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product for military expenditures, NATO should propose shifting something like 0.25 percent, to begin with, to a new Russian Partnership Fund. The fund could work with Russian representatives to identify projects that might have maximum impact at minimal cost.

Twenty years ago, a group of distinguished US/Russian experts assessed 11 key areas of potential collaboration, including agriculture, energy, environment, security, health care, education, and natural resources. They listed over 100 organizations focused on these key areas and developed 100 recommendations for new or expanded programs bringing the people and the institutions of the United States and Russia together. There was minimal government support and, in the end, nothing came of it. But these organizations could be reengaged and encouraged to reach out to former Russian colleagues to discuss potential future operations.

Arms control has an area of long-standing cooperation between Washington and Moscow on securing nuclear materials and knowledge. But worsening relations in recent years led both Russia and the United States to draw back significantly. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last remaining bilateral arms control agreement between the two countries, is officially still in place and would be a good place to begin new negotiations. Significant nuclear weapon reductions would benefit both countries.

On the economic front, the sanctions pushed almost 10,000 Western companies to withdraw from Russia even though many of them had very positive relation. Nearly 3,000 foreign firms still have some kind of operations in place or have not yet left. As many as possible of these companies need to reach out to their former Russian colleagues and begin to discuss what sort of renewal there could be once sanctions are lifted. The Russians need to see that these companies would like to return and help Russia prosper, and discussions could help detail just what this might mean.

The new Russian Partnership Fund could help identify investments opportunities. Russia, for example, has a totally inadequate highway system, while Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System gave America broad experience in designing and constructing a national road network. Russia also has a high potential for attractive investments in minerals and helium supply. It needs to broaden its economy from an oil and gas focus to creative uses of its wide resource potential. Technical exchanges would complement such projects.

An essential component of this strategy is active outreach to the Russian people that stresses the fiction of a Western threat while making Russian corruption and repression as transparent as possible. Creating a new approach to helping Russia become a true global partner with other countries is key. Programs that promote real economic advancement and provide Russia its own position on the world stage would resonate strongly with the Russian people.

Rather than promote a new Cold War, now is the time to definitively end the last one. Real peace is not possible without a new Russian government. As Max Bergmann has outlined in detail, the West needs to focus on achieving a democratic and prosperous world with a new and democratic Russia actively integrated in the industrialized world, as should have happened 30 years ago. Offering the Russian people a path out of their economic and diplomatic isolation is an essential element of such a transition.

Police raids against former president Bolsonaro and generals expose coup plot in Brazil

Miguel Andrade

In a dramatic intensification of the political crisis in Brazil, on February 8 the Federal Police (PF) carried out a series of raids targeting fascistic former president Jair Bolsonaro and a number of retired generals and other high-ranking officers who served either in his cabinet or in commanding military positions during his presidency.

President Bolsonaro at Army Day celebrations, April 19, 2022 [Photo: Isac Nóbrega/PR]

The raids marked the fourth round of police operations in as many months stemming from the investigations into Bolsonaro’s plans to nullify the results of the 2022 general elections, which he lost to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party (PT), and remain in power as a dictator. 

Investigators were following leads produced through a plea bargain deal struck by Bolsonaro’s former aide, Col. Mauro Cid, who was arrested on May 3, 2023. For the second time in as many weeks, police raided addresses connected to Bolsonaro, this time including the offices of his Liberal Party (PL). There, agents found a copy of a decree to be issued after his October 2022 electoral defeat announcing a “state of siege” and promising new elections. As a result of the latest operation, Bolsonaro had his passport confiscated by the PF and is barred from leaving the country.

Raids were also carried out against the entire military clique surrounding Bolsonaro. This included the former Army commander, Gen. Paulo Sérgio Oliveira, who was serving as defense minister at the time the coup was being plotted; Adm. Almir Garnier Santos, then serving as Navy commander; Gen. Augusto Heleno, then serving as intelligence chief; and Gen. Walter Braga Netto, then Bolsonaro’s chief of staff and running mate. Also targeted were Anderson Torres, then justice minister, who was deeply implicated in the fascist assault on the capital Brasília on January 8, 2023; and Valdemar Costa Neto, the president of the Liberal Party, who was also arrested for illegal possession of a firearm.

A key figure in the coup plot was revealed to be the then head of the Land Operations Command (Coter) of the Army, Gen. Stevan Theóphilo Gaspar de Oliveira. According to messages found in possession of Colonel Cid, General Gaspar de Oliveira committed Army troops for the enforcement of the coup, with the sole demand that the decree imposing the State of Siege be signed by Bolsonaro himself.

While all the targeted generals are currently retired, the operation also resulted in the arrest of a number of high-ranking active duty officers. The most prominent among them, Col. Bernardo Romão Corrêa Neto, was arrested on Sunday after the Army ordered his return from the Inter-American Defense College in Washington D.C., where he was stationed in December 2022, days before Lula’s inauguration. Investigators believe that Neto, who was taken into custody upon his arrival at the airport in Brasilia, was tasked with selecting loyal special forces (known as “Kids Pretos”) commanders to be at the head of arrest operations during the coup.

Among the extraordinary amount of evidence uncovered by the investigations is a recording of a July 5, 2022 cabinet meeting in which Bolsonaro repeated his bogus electoral fraud charges and urged his ministers to “act now on plan B,” because it would be harder to nullify the elections after results were announced by the Electoral Court (TSE). During the meeting, then intelligence chief General Heleno floated a plan for the use of spies to support a “turning of the table” before the elections. He was interrupted by Bolsonaro who called for the discussion to be continued in private. Messages were revealed in which General Braga Netto called for lower-ranking officers to pressure the Army commander, General Freire Gomes, to support the coup and “offer his head [to the lions]” if he continued to vacillate.

The investigation pieces together a number of elements uncovered previously, most significantly testimony offered by Cid that a coup was actively discussed among the military command, with the Navy commander Admiral Garnier Santos and six out of 16 members of the Army High Command committing to it.

It also provides the context for previously disclosed evidence of a vast undercover “parallel” spying operation within the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin), which reported to Gen. Heleno. This scheme, the target of two large PF operations less than two weeks before, illegally used Israeli-made spying software, called First Mile, to track the positions of at least 1,500 individuals, including members of Congress, STF justices and prosecutors. The aim was to gather compromising evidence to be used to blackmail or arrest them when the coup was unleashed.

Despite the wealth of evidence, the political establishment—from the PT administration to congressional leaders and the corporate press—remains ambivalent about the arrest of Bolsonaro, fearful of provoking any shocks to the already compromised bourgeois order in Brazil.

This fact was highlighted by growing calls in the press for the leading judge in the case, STF justice Alexandre de Moraes, to hand the task over to the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and the full body of the Supreme Court. These worries were expressed in the February 10 editorial of the leading Brazilian daily Folha de S. Paulo, headlined “Let there be justice, not revenge,” which noted the extensive evidence that Moraes himself was a major target of the coup plot, and called into question his impartiality.

Such hesitancy is rooted in a fundamental contradiction. Bolsonaro and his fascistic clique are not being opposed by a faction of the bourgeoisie committed to democratic forms of rule. The frail and misnamed “democratic broad front” led by the Workers Party is as committed as Bolsonaro to defending the unchecked rule of finance capital, which is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and is itself working for the establishment of a police state in Brazil. 

While the bourgeois “broad front” led by the PT in a temporary and precarious alliance with the courts and sections of the military has been compelled to act against Bolsonaro for its own political survival, it depends on the same reactionary forces that only a year ago the former president tried to mobilize in his authoritarian conspiracy.

Critical sections of the Brazilian bourgeoisie opposed Bolsonaro’s coup because they saw it as precipitous and likely to fail. They took note of the doubts in the prospects for a coup’s success expressed by US imperialism, which communicated to Bolsonaro that it would not stand behind his takeover. With the help of the PT administration, they are seeking to overcome such hurdles by vastly expanding police powers, showering the military with new weapons and contracts and seeking to lull the population into believing the armed forces are essentially committed to constitutional rule.

The persisting threat of a fascistic development of the Brazilian state is highlighted by the critical role assumed by General Theóphilo Oliveira over the first year of Lula in office. Now exposed as a key figure in Bolsonaro’s coup plot, he was at the center of establishing extra-constitutional relations between the Brazilian Army and US imperialism in the aftermath of the failed coup. This has included actions that have repeatedly run counter to the official line of Lula’s Foreign Office. 

Early into Lula’s term, General Theóphilo was at the center of a diplomatic crisis concerning the direct negotiations between the Brazilian Army and the Ukrainian government for the sale of 450 armored vehicles to be used against Russia, defying Lula’s ostensibly neutral stance on the war. Shortly after, as head of the Land Operations Command, he oversaw the “First International Seminar on the Land Military Doctrine of the Brazilian Army” which, behind the backs of the PT administration, invited representatives of the United States and leading NATO members, while excluding Brazil’s BRICS allies Russia and China.

The continued contacts between US officials and the far-right Oliveira, even as US President Joe Biden embraced Lula at the White House and US diplomats hailed Lula’s election, expose the political bankruptcy of the idea promoted by the PT and its pseudo-left allies that American imperialism represents a hindrance to a new dictatorship in Brazil.

These same forces have insisted, for over a year now, that the investigation into the fascist conspiracy in the Brazilian state must be conducted in secrecy and fully controlled by Moraes and the Federal Police. This has allowed, despite significant evidence having been revealed, the PF and the Supreme Court to conceal from the public the bulk of the information collected.

Despite the official claims, the secrecy of the procedure has nothing to do with effectively finding and charging the guilty. It is designed to concoct a fraudulent narrative that pins the entire blame for the coup plots on Bolsonaro and his personal “gang,” while maintaining that their miserable failure is due to the military’s supposed commitment to democracy.

Italy’s Stellantis confirms end of Maserati Levante production

Marc Wells

Workers assembling Maserati Levantes at the Mirafiori plant in 2016 [Photo by Stellantis]

Following three days of wildcat strikes and protests last week at Stellantis’ historic Mirafiori plant in Turin, Italy, the transnational automotive corporation is moving ahead with its job-cutting campaign. The company has informed workers that production of the Maserati Levante luxury SUV at the factory will end on March 31. 

The walkouts last week were triggered by the announcement by Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares that the Mirafiori plant, along with the Pomigliano d’Arco plant near Naples, could be shut down. The company implemented a “temporary layoff” affecting 2,455 Mirafiori workers starting on February 12 and, supposedly, ending March 31, the same day as the termination of the Levante production.

Since 2016, the Mirafiori plant has produced Levante SUVs (which have a starting price of US$104,000) at the rate of 25 per day. With the cancellation of the model only eight Maseratis per day will be produced, and they will be limited to the Ghibli, Quattroporte, GranTurismo and GranCabrio models.

The company is also reducing production of the slow-selling fully electric Fiat 500 subcompact at Mirafiori plant.

This will have a devastating impact on other auto parts and supplier companies, like the Lear Corporation in Turin, which supplies seats for Maserati and has already been subject to redundancy pay (Cassa Integrazione) at the end of 2023. Lear is in danger of being shut down, with 420 jobs on the line.

Italian autoworkers, like their brothers and sisters worldwide, stand in the crosshairs of a global restructuring of the auto industry. Layoffs and mass firings have accelerated in recent weeks, affecting thousands at Stellantis, Ford and GM plants in the US. In each case, the union bureaucracies have worked hand in hand to impose the job-cutting, demonstrating their compliance to the needs of corporate interests.

Workers walking out of the Mirafiori plant on strike the week of February 5 [Photo: FIOM]

For years, workers on the Maserati lines at the Mirafiori plant have been subject to temporary layoffs. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), Stellantis’ predecessor, placed 1,400 workers on redundancy pay in 2020. “We work 10 days every two months… many of my coworkers would like to work even in August to make up for the diminished salary,” Maserati autoworker Giacomo Zulianello said in a 2020 interview.

Stellantis is implementing a policy of brutal restructuring and cost-cutting as the company transitions to electric vehicles (EVs). Similar to his counterparts at the other global automakers, but perhaps most nakedly, Stellantis CEO Tavares has jetted from country to country demanding multi-billion-dollar incentive packages from national and local governments, threatening to devastate jobs if the money is not handed over.

In 2021, at the time of the FCA-PSA merger and his appointment as CEO of the newly founded Stellantis, he targeted high production costs in Italy compared to other European countries like France and Spain.

Now, Tavares is intensifying his efforts to extort government incentives. To this end, he is using Stellantis’ excess production capacity to as a bargaining chip to demand substantial subsidies from governments. In the US, Tavares was able to secure state and federal subsidies to keep the Belvidere, Illinois Jeep plant open. In Italy he is demanding a subsidy of €1 billion for the production of 1 million EVs, according to media reports.

The response of the Italian government, presided over by fascist Georgia Meloni, has been of a reactionary, ultranationalistic character. It is demanding a stake in Stellantis equal to that of the French government, seeking to more directly determine the company’s decisions and to participate in its profits, i.e., secure a greater proportion of the spoils produced from the exploitation of workers in Italy.

Stellantis is also expanding its electric drive modules production capacity by investing more than €100 million in a facility in Hungary, the third one for the corporation (the other two are in the US and France). These expensive transitions to EVs are triggering massive layoffs in correlated sectors. In Germany, Bosch is set to cut 1,200 jobs, while ZF predicts up to 12,000 layoffs.

The situation has escalated to the level of the European Union. European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager has nominally taken a no-contest position, stating, “We don’t have subsidies for European consumers to be able to buy zero-emission cars. Each Member State has different schemes and as long as they are not discriminatory, we cannot do anything.”

In the last two weeks, Tavares has also signaled his interest in a consolidation strategy, with rumors of a possible Stellantis/Renault SA merger, which Stellantis officials have thus far denied. Renault is also partly owned and controlled by the French state. The company is mired in a crisis, especially as it pertains to its attempt to target a valuation of €8-10 billion for Ampere, its EV business, which it is seeking to establish as a standalone enterprise.

Tavares is attempting to exploit the sharp economic and political divisions between the European governments to extract the biggest concessions from the capitalist states and the nationally based trade unions. The increasingly bitter conflicts among European states is further proof that Europe cannot be “united” on a capitalist basis, the raison d'etre of the EU.

Workers will not find a solution in the anti-EU ultra-nationalism often evoked by the fascists behind Meloni and echoed by the trade unions. One by one the CGIL, CISL and UIL union confederations are calling for national protectionism, and for the collaboration of the union apparatus, Stellantis and Italian government—in other words, a policy of corporatism.

This bankrupt perspective only divides Italian workers from their class brothers and sisters throughout the continent and subordinates them to needs of their “own” capitalist class. And it always translates into further wage and benefit reductions, and further job cuts in the name of making Italian capitalism “more competitive.”

Edi Lazzi, FIOM-CGIL secretary in Turin, expressed concerns among the union bureaucracy that tensions may escape its grip: “When workers go on wildcat strikes it means the situation has reached the limit. There is no more time to waste, we must act immediately.” This is why he relies on the fascist Meloni government to suppress the rising tide of discontent: “The central government and the institutions must come up with ideas to confront this job challenge.”

Other top union officials sounded a similar note. UILM’s secretary Luigi Paone put forward Stellantis’ board of directors as a supposed ally, stating recently, “Today’s announcement brings to virtually zero Maserati production in Mirafiori.” He raised the “urgency to discuss with Stellantis and institutions on the plant’s mission.”

In social media comments, Tommaso Pirozzi, a 30-year veteran worker at the Pomigliano d’Arco plant, which is also at risk of closure, described the relationship between Tavares, the government and the unions. “At the time of Fiat, with [CEO Gianni] Agnelli, they first blackmailed the government with more than 50,000 redundancy pay claims, then [former CEO Sergio] Marchionne: who can forget what was done in Pomigliano as a dress rehearsal to a devastating elimination of labor rights?”

Focusing on the current situation, he continued, “Now, Tavares is demanding more money, following a trend throughout the years of stealing money from the population.” He sounded a strong critical tone: “This has happened with the approval of trade unions and all political forces; how else can we explain the ongoing deindustrialization? It follows the logic of finance: make as much profit and leave dangers and leftover stock on the backs of workers.”

Criticizing the FIOM union, portrayed by the establishment as the most “radical” union, Pirozzi added, “They say FIOM is the only union saying ‘no’ to Meloni and Tavares. That’s false. FIOM is only giving that appearance. In reality, it’s telling the state to give the money [to Stellantis]… they [corporations] are all coming to plunder the state and the people.”

There are growing tensions among the ruling class: Vincenzo De Luca, a former Stalinist and current president of the Campania region where the Pomigliano plant is located, is very concerned about the explosive consequences of a shutdown in Pomigliano. Campania is an area that historically has been economically deprived and vilified. 

De Luca has been posturing as an opponent of the government presided by the fascist Meloni. He has called for a mass demonstration in Rome on February 16, with the purpose of funneling more money to the South. But this regionalist approach effectively pits Pomigliano workers against their brothers and sisters in Mirafiori, not to mention those in other countries who are being affected by the same corporatist policies pursued by Tavares.

Spain’s PSOE-Sumar government continues arming Israel for Gaza genocide

Alejandro López

A report of the Centre Delás per la Pau (Delàs Center for Peace Studies) has exposed that Spain is continuing to sell weapons to Israel amid the genocide in Gaza. It is a devastating exposure of the imperialist militarism and support for genocide of the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Sumar government, which had denied that it was aiding Israel.

People march during a protest in support of Palestinians and calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, in Barcelona, Saturday, Jan. 20, 2024. [AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti]

It also exposes the pseudo-left Podemos party, which left the PSOE-Sumar government last December. Podemos cynically claimed this would put pressure on the government to oppose the Gaza genocide. However, the Delàs Center’s revelations show that it sat in government with the PSOE as the Spanish state armed Israel in a war that has cost the lives of over 35,000 Palestinians, left over 60,000 injured and displaced 2 million people.

Last November, a Spanish weapons company exported ammunition to Israel worth €987,000, according to official data from the foreign trade portal Comex, according to an investigation by the Delàs Center carried out by researcher Alejandro Pozo.

The exported weaponry fell in the category of “bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles, cartridges and other ammunition and projectiles, and their parts, including slugs, shot and wads for cartridges.” That is, it would be lethal ammunition whose sale was authorised, first, by the PSOE-Podemos government which ended in November 2023, and then continued by its successor, the PSOE-Sumar government.

Both governments falsely claimed they had suspended arms exports to Israel since October 7, when Israel responded to Palestinian militias’ attacks by launching a genocide in Gaza.

Last December, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares responded to a parliamentary question by the Basque-nationalist EH Bildu party on arms sales to Israel by stating: “Since October 7, there have been no Spanish arms export operations to Israel … Therefore, don’t worry, that’s not going to happen.” On January 23, he told Cadena Ser radio: “Since October 7, 2023, there has been no arms sales operation to Israel.” On January 29, Albares repeated this to the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Commission.

Official figures, however, exposed this as a lie. According to the Delàs researcher, “The Comex portal shows that in November 2023 Spain was the largest exporter of [weapons] material to Israel in the European Union, representing 52 percent of the total exports of the European Union.”

The government cynically responded to the revelations with the excuse that these were weapons authorised for export before October 7. Asked by online newspaper Eldiario.es, the Secretary of State for Commerce said that the export “corresponds to licenses authorised before October 7” and contains “material for tests or demonstrations, in no case for final use or capable of being used in the conflict.”

The next day they recontacted the newspaper to specify that what had been sent was “medium caliber non-explosive ammunition.”

Successive Spanish governments could have revoked these authorisations, but did not, making them complicit in the Israeli genocide against Palestinians. Moreover, as Delàs researcher Pozo told Público, it is impossible to verify that these export authorisations were granted before October 7.

Export decisions implicate the entire government. They are debated in the Interministerial Board of Defense and Dual Use, which includes representatives of the Ministries of Economy and Finance, Defense, Interior, Presidency and Foreign Affairs. Its deliberations are not public and are protected by the Official Secrets Act, a law passed under fascist general Francisco Franco to prevent public scrutiny. They cannot even be obtained by a parliamentary request.

Furthermore, according to the same investigation, not only the authorisation of exports has continued, but also weapons imports from Israel. Since October 7, Spain acquired €705 million in products from the Israeli company Elbit Systems, which sells and advertises its products under the slogan “tested in combat.” These weapons’ use by Israel makes them particularly attractive for the Spanish army.

In a contract signed in November alone, Spain purchased Israeli Spike LR2 missiles for €287.5 million.

Definite political conclusions must be drawn from the support of the PSOE-Podemos and PSOE-Sumar governments to Israel’s genocide.

The fight against genocide in Gaza—part of an expanding imperialist war encompassing NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine and military confrontation against China—can only be carried out by mobilizing the working class politically against parties like the PSOE, Sumar, and Podemos. A revolutionary, international movement for socialism must be built in the working class, against middle class parties of war and capitalist government like Podemos and Sumar. It can only proceed as a movement fighting to bring the working class to power in Spain and internationally.

Both Sumar and Podemos have cynically intervened to cover their backs. Sumar’s spokesperson in parliament, former Podemos co-founder Íñigo Errejón, pledged to seek answers in parliament. “The embargo on the sale of weapons has to be complete and permanent,” he said. “We must stop the genocide in Gaza,” he claimed on X, after the news broke directly implicating Sumar in genocide.

Like Podemos in the last government, Sumar now specialises in making empty protests against its own government’s policy to obscure its role as a member of an imperialist government backing Israeli genocide and NATO’s war on Russia in Ukraine.

Sumar’s spokesperson and Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, said Sumar contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs José Manuel Albares, to state that “this cannot happen again.” But Urtasun himself is a well-known warmonger. Last year, before joining the government, he showed his pro-NATO credentials by advocating sending weapons and tanks to Ukraine to fight Russia.

Similarly, Podemos Organization Secretary Pablo Fernández, said this news “reveals the hypocrisy and incoherence of the PSOE,” which they accuse of “lying” and “deliberately hiding” that the Spanish government “continues to buy weapons from Israel.” He added that the government “continues to finance the Genocide from Israel to Palestine.”

But Podemos is lying and hiding the facts no less than the PSOE. Podemos ruled with the PSOE up to November 23, as the government continued to send weapons to Israel which are now being used to kill Palestinians. Moreover, while Podemos was nominally opposing the genocide, its own government sent Spanish frigate Méndez Núñez and military supply ship Patiño to join the battle group of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier.

The American carrier was deployed in the eastern Mediterranean to support the Israeli war, threatening to bomb forces in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Iran that might intervene militarily to assist Gaza.

Moreover, under Podemos, the weapons trade between Spain and Israel flourished. Between 2020 and 2022, Israel imported €140 million in weaponry, while Spain spent hundreds of millions buying weapons with the “combat-tested” mark from Israel.

Podemos is now covering for the PSOE-Sumar government. Having left the government, it is intervening in the mass anti-genocide protests to channel them back behind this blood-soaked government. It calls for the PSOE-Sumar government to “take measures” like arms embargos and sanctions on Israel and to break diplomatic relations with the country. Yet all the parties involved, PSOE and Sumar in government and Podemos outside, are implicated in the genocide.

Podemos, moreover, has refused to use its five lawmakers to threaten to bring down the PSOE-Sumar government which enjoys a thin majority only thanks to Podemos.

Normalizing mass infection and death, CDC to scrap COVID-19 isolation guidelines

Evan Blake

On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) intends to scrap its COVID-19 isolation guidelines, which currently recommend that infected patients isolate for five days to avoid transmitting the virus to others.

This unscientific policy change is part of the total abandonment of public health at the center of world capitalism. In effect, the CDC is providing explicit sanction for the Biden administration’s policy of letting COVID-19 spread entirely unimpeded, infecting, debilitating and killing masses of Americans for the foreseeable future.

Patient Mike Camilleri works with physical therapist Beth Hughes in St. Louis, Missouri, on March 1, 2023. After contracting COVID-19 Camilleri was left with dangerous blood pressure spikes, a heartbeat that raced with slight exertion, and episodes of intense chest pain. [AP Photo/Angie Wang]

Ignoring the fact that a large percentage of COVID-19 transmission is through asymptomatic patients—which has been known since the very beginning of the pandemic—the new guidelines will only recommend that patients isolate if they are symptomatic. Diagnosing themselves, patients can leave isolation once they are “fever-free for at least 24 hours without the aid of medication and their symptoms are mild and improving,” the Post reports, based on discussions with three anonymous CDC officials.

These same officials state that the CDC began planning to change the isolation guidelines last August, but “paused in the fall as covid cases rose.” In January, CDC Director Mandy Cohen sent staff a memo noting that the new policy would be released in April.

Evidently, the CDC had hoped to remove its toothless public health guidance shortly after the Biden administration and World Health Organization (WHO) ended their respective COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declarations last May. They were prevented from doing so due to the steady rise in COVID-19 wastewater levels beginning last July, as well as the global spread of the highly mutated Omicron BA.2.86 subvariant, nicknamed “Pirola,” first identified last August.

Since then, Pirola evolved into the JN.1 variant, which quickly became dominant globally and has caused a massive ongoing wave of infections, hospitalizations and deaths throughout the world. Wastewater estimates in the US indicate that upwards of 150 million Americans will have been infected by the end of this wave in the coming weeks, while global estimates of excess deaths indicate that over 700,000 people have died during the ongoing JN.1 wave.

Even according to official figures, which are known to be significant under-counts, roughly 2,300 Americans are officially dying from COVID-19 each week, while over 1,000 have died weekly for the past 22 weeks straight.

Despite being either the largest or second-largest wave of infections in most countries where wastewater levels of COVID-19 are tracked, the JN.1 wave has gone almost entirely unreported by the corporate media internationally. Throughout this time period, the CDC, WHO and every other public health agency globally did nothing to stop the spread of COVID-19 or protect the world’s population. But clearly the CDC understood that scrapping its isolation guidelines under these conditions would be bad PR and decided to wait until the wave began to recede.

In justifying the policy change, the Post repeats the Biden administration’s propaganda that COVID-19 is now essentially harmless, writing, “The new reality — with most people having developed a level of immunity to the virus because of prior infection or vaccination — warrants a shift to a more practical approach, experts and health officials say.”

But this supposed “new reality” of stable immunity is belied by the fact that the entire planet just experienced the fourth winter of mass reinfection, debilitation and death of the pandemic, precisely because SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has evolved to circumvent immunity from vaccination or prior infection. Indeed, the CDC’s new policy will only further facilitate viral evolution, which threatens to produce a catastrophic variant that is more lethal, infectious and immune-resistant.

Following a pattern throughout the pandemic, the change in federal policy was preceded by similar changes in two Democratic-led states, California and Oregon, during the past year.

This policy change is the latest in a continuous stream of attacks on science and public health by the CDC, which has wholly discredited itself over the course of the pandemic after once being the world’s preeminent public health agency. From the first year under Robert Redfield and the Trump administration, to the disastrous tenures of Rochelle Walensky and Mandy Cohen under Biden, the CDC has steadily wound back the clock on centuries of public health knowledge and understanding.

Dr. Robert R. Redfield at a coronavirus briefing Wednesday, April 22, 2020. (Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen)

From botching the initial rollout of mass testing and contact tracing, to actively discouraging testing, to encouraging the premature reopening of schools, to covering up the science of airborne transmission, to denigrating masking, to reducing isolation and quarantine guidelines in response to the Omicron variant, to embracing eugenicist conceptions, to repeatedly covering up the evolution and spread of new variants, the CDC has proven itself to be a pliant tool of Wall Street and the corporations, which are unwilling to accept the most minimal public health measures seen as impingements on profit-making.

The underlying aim of the CDC’s latest policy change is to normalize COVID-19 and treat it as equivalent to the flu and other respiratory pathogens, which are deemed “endemic” and therefore permanent features of modern social life. A massive state and media conspiracy has been developed to try to condition the population into accepting this narrative, while covering up the science of elimination, which proves that through a comprehensive global public health program, COVID-19, influenza, RSV and numerous other pathogens could be eliminated globally, saving millions of lives each year.

Significantly, just one week before the Post article was published, a pre-print study was released which found that infection with COVID-19, as well as other respiratory pathogens like influenza and RSV, substantially increases one’s risk of developing new-onset dementia (NOD), with COVID-19 increasing this risk by 60 percent within a year of infection. Those with severe COVID-19 infections demonstrated a 17-fold rise in the risk of acquiring NOD compared to non-severe infections.

The study does not delve into this, but raises the concern that multiple annual reinfections of the entire population with COVID-19 will very likely cause substantial population-level increases in rates of dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other neurological disorders in the years and decades ahead.

This is just one facet of the systemic health risks posed by COVID-19 and Long COVID, which can damage virtually every organ in the body and cause long-term debilitation, with each reinfection only heightening these dangers. Experts estimate that hundreds of millions of people are now suffering from Long COVID globally, while McKinsey’s COVID-19 Epidemiological Scenario Planning Tool estimates that the annual costs of “endemic COVID” could range between $137 and $379 billion in the US alone.

The pro-capitalist logic of the CDC’s policy is that society must accept unending waves of infection with COVID-19 and all other respiratory pathogens, about which nothing much can be done. Owners of public and private buildings should not be required to install HEPA filters or Far-UVC lamps, which have been proven to reduce airborne transmission. Workers must return to work and children to school while sick, to ensure that capitalist production proceeds unmolested.

Millions of working class UK households suffer 18 percent cut to incomes in space of five years

Simon Whelan

Research by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) finds Britain’s poorest tenth of households have suffered an 18 percent, almost one fifth, reduction to their incomes since 2019.

The removal of thousands of pounds from the spending power of the poorest working class families, after the previous decade of austerity is devastating and is bringing about an explosion of absolute poverty. Millions of families cannot make ends meet.

Foodbank outside a supermarket in Salford, England [Photo: Salford Foodbank/Facebook]

In their winter 2024 UK Economic Outlook, NISER noted how living standards for the poorest tenth of UK families have fallen most sharply since the beginning of the cost-of-living crisis. When adjusting for inflation, their incomes remain 18 percent below 2019-20 levels. According to the think-tank, this is a loss of “about £4,500” even after additional government one off cash support payments are taken into account.

Protracted stagnating and falling wages, drastic financial cuts to what remains of the welfare state, together with more recent soaring prices for energy, foodstuffs and other basic essentials have hit the working class hardest. The poorest spend a much higher proportion of their income on necessities. With no fat to trim from budgets, working class families increasingly do not even have enough money to buy necessities.

Lower inflation and sustained wage growth according to the think tank will mean British households “start to feel better off” this year as they forecast inflation will drop to 1.2 percent by the spring. Falling inflation does not mean prices are coming down of course, only that prices are rising less quickly than before. The official government measure of inflation is still above 4 percent and the more accurate measure RPI at almost 5 percent.

Inflation was in double digits for much of 2022/23 and the trade union bureaucracy collaborated with the government and corporations to end the recent strike wave with a series of below inflation pay deals.

As the NIESR report was published a senior Bank of England policymaker Sarah Breeden, one of the central bank’s four deputy governors, reiterated their fiscal policy. A victory in the war on inflation still had “some way to go” explained Breeden and required workers accepting even lower pay deals.

Inflation is of course not to be tamed by the corporations accepting lower profits. On the contrary, the corporations are garnering greater profits because with the aid of the trade union bureaucracy they have their heel on the throat of the working class.

The NIESR predicts living standards will grow by 1.9 percent over the 2024/25 financial year, beginning in April. Such a negligible rise would still leave households in the bottom half of the income range, with households in income deciles 1-4, between 7 and 20 percent worse off as things stood immediately before the beginning of the ongoing pandemic in 2019.

The NIESR warns that any rise in living standards will only camouflage stark differences between different households and different parts of the country. The incomes of the lowest 10 percent of households for instance will fall further—to 20 percent below 2019 figures—over the course of the year. The overwhelming benefits of economic growth will continue to be shared chiefly among those at the very apex of class society. The working class will continue to experience incomes and wages that stagnate and decline still further.

Falling living standards over the past five years follow the already calamitous falls experienced in the 10 years after 2008. This was begun by the Gordon Brown’s Labour government with ruthless austerity measures imposed to offset Labour’s £1 trillion bailout of the bailout of the banks and big business after the global financial crash. In 2010, the David Cameron-led Conservative/Liberal Democrats coalition took over where Brown left off, inauguration the “age of austerity”.  

Successive Conservative governments have deepened this frontal assault on living standards, especially to pay for Boris Johnson’s billions in subsidies handed to big business during the height of the pandemic.

Adrian Pabst, NIESR’s deputy director for public policy noted, “With low economic growth and high costs of energy, food and housing, living standards are recovering slowly and not returning to pre-pandemic levels for another three years”. He added that after more than a decade or more of wage stagnation, “you’re basically talking about 15-20 years of no real improvement in living standards” since the 2008 financial crisis.

The NIESR was founded in 1938 by a group of liberal reformists, including figures closely associated with the establishment of the welfare state, John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge. The NIESR thinktank carries out academic research of relevance to business and policy makers and is trusted in these circles for its analysis and verdicts. “While lower taxes can be part of the answer” they argue in the introduction to their Winter Outlook, the thinktank instead calls for the government to “inject more speed into the economy”, i.e. invest in infrastructure projects like fibre optics and public transport.

Their introduction continues, “We live in an age of upheaval characterised by growing geopolitical instability, national polarisation and deeply entrenched regional and local disparities of power, wealth, health, and well-being. Instead of boosterism or declinism, we need greater realism about where the country is and where it could and should go. The United Kingdom has shown some resilience to cope with external shocks, but it lacks productive capacity and high-quality economic policymaking to achieve important goals such as enhancing energy security or reverse widening inequality.”

Britain’s oldest independent research institute represents the thinking of a section of the elite that are becoming extremely nervous over the current path of development and especially the surge in social inequality and the revolutionary consequences threatened.

A day after the NIESR released their report the former prime minister Gordon Brown said that Britain was in the throes of a poverty “epidemic”, with the poorest households living in squalor, going without food, heating and everyday basics such as clean clothes and toothpaste. He described the poverty he recently witnessed in his Scottish hometown of Kirkcaldy, where in some neighbourhoods a staggering 70 percent of households live in poverty, the worst Brown says he has ever seen.

From left, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, former prime ministers Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown ahead of the Accession Council ceremony at St James's Palace, London, where King Charles III is formally proclaimed monarch, London, September 10, 2022 [AP Photo/Kirsty O'Connor]

Brown served as Tony Blair’s chancellor preaching New Labour’s Thatcherite free market agenda before bailing out the banks in 2008 as the crisis hit. He made his comments, in the words of the Guardian, “as he published a review of UK hardship on behalf of his Multibank project, a network of local charities developed out of the Office of Sarah and Gordon Brown which sources and distributes millions of surplus goods to families in need, from soap and shampoo to beds, nappies and toilet rolls.”

Brown’s  review noted that “the ‘cost of living crisis’ is the phrase, but ‘the cost of staying alive crisis’ might be a better description”.

The collapse in incomes will only worsen whichever party takes over after this year’s general election, with Labour under Sir Keir Starmer positioning itself as the party of business and “iron discipline” on public spending.

Gold mine disaster in Turkey poses international public health risk

Barış Demir

A massive landslide occurred around midday Tuesday at Anagold Mining’s Çöpler mine, owned by US-based Canadian SRR Mining, in the İliç district of Erzincan province in eastern Turkey.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced that nine workers were trapped. On the extent of the landslide, he said, “It is estimated that the total volume of the sliding mass—for the time being—is 10 million cubic metres and that this mass has moved 800 metres at a speed of 10 metres per second”. The search for workers continues with the participation of more than 800 search and rescue workers and volunteers.

If this waste soil containing toxic substances such as cyanide and sulphuric acid reaches the Euphrates River just a few hundred metres away, it could cause an environmental disaster that would last for decades in a vast area that includes war-torn Syria and Iraq as well as eastern and south-eastern Turkey.

In its first statement on the disaster, the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change said, “In order to prevent the material flowing during the landslide from reaching the Euphrates River, we had the covers of the culvert where the Sabırlı stream meets the Euphrates River closed.”

However, experts say that even if the waste soil is prevented from going directly into the Euphrates, rain and groundwater will inevitably lead to an environmental disaster because it is impossible to remove such a large amount of soil.

Food engineer and academic Dr. Bülent Şık said on X/Twitter, “This statement [of the ministry] does not reflect the truth. It is impossible to prevent the spread of chemical pollution. The increase in acidity will facilitate the dissolution of toxic elements and their contamination of ground and surface water. This is an environmental disaster that will last for decades.”

In an interview with the Gazete Duvar, Cemalettin Küçük, a metallurgical engineer, echoed Şık’s position. He said, “The waste was above the membrane. Now it has leaked out into nature below. It is also leaking underground.”

He added, “If the structure of the chemical changes with the rain, it can poison people through cyanide evaporation. You should tell the public the truth. It does not have to go into the Euphrates River. It is going into the groundwater. There would be a big disaster along the Euphrates with the groundwater.”

An official investigation launched after the disaster has led to the arrest of four managers and executives of the company. As in previous similar cases, this is an attempt to whitewash the political establishment from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the top, Murat Kurum, the former Minister of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate, and down to lower levels, as well as corporate-financial interests.

Despite years of warnings from scientists and experts about the dangers of the mine and protests by local residents and environmental activists, the source of the disaster lies in a capitalist system that prioritises private profit over the protection of public health and the environment.

The main perpetrator of this crime is Canadian imperialism, which uses the cheapest, most profitable and risky methods and carries out colonial-type mining all over the world, destroying the areas it mines. Its junior partners are Lidya Madencilik (Çalık Holding), and the Turkish government and state institutions, which facilitate the circumvention of procedures and have a share in the profits extracted.

While the immediate cause of the landslide remains unclear, Başaran Aksu of the Independent Mine Workers Union said, “Workers saw the cracks in the morning and warned their supervisors. Some small subcontractors withdrew their workers from the area. But the work continued. Around 12 noon, the cyanide leaching area collapsed due to dynamite explosions.”

Construction of the Çöpler mine began in 2009 and “leaching” commenced at the end of 2010. The site, which is reportedly the second largest gold mine in Turkey, is also located in the footprint of the Bingöl-Yedisu Fault Line, an active fault.

Leaching is a process of recovering precious metals using liquid chemicals with solvent properties. The metal to be enriched is dissolved in chemicals (usually acids or bases). In gold mining, this process is carried out in large open ponds.

The Çöpler mine has been emitting cyanide and sulphuric acid for years, causing ecological destruction in the region. The capacity of the mine, which is the size of 200 football pitches and 1,280 metres deep, was to have more than trebled to 640 football pitches.

The project started in 2008 with an officially endorsed Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report. In 2014 and 2021, the capacity was increased twice with new EIA reports. The latest EIA report, which increased capacity by 2.5 times, stated that there was no risk of landslides. Local residents and environmental activists have filed several lawsuits demanding the cancellation of the EIA reports.

Speaking to T24, İrfan Türkkolu, chairman of the TMMOB Chamber of Metallurgical and Materials Engineers, said, “It was a mine that threatened the health of the region not only now but since it opened. No matter how many times we said it should be closed, unfortunately the authorities responded by increasing the mine’s capacity.”

This was not Anagold Mining’s first environmental disaster. In June 2022, a pipe carrying cyanide burst at the mine and toxic waste flowed into the İliç Dam on the Euphrates River. The investigation found the company at fault and imposed an administrative fine of 16,4 million TL (about US$1 million at the time), the maximum.

The fact that the company, whose license was not revoked, reopened and resumed operations just three months after the disaster, and that its text debt of US$ 7.2 million were subsequently written off reveals the official patronage of the company and the government’s complicity in the disaster.

According to financial reports, Anagold Mining generated US$322.8 million in revenue and $46.5 million in profit from the mine in the first nine months of 2023. Since 2020, it has also generated almost $1.5 billion revenue and $334.6 million profit from the mine. This is why all doors have been opened to the company, including those of the government, the judiciary and those who prepared the EIA report.

This preventable catastrophe, which threatens the health of tens of millions of people, occurred less than a year and a half after the Amasra mining disaster in October 2022 and almost exactly a year after the Turkey-Syria earthquake of February 6, 2023, which officially claimed over 60,000 lives.

The official contempt for lives and the environment is an international phenomenon rooted in the capitalist system.

In 2019, a dam owned by multinational mining company Vale collapsed in Brazil, spilling 13 million cubic metres of iron ore tailings onto farms, villages and surrounding areas, leaving hundreds dead or missing.

In 2015, a cyanide spill was discovered at the Veladero gold mine operated by Canada’s Barrick Gold in Argentina, and more than a thousand cubic metres of cyanide waste was found to have reached five rivers.

In January 2000, when the dam at the Baia Mare gold mine—a joint-venture of the Australian company Esmeralda Exploration and the Romanian government—overflowed and collapsed due to heavy rains, some 100,000 cubic metres of cyanide solution spilled into the Tisza and Danube rivers. Water sources were poisoned in the disaster, which spread to Hungary and the Black Sea. Thousands of tonnes of fish were killed and agricultural land was damaged, the effects of which will last for decades.

One of the most striking examples of this “profits before lives” policy of the ruling classes around the world is their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 27 million people have died and mass deaths continue, as capitalist governments refuse to take the necessary public health measures against the pandemic. Countless others are suffering from Long COVID.