Worst mass shooting in Swedish history claims 11 lives

Jordan Shilton

People gather at a makeshift memorial near the scene of a shooting on the outskirts of Orebro, Sweden, Wednesday, February 5, 2025. [AP Photo/Sergei Grits]

A 35-year-old lone gunman killed 10 people at the Risbergska community school in the Swedish town of Örebro Tuesday before turning the gun on himself. The worst mass shooting in the country’s history occurred against the backdrop of rapidly growing social inequality, the promotion of militarism and war fever, and ongoing gang violence driven by the deepening social and economic crisis.

The gunman, identified as Rickard Andersson, was unknown to police before the shooting. He has been described in reports as a loner with few social contacts. He lived alone, was heavily involved in online gaming, and had earned no taxable income in recent years. To date, no information has been provided indicating a motive for his murderous outburst. An unconfirmed report suggested that he signed up for, but did not complete, various mathematics courses at the school, which aims to help adults complete their education.

Andersson apparently chose his victims at random. One of the dead was 28-year-old Salim Iskef, a student at the school due to get married in July, according to broadcaster SVT. Some other victims remain to be publicly identified. The gunman also injured numerous people in the shooting, which the police described as “an inferno.” SVT reported that he used a semi-automatic weapon and had licences for five firearms, three of which he had in his possession at the scene. When his body was found, he still had a large supply of unused ammunition.

It cannot be excluded that further information may reveal Andersson to have been influenced by far-right views. However, the currently available information suggests that he was a socially vulnerable, disoriented young man who snapped amid mounting social tensions and non-stop militarist war fever.

While the shock among the population has been palpable and widespread, official statements have failed to go beyond the most banal platitudes. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, whose conservative Moderate party-led coalition government relies on the support of the fascistic Sweden Democrats in parliament, sought to project an image of national unity by attending a public memorial in Örebro with the king Wednesday.

Speaking at a press conference, Kristersson described the massacre as “the worst mass shooting in Swedish history,” adding: “It is difficult to comprehend the extent of what has happened today. Darkness hangs this evening over Sweden. … what cannot be allowed to happen has now happened in Sweden.”

Any serious explanation for Andersson’s horrific act must take into account the dramatic deterioration of social conditions in Sweden. Over the past three decades, Sweden has been rapidly transformed from a country with one of the world’s most extensive welfare states into a society riven by social inequality, poverty and unemployment. Once held up by social-democratic politicians as proof that capitalism’s worst excesses could be reformed, Sweden has become a byword for corporate deregulation, anti-immigrant agitation, law-and-order crackdowns and rearmament for war.

This was mostly accomplished by Social Democrat-led governments, which began after the economic crisis of the early 1990s to systematically cut social spending and privatise public services. Sweden’s nationally regulated labour market, based on co-management between the employers and trade unions, was abandoned under the pressure of globalised production. The 1994-2006 Social Democrat-led government, which was also supported by the Greens and ex-Stalinist Left Party, paved the way with its right-wing record for the right-wing Alliance government to start Sweden’s largest-ever wave of privatisations in 2006.

Summing up Sweden’s transformation into a free-market paradise in their 2014 book The Fourth Revolution, former Economist editors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge observed, “The streets of Stockholm are awash with the blood of sacred cows. The local think tanks are overflowing with fresh ideas about welfare entrepreneurs and lean management. Indeed, Sweden has done most of the things that politicians know they ought to do but seldom have the courage to attempt.”

As public services increasingly fell apart and social inequality grew, the entire political establishment sought scapegoats for the deterioration in economic and social conditions. Sweden’s once open immigration and asylum system was transformed into the most restrictive in Europe by Stefan Löfven’s Social Democratic government from 2014.

All of the major parties blame foreigners for growing unemployment, gang violence and other social ills to divert attention away from the real culprits: political parties that implemented cost-cutting and austerity, and capitalists who reaped profits and grew wealthy by funneling society’s resources from public services into their pockets.

To this end, all the parties facilitated the promotion of the fascistic Sweden Democrats, a party with its roots in the neo-Nazi movement of the 1980s. By adopting many of its anti-immigrant policies, the Social Democrats, their Green and Left Party partners, and traditional right-wing parties like Kristersson’s Moderates helped build up the far right so much that after the 2022 election, the Sweden Democrats were the kingmakers in coalition talks.

The explosive growth of social inequality is extensively documented. The Global Wealth Report 2023 by Credit Suisse and UBS noted that the richest 10 percent of Sweden’s population owns 74.4 percent of the wealth, making Sweden the European country with the most unequal wealth distribution. A major factor in this has been the financialisation of the economy, which disproportionately benefits the very wealthy with access to investments.

According to Stattista, 16 percent of Sweden’s population is at risk of poverty, the highest among all Nordic countries, with others ranging between 8 and 12.7 percent. Oxfam’s global Commitment to Reducing Inequality index placed Sweden in 20th place, the lowest of any Nordic country.

A March 2023 article in the medical journal The Lancet noted, “It is a well-established fact that economic inequality leads to increase in violence, crime, poverty, and health inequalities, all of which can have lasting generational impact.” In this regard, gun violence has dramatically risen in Sweden, which went from having the lowest level of gun violence in Europe in 2000 to the highest rate of gun-related deaths per head of population today.

Although most gun crime is related to gang violence, it impacts the entire population. In 2023, 55 people were killed in 363 shootings in a country of just 10 million people.

Bound up with the dramatic worsening of economic and social conditions for broad swathes of the population are Sweden’s militarisation and the country’s emergence as a frontline state in the imperialist-led war on Russia. Sweden’s long-touted “neutrality” was jettisoned; it is now a NATO member state that provides substantial military support to Ukraine in the US-NATO war on Russia.

Stockholm reinstituted military conscription in 2017 and committed in 2022 to hike its military spending by over 60 percent by 2028. The vast sums of money required for war must be squeezed out of the working class, through the destruction of wages and public services, and attacks on working and living conditions.

In addition to the financial impact of militarisation, the pervasive war fever whipped up by the political and media establishment forces brutal violence into all areas of daily life. The public prominence of the military, with US-led military exercises in Stockholm and open military recruitment efforts, has increased sharply. Last November, the Swedish government sent printed copies of a pamphlet to every household informing readers how to survive for up to a week in the event of war.

Trump tariff war exacerbates financial market fragility

Nick Beams

Media coverage of the effect of US president Trump’s global tariff war has so far focused mainly on issues such as trade balances, global supply chains and the inflationary effect of the hikes.

Trader Michael Gallucci on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. [AP Photo/Richard Drew]

But there is another aspect which is no less important. That is what its effect will be on fragile global financial markets, bloated by record levels of debt and speculation, where unexpected developments and the uncertainty over what Trump might do next have the potential to set off a crisis.

The global tariff war, which started with the threat of a 25 percent tariff against Mexico and Canada, is being extended almost on a daily basis. Yesterday Trump warned that tariffs could be imposed on its nominal ally Japan and announced that next week he would be unveiling “reciprocal” tariffs against a series of so far unnamed countries. The European Union is directly in the firing line.

The kind of violent movement that can take place has already been seen on Wall Street. Last month’s announcement by the Chinese AI company DeepSeek that it had developed a cheaper way of developing AI caused the US chipmaker Nvidia to lose nearly $600 billion in market capitalisation in a single day—the largest one-day fall by any company in history.

Currency markets, where as much as $7.5 trillion a day is traded, can also be subject to sharp movements. This has been seen in the shifts in the value of the dollar following Trump’s threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada and then agreeing to a 30-day delay.

This week the Financial Times (FT) reported that Wall Street analysts have been “bombarding US companies with questions over how they will cope with Donald Trump’s trade wars, in an early sign of how the president’s policies are ripping through corporate America.”

The global banking and financial firm UBS has a Trump Tariff Losers basket of companies. It tracks the performance of companies likely to be impacted either by US tariffs or those that are imposed in retaliation.

According to the FT, Goldman Sachs has said that hedge fund funds have “increasingly shorted” companies in Europe which are exposed to the Trump tariffs including big names in the auto industry such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Shorting a stock involves making a bet that its price will fall, bringing a profit. If it unexpectedly moves the other way, then a major loss can be incurred.

There is growing turmoil in the markets, as no one is sure what executive order will be invoked by Trump from one day to the next. It is reflected in a report that trading in so-called zero-day options—contracts that last for just a day and are used to bet on very short-term market moves—hit a record high of $1.4 trillion on January 31.

The uncertainty in currency markets was summed up in comments by Paul McNamara, investments director at the global financial firm GAM.

“The big question is whether [Trump’s] got some master plan which involves taking things to the brink, or whether he’s just making it up as he goes along. Trying to read that man’s mind is just… It’s just incredibly difficult. [You’re] trying to trade on something which could go either way.”

Therein lies the potential for extreme market turbulence if some significant bet goes wrong and sets off a chain reaction.

The growing uncertainty is also reflected in the price of gold which this week hit a new record high of nearly $2,900 per ounce after rising by 26 percent last year. It has already risen by 8 percent so far this year.

John Reade, chief market strategist at the World Gold Council, said the “unprecedented” level of political and economic uncertainty generated by Trump’s policies was leading to increased demand for gold as a safe haven. Central banks have been among the biggest buyers, purchasing more than 1,000 tonnes for each of the past three years.

The increased potential for another financial crisis, triggered at least in part by the tariff war, comes on top of what is an already highly unstable situation in financial markets.

Last month in an interview with the FT, Nick Moakes, the chief investment officer at the large charitable foundation Wellcome Trust warned there were “accidents waiting to happen” because of the flood of money into the private credit market.

This market operates largely outside the regulated banking system—the International Monetary Fund and other global financial bodies have said they have relatively little knowledge of its activities and connections with the broader banking and financial system—and has expanded rapidly since the global financial crisis. In 2008 it was valued at around $2.5 trillion, quadrupling to $10 trillion by 2021 and is expected to reach $15 trillion this year.

“If the world gets a little bit more difficult economically, I think that there are some accidents waiting to happen in the private credit world,” Moakes said. Some “quite high-profile investors,” many of whom had some kind of “systemic importance,” will be “quite badly damaged.”

In an indication of the speed of events, the world has become significantly more difficult economically since mid-January when he gave the interview.

Aside from his tariff war, Trump’s promotion of crypto currencies—he has said he wants to make the US “the bitcoin superpower of the world”—is causing concern in some financial circles, including from among his own supporters.

Last month in an investor note, cited by the FT, the hedge fund Elliott warned that the collapse of crypto could cause “havoc.” Elliott was founded in 1977 by Paul Singer, a longtime Republican supporter who donated $56 million to the party’s election campaign, including $5 million to the political action committee directly backing Trump.

Elliot criticised the Trump administration for its support for crypto assets that have soared in price but have “no substance,” saying the fund had “never seen a market like this.”

The speculative surge in markets was not only due to the increase in the size of crypto but also because of its “perceived proximity to the White House.”

It said the “inevitable collapse” of the bubble “could wreak havoc in ways we cannot yet anticipate.”

The note also questioned why the Trump administration would be promoting crypto, which its backers view as an alternative to the dollar, when the US enjoys “immense advantage” as the world’s reserve currency.

As many economic analysts have pointed out, it is only the dollar’s status which enables the US government to run up massive debts—now of the order of $36 trillion— in a way not possible for any other country.

How the havoc resulting from the collapse of the speculative bubble will play out it is not possible to precisely predict. Nor it is possible to directly ascertain what may trigger it—a crisis flowing from Trump’s tariff war, a series of bad bets in the private equity sector, the collapse of the crypto market or some other, as yet unanticipated, immediate cause. But there is no doubt about the consequences for the working class.

Mozambique opposition parties call off protests, beg for seat in FRELIMO government

David Brown

Mozambique's President-elect, Daniel Chapo, left, and his wife, Gueta Chapo, leave after the presidential inauguration ceremony in Maputo, Mozambique, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025 [AP Photo/Carlos Uqueio]

Daniel Chapo was inaugurated as Mozambique’s fifth president on January 15, after the Constitutional Court confirmed the ruling Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO) party's victory in October's election, marred by the usual electoral fraud and “ghost voters.”

It followed months of mass nationwide protests, the largest uprising against FRELIMO in its nearly half-century of rule since Mozambique's independence from Portugal in 1975. Fearing that the movement could spiral beyond their control, the opposition parties urged an end to the demonstrations, abandoned their parliamentary boycott, and are now seeking dialogue with the new FRELIMO administration—under the auspices of the European Union.

Chapo, the candidate of FRELIMO, which has ruled the country since independence in 1975, is the first president not involved in the guerrilla war against Portuguese colonial rule. The various political factions in Mozambique see an opportunity to redivide the spoils from exploiting one of the world’s poorest countries. Mozambique has vast energy wealth that is central to European imperialist strategy amid war with Russia in Ukraine.

The elections were marred by the usual fraud from FRELIMO, which claimed victory with 71 percent of the vote. But this time, the leading opposition candidate, right-wing evangelical preacher Venâncio Mondlane, declared himself the winner, fled the country, and rode a wave of mass protests driven by deteriorating social conditions. Over the past decade in Mozambique, where the median age is just 17, poverty has skyrocketed from 46 to 65 percent.

While Mondlane called for protests against the government, he firmly opposed any attempt to overthrow FRELIMO, repeatedly stating: “We never said we wanted to attempt a coup d’état.” Instead, he sought support from the European powers to intervene and pressure Chapo to step aside.

Following the Constitutional Court’s ruling, Mondlane returned to the country earlier this month, initially calling to boycott the incoming parliament. What has unfolded since then has only exposed the complete bankruptcy of Mozambique’s so-called opposition to the corrupt FRELIMO.

Mozambique’s newly-elected parliament convened on January 13 in what could have been a humiliating moment for FRELIMO. With the opposition boycotting the swearing-in ceremony, only FRELIMO lawmakers were expected to attend, and authorities braced for mass protests by deploying armored vehicles and roadblocks around parliament.

But the anticipated showdown quickly devolved into political theater when PODEMOS—the breakaway faction of FRELIMO that has become the country’s largest opposition party and under whose ticket Mondlane ran—defied his calls for a boycott and took their seats. They undermined his efforts to challenge the election’s legitimacy.

PODEMOS leader Albino Forquilha told reporters: “We fought not to recognize the results, with large national protests, but the results were validated and we abided by the constitutional order.” The Centre for Democracy and Development accused Forquilha of receiving a bribe from FRELIMO to order Podemos deputies to take their seats.

Mondlane’s original party is RENAMO, the second-largest opposition party after PODEMOS. Its origins lie in Mozambique’s civil war (1977–1992), which launched a guerrilla war against FRELIMO after independence and was backed by the white-supremacist regimes of Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe) and then apartheid South Africa. RENAMO initially joined Mondlane’s boycott alongside the opposition Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), but quickly dropped it.

Since then, Mondlane decided to suspend protests for the first 100 days of FRELIMO rule and told the BBC that he was ready to work in Chapo’s government: “Yes if he has a genuine interest to work with me. He’s got a chance to invite me to the table of dialogue.”

Protesters recover from tear gas fired by police in Maputo, Mozambique, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024 [AP Photo/Carlos Uqueio]

In order “to pacify the country,” and make it safe for foreign investors, Chapo met with opposition party leaders on January 27 to draw up a joint program. Mondlane, who was excluded from the meeting, reacted afterwards by reassuring his readiness to work with the new administration, stating: “I have not yet been contacted [for dialogue…] when I am invited I will present my points of view, I have already passed on this message several times.”

Mondlane’s pleas are backed by the European Union, which insists on a deal between Chapo and Mondlane. “I believe that there is no political solution to this crisis without a dialogue that is truly inclusive and in which Venâncio Mondlane participates,” declared EU mission to Mozambique head Laura Ballarín.

The EU fears protests in Mozambique could jeopardize its huge stakes in Mozambique’s natural resources. European oil companies including TotalEnergies, Eni, and Galp have large stakes in its liquefied natural gas (LNG), with major offshore reserves in the Rovuma Basin. The EU sees Mozambique as a key energy supplier, particularly to diversify its energy sources away from Russian gas.

Major investments are also pouring into the port of Maputo, positioning it as a critical hub in global trade. This aims to accommodate the growing number of container ships rerouted around Africa due to Yemen’s blockade of the Red Sea in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Plans are also underway to construct an LNG terminal linked by pipeline to South Africa.

Several large-scale projects remain stalled, however. Total’s $5 billion hydroelectric dam project is on hold, officially due to the lack of necessary transmission infrastructure. Meanwhile, the $20 billion development of Mozambique’s vast natural gas fields in the north remains suspended due to an ongoing Islamist insurgency that faces a brutal military crackdown by government forces, backed by EU-funded Rwandan troops. Both the insurgents and state security forces have been accused of massacres against civilians in Cabo Delgado.

TotalEnergies is currently under investigation for its role in fueling the violence. So far, the conflict has claimed over 6,000 lives and displaced 2 million people internally.

Last week, to signal to his imperialist backers his willingness to “pacify” Cabo Delgado, Chapo launched a military operation “to identify and dismantle terrorist hideouts, to boost stability in the region.”

There is still substantial popular anger, despite all capitalist parties urging an end to the demonstrations and pushing for a “national unity” government. This effort amounts to little more than a temporary power-sharing deal among Mozambique’s ruling elite, in alliance with imperialism against the masses of workers and oppressed people.

Mozambique’s economic crisis continues to deepen. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) classifies it as at high risk of overall debt distress. It is in the final year of an IMF restructuring program, as international markets demand further “fiscal discipline.” The incoming finance minister estimates economic losses from election protests and their suppression at 3 percent of GDP, while Mozambique’s public debt is fully 93.7 percent of GDP.

The Trump administration’s 90-day pause on all USAID projects pending review has inflamed the crisis. Washington provides approximately $1 billion annually to fund HIV prevention and other healthcare programs in Mozambique—an amount equal to nearly 5 percent of the country’s GDP.

Significantly, the working class is threatening to enter into struggle with its own demands. Civil servants threaten to strike for a traditional New Year Bonus, known as the “13th month.” Denied by the previous government due to budget constraints, President Chapo agreed to pay a bonus in February, 50 percent for most public servants and 100 percent for state pensioners. The Union of Civil Servants rapidly called off the strike, trying to block a broader mobilization of the working class against FRELIMO, claiming they just want to support FRELIMO’s “development goals.”

More rent increases on the horizon in Germany following the merger of 2 major property companies

Markus Salzmann & Tino Jacobson

The enormous rise in rents that has taken place in Germany in recent years has resulted in growing levels of poverty. The latest takeover of Deutsche Wohnen (DW) by the property giant Vonovia is likely to drive up housing prices even further. Despite this, the dire situation confronting hundreds of thousands of households is not an issue in the current federal election.

Listed Deutsche Wohnen housing estate Weiße Stadt in Berlin-Reinickendorf [Photo by Marbot / Wikimedia commons / CC BY-SA 3.0]

In Berlin alone, rents for new properties rose by 26.7 percent in 2023 and by 6.4 percent in 2024. The average asking price rent for newly built flats is €now 20.11 per square metre. Only Munich is more expensive at €25.68. Nationwide, at least 25 percent of households have to spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. A study conducted by the welfare organisation Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband in December 2024 concludes that the poverty rate in Germany is significantly higher when housing costs are taken into account.

The final takeover of DW by Vonovia was approved in January at the Annual General Meetings of the two concerns in Berlin and Bochum. With the approval of the “profit transfer and control agreement,” Deutsche Wohnen is now fully under the control of Vonovia.

The merger of the two groups had already been agreed in 2021. For tax reasons, however, Vonovia only took over 87 percent of DW shares. With this “brazen tax trick,” as experts called the procedure, the group avoided tax payments totaling at least €1 billion.

With the merger now complete, Vonovia is now the largest private housing group in the country and the largest private landlord in the capital city, Berlin, with around half a million flats.

The deal not only increases Vonovia’s portfolio, it also has a favourable effect for the concern on further acquisitions and takeovers. As DW has a significantly lower level of debt than Vonovia, refinancing will most likely be handled via DW in future. Vonovia’s CEO Rolf Buch recently announced that the company would be buying more property in order to further increase its market share.

Vonovia will utilise its monpoly position to drive up rents further in order to provide shareholders with exorbitant returns. Last year, the company had already raised rents on a large scale, in some cases by 15 percent, on occasion without any necessary justification. In addition, tenants were confronted with excessive service charges. Experts and tenant protection organisations assume that extra profits are being made through a heating supplier controlled by the company.

Buch recently declared in the Tagesspiegel daily that the Berlin rent index, which sets the local average rent, had been “faked.” He implicitly linked this to the demand that property companies should be able to set rents and rent increases without restrictions.

In addition, very few new flats were built under the SPD-PDS state government. From 2003 to 2009, the annual number of new-build flats was less than 4,000. In 2010 and 2011, it was around 4,400 each year. At least 15,000 additional flats, mainly social housing, should have been built each year.

As a result, supply almost stagnated between 2001 and 2011. Over the course of 10 years, it only increased from 1,870,000 to 1,903,000 flats. At the same time, demand increased. While it was still just below supply in 2001, the demand for affordable housing in 2011 was 92,000 higher than the existing stock.

The number of social housing units fell by a third in the same period, from 397,000 to 265,000. Since then, the number of social housing units in Berlin has fallen to just under 90,000.

On September 26, 2021, a referendum on the expropriation of large housing companies was held in parallel to the elections for the Bundestag and the Berlin House of Representatives, with 56.4 percent voting in favour. However, as the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei warned, the Berlin state government made up of the SPD, Greens and Left Party “showed voters the middle finger,” ignored the result and continued to defend the interests of the rent sharks.

Even before the referendum, the SPD-Green-Left Party state government had expressly supported the merger of Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen. The Senator for Urban Development and Housing, Sebastian Scheel (Left Party), welcomed the merger and described the cooperation between property sharks and the Senate as “progress.” Since 2022, the Senate parties and property companies have been working closely together in the “Alliance for New Housing Construction and Affordable Housing” to line the pockets of the corporations at the expense of tenants.

In the state of Thuringia, where Left Party leader Bodo Ramelow headed the government from 2014 to 2024, it played a similar role. Here, rents exploded during Ramelow’s time in office. Between 2018 and 2022, rents in the state capital Erfurt rose by around 10 percent, more than the national average of 7.25 percent.

In Bremen, the Left Party governs together with the SPD and the Greens. Rents here recently rose by 6.3 percent in just one year, a sharper increase than in Munich or Berlin. Rents have risen by 8.6 percent since 2022.

New Zealand school lunches compared to “dog food” after government cutbacks

Tom Peters

Schoolchildren, parents and staff across New Zealand have spoken out over the past week against new school lunches, which have been compared to dog food and prison meals.

As part of its sweeping austerity measures, designed to make the working class shoulder the burden of the economic recession, the right-wing coalition government led by the National Party has reduced spending on school lunches from $8 to $3 per meal.

Associate education minister David Seymour, leader of the far-right ACT Party, boasted on January 30 that the new program will save $130 million a year and is “setting a precedent for the government working with businesses to achieve better results.”

These savings are at the expense of 242,000 school students from low-income households who are now receiving smaller and often revolting meals. According to the New Zealand Herald, “Auckland Primary Principals’ Association president Kyle Brewerton said kids have been comparing the lunches to ‘dog food’ and refusing to eat it.”

Ōtāhuhu College student Divya Kumar told Radio NZ her meal was “really bland,” with “overcooked pasta, and I don’t think it provides the nutrition we need as students.” Another student, Heremoko, said it was “like prison food,” adding: “Last year we actually knew what we were eating, we could see it. This year we’re questioning what we’re eating.”

New Zealand school lunches, January 2025 [Photo: Reddit / only-on-the-wknd, Hokinanaz]

Photos of the meals have been shared widely. One Reddit post from Auckland displayed a picture of an “unidentifiable pasta ball and lentils.” The lunches were delivered two hours late. “Not one child could stomach the food and so after offers to give food away to [the] local community were declined, all several hundred of these went into the rubbish.”

A parent shared a picture of what was “supposed to be mac and cheese” but “looks and tastes horrible.” They told the Herald: “I normally try to not waste food but when I tasted it, it was just so bland. If I guessed it was a white sauce with not much cheese, couldn’t actually taste the ham, and the veg/mac was so overcooked that they were just soggy.”

One Reddit user commented: “This is what they want. They want the food to go uneaten so they can [say] they’re not being eaten and it’s a waste of money. They don’t want to pay for kids to eat.”

Another suggested that “Parliament should be served the same food as our school children get.”

Due to late lunch deliveries throughout the week, which caterers attributed to “teething problems,” some principals reported that they had to buy food at the supermarket to feed hungry children. Some schools asked parents to send their children to school with extra food as a precaution, according to the Herald.

Last October it was reported that 75 suppliers would lose their contracts under the previous school lunches program, destroying as many as 2,000 jobs. They were replaced by a consortium led by the British-based multinational Compass Group, and also including the NZ businesses Gilmours and Libelle.

Compass is the world’s largest catering company, operating in 45 countries and providing billions of meals each year in healthcare, education, the military and other sectors. It has been involved in several scandals.

In 2015, Compass subsidiary Chartwells settled a lawsuit over school meals in Washington, D.C. A whistleblower alleged that Chartwells had overcharged the school district and there were repeated instances in which “food was delivered late, the number of meals was insufficient or the food was of poor quality or spoiled.”

In 2021, Chartwells was at the centre of a scandal involving food parcels sent to 1.7 million UK children whose schools were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The parcels were extremely meagre, prompting widespread public outrage.

Chartwells/Compass is the largest provider of school lunches in the UK, where meals are frequently criticised for their poor quality and low nutritional value. The BBC reported on March 14, 2024, on complaints that meals at Redbridge Community School in Southampton were getting smaller while prices were rising, and were often undercooked. “Chartwells seem to be unable to bake a potato,” the head teacher said.

The New Zealand government and its defenders in the media have responded to criticism by essentially saying children from poor households should consider themselves lucky to get any food at all.

Minister Seymour told Newstalk ZB the media was highlighting “the worst examples that they can find and the worst comments that they can find.” In response to principals saying “this is not good enough,” Seymour called for a “reality check” and said “this is a government with a $17 billion deficit.”

Far-right blogger Cam Slater posted on X/Twitter that parents unhappy with the lunches their children were getting should “feed them yourselves like you did in the holidays. That is what [is] wrong with this country, too many with their hand out.”

Slater’s comment was shared by billionaire toy company founder Nick Mowbray, New Zealand’s richest man and a major donor to the ACT and National Parties.

The slop now being served at schools is connected to the government’s broader agenda of gutting and privatising the education system and other public services.

The ACT Party is overseeing the reintroduction of privately-run charter schools, with funding provided last year to establish 50 of them. This will divert public funds to private operators, who do not face the same requirements as public schools to follow the curriculum and can set different pay rates for teachers.

In the US and the UK, charter schools or “academies” have played a major role in deregulating education and attacking conditions for school staff. Under the 2008–2017 National Party-ACT government, a trial of charter schools in New Zealand resulted in financial irregularities and dysfunction, forcing one school to be shut down.

The Labour Party has criticised the new school meals, with education spokesperson Jan Tinetti saying “this government chose cost-cutting ahead of quality.” She declared she was “deeply concerned” about “wider impacts on reducing child poverty” and on children’s ability to learn.

This is utterly hypocritical. In its 2023 budget, the last Labour government increased operational funding for schools by just 3.5 percent—about half the 6.7 percent annual inflation rate. Tens of thousands of teachers repeatedly went on strike to protest against frozen wages, although their struggles were suppressed by the union bureaucracy.

The Labour government also oversaw an increase in the number of children living in poverty. Labour campaigned for deeper austerity measures in the October 2023 election, which it lost in a landslide defeat amid a worsening social crisis, paving the way for the current far-right government.

Mass jobs cull continues at UK universities

Henry Lee

A wave of mass job losses is engulfing UK universities, with higher education the latest public service suffering from the Labour government’s austerity agenda. The cuts are exemplified by Cardiff University, which has announced plans to eliminate 400 full-time posts, around 7 percent of all jobs.

Cardiff University is the largest university in Wales with over 32,000 students. It is a member of the prestigious Russel Group, indicating that the major financial crisis in higher education is affecting more than the smaller and less well-funded institutions.

The main building of Cardiff University [Photo: Stan Zurek]

The University and College Union (UCU) pointed to the university’s £500 million in financial reserves in an effort to persuade management that the job losses are avoidable. However, the cuts are not simply a response to a short-term crisis but part of a long-term plan to restructure the university along the lines of a profitable business.

As it has done in all disputes over job losses since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the UCU has only said that it opposes compulsory redundancies, meaning that job losses can be made on a supposedly voluntary basis. The university borrowed the same line and said that it would cut jobs through voluntary redundancies unless “absolutely necessary”. This an absurd claim when the university plans to close entire courses—including nursing, modern languages and music—and reduce staffing levels across almost every discipline.

Cardiff University also plans to reduce its intake of UK students, while stating explicitly in its consultation document that student to staff ratios will increase “in order to achieve financial sustainability”. It suggests increased ratios “will pose some immediate challenges and will require adaptions to workload” for remaining workers; a euphemism for yet another increase to already high workloads.

The Cardiff cuts are just the tip of the iceberg. Durham University is also planning to cut 200 jobs this year, Newcastle University is cutting 300 and Queen’s University Belfast has opened a voluntary severance scheme which unions say could cut 270 jobs. UCU members have voted to strike against the threat of job losses at the University of Dundee and the University of Sheffield International College, and a ballot is running at the University of East Anglia.

Worse is yet to come, as the Office for Students projects that three-quarters of universities will be in deficit this year, and one quarter are already making budget and staff cuts. The Times Higher Education reported that 10,300 jobs were lost across the whole sector during the 2023-24 academic year, “up from 7,300 the year before, and an average of 100 per institution.”

These were the figures from the 103 universities that have posted financial accounts. Between them they have spent more than £200 million on severance pay, showing they are “investing” their financial reserves in cutting as many jobs as possible like corporate asset-strippers.

Up to 10,000 further jobs could go this year with almost one in four leading universities cutting budgets and reducing staff. The Guardian noted Saturday that “About 90 universities are currently restructuring alongside compulsory and voluntary redundancy schemes to lower their wage bills.”

The Starmer government has made clear it will do nothing to prevent institutions from making major cuts in order to remain “competitive.” Baroness Jacqui Smith, Labour’s Minister for Skills in the Department for Education, has repeatedly made clear that universities are to be included in the government’s plans for austerity and attacks on migrants.

Labour is able to push ahead thanks to its partnership with the trade unions, which it relies on to suppress workers’ opposition to cuts and intensified exploitation. Nowhere was this clearer than in a fawning interview of Smith by the UCU’s general secretary Jo Grady, posted on the union’s YouTube channel on Wednesday.

The video was an apologia for Labour, despite the viciously anti-working-class policies pushed through in its first six months in power. UCU members were asked to submit questions to the minister, and told “Together we can influence the government to take action.”

But in her enthusiastic introduction, Grady was unable to point to a single positive action of the government, claiming that the main benefit of Labour over the Conservatives was a “clear tone shift” and that “At least we are in dialogue now… we don’t feel under constant attack”. She is speaking for the union bureaucracy, not workers.

Smith was given ample room to promote the government’s forthcoming education white papers and made vague promises that “unproductive competition” would be replaced with more collaboration and cooperation between universities—likely a veiled reference to suggestions that universities merge or share services to further cut staff.

When finally asked about the financial crisis and job cuts, Smith claimed that, as universities are supposed to be autonomous, it was inappropriate to even ask her about Coventry University—where the vice-chancellor was given an £80,000 bonus despite the threat of 300 job losses.

Echoing the 2010 Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government’s justification of the “age of austerity”, Smith feigned sympathy with higher education workers facing mass job losses but insisted, “We have inherited an enormously difficult fiscal position”. She reiterated, “There will not be a major reform of the way that we fund higher education. … There is not going to be a large injection of taxpayers’ money.”

The door was left open for imposing a greater burden on students and graduates with further increases to tuition fees.

Smith also ruled out reversing restrictions introduced last year on international students bringing dependents to the UK—despite absurdly claiming to have abandoned the Tories’ demonisation of migrants. She took the opportunity to state that Labour must “demonstrate an understanding of the impact of migration”.

The resources and technology which exist in modern society could easily make the higher education sector a source of good jobs and quality education, but this will not happen through any amount of pressure on the Labour government, which is committed to reshaping society entirely in the interests of the rich.

The UCU and the other unions are working to keep the many local disputes against job losses isolated, avoiding any confrontation with its Labour “partners” in government. Hence their opposition only to compulsory redundancies and insistence on “consultation” over cuts—to save face while agreeing to the jobs massacre made inevitable by Labour’s policies.

UCU members already voted in a consultative ballot at the start of December to take industrial action for a 5.5 percent pay increase. The same month, its Higher Education Committee voted to begin the balloting process for a strike that could take place in April.

But not until the last week, as the scale of job losses became clear, did the union say anything about organising any fight. And this had nothing to do with organising the industrial strength of tens of thousands of HE workers, but centred on appeals to the Labour government to do the right thing. Posting on X on January 28, Grady pleaded, “We have a Labour government in Wales. We have a Labour government in Westminster. Our political leaders must intervene.”

The same day, Grady, seeking to contain growing anger at the jobs cull, was cited in the Times saying, “If vice-chancellors do not step back from the brink and work with us to protect jobs, serious industrial unrest cannot be ruled out”.

Study exposes COVID-19’s dire social impact in Brazil

Fátima Ferrante

Food distribution to homeless population in Curitiba, in southern state of Paraná. (Credit: Valmir Fernandes [Photo by Coletivo Marmitas da Terra / CC BY 4.0]

A study released by Brazil’s Health Ministry has exposed the dire social impact of the “COVID forever” policy initiated by the government of fascistic president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) and continued under the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers Party - PT)

Entitled “Epicovid 2.0” the study is the result of the largest population-based study on COVID-19 in Brazil. Presented on December 18, the study’s data was obtained through 33,000 interviews conducted through home visits in 133 cities in all 27 Brazilian states.

The study shows that the pandemic has exacerbated already extremely acute social inequality in Brazil, with the poorest population being the most severely impacted by COVID-19 and its multiple effects. Almost 15 percent of respondents reported the death of a family member due to COVID-19, and 21.5 percent of them reported that a child or teenager in the household had to interrupt their studies at some point during the pandemic.

Almost half of the respondents said they had suffered food insecurity at some point, reporting a lack of money and/or a reduction in their own food to feed the children in the household. In addition, almost 35 percent lost their jobs, and 48.6 percent experienced a reduction in their family income. All of these outcomes occurred more frequently among the poorest sections of the population and in households headed by women.

This situation caused informal work at the start of the pandemic to explode in Brazil and, even though it is decreasing today, it remains at high levels. Almost half of the workforce in Brazil was informal in mid-2021, shortly after the second deadly wave of the pandemic, a figure that has fallen to 40 percent today.

One of the study’s significant findings is that 65.2 percent of those infected with the novel coronavirus have or have had Long COVID, that is, some 40 million people (18.9 percent of the Brazilian population). Of this total, almost 18 million people still have a series of persistent post-COVID-19 symptoms or complications. According to the study, the most prevalent symptoms among those with Long COVID are memory loss, difficulty concentrating, hair loss, joint pain, anxiety and tiredness.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) definition, Long COVID is the “continuation or development of new symptoms 3 months after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, with these symptoms lasting at least 2 months without further explanation.” The condition can strike anyone, regardless of age or severity of illness, and affect different organs and systems of the body, with more than 200 symptoms recorded to date.

Concluding the presentation of the study, researcher Pedro Hallal, Full Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (USA), said that “the impacts of the pandemic on the Brazilian population are great and long-lasting,” while at the same time “the pandemic has exacerbated historical health inequalities in Brazil.”

Despite important findings about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, the study presents the pandemic as a thing of the past. The virus, however, continues to circulate in Brazil and around the world, causing infections, deaths and a series of debilities associated with Long COVID – a situation totally ignored by the Lula government.

During the presentation of the study, the Health Minister of the PT government, Nísia Trindade, said that “Epicovid 2.0” is the continuation of “a broad, comprehensive study on COVID [that] was carried out during the pandemic,” but was shut down by the “denialism” of the Bolsonaro government.

Hallal also explained that the first version of the study had the objective of “monitoring the spread of the virus” of COVID-19 in Brazil, while the second version, adapted to a “new moment in public health in Brazil”, has the objective of “evaluating the impacts that the pandemic had”.

Between May and July 2020, Hallal coordinated the largest epidemiological study on the pandemic in Brazil, funded by the Bolsonaro government's Health Ministry. Although discontinued by the Bolsonaro government, the study at the time showed a six-fold underreporting of cases in Brazil and that the risk of contamination among indigenous people is five times higher than the national average, and among the poor twice as high.

Hallal has become one of the targets of Bolsonaro and his political allies, who have attacked the monitoring of the pandemic as part of their “herd immunity” policy. After receiving a series of threats, particularly for his participation in the 2021 Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry convened by the Brazilian Senate that exposed the criminal policy of the Bolsonaro government, Hallal was forced to move forward a trip to the US at the end of 2021.

Despite denouncing the Bolsonaro government's “herd immunity” policy, Hallal and other researchers ended up adapting to strong class pressures as vaccines became widely available and capitalist governments around the world began to falsely pledge that they would contain the pandemic. The foremost representative of this policy was the US government headed by Joe Biden.

At the beginning of 2022, during the Omicron wave, Hallal used his scientific authority to fraudulently claim that this new variant “will infect a lot of people and very quickly, but it is less aggressive” and that “it can make this disease live among us, just as others do”. He also argued that “there is a positive side to Omicron. There is the possibility that the Omicron is the first step towards COVID-19 becoming an endemic disease and no longer an epidemic or pandemic.”

The Lula government’s boosting of Hallal's scientific authority says a lot about its response to the pandemic. Since coming to power in early 2023, it has ended the daily reporting of cases, has failed to implement any educational campaigns about COVID-19 and has followed the policy of the world’s capitalist elite of restricting its response to vaccinating the population against COVID-19.

However, even this last measure has not been universal, has not used the most up-to-date versions of the vaccines and has suffered from numerous failures. Since the end of 2023, COVID-19 vaccines have only covered priority groups, leaving out the vast majority of the population between the ages of five and 60. The last time a person who is not part of these groups had a COVID-19 vaccine in Brazil was almost two years ago.

Reports of a shortage of vaccines against COVID-19 and other diseases have been frequent in the pages of the Brazilian corporate media since the middle of last year. In September, around 8 million doses expired, while municipalities reported a shortage of the vaccine. Between November and December, the National Confederation of Municipalities carried out a study and found that 65.8 percent of the 2,895 municipalities that took part in the survey are short of various vaccines, including those against COVID-19, chickenpox and whooping cough.

In addition, from 2023 to 2024, the health ministry incinerated almost R$2 billion worth of medicines, vaccines and supplies from the Unified Health System (SUS), a waste three times greater than during the entire Bolsonaro government and a record for a 10-year period (2015-2024). Vaccines against COVID-19 account for the largest losses, totaling R$1.8 billion.

As much as the Lula government tries to distance itself from the Bolsonaro “herd immunity” policy, in practice it has subjected the population to successive waves of infections, trapping the working class in a new normal of chronic diseases.

Although vaccines don't prevent infection, they do reduce the risk of infection, hospitalization and of developing the numerous sequelae associated with Long COVID. Since the early years of the pandemic, it has been clear that the protection offered by the vaccine wanes after months, which is why booster doses and annual vaccinations were soon recommended to maintain immunity.

A significant study published in July 2024, led by Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, one of the most prominent Long COVID researchers, showed that vaccination reduced the incidence of Long COVID by almost half. In the context of the free circulation of SARS-CoV-2, the authors note: “The large number of people infected during the Omicron era, the large number of new infections and ongoing reinfections, and low adherence to vaccination may translate into a large number of people with [post-acute sequelae of COVID-19].”

This and countless other studies expose the Lula government's claim to “follow the science” against COVID-19 as part of a supposed “reconstruction of Brazil” after the Bolsonaro government's years of destruction. Significantly, the publication of “Epicovid 2.0” marked the first time that officials from the Lula government spoke out about Long COVID. This was not accompanied, however, by any awareness campaigns to educate the broad Brazilian population about this chronic condition, let alone any explanation of the best way to avoid it: not getting infected with COVID-19.

In an interview recently published on the WSWS, which had major repercussions on social media, Dr. Arijit Chakravarty, one of the main scientists warning about the risks of COVID-19 for public health, defended a “multifaceted strategy” over the “vaccine only strategy”. According to him, society “has a fighting chance” against a virus with an evolution like SARS-CoV-2 only with such a strategy that “limits the spread of long-term infections, develops combination therapies for long-term infections, uses the multifaceted approach to reduce viral load, including the deployment of items such as HEPA filters and distant UVC light and the monitoring of viral load in public spaces.”

The continued presence of SARS-CoV-2 and new outbreaks of diseases that had been controlled for decades is not an uncontrollable accident, but the consequence of an intentional policy against public health. Decades of accumulated public health knowledge provide the means to eliminate COVID-19 and countless other diseases.

UK Labour government to impose massive welfare cuts and criminalisation of benefits claimants

Dennis Moore

The UK Labour government is putting forward proposals that will see long-term sick benefits claimants forced to look for work as a condition for receiving sickness payments. Another proposal being mooted is for some claimants to have their benefit payments cut by up to £5,000 a year. Another would make it more difficult for claimants with mental health conditions to claim separate disability benefits.

The changes, spearheaded by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, would be the most ferocious attacks on the welfare system for over a decade. There are 2.4 million benefit claimants claiming incapacity benefits who are currently not required to look for or prepare for work.

Liz Kendall, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [Photo by House of Commons/Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Many are in significant distress over whether their benefits will be stopped or reduced. The Disability News Service reported on a recent survey carried out via a question posed on social media by Inclusion Barnet’s Campaign for Disability Justice (CDJ). CDJ asked disabled people how they believed they would be affected if the government went ahead with the cuts.

Of the 100 respondents, 12 percent said they would have to cut back on food, with some saying they would have nothing. Other said they would no longer be able to afford food necessary for their dietary needs. One in 10 said they have to cut back on heating and one in seven feared they would even lose their home if the government went ahead with cuts to their benefits. Nearly a third of respondents, without any prompting from CDJ, said cuts to their benefits would cause a deterioration in their health.

Inclusion Barnet had to contact approximately a fifth of the respondents with information on how they could access support with their mental health, after many had disclosed suicidal thoughts.

Labour’s proposals are a continuation and extension of Tory plans to cut at least £3 billion from disability benefits, put forward amid screaming denunciations from the right-wing media about a forecast £8.6 billion welfare “overspend” this year. Much has been made of the fact that the proportion of the welfare budget going towards the sickness benefits has increased rapidly in the last decade.

To distract from the fact that this reflects both the sharp cuts to other payments like low income benefit and the raging mental and physical health crisis in the UK—caused in large part by these cuts and exacerbated by the COVID pandemic—Labour has launched a vicious campaign aimed at further demonising benefits claimants. The centrepiece is its New Public Authorities (Fraud Error & Recovery Bill), which entails extraordinary attacks on democratic rights.

The legislation allows those accused of benefit fraud to be banned from driving for up to two years if they fail to reimburse the money owed—if it exceeds £1,000 and the DWP have made repeated requests to the claimant that the money is paid back and the requests ignored. DWP investigators will also be empowered to apply to the courts for search warrants, for the first time giving them the power to enter and search premises—with police in attendance—and seize computers and smart phones for “evidence gathering”.

The bill also legally compels a bank or employer of a person suspected of fraud to comply with the retrieval of money that is suspected of being owed to the DWP. The DWP will have the powers to authorise payments to be made from an employed person’s bank accounts, without their authorisation. These measures build on the powers the government already has to investigate the bank accounts and request bank account transaction details on a case by case basis of those suspected of benefit fraud—under the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 and the Social Security Administration Act 1992.

The new powers will also apply to payments that the DWP makes in error to a claimant, treating the recipient in the same way as if they had made a fraudulent claim.

According to government estimates, the Fraud Error & Recovery Bill will claw back £1.5 billion over the next five years and is part of the government plans for £9.2 billion in savings from measures to tackle fraud and error in the welfare system. Its measures amount to a crimination of welfare recipients, with Kendall declaring, “We are turning off the tap to criminals who cheat the system and steal law-abiding taxpayers’ money”.

Campaign groups have raised that the Bill’s measures will invade a person’s right to financial privacy, with the possibility that legitimate claimants will be wrongly investigated.

The policy of criminalising benefit claimants is being enforced while the richest get away with tax avoidance and evasion on a staggering scale. The Office for National Statistics estimated that for the year 2022-23, the amount lost to the Treasury for tax evasion stood at £5.5 billion. Legalised tax dodging accounts for even greater sums: the lower rate of capital gains tax versus income tax saves the rich £14 billion a year.

At the same time, a vast amount of benefits go unclaimed each year, often because potential claimants are not even aware they can claim them in the first place, or because, given the filthy diet of propaganda regularly vomited up in tabloid press demonising “benefit scroungers”, they would feel stigmatised for doing so.

Missing Out, a report published in April last year by the social policy organisation Policy in Practice, estimates that there £14.4 billion of benefits and support went unclaimed in 2023—an increase of £4 billion over the previous year.

The new offensive against what remains of the welfare system is being carried out by Labour on behalf of the corporations and the military it promised to represent in government. Every single penny seized from disabled people and millions of other benefit claimants will go towards big-business handouts and increased spending on the armed forces.

Last week, a Times editorial drew the connection bluntly, complaining, as Kendall finalised the DWP’s brutal plans, “With each passing year more and more billions are squandered on benefits for the working-age ‘sick’ while Britain’s defences crumble for want of a mere fraction of that amount.”