Brutal repression against striking public employees in São Paulo, Brazil

Tomas Castanheira

On Wednesday afternoon, teachers and municipal workers in São Paulo faced violent repression by the police as they protested against a City Council vote on a “pension reform” that dramatically slashes their pensions.

Tear gas fired at striking workers in front of the São Paulo City Council building (WSWS Media)

The area in front of the City Council building was turned into a battlefield, with the police firing a barrage of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at the thousands of workers gathered there. Several were wounded by the gunfire, and one worker fractured her foot, remaining on the ground for hours without medical care as tear gas bombs landed by her side. The councillors proceeded with their session, which extended into the early morning hours, when they passed the criminal bill.

Municipal workers had been on strike since October 15 against the austerity measures introduced by Mayor Ricardo Nunes of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB). As soon as the vote ended, “at midnight and forty minutes,” declared SINPEEM, the largest union of municipal teachers, the unions declared the strike over.

This was the second strike this year by São Paulo’s municipal educators, the largest section of public service workers. In February, they struck for four months against the unsafe reopening of schools. The large support for the new strike movement, which gathered tens of thousands in several demonstrations over the last month, is an expression of the growing opposition of the working class to the intolerable conditions being imposed by capitalism.

In the last months, in addition to public employees in São Paulo, workers at General Motors in São Caetano do Sul went on strike against the company’s proposed contract and rejected the agreement presented by the union, which buried the strike against the will of the workers. More recently, truck drivers held a strike in protest over the increase in fuel prices that affected the operations of Brazil’s largest port in the city of Santos, on São Paulo’s coast. In the south of the country they were joined by demonstrations of app delivery and oil workers.

The living standards of Brazilian workers have been seriously affected in the last two years. Brazil and the entire Latin American region were hit by the COVID-19 pandemic while already in the midst of a prolonged economic crisis, which has severely deepened. Unemployment levels have reached historic highs, more than 20 million have been thrown below the poverty line, and hunger has returned as a widespread social issue. Brazil’s working families struggle to make ends meet in the face of rampant inflation that has already reached 10.67 percent over the past 12 months.

Economic desperation is compounded by the catastrophic results of the COVID-19 pandemic policies of fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and the capitalist ruling class as a whole. The country already has more than 610,000 recorded deaths from the coronavirus and continues to record about 230 deaths daily, with significant levels of under-reporting. But across the country, local governments of all political parties are promoting an end to minimal mitigation measures, including an end to mask mandates in public places and the imposition of mandatory face-to-face education for all children.

As the WSWS reported, there was a widespread revolt against these inhumane conditions imposed by Brazil’s ruling class on the part of São Paulo’s municipal workers. Their anger was even greater in the face of the insistent and voracious attacks by the São Paulo City Hall and the endless betrayals by the unions that claim to represent them.

Workers have been fighting attempts to scrap their pensions since at least 2016, when a proposed pension reform was presented by then-Mayor Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party (PT). The attacks were intensified by his successor, João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), now governor of São Paulo, who brought the pension reform known as “ Sampaprev ” to a vote in March 2018. Public employees responded with a strike and massive street demonstrations, which led to the postponement of the vote on the bill. At that time, the unions called for a “suspension” of the strike, knowing that sooner or later the bill would be brought to a vote again.

The lifelong president of the SINPEEM union, Claudio Fonseca of the Citizenship party, a successor to the Stalinist Communist Party, was then a city councillor. The unions waited for Fonseca’s colleagues in the Council to convene, amid the 2018 Christmas celebrations, a new session to approve Sampaprev to call for new demonstrations. Just like this week, the public employees were barbarically repressed while the project was being approved by the councillors. Amid a rebellious mood among the workers, the unions held an assembly that voted to call a strike at the beginning of the 2019 school year.

The 2019 strike, which fought for the repeal of the recently approved pension reform, once again assumed massive proportions and was ended in a rigged vote by SINPEEM and its allies, who trampled on the decision of the majority of workers who voted to continue the movement. The same scam was applied by the unions in the strike against the unsafe reopening of schools, this time in an online meeting.

After increasing the retirement contribution rates for active employees in 2018, thus eroding their salaries, the MDB government extended the attack to already retired employees, who will have 14 percent of benefits that exceed the minimum wage ripped off. The unions, for their part, repeated their sordid strategy to disorient the workers. They subjected the powerful force of more than 100,000 São Paulo public employees to the powerlessness of the “allied” PT and PSOL councillors to reverse the vote.

The failure of this strategy was demonstrated immediately, when the entire PT caucus voted in favor of one of the bills that made up Mayor Ricardo Nunes’s austerity package. The justification of the PT councillors was that the bill would be approved anyway, and they advanced its approval to discuss mitigating amendments. In reality, the Workers Party had already carried out attacks of the same character against the pensions of public employees in the states they rule, such as Ceará and Bahia.

Tired of these theatrics and recognizing the impotence of these methods to respond to the attacks of the capitalist state, many workers talked about radicalizing their struggle, with actions ranging from blocking the city streets to occupying the City Council building to prevent the vote. This mood was definitely present in Wednesday’s demonstration.

As the beginning of the session approached, tensions grew between the workers and the shock troops. Demonstrators threw eggs and other harmless objects at the police, who promptly started firing tear gas grenades. The response of the union officials, perched on the top of sound trucks, was to immediately denounce workers opposed to the union’s capitulation as “divisive” and “infiltrators” and spread lies that people with “backpacks full of bombs” had been seen among the crowd.

SINPEEM’s directors claimed that the police, ready to savagely repress the workers, were there “working” and that they were their allies, since the police would also be harmed by the austerity measures. The president of SEDIN (Union of Childhood Educators), Claudete Alves of the PT, on the other hand, declared that confronting the police would mean using “fascist methods” that would equate the workers with far-right supporters of President Bolsonaro. Fonseca then stated that “the last thing we need today is to invade the City Council building,” since “our goal is to convince the councillors” to change their vote.

These fraudulent and deeply reactionary arguments reveal the class character of the unions. Having degenerated decades ago, they have turned into empty bureaucratic husks that support a privileged bureaucracy opposed to workers’ interests. They are not only rabid opponents of socialism but of any form of class struggle. Their real role is that of policemen of the working-class movement, and therefore they identify with and respect the “work” of the shock troops.

Over 40 killed by floods in South India and Sri Lanka

Kapila Fernando

At least 41 people have been killed by floods caused by heavy rains in South India and Sri Lanka over the past week. The severe weather, which initially began in late October and worsened on November 7, was due to a low-pressure area over the Bay of Bengal.

Working people and the poor in urban and rural areas alike, who have already been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and escalating price rises in food and other essentials, are the worst affected.

In Sri Lanka, 25 people have been killed and thousands more displaced by floods and landslides. The current disaster followed devastating floods in June, which led to 17 deaths.

Men wade though floods in Puttalam Nagavillu [Source: Facebook]

According to the latest reports from the Disaster Management Center (DMC), residents of 145 Divisional Secretariats in 17 districts, with over 212,000 people from more than 60,200 families, have been impacted. About 23 homes have been destroyed and 1,229 houses partially damaged, with the displaced sent to 76 “safe locations” managed by DMC provincial offices.

In South India, 16 people were killed in Tamil Nadu, according to state disaster management. Many parts of Chennai, the state capital, are flooded, with roads under water and thousands of residents in low-lying areas displaced. The rains in the past week are among the heaviest recorded in Chennai since 2015.

Several Chennai hospitals, including the ESI hospital, ESI medical college hospital, Anna Nagar hospital and Chaithapettai hospital, were badly affected and saw the transfer of patients to other facilities. Many schools and university colleges in the state were closed and some train services suspended.

The largest downpour in Sri Lanka occurred at Point Pedro, Jaffna in the Northern Province on Wednesday, which recorded 204 millimetres. In Mannar district, in the same province, floods destroyed 13 houses and partially damaged 802 homes, impacting 3,500 families. Over 100 homes were badly damaged in the Mirigama area in the Western Province.

Flooded street in Jaffna [Source: Facebook]

Transport and the supply of essential services have been severely restricted by flooded highways and railways as well as landslides and falling trees. Working class families and the poor, struggling with the escalating cost of essentials, such as gas, fuel, sugar and rice, now confront food shortages because farmland and grocery shops are under water and fishermen throughout the country are unable to work. A lack of safe drinking water and other basic requirements heighten the danger of island-wide outbreaks of cholera, diarrhoea and dengue fever.

Half of the deaths in Sri Lanka have been caused by landslides. On Wednesday, a middle-aged woman and two girls, aged 8 and 13, were killed by a landslide at Rambukkana in Kegalle district. In Galigamuwa, in the same district, a woman was hospitalised with injuries caused by a landslide that day. Her husband and their 32-year-old son were killed in the incident. Their bodies were not found until the following afternoon.

Ramukana landslide where three people, including two children, died [Source: Facebook]

Others killed by landslides included a married couple in Rideegama Udawatte and a female health worker at Narammala in the Kurunegala district in Northwestern Province.

Sri Lanka’s National Building Research Organisation (NBRO) has issued landslide warnings for a number of divisional secretariat areas in 10 districts. Kandy, Kegalle and Kurunegala have been designated as the most dangerous areas.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse voiced his sympathy in parliament for the flood victims on Thursday, but failed to provide any details about government support measures. He appealed to the opposition political parties to participate in unspecified “relief programs” in a clear attempt to contain popular anger over the government’s failure to provide proper assistance.

On Thursday morning, DMC director general Sudantha Ranasinghe told a press conference that the situation had “ developed gradually” and that action had been taken to warn people in affected areas about the dangers. Attempting to blame the victims, Ranasinghe claimed that those who died did so because of their “failure to vacate the dangerous areas and their careless behaviour.”

Ranasinghe said that President Gotabhaya Rajapakse had directed him that anyone who failed to vacate from NBRO-categorised dangerous areas would be forcibly evacuated by the police and through court orders. He said nothing about whether the forceful evacuations were temporary or if evacuated people would be provided alternative houses.

Annual landslide deaths in Sri Lanka are increasing, because official warnings are limited to mere announcements and successive governments have failed to organise proper pre-disaster warnings and genuine evacuations, including the provision of alternative facilities for evacuated families.

The majority of those vulnerable to landslides are workers from the tea and rubber estates and poor peasants who cannot afford to buy land in safe areas or build strong houses.

Most plantation workers are still living in line rooms built during British colonial rule, many of them a century old and easily damaged by light winds and rain. In 2016, a landslide killed about 200 people from three villages at Samasara Kanda in Kegalle district.

Sri Lankan governments, moreover, have forcefully evacuated tens of thousands of poor people from small homes, including in Colombo and labelling their makeshift self-built dwellings as “unauthorised buildings.” The residents are also being blamed for causing floods in urban areas and are being forced out with the lands being handed over for big business investment projects.

Colombo governments have spent huge sums of money on infrastructure developments, such as expressways and new airports, to attract international capital, but have failed to initiate substantial programs for decent housing for workers and the poor, or adequate waterways, drainage and sanitary facilities. Contrary to government claims, a major factor in city flooding is improper urbanization, where profits take precedence over scientific planning according to human need.

While the rainfall is expected to decline over the next few days, the danger of flooding remains, with an increasing risk of landslides, because reservoirs and lakes in the central hill areas have overflowed into low-level areas. There is also the danger of a major dengue outbreak, with over 1,360 cases reported in the first 10 days of November, compared to only 770 cases for the whole of November last year.

Travel nursing demand reaches all-time high amidst nursing shortage and Delta surge should be in pandemic

Katy Kinner

Demand for travel nurses, who are temporary short-term nurses used to cover staffing demands, is at an all-time high across the US.

Registered traveling nurse Patricia Carrete, of El Paso, Texas, walks down the hallways during a night shift at a field hospital, Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021, in Cranston, R.I [Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman]

According to data from a health care staffing firm SimpliFi, there were over 30,000 available travel nurse positions nationwide in August, a 30 percent increase from the coronavirus’ January surge. Today, data from various travel nurse agencies suggests the demand is significantly higher, with estimates ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 open positions nationally this fall.

While demand for travel nurses has spiked multiple times throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of the Delta variant has put an unprecedented strain on nurse staffing levels, causing hospitals to contract out to travel nurse agencies.

The recent worsening of the nurse staffing crisis is caused by both the influx of patients falling ill with the Delta variant as well as an increase in nurses leaving the profession, fed up with the unending stress, poor pay and terrible staffing ratios that make their jobs unsafe.

According to a September survey by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, two-thirds of ICU nurses have considered leaving the profession entirely. The staffing crisis is further exacerbated by an influx of previously canceled procedures, appointments and surgeries having been rescheduled for this summer and fall.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the function and mechanism of travel nursing. Before the pandemic, travel nurses made up about 3–4 percent of overall national nursing staff, but as of August 2021, travel nurses make up about 8–10 percent of hospital nursing staff.

Traveling nursing first began in an official capacity in 1978 with the advent of the first agency, TravCorps, which was intended to meet seasonal demands in New Orleans brought by the Mardi Gras celebration. Throughout the 1980s, travel nursing was utilized as a tool to handle national nurse staffing problems. Today, travel nursing in the US has become a $10 billion dollar industry.

While the surge in popularity of travel nursing has deepened the country’s nursing shortage, it has been a boon for staffing agencies. One staffing agency, AMN Healthcare Services, reported a 41 percent increase in revenue from the same time last year, a trend to be found across the industry.

Until the COVID-19 pandemic, travel nurses filled temporary, localized staffing shortages or increased patient burdens, such as those caused by natural disasters, seasonal increases in tourist destinations or labor strikes.

In the early weeks of the pandemic, when the virus was significantly worse in localized areas such as New York, travel nursing functioned as before, with nurses shipped to the areas of most need and paid more if traveling from a farther distance. However, as the coronavirus saturated the globe and demand for travel nurses skyrocketed everywhere, hospitals were forced to sharply increase their incentives if they wanted to attract temporary workers.

The heavy utilization of travel nurses—at one time meant to be a stop-gap measure—is just another example of the irrational handling of the pandemic. The hiring of travel nurses is a band-aid amidst a devastating global nursing shortage and in some cases can be a catalyst for worsening health care, especially in rural and community hospitals. Travel nursing is also not immune to the global nursing shortage, and there is no guarantee that the increasing amount of open travel nurse positions can be filled.

Rural hospitals find themselves in a severe crisis as they are unable to compete with travel nurse salaries which are often double or quadruple the salaries found at rural hospitals.

A new survey of rural hospitals from the Chartis Group, which provided their preliminary results to Vox, reveals how deep the problem runs. The survey showed that 99 percent of rural hospitals surveyed said they were experiencing a staffing shortage, and 96 percent of them said they were having the most difficulty finding nurses. Rural hospitals were already operating on razor thin margins, with record numbers of hospitals closing in 2020 and now an additional 216 rural hospitals at high risk of closure as of Sept 2021.

In addition to hospital system funding, money for travel nurses can come from state and federal funding, where it can be canceled at the whim of politicians and the ruling class. For example, in September, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed an order that would bring in 900 travel nurses for the price of $10 million a week for an 8-week contract. When this contract ended on October 31st, the state immediately returned to previous staffing levels, spurring other nurses to leave the field or take travel nurse positions themselves, worsening the already devastating staffing crisis in Mississippi. In many cases, the same staffing agencies that filled the state-funded positions were the ones luring Mississippi nurses away from the state with high-paying contracts.

Hospitals also use travel nurse agencies to undercut the power of striking workers, forming special contracts to ensure profits continue rolling in. In the same breath, hospital CEOs tell workers there is no money to increase wages and hire more workers while signing contracts with travel nursing agencies.

Bill rates for travel nurses have increased significantly with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The agency takes a cut of the bill rate, so hospitals are paying a much higher rate than the posted nurse salary. In December 2019, average weekly travel nurse wages were about $1,600 according to data from a travel nurse recruiting company, Vivian Health. A year later, weekly pay average was more than $3,500, with rates rising during surges. Rates for ICU nurses are often highest, as they are most in demand and the job requires specific training and skills. Current ICU travel nurse rates can be as high as $6,000–8,000 per week.

Hospital systems are willing to pay these rates, as the alternative would be to raise the pay and improve benefits for their staff nurses and attract new applicants.

Although highly paid, working as a travel nurse is difficult and can be dangerous to nurses and patients alike. There are no significant scientific studies on the safety of travel nursing, but evidence suggests that travel assignments present numerous safety issues.

While it depends on the agency and hospital, nurses can be provided with little to no orientation. At the same time, nurses are often entering units with high patient to nurse ratios and a lack of experienced staff, which presents additional safety risks. Some crisis travel nurse contracts can call for nurses to work four to six 12-hour shifts a week, wearing nurses down to a point where medication errors and other mistakes are more likely to occur.

While the extra hands provided by travel nurses are appreciated in hospitals that need the help, this method of fighting the pandemic does not stop the breakdown of the health care system, and only serves the lucrative travel nurse agencies and hospital systems while worsening the working conditions for health care workers.

But there is a growing movement of health care workers who are saying, “Enough is enough.” Most notably, over 32,000 Kaiser workers have set an open-ended strike date for November 15, demanding the institution of safe staffing ratios, wage increases, as well as the prevention of the two-tier wage and benefit system Kaiser is fighting to impose.

Chinese regime rewrites history as Xi Jinping prepares for third presidential term

Peter Symonds

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) completed a four-day Central Committee meeting this week and issued a lengthy communiqué yesterday full of effusive praise for President Xi Jinping and the work of the party since he was installed as CCP general secretary in 2012.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on screen during a gala show ahead of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, June 28, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan]

The adulation of Xi is in preparation for holding the 20th CCP congress next year at which he is expected, unlike the two previous leaders, to be given a third five-year term as general secretary and therefore the country’s president. The previous congress in 2018 removed the constitutional limitation of two terms for the president and vice-president.

In announcing next year’s party congress, the communiqué declared: “The Central Committee calls upon the entire Party, the military, and all Chinese people to rally more closely around the Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core [and] to fully implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

The reference to Xi as the party’s “core” and the “guiding role” of his thought is now a mandatory official ritual. The meeting not only fully supported the work report of the party’s Political Bureau as presented by Xi but unusually adopted a “Resolution on the major achievements and historical experience of the party over the past century.”

The CCP has only ever adopted a historical resolution on two previous occasions. In the first, in 1945, Mao Zedong sought to codify his dominant position in the leadership after factional infighting during the 1930s. In the second, in 1981, Deng Xiaoping set out to bury the legacy of Mao’s misnamed Cultural Revolution from 1966 and open the door for pro-market restructuring and capitalist restoration.

The latest historical resolution puts Xi at least on a par with Mao and Deng. The summary of the resolution contained in the communiqué refers to Mao and Deng and makes mention of Xi’s immediate predecessors—Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao—but more than half of its 5,400 words are devoted to lauding the achievements of the party under Xi.

A similar emphasis was evident in party’s new “brief history” launched to coincide with the official centenary of the CCP’s founding in July 1921—roughly a third of its pages are devoted to Xi’s nine years in office. Moreover, the state-owned media subject the population to a diet of hagiographic articles promoting Xi as a man of the people with the common touch.

This extraordinary build-up and the regime’s reliance on Xi—a bland bureaucrat, who, unlike Mao and Deng, did not experience the social and political upheavals that led to the 1949 Chinese Revolution—derives not from a position of political strength but of weakness. The CCP is not only riven with internal divisions but confronts geo-political conflicts, particularly with the US, a slowing economy, and, above all, sharpening social tensions produced by the gulf between rich and poor.

In the wake of the 2018 CCP congress, the World Socialist Web Site characterised the emergence of Xi as China’s undisputed political strongman as “a form of rule that Marxists have classically designated as Bonapartist.” Facing a profound crisis on all sides, Xi has been thrown up as a larger-than-life figure to quell internal disputes as the party desperately seeks to consolidate its forces to suppress social upheaval at home and prepare for US-led aggression abroad.

This week’s communiqué, on the one hand, is compelled to acknowledge “that the external environment has grown increasingly complex and grave over the past year… while China has faced extremely arduous tasks in COVID-19 prevention and control as well as economic and social development at home.”

On the other hand, standing reality on its head, the communiqué presents Xi’s record as one of all-round triumph—“the economy has maintained good momentum, positive advances… in China’s scientific and technological self-reliance, further progress… in reform and opening up. A complete victory… in the fight against poverty as scheduled, the people’s wellbeing… further improved, social stability… maintained, steady progress… in modernizing the armed forces, and China’s major-country diplomacy has advanced on all fronts.”

In fact, under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic growth in China slowed markedly to less than 5 percent in the third quarter—well below the 8 percent benchmark regarded by the regime as necessary to maintain low levels of unemployment and therefore social stability. Adding to the economic slowdown is the danger of financial instability stemming from very high levels of debt and a mounting crisis in the property market, signalled by the repayments crisis of Evergrande and other major property developers.

On the international front, it would be difficult to identify any advances in “major-country diplomacy.” Beijing confronts the unrelenting hostility of the US, which has engaged in a military build-up throughout the region over the past decade, strengthening military alliances and engaging in military provocations in the South China and East China Seas. This year under Biden, Washington has deliberately stirred up tensions with Beijing over the explosive issue of the status of Taiwan, undermining the basis for diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Despite the veneer of unity, sharp divisions exist within the CCP leadership between those who advocate concessions and a new compromise with the US, involving a further economic opening up to foreign capital, and those pushing for accelerated military expansion and greater national economic reliance. Neither strategy is in any sense progressive—the US has already made clear that it will accept nothing short of complete submission to its interests, while engaging in an arms race leads down the path to a catastrophic war.

As he balances precariously within the party, Xi is also desperately seeking to maintain a base of social support. He continually declares the party’s fidelity to Marxism, socialism and communism, yet the CCP abandoned its basic tenets decades ago in embracing the reactionary Stalinist doctrine of “Socialism in One Country” and presides over a manifestly capitalist economy in which the market dominates every aspect of life.

The CCP justified its embrace of capitalist restoration by claiming that it would guarantee the social welfare of the population. As foreign capital flooded into the country to exploit its cheap labour, the living standards of millions were lifted. At the same time, however, an immense social gulf opened up between the bulk of the population and a tiny layer of billionaires and multi-billionaires that benefitted from capitalist restoration.

Xi’s claims to be implementing “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and to have ended absolute poverty, as well as the regime’s implementation of a scientifically-based COVID-19 elimination strategy reflect, in the final analysis, a fear of mounting social tensions. The legacy of the 1949 Chinese Revolution, a momentous social upheaval that was deformed by the CCP’s Stalinist perspective, continues to reside in the widespread popular belief that the social interests of the masses should take precedence over the private profits of a few.

Despite Xi’s boast to have eliminated narrowly defined absolute poverty—on schedule!—some 600 million Chinese cannot afford to rent, let alone buy a property, in a major city. At the same time, China has more dollar billionaires—many of whom are CCP members or in advisory bodies—than the US. The regime’s recent moves to rein in some huge Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent are aimed both at promoting, falsely, a populist egalitarian image in line with its claims to be promoting “common prosperity,” and ensuring that the super-wealthy do not challenge the CCP’s monopoly on power.

So-called Xi Jinping Thought, along with the CCP’s rewriting of history, nevertheless reflect the interests of the Chinese oligarchs. In essence, it boils down to Xi’s “Dream” for China’s “national rejuvenation,” which, he claims, was the aim of the CCP from its founding. While the CCP opposed the imperialist subjugation of China from the outset, it recognised that such a struggle necessitated the unity of Chinese workers with their class brothers and sisters internationally to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism globally. The nationalist perspective of the CCP today is the diametrical opposite—far from overthrowing the current imperialist order, it wants a seat at the imperialist table, which it currently does not have.

The internationalist and socialist program that animated the founding of the CCP is what workers and youth in China need—like their counterparts in the US and around the world—as they face the rising danger of war and a worsening economic and social outlook.

Saving Our Planet Requires Systemic and Behavioural Change

Graham Peebles

The natural environment has been poisoned, vandalized and trashed in accordance with the demands and values of the all-pervasive socio-economic system, and as long as it persists it is impossible to imagine the steps required to save the natural world being taken. Economic considerations and short term self-interest will continue to be applied and the devastation will continue.

Neo-liberalism is an extreme form of capitalism, like its founding ideology but darker, even more unjust and brutal. It sees every aspect of life – waterways, forests, the air, people, you name it – as a potential product to be exploited, profited from, drained of all value and discarded. The “free market” (does such a thing exist, anywhere?), and its power to regulate supply and demand, is a cornerstone, as is competition and private ownership of everything, including health care, education, even prisons. Whatever area, the aim is the same, maximize production limit costs and generate wealth for the business, most importantly the shareholders, no matter the impact on the environment and society.

A value system and integrated way of life has evolved consistent with the ethos of this poisonous ideology: individual ambition – personal success over group well-being; greed or excess; sensory pleasure; materiality; tribal nationalism (strengthened by competition); distrust of others who are different, and a fabrication of individuality. True individuality is impossible within the constraints of the doctrine which demands conformity, assimilates and dilutes creative expression to the mechanics and trends of the machine, and like all ideologies, moves towards crystallisation, maintains itself supreme and claims there are no viable alternatives.

Societies have been fashioned around these ideals and values, as has individual and collective behavior; behavior resulting from conditioned ways of thinking about ourselves, of other people, of the environment and the purpose of life, which, whilst openly undeclared is hinted at from the values promoted: Purpose it says is related to pleasure, sensory gratification and material success; all of which are sold as means to achieving self-happiness and self-fulfillment, without ever questioning what this “self” is.

Such self-centred happiness is derived from pleasure and the quelling of desire, which, as the architects of the system know well, is not possible, because desire is insatiable. This fact is instinctively known, but the messaging to the contrary is relentless and for many, most perhaps, the trials of daily living are so great, the separation from oneself and the natural world so acute, that relief is essential. The diverse and endlessly malleable World of Consumerism provides the means of momentary alleviation: Alcohol, drugs, (legal and illegal), sex, shopping, TV, sport, more shopping, holidays, organised religion, shopping and food. And to excess; greed, ownership of things (homes, cars, clothes etc.), and the general accumulation of stuff is insisted upon, for the simple reason that it is consumerism that feeds the monster. This very same consumerism, which is perpetuating unhappiness and fueling ill health, is also the underlying cause of the environmental emergency.

It is the irresponsible consumption of animal-based foodstuffs and manufactured goods, many of which are made in the Asiatic world (where the West has outsourced its production-based greenhouse gas emissions), that is driving the crisis.

A massive “if”…

Complacency, ignorance and selfishness have been the principal weapons of environmental destruction wielded by western governments, big business and the rich for decades. Adopted now by nations in other parts of the world, the global environmental impact has been devastating, in many cases catastrophic: destroying ecosystems, massacring animal life, poisoning the air and water, draining the soil of all goodness and disrupting natural climate patterns.

In order to stop the carnage and begin to heal the planet, a radical change is needed, not just more pledges and corporate greenwashing; fundamental change in behavior and attitudes that will usher in a kinder, more considerate way of living. The needed values and actions however are incompatible with Neo-Liberal capitalism, or any form of capitalism, and the greedy, selfish behavior that it promotes: cruel modes of living fashioned in rich nations, where the most extreme levels of consumerism occur.

It is not after all the villagers in India, China or Sub-Saharan Africa where rabid consumption is taking place, it’s the rich that are overwhelmingly responsible – the obscenely rich in particular; the private jets, numerous homes, cars, constant travel and piles and piles and piles of things. A study by Oxfam, published in 2015, found that, “Fifty percent of the world’s carbon emissions are produced by the world’s richest 10%, while the poorest half – 3.5 billion people – are responsible for a mere 10%.” In the 25-year period studied (1990-2015), global carbon dioxide emissions rose by 60%, and “the increase in emissions from the richest 1% was three times greater than the increase in emissions from the poorest half” of the world’s population, that’s around 3.6 billion people.

Wrapped in selfishness and protected by governments, it is the really rich, and the corporations (which they own) that own everything and are consuming most of everything. This overindulged, hideously wealthy collective, have benefitted enormously from the socio-economic machine and are extremely resistant to the systemic change that is needed if, and at this stage it’s a massive “if”, the natural world and all that lives within it, is to be saved.

The structural limitations (financial, political, social) and behavioral expectations of the Ideology of Greed and Exploitation, prohibit the needed changes taking place within the time frame required, hence the perpetual procrastination, excuses and delays, even as the planet burns. The inherent constraints and relentless demands – to consume, to exploit, to compete, to divide – run completely contrary to the needs of the environment, and indeed the health of humanity; sacrifice is required, it is not possible to have our materialistic consumer filled cake and eat it; sacrifice of a materialistic way of life that has resulted in divided societies of unhappy anxious people and the destruction of the natural world.

Last year, as with each year during the previous decade, global greenhouse gas emissions were the highest ever recorded; this, despite an economic quietening resulting from Covid restrictions and high levels of awareness of the environmental emergency throughout the world. As COP26 draws to an unimpressive close, governments haggle over emission targets, funding of fossil fuels and money for the global south, and a new poll reports that most people (in the 10 countries polled, including UK, US, Germany, France) say they are unwilling to alter their way of life to save our planet. We must once again ask, what will it take for humanity to wake up and change?

For the environmental emergency to be faced with the intensity needed, and healing to occur, a dramatic shift is required. A systemic shift, together with a fundamental change in attitudes, values and behavior, particularly among those living in the rich nations. A shift away from complacency and selfishness towards responsibility, cooperation and simplicity of living; united action rooted in love, as Elizabeth Wathuti (youth climate activist,) from Kenya told COP26 in her wonderful speech,“care deeply and act collectively.”

COVID-19 deaths and child infections continue to surge in Russia, Ukraine

Clara Weiss

Weeks into the latest surge of the pandemic in Eastern Europe, Russia and Ukraine continue to report record COVID-19 deaths on an almost daily basis. Both countries now have the highest daily death tolls after the United States, which is also heading into another spike in cases.

Medics wearing special suits to protect against coronavirus treat a patient with coronavirus, left, as others prepare a patent to move at an ICU at the Moscow City Clinical Hospital 52, in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

This week, Russia set several records in a row, with 1,239 people dying on Wednesday and 1,211 the day before. This brings the total number of official deaths to 250,454. While by far the highest number in Europe, this figure is widely acknowledged to be a vast undercount. The excess death toll in Russia has superseded 720,000 since the beginning of the pandemic and is expected to hit one million by the end of the year. Daily new cases continue to hover between 38,000 and 41,000 a day, more than during any previous wave.

According to Russia’s Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, as of Wednesday, 258,000 people are hospitalized for COVID-19, and 1.335 million—out of a population of 140 million—are under medical supervision because they have been infected.

The country now uses 2,925 tons of medical oxygen per day, and at least 12 regions are currently experiencing oxygen shortages. Murashko also indicated that about 53 percent of the population have now received at least one shot of the vaccine, but millions did so only over the past few weeks and are not fully vaccinated yet. Only a bit over one-third of the population have received two jabs.

The numbers for child infections are particularly disturbing. Alexander Gorelov, the head of the National Scientific Society of Infectious Disease Specialists, revealed on Thursday that 11 percent of all COVID-19 cases are among children. This means that over 130,000 children are currently infected, more than twice as many as the health minister indicated two weeks ago.

Gorelov also noted that among children, infants up to one year old, as well as children over seven years old, are getting infected most often. A medical expert earlier reported that 13.5 percent of all children who have gotten COVID-19 in Russia subsequently are suffering Long COVID symptoms, which can include severe neurological difficulties and the loss of several IQ points.

An untold number of children have died from the virus, with the Kremlin refusing to publish any statistics on child deaths. On Thursday, a newborn baby that had been infected by its mother three days after its birth tragically died in the city of Vladimir.

The high numbers of cases and deaths show that the “non-working week” from October 30 through November 7, during which schools and many businesses were shut down across the country, proved woefully inadequate to stem the spread. Despite the ongoing spike in deaths, the vast majority of regions, including the hotspots in Moscow and St. Petersburg, refused to extend the limited public health measures. Schools and businesses have fully reopened in almost all regions and only some colleges continue remote learning. Mask and vaccine mandates are imposed in a haphazard and chaotic manner with stark regional and local differences.

Conditions are thus rife for a further horrific spread, especially among children.

Deaths and child infections are also on the rise in neighboring Ukraine, which reported 24,747 new cases on Thursday. Of these, 1,550 were detected among children and 462 among health care workers. Over 800 people are now dying in the country almost every day.

The mayor of the capital Kiev, Vitaly Klichko, revealed earlier that 85 children had been hospitalized in serious condition on Tuesday, more than ever before, with some as young as two years old. Four of them are in the ICU. Tuesday also saw the highest daily deaths yet in Ukraine, 833 people. Over 72,000 have now officially died from the virus, among them at least 42 children.

Even before deaths surged to the current peak, there were gruesome reports of people burying COVID-19 victims in their backyard because cemeteries had run out of space. As in Russia, Ukrainian hospitals are reportedly experiencing oxygen shortages. Only 18 percent of the country’s 40 million citizens are vaccinated.

Governments in both countries are responding to the surge by blaming the population and declaring vaccination to be the key to resolving the crisis. The Russian government is now discussing a new law that would require proof of vaccination on public transportation, and many regions now are extending vaccine mandates. Ukraine is already requiring proof of vaccination in many areas of public life.

In a typical statement, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said that “the degree to which the health care system gets stressed now completely depends on how you [citizens] conduct yourself” and on “preventive measures” like “vaccines.”

In fact, while vaccines are an extremely important tool to combat the pandemic and protect the population—above all, from severe illness and death—even under conditions of a near complete vaccination of the population, the virus will still spread. Only a combination of mass vaccination, regular testing, contact tracing and the temporary closure of nonessential businesses, coordinated on a global level, can eliminate the virus.

Already, the effectiveness of the vaccines is undermined by the continued spread of the virus. Many countries, including in Eastern Europe, report a growing share of people who are fully vaccinated and nevertheless are hospitalized or die. In the Moscow region, 18 percent of those hospitalized have been vaccinated, and in Latvia, 40 percent of those who died on Thursday had been fully vaccinated.

The attempts by Russian and Ukrainian officials to blame the population and make the spread of the virus an issue of “individual choice” is above all aimed at covering up the political and social reasons for the unfolding disaster. Conditions for the raging pandemic and the horrific death toll were created by the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy. The destruction of the Soviet Union was the culmination of decades of betrayals of the October Revolution by the Soviet bureaucracy and the suppression of the socialist alternative to Stalinism, which was represented by the Left Opposition and the Fourth International.

Capitalist restoration and unending austerity measures since the 1990s have devastated what was once one of the best health care systems in the world. The number of hospital beds in the country has been axed, and medical equipment is now so outdated that oxygen pipes burst and ventilators have gone up in flames. The medical staff is severely overworked and underpaid. Health care workers have also been among those worst-affected by infections and deaths from COVID-19.

The looting that accompanied capitalist restoration and the open criminality of the ruling oligarchies are also a principal reason why the vast majority of the working population have no trust whatsoever in the government. Across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, distrust of the authorities is cited as the prime reason for popular hesitancy to get vaccinated. An additional factor has been the systematic promotion by the state of irrational, religious and anti-scientific conceptions.

When the pandemic hit, the oligarchs in Russia and Ukraine followed the examples of the capitalist class in the US and Germany: Having responded far too late to the emergence of the virus, since spring 2020, they have refused to impose the necessary public health measures and reopened factories. The school reopening this fall has been a major driving factor behind the latest surge. It is through these policies that conditions for mass suffering and death and the further spread and mutation of the virus were created.

Macron calls for policies of austerity, mass infection in France

Alex Lantier

Tuesday night, with the COVID-19 pandemic surging across Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron gave a prime-time address. It epitomized the murderous arrogance of the “president of the rich.” As over 3,000 people die of COVID-19 daily in Europe, and the World Health Organization (WHO) warns of 500,000 COVID-19 deaths before February, he proposed new attacks on pensions and unemployment insurance while demanding the French people “live with the virus.”

French President Emmanuel Macron. (Ludovic Marin, Pool via AP)

While Macron is so concerned with his own unpopularity that he has not yet formally declared his candidacy for re-election in April, the speech effectively marked the launch of his re-election bid. Currently dominated by Macron and neo-fascist candidates Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen, the campaign is politically toxic. Macron’s speech aimed primarily to assure the banks that he is the best candidate to guarantee their profits at the expense of workers’ lives and living standards, by ensuring no effective action is taken to halt the pandemic.

As over 10,000 people are confirmed infected and dozens die of COVID-19 every day in France, Macron began with a thoroughly false presentation of his record on the pandemic:

Our decisions were always based on scientific knowledge, the necessity of protecting ourselves, our will to act proportionately, and on the conviction that our greatest strength is individual and collective responsibility. This is what led us to decide twice on lockdowns when they were needed, in spring and autumn 2020. Then, we limited ourselves to a curfew and appropriate rules for each region at the beginning of this year, 2021, at a time when many of our neighbours were closing everything.

Macron rejected any further lockdowns or distance learning for schools, instead proposing a third dose of vaccines for over-65s, and for over-50s starting in December, to limit the death toll while the virus runs rampant. He concluded, “we know we will have to live with the virus and its variants until the world population as a whole is immunized.”

This position needlessly condemns hundreds of thousands of people across Europe and millions worldwide to die of the virus. Macron is imitating British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s infamous call: “No more fucking lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands.” As the virus circulates broadly, and hundreds of millions are unvaccinated or have fading immunity from a less-recent vaccination, this policy will lead to the emergence of more new variants and mass infections and death.

This is why Europe is on track to see 100,000 COVID-19 deaths this month, though a large part of its population is vaccinated. Germany, which has a similar proportion of its population vaccinated as France, is seeing over 45,000 cases and 150 to 250 deaths each day.

Macron’s claims that he bases his policy on science are false. From the beginning of the pandemic his government lied about the virus and trampled scientific advice underfoot. Former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn, who is now being prosecuted for her handling of the pandemic, publicly dismissed COVID-19 as a “little flu,” while privately warning Macron’s cabinet that the virus was causing mass deaths in China. The French government also initially destroyed large quantities of masks, falsely claiming they were useless to fight the virus.

Macron did not decide on the spring 2020 lockdown: it was imposed by a wave of strikes spreading from Italy across much of Europe. Companies “cannot continue operations due to pressure from workers,” French Business Movement (Medef) vice president Patrick Martin said at the time, bemoaning “an extremely brutal change in attitude by the workers.” This strict lockdown brought the number of daily cases in France down to below 500 and halted a massive wave of death at around 27,000 in France and 200,000 in Europe.

If the number of COVID-19 deaths now stands at over 1.3 million in Europe and 118,000 in France, this is because the Macron administration and other EU governments refused to implement contact tracing to halt the regrowth of cases and has ruled out ever again imposing a strict lockdown. Since then, they have focused exclusively on keeping schools and workplaces open, to ensure a continued flow of profits to the super-rich. Whatever “lockdowns” were implemented were not strict, but involved keeping non-essential workplaces open and children in school so their parents could be kept at work.

The contrast with China—where a zero-Covid policy has limited deaths to under 5,000 and caused far less damage to the livelihoods of workers and small businesses—is a staggering indictment of the Macron administration, who set priorities of profits over lives.

While millions died in Europe, the European Central Bank printed €1.25 trillion in bank bailouts and the European Union (EU) launched a €750 billion corporate and state bailout scheme, of which Macron announced that France is to receive €100 billion.

The Macron government and the European ruling class as a whole intend for these massive sums of public money to continue being funneled directly to the pockets of the financial aristocracy. Macron proposes a few sops to workers, such as responding to surging inflation with a temporary cap on natural gas prices and distributing €100 checks to workers earning less than €2,000 monthly. The real money, however, goes to the billionaires, who in Europe have added a staggering $1 trillion to their net worth during the pandemic.

The 500 wealthiest families in France now hold just under €1 trillion, up 30 percent in just one year, according to Challenges magazine. LVMH luxury conglomerate owner Bernard Arnault owns €157 billion, up 57 percent from 2020; the Hermès family, €81.5 billion, up 47 percent; L’Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, €71.4 billion, up 40 percent; the Wertheimer clan of Chanel, €67 billion, up 26 percent; François Pinault of the Kering luxury conglomerate, €41.5 billion, up 30 percent. At the same time, France’s economy contracted 8 percent due to the pandemic.

The rest of Macron’s speech was dedicated to promoting austerity measures that will further boost the wealth of his wealthy backers. He pledged to slash unemployment insurance “in the coming weeks,” by purging the rolls of large numbers of unemployed: “Job seekers who are not actively seeking work will see their payments suspended.”

Macron also said he planned to raise the official retirement age from 62 to 65 and take other steps to effectively cut pensions. Significantly, he said he would not take action immediately for fear of provoking a social explosion: “The health situation we face and that is worsening across Europe, the common wish of business and trade union federations to focus on restoring the economy, and our nation’s need for social harmony means that conditions are not right to return to this topic today.”

He also agreed not to promulgate the pension cut he passed last year in the face of mass strikes, and which has already been voted into law. It is, however, only a matter of time before Macron or his successor move to slash public pensions in France.

Macron’s speech exemplified an essential point: that the principal obstacles to ending the pandemic, and to providing decent salaries and living standards, are not technological, but political, due to the obscene and criminal self-enrichment of the ruling class. As the French ruling elite puts forward either neo-fascists or Macron and his fascistic record as the principal presidential candidates, it is ever more apparent that the elections by themselves will resolve nothing.