The Keep Africa Poor and Dependent Project

Graham Peebles

Exploited and abused for generations by white colonial powers and manipulative economic structures, there is a growing feeling of solidarity within parts of the African continent, as exemplified by the #NoMore movement. Covid vaccine inequality and environmental injustice, together with recent events in Ethiopia have galvanized people.

Ideas of African unity and rage against former imperial forces are nothing new; the chain of suppression and exploitation of African nations is long, running from slavery and colonialism (including colonial extraction) to wealth and climate inequality, racial capitalism and now Covid vaccine apartheid.

Despite the fact that many would say Africa was united long before Europe – family to tribe, tribe to nation, nation to continent, with 54 countries spread over a vast area – establishing a defined Union of Africa seems unlikely, if not impossible. Standing in solidarity, rejecting western intervention, challenging the exploitative status quo and reductive notions of development based on a defunct western model is not; indeed, if African nations are to prosper and create vibrant economies allowing its burgeoning young population to fulfil their enormous potential, they must.

Poverty amidst abundance of resources

Blessed with rich environments and vast natural resources, Sub-Saharan Africa should certainly not be poor. But for huge numbers of people across the continent grinding poverty and hardship are the norm.

According to the World Bank report Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Africa, while those living in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 a day) has fallen in the last twenty years, the number of “poor people [living on $5 a day or less]…has increased from 278 million in 1990 to over 413 million” Over 80% of those living in stifling poverty are found in rural areas where education and health care are scarce.

Natural resources dominate many African economies and, along with agriculture, are central to the livelihoods of the poor rural majority. African natural resources that are owned by multi-national mining companies, dug out of the ground by grossly underpaid local workers, are exported for production in goods that are sold in the rich developed nations. This has been the role of Sub-Saharan Africa for generations, and is fundamental to the prosperity of advanced countries: they need the raw materials and they need them to be dirt cheap.

The handful of conglomerates that dominate, collude in enabling monopoly buying structures. Contracts agreed at national levels are administered by middle-men, often corrupt, in the pockets of the corporation; the local workforce have little choice but to accept whatever ‘terms of employment’ are offered; poverty entraps and silences rebellion.

It is a crippling model of suppression and exploitation; a form of wage slavery – that holds not just the workers in its suffocating grip, but the nation and continent. It is one of the main reasons African nations that are overly dependent on raw materials, whether cotton or oil, coffee, diamonds or Cobalt, are poor. Poverty is political, the result of short-term political and economic decisions taken in The West by duplicitous corporate-controlled governments.

The other reasons that ensure Africa remains poor and dependent are historical and economic: Colonization, which persists as economic and cultural imperialism, together with a certain mind-set of superiority/inferiority. A mind-set that maintains consciously or unconsciously that some people (black, brown) are worth less than others and, as Covid vaccine inequities demonstrate, can be sacrificed. The economic structures, global institutions and economic ideologies championed by abusive self-centered governments and promoted in the business schools around the world are all designed to ensure Africa remains poor: Imperialism never ended, it just changed form.

When colonial powers withdrew from the global south they needed new ways of maintaining the enslavement of Africa and Africans. Three interrelated weapons where used to create dependency: Aid, debt and the toxic Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), the overarching umbrella of control.

In the 1980s SAP’s where introduced; the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) gave highly conditional loan packages to African nations in order to aid their ‘development’; in fact the loans/SAPs, which destroyed African economies and agriculture, were simply forms of debt entrapment. Once a country is indebted it becomes easy to control. SAPs hollowed out national economies and incorporated Africa into the global political economic system, dominated by the US. It’s economic warfare: the rich countries set up these unaccountable institutions and systems to control the poor nations.

The IMF, WB, World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), were given enormous political influence/control of African governments and economies. Funding for public services (e.g. education and health care) was slashed to repay loans; countries were forced to ‘liberalize’ their economies, and privatize, selling off key areas like utilities to western or western-backed companies.

In his book Confessions Of An Economic Hitman, John Perkins designates this process of economic terrorism as ‘Predatory Capitalism’: he describes how in an earlier period, during the 1950’s the IMF, CIA and US State Department set up a faceless bank to lend money to African countries that were producing raw materials; any national President that refused the loan was at risk of being handed over to the ‘Jackals’, as Perkins describes the CIA thugs that accompanied him.

At independence, many African countries were self-sufficient in food production and were in fact net exporters of food; SAPs and the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, changed all that. Countries were forced to withdraw State subsidies to agriculture (while farmers in Europe and the US receive huge subsidies); farmers suffered, food prices increased, food insecurity was created, dependency on aid and Western benefactors ensured and with it control by the US and her puppets, of Africa, its direction and ‘development’, or, as these paranoid selfish states would have it, its non-development.

‘Development as Westernisation

Within the narrow socio-economic paradigm that dominates global affairs, ‘development’ and perpetual economic ‘growth’ are regarded as all important. Dominated by quarterly national GDP figures, it is a reductive model designed by ‘donor’ nations to serve not the people of Africa or Asia, but western corporations and the unjust, defunct Ideology of Greed, so beloved.

The very idea of development, has become synonymous with ‘Westernization’, including the way of life, the values, behavior and attitudes of the rich, ‘successful’ nations of The West: a hollow, deeply materialistic way of life rooted in division, selfishness and conformity that has poisoned and vandalized the natural environment, created unhealthy, unequal societies of anxious suppressed human beings.

In order to develop economists maintain Africa must industrialise and manufacture – no country has ever ‘developed’ without manufacturing. All this is true, and some African nations, like Ethiopia, which has a vibrant leather industry, are beginning to do just this. But this is only true within the suffocating boundaries of the existing model of extreme capitalism based on unsustainable consumerism.

There must be another way; perhaps as we sit at this transitional time, not just for Africa, but for the world as a whole, the opportunity presents itself to re-design the socio-economic structures, reimagine civilization, and in so doing save the planet. And perhaps Africa, unburdened, energised and dynamic can play a leading role; working with the West, but rejecting the model of conformity and exploitation, the conditionality of support.

The existing development paradigm sits within the overarching political-economic system, a system of global monopolies, centralized control, massive inequality, grinding poverty, financial insecurity and stress. Not only should this model of development be rejected by Africa, and it would be were it not for the Noose of Debt, and the fact that it is presented as the one and only show in town, but the poisonous spring from which it flows – Market Fundamentalism as some call it – must also be radically dismantled.

It may appear impossible to challenge, but there are alternatives to the current unjust political-economic system. And as the environmental and social impact of the Neo-Liberal experiment becomes more apparent, as well as the economic pain of the majority, more and more people around the world, especially within Africa, where the environmental emergency has inspired powerful movements of activism, recognize the urgent need to reject this way of organizing life and are demanding change.

Western powers (dried-up imperial forces) do not want Africa and Africans to flourish and become strong, this is clear to all. Africa’s destiny must rest in the hands of Africans, in particular young Africans (the median age in Africa is around 20, Europe is a greying 43, US a complacent 39), who are increasingly standing up, organizing, particularly in regard to the environment, and calling for change.

But what should that change look like? Not a shadow of Western nations, but a creative evolving movement of development in which the people have a voice; social and environmental responsibility are championed and lasting human happiness sit at its core. Unity is essential, African unity is essential; together, not necessarily under some defined structure, but coordinated cooperation and support through the medium of the African Union and civil society.

The first and most basic step towards establishing a less brutal, more just system would be the equitable distribution of the resources of the world – the water, land and food; the machinery needed to build infrastructure; the skills, knowledge and expertise.

The world is one: We are brothers and sisters of one humanity. And if we are collectively, within Africa and the world, to establish An Alternative Way, this basic fact needs to form the foundation and provide the touchstone of new systems and modes of living. Only then will we begin to build a global society in which the values of unity, compassion, tolerance and sharing, which are found in tribal societies all over Africa, may flourish.

The Western Allied Nations Bully the World While Warning of Threats From China and Russia

Vijay Prashad

On January 21, 2022, Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach attended a talk in New Delhi, India, organized by the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. Schönbach was speaking as the chief of Germany’s navy during his visit to the institute. “What he really wants is respect,” Schönbach said, referring to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. “And my god, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost.” Furthermore, Schönbach said that in his opinion, “It is easy to even give him the respect he really demands and probably also deserves.”

The next day, on January 22, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba summoned Germany’s ambassador to Ukraine, Anka Feldhusen, to Kyiv and “expressed deep disappointment” regarding the lack of German weapons provided to Ukraine and also about Schönbach’s comments in New Delhi. Vice Admiral Schönbach released a statement soon after, saying, “I have just asked the Federal Minister of Defense [Christine Lambrecht] to release me from my duties and responsibilities as inspector of the navy with immediate effect.” Lambrecht did not wait long to accept the resignation.

Why was Vice Admiral Schönbach sacked? Because he said two things that are unacceptable in the West: first, that “the Crimean Peninsula is gone and never [coming] back” to Ukraine and, second, that Putin should be treated with respect. The Schönbach affair is a vivid illustration of the problem that confronts the West currently, where Russian behavior is routinely described as “aggression” and where the idea of giving “respect” to Russia is disparaged.

Aggression

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration began to use the word “imminent” to describe a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine toward the end of January. On January 18, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki did not use the word “imminent,” but implied it with her comment: “Our view is this is an extremely dangerous situation. We’re now at a stage where Russia could at any point launch an attack in Ukraine.” On January 25, Psaki, while referring to the possible timeline for a Russian invasion, said, “I think when we said it was imminent, it remains imminent.” Two days later, on January 27, when she was asked about her use of the word “imminent” with regard to the invasion, Psaki said, “Our assessment has not changed since that point.”

On January 17, as the idea of an “imminent” Russian “invasion” escalated in Washington, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rebuked the suggestion of “the so-called Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Three days later, on January 20, spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova denied that Russia would invade Ukraine, but said that the talk of such an invasion allowed the West to intervene militarily in Ukraine and threaten Russia.

Even a modicum of historical memory could have improved the debate about Russian military intervention in Ukraine. In the aftermath of the Georgian-Russian conflict in 2008, the European Union’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, headed by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, found that the information war in the lead-up to the conflict was inaccurate and inflammatory. Contrary to Georgian-Western statements, Tagliavini said, “[T]here was no massive Russian military invasion underway, which had to be stopped by Georgian military forces shelling Tskhinvali.” The idea of Russian “aggression” that has been mentioned in recent months, while referring to the possibility of Russia invading Ukraine, replicates the tone that preceded the conflict between Georgia and Russia, which was another dispute about old Soviet borders that should have been handled diplomatically.

Western politicians and media outlets have used the fact that 100,000 Russian troops have been stationed on Ukraine’s border as a sign of “aggression.” The number—100,000—sounds threatening, but it has been taken out of context. To invade Iraq in 1991, the United States and its allies amassed more than 700,000 troops as well as the entire ensemble of U.S. war technology located in its nearby bases and on its ships. Iraq had no allies and a military force depleted by the decade-long war of attrition against Iran. Ukraine’s army—regular and reserve—number about 500,000 troops (backed by the 1.5 million troops in NATO countries). With more than a million soldiers in uniform, Russia could have deployed many more troops at the Ukrainian border and would need to have done so for a full-scale invasion of a NATO partner country.

Respect

The word “respect” used by Vice Admiral Schönbach is key to the discussion regarding the emergence of both Russia and China as world powers. The conflict is not merely about Ukraine, just as the conflict in the South China Sea is not merely about Taiwan. The real conflict is about whether the West will allow both Russia and China to define policies that extend beyond their borders.

Russia, for instance, was not seen as a threat or as aggressive when it was in a less powerful position in comparison to the West after the collapse of the USSR. During the tenure of Russian President Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999), the Russian government encouraged the looting of the country by oligarchs—many of whom now reside in the West—and defined its own foreign policy based on the objectives of the United States. In 1994, “Russia became the first country to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace,” and that same year, Russia began a three-year process of joining the Group of Seven, which in 1997 expanded into the Group of Eight. Putin became president of Russia in 2000, inheriting a vastly depleted country, and promised to build it up so that Russia could realize its full potential.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Western credit markets in 2007-2008, Putin began to speak about the new buoyancy in Russia. In 2015, I met a Russian diplomat in Beirut, who explained to me that Russia worried that various Western-backed maneuvers threatened Russia’s access to its two warm-water ports—in Sevastopol, Crimea, and in Tartus, Syria; it was in reaction to these provocations, he said, that Russia acted in both Crimea (2014) and Syria (2015).

The United States made it clear during the administration of President Barack Obama that both Russia and China must stay within their borders and know their place in the world order. An aggressive policy of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and of the creation of the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) drew Russia and China into a security alliance that has only strengthened over time. Both Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping recently agreed that NATO’s expansion eastward and Taiwan’s independence were not acceptable to them. China and Russia see the West’s actions in both Eastern Europe and Taiwan as provocations by the West against the ambitions of these Eurasian powers.

That same Russian diplomat to whom I spoke in Beirut in 2015 said something to me that remains pertinent: “When the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq, none of the Western press called it ‘aggression.’”

Germany’s federal and state governments decide to scrap pandemic measures

Gregor Link

Wednesday’s conference of Germany’s federal and state governments has laid the basis for a devastating intensification of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the high point to date of the Omicron wave, the representatives of the “traffic light” federal coalition government and the state minister presidents have agreed to eliminate all remaining measures apart from mask mandates in certain public places.

An intubated COVID-19 patient gets treatment at the intensive care unit at the Westerstede Clinical Center, a military-civilian hospital in Westerstede, northwest Germany, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

The agreement stipulates that by the official start of spring, March 20, 2022, all “substantial protective measures” are to be lifted. The protective measures that have been in place up to now—such as access restrictions to retail stores and restaurants, the obligation in some areas for employees to work from home, and the requirement that people in workplaces either be vaccinated, recently recovered from an infection or in possession of a recent negative test—are to expire as planned and will not be extended any further.

As a first step, all private contact restrictions for vaccinated and recovered people will be lifted as of Friday. In retail, the so-called 2G rule, which allows only people who are vaccinated or recently recovered to enter many stores, will be abolished nationwide, and the requirement to wear an FFP2 (N95) mask will be removed.

From March 4, 2022, the access restrictions to restaurants and hotels will be relaxed to allow access to people with a current negative test, as well as those who are vaccinated or recently recovered. Discos and clubs will open to all guests with a same-day test or booster vaccination. Where the 2G or 2GPlus rule applies, requiring vaccinated or recovered persons to present in addition a current negative test in order to gain access, the “maximum capacity” rules will be adjusted for “major national events,” including football matches. Up to 6,000 people will be allowed indoors, and up to 25,000 outdoors.

The federal government’s Council of Experts, which includes scientists and other government advisers, sanctioned the “relaxation” of the measures, but warned in a statement that there will be a greater need for “intensive care for people aged over 60 years,” and increased risk of the “spreading of new virus variants.” It added that the course of the pandemic “cannot be precisely predicted.”

Due to the “probably even more infectious” Omicron sub-variant BA.2, a “longer wave or a rebound of infections compared to the estimates for BA.1” must be anticipated, the paper noted. “As part of any reopening steps,” it continued, “unvaccinated and older people at risk of a severe infection will be increasingly involved in the infection process.” Additional major “waves of infection” can be expected by autumn at the latest.

The days leading up to the most recent federal-state conference were marked by a reactionary, anti-scientific campaign. This culminated in Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (Social Democrats-SPD) removing decisions on the length of the so-called recovered status from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s infectious disease agency.

A person’s “recovered status” refers to the period of time during which he or she is considered, for the purposes of public health restrictions, to have immunity from the virus. In the future, “determinations on the status of vaccinated and recovered” individuals should no longer be delegated to the scientific institutes of the federal government, he declared.

Following the latest scientific findings, the RKI had reduced the immunity period after an infection from six months to three months without taking into account the interests of big business. Free Democratic (FDP) politicians and right-wing media commentators demanded that RKI head Lothar Wieler be “disempowered.” A report by the scientific service of the federal parliament even expressed “doubts” that the actions of the RKI met “constitutional standards.”

On the talk show “Anne Will” on Sunday, Lauterbach summed up the capitalist programme of endless pandemic. Looking ahead to “completely different variants in autumn,” it was, he explained, “important to recognise that things will no longer be the same as before COVID-19.”

He continued: “The world has gotten a little worse. We have a virus that is more contagious and dangerous than the flu. The idea that this is now becoming increasingly harmless and will soon become a cold is a very dangerous legend. That may be the case in 30 or 40 years, but not for the next 10 years.”

This is what the man believes who, as minister of health, bears direct responsibility for the scrapping of protective measures!

Lauterbach is risking the deaths of hundreds of thousands because the capitalists refuse even temporarily to put aside their selfish profit interests. The example of China shows that the virus can still be stopped through a scientific elimination strategy, including coordinated lockdowns and public investments to fight the pandemic. If the same policy had been followed in China as in Germany, well over 2 million inhabitants would have died, compared to the 4,636 deaths China has recorded.

In Germany, the policy of allowing everything that does not result in the complete and immediate collapse of the health system has caused immeasurable misery. In just the three weeks since the last “Coronavirus Summit,” 3,476 people have officially died of COVID-19. Since November 9, there has only been a single day when fewer than 140 people died from the virus. The official death toll of 120,227 people since the pandemic began is roughly the equivalent of completely wiping out a mid-sized city like Wolfsburg or Göttingen.

Since the number of deaths fell in January, partly due to booster vaccinations, this trend has reversed in recent days and is now threatening to parallel the explosion of infections. At 11.73 per 100,000 inhabitants, the rate of hospital admissions is at the RKI’s highest warning level and has again increased massively in the oldest and youngest age groups (+1.75 and +0.35, respectively, compared to the previous week).

According to official figures, some 320 people have on average died per day in France, with a maximum of more than 650 deaths. If one adjusts the number of deaths in France, Israel or Denmark, which are a few days or weeks ahead of developments in Germany, for population size, one can assume that Germany will soon record at least 500 deaths per day, despite vaccinations.

Mass death on this scale, which, according to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), is projected in the pandemic plans of the Ministry of Health, would be comparable to the worst days of the so-called Delta wave last winter.

The epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch and his team at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health presented new figures on excess mortality in a preprint study, according to which some 135,000 adults died of COVID-19 in the US between June and early December 2021 because they were not vaccinated. Of the nearly 1,000 preventable deaths every day, one in six was under the age of 50.

Turning to the impact of the Omicron variant, the FAZ recalled that in just under two months, half a million people, most of whom were not vaccinated, have died worldwide.

An article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung makes it clear that talk of the Omicron variant being “mild” is specious. “Omicron has a supposed mild effect because the vaccinations protect against severe symptoms so well,” Oliver Keppler, head of virology at Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University, told the newspaper.

Markus Wörnle, who heads the central emergency room at Munich University Hospital downtown, added, “The patients who have to be hospitalized because of a COVID infection are usually older patients with previous illnesses, or patients with no or insufficient vaccination protection.”

The “pathogen, which is deadly for many people” is still associated with severe pneumonia and causes Long COVID, the consequences of which “cannot yet be seriously quantified,” according to Keppler. The virologist added: “The label ‘mild’ is disastrous.”

According to British data, even among vaccinated infected people, the hospitalization rate is 1.9 percent. Two million Germans over the age of 60 are still unvaccinated.

But although the science editors of the major newspapers—as well as the federal and state governments—are well informed of the facts of the Omicron catastrophe, large sections of the media support the policy of mass infection and even fuel it. A particularly repulsive role in this campaign is played by the daily newspaper Die Welt, which now publishes vicious articles on a daily basis denouncing students, parents and teachers who oppose the policy of mass infection.

A recent Die Welt article titled “The Lockdown Advocate Conspiracy Theory” angrily notes that “a movement is growing on the pro-lockdown side that … accuses the open school state and its actors of seriously planned mass assault.”

According to the author, Verena Weidenbach, a growing part of the “No COVID faction” criticizes the “social Darwinist ‘planned mass infection’ of ‘defenseless children,’” views “the state’s alleged ‘mass infection policy’ as an expression of neoliberal-capitalist selection logic,” and associates it with “eugenics programs” and the “Nazis’ murder of the disabled.”

This perspective, the author warns, is part of “worrying processes of alienation and radicalization” that are associated with “considerable potential for the mobilisation of fundamental opposition.”

UK cost of living crisis hits millions as inflation reaches new record

Barry Mason

UK workers are suffering a worsening onslaught on living conditions as inflation surges to record levels. The Consumer Price Index measure of inflation hit 5.5 percent in January, a rise from 5.4 percent in December which was already the highest rate in nearly 30 years.

A shopper enters a supermarket in London, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021 during England’s third national lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

A more accurate inflation measure, the Retail Prices Index (RPI), which factors in housing cost, measured 7.8 percent in the year to January, up from 7.5 percent in December.

Many staples are now unaffordable for millions of people. An analysis by the i news web site found: “In January 2021, a 500g tub of margarine cost £1.27 on average, but by January 2022 that price had leapt 57 pence to £1.84, a 45 percent increase. While shoppers could expect to pay £1.89 for a kilo of apples last January, the price shot up by nearly 27.5 percent, to £2.41, in the next 12 months. A kilo of pears, which previously cost £1.91 would have set shoppers back £2.36 last month, a rise of nearly a quarter. Instant coffee became dearer too, costing £3.06 per 100g last month compared to £2.77 a year ago – a 10.5 percent increase. The cost of tomatoes also rose 10.5 percent, from £2.19 per kilo to £2.42.”

According to Tesco supermarket chairman John Allan, the worst is “yet to come”. Predicting that food prices will rise by five percent in the spring, he said at the start of February that “price increases at the supermarket could be five times greater over the coming months than they had been in the last quarter.”

Due to a surge in ingredients, energy and transport costs, the Heineken brewer said that beer prices could shoot up by 15 percent.

Deepening the cost-of-living crisis, average petrol and diesel prices are both at record levels. Petrol passed 148p for the first time this week, breaking the previous record (147.72) set in November. Diesel reached a new high of 151.57p per litre. The businesses hit will pass on the cost to consumers.

With public transport costs prohibitive for millions, even access to a second-hand car is becoming impossible. Second-hand car prices have increased by 30 percent, due to factors including a shortage of new car availability in the last two years. Henry Smith, strategy manager for car buying website Desperate Seller, told the Times, “This worsening situation could result in vehicles being out of reach for low-income households, the people who often rely the most on having a reliable car.”

On February 3 the Conservative government’s energy watchdog body, Ofgem, announced increases on the price caps power companies can set for consumers. Ofgem stated, “The energy price cap will increase from 1 April for approximately 22 million customers. Those on default tariffs paying by direct debit will see an increase of £693 from £1,277 to £1,971 per year (difference due to rounding). Prepayment customers will see an increase of £708 from £1,309 to £2,017.”

The £1,277 figure which had been set in October last year was a £139 increase on the previous figure. Energy experts predict it could rise above the £1,971 figure in Ofgem’s August 2022 revaluation.

The energy price hikes will impact most on vulnerable groups such as poor pensioners and the disabled. The approximate 4.5 million people on pre-payment meters, who are often already struggling financially will be especially hard hit.

The government, citing its fraudulent commitment to “levelling up” incomes, was forced to announce limited mitigations to the extreme energy price hike.

Johnson’s multi-millionaire Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced all UK households would get a £200 rebate on their energy bills in October. However, this would have to be paid back at the rate of £40 a year over five years beginning in 2023. In addition, council taxpayers in England who live in properties rated A to D for council tax charges, the lowest value properties, would receive a £150 rebate in April this year. This meagre amount would not have to be paid back but its impact will be offset by rising costs.

The Resolution Foundation reported that even with the government’s measures, the number of families living in fuel stress would still double from 2.5 million families to five million.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition noted, “this will plunge an additional 1.1m homes into fuel poverty, taking the total now in fuel poverty to 22% of all households in England (c.12.5m people). The final total may be higher and closer to 26% of all households, due to the ‘heat now, pay later’ nature of Government support.”

Disability group Scope tweeted, “We are braced for the biggest fall in living standards in decades, and disabled families will be among the hardest hit.”

The Food Foundation affordable and healthy food campaign group spells out the dire impact. Their February 8 press release noted that a shocking one million adults, 3.6 percent of the population, had gone without food one whole day over the last month as they didn’t have access to or could not afford food. It warned of “a continued rise in food insecurity across the UK. Compared with July 2021 the figure has risen from 7.3 percent of UK households to 8.8 percent (4.7 million adults in the past month.”

Vulnerable groups were particularly at risk of food insecurity, the Food Foundation noted, with disabled people and those on the Universal Credit benefit five more times likely to have been food insecure over the past six months.

Highlighting the “eat or heat” dilemma the organisation found, “Sixty-two percent of households have experienced higher energy bills; and 16 percent of UK households have had to cut back on the quality or quantity of food to afford other essentials (e.g., energy bills). Meanwhile 59 percent of households are worried that increased energy prices will mean they have less money to afford enough food for themselves/their family.”

Children are increasingly facing food insecurity as “two million children… live in households that do not have access to a healthy and affordable diet… (putting) them at high risk of suffering from diet related diseases, poor child growth and shorter lives.”

Disability Rights UK CEO Kamran Mallick said, “With rising energy bills, increasing inflation and benefits pegged at a horrendously low level, millions of Disabled people are living in conditions comparable to the nineteenth century work house.”

Even the Financial Times article felt obliged to comment, “The stark indicators of hunger come before a once-in-a-generation hit to living standards, as people in the UK brace for a triple whammy of tax rises, increasing energy costs and consumer price inflation.”

In April, National Insurance contributions will increase by 10 percent, leaving a worker on £30,000 a year around £5-a-week worse off. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) calculated that the rise could trigger a 30 percent increase in households classed as destitute, taking the number to a million. Being destitute is defined as being unable to afford to buy essentials to eat, keep warm and keep clean.

Workers are not seeing their wages rise to compensate. A Trades Union Congress (TUC) report published February 7 noted that in a poll two thirds of workers expected to see their pay fail to keep up with inflation over the coming year. The TUC said, “Headline pay growth—before prices are taken into account—slowed to 3.8% in November from 4.2% in October.” It added, “And in spite of its pivotal role in the pandemic economy public sector workers are seeing the biggest reductions to pay growth.”

The trade unions are the main force in ensuring that workers’ wages are held down. One dispute after another, they have acted on behalf of the corporations, public sector management and the government to suppress the class struggle and impose poverty-level, below-inflation pay deals.

Australia: Svitzer steps up pressure on workers to accept cuts to wages and conditions

Terry Cook

Svitzer, Australia’s largest tugboat operator, is stepping up its campaign of intimidation to force workers to accept a new enterprise agreement (EA) that would slash wages and conditions.

Tugboats Svitzer Eagle (left) and Svitzer Falcon (right) near the entrance to the inner harbour of Fremantle Harbour, Western Australia, 2015 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The company, part of the Danish-owned Maersk international shipping group, has made clear it is determined to drive through regressive changes across its Australian operations, which involve more than 100 tugs.

Svitzer’s proposed EA covers 540 workers who are members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), the Australia Maritime Officers Union (AMOU) and the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers (AIMPE).

During negotiations that have dragged on through 50 meetings since the old EA expired in 2019, the company has maintained its aggressive position. Last month, even as he claimed Svitzer was “bargaining in good faith,” managing director Nicolaj Noes declared he was “not prepared to agree to a new EA that replicates legacy terms which had been agreed more than 22 years ago, in a completely different market.” Noes added: “We are looking to secure an EA which reflects the current market and meets our customers’ demands and expectations.”

In other words, what little remains of working conditions fought for and won by previous generations must be dismantled to ensure that the lives of employees are ever more tightly bound to the company’s demand for increased profits.

Svitzer management and the maritime unions have provided little detail about the 30 changes being demanded by the company, which include slashing full-day minimum shift lengths for casuals, abolishing fixed crewing levels and an end to any say from the unions in relation to hiring.

The proposed agreement would deliver pay increases of just 1.5 percent per annum this year and next. This paltry pay “rise” is well below the current inflation rate of 3.5 percent and far short of the 4.5 percent rise over the last 12 months to the cost of non-discretionary goods and services such as food, fuel, housing and health care. Moreover, as the current EA expired in 2019, workers did not receive a pay rise in 2020 or 2021.

After workers voted down Svitzer’s proposed EA by a massive 92 percent, the company applied last month to the Fair Work Commission (FWC), Australia’s pro-business industrial tribunal, to terminate the existing EA. If Svitzer’s FWC application is granted, the workers would be pushed onto the minimum industrial award, with far lower wages and greatly diminished working conditions.

Svitzer is ruthlessly pursuing this cost-cutting agenda although its parent company saw a 55 percent increase in revenue to $US61.8 billion in 2021. Maersk’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation tripled to $US24 billion and its free cash flow stood at a massive $US16.5 billion.

In 2020, Svitzer made 18 tugboat operators at its Geelong base redundant, claiming it was preparing to wind up operations at the Victorian port. In fact, the sacked employees were replaced with fly-in-fly-out labour hire workers.

The company has only been able to step up its intimidation because the maritime unions, with the MUA in the lead, have systematically worked to contain and isolate the dispute. The workers, increasingly frustrated with the interminable negotiations, voted overwhelmingly last year for a campaign of industrial action to oppose Svitzer’s demands and to defend their wages and conditions.

The unions, however, have consciously worked to undermine any genuine struggle, restricting all opposition to limited and sporadic stoppages and ineffectual work bans to ensure minimal disruption to Svitzer’s operations. The aim has been to “let off steam” and gain time for the unions to continue working behind the scenes to broker an outcome in line with the company’s demands, but which could be palmed off to workers as the best outcome possible.

Responding to Svitzer’s move to terminate the current EA, MUA assistant national secretary Jamie Newlyn complained that the company was abandoning “the flexibility and productivity that the enterprise agreement provides” and was “making it all but impossible for round-the-clock operations at Svitzer tugs to continue.”

As in recent MUA sell-outs at Qube and Victoria International Container Terminal, the union’s overriding concern in the Svitzer dispute is not to defend the jobs and conditions of its members, but to maintain its position as an industrial police force for management.

Putting further pressure on the Svitzer workers, the MUA this month “brokered peace” with Patrick Terminals in a two-year dispute in which limited industrial action was repeatedly shut down by the union. The recent union-management “in-principle” agreement includes wage rises far short of the rapidly increasing cost of living, grants the company complete control over hiring and firing, and delivers it “much-needed flexibilities.”

Like Svitzer, Patrick had applied to the FWC to terminate the previous agreement covering workers. The MUA’s deal with Patrick demonstrates the union’s readiness to utilise the threat of minimum award conditions to beat down workers’ resistance and impose a sell-out.

The unions have blocked any unified action between the Svitzer workers and their counterparts at Patrick or at tugboat operator Smit Lamnalco, which serves Gladstone, the largest multi-commodity port in the state of Queensland. In December, that company also applied to the FWC to terminate its EA covering marine engineers and members of the AMOU and AIMPE.

Last week, the AMOU, which covers master drivers on Svitzer’s tugs, informed the company it was calling a series of 48-hour work stoppages staggered over the ports in Brisbane, Sydney, Fremantle and Newcastle between February 17 and 25.

Far from the beginning of a counter-offensive by the unions against Svitzer’s increasing attacks, the purpose of these stoppages is to contain and hose down the growing anger among workers to allow the unions to continue their behind-the-scenes negotiations with the company.

Announcing the stoppages, AMOU executive officer Mark Davis proclaimed tugboat masters to be “a responsible group of workers with little previous intention to take strike action,” but said “the behaviour of the company has so exasperated them that they have had to withdraw their labour.” Even as it announced the stoppages, the union assured Svitzer there would be exemptions, including for “emergencies, defence or threat to life and property.”

The Svitzer workers face a concerted attack by the company, which has the complete support of the Australian political establishment. The Liberal-National federal government has made clear in recent months it is completely on board with the demands of business to restructure working conditions across the waterfront and the whole logistics sector.

Asked in December whether the government would intervene to prevent strikes at Patrick Terminals, Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared: “I can assure you that the government will take action, if needed, to protect the Australian economy from serious harm.”

While the MUA denounced Morrison’s statement, their actual response was to ensure no industrial action was taken at Patrick in the lucrative pre-Christmas period.

The company is also assured of Labor’s backing. The FWC, with its extensive powers to terminate agreements and industrial action, together with the draconian industrial laws it enforces, were introduced by previous Labor governments with the full support of the trade unions.

The deepening assault on jobs and conditions across the ports, and the working class more broadly, is only possible because the unions have, for decades, suppressed any genuine opposition among workers. Amid growing anger over the “let it rip” pandemic policies, and the accompanying assault on wages and conditions, the unions are doing everything they can to prevent a breakout of the class struggle and any independent political action by workers.

Tugboat workers who, unlike Svitzer executives, are essential to port operations are in a powerful position to wage a genuine fight for improved wages and conditions and to win the support of major sections of the working class.

Shelling in Donbass brings Europe to brink of war

Clara Weiss

On Thursday, heavy artillery shelling, including of residential areas, was reported in East Ukraine’s Donbass region. It is the most significant military escalation of the conflict between the US-funded Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists since at least last spring. News of the bombardment came just hours after an “invasion” of Ukraine by Russia, which the US claimed was supposed to take place on February 16, failed to materialize. The Kremlin has always denied that it had any such plans.

Members of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces, volunteer military units of the Armed Forces, train in a city park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Jan. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

The Kremlin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said that the situation in Donbass could “at any moment” escalate “into a new eruption of war in the immediate vicinity of our borders.”

In one village in territory controlled by the Luhansk People’s Republic, a kindergarten and a school were struck. The separatists blamed the Ukrainian military, while Kiev implicated the separatists.

Without providing any evidence, UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was a “false-flag operation” by Russia designed to “discredit” the Ukrainians. For weeks, US and UK media and intelligence agencies have issued unsubstantiated allegations of a planned “false flag operation” by Russia. The allegations have been so absurd that recently even an AP reporter challenged a state department spokesman over them.

The current escalation in the Donbass can only be understood against the background of US efforts to provoke a war with Russia. Following an extraordinarily belligerent speech by US president Joe Biden on Tuesday, US and NATO officials insisted that the threat of a Russian invasion remains imminent even as Russia reportedly began withdrawing some of its troops.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken alleged on Thursday that there has been no Russian troop withdrawal and that Russian troops “are preparing to launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days.” Washington-based journal Politico has now declared yet another supposed date for a Russian invasion—February 20.

Blinken announced that he will attend the Munich Security Conference, which is set to begin tomorrow in Germany, along with US Vice President Kamala Harris. At the same time, NATO’s general secretary Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance is preparing a further build-up its forces along Russia’s border. This kind of war-time mobilization against a “Russian threat”, he said, would now have to be accepted as “the new normal in Europe.”

Shortly after news of the shelling on Thursday broke, Moscow submitted its response to the US’ rejection of its December demands for security guarantees. The Kremlin reiterated that it wants a guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted to NATO, that NATO will return to its 1997 borders, and that NATO will not station nuclear missiles near the Russian border and will withdraw ones currently there. The Kremlin insisted again that it is not preparing any invasion of Ukraine. Noting that the US had failed to take into account any of its security demands, the Kremlin said that it would not budge and might be “forced to respond, including through the realization of measures of a military-technical character.”

For reasons that have not been made public, Moscow expelled the US’ deputy ambassador to Russia on Thursday.

In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky tacks between militarist tub-thumping and calls for calm. As the shelling in the Donbass escalated this week, he made a trip to the front to praise Ukrainian troops. In an interview with RBC Ukraina, he then effectively stated that his government would no longer accept the Minsk accords of 2015. While he said that Kiev would work within the Normandy format—four-way negotiations involving Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine—he insisted a new major international agreement would have to be signed.

This agreement, Zelensky demanded, would have to provide Ukraine with “security guarantees” tantamount to those that NATO members receive since the process of Ukraine's NATO accession is dragging on. At the same time, Zelensky again denounced the war hysteria in the Western media.

In recent remarks, David Arakhmia, head of Ukraine’s Servant of the People party, has said that this “hysteria is now costing the country $2-3 billion every month.” He described the “fake” information spread by CNN, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal as a form of “hybrid warfare” that was “worse” than the work of top Russian state propagandists. Beyond the economic concerns that drive these statements, there are no doubt fears in sections of the Ukrainian oligarchy that their country will be turned into another “Afghan trap” for Russia, as has repeatedly been threatened by US officials. In such a scenario, they could well find themselves hung out to dry.

Ukraine is becoming increasingly destabilized by the war drive against Russia. It is far from clear whether Zelensky is in control of the situation in the country. Over the past weeks, there have been many indications that preparations for the overthrow of his government and his replacement with someone more immediately compliant to the US are underway.

Adding another element of enormous instability to the situation is the fact that Ukraine’s fascists have been emboldened by the escalation of the conflict with Russia and the shameless Western media campaign promoting them as fighters for “democracy” and “freedom.” These forces, having been de facto integrated into the state and military apparatus, are heavily armed. Since November, Dmitry Yarosh, who led the fascist Right Sector during the 2014 coup and is still running his own far-right paramilitary unit, has been an adviser to the head of Ukraine's general staff, Valery Zaluzhny.

Starting in early 2021, “retaking” Crimea and the Donbass—a long-standing demand of the far-right—was made a part of Ukraine’s official military strategy. Spelling out what is no doubt being discussed behind closed doors, Oleh Tyahnybok, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and head of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party, declared earlier this month that Russia had to be “dismembered” and split into two “20 national states” in order for Crimea to be “returned” to Ukraine. Russian President Putin has repeatedly invoked this very scenario—that is, a repetition on a grander scale of the carve-up of Yugoslavia—as a principal concern.

After three decades of imperialist encirclement—a reality for which they and their Stalinist predecessors are directly responsible--substantial sections of the Russian ruling class increasingly view a war as inevitable.

Sergei Karaganov, the honorary chairman of Russia’s Council of Foreign and Defense Policy, said in a recent interview, “[T]he dilemma we face is quite simple. If we remain in the current system (i.e., looking blankly at NATO's expansion into Ukraine), war is inevitable. …In that sense, our concern is how to find a way to achieve a stable and equitable security system in Europe and thus avoid a military conflict. We want to change the system without a big war. Nevertheless, I don't rule out that a small war or a series of local wars could still happen. There is simply a high probability that our Western ‘partners,’ due to their forgetfulness of history or their malicious stupidity—which they have as, alas, has been demonstrated over the past decades—will try to prevent the ‘soft’ scenario, [and] will try to provoke us.

“So the situation is really acute. And [because] it is so acute that we must go all the way, because if we do not, the system will collapse anyway. And then a big war will be inevitable, and it may start on conditions beyond our control. The choice, therefore, is clear.”

Explaining why the Kremlin advanced its demands for security guarantees in December, Karaganov went on to state that Russia now had better “trump cards” for negotiating with the US than ever before. While Karaganov did not go into any details, the Kremlin has been seeking to play on tensions between the imperialist powers, especially Germany and the US, and also hopes to exploit fears of a Russo-Sino alliance as US imperialism increasingly focuses on preparing for war with China.

Whatever the geopolitical and domestic calculations of either Washington or the Kremlin, the dynamics unleashed by the crisis of capitalism and US imperialism’s military rampage over the past decades inexorably lead toward a catastrophic war.