UK Prime Minster Boris Johnson stakes his claim as Europe’s top warmonger

Robert Stevens

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev Saturday in an unannounced visit that was weeks in planning.

For Johnson, representing NATO powers funneling staggering amounts of lethal weaponry to Ukraine, the visit was a sickening photo op designed to present him as Europe’s most fervent warmonger.

A compliant media led their front pages with celebrations of the visit. The Sunday Times ran a photo of Johnson and Zelensky with a menacing armed guard behind them below a headline reading, “BROTHERS IN ARMS”.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine. 09/04/2022. Picture supplied by the Ukrainian government. (Number 10/Flckr)

Johnson also calculated that the trip into a war zone would divert attention from a government mired in crisis, which has overseen over 190,000 COVID deaths and is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police over parties held during pandemic lockdowns. Millions of workers are facing a cost-of-living crisis and what the governor of the Bank and England described as a “historic shock” to their incomes. Even as Johnson left for Kiev, Chancellor Rishi Sunak faced political oblivion as a result of the non-domiciliary, non-UK-taxpaying, status of his wife, who is from one of India’s richest families.

How desperate Johnson was to get to Kiev was detailed in the Mail on Sunday which noted, “Last month, it was reported that the Prime Minister had asked officials to examine the practicality and value of the trip to the Ukrainian capital for talks with his Ukrainian counterpart… At the time, security officials were said to be ‘having kittens’ at the prospect of Mr Johnson travelling to a war zone. But a Whitehall source said the Prime Minister ‘wants to go’ if it can be made to work.”

No matter what, the dangerous trip went ahead. It followed Friday’s visit by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, alongside EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. The Ukrainian defence ministry tweeted, “We welcome Boris Johnson in Kyiv, the first G7 leader to arrive in Ukraine since the beginning of the large-scale war. We are strengthening our union of democracies. Be brave, like Boris. Be brave, like Ukraine.”

Johnson set the militarist agenda for his visit the previous day with a Downing Street press conference alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The UK prime minister made another dig at Germany’s reliance on Russian energy supplies, stating, “We cannot transform our respective energy systems overnight, but we also know that Putin’s war will not end overnight. That’s why Britain and Germany have joined dozens of allies to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons. Last week, the UK convened a donor conference which raised weapons and equipment for Ukraine worth over £1.5 billion—or 2.5 million items of military kit.”

Johnson’s comments confirm that a proxy war is being waged by NATO against Russia, with the military hardware supplied by the western powers and Ukrainian troops doing the fighting. Announcing the pouring in of yet more weapons, he said, “The UK will send a further £100 million worth of high-grade military equipment to Ukraine’s armed forces, including more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, which fly at three times the speed of sound, another 800 anti-tank missiles, and precision munitions, capable of lingering in the sky until directed to their target.

“We will also send more helmets, night vision and body armour, on top of the 200,000 pieces of non-lethal military equipment the UK has already dispatched.”

In Ukraine, Johnson said of Moscow’s decision to withdraw from Kiev’s boundaries that Putin “has suffered a defeat but his retreat is tactical and he is going to intensify the pressure now in Donbas and in the east.”

Britain would more than double its loan guarantee to Ukraine through the World Bank to $1bn, subject to parliamentary approval, Johnson pledged. Tariffs would be liberalised on most Ukrainian exports to the UK and customs checks eased.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence tweeted of a short walkabout by Zelensky and Johnson, “This is what democracy looks like.”

What a sham! Zelensky’s government, elected in 2019, has developed the closest ties with far-right shock troops such as the Right Sector and the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party. These forces led the 2014 US-backed coup which deposed the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Today Zelensky is the poster boy of fascist forces, including the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion which played a critical role in the coup.

On Thursday, just two days before Johnson’s Kiev visit, Zelensky addressed the Greek parliament in a video message. Finishing his speech, Zelensky added, “I am confident that with the help of Greece we will win. Do not listen to me alone. Listen to two fighters.”

One of the soldiers who then spoke was from the Azov Battalion. He addressed the parliament of a country occupied by Hitler’s fascist armies, which killed 59,000 Greek Jews (83 percent of the total Jewish population, one of the highest percentages in Europe). The fascist declared, “I was born in Mariupol, and I take part in the defence of the city from the Russian Nazis.”

The crucial role played by armed fascists under Zelensky has been all but expunged from Britain’s media, with the incident in Greece reported nowhere. Rather, Johnson’s visit triggered yet more hysterical demands that the war against Russia must be stepped up. The Observer, the Sunday sister paper of the pro-war Guardian, editorialised, “In the face of Vladimir Putin’s cruelty, Nato must consider taking much tougher options.”

It complains, “Sanctions on Russia and arms for Ukraine are celebrated by western governments as an unprecedented, unifying success. They tell each other what a good job they’re doing. But it’s not working.”

The “continued, shaming, ineffectual western shouting from the sidelines is unacceptable. The sooner [US President] Biden and the rest stop wringing their hands and start calling the shots the better.”

There were “hard choices western leaders must urgently consider. First, direct intervention to create a safe haven in western Ukraine, where displaced people may congregate instead of fleeing abroad. Inform Moscow in advance of its location and boundaries. Be clear it will be protected by Nato air power and ground forces invited in by Kyiv.” Other options included NATO strikes on Russian artillery.

This diatribe for upscaled war, backed by legions of Nato’s warplanes, concluded, “If the west is serious about stopping the war[!], these and similarly robust actions may be the only way left.”

Former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore could disagree with none of this. Writing Friday in the Conservative government’s house newspaper, he declared that among the European powers only the UK was prepared to defeat Moscow militarily. “In the case of France and Germany, the feeling is not so much that the country should triumph, but that the killing must stop… Jaw-jaw not war-war is the cliché.”

Tobias Ellwood MP, chair of parliament’s defence select committee, said Johnson’s visit was a “powerful message directly to Putin that we won’t be intimidated”. Britain was leading other nations including Poland and Slovakia in “breaking away from NATO’s self-imposed limits” and providing greater military support to Ukraine.

Ellwood boasted, “I called for a division of NATO to go in prior to the invasion, but NATO didn’t want to know. And I think they’re now regretting that decision… So seeing the prime minister step forward, take some leadership” was necessary “because much of NATO is consolidated within the NATO architecture that they’ve left Ukraine outside of that support.”

Macron, neo-fascist Le Pen advance to runoff in French presidential election

Kumaran Ira & Alex Lantier

In yesterday’s French presidential election, in a replay of the first round of the 2017 elections, outgoing President Emmanuel Macron and neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen advanced to the final round of the presidential contest on April 24. According to initial estimates last night, they received 27.4 percent and 24.0 percent of the vote, respectively. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the former Socialist Party official who was the candidate of the Unsubmissive France (LFI) party, obtained 21.6 percent of the vote.

Mélenchon’s campaign manager, Manuel Bompard, issued a statement overnight calling Mélenchon’s vote “an extraordinary result,” but conceding, “unhappily, this will not be sufficient to qualify for the second round.”

If these figures prove correct, it would be the third time, after the 2002 and 2017 elections, that a neo-fascist candidate advances to the runoff of the French presidential elections. The fact that voters are being presented yet again with a poisoned choice between Le Pen and the right-wing “president of the rich” exposes the political bankruptcy of the organizations that the ruling establishment falsely promotes as the “left.” They proved incapable of defeating either a despised outgoing president or a neo-fascist.

A screen shows French President Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen at her election day headquarters, in Paris, Sunday, April 10, 2022.(AP Photo/Francois Mori)

The election confirmed the collapse of what were France’s dominant electoral parties in the era after the May 1968 French general strike. Valérie Pécresse of the right-wing The Republicans (LR), the latest incarnation of the Gaullists, and Socialist Party (PS) candidate Anne Hidalgo, representing France’s two main parties of government from 1968 to 2017, took 4.7 and 1.8 percent, respectively. Green candidate Yannick Jadot took 4.5 percent, and Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) candidate Fabien Roussel 2.4 percent of the vote. All these candidates are now eliminated.

Far-right journalist Eric Zemmour, who has been convicted of inciting racial hatred and is close to sections of the officer corps that agitated for a military coup after the COVID-19 pandemic began, took 7 percent of the vote.

The campaign for the second round is beginning amid enormous uncertainty and popular alienation from the political establishment. There was a high abstention rate of 26.2 percent of registered voters in the first round—a larger number of voters than voted for any of the candidates. Polls have shown Le Pen taking 48 or 49 percent of the vote against Macron, and there is a real possibility that Le Pen could defeat Macron.

While Macron campaigned in 2017 as an investment banker who would revolutionize the economy, France is in shambles. Nearly 1 million people caught COVID-19 over the last week in France, and 768 have died, yet the Macron government encouraged people to come out to vote without masks even if they were positive for COVID-19, making voting a likely superspreader event. Rationing of natural gas and shortages of sunflower oil and other key products are emerging due to NATO sanctions against Russia amid the war in Ukraine.

In a brief speech late Sunday evening, Macron claimed he would build a “great movement of unity,” rallying the French people “in order to block the path of the far right.” He claimed: “I am ready to invent something new to bring together different convictions and sensibilities to build with them a common action in the service of our nation in the coming years. It is in our power.”

Le Pen demagogically portrayed herself as preparing to lead a popular, democratic government. She called on voters “of the right, the left, from elsewhere, from all backgrounds to join this great national and popular rally.” Officials of Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) told the daily Libération, “It is the left that, one can say, almost holds the keys to this election.”

Le Pen’s speech combined threats to “get immigration back under control,” pledges to build up the police, and demagogic appeals to opposition to Macron’s anti-worker policies. After Macron pledged to raise the retirement age to 65 and to force welfare recipients to work for their benefits, Le Pen pledged to defend the “solidarity we grant to the more vulnerable, the possibility to have guaranteed rights, or to retire while still in good health.” Amid reports that Le Pen might try to ban Muslim headscarves, she pledged to defend “women’s rights” and “secularism.”

The neo-fascists have been allowed to posture as “left” because Macron’s presidency has faced no left-wing opposition from within the political establishment. Macron actively legitimized fascistic policies, including his murderous policy on COVID-19 of “living with the virus.” He hailed France’s Nazi-collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain while unleashing hordes of riot police to assault “yellow vest” protests calling for social equality. Macron government officials even publicly attacked Le Pen as being “soft on Islam.”

Yet in this toxic atmosphere, the parties that the media and ruling elite have built up as the “left” consistently ceded the ground of political opposition to the far right. Mélenchon and pseudo-left parties like the Pabloite New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) or Workers Struggle (LO) isolated or denounced the “yellow vests.” They lined up behind anti-vaccine protests led by the far right, even as 142,000 people in France and nearly two million across Europe died of COVID-19.

Finally, Mélenchon, the NPA, Stalinist organizations like the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union, and LO all aligned with Macron and NATO in the war with Russia in Ukraine, where NATO is arming Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias such as the Azov Battalion against Russia.

Whether Macron or Le Pen emerges victorious in the second round, the new president will oversee a reactionary government that will come into violent conflict with the working class. The election of a neo-fascist president in France poses enormous dangers. However, candidates who are now calling on voters to support Macron as the lesser evil against Le Pen are perpetrating a political fraud: Macron is not an alternative to a neo-fascist presidency.

While Zemmour and the minor far-right candidate Nicolas Dupont-Aignan both called to vote Le Pen on the runoff, most of the defeated candidates lined up behind the “president of the rich.”

Pécresse said, “I am deeply worried for the future of our country, as the far right is closer than ever to winning the election.” Predicting that Le Pen’s election would lead to “discord, impotence and failure” at home, and “France’s disappearance from the European and international stage,” she said: “Thus, despite profound divergences I stressed throughout the campaign, I will vote Emmanuel Macron to prevent Marine Le Pen’s arrival in power and the chaos that would result.”

The Greens, PS and PCF also called for a Macron vote, and Mélenchon has made clear LFI will issue a cynical, barely-veiled call for a Macron vote. LFI officials fear the widespread opposition that emerged in 2017 among LFI voters, especially in working class areas of major cities, to voting for either Macron or Le Pen. Mélenchon’s assistant Adrien Quatennens told France2 television that LFI will hold a ballot among its members to allow them to choose what to do, but that a Le Pen vote would not be on the list of choices.

Mélenchon, who is 70 years old and has said that he will not stand again in the 2027 presidential elections, presented his failure to advance to the second round as a victory that would strengthen his party. “A new page of our struggle is opening. You will turn it, we will turn it with the sense of pride in work well done,” he claimed, adding that France faces “a political state of emergency.”

It is apparent, however, that Mélenchon is setting out to play the same reactionary role he played in 2017: corralling millions of his voters behind Macron’s violently reactionary presidency. Indeed, at the end of his concessions speech, Mélenchon was reduced to repeatedly chanting: “You must not give any votes to Mrs. Le Pen! One cannot give a single vote to Mrs. Le Pen!”

In reality, the entire militaristic and fascistic course of Macron’s own presidency shows that Mélenchon’s perspective is a false one and a dead end for workers and youth seeking to oppose the turn towards the far right in France. Mélenchon similarly let it be known that he preferred a Macron vote in 2017 to oppose Le Pen. Yet the result was that LFI helped Macron get elected and turn French politics far to the right.

Sri Lankan Central Bank governor: Prepare for more austerity

Saman Gunadasa

Sri Lanka’s newly-appointed Central Bank governor Nandalal Weerasinghe declared Friday: “We should tell the people the result of our program will be a much worse situation before [there is] a turn around.”

Weerasinghe warned that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would dictate brutal austerity measures as the price of any emergency bailout. His first action of Friday was a huge 7 percentage point hike in country’s interest rate to 14.50 percent—a move that will hit working people and small businesses hardest.

Weerasinghe made these remarks on a talk show on the Swarnavahini TV channel, just hours after he was appointed to the post. A retired Central Bank deputy governor, he was asked by President Gotabhaya Rajapakse take the post as he is desperately seeking to cobbled together a delegation to hold talks with the IMF.

Central Bank Nandalal Weerasinghe [Image: CBSL Twitter]

A delegation led by the Finance minister Ali Sabry is to leave for New York on April 18. Sabry, who clearly does not want the job, resigned less than 24 hours after his appointment as finance minister last Monday. After spending days trying to find a replacement, the president announced that he would not accept Sabry’s resignation. On Friday, Sabry reluctantly announced he would continue in the post.

Weerasinghe warned: “We can’t turn around a crisis caused by two years within two days. When we discuss restructuring with the IMF or our creditors they will ask what is the responsible authority.” He declared the country needed a “stable government,” adding that “turning around the economy will depend on how soon we can have the social and political stability.”

“We have to explain and convince the people that they must tolerate, and get their support. Then only we can carry this out. Now that inflation is 17.5 last month, it will be 25 next month. If people take to the streets and say they don’t agree to do this, it will only get worse… You have to explain the solution to them,” he said.

Working people, however, are already facing intolerable burdens with skyrocketing prices for essentials, shortages of fuel and cooking gas and long hours every day of no electricity.

Hundreds of thousands of workers and youth are continuing to hold demonstrations throughout the country that began a week ago. They demand immediate resignation of President Rajapakse and his government and solutions to the crisis.

On Saturday, more than 20,000 young people gathered at Galle Face Green in central Colombo while around 10,000 flocked there again on Sunday.

The Central Bank governor’s call for “political and social stability” is to a government that is universally hated. It has a wafer-thin majority after 41 MPs declared last week that they would act independently.

President Rajapakse initiated talks yesterday with the MPs in a bid to get them to return to the ruling coalition. Rajapakse has again called on opposition parties to set up an interim regime. Opposition parties rejected a similar offer last week.

Ali Sabry (Photo: Facebook)

The IMF program touted as the means to turn around the economy was outlined early last month. It includes increases in income and value added taxes; further rises in fuel and electricity prices; a market-determined flexible exchange rate; the restructuring and privatisation of state-owned enterprises; deep inroads into state expenditure; and the further slashing of price controls and subsidies.

The market-based devaluation of the rupee was already implemented in early March. Since then, official US dollar rate has been shot up from 203 to 325 rupees—a 60 percent devaluation. This has driven up the price of imported food items, fuel, medicines and other essentials.

The economic crisis in Sri Lanka is a very sharp expression of global turmoil fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerated by the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Tourism has been badly hit and exports have plunged. Sri Lanka has just $US1.9 billion in foreign reserves and has $7 billion in foreign loan repayments to make this year.

A Financial Times editorial on April 7 highlighted Sri Lanka’s vulnerability, warned: “The country may have as little as $500 million left in foreign reserves though a $1 billion bond repayment is due in a few months.” It declared that “fears are growing that Sri Lanka could be the first in a series of emerging markets to descend into economic turmoil.”

Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Finance Minister Sabry said: “Sri Lanka will need about $3 billion in external assistance over the next six months to help restore supplies of essential items including fuel and medicine.” In the lead-up the IMF talks, he pledged that “the government will raise taxes and fuel prices within six months and seek to reform loss-making state-owned enterprises.”

The opposition parties declare their sympathy with people on the streets demanding Rajapakse’s resignation. But they are advocates of the IMF austerity agenda, knowing full well that it will only intensify the social assaults.

Speaking in parliament on Friday, parliamentary opposition leader Sajith Premadasa declared: “If we want to receive monetary aid from them [IMF], we need to provide the IMF with a plan to build debt sustainability.” He heads the Samagi Jana Balavegaya which is boasting that it has been insisting the government go to the IMF from the outset.

United National Party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said in parliament last week that he has personally spoken with top IMF officials about the country’s crisis and was assured that the IMF was ready to help.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna is maintaining a duplicitous silence about government plans to implement IMF austerity program.

No one should be under any illusion that the IMF austerity agenda will end Sri Lanka’s economic crisis. It is the means for forcing the country’s working class and rural masses to bear new burdens to ensure repayments to the international banks, finance houses and foreign creditors.

Renewed strikes at German day care and social services centres

Marianne Arens

Recently renewed strikes at German day care and state social services centres express mounting popular anger. After enduring pandemic conditions for over two years, day care teachers as well as social workers and assistants who care for the disabled are demanding tangible relief, more staff, serious measures to protect their health and a salary increase to keep pace with rising inflation.

Striking workers on April 7 at the Town Hall in Offenbacher, Germany (Photo: WSWS)

The strikes are part of a growing movement of the international working class. Across Europe and around the world, workers in public services, schools, airports, industry and logistics are no longer willing to endure permanent work stress, staff shortages and health hazards, while barely earning enough to survive. The strikes coincide with protests by teachers in the US and truck drivers in Spain, general strikes in India and Greece, and a social uprising in Sri Lanka, among other demonstrations of mass discontent.

The next round of collective bargaining in the social and educational services is more than two years overdue. The previous five-year collective agreement expired at the end of 2019. The coronavirus pandemic was seized upon as an excuse for an extended delay, with negotiations on a new contract beginning only at the end of February of this year.

German day care workers are fully justified in demanding better conditions, tangible relief and more recognition, and they have the sympathy of the working class. To win their demands, however, they will have to break with the dominant service-sector union, Verdi, and establish independent rank-and-file committees to end the isolation of their struggle by connecting with others engaged in labour disputes.

Verdi will not fight for real change. The union is fully on the side of the federal coalition government, consisting of the Social Democratic Party, the Free Democratic Party and the Green Party, and the business interests the government serves. Just a few days after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Verdi boss Frank Werneke proclaimed his full support for the anti-Russian sanctions that have fueled spiraling prices. It was “appropriate and necessary to react with sanctions,” said Werneke in Berlin on February 27.

Since then, the Verdi leadership has reconvened with the Association of Municipal Employers’ Associations (VKA) in an attempt to reassert control over the growing labour conflict in the municipal sector. On March 21 and 22, Verdi executives Frank Werneke and Christine Behle met with VKA President Karin Welge, like the union officials a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The third and final round of negotiations is to take place on May 16 and 17.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is using the war in Ukraine to launch the largest rearmament campaign since the regime of Hitler, allocating 100 billion euros to the armed forces while bleeding the public sector dry. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (also SPD) recently spoke openly about this, stating: “The whole truth is: many hardships still lie ahead.” He demanded not only “solidarity” from Germany’s working population, but also a “willingness to accept privations.”

This is the background to Verdi’s collective bargaining tactics in the social and educational services. Each strike is isolated from all other strikes, including those of schoolteachers, in order to avoid the spread of open resistance. The union indistinctly demands a “round of improvements,” but fails to provide any concrete figures, either in euros or percentages. Nor does it stipulate specific staffing ratios or reduced working hours.

Meanwhile, municipal employers have made it abundantly clear that their finances can bear no additional burdens. Any new demands would “lead to serious imbalances in the collective bargaining structure of the municipal public sector and to disproportionate and unaffordable increases in personnel costs,” said Karin Welge, the mayor of Gelsenkirchen and VKA chairwoman.

She took over the post from the previous head of the VKA, Ulrich Mägde, on January 1, 2022. She presides over an association that represents the interests of 10,000 municipal employers, who employ some 2.3 million workers.

As recently as December, the German Association of Cities found that municipalities were short 230,000 educators and 300,000 nurses, but Ms. Welge refused to provide what she called improvements “from a watering can.” This she justified by claiming that “working and pay conditions [in the social and educational services] were already raised significantly in 2009 and 2015.”

In reality, the 2015 day care strike won only modest improvements in pay, but these have not changed the burdensome framework of working conditions. The groups of children remain far too large, staff shortages are widespread, and the number of untrained staff is growing, increasing the workload of the trained professionals to an unbearable level. Moreover, new waves of the coronavirus pandemic continue to wash over the already ailing and overburdened municipal facilities.

And while governments are dropping all pandemic protection measures, the highly contagious Omicron BA.2 variant is sweeping through day care centres. Many facilities, such as in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, are no longer able to provide regular care due to staff shortages caused by rampant coronavirus infections.

Speaking to the WSWS on April 7, during the strike in Offenbach, kindergarten teachers affirmed these grievances. “I am dead tired every evening and just glad to get home,” one teacher said.

Pre-school teachers in Offenbach, Germany (Photo: WSWS)

She described the additional burdens of a poorly implemented inclusion program. “You have in a group of 20 children sometimes several disabled children who need special attention, but you get no additional staff at all,” she explained. She added that at this stress level, she feared she would not hold out until retirement age.

“Financially, we achieved a lot in 2015 with our last big strike,” said Ulla, who works in social services. “But those gains have been eroding. Right now, we are living through the highest inflation in years. That may not be a problem for members of the Bundestag (German parliament), whose salaries are automatically scaled up, even though they are paid on another level in the first place. But it is a problem for us.”

One day care teacher added: “After the strike, the key—how many children there are for one day care teacher—was quietly brushed under the rug. It’s only gotten worse since then.”

Michaela, who has worked in day care for seven years, confirmed this. She said: “We definitely need an improvement in group sizes!”

She explained that in her facility it was normal for a trained teacher to care for a group of up to 30 children with an untrained assistant.

“Sometimes there is a third person, but they are usually lateral hires. For example, I am often all alone in the afternoons, and the children are getting picked up later and later. When you’re alone with all these children, you can’t really do anything, just keep them safe. It’s almost become just a custodial institution.”

As she reported, she herself had recently contracted the coronavirus, although as a high-risk patient she should have been provided extra protection. “It hit me hard, even though I was vaccinated and boosted,” she said. “If someone older gets even close to as sick as I got, that can be really dangerous.”

Michaela said her jaw dropped in dismay at German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach’s announcement (since rescinded): “Every infected person should decide for himself whether to stay home with the coronavirus!” She pointed out that the coronavirus policy in Germany had been inconsistently implemented from the beginning: “The schools were partly closed at the beginning, partly separated into small groups. You weren’t allowed to play sports, not even outdoors—but the kids came to school in buses that were packed!”

Katarina, an Offenbach educator, added: “Now the government suddenly has 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr (military). Surely, that shows there’s enough money.”

She confirmed that all parties support this war policy, including the Left Party. “But I’m not that surprised about that anymore,” she said. “We already had the experience with the Greens. As soon as they got into government, they suddenly forgot everything they had said up until then.”

Thailand risks 50,000 daily cases after Songkran Festival super-spreader

Robert Campion

Last Thursday, the Thai Public Health Ministry forecast a surge of 50,000 cases following the opening of the annual Songkran festival the previous day. This acknowledgement is all the more damning, given that the government is in the process of officially declaring COVID-19 to be “endemic”—a code word for letting it rip through the population.

The Public Health Ministry report estimates that the daily number of patients suffering lung inflammation could reach 3,000, with about 900 requiring ventilation and as many as 150 dying each day. These numbers could almost double, it stated, if current health precautions were only sparingly implemented.

The Songkran festival, which marks the Thai New Year, risks worsening the spread of COVID as large numbers of people travel and take part in social gatherings. Of particular concern are the dangers to unvaccinated sections of the population, including both the elderly and children.

Local residents wait on line to receive shots of the Pfizer vaccine at the Central Vaccination Center in Bangkok, Thailand, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

Dr. Sumanee Wacharasint, director of the Bureau of Risk Communication and Health Behaviour Development, reported last Wednesday that only 34.6 percent of the population has received their booster shot, including 37.2 percent of the elderly.

For the 5–11 age group, less than 50 percent were reported to have received their first vaccine dose and less than 2 percent their second.

Only seven of the 77 provinces have achieved a 70 percent target of booster shots for the elderly, including Samut Prakan, Nonthaburi, Maha Sarakham, Nan, Phuket, Lamphun and Chainat.

The Royal College of Physicians, the Preventive Medicine Association of Thailand, the Thai Society of Critical Care Medicine, the Thoracic Society of Thailand and the Infectious Disease Association of Thailand are all urging the population to get booster shots ahead of the expected surge in infections.

The government is doing the opposite. It is lulling people into a false sense of security by announcing the implementation by July of its unscientific program of declaring COVID-19 “endemic,” along with the dismantling of COVID public health restrictions.

Daily cases are currently at all-time highs with 26,081 cases reported last Thursday morning along with 91 deaths. The Worldometer ranks Thailand 10th in terms of cases, while the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) classifies it as “very high” risk.

As is the case internationally, the daily cases and deaths are greatly underestimated. Cases are already nearing 50,000 daily after one incorporates the RAT results that are left out of official totals. On April 3 for example, the Public Health Ministry reported 24,892 cases, but there were also 15,972 positive RAT results, raising the total to 40,864.

Thailand’s Rural Doctor Society (RDS) recently reported that on March 30 positive RAT results found by the organisation in just three provinces was higher than the official total of RAT-detected infections nationwide.

The country’s Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) reported a positive RAT tally of 16,079, yet RDS found the total for provinces of Chon Buri, Songkla and Change Rai was 16,484 cases—with 8,323, 4,839 and 3,322 cases respectively.

“We, the front-line healthcare workers, are working hard as we aim to bring the number of new infections down by containing the spread of the virus as well as we can,” an RDS Facebook statement declared.

However, it continued, “making up an ideal figure just isn’t the way to go… Reporting the actual number of new infections will instead help raise public awareness about the outbreak situation.”

Like its counterparts internationally, the Thai military-backed regime is determined to “open up” to the revive the economy and boost profits.

In the wake of the Delta outbreak last year, the Finance Ministry in January projected economic growth for 2022 of 3.5–4.5 percent, based on an improvement in the global pandemic situation. This rosy outlook made the false assumption that the Omicron variant was “mild” and would usher in a return to normality.

Instead, Thailand is now in the grip of a larger Omicron wave with increasing deaths and infections. New dangers are emerging with the arrival of variants, including reports of the recent Omicron XE, first seen in Britain in January. Omicron XE is 10 percent more transmissible than BA.2 and 43 percent more transmissible than the original Omicron (B.1.1.529), according to the UK Health Services Agency (UKHSA).

The government is desperate to revive its flagging tourism industry, which represented 20 percent of GDP prior to the pandemic. Only 427,000 foreigners visited Thailand in 2021, compared to a regular annual average of 40 million.

On April 1, the government scrapped the need for international travelers to undertake a pre-departure PCR test. It discussed plans Friday to replace PCR tests for arrivals with the less accurate Rapid Antigen (RAT) tests and institute shorter quarantine times. CCSA announced it would postpone such measures until May, pending the impact of the Songkran festival on infection rates.

The economic crisis is being exacerbated by the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine that has led to higher energy and food prices. Being a net importer of oil, the country faces increased risks of a trade and account deficit with rising operating costs for its manufacturing sector.

The official inflation rate rose in February to 5.28 percent, its highest in 13 years and well outside the central bank’s maximum target of 3 percent. In a bid to keep the economy on life support the bank has retained its key interest rate at an historic low of 0.5 percent.

The value of the national currency, the baht, is also falling as international investors flock to the US currency.

Government growth estimates are being questioned. Kasikorn Research Center (K-Research) recently lowered its growth projection from 3.7 percent to 2.5 percent. The World Bank has also revised the country’s annual growth from 3.9 percent to 2.9 percent.

Australian governments plan to scrap COVID-19 mitigations as cases pass five million

Martin Scott

More than 5 million COVID-19 infections have now been recorded across Australia, with an average of over 55,000 new positive tests being recorded each day over the past week.

There are currently more than 485,000 active cases in Australia, including 257,000 in New South Wales (NSW), 64,000 in Victoria, 59,000 in Queensland, 44,000 in Western Australia, 38,000 in South Australia, 12,000 in Tasmania, 6,000 in the Australian Capital Territory and 3,100 in the Northern Territory.

Around the country, 2,941 people are hospitalised for the virus, an increase of 360 over the previous week. A total of 6,550 people have died from COVID-19, including 183 in the past week.

Staff prepare to collect samples at a drive-through COVID-19 testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said on Tuesday that official infection figures in the state were “a big underestimate” and actual case numbers may be “at least 50 percent higher.” Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley warned on April 2 that the state could see “several hundred” more COVID-19 hospitalisations each day by the end of the month.

Despite these acknowledgements, Hazzard and Foley are proceeding with plans to scrap the few remaining public health measures against the virus.

As they have been all year, the NSW Liberal-National and Victorian Labor governments are in lockstep, leading the reopening drive. A spokesperson for Hazzard said last week, “Whatever decisions are being considered they will be made only after consultation with the Victorian Government to ensure coordination between the two major states.”

According to the Age, “senior government sources” in Victoria last week flagged the imminent removal of mask requirements for hospitality workers, primary school students and public transport users.

Both states are also considering slashing isolation rules for household close contacts. NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said on Friday, “the faster we can get to a point where the close contact rule is relaxed, the better.”

Perrottet’s comment followed a demand from Qantas CEO Alan Joyce for aviation workers to be exempted from isolation rules. Joyce said up to 18 percent of the airline’s workforce was currently unable to work due to COVID-19 infection or exposure.

As they did in February in relation to the slowing of the Omicron BA.1 wave, governments are hailing the “peak” of the current BA. 2 surge as justification to abandon remaining mitigations.

The current claims of a peak are even more bogus than in earlier waves given the acknowledgement that infections are far higher than the official case numbers. Moreover, this entirely unscientific approach denies the role of the reopening drive in creating the conditions for ongoing waves, potentially with new and more virulent strains of the virus.

Several cases have been detected in NSW and Queensland of so-called “Deltacron,” a recombinant variant with properties of both Delta and Omicron. As soon as the infections were revealed, government officials asserted, without any evidence, that the variant was “mild” and unlikely to pose a great danger. At the very least, the detection of “Deltacron” indicates the extent to which the virus is mutating, posing the possibility that there are a host of variants already present in the community.

This is a product of the criminal response to the pandemic of all capitalist governments, which have allowed mass infection in the interests of corporate profit, thereby turning the world into a petri-dish for the development of new variants.

The arrival of the supposedly “mild” Omicron variant late last year was promoted by governments in Australia and around the world as a sign the pandemic was coming to an end. The fact that this was a complete fabrication was demonstrated clearly in Australia where 4,261 people—two-thirds of the pandemic total—have died from COVID-19 in just the first 100 days of 2022.

The reality is, as Dr. David Berger explained his recent testimony to the Global Workers’ Inquest, “There is actually no selection pressure on the virus to become less virulent. It infects people before symptoms. As long as that occurs, it doesn’t matter if it kills the host.”

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is predicting cumulative COVID-19 deaths in Australia could rise to more than 12,000 by the end of July. The modelling indicates that the reintroduction of mask mandates could reduce this to around 9,500.

New Deakin University modelling suggests 5 to 15 percent of the more than two million people infected in Australia during the first Omicron surge will suffer some form of Long COVID. The study estimated 80,000 to 325,000 people would have ongoing symptoms after three months.

While many may recover within six months, the sheer number of infections caused by the “let it rip” policies embraced by all Australian governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, means thousands of people will face longer-lasting, potentially life-long effects.

Dr. Leonie Keall, a senior clinical neuropsychologist at Melbourne’s The Alfred hospital, told the Nine network she is treating a growing number of patients with unusual symptoms months after having COVID-19.

Dr. Keall said most of her Long COVID patients are aged between 20 and 60 and suffer symptoms including “greatly reduced mental clarity,” absent mindedness, fatigue and difficulty remembering words or phone numbers. She said one of her patients described the condition as “like her brain had been cut in half.”

Health economist Professor Martin Hensher, who worked with the Deakin team, said: “At the moment we really have no idea of the extent of Long COVID in Australia. We are flying pretty blind.”

While it is not clear how many Australian children have been or will be affected by Long COVID, the reopening of schools for face-to-face teaching has caused the infection of hundreds of thousands of students. The vast majority began the school year unvaccinated or having received only a single dose.

In NSW in the past 30 days, over 117,000 people aged 10-19 tested positive for COVID-19, almost 20 percent more than the age group with the second-highest number of positive tests. In addition, 74,000 children under ten years old tested positive.

Last Monday, 20 percent of New South Wales school students did not attend class because of COVID-19 infection or exposure. At least 20 public schools across the state were forced to cancel in-person classes because there were not enough healthy teachers to teach them.

At countless schools, large groups of students have been herded into libraries or school halls to watch movies, allowing one teacher to supervise several classes at once. Aside from shattering any illusion that the reopening had anything to do with the educational needs of children, this practice only further accelerates the spread of the virus.

A Senate Select Committee inquiry into the pandemic delivered its final report on Thursday. Committee chair, federal Labor Senator Katy Gallagher, said the Australian government’s response to the pandemic was “characterised by a failure to be prepared, a failure to take responsibility, and then a failure to get it right.” Despite this, none of the 19 recommendations contained in the report called for any reversal of the “let it rip” agenda.

The committee called for a royal commission into the Australian government’s response to the pandemic. Any such inquiry will be a whitewash, portraying the devastating and ongoing mass infection, illness and death as a natural disaster exacerbated by isolated “errors” or “miscalculations” by individuals.

Only an investigation by and for the global working class can expose the forces truly responsible for the pandemic, capitalist governments, including Australia’s, which have enforced the demands of big business that workplaces and schools be kept open and all public health measures eliminated to prevent any impediment to profits.

Budget cuts to deepen in Australian universities

Mike Head

Regardless of the outcome of the May 21 federal election, Australia’s 200,000 surviving university workers and 1.6 million students confront even more serious attacks on jobs and conditions following this year’s federal budget.

The cuts in the March 29 budget will intensify what has already happened during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which up to 90,000 jobs have been eliminated, including those of casual academics and other workers, class sizes have blown out and hundreds of courses have been scrapped.

In another display of bipartisanship, the opposition Labor Party helped the Liberal-National Coalition government to push the budget through parliament within 24 hours. It targets higher education for further steep cuts, alongside public schools, healthcare and climate change spending, while boosting military funding in preparation for participation in US-led wars.

The main quadrangle of the University of Sydney (Wikimedia Commons)

The budget cut government funding per university student by 5.4 percent in real terms for 2022-23 and 3.6 percent for the following two years. According to the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), this means $3 billion sliced off universities from 2017-18 to 2025-26. That seems to be an underestimate, because it is based on inflation figures that predate the global surge in prices since the start of the Ukraine war.

Without even taking inflation into account, spending on the Commonwealth Grants Scheme itself, which funds undergraduate and some masters degree courses, will fall from $7.56 billion in 2021-22 to $7.22 billion in 2023-24.

The Morrison government’s “Job Ready Graduates” scheme shifts more of the cost of courses onto students, especially those in humanities, while more narrowly focusing tertiary education on satisfying the demands of employers. The estimated student share of course costs is rising from 42 to 48 percent, loading students with massive debts.

Spending on university research is set to increase marginally, from $2.32 billion in 2021-22 to $2.92 billion in 2025-26, but that is a cut in real terms due to rising inflation. Much of the increase in dollar terms is due to the government’s pro-business “research commercialisation” scheme announced late last year to further tie universities to the research requirements of the corporate elite.

The budget cuts will intensify the pro-business gutting and restructuring of tertiary education that has been pursued by Coalition and Labor governments alike, especially since the last Labor government of 2007 to 2013, kept in power by the Greens, imposed an “education revolution.”

Labor’s “demand-driven” funding system forced universities to compete for enrolments while cutting funding by $3 billion in 2012-13, driving them to become increasingly dependent on full-fee paying international students.

That laid the basis for the current Coalition government and university managements to exploit the COVID pandemic to accelerate this offensive, with the loss of international revenue being used as a pretext to cut a swathe through jobs and courses.

University data for 2020, released last month by Acting Education Minister Stuart Robert, showed that “productivity” grew across the sector by 4.5 percent that year, a leap from 1.2 percent in 2019.

According to the Australian, this productivity calculation features cost-cutting metrics such as “students per $1 million” and “students per academic.” In other words, “productivity” means cutting spending, and academics, per student.

The only beneficiaries of the restructuring, apart from big business, have been highly-paid university executives. They have been rewarded, including via performance bonuses, for inflicting the pain on staff and students.

University of Queensland (UQ) vice-chancellor Professor Deborah Terry was paid $1.2 million last year, for example. That is about 30 times Australia’s official minimum wage of $40,000.

UQ’s 2021 annual report, tabled in the Queensland parliament, also reveals that another 10 executives were paid between $555,000 and $825,000 each. That places them firmly in the top 5 percent of the income scale.

Yet, all this is only possible because the outrage of university workers and students has been systematically suppressed by the NTEU and other trade unions, as well as the student unions, mostly aligned to the Labor Party.

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, the NTEU rushed into backroom talks with these university managements, offering wage cuts of up to 15 percent and up to 18,000 job cuts, including by forced redundancies.

After this unprecedented union-management deal provoked immense anger among university workers, the employers pulled out of it. Nevertheless, the NTEU pressed ahead by pushing through similar schemes to impose sacrifices on staff at individual universities to help managements achieve the cost cuts they demanded.

The union opposed every call by Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and Committee for Public Education (CFPE) supporters for a unified struggle against the government. At the same time, the NTEU’s protests and pleas to members of the parliamentary elite for budgetary relief predictably fell on deaf ears.

After this debacle, the NTEU began trying to corral workers back into its ranks by claiming that enterprise bargaining with individual managements provided the only means of defending even what conditions remained.

The NTEU has since dragged that process out, long past the expiry of the previous three-year enterprise agreements, effectively imposing a wage freeze and further isolating staff and students, campus by campus.

Meanwhile, the union has promoted the illusion that a Labor government would halt the assault. In a post-budget media release, NTEU national president Alison Barnes wrote: “The spotlight is now firmly on a future government to deliver the urgent reforms and funding the higher education sector needs to restore jobs and recover from the pandemic.”

This pitch not only flies in the face of the destructive role of the last Labor government, it covers up the even more reactionary plans of Labor today. Labor leader Anthony Albanese has said a Labor government would fund “up to” 20,000 extra university places in 2022 and 2023.

That is a far cry from Labor’s 2019 election promise, itself inadequate, to step up university funding by $10 billion over 10 years. The Australian calculated that the additional places would cost less than $500 million.

Moreover, Labor’s blueprint echoes the Coalition’s Job Ready regime. The new student places would focus on vocational areas such as digital and cyber security, manufacturing, early childhood, aged care and disability. The first two are priorities for the capitalist elite as it plans for military conflict and seeks to maximise the available workforce to exploit.

Last August, Labor’s shadow education minister Tanya Plibersek addressed the Australian Financial Review Higher Education Conference, an elite business gathering, presenting a Labor government as the best means of escalating the corporate restructuring of tertiary education.

Plibersek proposed a bipartisan “accord” between the two ruling parties, the unions, business, university managements, students and parents to “make university reform stick” in the interests of “national prosperity.”

The NTEU shares Labor’s pro-business commitment to “university reform.” In her budget media release, Barnes said the Coalition government was “embarrassing” because it refused to recognise that “tertiary education is Australia’s fourth largest export industry contributing $40 billion to Australia’s total exports.”

This means further subordinating tertiary education to the profit interests of the Australian capitalist class. It makes clear that the ongoing destruction of jobs, conditions and courses can be fought only on the basis of a totally opposed political perspective that rejects the dictates of the financial markets and employers. That is, a socialist program in which educators have secure jobs with decent pay, and free, first-class education is a right for all.

Lessons need to be drawn from these experiences. The NTEU and other unions do not represent the interests of workers. They function as pro-Labor and pro-employer industrial police forces.