WHO warns of severe hepatitis among children across several countries, possibly tied to spread of COVID-19

Benjamin Mateus

The World Health Organization (WHO) has advised countries that there has recently been a sudden rise in cases of acute hepatitis of unknown origin among children. Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver that can lead to jaundice (the yellowing discoloration of the skin and whites of the eyes), poor appetite, fatigue, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea. Blood work usually reveals very elevated liver enzymes.

A father helps his child with a mask in front of Bradford School in Jersey City, New Jersey on June 10, 2020 (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

Typically, acute hepatitis resolves on its own, but it can progress to acute liver failure in some. In such instances, liver transplantation becomes a life-saving surgery. Long-term concerns include progression to scarring of the liver (cirrhosis), chronic liver failure, and liver cancer.

As of April 21, 2022, at least 169 of these rare cases have been reported to the WHO across 12 countries. The age of the patients has ranged from one month to 16 years old. The United Kingdom, with 114, has reported the majority of cases. Ten of these children have required liver transplants, of which seven were in England. Spain has documented 13 such cases and Israel 12. The US has reported at least 14 severe hepatitis cases: nine in Alabama, two in North Carolina, and three in Illinois.   

The other countries include Denmark (six), Ireland (less than five), the Netherlands (four), Italy (four), Norway (two), France (two), Romania (one), and Belgium (one). In total, 17 children (10 percent) have undergone liver transplantation, and one child has died.

The Scottish National Health Service first broke the news of these cases of acute hepatitis among children to the WHO in early April. A rapid communication to Eurosurveillance on their experience was published on April 14.

They wrote in their report that “five children aged 3-5 years [presented] to the Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow with severe hepatitis of unknown etiology within a three-week period. The typical number of cases of hepatitis of unknown etiology across Scotland would be fewer than four per year.” Of the first 10 cases in children under the age of 10 requiring hospitalization, nine of these cases had symptom onset in March and the first one was in January.

By April 8, an additional 64 cases were identified, raising the total to 74 who met the case definition specified by the UN health authority. Several children were transferred to pediatric centers specializing in liver disorders, and six children had undergone liver transplants by then.

All tested cases excluded hepatitis type A, B, C and E viruses (and D where applicable.) However, the SARS-CoV-2 and/or adenovirus infections were documented in several cases. Health authorities caring for these children are also investigating epidemiological risk factors such as recent international travel and exposure to chemicals or toxins.

An additional five cases were then reported from Ireland, prompting the WHO to release a Disease Outbreak News alert on April 15 regarding these developments and calling for diligence in identifying, investigating, and reporting such cases in the UK and internationally.

They wrote, “The priority is to determine the etiology of these cases to guide further clinical and public health actions. Any epidemiological links between or among the cases might provide indications for tracking the source of illness. Temporal and geographical information of the cases, as well as their contacts should be reviewed for potential risk factors. While some cases tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and/or adenovirus, genetic characterization of viruses should be undertaken to determine any potential associations between cases.”  

Since that initial report, cases have grown more than expected. The WHO said, “Given the increase in cases reported over the past one month and enhanced case search activities, more cases are likely to be reported in the coming days.”

During an emergency session at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Lisbon on Monday, Dr. Meera Chand, who is the incident director for the UK Health Security Agency investigating these outbreaks, said, “The cases in England are not known to be connected to each other and are dispersed all over the country,” meaning there is no epidemiological linkage like with the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, implying the disease is not being transmitted.

Chand explained, “I think our leading hypothesis, given the data we’ve seen, is that we probably have a normal adenovirus circulating, but we have a co-factor affecting a particular age group of young children which is either rendering that infection more severe, or causing it to trigger some kind of inappropriate immune response.”

In their April 23 report, the WHO noted that in 74 cases, an adenovirus infection was detected, of which 18 on molecular testing were identified as type 41. Though adenoviruses have been implicated in rare cases of acute hepatitis, most of these cases occur in immunocompromised children, and such complications have not been documented among previously healthy children. Additionally, 20 of these cases were positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and 19 were co-infected with both viruses.

Adenoviruses are respiratory viral infections that generally cause symptoms analogous to the common cold or flu, presenting with fever, cough and sore throat. Other characteristics of the infection can include conjunctivitis, bronchitis and diarrhea. Individuals with weakened immune systems can suffer more severe complications.

After dropping to unusually low levels during the pandemic, the complete social relaxation and return to in-class instructions have meant a surge in adenovirus infections. At the same time, the incidence of COVID infection among children in the US has risen to 75 percent, according to data recently published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

One of the working theories being proposed is that recent COVID infections could sufficiently alter the immune response, making children susceptible to severe side effects from relatively harmless viruses. Genotyping of adenoviruses in these cases has not revealed that there might be a more virulent strain of adenovirus circulating in communities.

Still, Jim McMenamin, Scotland’s director of public health, told Reuters that “work was underway to establish if the adenovirus involved had mutated to cause more severe disease.” He added, however, “Or [possibly the adenovirus] could be causing the problems ‘in tandem’ with another virus, including possibly SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.”

Dr. Yael Mozer-Glassberg, head of the pediatric liver transplant unit at Schneider Children’s Medical center in Petah Tikva, speaking on the cases from Israel, said, “After we ruled out all the various possibilities, the common denominator in all the cases we found was that all had come down with the coronavirus around three and a half months before the infection appeared. This certainly raises the question. But I don’t think it’s possible to say yet that all these cases are a post-COVID phenomenon.”

All authorities agree that there is no link to the COVID vaccines. None of the cases in the UK in the under-10-years of age are known to have been vaccinated. However, vaccination rates among the youngest are the lowest in any age category. Should the linkage between seasonal viruses and SARS-CoV-2 prove to trigger the development of severe acute hepatitis among the most vulnerable, it only further confirms the importance of eliminating COVID and the criminal negligence in allowing it to spread throughout the world’s population.

COVID-19 spread among Australian political establishment exposes pandemic lies

Martin Scott

With Australian Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese still conducting his campaign for the May 21 federal election from isolation, further information has come to light about the spread of COVID-19 within the political and media establishment.

Anthony Albanese appears on ABC TV via Zoom (Screenshot: ABC)

According to the Australian, at least seven journalists in the Labor media contingent contracted the virus in the first two weeks of the campaign. Yet the incursion of the deadly pandemic into the corporate media’s own ranks has done nothing to reverse their relentless promotion of a “return to normal.”

Senior members of the opposition leader’s shadow cabinet have also been hit by the pandemic in recent weeks. Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last Friday that Tony Burke, Kristina Keneally and Jason Clare had all been infected with COVID-19 since the federal budget announcement, less than a month ago.

The string of infections exposes the lies pushed by both major parties that the pandemic is over. This unscientific and criminal fabrication is being used to justify the ending of all COVID-19 mitigation measures in line with the profit demands of big business. Meanwhile, more than 40,000 new cases are being detected each day around the country despite declining test rates.

The outbreak also reveals the extraordinary lengths to which the political establishment will go—even if it means putting themselves and their families at risk—to promote the subordination of the health and lives of working people to corporate profit interests.

COVID-19 has killed an average of more than 40 per day in 2022, making it the second or third most common cause of death in Australia, based on pre-pandemic figures. Fifty deaths were reported yesterday, yet the pandemic is virtually absent from the nation’s news headlines, except to denounce China’s continued efforts to quash the virus.

Western Australian (WA) Labor Premier Mark McGowan last week tested positive for COVID-19, while his son was hospitalised for four days “in a serious condition” for the virus.

Prominent politicians, including Albanese, Liberal-National Prime Minister Scott Morrison and WA Liberal Party leader David Honey, rushed to send public messages of support for McGowan and his family on Twitter.

The “thoughts and prayers” conveyed by McGowan’s colleagues are utterly cynical and entirely at odds with the complete disregard shown by the entire political establishment for the health and lives of the working class during the pandemic. In one tragic example of this, the same day McGowan’s son was released from hospital, the WA health department announced that another teenager had died from COVID-19.

In line with the demands of big business and the actions of capitalist governments in every country except China, all Australian governments—state, territory and federal, Labor and Liberal-National—have deliberately let the virus rip.

As a direct result of these profit-driven policies, more than 7,000 Australians have died from COVID-19, including 4,769 since the beginning of the year. More than 5.7 million people have been infected according to official figures, which vastly understate the real spread of the virus.

In the past week, over 300,000 new infections were recorded across the country, and 262 people died. More than 3,100 people are currently hospitalised with the virus and 131 are in ICU.

The pandemic has hit hardest among the most disadvantaged sections of the working class. According to an Australian Bureau of Statistics report released last week, 35.9 percent of COVID-19 deaths occurred in the 20 percent of areas with the greatest socio-economic disadvantage. Just 9.8 percent were in the most advantaged quintile.

Immigrants to Australia have died from COVID-19 at more than 2.5 times the rate of people born in the country. Those born in the Middle East died at almost nine times the overall rate.

The same report found that at least 42 people have died in Australia from Long COVID, raising the spectre of the long-term ramifications of mass infection.

The deadly consequences of the reckless “let it rip” policies are perhaps most exposed in McGowan’s own state. Like all Australian governments, the WA administration implemented lockdown and safety measures early in the pandemic following demands from key sections of the working class, including health workers and teachers. As a result, the virus was effectively eliminated from the state.

With most of the population isolated from the rest of the country by vast stretches of desert, and exemptions granted to the mining corporations which dominate the state’s economy, the WA government was able to maintain strict border controls throughout much of the first two years of the pandemic.

Labor was returned to office with a landslide victory in the March 2021 election, which demonstrated the mass popular support for the public health measures and the relatively “normal” life enjoyed by WA residents. McGowan promised to continue to keep the population safe from COVID-19, while the Liberal opposition vowed to tear down the “hard border.”

In fact, less that one year later, the McGowan government followed the lead of the other state and territory governments and threw open the WA border.

Up until the end of last year, WA had recorded just 1,158 COVID-19 infections and 9 deaths. Not a single death was recorded between May 3, 2020 and February 11 2022. Since the border was reopened on March 3, more than 330,000 people have contracted the virus in WA and 107 have died.

Despite the rapidly mounting toll of infection, illness and death, and the impact on McGowan himself, the WA government yesterday announced the further easing of public health measures in line with the ending of restrictions announced last week in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.

From today in WA, asymptomatic close contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases are no longer required to self-isolate. Masks no longer must be worn except in “high-risk settings” including health and aged care facilities and public transport. Venue capacity limits have been abandoned.

In the Australian Capital Territory, the Labor government yesterday ended the requirement for close contacts to isolate, on the same day the territory recorded its second-highest number of COVID-19 hospitalisations.

Mask mandates have now been abolished in all Australian states and territories, while only Tasmania maintains venue capacity limits and a requirement for all close contacts to self-isolate.

The destruction of public health measures throughout the country by Labor and Liberal-National governments alike makes clear that, as long as the capitalist parties are in control, the working class will be subjected to the ongoing threat of the deadly virus.

German-European war plans: politics and media rejoice over Macron's election victory

Johannes Stern

The re-election of Emmanuel Macron as French president has triggered a mixture of jubilation and relief among German politicians.

On the very evening of the election, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) wrote on Twitter: “Félicitations, hearty congratulations, dear President Emmanuel Macron. Your voters have also sent a strong message of commitment to Europe today. I am happy that we will continue our good cooperation!”

French President Emmanuel Macron, left, greets German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as he arrives for an EU summit at the Palace of Versailles on March 10, 2022 (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)

Leading representatives in government and opposition expressed similar sentiments. “I’m sure it’s not just me who feels a load off my mind right now. Félicitations, Président Emmanuel Macron & my colleague J. Denormandie!” said the Green Minister for the Environment, Cem Özdemir.

SPD leader Saskia Esken wrote: “I’m dancing! Great relief and our warmest congratulations to Emmanuel Macron and our French friends!”

Liberal Democratic Party (FDP) leader and German Finance Minister Christian Lindner described Macron’s victory as a “direction-setting election,” meaning “the united Europe is the biggest winner of this election. Vive la France, vive l’Europe.”

Apart from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose leader Tino Chrupalla congratulated “our partner Marine Le Pen”, the opposition parties also joined in the chorus.

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Fredrich Merz declared that with Macron, “Europe has also won today”. And the Thuringia State Premier Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) cheered: “The election of President Macron is good for Europe and the Franco-German relationship. Congratulations President Emmanuel Macron.”

Politicians and the media justify their mantra of support for Macron with their supposed opposition to nationalism and right-wing extremism. “The normalisation of extremist discourse in the French election campaign is a warning,” cautioned Green Party leader Omid Nouripour on Twitter, for example. It was now necessary to “stand up for democracy and freedom with all our strength and defend our European values”.

All of this is patently absurd. In fact, Macron has increasingly adopted and implemented the programme of the far right over the last five years. Macron’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, a sympathiser of the far-right Action Française, passed discriminatory laws against Muslim associations and publicly criticised Le Pen for being too “soft” on Islam.

Macron himself called Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain a “great soldier” and repeatedly mobilised the notoriously right-wing French police against the “yellow vests”, protesting students and striking workers. In the pandemic, the “president of the rich” pursued a herd immunity policy of deliberate mass infection in the interests of the financial markets, he deported refugees en masse and in foreign policy pursued militarism and war.

In Germany, the same parties that are now celebrating Macron are also pursuing an extreme right-wing programme. Since coming to power last November, the “traffic light” coalition of SPD, FDP and Greens has steadily intensified social austerity, stepped up the powers of the state, massively rearmed the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) and implemented a strict herd immunity policy. It has ended all protective measures against COVID-19 and intensified the state crackdown on the left.

Putin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine was immediately used by the government as a pretext for tripling Germany’s military budget, the biggest rearmament spending since Hitler. Eighty years years after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Berlin is again waging war against Russia in Ukraine—with all the tragic consequences. Politicians and the media are engaged in an anti-Russian witch hunt reminiscent of the darkest times in German history.

It is precisely these martial ambitions that lie behind German support for Macron. Since 2014 at the latest, the ruling class has openly pursued the goal of militarising Europe under German leadership in order to pursue its global geostrategic and economic interests. As a supporter of the European Union and a more independent European foreign policy, Macron is seen as an ally in the implementation of the German-European great power offensive.

Significantly, a recent commentary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) is entitled, “In Paris sits a partner with guts”. It celebrates Macron for “not seeking his salvation in tactical Euroscepticism” despite the large number of “malcontents” in the French electorate. Rather, Macron “had the guts to promote the EU as a solution to the problems of globalisation, both the material and in terms of identity.

But now the French president and the EU must also “deliver”. And that would “not be possible without Chancellor Olaf Scholz” and the “turning point in foreign policy” he had announced. The FAZ’s hope: “If Scholz were to succeed in making Germany a pillar of European sovereignty in military and political terms, then the Franco-German motor would gain some traction.”

A look at the so-called “Strategic Compass for Security and Defence” shows what this means in concrete terms. The document, adopted by the European Council on 21 March, reads like a blueprint for a more independent European war policy. In an era of “strategic competition” and “major geopolitical shifts”, it must be a matter of “defending our interests”, it says in the introduction.

What follows is a catalogue of military and security measures that would transform Europe into a veritable war union, capable of military intervention even independently of the USA and NATO. “We must be able to act rapidly and robustly whenever a crisis erupts, with partners if possible and alone, if necessary,” the document says.

“To that end”, the EU will 1) Reinforce its “civilian and military CSDP [Common Security and Defence Policy] missions and operations”, 2) “Develop an EU Rapid Deployment Capacity that will allow us to swiftly deploy up to 5,000 troops into non-permissive environments [...]” and 3) strengthen “our command-and-control structures, in particular the Military Planning and Conduct Capability”.

To achieve the necessary war capabilities, the EU members commit themselves to “spend more and better in defence” and on massive rearmament. Among other things, the aim is to “jointly develop cutting-edge military capabilities” in all operational areas, “such as high-end naval platforms, future combat air systems, space-based capabilities and main battle tanks”.

Some of these projects are already being pushed through. For example, the total €100 billion “Special Assets of the Bundeswehr” provides for spending of about €34 billion on “multinational armament projects”. These include Franco-German mega-projects such as the new European Future Combat Air System—FCAS and the Franco-German Main Ground Combat System (MGCS).

In the election campaign, Le Pen had threatened to cancel these projects and called Germany “the absolute negative of French strategic identity”. Franco-German tensions have objective causes and will also intensify under Macron, but the ruling class in Germany hopes to continue the collaboration as long as possible and use it for its own rearmament plans.

A recent commentary in Der Spiegel entitled “How I learned to love the bomb,” openly calls for German nuclear weapons and participation in France’s “Force de frappe”—also against the background of growing tensions with the USA.

“In terms of security, we are more dependent on the USA than we are on Russia in terms of energy,” complains author and former editor-in-chief of Bild Zeitung Nikolaus Blome. That was why time is pressing. “If Putin stays in office and Trump wins the next US election,” he says, “the Bundeswehr will be largely on its own by the end of 2024.” Because Trump “would not risk a nuclear war for Germany or Europe, let alone wage one.”

Blome’s apocalyptic conclusion: Berlin must be able to do this itself! It should “not remain unthinkable that Germany arms itself with nuclear weapons. That it and France should stretch a joint nuclear umbrella over the EU.” From Macron comes the phrase, “‘L’Europe qui protège’, a ‘Europe that protects’,” he adds cynically. The expression already fitted during the coronavirus pandemic and now fitted “even better because of Putin.... for a long time, even better.”

Russia and US Uranium

Tatyana Novikova

In March 2022, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced several bills calling for a ban on Russian uranium as a way to cut off funds for the war in Ukraine and also boost domestic uranium production. Although environmentalists applaud the Russian uranium ban, they are concerned that an expansion of domestic mining will have adverse effects on the environment and surrounding communities.

The United States relies heavily on imported uranium, with Russia supplying about 16 percent in 2020. The uranium business with Russia, however, includes not only imports but also enrichment services provided by the Russian state corporation Rosatom, which accounts for 23 percent of total enrichment services in the United States. It’s unclear what is included in the 16 percent mentioned above. If this is only uranium mined in Russia, it is not all the uranium sold to the United States by Russia.

In 2013, Rosatom acquired Uranium One, a Canadian uranium mining company. The story made the news and was discussed in the Senate in relation to concerns that Russia, particularly in the wake of its seizure of Crimea, had taken over American uranium deposits through a Canadian firm. Yet Russia in fact purchased Uranium One to gain access to vast deposits in Kazakhstan, a world leader in uranium mining and supplies. Whether the uranium mined in Kazakhstan and exported by Uranium One to the United States is labelled as Canadian or Kazakh, the profits nevertheless go to Russia.

So, banning the 16 percent of direct Russian imports would not cut off all uranium profits flowing to the Kremlin. But it would be a first step.

Filling the Gap

The United States has one of the world’s oldest nuclear power plant fleets. Their average age is 30–40 years, and many of them continue to function beyond the design period, posing additional safety risks (6). Decommissioning nuclear power plants that should have long been shut down due to age and risk factors will cut uranium fuel consumption by 16 percent or more.

Nuclear power plants produce energy not when the consumer requires it but when the reactor can safely generate it. Almost all nuclear power plants in the United States today operate at near-maximum capacity, or about 90 percent. As reactor power drops, so does the degree of fuel burnup. Thus, if the plant runs at a lower power, the same uranium can be used for a little longer, which also helps to save fuel.

So, eliminating the 16 percent of uranium from Russian sources can be accomplished through the closure of aging nuclear power plants and the implementation of energy efficiency measures.

Expanding Domestic Uranium Mining?

Uranium mining in the United States has dramatically declined in recent years. Thus, production in 2018 was 72 percent less than in 2016. The United States produced only one percent of global uranium production in 2018.

Despite Senator Barrasso’s claim that the United States has enough uranium, surface deposits are depleted. Deeper ores have low uranium content (below 0.1 percent) and high extraction costs. Then there are the environmental consequences of mining. In Wyoming, Senator Barrasso’s home state, leaching from uranium mines has already polluted groundwater, and mining companies are unable to restore it to its original state.

Uranium mining in the United States on federal lands is regulated by the NEPA act, which requires the preparation of an environmental impact statement as well as public and expert consultations. Mining operations on private lands may be regulated at a state level. The permitting process sometimes takes years.

Donald Trump loosened the NEPA act to encourage an increase in domestic uranium mining. In addition, the Department of Energy recommended changes to environmental legislation, particularly NEPA, to make it more favorable to uranium mining. However, this did not lead to practical benefits. The process was not significantly simplified, and domestic uranium production did not increase. For the United States to increase substantially its uranium mining to substitute for Russian imports, it would have to abolish NEPA, gut the country’s environmental policy and undermine Native American communities that live in proximity to the mines.

Uranium Provides Security?

Uranium has traditionally been used in nuclear power plants. The military also uses uranium in nuclear warheads, which must be renewed on a regular basis. However, the United States can import uranium from NATO allies like Canada. These imports can be increased in case of a military need. In the energy sector, meanwhile, the global uranium market has changed so much in recent decades that even if Russia supplies vanish, countries with a large fleet of nuclear power plants are unlikely to notice.

Because of sharply declining world prices, the leaders in uranium production, such as Kazakhstan, have reduced their uranium output. Following the Fukushima disaster, demand fell to historic depths and has only recently begun to rise. But even this modest increase in demand, following a ban on Russian uranium imports, would only result in the resumption of production and a quick replenishment of the deficit. In addition, since 2018 the IAEA has built up a global uranium reserve in Kazakhstan that can supply countries with uranium shortages.

At the moment, a more serious consideration than the supply of uranium is the vulnerability of nuclear power plants to terrorist attacks. After the Russian army shelled and then seized two Ukrainian nuclear power plants, including Europe’s largest, the entire world was busy preparing for a new Fukushima or Chernobyl. A terrorist attack or the shelling of a spent nuclear fuel storage at any of these nuclear power plants could have had tragic consequences for Western Europe. Rosatom can no longer be considered a responsible international partner because it was directly involved in the Russian military’s seizure of these nuclear power plants.

Strengthening national security necessitates terminating all energy ties with Rosatom and Russia. However, a Russian uranium ban should not be an opportunity to expand domestic uranium mining. Rather, it should be part of a transition away from costly and environmentally damaging uranium dependence and toward safer, more sustainable renewable energy, which is rapidly gaining not only market share in the United States but consumer interest as well.

Working class struggles explode in Peru

Don Knowland & Cesar Uco

Weeks of protest in Peru expanded last week to numerous additional sectors of the Peruvian urban and rural working class countrywide, including farm workers and miners.

The unrest was ignited on March 28, when cargo carriers began a nationwide strike, blocking roads throughout the country for two weeks. Their main demand was for relief from a 37 percent fuel hike triggered by the war in Ukraine.

The strike led to a wave of protests over inflation by agricultural workers, urban bus transport workers, cab drivers and others, mostly centered in the region of the capital, Lima.

President Pedro Castillo called out the military to clear roads and impose a curfew. Tens of thousands marched in the streets of downtown Lima to protest the curfew. Castillo had to quickly lift these measures to avoid triggering further unrest.

President Pedro Castillo speaking at an April 22 ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the Army’s storming of the Japanese Embassy in which 14 left-wing guerrillas were massacred. (Credit: ANDINA)

Last week protests exploded throughout the country over the soaring cost of fertilizer and fuel. “Peru is a powder keg about to explode,” declared the right-wing Expreso.

Thousands joined a two-day general strike in the southeastern Cuzco region. Protestors blocked roads with rocks and burning tires.

The tourist train to the famous Inca ruins of Machu Picchu—a vital economic sector in the region—stopped operations, forcing many tourists to cancel trips.

The organizers of the Cuzco stoppage, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Agrarian Federation of Cusco (Fartac), threatened to resume the strike on Monday, April 25.

Cuzco’s population went back on strike even earlier, on Friday, April 23, as Castillo rushed to the city, holding an impromptu cabinet meeting aimed at tamping down the unrest.

With millions of people in the impoverished southern Peruvian Andes lacking the means to feed their families, the Cuzco strike quickly spread to other cities.

In Ayacucho, a 24-hour strike occurred. Picket lines and road blockades disrupted transit in the city of Juliaca, a center of commerce linking Bolivia with Cuzco, and with Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city and industrial center.

Farmers protested in Huancayo, which was the center of violent protests two weeks ago and is home to the “left”-nationalist party, Perú Libre, that put Pedro Castillo in office.

Similarly, in the Ancash region of northern Peru, farmers blocked the Parco bridge, which connects the coast to the Callejón de Huaylas, an inter-Andean valley in north-central Peru.

General unrest also continued among Peruvian miners and in mining communities.

On April 14, community members of Fuerabamba, located in the Andean mining department of Huancavelica, invaded the site of the Chinese-owned mega mining project Las Bambas, the third largest copper producer in the country. The comuneros have long claimed that the road which crosses their lands and is used by trucks full of copper ore pollutes the air and damages crops and livestock.

In response, Las Bambas announced it will stop producing copper. President Castillo then resorted to sending the army against the protesters.

Protests from the mostly indigenous surrounding communities demanding financial compensation and a share of future profits that had shut Southern Copper Corp's Cuajone mine since late February only ended after the government declared a state of emergency last week and sent in soldiers.

According to El Comercio, “struggle committees” have been formed in 15 of Peru’s regions, indicating the class struggle and protests will increase, as, inevitably, will confrontation with the police and army.

Peruvians are at the end of their ropes amid the worst economic crisis in two decades. It follows on more than two years of pandemic which so far has taken the lives of 212,486 people, the second highest mortality rate per capita in the world.

Soaring food and fuel prices risk escalating into a full-blown hunger crisis, particularly amid a shortage of fertilizers.

Peru’s agricultural industry is facing a deficit of 180,000 metric tons of urea, a key nitrogenous fertilizer, with output of staples such as of rice, potatoes and corn set to fall as much as 40 percent unless a solution is found in the coming months, according to Eduardo Zegarra, an agrarian economist and researcher at think tank GRADE.

World fertilizer prices have surged after Russian’s invasion of Ukraine pushed up the cost of natural gas, the main input for most nitrogen fertilizer, forcing producers in Europe to cut output. Sanctions on Russia, a major low-cost shipper of every major kind of crop nutrient, are disrupting global trade. Russia accounted for 70 percent of Peru’s fertilizers last year.

Peru’s economy will continue to shrink in the coming months. According to the Peruvian Institute of Economics (IPE), private investment will fall 6 to 8 percent. And 61 percent of citizens will face difficulty making interest payments.

The government’s exemption of fuel from the ISC (Selective Consumption Tax) and the “family basket” plus other foodstuffs from the IGV (General Sales Tax), is mostly benefiting households in the two highest income quintiles, rather than the mass of workers and peasants.

With respect to the poorest Peruvian families, La República reported, 'Common pots [survival group organizations among the poorest Peruvians] struggle over rising food prices. Getting sugar, oil, vegetables and meat has become an odyssey for the leaders of these organizations.”

To make up for the loss of income, since the early months of the pandemic families have been depleting their pension fund savings to pay for house rent, schools, food, transportation and other essential goods and services. As a result, pension assets in the country have dropped by about one-third.

The impact of inflation is only expected to worsen. In the last 12 months it was 7.45 percent. To curb inflation, the Bank of Peru has increased the reference interest rate by 50 basis points (0.5 percent), in turn increasing borrowing costs. This measure will particularly affect micro and small enterprises (mypes), which are the main generators of jobs in a country, where labor informality stands at 76 percent.

The popular response to corruption scandals, the marked incapacity of Pedro Castillo’s bourgeois government to meet the crisis and his recent consorting with far right-wing elements is expressed in the most recent polls. According to pollster Ipsos, the approval rating of Castillo has fallen to 19 percent, and that of Congress President Maria del Carmen Alva, of the center-right party Acción Popular, to 15 percent; 63 percent said Castillo should resign. The main bourgeoisie newspaper, El Comercio, trumpeted 'Massive rejection of Pedro Castillo.'

But the popular slogan has been “out with all of them,” reflecting a rejection of the entire bourgeois governmental setup.

There are in fact widespread calls for Castillo to resign. According to the Financial Times, many others “want him to fulfill his campaign promises to elect a constituent assembly to draw up a new constitution, to nationalize the gas industry and to implement agrarian reform,” a platform the Peruvian right last year called communism.

Desperate in the face of mass disapproval, at the cabinet meeting on Friday in Cuzco Castillo said he would send a bill to Congress to place a referendum on the regional elections ballot in October to draft a new constitution. Castillo knows full well that Congress will not agree, and that the measure is just a stunt to quell popular disquiet. Talk at the meeting by Mining Minister Carlos Palacios about lowering contract prices at Peru’s giant Camisea natural gas fields similarly was nothing but blather.

The reality is that the entire Peruvian capitalist class confronts a crisis of rule. It is incapable of providing any significant reforms.

The pseudo-left, including publications like Jacobin and Counterpunch, last year had posited Castillo, the candidate of a “Marxist” party, as the shining knight of a left revival. But after nine months in office, he has done nothing to challenge the interests of the national bourgeoisie and international capital. The disaster was so obvious that by year’s end they stopped bothering to even write about him anymore.

Other so-called “left” groups in Peru are so decrepit and politically bankrupt that they provide only a dead end for the Peruvian masses. Calls for an April 7 mobilization by the Stalinist Communist Party-controlled General Confederation of Workers (CGTP) and the Maoist Single Union of Education Workers of Peru (SUTEP) went unnoticed.

Likewise, the collectives and organizations leading various workers' struggles—such as Fartac in Cuzco—are only seeking an accommodation with the government. Several have a record of working with transnational companies and lining their own pockets.

UK Chancellor Sunak demands billions more be clawed back in student loan repayments

Ioan Petrescu

UK chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spring statement contained sweeping attacks on working-class university graduates.

The annual earnings threshold after which student loans must begin to be repaid will be lowered from £27,295to £25,000. Loans will now be written off only after 40 years rather than 30. The move to link interest on the loan to the RPI rate of inflation, rather than RPI + 3 percent, is in effect a giveaway to the highest-earning graduates.

The changes will hit working-class youth the hardest, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimating that those with lower and middle earnings will have to pay around an extra £30,000 over the duration of the loan.

Up to 300 students in a lecture room at Cardiff University this year (WSWS Media) [Photo: WSWS]

Previously the repayment threshold increased in line with average earnings. Now the government has frozen the threshold at £25,000 for the next five years, meaning—under conditions where inflation is set to reach record levels—that graduates will have to spend more and more of their income on paying back their loans.

The threshold is due to start increasing again from 2027-2028 school year, but it will be indexed to RPI, rather than average earnings, meaning that future graduates will pay back a larger share of their student loans if they do manage to make gains in their salaries.

Currently only 25 percent of graduates fully repay their loans. The combination of the lengthened repayment period and the lowered threshold will increase this figure to 70 percent, according to the IFS. By their calculations, Sunak’s changes will save £6 billion in 2023 and £2.3 billion each year after that.

While capping the maximum interest rate at RPI, rather than RPI + 3 percent, reduces the amount to be paid, this has a very small impact for most graduates—dwarfed by the other changes. The ones who will benefit are the highest-earning graduates, only minimally impacted by lowering the income threshold and increasing the repayment term. According to the IFS, graduates at the top of the earnings scale stand to pay back as much as £20,000 less with the new reform.

Students who have enrolled at universities since 2012 (the last time the loan system was reformed) get the worst of both worlds. They are affected by the changes in repayment thresholds starting from 2023, but they will not see the benefit from the lower interest rates. The IFS estimates middle-earning graduates in this cohort will pay £20,000 more over the course of their loans as a result. Given the current rates of inflation, interest on tuition loans for students in this group is set to soar to 12 percent next September.

Martin Lewis, who heads financial advice website Money Saving Expert, said Sunak’s “plans will see most university leavers pay far more for their degrees over their lifetime than they do now. It effectively completes the transformation of student ‘loans’, for most, into a working-life-long graduate tax. 

“The decision to extend repayments to 40 years, combined with the other measures, will leave most who start university straight after school still repaying it into their 60s.”

Sunak has taken the next step in the long-prepared marketisation of higher education—transforming higher education even more into a privilege reserved for the rich—beginning with Tony Blair’s introduction and initial tripling of tuition fees and David Cameron’s second tripling of the cost of university education to £9,000 a year. This was done under a system which initially left the government picking up the tab for billions of pounds of unpaid loans. The Financial Times reports, “The government has estimated that 54 per cent of student loans will never be paid back, with the current value of unpaid debt at £161bn.”

But the ruling elite never had any intention of covering this cost and have since been working to shift the burden more fully onto students.

A spur has been given by the government’s drive to claw back the hundreds of billions spent by the government during the first two years of the pandemic, most of it as bailouts for big business. Sunak offered a measly one-off 5p per liter fuel duty reduction and a 1 percent reduction in the basic rate of income tax from 2024 as the only sops in his brutal spring statement. The money for funding these tax cuts comes almost exclusively from increasing the burden on poorer graduates with the new student loan reform.

The student loan announcements are also an effective cut to higher education, with yearly fees capped at £9,250 and no additional government money made available. The fully realized marketised system is intended to simultaneously cut down student numbers and the range of higher education provision on offer.

Since most university funding comes from student tuition fees, and with inflation surging and predicted to rise further, the cap will put many institutions in a precarious financial position, resulting in the ditching of “unprofitable” courses and more cuts to staff pay and conditions. The Financial Times cited Universities UK who “calculated that by the end of the 2024 academic year, inflation would reduce the value of the annual tuition fee to £6,600 based on 2012 prices, when the fees cap trebled to £9,000.”

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD), the UK already has the lowest share of public funding in tertiary education among member countries at 25 percent, compared with an OECD average of around two-thirds. As the government proceeds with its plans, working-class youth will be forced out of a reduced number of courses and spaces, if they can afford to even consider going to university at all.

The education unions have no fundamental opposition to any of the measures outlined by Sunak.

National Union of Students (NUS) president Larissa Kennedy said the spring statement was a “disgrace” as “Students are paying hundreds of pounds extra in energy bills, relying on foodbanks thanks to soaring inflation, and being forced to choose between heating and eating.” But this bluster belies the NUS’s record.

No calls were made for a fightback against the government, or the slightest opposition raised against the entire student loans system—long accepted by the NUS and the education unions. These organisations offered only token resistance to Labour’s introduction and tripling of tuition fees. They demobilised major protests against their further trebling to £9,000 a year and the slashing of grantslike the Education Maintenance Allowance. Today they make no calls in support of the right to universal free higher education.

This is the case even as the attacks on students are intensifying, and those from working-class backgrounds are steadily deprived of access to higher education, and at a time when university staff are fighting against an unprecedented reduction of their pensions and evisceration of their pay, terms and conditions. The NUS and University and College Union (UCU) have organised no systematic campaign against the marketisation of higher education which underlies the attacks faced by higher education students and workers alike.

The disintegration of the German Left Party—the price of right-wing politics

Peter Schwarz

On Wednesday, Susanne Hennig-Wellsow relinquished the leadership of the German Die Linke (Left Party) with immediate effect. It had only been 14 months since she and her co-leader, Janine Wissler, had been elected to head the party. Wissler is now to lead the party alone until a new leadership is elected in June.

Janine Wissler and Susanne Hennig-Wellsow during their election to party leaders in February 2021 (Image: Martin Heinlein/Die Linke/CC BY 2.0)

Hennig-Wellsow’s resignation is just the latest chapter in a rapid disintegration of the Left Party. In last September’s federal election, it lost nearly half its previous share of the vote and missed the 5 percent hurdle required for parliamentary representation. Only because it won three direct mandates is a Left Party faction returning to the Bundestag at all. Presently, the party polls at 4 percent nationwide.

At the end of March, the Left Party plummeted from 12.8 to 2.6 percent in the Saarland state election. Oskar Lafontaine, who had co-founded the party in 2007 and ultimately led the state parliamentary group in Saarland, had quit the party shortly before.

As is always the case with internally rotten parties, the political issues underlying their decline are not openly discussed. Instead, the tensions and wing wars that inevitably accompany decay are fought out over sideshows—scandals, affairs and personal accusations.

Hennig-Wellsow’s resignation is no exception in this respect. She begins her resignation statement with a lengthy lament about the party’s crisis, without once getting specific, followed up with volleys of poisoned arrows upon her rivals.

“We could not deliver on the promise to be part of a forward change in policy due to our own weakness,” she states. “We have delivered too little of what we promised. Any real new beginning has failed to materialize. An apology is due, an apology to our voters whose hopes and expectations we have disappointed.”

And further: “A programmatic, strategic and cultural renewal of the Left is necessary, as we have known for years. I have done all within my power to contribute to it. But we have not yet come as far along this path as I believe we should have. We have betrayed trusts ...”

Hennig-Wellsow cites three reasons for her resignation: Her private life situation, the political difficulties of recent months—“the renewal needs new faces to be credible”—and the “handling of sexism in our own ranks.”

The second and third reasons are directed at internal party rivals, especially at co-chair Janine Wissler. The influential weekly Der Spiegel published a long article last Friday about allegations of sexual assault in the Hessian state party, where Wissler played a leading role for years. In it, Wissler’s then-life-partner is accused of sexual assault and Wissler herself of covering it up.

Although a party statement affirmed to Wissler that she had behaved in a politically correct manner, the accusations of sexism have since been further amplified—especially within the Left Party-associated Solid youth organization—in an internal party #MeToo campaign. Only an independent investigation can show what to make of all this. In any case, the sexism accusations are not the cause, but only a means in the internal party mud fight.

The real cause of the Left Party’s crisis and decline is its right-wing politics. The worsening of the social crisis as a result of the pandemic and inflation, as well as the war in Ukraine, have made it impossible to hide its right-wing policies under left-wing phrases. Whoever voted for the Left Party under the wrong impression that it was a left-wing alternative is turning away.

The claim that the Left Party and its predecessor, the PDS, are left-wing, anti-capitalist or socialist has always been a fraud. Emerging from the Stalinist state party of East Germany, the PDS initially served as a wailing wall for all those who had been short-changed in German reunification, which the PDS itself had supported. But the more it was needed to quell social tensions in the East, the more openly it professed its support for social cuts and a police state.

In 2007, renegade Social Democrats and union bureaucrats from the West, who feared that the Social Democratic Party (SPD) could no longer keep the class struggle under control because of its mass-impoverishing Agenda 2010, united with the PDS to form the Left Party. Several pseudo-leftist groups who had previously led a meagre existence in the pocket of the SPD and trade unions also joined the new party, which provided them with lucrative political careers. Among them was Janine Wissler, who had been a member of the group Marx21, close to the International Socialist Tendency, and its predecessors for two decades.

In the federal states where it assumed government responsibility, the Left Party cut social spending as savagely as any other party, deported refugees and outfitted the police. In the state of Thuringia, the party has held the prime ministership for the last seven years.

With the Ukraine war, the Left Party is letting the last fig leaf fall: its nominal renunciation of militarism and NATO, which was never more than platonic lip service without practical consequences.

Gregor Gysi, a founding member and long-time leader of the PDS and the Left Party, tried to win support for the German federal government’s €100 billion rearmament program as early as February. Gysi accused left-wing deputies who opposed it: “You are only interested in saving every aspect of your old ideology. NATO is evil, the US is evil, the federal government is evil, and that’s the end of it for you.”

Hennig-Wellsow immediately backed Gysi. In a written contribution, she called for “self-criticism.” The Russian attack on Ukraine showed “how great one’s own illusions were” that had led to “devastating misjudgements.” One cannot “cling to ‘truths’ that have been crushed by tanks and missiles.”

Even if it is not easy to “reconcile the desire for peace and the will to defend,” Hennig-Wellsow said, the party must ratchet up its “own notion of ‘defensive potentials.’” The call for the “dissolution of NATO and its replacement by a collective security system with the participation of Russia,” which is still in the party’s current program, must also be questioned, she said.

Hennig-Wellsow, the daughter of an East German policeman taken on by the West German police after reunification, was State Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow’s right hand as the Thuringia state party parliamentary group leader before moving to Berlin last year. She is one of those Left Party representatives particularly eager to prove their “ability to govern,” i.e., their unqualified loyalty to the capitalist order.

Now she has resigned, irked, but her war path has become official policy of the Left Party, fitting seamlessly into the war propaganda of NATO, which is flooding Ukraine with weapons, waging a proxy war against Russia and risking a nuclear World War III.

On March 6, in a recent general debate in the Bundestag, Left parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch explicitly backed the German government, which is supplying Ukraine with arms on a large scale, and called for unity among the “West,” i.e., NATO.

“I want to state this clearly: the responsibility for the war and the crimes lies with Russia, not with anyone in Germany,” he declared, calling on all other parties to stand united: “Those who try to instrumentalize the war in Ukraine for party political reasons are not contributing to ending the war, but are playing into the cards of Russian propaganda of a divided West.”

To the extent Bartsch criticized the German government, the criticism came from the right. “Why is Germany failing to enforce sanctions against Russian oligarchs?” he asked. Belgium, France and Italy, he said, had managed to freeze much higher sums.

In a video published by Die Welt, Bartsch advocated a halt to energy imports from Russia, something even the ruling government has so far rejected for fear of devastating economic consequences. It is an “insane situation,” he said. “We are financing this war. We are transferring hundreds of millions every day into Putin’s war chest.”

There is no serious opposition to this war policy within the Left Party. Janine Wissler loyally supports the course of Gysi, Bartsch and Hennig-Wellsow.

Left Party politician Sahra Wagenknecht and her followers, who most clearly distance themselves from NATO, do so from a German-nationalist standpoint rather than a principled stand against German militarism. They believe that German imperialism could better advance its national interests by breaking away from US dominance.