Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov visits Turkey as NATO escalates war in Ukraine

Ulaş Ateşçi

As the NATO powers escalate their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Ankara, Turkey’s capital, on Wednesday for talks with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.

Both Lavrov and Çavuşoğlu supported calls to create a “safe grain corridor” from Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea through the Turkish straits. However, the NATO-backed Ukrainian government rejected the proposal, declaring it not credible, according to AP reports.

The Turkish and Russian foreign ministers also discussed resuming peace negotiations between Kiev and Moscow, which were interrupted under pressure from the major NATO powers.

Both plans are incompatible with the plan of the US-led NATO powers to inflame the war in order to bring about regime change in Russia and ultimately realize the imperialist division and plunder of this vast country’s resources.

For this, NATO has opened a Northern front in war against Russia. Since Sweden and Finland announced their intention to join NATO in mid-May, with the support of the US and European imperialist powers, Sweden has been turned into a naval garrison against Russia. Meanwhile, Moscow’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine, which plays into the hands of Washington, is reportedly making military advances in the east of Ukraine.

The Kremlin faces punishing Western sanctions, including import and export bans as well as the exclusion of major Russian banks from the international SWIFT financial system, making it virtually impossible for Russian companies to trade with the West. In response, it is trying to maneuver with Turkey, a NATO member state, and the pro-US Gulf monarchies.

Before visiting Turkey, Lavrov toured Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. According to the Arab News, “Lavrov clarified that the members of the GCC will not participate in sanctions against Russia. Moreover, prior to the meeting, Lavrov spoke with Prince Faisal, when the Russian diplomat praised the level of cooperation in OPEC+, as it is known that Saudi Arabia and other member states rejected American pressure to increase crude output after the start of the Russian operation in Ukraine.”

After the Çavuşoğlu-Lavrov meeting, which was also attended by military delegations, the two held a joint press conference. “We see a [common] will between Russia and Ukraine to return to negotiations,” said Çavuşoğlu, adding that his government sees UN plans to establish a food corridor out of Ukraine under Turkish naval forces watch as “reasonable and feasible.” He proposed to host a meeting with the UN and Ukraine in Istanbul.

He added, “If the whole world is in need of the products to be exported by Ukraine and the Russian Federation, we need to establish the adequate method and mechanisms.” While Ankara denounces the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and openly supports the Kiev regime, it did not join the US-led sanctions against Russia due to its strong ties with Moscow. Çavuşoğlu said the West should ease sanctions in return for Moscow’s agreeing to a “food corridor.”

AP wrote, “While food exports are technically exempt from the sanctions, Russia claims that restrictions on its ships and banks make it impossible to deliver its grain to global markets.” According to AP, 22 million tons of grain are sitting in silos in the Black Sea ports of Ukraine, “one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil.”

During the press conference, Lavrov denied that a global food crisis was caused by the Russian-Ukrainian war. He claimed that the share of Ukrainian grain exports in the global market made up about 1 percent of the total and therefore is too small an amount to be significant, before adding: “Nevertheless, Russia values Turkey’s efforts to unblock the situation on grain exports from Ukrainian seaports.”

On Tuesday before his visit to Turkey, he also said Western countries had created “a flurry of artificial problems” by closing their ports to Russian vessels.

On June 3, Russian President Vladimir Putin said: “If someone wants to solve the problem of exporting Ukrainian grain—please, the easiest way is through Belarus. No one is stopping it,” adding: “But for this you have to lift sanctions from Belarus.” He also said that British and US sanctions on Russian fertilizers would escalate problems on global food markets.

NATO claims that Russia is responsible for rising food prices and shortages are political lies. Food prices were rising even before the war, as central banks in the centers of world finance debased major currencies with massive printing of money to be handed over to the financial aristocracy. The current cut-off of grain supplies is largely due to US-led sanctions as NATO and Washington call for a “long and painful war” against Russia.

Russia is demanding Ukraine clear sea mines around its ports in exchange for allowing food ships to leave Ukraine. According to the Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency, Lavrov said “the main problem with the export of Ukraine’s grains is the country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s refusal to discuss the clearing of sea mines.”

Denying Ukrainian officials’ claims on potential Russian naval attacks from a corridor, Lavrov said: “We guarantee that we will not use the demining of Ukrainian ports to attack the country. … We are ready to ensure the safety of ships that leave Ukrainian ports. We are ready to do this in cooperation with our Turkish colleagues.”

On Wednesday, Ukrainian Grain Union chief Serhiy Ivashchenko rejected this, however, saying: “Turkey doesn’t have enough power in the Black Sea to guarantee the security of cargo and Ukrainian ports.” He added that it would take three to four months to remove sea mines.

The European powers’ reaction on a possible “food corridor” was not positive. European Council President Charles Michel accused the Kremlin of “weaponizing food supplies,” while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hypocritically claimed: “Our sanctions do not touch basic food commodities. They do not affect the trading of grain or other food between Russia and third countries.”

She added, “And the port embargo specifically has full exemption on agricultural goods. So let’s stick to the truth. It’s Putin’s war of aggression that fuels the food crisis and nothing else.”

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan discussed the creation of a safe sea corridor last week. According to the AP, the Ukrainian government called for “security guarantees, such as a supply of weapons to defend against maritime threats and the participation of NATO ships in the Black Sea.”

Asked about Ankara’s efforts, a US State Department spokesperson said, “[we] appreciate Turkey’s efforts to mediate diplomatic discussions. … We strongly support the resumption of grain exports from Ukraine to alleviate global food insecurity that Russia’s war has exacerbated.” He called for Ukraine to be “fully involved in any decisions” while “any plan should not enable Russia to further its own military aims.”

In fact, the Russian-Turkish initiative for a “food corridor” was originally a counter-move to NATO plans to exploit the food crisis to escalate the war against Russia, sending warships to the Black Sea and creating conditions for all-out war between NATO and Russia.

Such a NATO deployment would, however, require the approval of the Turkish government, which controls the straits leading to the Black Sea. Ankara closed the straits to both Russian and NATO warships after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Japanese cabinet approves policy to double military spending

Ben McGrath

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government is set to significantly increase its military involvement in the Indo-Pacific region, according to annual policy guidelines adopted by Kishida’s cabinet on June 7.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (Image: Wikimedia)

These new guidelines come in the wake of United States President Joe Biden’s summits with Kishida and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in Tokyo at the end of May, aimed at preparing for war with China.

The Basic Policies for Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform policy package calls for doubling Tokyo’s armed forces spending “within five years,” without specifying a specific numerical target. The guidelines state that Tokyo will aim for the standard set by NATO countries by spending more than 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on the military. Japan currently spends about 1 percent of its GDP on the armed forces.

Tokyo’s military budget for the 2021 fiscal year reached 6.17 trillion yen ($US46 billion), which included the initial and supplementary budgets. If doubled this would make the Japan the third largest military spender in the world, surpassed by only the US and China.

In addition, the new guidelines allow increased weapon exports, with regulatory laws likely to be changed by next March, according to Nikkei Asia. In 2014, Japan eased regulations that banned the export of weapons, though this ban had been undermined in the past.

Now, Tokyo is trying to eliminate the prohibition altogether. Tokyo hopes this will allow it to more cheaply produce weaponry, such as the fighter jets and anti-aircraft missiles it is developing with the US and the United Kingdom, as well as procure weaponry at cheaper costs.

Tokyo intends to use exports to deepen military cooperation with countries in the Indo-Pacific region, such as Australia and India. Japan also hopes to sell fighter jets to countries throughout Southeast Asia in a bid to offset Chinese influence.

The policy guidelines do not make clear where the money will come from to pay for this increased spending because the working class will be forced to foot the bill through increased attacks on living and working conditions.

The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) offered only milquetoast criticisms of the guidelines, and refrained from addressing the pro-war agenda. The CDP’s head of its policy research committee Junya Ogawa, stated: “We can spend that money in a more sensible way.”

Tokyo is using supposed Chinese and North Korean aggression to run roughshod over widespread anti-war sentiment in the public and justify remilitarization. Calls for increased spending are not new, having been part of the right-wing and ultra-nationalist program for years.

The US has likewise urged Tokyo to accelerate its plans for remilitarization to better integrate Japan into Washington’s war plans with China. During Biden’s visit to Tokyo from May 22 to 24, Kishida pledged that Japan would “considerably expand its defense spending to drastically bolster its defense capability.”

In line with this, some of the most vociferous proponents of remilitarization within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), including former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, demanded more explicit commitments to a military buildup in the policy package than what appeared in a May 31 draft. This included adding the five-year timeline for increasing spending and specifically referencing the 2 percent of GDP that NATO countries pledge to spend on their militaries.

While Abe left office in September 2020, he remains a lawmaker in the National Diet and wields a great deal of influence in the LDP. He has been particularly belligerent over Taiwan, calling into question the “One China” policy, which states Taiwan is part of China, and to which Tokyo and Washington formally adhere. He also sparked debate in February within the LDP over Japan possibly hosting US nuclear weapons.

Abe, speaking on June 5 at the 13th Axios Outlook Symposium, reportedly called on Japan, the US, and other allies, such as Taiwan and the Quad—including Australia and India—to create a situation that forces Beijing to give up the idea of militarily seizing Taiwan. According to Taiwan News, Abe stated: “We must not underestimate their (Beijing’s) efforts. Any infringement on Taiwan is an infringement on Japan.”

Washington and its allies have accused Beijing, without evidence, of preparing to invade Taiwan. Biden declared while in Japan that Washington had made a “commitment” to intervene militarily in such an event.

In reality, Beijing has stated that if the island declares independence or is acknowledged as such by Washington, Beijing would use force to prevent Taiwan from becoming a base for US imperialism. Having steadily chipped away at the “One China” policy, seeking to goad Beijing, it is the US and Japan that risk war.

Furthering this imperialist agenda, the Kishida government’s new policy package included a “very rare” reference, according to an LDP official, to Taiwan in a footnote, saying Tokyo “underscores the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and encourages the peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues.”

The decision to include that comment followed the reference to Taiwan in the joint statements issued at summits between Biden and then-Prime Minister Yoshida Suga last year and again between Biden and Kishida last month. The Biden-Suga statement was the first time that leaders from the US and Japan had directly mentioned Taiwan in such a declaration since 1969. This was not an innocent remark, but a calculated inclusion meant to undermine the “One China” policy and Beijing’s legitimacy as the government of China.

Japan’s right-wing Sankei Shimbun reported on June 4 that Tokyo’s defense ministry is planning for the first time to station an active-duty military attaché at the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association, Tokyo’s de facto embassy on Taiwan, to aid with intelligence gathering. The report claimed the attaché would be a civil servant with the defense ministry rather a military officer. Since 2003, Tokyo has dispatched a supposedly retired military official to fill this role.

Beijing has reacted with anger to these developments. A June 8 editorial in the state-run Global Times stated: “Japan is literally doing something that threatens China’s core national interests, and China will not remain indifferent. We must remind Japan of what this step [questioning the ‘One China’ policy] means. The Taiwan question is China’s internal affair. If an outsider wants to step in, we will ‘break its leg.’”

The Japanese government’s move to double military spending, following its German counterpart’s decision to triple its military budget this year, is a further sign of preparations for another disastrous world war, with all the imperialist powers re-arming at an accelerated rate.

Sri Lankan president imposes essential public services order, banning power and health workers strikes

Saman Gunadasa

On Wednesday night, Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse issued an extraordinary gazette declaring electricity and health essential public services and outlawing strikes in these sectors.

Ceylon Electricity Board workers protesting outside head office on 3 November 2021 (WSWS Media)

The immediate aim of the decree, which was issued under the country’s draconian Essential Public Services Act (EPSA), was to stop a planned strike by Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) workers starting at midnight. The key sector has a more than 26,000-strong workforce. The strike was called by the Ceylon Electricity Board Engineers Union (CEBEU) and the Ceylon Electricity Board United Trade Union Alliance (CEBUTA).

According to the EPSA decree, any employee of the designated institutions who does not attend work faces “conviction, after summary trial before a magistrate” and will be “liable to rigorous imprisonment” of two to five years and/or a fine of between 2,000 and 5,000 rupees ($US5–$US13).

The “movable and immoveable property” of those convicted can be seized by the state, and his or her name “removed from any register maintained for profession or vocation.” It is also an offence for any person to “incite, induce or encourage any other person” to not attend work through a “physical act or by any speech or writing.”

The unions called the strike in protest against an amendment to the CEB Act 2009 proposed by Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekara, allowing investments in the “renewable energy sector” without competitive bids. The amendment removes a paragraph in the act stating that the license for the investment should be given to the bidder who provides electricity at the lowest price. Desperate to attract investment at any cost, the government will be able to arbitrarily decide on investment opportunities.

The CEB unions denounced the amendment, declaring that the government was planning to hand over the country’s wind and solar resources to the Adani Group, a major Indian multinational, without the competitive bidding process. They also demanded a halt in the moves towards privatisation of the CEB and for a suitable professional with an “unblemished character” to be appointed as CEB chairman.

The unions, however, immediately capitulated to Rajapakse’s essential services gazette and cancelled the strike.

CEBEU president Anil Ranjith told the media that Rajapakse had called him and promised to look into the union’s demands during the committee stage debate in parliament. Ranjith also claimed that if the current amendment was passed, “We will not hesitate to resume our trade union action with immediate effect.”

Rajapakse’s “promise,” like Ranjith’s threats, were worthless, with the amendment passed by a majority in the Sri Lankan parliament on Thursday.

At the same time, the Colombo District Courts, on the request of CEB management, issued an enjoining order preventing the CEBEU from “disrupting supply of electricity to the general public as a result of engaging in strike.” The order constitutes a judicial ban on the strike and is valid till June 22, when the union leaders will have to appear in court. Ignoring the order would be considered contempt of court and punishable.

None of the opposition parties, including the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), opposed the essential public services order.

Leading SJB MP, Harsha De Silva failed to win support for an opposing amendment allowing small investors to bid for tenders, further demonstrating that the SJB has no fundamental differences with the government’s agenda. JVP parliamentarians recorded a token opposition vote against the government amendment.

Power and Energy Minister Wijesekara told parliament that the government would not “bow down to trade union terrorism,” a reference to CEB workers not the union bureaucrats who had already stopped the strike. He also called on the security forces to protect the hydropower reservoirs, claiming “sabotage acts” were occurring.

Sri Lanka’s original Electricity Act of 2009 paved the way for private firms, cooperatives and local government bodies to compete with the state-owned CEB in all aspects of power generation, transmission and distribution. The current amendment, which permits private investments, including international investors in the renewable sector, is another element in the restructuring and ultimate privatisation of the CEB, a long-standing International Monetary Fund (IMF) demand.

Facing mass nationwide protests and two general strikes in April and May demanding his resignation as president and the removal of his government, Gotabaya Rajapakse appointed pro-US politician Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister last month. Wickremesinghe, the only United National Party representative in parliament, is charged with implementing the IMF’s austerity demands. He has repeatedly declared that loss-making state-owned enterprises cannot be sustained and must be privatised.

Yesterday, the media reported that the CEB lost 65 billion rupees in the first quarter of this year. Electricity prices will soon be increased with CEB management proposing a 300 percent hike, which will drastically impact on workers and the poor. 

CEBUTA leader Ranjan Jayalal (WSWS Media)

The union’s criticism of the amendment bill is hypocritical. Announcing the cancellation of the strike, CEBUTA leader and JVP central committee member Ranjan Jayalal said: “This bill allows the Indian Adani Company to have monopoly in this sector. If there is a competitive tender bidding process then domestic and international investors should also be allowed intervene.”

In other words, the union is not opposed to “competitive bidding” in the electricity sector but wants it broadened. It was compelled to call a strike in order to dissipate workers’ anger over the government privatization drive.

Last year, the Rajapakse government decided to sell 40 percent of the state-owned Kerawalapitiya LNG power plant to the US-based New Fortress Energy Company. The unions called limited protests and took court action, claiming that this would help to compel the government to reverse its decision. Predictably, the courts backed the government deal and the unions accepted the ruling and shut down their protests.

Over the last two and half months, the CEB unions, in collaboration with other unions, have worked to divert the mass anti-government protests and strikes behind SJB and JVP calls for an interim regime and parliamentary elections.

As previously noted, Rajapakse’s draconian essential services decree applies to the health sector where workers are deeply hostile to government cuts to overtime payments. While health employees have held strikes and demonstrations at several hospitals, the health unions have shutdown these protests, accepting “assurances” from the health ministry that it will pay back the reduced allowances at some point in the future.

The new EPSA decree banning strikes by electricity and health workers is a warning to the working class as a whole.

Deeply mired in the global crisis triggered by the pandemic and intensified by the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, the Sri Lankan capitalist class is determined to impose the economic burden on workers and the poor, including through the use of dictatorial measures.

As the last three months have again revealed, the survival of the capitalist elite and its government depends on the treachery of the trade unions.

2.6 million US educators and staff quit public K-12 and higher education jobs during pandemic

Chase Lawrence & Renae Cassimeda

Kindergarten teacher Karen Drolet, left, works with a student at Raices Dual Language Academy, a public school in Central Falls, R.I., Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022.

Around 2.6 million educators and staff have quit public education jobs in K-12 and higher education during the pandemic, monthly figures from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) show. Overall, there have been 4.8 million educators and staff total “separations” in public education during the pandemic which include layoffs (1.3 million), resignations (2.6 million), and other separations (771,000), including retirement, death, disability and transfers.

Significantly, data from the first four months of 2022 shows that the exodus from the public education industry is ongoing. In the first four months of this year, 734,000 total separations took place in the industry with the vast majority of those, 64 percent, or 474,000, being resignations.

In spite of this, the May 3 BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary showed state and local government education job openings actually declined by 43,000, the second largest sector-decrease behind decreases in transportation, utilities and warehousing at 69,000, suggesting substantial job cuts by school districts nationwide.

US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona lied to educators and staff in a recent interview on Axios, when he said, “Competitive salaries, good working conditions, and teachers’ voices are at the table when we’re talking about reimagining education. We’re fighting for you. But we also recognize what you’ve done in the last two years, especially.”

One would think that Cardona lives in another world. Such staggering statistics, in reality, depict public education in a state of breakdown. Compounded stress, overwork, stagnant wages, sickness and death exacerbated by the over two and a half years of an ongoing pandemic, rising inflation and the threat of war have resulted in a continued mass exodus of US educators and school workers and have further accelerated attacks on public education.

In K-12 public schools, recent data from an Institute of Education Statistics (IES) study entitled The School Pulse Panel, which collects information on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic from a national sample of public schools, reveals the impact of the pandemic on public education.

Almost half, or 44 percent, of public schools report having full- or part-time teacher vacancies. Sixty-one percent of public schools said that they had an increased number of teacher and staff vacancies in January 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with only 22 percent saying that they did not. Further, 45 percent of schools noted that Special Education departments had the highest number of vacancies.

Another hallmark of the teacher shortage is the increasing tendency for teaching and non-teaching staff to be forced to work outside their intended duties. According to the IES survey, 57 percent of schools with one or more vacancies said they increasingly needed to use teachers for work outside their job descriptions.

The numbers are worsened by widespread absences, which have soared due to coronavirus infections and mental exhaustion from overwork. Three-quarters of districts reported needing to use non-teaching or teaching staff to act as substitute teachers. The IES survey noted that in January, 66 percent of staff expressed concern for the overall lack of substitute teachers at their site.

According to a recent CalMatters analysis, data from the state’s seven largest urban school districts for January showed that teacher and substitute vacancies were higher in low income areas. In low income districts on average, 42 percent of teacher absences were filled with substitutes, while higher income districts had 63 percent of their teacher absences filled with substitutes. For instance, in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest K-12 district in the US, schools in neighborhoods with the most low income students found substitutes for only 23 percent of absent teachers.

The IES survey also noted further actions that districts were taking to deal with the staffing crisis. Seventeen percent of schools reported they will offer fewer extra-curricular opportunities due to vacancies, and a quarter of schools will be increasing class sizes for the same reason. One in five schools is sharing teachers or staff to offset vacancies or absences.

The severe staffing crisis has caused many Head Start programs, federally funded preschool and early preschool programs for low income families, to close permanently. A recent survey of more than 900 National Head Start Association members showed that 90 percent of respondents’ programs have closed classrooms permanently or temporarily due to lack of staff, and nearly a third of staff positions are currently unfilled. Together with the baby formula shortage in the US, the closure of Head Start programs leaves countless low income families in a dire situation.

Additionally, the IES findings for April 2022 show that 70 percent of schools reported an increase in students seeking mental health services since the start of the pandemic, and 29 percent reported an increase for teachers. This exposes the lying claims by the Biden administration and corporate media that virtual learning and the closure of school buildings were responsible for the mental health crisis in schools. If this were so, it would be over now that children and teachers have been forced back into schools. In fact, the elimination of COVID-19 restrictions played a large role in the acceleration of the mental health crisis for teachers and students which was already present before the pandemic.

If the Biden administration had any intention of “fighting” for educators and students, there would have been efforts, backed by science and public health experts, to fight to stop the pandemic, ensure the safety of students and staff and to actually fund public education. Instead, Cardona and Biden have forced the reopening of schools alongside the teachers unions so parents could go back to producing profits for Wall Street.

The IES survey also noted that in January, 51 percent of staff are concerned for their physical health and safety, while 46 percent of staff are concerned about transmitting COVID-19 to immunocompromised family members. According to an unofficial tracker of US school personnel COVID-19 deaths which corroborates its total numbers with reports in news media, at least 2,367 educators and school workers in US K-12 schools have died since August 2020.

In California, COVID-19 deaths among current and retired educational staff in the state from March 2020 through December 2021 officially stands at 787, according to CalSTRS. Ninety percent, or 708, of these deaths were among retired staff, while 10 percent, or 78, were among active staff. The toll is likely an undercount given the substantial cover-up of reporting and lack of overall COVID-19 surveillance in US schools and general public.

At the direction of the Biden administration, billions of dollars in coronavirus relief money are being used for hiring incentives to address the staffing shortage. But trillions, which could have been used to better fund education, were given instead to Wall Street and for war with Biden and Congress supplying unlimited funds and armaments to Ukraine.

As the mass shortage of teachers continues to deepen across the country, districts are scrambling for last-minute solutions, which has further intensified attacks on public education.

Many districts have cynically resorted to meager one-time bonuses in attempts to retain teachers and staff. Sellout contract agreements reached by districts and education unions during the recent strikes of Minneapolis and Sacramento teachers and school staff offered paltry wage increases and one-time bonuses, which resulted in actual cuts to real wages given rising cost of living and runaway inflation. School districts in Texas, such as Dallas Independent School District (DISD), have given miserly bonuses for new hires in a bid to replace teachers who have left.

Other school districts across the country are removing a full day of school from each week because of acute staffing shortages and budget deficits.

Many Texas school districts have recently adopted a four-day week in a bid to reduce costs for the school district and boost student and teacher attendance. However, students and staff are still required to make up lost instructional time.

In Tioga Independent School District in North Texas, a four-day school week is being proposed alongside an increase of 30 minutes per school day, as well as a lengthening of the school year by three weeks and shortening of the summer by the same amount. Similar increases are being implemented in Chico ISD and Mineral Wells ISD, both in North Texas. In another North Texas district, New Summerfield ISD, Fridays may be used for staff development and tutorials. In Wieser School District in Idaho, increases could range from 30 minutes to 55 minutes.

Online for-profit education companies have also profited off the crisis in education by partnering with school districts to fill teacher vacancies with virtual teachers for students in classrooms. Proximity Learning and Elevate K12 are two major online education companies which have grown rapidly during the pandemic. Proximity is used by 164 districts in the US and is expected to double its workforce to nearly 2,000 teachers by next school year. Elevate K-12 has seen a similar rapid growth and expects to double the number of school district partnerships to 500 and to more than double its teaching workforce to 3,000 by next year. The efforts by private companies to partner with K-12 districts work to drive down wages and deepen efforts at privatizing public education.

Pay for educators in Elevate K12 range from $20 to $50 an hour, while Proximity offers $25 to $30 an hour for part-time teachers. Proximity just recently created full-time positions with a $40,000 salary, far less than the average estimated salary in Mississippi—which has the lowest average salary in the country at $47,000.

Mélenchon surges in polls in run-up to French legislative elections

Alex Lantier

The first round of the French legislative elections will take place tomorrow, seven weeks after the re-election of President Emmanuel Macron. However, Macron’s “Ensemble!” election coalition is falling behind the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who finished third in the French presidential elections with 22 percent of the vote.

On Thursday, several polls were published showing NUPES candidates leading in absolute numbers of votes with 28 percent of the total, in front of “Ensemble!” with 27 percent. Marine Le Pen’s neo-fascist National Rally (RN) polled 19.5 percent, and the right-wing The Republicans (LR) 11 percent.

There is enormous uncertainty about the outcome of the election. As Mélenchon’s vote is concentrated in urban working class areas, Macron’s coalition would likely get the most seats, by carrying the many smaller rural districts. In the 577-seat National Assembly, “Ensemble!” would have 260 to 300 seats, NUPES 175 to 215, LR 35 to 55, and the RN 20 to 60. Macron could thus fail to get the 289-seat majority needed to form a government, though Mélenchon’s promise to win the election and become prime minister under Macron also appears vulnerable.

The surge in votes for Mélenchon—who has won support by pledging to bring the retirement age back down to 60, block gas price increases and increase pensions and the minimum wage—reflects an attempt by workers and youth to register a left-wing vote. It has exploded the capitalist media’s explanation for the two-decade rise of neo-fascist parties: namely, that French workers are shifting relentlessly to the right.

In fact, workers are looking to register a left-wing vote and avert the devastating impact of inflation in fuel and food prices that is rampaging across the world capitalist economy. Neo-fascists have lost 4 percent of the vote since the presidential election, amid an international upsurge of the class struggle. During the legislative election campaign, health and airport workers across France and Europe struck against low wages, social austerity and the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, however, the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES), the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), stresses that workers can place no confidence in Mélenchon, who will inevitably disappoint whatever hopes they place in him. Mélenchon aims to drive workers into a parliamentary dead end of supporting a Mélenchon-Macron coalition government, to defuse the mounting radicalization of the working class and to avert an explosion of the class struggle.

Yesterday, Mélenchon issued a last-minute election appeal, saying: “A great time has come. Sunday, if you want, if you go vote … if you vote NUPES, we can change the history of our country and, above all, the lives of each and every one of us.” With enough NUPES votes, he added, “we will have a majority of deputies in the National Assembly, and from there, a government of which I will be the prime minister. So it’s the time to make a simple effort … it just takes a few moments, and it can change everything.”

It is a fraud to claim that electing Mélenchon to serve under Macron as prime minister will “change everything.” Macron is widely hated among workers as the “president of the rich,” for having cracked down in his first term on all protests and strikes against austerity and military-police repression. There is nothing to negotiate with Macron. He can only be dealt with by waging the class struggle, and mobilizing the working class to bring down his regime.

With Macron in control of foreign policy as president, France is stoking the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. He has said he is ready to send French warships into the Black Sea to face off against the Russian navy—ostensibly to remove mines Ukraine has sowed in its harbors to protect them from Russian attack, and then escort Ukrainian grain exports out to world markets. Macron is spending countless millions of euros on sending heavy artillery and missile systems to the Ukrainian armed forces, risking the outbreak of World War III.

Macron is continuing the multitrillion-euro European bank bailouts of the super-rich that are fueling inflation and his policy of mass infection on COVID-19. He also is maintaining his usual deafening silence on the forces in the French officer corps around the far-right de Villiers family, who last year threatened to mount a coup in France, shortly after Donald Trump attempted a coup in Washington D.C. to stop the election of Joe Biden.

Despite Macron’s flagrantly reactionary program, Mélenchon is signaling that he will seek a deal with Macron at all costs, supposedly in the national interest.

He defended Macron’s utterly reckless war policy in Ukraine against criticisms by Ukrainian officials who demanded that Macron visit their country. Endorsing the European powers’ arming of neo-Nazi forces like Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, Mélenchon said: “I think the Ukrainians should not speak to us that way, because France is arming, France is engaging, France is supporting the Ukrainian people.”

On France Inter radio, Mélenchon pledged that with Macron, “[w]e will get along because that is in the interest of our country.” He also walked back his earlier claims to want to build a Sixth Republic to replace the current Fifth Republic founded in 1958 by General Charles de Gaulle during the Algerian war, amid a coup by officers hostile to Algerian independence from France.

While Mélenchon claimed on France Inter that he “fights the constitution of the Fifth Republic,” he hastened to add that “as long as it’s that one, that is the rule that will be applied.” Asked to explain why he suddenly proposed to support and respect a constitution he has so often loudly denounced, Mélenchon bluntly declared: “I am not in favor of organizing a political insurrection in this country.”

He is doing a cynical and reactionary balancing act—pledging to massively improve living standards, while supporting the policies of France’s “president of the rich,” and claiming to speak for left-wing sentiment and opposition to capitalism, while opposing revolution. There is, however, no way to square the circle or to reconcile the irreconcilable.

Mélenchon’s pledge to work with Macron no doubt reflects his acute awareness that, should it do well in the elections, NUPES legislators would necessarily be called upon to help implement Macron’s program.

The working class in Europe and beyond have had bitter experiences with pseudo-left parties like the NUPES, that have pledged to “change everything” but oppose revolution. Mélenchon’s ally in Greece, the Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”) party became a byword for betrayal after it came to power in 2015, pledging to end EU austerity policies. It promptly abandoned its promises, imposed billions of euros in social cuts and built a vast network of prison camps for refugees in the Greek islands.

In Spain, Mélenchon’s ally, the Podemos party, which is currently in government, has sent riot police to assault striking metalworkers and truckers, imposed austerity policies and sent anti-tank missiles to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine.

New Zealand hospitals inundated, healthcare system “imploding”

Tom Peters

Every day brings new reports of the worsening crisis in New Zealand’s public hospitals, as a result of the Labour Party-led government adopting the criminal COVID-19 policy of mass infection.

Hutt Valley Hospital Emergency Department (Source: Hutt Valley District Health Board Facebook)

The government has dropped any pretence of even trying to mitigate the pandemic, after abandoning its zero COVID policy last October. It has ditched vaccine mandates, loosened isolation requirements and made masks optional in schools. During her recent visit to the US, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern referred to the pandemic as a thing of the past, as she encouraged tourists to return to New Zealand.

More than 1.2 million people have been infected with the virus, more than one fifth of the population, according to official figures. The actual number is undoubtedly far higher. As of June 10, the ministry of health had recorded 1,303 COVID-related deaths, 95 percent of which occurred this year, after the reopening of nonessential businesses and schools as Omicron hit the country.

On June 8, the Otago Daily Times reported that the Southern District Health Board (DHB) cancelled all surgeries at Dunedin Hospital “due to severe staff shortages.” Chief operating officer Hamish Brown blamed “high numbers of emergency department presentations, Covid-19, staff fatigue and illness.”

This situation is repeated across the country. At some DHBs, more than 20 percent of staff are sick with COVID or influenza or are isolating as a COVID contact. Meanwhile, St John Ambulance told the media this week that the number of call-outs now exceeds that during the Omicron surge in March–April. The service issued an emergency call for volunteers.

Emergency doctor John Bonning told the New Zealand Herald that Middlemore Hospital in South Auckland experienced its “biggest day ever” on June 7. The emergency department saw 420 patients in one night, well above the normal level of 300. The following day, according to a leaked email sent by management to staff, there were still “71 patients awaiting a bed.”

A Middlemore worker quoted by Stuff said: “It is frightening, actually, working there at the moment. It feels like there are lives at risk because of the high volumes [of patients]… Staff are feeling enormous pressure—they’re stressed and tired.”

This week, 256 staff in eight wards at Wellington Hospital lodged a “provisional improvement notice” with management and the government regulator WorkSafe, citing unsafe staffing levels. In response, non-critical surgeries have been postponed.

On June 7, the Herald reported that a woman who presented to Wellington’s emergency department “waited a total of 25 hours for a bed on a ward to be available for her.” The woman, who has a chronic pain condition, said she “wasn’t treated like a human being.”

Hospitals are now seeing people who have been infected more than once. Whangarei emergency doctor Gary Payinda tweeted on June 8: “The last thing anyone needs is flu and a repeat case of Covid… I’m seeing cases within 6–12 weeks of their first infection, sometimes worse than their first one, in the emergency department.”

Health Minister Andrew Little has repeatedly downplayed these reports. On June 8, he misleadingly told NewstalkZB that “whereas so many other hospital systems… in the last couple of years were overrun and overwhelmed because of COVID, we managed to avoid that.” He neglected to add that this has changed dramatically in recent months. Now that NZ has adopted the same murderous “let it rip” policy as other countries, its hospitals are facing the same crisis.

The Ardern government’s efforts to downplay the pandemic have led to growing complacency and the belief, among some people, that getting COVID-19 is inevitable. Retail NZ CEO Greg Harford told Newshub yesterday that up to 40 percent of shoppers are no longer wearing masks, despite being technically required to do so.

Public health experts are increasingly concerned at the Labour government’s refusal to take action. University of Canterbury senior lecturer Matthew Hobbs, and fellow researchers Alex Kazemi and Lukas Marek, wrote in the Conversation on June 1 that, in addition to COVID, flu cases have begun to spike, and “[c]onditions are also primed for potential outbreaks of other illnesses including measles, whooping cough and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).”

They called for “a recommitment to public health measures that slow the spread of respiratory infections, as well as a renewed drive for widespread vaccination.” The experts pointed out that although 95 percent of the eligible population had received two shots of the Pfizer vaccine, far fewer are triple-vaccinated. According to the Ministry of Health, 2,665,867 people—about half the population—have received the third shot, which is essential to provide protection against Omicron, although it still does not prevent all illnesses and deaths.

In a June 10 Conversation article, epidemiologist Amanda Kvalsvig wrote that “the government’s policy of keeping schools open through the Omicron outbreak has left communities exposed to widespread infection and disrupted learning.” She called for the reintroduction of mask mandates and for proper ventilation and air quality monitoring systems in schools.

While reporting on the crisis in hospitals, as well as chronic teacher and student absences due to COVID, corporate media outlets continue to publish articles encouraging people to treat the pandemic as over.

Stuff’s travel writer Brook Sabin declared following a recent visit to Australia: “Covid is going nowhere and the restriction-free life isn’t as scary as it seems. More people need to head overseas and realise there is life after Covid.” He did not mention that Australia is recording hundreds of COVID deaths every week due its bipartisan “let it rip” policy.

One reader commented below the article: “As a doctor working in a hospital that has just cancelled elective surgery for two weeks as the hospital is overloaded from staff sickness and a long COVID tail and now influenza, I find your article plain irresponsible and selfish [...] the health system in Aotearoa is imploding.” The comment received more than 90 positive reactions.

Another reader stated: “We should be still in full lock down. Not long ago 20-30 deaths a day would have been horrifying.… If the world locked down properly the virus would have been gone in 4 weeks.”

Wellington resident Erica observed on Twitter: “We’re averaging 11 deaths per day. If the road toll for Easter was nearly 50 there’d be an outcry. I am a support worker and in our service, after being covid-free, this week 8/12 [8 out of 12] residents have it. Three staff are also infected. This is our peak.”

Elon Musk threatens to cut 10 percent of Tesla’s white collar workforce

Rafael Azul

Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Elon Musk, CEO of electric vehicle maker Tesla, called for the layoff of 10 percent of the company’s white collar workforce in an internal company email on June 3.

“Tesla will be reducing salaried head count by 10 percent, as we have become overstaffed in many areas,” Musk stated. He said that the number of hourly employees, on the other hand, would increase.

In another email cited by Reuters, Musk had stated he was ordering a “pause on all hiring worldwide,” saying that he had a “super-bad feeling” about a coming recession.

Musk later reversed himself twice on Twitter, first stating that “total headcount will increase, but salaried should be fairly flat,” before seeming to confirm that the plan for salaried job cuts was accurate.

More recently, on June 10, it was revealed that Tesla had canceled a series of virtual job fairs, which had been scheduled to take place in China this month. The events were to recruit positions in sales, deliveries, research and development and procurement, according to the Wall Street Journal.

His threats to the cut salaried jobs come shortly after the billionaire commanded white collar workers at Tesla and SpaceX to return to the office full-time or be fired, i.e., end remote work arrangements despite the continuing danger of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence,” declared Musk in a memo with the subject line “To be super clear” the week before. With his typical self-aggrandizement, he continued, “That is why I lived in the factory so much—so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, Tesla would long ago have gone bankrupt.”

Tesla has become the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles (more than 936,000 vehicles sold in 2021), although it still lags far behind the established automakers in the overall number of vehicles sold. Its rise has been dependent upon the intense and brutal exploitation of workers, as well as the cheap-money policies of the Federal Reserve and the attendant frenzied speculation on Wall Street over the last decade-plus.

The run-up of Tesla’s stock price has made Musk the world’s richest man, with a fortune estimated at more than a quarter of a trillion dollars, despite the recent slump in the company’s share value.

The company now employs 100,000 workers across the world in 19 manufacturing plants that, in addition to electric vehicles and parts, manufacture home batteries (the Tesla Wall) and other components. Its biggest assembly plants are in Shanghai, China (15,000 workers) and Fremont, California (10,000 workers) in the United States, and more assembly plants have been recently opened in Texas and Germany.

Elon Musk’s corporate empire also includes aerospace company SpaceX and other firms. He is currently negotiating the purchase of social media platform Twitter for an estimated $44 billion. He has increasingly courted the Republican Party and sections of the far right, stating that he would reinstate Donald Trump’s Twitter account following his acquisition of the company.

Facing gathering pressure on Tesla’s staggeringly inflated share price, Musk is more and more lashing out at the company’s workforce, seeking to drive up productivity and workers’ exploitation even more. “There is just a lot of super talented hardworking people in China who strongly believe in manufacturing,” Musk said in an interview with the Financial Times last month. “They won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they will be burning the 3 a.m. oil, they won’t even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all.”

A May 10 Fortune article described conditions for Tesla workers at its massive Shanghai plant. In April and May, its workers were forced to work 12-hour shifts, six days a week, sleeping in the plant as part of a “closed loop system” to keep Tesla’s production going during Shanghai’s COVID-19 lockdowns.

Early on during the COVID-19 pandemic, Musk attacked the public health measures that had been implemented by the state of California, calling them “fascist” and cynically claiming to stand for the freedom of workers at the plant. Musk has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the pandemic, which has killed over 1 million people in the US, promoting dangerous conspiracy theories to his social media followers.

Defying a county public health mandate during the initial surge of COVID-19, Musk reopened the Fremont plant in May 2020, daring county officials to arrest him. State and county officials promptly caved in to his demands. As a result, over 400 plant workers caught the coronavirus by the end of 2020. Tesla and Alameda County collaborated in hiding the number of pandemic victims at the plant.

“I feel abandoned, we all feel abandoned,” Branton Phillips, a worker at the Fremont plant, told CBS in 2020. “One day somebody is sick and we know that, next day the three to four guys that worked around him are also gone, and we’re not told anything.”

“He threatened to leave the county for Texas, and then we saw a complete change from the county and the state. They just turned a blind eye,” said Carlos Gabriel, another worker.

How African Muslims Civilized Spain

Garikai Chengu

This week marks the anniversary of the end of nearly 700 years of African Muslim rule over Spain, Portugal and Southern France.

Four hundred and eight years ago today King Phillip III of Spain signed an order, which was one of the earliest examples of ethnic cleansing. At the height of the Spanish inquisition, King Phillip III ordered the expulsion of 300,000 Muslim Moriscos, which initiated one of the most brutal and tragic episodes in the history of Spain.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was ancient Africans that brought civilization to Spain and large parts of Europe and not the other way around.

The first civilization of Europe was established on the Greek island of Crete in 1700 BC and the Greeks were primarily civilized by the Black Africans of the Nile Valley. The Greeks then passed on this acquired culture to the Romans who ultimately lost it; thus, initiating the Dark Ages that lasted for five centuries. Civilization was once again reintroduced to Europe when another group of Black Africans, The Moors, brought the Dark Ages to an end.

When history is taught in the West, the period called the “Middle Ages” is generally referred to as the “Dark Ages,” and depicted as the period during which civilization in general, including the arts and sciences, laid somewhat idle. This was certainly true for Europeans, but not for Africans.

Renowned historian, Cheikh Anta Diop, explains how during the Middle Ages, the great empires of the world were Black empires, and the educational and cultural centers of the world were predominately African. Moreover, during that period, it was the Europeans who were the lawless barbarians.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire multitudes of white warring tribes from the Caucus were pushed into Western Europe by the invading Huns. The Moors invaded Spanish shores in 711 AD and African Muslims literally civilized the wild, white tribes from the Caucus. The Moors eventually ruled over Spain, Portugal, North Africa and southern France for over seven hundred years.

Although generations of Spanish rulers have tried to expunge this era from the historical record, recent archeology and scholarship now sheds new light on how Moorish advances in mathematics, astronomy, art, and philosophy helped propel Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance.

One the most famous British historians Basil Davidson, noted that during the eighth century there was no land “more admired by its neighbours, or more comfortable to live in, than a rich African civilization which took shape in Spain”.

The Moors were unquestionably Black and the 16th century English playwright William Shakespeare used the word Moor as a synonym for African.

Education was universal in Muslim Spain, while in Christian Europe, 99 percent of the population was illiterate, and even kings could neither read nor write. The Moors boasted a remarkably high literacy rate for a pre-modern society. During an era when Europe had only two universities, the Moors had seventeen. The founders of Oxford University were inspired to form the institution after visiting universities in Spain. According to the United Nations’ Education body, the oldest university operating in the world today, is the University of Al-Karaouine of Morocco founded during the height of the Moorish Empire in 859 A.D. by a Black woman named Fatima al-Fihri.

In the realm of mathematics, the number zero (0), the Arabic numerals, and the decimal system were all introduced to Europe by Muslims, assisting them to solve problems far more quickly and accurately and laying the foundation for the Scientific Revolution.

The Moors’ scientific curiosity extended to flight and polymath, Ibn Firnas, made the world’s first scientific attempt to fly in a controlled manner, in 875 A.D. Historical archives suggest that his attempt worked, but his landing was somewhat less successful. Africans took to the skies some six centuries before the Italian Leonardo Da Vinci developed a hang glider.

Clearly, the Moors helped to lift the general European populace out of the Dark Ages, and paved the way for the Renaissance period. In fact, a large number of the traits on which modern Europe prides itself came to it from Muslim Spain, namely, free trade, diplomacy, open borders, etiquette, advanced seafaring, research methods, and key advances in chemistry.

At a time when the Moors built 600 public baths and the rulers lived in sumptuous palaces, the monarchs of Germany, France, and England convinced their subjects that cleanliness was a sin and European kings dwelt in big barns, with no windows and no chimneys, often with only a hole in the roof for the exit of smoke.

In the 10th century, Cordoba was not just the capital of Moorish Spain but also the most important  and modern city in Europe. Cordoba boasted a population of half a million and had street lighting, fifty hospitals with running water, five hundred mosques and seventy libraries, one of which held over 500,000 books.

All of these achievements occurred at a time when London had a predominantly illiterate population of around 20,000 and had largely forgotten the technical advances of the Romans some six hundred years before. Street lamps and paved streets did not appear in London or Paris until hundreds of years later.

The Catholic Church forbade money lending which severely hampered any efforts at economic progress. Medieval Christain Europe was a miserable lot, which was riffe with squalor, barbarism, illiteracy, and mysticism.

In Europe’s great Age of Exploration, Spain and Portugal were the leaders in global seafaring.  It was the Moorish advances in navigational technology such as the astrolabe and sextant, as well as their improvements in cartography and shipbuilding, that paved the way for the Age of Exploration. Thus, the era of Western global dominance of the past half-millennium originated from the African Moorish sailors of the Iberian Peninsula during the 1300s.

Long before Spanish Monarchs commissioned Columbus’ search for land to the West, African Muslims, amongst others, had long since established significant contact with the Americas and left a lasting impression on Native culture.

One can only wonder how Columbus could have discovered America when a highly civilised and sophisticated people were watching him arrive from America’s shores?

An overwhelming body of new evidence is emerging which proves that Africans had frequently sailed across the Atlantic to the Americas, thousands of years before Columbus and indeed before Christ. Dr. Barry Fell of Harvard University highlights an array of evidence of Mulsims in America before Columbus from sculptures, oral traditions, coins, eye-witness reports, ancient artifacts, Arabic documents and inscriptions.

The strongest evidence of African presence in America before Columbus comes from the pen of Columbus himself. In 1920, a renowned American historian and linguist, Leo Weiner of Harvard University, in his book, Africa and the Discovery of America, explained how Columbus noted in his journal that Native Americans had confirmed that, “black skinned people had come from the south-east in boats, trading in gold-tipped spears.”

Muslim Spain not only collected and perpetuated the intellectual advances of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Roman civilisation, it also expanded on that civilisation and made its own vital contributions in fields ranging from astronomy, pharmacology, maritime navigation, architecture and law.

The centuries old impression given by some Western scholars that the African continent made little or no contributions to civilization, and that its people are naturally primitive has, unfortunately, became the basis of racial prejudice, slavery, colonialism and the ongoing economic oppression of Africa. If Africans re-write their true history, they will reveal a glory that they will inevitably seek to recapture. After all, the greatest threat towards Africa having a glorious future is her people’s ignorance of Africa’s glorious past.