Former police officer massacres 38 people, including 24 children, in Thailand

Oscar Grenfell

A horrific attack at a childcare centre in Thailand’s northeastern province of Nong Bua Lamphu has claimed at least 38 lives. Some 24 of the victims were young children, in what has been described as the country’s worst mass killing in decades. An unknown number of survivors have been hospitalised with injuries.

The official fatality count has changed several times over the past 36 hours, each time being revised upwards.

Relatives of the victims of a mass killing attack by former police officer gather for Buddhist ceremony in the rural town of Uthai Sawan, north eastern Thailand, Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. [AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

Panya Kamrab, a 34-year-old former police officer, has been identified by Thai authorities as the perpetrator. He reportedly arrived at the childcare facility, in the rural town of Uthai Sawan, in the early afternoon of Thursday, before indiscriminately opening fire.

Most of the children who were killed were between the ages of 2 and 5, according to officials. Only one child who was on site reportedly survived. Staff members were also murdered, including a 25-year-old teacher who was eight months pregnant. According to witness reports and press accounts of the autopsies, many of the victims were butchered with a large blade, similar to a machete, used by farmers to cut sugar cane. Their injuries are said to have been horrific.

Kamrab allegedly returned to his nearby home after the massacre, killing his own children and his wife before turning the gun on himself.

Local officials have told the international press that Kamrab had gone to the childcare centre, and was agitated when he found that his own child or children were not there.

In comments to Reuters, Jidapa Boonsom, a district official, said that Kamrab had first shot four or five staff members, before entering the facility. The children were asleep or resting during naptime when he entered. People nearby had initially thought that fireworks were being let off, before becoming aware of the developing tragedy.

In the days since the massacre, dozens of family members have made harrowing visits to the childcare centre, to the morgue and to other points of congregation, where a collective mourning has unfolded.

Their comments have pointed to the magnitude of the horror that has taken place. Relatives have spoken of the interests and hobbies of the young children, the hopes they had for their future and the unbearable grief of losing them.

The Wall Street Journal reported: “Four-year-old Thawatchai’s grandmother, Aoy Yodkao, had hoped the boy would take care of her as she grew older. He would call her ‘Yai Aoy, Yai Aoy,’ meaning Granny Aoy, and loved to play with her phone, she said…

“Now, she says, she can’t sleep or eat. She worries about the health of her pregnant daughter, the boy’s mother. ‘I have no idea what to do next,’ she said. ‘I can’t think of anything right now.’”

The attack, targeting defenseless children and those who care for them, has shocked masses of people in Thailand and around the world.

Many of the details remain sketchy, and undoubtedly more information will emerge.

Already, however, the mass killing has raised a host of questions about the culture of the military and police, whose personnel have been involved in most attacks of this nature; a growing epidemic of drug use, and the malignant growth of social tensions, which, whatever the psychological and individual characteristics of perpetrator, have to be present in such a horrific social event.

The few details that are publicly known about Kamrab paint him as a forlorn figure whose life was falling apart. The 34-year-old had lost his job as a police lieutenant colonel last year after being caught with methamphetamines. It is unclear if he had been in work since. Kamrab was embroiled in ongoing drugs proceedings, which had been the subject of a court hearing the morning of the attack.

Other reports speak of the inevitable money problems stemming from such a predicament and the possibility that Kamrab’s marriage was on the cusp of a separation.

Initially, police said that Kamrab was likely under the influence of methamphetamines when he carried out the attack, having taken the drug after his court hearing.

The country has a growing drug problem, with some reports placing the number of adults who have tried methamphetamine, often sold as “ya ba” pills at almost 15 million people out of a population of 69 million. Record seizures have occurred during the pandemic, and some 80 percent of all prison inmates are incarcerated for drug offenses, mostly related to meth.

Government officials seized on these reports, ascribing the attack to the substance, which can be associated with violent behavior, and seeking to damp down discussion of the broader issues raised by the attack by declaring that it was purely the outcome of a drug addiction.

These assertions have been complicated by reports that Kamrab’s autopsy found no traces of narcotics in his system, indicating that he had not taken any illicit substance over the 72 hours prior to his death.

Several witnesses described seeing Kamrab walk out of the childcare centre, having carried out his unspeakable crimes, in a calm state, as though nothing had happened, and seemingly disconnected from what was taking place around him. The descriptions, connected with the apparent absence of drugs as an immediate factor, raise the possibility of a major psychological break or other mental health episode.

Angry comments on social media have highlighted Kamrab’s former position in the state apparatus, as a police officer. Previous attacks of this nature have also been perpetrated by police and military figures.

The second-deadliest attack, after last Thursday’s, took place in February 2020, when a soldier went on a two-day, live streamed rampage, murdering 29 people and injuring 58. That rampage took place in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima, also known as Korat, which, like the scene of Thursday’s mass killing, is in the impoverished northeast of the country.

In June 2021, a former soldier fired on a COVID clinic, killing one. Last month a soldier suddenly began shooting his colleagues at a Bangkok military base, killing two and wounding another.

Thailand’s military and its police are notoriously corrupt. For decades, they have played the role of political kingmakers, sometimes more openly, sometimes behind the scenes. They are thus a focal point of power intrigues, hierarchy and often criminal money-making operations. Current Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is a former army officer who took power in a military coup in 2014.

As is the case throughout Southeast Asia, the political prominence of the military and the police is bound up with the immense social tensions and the fears in the ruling elite of social opposition from below. Prayut has overseen repeated, brutal crackdowns on protesters demanding democratic rights, including in 2020 and 2021. Being on the frontlines of such state suppression cannot but toughen and brutalise those involved, including lower-level police and soldiers.

Like all civil servants, they are entitled to own personal firearms, the purchase of which is subsidised by the state. That appears to have been how Kamrab legally acquired the gun that he later turned on the children. Thailand has the highest rate of gun ownership in the region.

Widely shared comments on social media have asked, “Who will watch the watchers?” and “Who do you call when the police are doing the shooting?” One Tweet, cited by Time magazine, stated: “Shooting in Korat caused by stress. Shooting at Nong Bua Lamphu caused by drugs and stress. Shouldn’t we look at the system? With security organisations like this, no one will dare trust them.”

In a bid to shut down this discussion, the national government has pledged compensation for victims and their families. Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn yesterday visited some of the victims’ families, a rare act by the figure who sits at the apex of the Thai state and is protected from criticism by some of the harshest lèse-majesté laws in the world. He is the latest in a string of state officials to have made an appearance.

Some of the visits have backfired, serving only to underscore the social chasm between the governing representatives of the ruling elite, and the impoverished victims’ families. A red carpet laid outside the childcare centre for visiting government officials was the subject of derision and anger online. So were reports that victims’ relatives were told to hold up signs, thanking the government for compensation.

As is the case throughout Southeast Asia, Thailand is a society of gross social inequality. The divide has only been intensified by the pandemic, which has wrought a devastating toll, and by inflation, which is pushing millions to the brink.

Like the phenomenon of mass shootings in the US, the Thai massacre has pointed to a deeply diseased society, riven by social tensions.

European Political Community summit pledges to escalate war on Russia

Alex Lantier & Johannes Stern

On Thursday and Friday, heads of state from 44 European countries met in the Czech capital, Prague, for the inaugural summit of the European Political Community (EPC). Proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron in May, it brought together European Union (EU) countries, Britain, and a dozen countries along Russia’s western border.

The Prague summit was a politically sinister event. It called to arm Ukraine against Russia, even after reports emerged that US President Joe Biden had told top financial donors that the NATO war on Russia threatened to lead to nuclear Armageddon. Even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has just proposed to launch pre-emptive strikes on Russia, the summit heard and applauded a bellicose video address from Zelensky.

After the summit, Macron held a joint press conference with Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and Moldovan President Maia Sandu. They stressed that they are committed to military escalation against Russia, even though it threatens to cut off energy supplies to Europe and, by the admission of the US president, to unleash the destruction of human civilization itself.

[AP Photo/Petr David Josek]

Macron hailed the presence of Zelensky and insisted that the summit had put to rest any doubts as to whether the EU powers supported an aggressive military posture against Russia. He said, “We have made clear the unity of 44 European countries who, all 44 of them, clearly condemned Russian aggression and gave their support to Ukraine. This has great value, because previously certain doubts had existed.”

Macron alluded briefly to the many conflicts involving states represented at the Prague summit, which underscore the unviability of the EPC itself. Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars in the last two years, unresolved border conflicts continue between Serbia and Kosovo, and Greece and Turkey are on the verge of war over gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Sandu similarly endorsed the US-European arming of Ukraine to retake Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine now annexed by Russia—a move that threatens to provoke nuclear war.

“Peace starts with helping Ukraine restore its territorial integrity within its internationally-recognized borders. We are united in condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine and the illegal annexation of its territories,” she said, adding, “Energy security was the other major topic we discussed. We should not allow the energy crisis to undermine our democracy.”

Indeed, the rising danger of NATO military operations against Russia leading to all-out nuclear war goes hand-in-hand with the rising economic impact of NATO’s cut-off of Russian energy. Food and energy prices are already surging in Europe, with inflation running at over 10 percent, and energy shortages will devastate Europe’s economy and society this winter. Over 400,000 job losses are expected in Germany and a half million in Italy alone as electricity cut-offs shutter industry.

Europe’s leading imperialist powers are responding by stepping up the offensive against Russia. In a press statement, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed the EPC summit, declaring, “Clearly, this is now a meeting that cannot be thought of in isolation from the Russian attack on Ukraine. But it is also good to see that we are all supporting Ukraine in very different ways: financially, with humanitarian aid, and many are also supplying weapons, as Germany is doing.”

Scholz boasted to the German daily Die Welt, “These [arms] include decidedly efficient weapons, such as the self-propelled howitzer 2000, multiple rocket launchers and the Gepard anti-aircraft tank. It is these weapons that proved particularly effective during the counteroffensive by the Ukrainian armed forces.” Germany and Brussels “will continue to support Ukraine for as long as necessary,” he added.

Scholz said Germany will also make an “important contribution” to the planned EU training mission for the Ukrainian armed forces. On Friday, after an informal EU summit in Prague, he said the mission would be “large in scope” and that he expected decisions to be announced as early as next week. Currently, the EU would provide training programs outside Ukraine for some 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers, 2,800 of whom could be special forces.

The EU is massively escalating military aid for Ukraine against Russia. In Prague, EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola urged EU countries to deliver modern tanks to Ukraine. Ideal would be “Leopard 2 tanks, for example,” she told AFP, referring to Germany’s main battle tank. France is considering supplying more Caesar howitzers to Ukraine, according to Macron. Under discussion, according to AFP, are six to 12 more Caesars, which were originally intended for Denmark.

To defeat Russia and subjugate this resource-rich country, European powers are ready to risk World War III, brushing aside the threat of nuclear Armageddon. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed that they take Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats seriously, but will not be blackmailed by his words.

Media warmongers aggressively spread the lie that “fear” of the threat of nuclear war is worse than nuclear war itself. “U.S. President Biden warns of Armageddon in the face of Russian threats of nuclear weapons. The concern is justified, of course,” writes the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “But: more dangerous than nuclear blackmail is only the surrender to it.”

The EPC summit and the response by the European powers and bourgeois media starkly poses critical political issues to workers entering into struggle against inflation and war in Europe and internationally. There is no way to oppose the escalating NATO imperialist war with Russia within the official framework of capitalist politics.

Indeed, the EU powers have, over the recent years, carried out a remarkable shift in their public position towards US-led war against Russia. After Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as president, Berlin and Paris both called for an independent EU military policy. As part of this policy, they at times criticized Washington’s most aggressive measures against Russia. Macron raised this in an interview in The Economist in November 2019, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

NATO, Macron declared in 2019, is “brain-dead.” He said that its policy of stoking a war in Syria between Russia and Turkey, a NATO member state, was “an enormous problem for NATO.” US policy towards Russia, he added, was completely unhinged. “When the United States is very harsh with Russia,” Macron declared, “it is a form of governmental, political, and historical hysteria.”

Calling to “reconsider our position towards Russia,” Macron told The Economist that France can “talk to everyone and so build relations to prevent the world from going up in a conflagration.”

Today, Scholz, Macron and others are pressing recklessly ahead with a war on Russia, even though they and Biden all know the world could go up in a conflagration.

It is apparent that, to use Macron’s terms, a form of governmental, political and historical hysteria has seized the imperialist ruling classes. Amid the economic crisis caused by their disastrous official handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and bank bailouts to the rich, they are intensifying their drive for plunder. Having encountered no opposition in the political establishment to policies of mass infection in the COVID-19 pandemic, they are heading for nuclear World War III.

The divisions among the heads of state attending the EPC summit do not make a conflagration less likely, but more so. Beyond the Azeri-Armenian, Serbian-Kosovar, and Greco-Turkish conflicts, a row has broken out between France, on the one side, and Germany and Spain on the other over whether to build a gas pipeline linking Spain to Germany via France. Anger erupted also over Germany’s massive €‎200 billion energy package. All these geopolitical conflicts and conflicts over control of the energy markets tear European capitalism apart, making it even less capable of avoiding a Third World War.

Interest rate hikes leading to recession, UN says

Nick Beams

The United Nations has added its voice to the growing list of international organisations, including the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, warning that interest rate hikes imposed by the US Federal Reserve are creating the conditions for a financial crisis and global recession.

In its annual report issued earlier this week, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said that after a “recovery” in 2021 “the world economy is in the midst of cascading and multiplying crises.”

It said that with incomes still below 2019 levels in many major economies “growth is slowing everywhere.”

The rise in interest rates and highly volatile bond markets meant that “debt-distressed countries, including over half of low-income countries and about a third of middle-income countries, are edging ever closer to default.”

With one eye clearly focused on the class struggle, it said economic hardship, arising from a cost-of-living crisis in advanced and developing countries, compounded by the threat of new outbreaks of COVID-19, the effects of climate change, and cuts in government spending, “is already triggering social unrest that can quickly escalate into political instability and conflict.”

Pointing to the effects of interest rates on the economy, the report said every percentage point rise in the Fed’s key interest rate lowered economic output in rich countries by 0.5 percent and by 0.8 percent in poor countries over the next three years; and more drastic rises of 2 and 3 percentage points (such rises are already being implemented) would further depress the “already stalling economic recovery” in emerging economies.

UNCTAD Secretary General Rebeca Grynspan (CC Attrib 1.0) [Photo / CC BY 1.0]

Speaking on the report, UNCTAD secretary-general Rebeca Grynspan said: “There’s still time to step back from the edge of recession.” But the current course of action was hurting the most vulnerable, especially in developing countries and “risks tipping the world into a global recession.”

The rate hikes, spearheaded by the Fed and carried out by central banks around the world, have been initiated in the name of fighting inflation. But they will do nothing to bring down prices which are the result of supply-side constrictions, speculation and profit-gouging by major corporations, details of which are contained in the report.

In an interview on the report, Richard Kozul-Wright, head of the UNCTAD team which prepared it, said: “Do you try to solve a supply-side problem with a demand-side solution? We think that’s a very dangerous approach.”

This is a misplaced analysis. The aim of central bank policy is not the reduction of inflation per se.

It is directed to inducing a major slowdown, a recession, if necessary, to suppress workers’ wage demands as they seek to claw back the cuts in living standards they have already suffered—and the further cuts to come—arising from the largest price increases in four decades.

In other words, the policies being directed by the Fed are not the product of a misdiagnosis of the economic situation. Rather, they flow from a consciously worked-out class-war agenda resulting from the policies implemented by governments and central banks, at least since the global financial crisis of 2008.

The report gave short shrift to the claim that the price surge is simply the product of the war in Ukraine, noting that while this has “added to economic anxieties” the “most critical problems faced by the global economy predate the war.”

The evidence suggested the inflation surge did not come from the loosening of fiscal policy or wages pressure “but instead derives largely from cost increases, particularly for energy, and sluggish supply response due to a prolong history of weak investment growth.”

This is a direct result of the quantitative easing policies of the Fed and other central banks after the 2008 crisis, accelerated after the March 2020 meltdown of financial markets, which meant speculation and financial parasitism was on steroids due the provision of trillions of dollars of ultra-cheap money.

In what it called a “high profit environment, financial engineering became an instrument of rent-seeking behaviour, particularly among larger international corporations. Thanks to their market power they have often generated income from the manufacture of scarcity rather than the production of goods or delivery of services.”

This has been combined with profit gouging. By mid-2022, the ratio of corporate profits to US GDP was 7 percent as opposed to 6.25 percent before the pandemic. With US GDP somewhere north of $20 trillion, this means that at least an additional $350 billion is flowing into the coffers of the corporations.

According to the report, between 2020 and 2022 “an estimated 54 percent of the average price increase in the United States non-financial sector was attributable to higher profit margins, compared to only 11 percent in the previous 40 years.”

Another key factor in pushing up prices, particularly energy and food, has been the increase in speculation, financed by low interest rates. “The quantitative easing of 2020 and 2021 led to more speculation and inflation in asset markets, from crypto currencies to oil, food and minerals.”

Because of their volatile nature, hedging has long been part of the commercial operation of commodity markets. But this has been completely overshadowed by speculation which is “one important factor in driving up energy, food and commodity prices.”

Before 2002, non-commercial speculators comprised 20 percent of US oil futures markets. By 2009 this had risen to 50 percent with more recent estimates putting it as between 70 and 80 percent.

The report noted that since the financial crisis of 2008 financial entanglements have become increasingly global, with the result that “complex shocks, including outbreaks of financial panic or extreme price volatility, or a combination of external triggers, are a present danger.”

It was prepared before the UK financial crisis, but there is no question that had it not been staved off, at least temporarily through the £65 billion pound intervention by the Bank of England into the bond market, it would have ripped through the global financial system, confirming this analysis.

“Monetary tightening,” it continued, “poses additional risk to the real economy and the financial sector: given the high leverage of non-financial businesses, rising borrowing costs could cause a steep increase in non-performing loans and trigger a cascade of bankruptcies.”

If regulations were considered politically unacceptable [that is, by the financial markets] and monetary authorities proved unable to stabilise inflation quickly, government authorities “might resort to additional fiscal tightening” which would “only help precipitate a sharper global recession.”

The financial situation has been made more unstable by what UNCTAD calls the “universe of non-bank financial institutions and credit providers,” known as the shadow banking system, largely unregulated, which, despite some efforts to contain it has “expanded in size, geography and diversity.”

The share of global financial assets held at shadow banking institutions has risen from 42 percent in 2008 to close to 50 percent at the end of 2019. In the US, shadow banking organisations originate more than two-third of mortgages and the share of loans to businesses is almost equal to that held by banks. In 2021, shadow banks controlled $226.6 trillion of assets out of a total of $468.7 trillion.

The report correctly noted that: “The world is facing a systemic crisis and only systemic action can solve it.”

But the limited reforms UNCTAD proposes, based on greater regulation and control, fall far short of that. Furthermore, recent history shows, and as set out in the report itself, even these measures will not be undertaken.

Reviewing that history, the report stated: “In the decade following the GFC [global financial crisis], an opportunity was missed to put the world on a more sustainable and inclusive growth path.” But once the panic was over, it continued, central banks pumped in more money, non-bank financial institutions greatly expanded their portfolios, governments cut their spending, wages stagnated, and wealth and income inequality grew.

The “missed opportunity” was not due to lack of knowledge. Reports, for example by the US Senate in 2011, pointed to the enormous dangers in the operations of the financial system and its often-outright criminality.

Nor was there a political problem in the electorate. Following the GFC, which devastated the lives of millions of people in the US and around the world, there would have been massive public support for taking the entire financial system into public ownership. But even where blatant criminal activity was revealed, no charges were laid. The banks were declared too big to fail and the criminals too powerful to jail.

Coronavirus deaths in Germany reach 150,000

Tamino Dreisam

Last weekend, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) officially reported the 150,000th coronavirus death in Germany. This shocking milestone is the result of the profits-before-lives policy that all federal and state governments, and governments throughout the world, have pursued since the beginning of the pandemic.

This catastrophic loss of life is unprecedented in peacetime. In two and a half years, as many people have died as there are residents of a medium-sized city. Life expectancy for girls fell by 0.4 years and for boys by as much as 0.6 years compared to 2019.

Refrigerated container for coronavirus dead at the main cemetery in Hanau, Germany, in December 2020 (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Behind the figure of 150,000 dead are millions of people who have lost friends, relatives, children, or parents. Millions more are suffering from the long-term effects of infection with the virus.

The actual extent of the deaths is much higher than the official figures indicate. A WHO study examining excess mortality because of the pandemic came to the conclusion that 195,000 people had already died in 2020 and 2021 in Germany--that is 42 percent more than the officially recorded deaths in the same period. Extrapolated from the 150,000 deaths now officially reached, that would be 213,000 actual deaths.

One would think that these shocking numbers should give cause to remember the dead and to seriously discuss the political decisions that led to this disaster. However, this is not even remotely the case. On the contrary, the establishment politicians react mainly with silence. Dying from the virus is to be accepted as something natural and inevitable.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democrats, SPD) made no official statement marking the tragedy. And German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) merely penned a tweet, “Now there are 150,000 corona dead. Too many, but without the solidarity and common sense of the population, there would be many more. Keeping the death toll low must remain one of our goals.”

This is as cynical as it is mendacious. The figure of 150,000 is anything but “low”; it is roughly equivalent to the population of Regensburg. And in fact, it was never the goal of the federal government—neither the previous grand coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and SPD, nor of the current “traffic light” coalition of the SPD, Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens—to “keep the death toll low.” From the beginning, it placed protecting profits above saving lives. The 150,000 deaths are the direct result of this policy.

Shortly after the pandemic began in March 2020, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) declared she and her government assumed that 60 to 70 percent of the population would become infected with the virus. It was only because of protests and wildcat strikes by the working class, which spread through Italy and other southern European countries to the US and North America within a few days, that the government was forced to impose a limited lockdown.

The ruling class used this lockdown to transfer billions into the bank accounts of the large corporations and the rich in the form of so-called “rescue packages.” All parties in the Bundestag (federal parliament), from the Left Party to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), worked closely together on this. When Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) declared at the end of April 2020 that the right to life was not “absolutely” protected by the constitution, all parties took this as a signal to lift the limited lockdowns and other protections.

The following winter of 2020/2021 was to be the deadliest winter of the pandemic so far, with nearly 900 people dying daily at its peak. At the same time, stock prices skyrocketed, and a fabulous orgy of enrichment took place at the top. According to the US business magazine Forbes, the number of German billionaires rose by 29 to 136 in the first year of the pandemic alone. Since then, this class policy has been steadily intensified.

When the traffic light coalition took over the government after the September 2021 federal election, it took the policy of allowing the virus to run wild to the extreme, in order to protect capitalist profit interests. On November 25, even before the traffic light government was officially in office, coalition officials ended the designation of an “epidemic emergency,” taking away the legal basis for lockdowns, school and business closures, and other life-saving measures.

As a result of the traffic light coalition’s criminal policies, Omicron emerged as the dominant variant in Germany, like the rest of the world, and infection rates soared to record levels. At the peak of the wave, hundreds of thousands were infected daily. The government responded by completely dropping the pretense it was trying to contain the pandemic.

In January 2022, the government shortened the quarantine period to seven days. In March, it passed a so-called “Protection Against Infection Act” that reduced the coronavirus measures to “basic protection.” In April, it rejected a policy of mandatory vaccination. In May, it shortened the quarantine period to five days, and in June, eliminated free testing.

Under the new Infection Protection Act that took effect October 1, the traffic light government is also eliminating the last protective measures, laying the groundwork for more mass fatalities this autumn and winter. Already, more than 500 people are dying from the virus each week, and new immune-resistant subvariants such as the Omicron BA 2.75.2 are spreading.

At the same time, the government is subordinating all areas of society to its war policy. While it is pouring 100 billion euros into the military via a “special fund for the Bundeswehr” (Armed Forces) and tens of billions more into arms deliveries for Ukraine, the health budget is being cut by dozens of billions of euros.

Lauterbach himself summed up the priority of the ruling class when he tweeted on Saturday: “We are at war with Putin, and not his psychotherapists. We must continue to consistently pursue victory in the form of the liberation of Ukraine.” That is unequivocal. After more than 150,000 deaths in the pandemic, the ruling class is ready to sacrifice even greater masses of people in the war against Russia.

North Korea fires missile over Japan for first time since 2017

Ben McGrath

Over the past two weeks, North Korea has conducted a spate of missile launches, the first major weapons tests since June. Rather than attempt to de-escalate the situation, the United States and its allies in Northeast Asia are exploiting the issue, combining increased militarization of the region with the ongoing isolation of Pyongyang, all aimed at preparing for war with China.

This photo distributed by the North Korean government shows what was said to be the test launch of a Hwasong-12 intermediate range missile in Pyongyang, North Korea, Aug. 29, 2017. [AP Photo/ Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP]

Pyongyang’s most recent launch took place Thursday morning, with two short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) landing in the Sea of Japan. This followed a Tuesday morning firing of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), from Mupyŏng-ri, Jagang Province in the northern part of the country. This missile, identified in the media as a Hwasŏng-12, reportedly traveled some 4,600 kilometers and reached a maximum altitude of 1,000 kilometers. The missile flew over Japan’s Aomori Prefecture, in the north of Honshu, the first time Pyongyang has fired a missile over Japan since 2017. It landed in the Pacific Ocean, some 3,200 kilometers east of the country.

In total, Pyongyang has conducted six tests, launching ten total missiles since September 25, which corresponded with the arrival of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier at South Korea’s port city of Busan on September 23, as well as the arrival on September 26 of US Vice President Kamala Harris in Japan for the state funeral of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Harris also made a one-day visit to South Korea on September 29, meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and provocatively visiting the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea. 

The nuclear-powered US carrier and its strike group held multiple exercises in the Sea of Japan with both the South Korean and Japanese navies for the first time in five years. This broke a tacit agreement in 2018 between the previous Trump administration and Pyongyang to halt large-scale US drills with South Korea in the region in exchange for a moratorium on the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and nuclear tests.

Furthermore, during the summit between US President Joe Biden and South Korea’s Yoon in May, the two sides agreed to deploy US strategic assets to the region while also agreeing to restart the Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group for the first time since January 2018. The group provides Washington and Seoul the opportunity to hold discussions on strategic and policy issues regarding so-called extended deterrence, including the use of nuclear weapons.

Since agreeing to the moratorium in 2018, North Korea has conducted only two apparent ICBM tests, one in March and another in May, following the Biden-Yoon summit. The Biden government has allowed North Korea to languish under brutal US-led sanctions while the country faces a major economic crisis and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Washington has refused to offer any genuine relief as Pyongyang had hoped after halting its weapons tests.

Pyongyang’s missile launches, therefore, represent a desperate attempt to bring Washington back to the bargaining table. They are also the result of Washington’s goading as it abandons the 2018 agreement with Pyongyang by staging large-scale drills with South Korea, which included the Ulchi Freedom Shield drills in August, forcing North Korea to respond.

North Korea’s state media has remained silent about Tuesday’s test. However, China’s Foreign Ministry responded by calling on all governments involved to maintain “the policy of seeking a political settlement of issues on the Korean Peninsula and address each other's concerns in a balanced way through dialogue.”

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning also stated during a press conference on September 30 that Pyongyang had “legitimate and reasonable security concerns” while criticizing the numerous military drills the US has staged with South Korea and Japan in recent weeks.

Conscious of the US’s history of violent regime-change operations around the world, including the one currently being conducted against Russia, Pyongyang is looking for security guarantees while using its weapons program as its only real bargaining chip short of complete capitulation.

Washington and Seoul are also seizing on Pyongyang’s missile launches, as well as claims that an ICBM or nuclear test are imminent, to increase military drills in the region, close to China, the primary target of US imperialism. This includes the announcement Wednesday that the USS Reagan would return to the Sea of Japan after leaving last week. The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff called the return so soon “very unusual.”

The US and South Korea fired four ATACM (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles into the Sea of Japan on Wednesday. The previous day, the two militaries also conducted a bombing run on a range on Jikdo, an island in the Yellow Sea. Consisting of four South Korean F-15K fighter jets and four US F-16 fighters, a South Korean jet dropped two JADAM bombs on the island on Tuesday. The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that the air strike demonstrated the two allies “capabilities to conduct a precision strike at the origin of provocations based on the alliance’s overwhelming forces.”

South Korea’s military also attempted to fire a short-range Hyunmoo-2C ballistic missile, but it failed shortly after launch. While its warhead did not explode, it reportedly landed just 700 meters from the nearest residential area.

In addition, following Tuesday’s missile launch, Biden spoke to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, with the White House stating afterwards that both condemned North Korea’s test “in the strongest terms.” Kishida called the launch “barbaric” and told reporters after the call with Biden, “We will always have to consider unique sanctions” on North Korea.

Kishida also stated that Tokyo is in close communication with South Korea, discussing “various security issues while bringing the United States into the dialogue.” He said that Tokyo “would like to have close communications,” with Seoul and called for the setting up of a meeting between himself and President Yoon. The two have already scheduled a phone call for Thursday.

Longstanding tensions between Tokyo and Seoul have cut across Washington’s plans for war against China, which includes incorporating its two allies into a regional ballistic missile system designed to prevent China or Russia from launching a counter-attack against US forces. This requires high-level and bilateral intelligence sharing between Japan and South Korea. Trade disputes and historical issues have prevented this from taking place. South Korea’s Yoon, however, has made clear his administration will pursue closer relations with Tokyo.

French refinery strikes defy Macron’s policy of inflation and war

Alex Lantier & Anthony Torres

Fuel shortages are emerging across France after strikes in Total and Exxon refineries began on September 27. This sets the stage for a confrontation between refinery workers, on the one hand, and President Emmanuel Macron’s government backed by the NATO alliance.

Refinery workers are demanding a 10 percent raise, pointing to inflation and the tens of billions of euros in super-profits realized by their employers. Total refineries at Gonfreville-l’Orcher, La Mède, Feyzin, Donges and Grandpuits are affected, as are Exxon refineries at Notre Dame-de-Gravenchon and Fos. While strike actions at Donges and Grandpuits halted this weekend, it has continued in the other refineries.

Over 70 percent of refinery workers are participating in the strike, according to trade union figures. Striking workers at the Feyzin refinery emphasized the broad impact of the strike in their comments to the press: “There is no exit or entry of products in our entire refinery. This means 200 to 250 trucks per day, without counting barges and train cars, that are no longer entering or leaving the refinery.”’

Gas stations have started to run dry in the Marseille area, as well as around Lille and Dunkirk in the north of France, and now in the Lyon area as well. On Wednesday, assemblies of strikers voted to continue the action at Gonfreville-l’Orcher, France’s largest refinery, as well as at Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon.

In Fos, a shop steward told the WSWS that the unions were impelled to strike by anger at inflation among the workers: “It’s sad, our company earns €409 million in just one semester, but it is incapable of defending the purchasing power of its employees. That is why there was such anger among the workers that we had to go out on strike. … Everywhere in France, whether one works in refineries or small businesses, transnational corporations or the public sector, everyone is up against it. So it’s critical for everyone … to get back purchasing power as prices skyrocket.”

Citing workers’ anger at Macron’s discussion of new pension cuts amid the NATO war on Russia in Ukraine, the steward added: “Inflation had already started in 2021, but then the war in Ukraine was a catalyst for an out-of-control eruption of inflation and especially of energy prices. Just like the COVID crisis, the Ukraine crisis is also a crisis of capitalism.”

The Total and Exxon workers have taken up a struggle against the inflationary policy of the financial aristocracy to attack the workers not simply in one or other workplace or industry, but as an entire class not only in France but internationally. The banks and capitalist states of the European Union (EU) are all trying to make workers bear the full brunt of the crisis by slashing their purchasing power.

The strike is bringing the refinery workers into direct conflict not only with Macron, but with the financial markets and the NATO alliance that is using Europe as a base for war with Russia. To wage such a struggle, control of the strike has to be taken out of the hands of the national union bureaucracies that negotiate with Macron and supporting his war policy.

The wage struggle at Total reveals that the bureaucracies’ have already completely failed to defend the most basic interests of the workers. The banks reacted to the NATO war with Russia by speculating on energy, massively driving up prices and boosting oil companies’ profits. Raiding the wallets of workers across Europe and the world as they paid their utilities or filled their gas tanks, the five largest companies of the industry (Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total) made €60 billion in profits in just the second semester of 2022.

This summer, Total CEO Patrick Pouyanné announced plans to pay out a staggering $15 billion in profits to Total shareholders in 2022. As the strike began, Pouyanné announced that a further $2.62 billion would be paid back in dividends to the shareholders.

Yet Total has only granted a 3.5 percent raise for its employees in France, though inflation is already around 7 percent in France, and over 10 percent in Europe as a whole. That amounts to a 3.5 percent cut in real wages.

As if to display his contempt for Total workers, Pouyanné also granted himself a whopping 52 percent raise, bringing his yearly salary to €5.9 million. This is 167 times the median yearly salary of a Total worker in France.

The way forward in this struggle is for workers to rebel against the union bureaucracies, smash their stranglehold over workers’ struggles, and appeal for a far broader mobilization of the working class against inflation. The struggle is not only against Pouyanné, but against Macron and, ultimately, the entire NATO alliance that is putting Europe on a war footing. Only a broader mobilization will suffice once gas stations run dry and the Macron government moves to force workers back to work.

It is necessary to draw the lessons of the powerful 2010 refinery workers strike against then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension cuts. Facing a complete breakdown of gas supplies that would have shut down the economy, the Sarkozy government devised a multi-pronged strategy to break the strike. It imported refined petroleum, cut deals with various union bureaucrats, issued a requisition order to refinery workers to force them to work, and sent riot police to beat workers who defied the order and physically compel them to return to work.

Isolated by the other union federations, the refinery workers were compelled to accept defeat, even though Sarkozy’s pension cuts were overwhelmingly unpopular.

The warning must be made: the ongoing great-power war in Europe and the escalating economic collapse will make Macron even more aggressive in attacking the workers. French union federations have supported the NATO war against Russia, and they will prove even more craven in isolating and betraying strikes that threaten NATO’s war agenda in Europe.

Millions driven into poverty by pandemic, soaring prices and recession

Nick Beams

The World Bank report on the growth of global poverty released earlier this week presents a graphic picture of the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hundreds of millions of people in the world’s poorer countries, now being exacerbated by rising inflation and the shift of the world economy into recession.

According to the report, the pandemic dealt the biggest blow to poverty reduction in decades. The number of people pushed into “extreme poverty,” defined as receiving less than $1.90 per day, rose by 70 million to reach a total of 700 million, or 9.3 percent of the world’s population in 2020.

Water is distributed at a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia, on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. Somalia is in the midst of the worst drought anyone there can remember. A rare famine declaration could be made within weeks. Climate change and fallout from the war in Ukraine are in part to blame. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Under conditions of rising inflation, exacerbated by the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the downward movement in the currencies of developing markets, produced by the interest rates hikes of the US Federal Reserve, the situation shows no signs of improvement.

By the end of this year, as many as 685 million people could still be living in extreme poverty, making 2022 the second worst year for poverty reduction in two decades after 2020.

The pandemic, as in so many other areas of economic and social life, was a trigger that accelerated processes already underway.

As the report noted, in the five years leading up to it, poverty reduction had slowed and by 2020 “the world was significantly off course on the global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.” It estimated that on present trends 7 percent of the world’s population—574 million people—will still be in extreme poverty by the end of the decade.

Even before the pandemic struck, nearly half of the world’s population (47 percent) were living in poverty, defined as receiving less than $6.85 a day.

Together with the 20 million estimated to have died because of the pandemic and the millions who continue to be infected, alongside millions of others suffering debilitating effects of Long COVID, the rise in poverty is a further expression of the magnitude of the social crime committed by capitalist governments around the world in their refusal to undertake the necessary public health measures to eliminate the virus from the human population.

This was not because it was impossible to do so—the experience in China shows it is eminently feasible—but because of the adverse impact it would have on stock markets, bloated to extraordinary levels by the provision of trillions of dollars from the Fed and other central banks.

Now the agencies of finance capital are committing new crimes. To try to crush the movement of workers and the oppressed masses around the world as they confront the highest inflation in four decades, the central banks are lifting interest rates in order to induce a recession.

The impact is already being felt by the world’s poorest people. The currencies of less developed countries have declined dramatically, leading to an escalation of food and energy prices in the local currency.

The experience of Ghana is an example of this process. Over the past year the dollar price of oil has risen by 12 percent. But over the same period the currency, the cedi, has fallen by 40 percent against the US dollar. This means that a barrel of oil which cost 475 cedi a year ago now costs more than 900 cedi, nearly double.

This experience is being repeated in country after country in food, energy, medical supplies, and other vital imports.

At the same time, a growing number of countries are on the edge of default on the debts they owe to government agencies and international finance capital. The debt of at least 10 countries has already been listed as being in extreme stress and many more will follow.

The “restructuring” programs being dictated by the International Monetary Fund mean that the experience in Sri Lanka, which has already defaulted, setting off a full-scale onslaught against the working class to pay the vultures of international finance capital, are being extended around the world.

The World Bank calls for a series of reforms aimed at aiding the poor, knowing that governments intend to do nothing of the sort.

In fact, interest rate hikes being instituted by the US Fed are driving the world into recession, as the World Bank has already acknowledged together with the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations and a plethora of economists.

At its semi-annual meeting to be held in Washington next week, the IMF will again revise down its forecast for global growth, for the fourth time, as indicated in a speech yesterday by the Fund’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva.

The IMF estimates that countries accounting for about one-third of the global economy will experience at least two consecutive quarters of contraction either this year or next and even where growth is positive, “it will feel like a recession because of shrinking real incomes and rising prices.”

The total loss of global output between now and 2026 is expected to be about $4 trillion. “This is the size of the German economy—a massive setback for the world economy,” she said, adding that “it is more likely to get worse.”

The IMF chief did not intend it, but her remarks were an indictment of the policies pursued by the supposed guardians of the stability of the global capitalist economy, above all the policy pursued on COVID.

After growth of 6.1 percent in 2021, she said, “most economists, including at the IMF, thought recovery would continue, and inflation would quickly subside—largely because we expected vaccines would help tame supply side disruptions and allow production to rebound. But this is not what happened.”

Multiple shocks, including the war in Ukraine, “changed the economic picture completely,” and “far from being transitory, inflation has become entrenched.”

But with the policies on COVID having produced a disaster, new disasters are being created.

Endorsing the interest rate hikes, Georgieva said “not tightening enough” would cause inflation to become “de-anchored and entrenched,” code words in ruling circles and their economic agencies for a situation in which the working class strives to defend its living standards through strikes and social struggles.

The suppression of this movement is the number one priority of the financial elites even though, as she acknowledged, it could “push many economies into prolonged recession.”