Almost one month into the Ebola outbreak in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni on Saturday placed two districts in Central Uganda, Mubende and neighboring Kassanda, under a three-week lockdown after previously downplaying the crisis and stating that no such measures would be employed.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni inspects the honor guard, in Kololo, Uganda, Sunday Oct. 9, 2022. [AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda]
In a televised address, Museveni said, “These are temporary measures to control the spread of Ebola. We should all cooperate with authorities, so we [can] bring this outbreak to an end in the shortest possible time.”
The about-face appears to have been prompted by the recent death of a 45-year-old man who fled his village in Mubende after a relative died, seeking aid from a traditional healer near Kampala. When his condition worsened, he sought medical treatment at Kiruddu National Referral Hospital in the capital, before succumbing to the disease on October 7. Health authorities have traced 42 people whom he had come into contact with and quarantined them.
Sadly, the deceased man’s wife tested positive for Ebola soon after giving birth at a health clinic in Kampala. The status of the newborn remains unknown. Despite these deeply concerning developments, Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng told the public that the capital remained “Ebola-free” because the couple had been infected in Mubende.
On Thursday, she told reporters, “I want to state very clearly that this does not mean Kampala has Ebola. Cases that were already listed in Mubende remain cases of Mubende. Unless Kampala generates its own cases that start within Kampala, we cannot call that a Kampala case.” She added that the health workers who attended to the infected mother remain under medical observation and in isolation at the main hospital in the capital.
The lockdown means that no one can travel in or out of these two districts except for cargo vehicles transiting from Kampala to Southern Uganda. All restaurants and bars in the affected districts are ordered closed and a nighttime curfew has been imposed. No congregations will be held in houses of worship during the lockdown. The police also have orders to arrest anyone suspected of being infected who refuses to isolate. Traditional healers have been forbidden to treat cases, and health officials must supervise all burials.
At their October 12 press brief reviewing the various emerging epidemics across the globe, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that there were at least 54 confirmed and 20 probable Ebola cases, with 39 deaths and 14 people that have since recovered. There have been ten health care workers infected, of which four have died.
Screenshot of a PowerPoint presentation to clinicians on the Uganda Ebola outbreak
As of the weekend, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said they had documented 1,100 contacts of known Ebola patients. So far, the outbreak of the Sudan ebolavirus has affected five districts in Central and Western Uganda—Bunyangabu, Kagadi, Kassanda, Kyegegwa, and Mubende. However, the country’s borders remain very porous. The capital and its outlying sprawling neighborhoods are home to more than 6.5 million people. Direct flights from the airport to Europe via Amsterdam and Brussels and regional centers include Addis Ababa and Doha.
According to the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA), the Ugandan authorities have yet to institute departure screening from the international airport in Entebbe, although this was contradicted by the United States CDC on their October 12 Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity Call, which indicated that exit screenings of air passengers are being conducted.
Health officials fear the virus has been spreading undetected since early August, threatening to take hold in the capital and potentially spread to other African countries and other continents. For instance, at the end of September, suspected cases were reported in Kenya and South Sudan. The health minister of Kenyalater affirmed that “laboratory tests for samples taken from the patient have since turned out to be negative and therefore there is no cause for alarm.”
Speaking with Scientific American, Dr. Kyobe Henry Bbosa, Ebola incident commander at Uganda’s Ministry of Health, said, “This particular outbreak is most likely a spillover from wildlife. We have no evidence of this strain of Ebola virus in the recent past to suspect it came from a different outbreak. The last Sudan Ebolavirus outbreak that happened…was more than ten years ago, and we think it is much less likely to be a spillover from that. We think this is a fresh spillover from the wild into the human population, where it is currently circulating.”
He added, “As for the geographical distribution, the main epicenter of the outbreak is Mubende district, which is near the center of Uganda. But within that, we have five subcounties [where cases have mainly occurred]. We are looking at a span of 70 kilometers from one end to the other. For the disease clusters within the subcounties, we are looking at a distance of up to 30 km. The breadth of response is the whole country. We are hoping to extend the response across the 11 districts surrounding the one at the epicenter.”
Last week, the Biden administration announced that all passengers arriving from Uganda would be rerouted through select airports and screened. However, the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) has released a statement noting, “The screening of travelers returning from Uganda is not an effective control measure,” adding that such measures are “time and resource consuming and will not identify effectively infected cases.”
The recent case of an Israeli who fell ill after returning from Uganda sent shudders throughout the international community but added validity to the concerns raised by the ECDC. The first Ebola test the man in question took was negative, but he remains under quarantine at Sheba Medical center.
Last week, the WHO sent in team of specialists led by Executive Director Dr. Mike Ryan to assist in response efforts. Currently, funding remains a critical issue. The international agency has released $2 million in contingency funds, and organizations like Doctors Without Borders and International Rescue Committee have sent in additional supplies and experts. But these are far short of the appeal for a meager $18 million Uganda has made to support containment efforts.
At the WHO press brief, Ryan said, “We need more international support for the government here and the surrounding governments in terms of preparedness. We need to activate the surveillance system more at the local level. We need more alerts. We need more community engagement. We need better infection prevention and control in private and public healthcare facilities. We need to do the necessary testing of drugs and vaccines, and that’s currently been planned and is underway already for some of the antivirals and monoclonals.”
He added, “Ebola brings surprises, infectious diseases bring surprises, and she [Aceng] and her team are not in any way underestimating the challenge that this outbreak represents. So, I have confidence that the right things are being done, but we need more scale-up. We need more support for that scale-up, and again, it’s reassuring to see the countries in the region coming around together. It’s also important that countries, when they are transparent and countries engage, that we don’t see punishment for that.”
Though Dr. Ryan’s comments were carefully worded, it is woefully apparent that the Ugandan outbreak is the beginning of a potentially more significant crisis to which world capitalism, riven by unprecedented geopolitical tensions since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, has no response.
At least nine African countries will join their efforts with the WHO to assist in containing the growing epidemic as it threatens all regional territories due to the extensive network of trade and cultural connections. These include Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Kenya, which will assist in heightening disease surveillance and training emergency responders.
The Biden administration has drafted a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution authorizing the deployment of foreign troops to Haiti, according to a report in the Miami Herald. The resolution is the first official confirmation that the US is preparing yet another invasion of the Caribbean nation, which has suffered for over a century from recurring, blood-soaked military interventions by American imperialism and its allies.
The draft resolution comes in the wake of direct calls, first from Haiti’s hated, US-installed president, Ariel Henry, and then the UN Secretary-General António Guterres for the dispatch of a “multinational rapid action force” to the island-nation to bolster its repressive police forces, restore bourgeois order and suppress mass popular discontent. “We wish to see our neighbours like the United States, like Canada, take the lead and move fast,” Bocchit Edmond, Haiti’s US ambassador told Reuters Oct. 10.
Protesters calling for the resignation of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry run after police fired tear gas to disperse them in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. [AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph]
A copy of the US resolution was obtained by the Herald and reportedly confirmed by multiple US and UN officials. The draft comes a few days after Guterres sent a letter to the UNSC calling for military forces be sent to Haiti in the name of combatting “armed gangs,” who are allied with opposing sides of Haiti’s political elite and have waged a campaign of violent terror against the population while gaining a hold over critical infrastructure.
The resolution comes amid mass protests that have been ongoing for several weeks involving tens of thousands in the capital Port-au-Prince and other major cities like Cap-Haïtien and Gonaïves. The demonstrations have raised social tensions to a breaking point. Protesters are demanding the resignation of the unelected, imperialist-backed puppet regime of Henry and an end to dire social conditions in the impoverished country, marked by rising hunger and skyrocketing prices for fuel and other basic goods.
In recent days, widespread demonstrations flared in opposition to Henry’s request for foreign security forces to help preserve his crumbling regime. Popular opposition among Haiti’s workers and oppressed masses is also directed against the gang syndicates that currently occupy large swathes of the country and have long collaborated with leading government officials in carrying out massacres against the civilian population.
The insurgent movement of the Haitian working class and poor is emblematic of developments internationally, where worker unrest has sprung up in many parts of the globe in response to exploitation, rising social inequality and mass death created by the COVID-19 pandemic. This global strike wave has emerged in countless countries, from Argentina and South Africa to Lebanon and the United States.
The US and Canada announced Saturday that they had deployed armored vehicles and other military supplies to Haiti’s police, which have had to surrender control of territory, including in much of Port-au-Prince, to powerful gangs. A spokesman for the US military’s Southern Command said the provision of equipment was a joint operation involving the US Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force.
A US State Department statement said the equipment would assist Haiti’s National Police (HNP) “in their fight against criminal actors fomenting violence and disrupting the flow of critically-needed humanitarian assistance.”
Images circulated on social media Sunday showing a Canadian Boeing C-17 Globemaster III landing at Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture international airport and unloading the first batch of military equipment. Although Canada’s embassy in Haiti declared the shipment was not for impending Canadian and American troops, many on social media found the claim dubious at best and saw it as a sign foreign intervention is imminent.
The US-drafted UNSC resolution singles out one of the most notorious gangs and criminal leaders rampaging the nation, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, and his G9 Family and Allies. The draft proposes sanctions be imposed on groups and individuals who “threaten the peace, security or stability of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country,” including an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo on perpetrators.
A possible tipping point for the decision to send armed reinforcements came from a gang-related blockade of Varreux fuel terminal north of Port-au-Prince, a storage facility that is one of Haiti’s largest fuel distribution centers. The terminal owners announced Saturday that “armed men” had attacked their installations and fled with more than 28,000 gallons of petroleum products.
The images of Canadian equipment landing in Port-au-Prince recalls the scenes in February of 2020 when US forces delivered armored vehicles to then-president Jovenel Moïse that he subsequently used to crack down on a broadening protest movement against his plans to consolidate a presidential dictatorship.
Equipment delivered to the Moïse government was transferred directly into the hands of G9 and Chérizier, a former officer of the HNP who would become a henchman of Moïse in terrorizing the population and crushing dissent. Among the most infamous terror campaigns launched by G9 and sanctioned by Moïse were an August–September 2020 massacre that left 22 dead, and the April 2021 massacre staged in the Bel Air slum of Port-au-Prince.
The phony claim that the sending of arms to Haiti is necessary to assist the HNP in combatting gang violence is refuted by the violent repression the police has meted out to protestors throughout the wave of demonstrations prompted by the ever-worsening economic situation, including last month’s elimination, at the behest of the IMF, of oil price subsidies.
Last week police shot at protestors demonstrating against a foreign military intervention, killing at least one young woman.
People carry a woman's body after she was shot by police during a protest demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. [AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph]
The reality is that the thuggish gangs share deep connections with significant sections of Haiti’s National Police dating back at least to Moïse’s regime. According to a survey conducted by Sant Karl Lévêque, a human rights organization, an estimated 40 to 60 percent of police officers have connections with gangs.
The US media’s coverage of the social disaster unfolding in Haiti has increasingly sought to exploit the gang violence to justify a colonial-style occupation of Haiti aimed at reasserting Washington’s domination in its Caribbean “backyard.”
By far the loudest purveyor for this filthy propaganda drive has been the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, which has issued editorial after editorial demanding “boots on the ground” to prevent the country from being “sucked deeper into a vortex of anarchy.”
The most recent was published October 11, under the title “Yes, intervene in Haiti—and push for democracy.” The editorial concedes Henry is a US puppet, who presides over an “unelected, illegitimate government” that “has either enabled or promoted the country’s dissolution into criminal gang fiefdoms allied with the country’s elite.” But then, without missing a heartbeat, it suggests a US-led military intervention can promote democracy, going so far as to claim “Haitians would support—if with misgivings—the chance” foreign troops would provide “at restoring some semblance of normal life.”
American imperialism’s repeated occupations of Haiti
Since the dawn of the 20th century there have been three major US-led military interventions in Haiti—launched in 1915, 1994 and 2004. All were aimed at upholding American imperialism’s role as the central economic and geopolitical power in the Caribbean region, and ensuring the impoverished country was saddled with a government entirely servile to Washington and the US financial elite.
The first occupation, which lasted until 1934, was not Washington’s first instance of interference in Haiti but rather consolidated its grip over the country. Six months beforehand, US Marines had marched on the state treasury in Port-au-Prince and took the nation’s entire gold reserve. At the height of the US military presence, 5000 Marines were stationed in the country of less than 3 million and brutally suppressed a radical and largely peasant-based resistance movement, the Caco. The fighting led to the murder of over 15,000 Haitians but only 16 US fatalities.
In seeking to crush the anti-occupation rebellion, the US employed the nascent technique of aerial bombardment. Caco villages with families, children and livestock were bombed in indiscriminate aerial assaults. Ground troops were then sent to kill survivors.
The resistance to the occupation reached a climax when rebel Charlemagne Peralte was pinned to a door and left on a street to rot to death for days at the end of 1919. The US military described Peralte as the “supreme bandit of Haiti.”
At the outset of the occupation, American forces seized Haiti’s customs houses, imposed martial law, instituted press censorship, and outlawed dissent. The US installed a pliant president, imposed a one-sided “treaty” ratified only by the US Senate and rewrote the constitution to eliminate a ban against foreign land ownership.
After two decades of occupation, American forces left the country in the hands of army and police trained in the violent methods of the Marines, and a thin layer of business elites and politicians who enriched themselves while the masses languished in poverty. The US-trained Haitian army became the backbone of capitalist domination for the next five decades. For almost thirty years, the US backed to the hilt the stridently anti-Communist dictatorships of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and then his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, despite the atrocities they perpetrated through their tonton macoutes paramilitary forces.
The second occupation came in September 1994 when a 20,000-strong US occupation force landed on the island to return to power Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who three years earlier had been ousted in a Washington-backed coup led by General Raoul Cèdras. With the de facto support of the Bush senior and Bill Clinton administrations, Cèdras presided over a reign of terror in Haiti’s poorest neighborhoods perpetrated by his military and CIA-backed death squads.
But ultimately Clinton decided capitalist rule in Haiti and Washington’s global agenda of “human rights” imperialism would be better served by allowing Aristide—who following his ouster has prostrated himself to the US and pledged to impose IMF austerity and privatization policies—to be returned to power and serve out the remaining 16 months in his presidential term. The Pentagon’s occupation force encountered no resistance from its longstanding Haitian army allies and with Washington’s blessing Cèdras was allowed to retire to Panama, where he lives to this day.
How Washington and Ottawa collaborated with fascist killers to overthrow Aristide
Having returned Aristide briefly to power in 1994, the US military acting in concert with Canadian and French military forces, and in close coordination with former Tonton Macoutes and army personnel who had served as killers for the Cèdras’ dictatorship, organized his bloody overthrow in 2004, four years after he had been re-elected as president. In his second term, Aristide was even more servile to US interests and at their behest implemented neo-liberal policies and ceded key positions in his government to opposition forces. But this was not enough to calm the nerves of the traditional ruling-elite who wanted to be able to plunder the resources of the state at will and viewed Aristide, because of his previous association with social opposition, with pathological hatred.
For several years, the George W. Bush administration placed economic and diplomatic pressure on Aristide, demanding that he agree to power-sharing with the representatives of the traditional Haitian capitalist elite—bankers, sweatshops capitalists, and Duvalierist state functionaries—and right-wing middle class professionals. Subsequently, no doubt buoyed by the supposed success of the US invasion of Iraq less than a year before, Washington opted for regime change. Toward this end, it and Ottawa encouraged, if not directly set in motion, a rebellion of former army officers and Tonton Macoutes. North America’s imperialist governments refused all requests from Haiti’s elected government for assistance until the rebels were at the gates of Port-au-Prince, then intervened under the pretext of preserving order and democracy and promptly kidnapped Aristide and bundled him on a plane for the Central African Republic.
Today’s gang leaders, such as the former officer Chérizier, allied with sections of the HNP and security forces, follow in the footsteps of the homicidal terrorists mobilized for the 2004 coup, like Guy Phillippe and Louis-Jodel Chamblain. Both were former Haitian army officers with US ties. Phillippe received training from US Special Forces, while Chamblain was a leader of the CIA-backed FRAPH organization that carried out state terror in the early 1990s.
Apart from having a government in Port-au-Prince even more at Washington’s beck-and-call, an important motivation for the third American military occupation of Haiti was to prevent Haiti’s socio-economic and political crisis from triggering a refugee crisis. The Bush administration feared an outpouring of refugees would destabilize neighboring Dominican Republic—a site of unfettered domination by US corporations—and the greater Caribbean region, and further expose the hypocrisy and brutality of US imperialism’s treatment of refugees.
The US, Canadian and French military forces that ousted Aristide and his government, were soon replaced by a UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). This was largely staffed by military personnel from lesser developed countries, including Brazil, Jordan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. MINUSTAH troops would remain in the country until 2017, serving as a backstop for a succession of right-wing, US backed governments. The UN “stabilization forces” also inadvertently introduced cholera to Haiti provoking a major health crisis.
Following the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people, US and Canadian troops were redeployed to Haiti under the MINUSTAH mandate. Under the guise of providing humanitarian relief, they ensured the catastrophe did not ignite a social explosion or mass refugee exodus, then promptly left Haiti to its fate. The whereabouts of the $13 billion donated for Haitian earthquake relief, very little of which reached the Haitian people, and the role Bill Clinton, who served as co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, played in its dispersal remain live political issues in Haiti.
The military intervention in Haiti that the US, with the support of Canada, and other of its allies is now preparing is motivated by the same predatory imperialist interests and intrigues as those that preceded it.
Washington is concerned that the political crisis and growing social unrest will destabilize the region. Dominican president and multi-millionaire Luis Abinader along with several other Dominican officials have been pleading for months that the imperialist powers place occupation forces in Haiti. They fear that the insurrectionary movement in Haiti could inspire Dominican workers and worsen the Dominican Republic’s own refugee crisis.
Above all, Washington wants to ensure that whatever government holds power in Port-au-Prince, whether headed by Henry or another member of Haiti’s kleptocracy, its leading personnel are selected by Washington and its policies tailored to US interests.
Moreover, at a moment when the US is leading a criminal NATO-instigated war against Russia over Ukraine, American imperialism wants to preserve the sordid fiction that it has the responsibility for maintaining “order” in the Americas and for launching “humanitarian” interventions on the international arena.
Yesterday, European Union (EU) foreign ministers met at a summit in Luxembourg and pledged a massive escalation of their participation in the NATO war on Russia in Ukraine. This decision confirms that EU countries are at war with Russia and, by the admission of top EU officials, raises the danger of direct military conflict between EU states and Russia.
The EU Foreign Affairs Council web site reported that the EU foreign ministers “agreed to establish an EU Military Assistance Mission (MAM) to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The mission will train around 15,000 troops on EU soil. They also agreed to allocate a further €500 million under the European Peace Facility to finance deliveries for the Ukrainian defence forces, thereby bringing EU military assistance for Ukraine to a total of €3.1 billion.”
With this decision, the EU is committing itself to waging long-term, large-scale land warfare against Russia. The EU MAM to Ukraine is to last two years, after which EU authorities can renew its mandate. While the EU did not say precisely what weapons it would give the Ukrainian regime, EU officials have previously said they are providing arms up to and including heavy artillery, tanks and anti-aircraft missile batteries.
This decision came barely a week after US President Joe Biden told a meeting of private donors that the escalating war between NATO and Russia could lead to “nuclear Armageddon.” The EU’s response at the Luxembourg summit made clear that, like Washington, the European imperialist bourgeoisie intends to escalate the conflict even if it leads to all-out nuclear war.
Indeed, the EU Foreign Affairs Council emphasized that it would not be deterred by warnings from Russia that its actions are unacceptable and could trigger a Russian nuclear attack. It wrote: “The EU is unwavering in its support to Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty. … The nuclear threats made by the Kremlin, the military mobilization and the illegal annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine will not shake the EU's resolve.”
The utterly reckless, unhinged character of European foreign policy emerged in EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s threats last week to “annihilate” the Russian military. He made this remark after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia had “various means of destruction” available to respond to against attacks on its “territorial integrity,” warning, “It’s not a bluff.”
Borrell replied: “It has to be clear that the people supporting Ukraine and the European Union and the member states, and the United States and NATO are not bluffing either. And any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer—not a nuclear answer but such a powerful answer from the military side—that the Russian army will be annihilated …”
Given the scope of the mass murder Borrell was proposing—the Russian armed forces contain an estimated one million active-duty and two million reserve personnel—it is difficult to see how such an attack could not involve the use of nuclear weapons.
In line with Borrell’s reckless tone, the Luxembourg summit also adopted aggressive positions towards several other countries, especially Iran. After widespread reports in NATO media of Russian use of Iranian Shahed drones in Ukraine, the EU denounced the “reported use by Russia in the war in Ukraine of drones allegedly supplied by Iran.”
Passing over in silence its own record of police violence against social protests, the EU cynically seized upon the mass protests in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody to posture as a friend of the Iranian people. It adopted financial sanctions on “11 individuals and 4 entities … linked to the death of Mahsa Amini and to the violent repression of the peaceful protests.”
The summit identified China as “a partner with whom the EU must engage, a tough competitor, and a systemic rival,” and agreed to send 40 EU monitors to the Azeri-Armenian border. This area of the Caucasus, on Russia’s southern flank, has seen bloody conflicts in the last two years and the deployment of Russian peacekeeping troops.
It is apparent that the EU, following in the footsteps of Washington and London, is dropping any pretense of not being fully engaged in the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine.
After the announcement of the EU training mission, the German Ministry of Defence rushed to assure on Twitter: “Defence Minister Lambrecht [Christine, SPD] clarifies: With the training mission of the Ukrainian soldiers, Germany will not become a war party. Training is needed for self-defence capability with state-of-the-art equipment. We support Ukraine in protecting its sovereignty.”
This is a pack of lies. In March, an expert opinion of the Scientific Service of the Bundestag stated that the training of Ukrainian soldiers on German soil was a participation in war under international law. And obviously, the imperialist powers are not concerned with the “defence” and “protection” of a sovereign Ukraine in their war offensive. NATO is waging war and arming the Ukrainian army to the teeth in order to defeat and subjugate resource-rich Russia.
A recent commentary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung entitled “Reality as it is” states this openly. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's claim that “NATO is not a party to this conflict” is, “with respect, factually simply wrong,” the SZ wrote. “Ukraine is only surviving militarily because the West is massively supporting it. The Ukrainian soldiers are doing the fighting—but they are doing it de facto on behalf of the rest of Europe, which is equipping them, training them and supporting the war's goal, the defeat of Russia.”
The leading EU powers, above all Germany and France, play an increasingly aggressive role in the NATO war against Russia. Berlin is flooding Ukraine with weapons and announcing new deliveries almost daily. At the same time, the ruling class is using the war to make Germany once again a leading foreign policy and military power after the crimes of the First and Second World Wars.
On Monday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) visited a live tank combat exercise of the German Armed Forces on the troop field in Bergen. On site, he praised “special assets of the Bundeswehr,” that is, the €100 billion defence fund he had launched. With this sum, the Bundeswehr “must now be equipped in such a way that it has the weapons and ammunition, the instruments it needs to carry out its mission.” Once this had been “achieved,” however, “we must not stop, [but] permanently equip the Bundeswehr with what is necessary to fulfil its mission.”
French President Emmanuel Macron announced at the end of last week that Paris is “currently working on the delivery of Caesar howitzers: We have delivered eighteen. We are currently working on the delivery of six additional howitzers.” France would also soon deliver “air defence radar, systems and missiles,” he said. Germany already delivered the first Iris-T air defence system to Kiev last week.
If some of the weapons Kiev is demanding are being withheld, it is mainly with the argument that they weaken its own armies. Macron, for example, recently explained that Paris could not always respond to the aid Kiev requested for this reason. “When President Zelensky sometimes asks me to deliver massive amounts of equipment, I am forced to keep some for ourselves in order to protect ourselves or our eastern flank,” Macron explained.
After a month of talks following the September 11 election in Sweden, the right-wing Moderate Party has come to power with the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats. Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson won the backing of parliament on Monday to become prime minister by 176 votes to 173. He will be officially made prime minister following a ceremony with the king of Sweden on Tuesday.
Ulf Kristersson on his way to the speaker of the Riksdag on 12 October 2022 [Photo by Frankie Fouganthin / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]
Kristersson’s election marks the first time a Swedish prime minister has relied on the votes of a far-right party with neo-Nazi roots to become prime minister. The Sweden Democrats were founded in the 1980s by neo-Nazis seeking to form a party capable of gaining representation in parliament. They have succeeded in capitalising on the sinking popularity of all the other capitalist parties, the Social Democrats in particular, as they oversaw the dismantling of the Swedish welfare state, tax cuts for the rich and a major military buildup. The Sweden Democrats secured more than 20 percent of the vote in last month’s election and have the second-largest group in parliament behind the Social Democrats.
Kristersson’s coalition consists of three right-wing parties: the Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals. However, the Sweden Democrats will exercise significant influence over the coalition. In the new government’s policy document, called the Tidö Agreement, the Sweden Democrats were able to secure support for most of their law and order, anti-immigrant demands. They also have ensured that their party has representatives in all governmental departments to supervise the work of the new government.
The leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, heralded the new government as a “paradigm shift.” This follows celebratory comments from fascists and neo-Nazis across the world since the election, including from close allies of fascist-minded former US President Donald Trump.
The stated policies of the new government include the following:
The creation of zones in working class, migrant areas where the police can search people indiscriminately for no reason or warrant.
Tripling of minimum income required for labor-based migration, disqualifying poorer migrant labourers.
The drafting of plans to criminalise begging throughout the country.
Substantial increases to police funding and surveillance cameras throughout the country.
The abolition of permanent asylum for refugees and more than a four-fifths reduction in refugees allowed per year.
All new residency applicants will be required to give DNA samples for a state-wide DNA registry of foreigners.
A new round of tax cuts for businesses.
Anyone without Swedish citizenship suspected of being a gang member can be deported without being found guilty in a court of law of a crime.
General increase in the severity and duration of punishments, including youth convicted of crimes being handled by the prison system and increased sentencing for people convicted of multiple crimes.
Consideration of registering EU citizens if they stay longer than three months.
Consideration of asylum “transit zones,” i.e., holding camps for migrants seeking asylum.
Inquiry to more than double the time it takes to qualify for Swedish citizenship—moving it to eight years—and adding stricter language and cultural knowledge qualifications. This could also include a new oath of loyalty to the Swedish state.
The proposed political agenda of the new government makes clear that the Swedish ruling class is turning ever more openly towards authoritarian and fascistic forms of rule. This development can only be explained by the staggering growth of social inequality, which has convinced the ruling class that it must resort to more aggressive methods to defend its wealth and privilege, and the transformation of Sweden into a frontline state in the US-NATO war with Russia.
Having applied to join NATO and undertaken a vast expansion of its armed forces since 2014, the Swedish ruling elite has abandoned the last vestiges of its historic policy of neutrality. The vast amount of financial and material resources Stockholm intends to plough into the US-led drive to subjugate Russia to the status of a semi-colony can only be squeezed out of the working class using the brutal methods associated with the far right.
Over the past three decades, successive governments, chiefly those led by Social Democratic prime ministers, have gutted Sweden’s relatively generous welfare state, undermined pension rights and privatised public services. The Sweden Democrats sought to capitalise on the growing anger towards the political establishment produced by these policies by blaming mounting social problems on immigrants.
While the Sweden Democrats have pioneered this chauvinism, the Social Democrats have effectively adopted their positions. Right before the election, the outgoing Social Democrat Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson complained that she did not want any “Somali towns” in Sweden.
The social problems confronting large numbers of immigrants to Sweden, which the fascistic Sweden Democrats reduce to “gang violence” and blather about, are inseparable from the general onslaught on workers rights and public services since the 1990s. Over the last decade, Sweden had one of the highest rates of refugee migration within the European Union (EU). About a quarter of all Swedish residents are foreign-born. The systematic slashing of state revenues through tax handouts to big business and the wealthy, and the opening up of health care, education and other key public services to private profit have denied many of these new arrivals the services needed to help secure a decent standard of living.
The relaxation of labour regulations has created large swaths of low-paid, insecure employment, not least in sectors like health care and elderly care. Large numbers of immigrants live in neighbourhoods of major cities, like Stockholm and Malmö, where rates of unemployment and poverty are significantly higher than the Swedish average.
A recent Oxfam report on global inequality found that “inequalities in Sweden have increased significantly” in the last decade. Suzanne Standfast, Oxfam Sweden’s general secretary, stated, “Sweden is one of the OECD countries where economic inequalities have increased the most in recent decades.” She continued, “We have a high tax burden, yes, but assets are taxed considerably lower in Sweden than in many other countries. This means that people with a low income sometimes pay a higher percentage of tax than people with greater assets.”
Stockholm, Sweden’s capital, is the seat of the second largest tech boom in the world—only outpaced by Silicon Valley in California. Sweden has the highest number of billionaires per capita of any major EU country.
The Social Democrats have played a key role in presiding over these developments with the support of the Left Party and Greens. The ex-Stalinist Left Party backed the outgoing Social Democrat government throughout its eight years in office as it enforced huge increases in military spending and implemented budgets dictated by the right-wing parties.
As COVID-19 spread around the world in 2020, the Social Democrats and Left Party played a criminal role in promoting the false idea of “herd immunity,” implementing policies of mass infection that led to a significantly higher fatality rate in Sweden than its Nordic neighbours. Sweden’s “herd immunity” policy was embraced by the most reactionary political figures around the world, including Trump.
People arrive for work at the Amazon distribution center in the Staten Island borough of New York, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021. [AP Photo/Craig Ruttle]
After two years of breakneck expansion, Amazon is scaling back its warehouse operations as the economic downturn weighs on its main marketplace business.
Amazon has closed down or canceled plans to open 44 facilities in the US in 2022, according to MWPVL International, which maintains a tally on Amazon’s facilities. These are mostly its last-mile delivery stations. Amazon has also delayed the opening dates for some 25 facilities. Amazon has also announced closures in Europe.
Combined, the square footage for all closures is over 53 million square feet, or 1.9 square miles of space.
Many facilities are located in California, New York and New England, with five facilities set to close in Massachusetts alone. Additionally, multiple facilities planned for logistical hubs near major population centers like Atlanta and Cincinnati will be affected.
In addition to renegotiating leases on warehouses it does not own, Amazon has been exploring subleasing 10 million or more square feet of warehouse capacity.
In addition to closures, mass layoffs have accumulated. Earlier this month, Amazon announced it was freezing all new hires for corporate positions in its retail division. Outside of its direct retail operations, Amazon announced the closure of all its US-based call centers except one, along with closing all its brick-and-mortar books and pop-up shops and the end of Amazon Care telehealth services.
At the end of the March quarter, Amazon had 1,608,000 full- and part-time employees, excluding contractors. By the end of the June quarter of this year, Amazon slashed that number to 1,523,000, a drop of 99,000 people.
It is uncertain how many people will end up without jobs due to these closures or delays, but in the Baltimore, Maryland, metro area, Amazon announced in August it had opted to close two delivery stations. One, in Hanover, has 190 workers while the other, in Essex, has 163 workers. The closures are set to start October 25.
For its part, Amazon claimed, “No employees were laid off in Maryland and every one of the employees was offered a position at a nearby facility.” Nevertheless, these forced transfers came with the caveat that workers would have to switch to night shifts or accept new shift start times and hours that may conflict with their responsibilities outside of work.
“My friend worked at [the Hanover] location. Amazon ended up firing her,” a worker at a Baltimore warehouse told the International Amazon Workers Voice. “They changed the schedule up at the last minute and told her that she had to work 12-hour days or she could quit.”
Workers who cannot make these shift changes fit into their schedules will not receive accommodation; they will have to find other jobs. Another worker outside the nearby BWI5 facility in Dundalk, Maryland, told the IAWV that he had noticed Amazon was issuing more reprimands for minor infractions such as the dreaded “Time Off Task” in order to enforce speed-ups with the intent of pressuring more workers to quit.
At the end of 2019, Amazon’s warehouse footprint spanned about 272 million square feet in the United States. By the close of 2021, Amazon had almost doubled its size to occupy over 525 million square feet of warehouse space.
Amazon found itself unprepared for the slowdown in e-commerce demand as inflation began to accelerate in 2021 and 2022, putting pressure on shoppers and business customers alike as prices rose. Rising fuel and labor costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine further impacted investors, hitting Amazon’s profitability.
In April, after releasing its first-quarter earnings, Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky stated on a call with investors, “We have too much space right now versus our demand patterns.” Olsavsky continued, “As the [Omicron COVID] variant subsided in the second half of the quarter and employees returned from leave, we quickly transitioned from being understaffed to being overstaffed, resulting in lower productivity. This lower productivity added approximately $2 billion in costs compared to last year.”
The company has responded by announcing various measures aimed at slashing costs and reducing the scope of expansion plans made at a time company bosses believed double-digit rates of growth would continue.
CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder and longtime multi-billionaire Amazon chief Jeff Bezos last year, has made it his priority to restore a “healthy level of profitability” at Amazon, calling the past two years “incredibly unusual” at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in late May.
Since its inception in the 1990s as an online book seller, Amazon has reliably delivered investors double-digit annual sales growth. In 2022 that pace of growth slowed to a single-digit rate for the first time since 2001, threatening the assumptions of future profitability that underlie its share price.
Along with this slowing top-line growth, Amazon has swung from record profitability to net losses over the past year.
The company lost $3.8 billion in the first quarter and $2 billion in the second, the first time in seven years it hasn’t posted net profits. While the broader stock market has also fallen over the year as global central banks hike interest rates, Amazon shares are down about 33 percent since the start of the year, its worst year since the market crash of 2008.
At an all-hands meeting on October 10 at its corporate headquarters in Seattle, Jassy told assembled employees, “Good companies that last a long period of time, who are thinking about the long term, always have this push and pull. There are some years where they’re expanding really broadly. Some years where they’re checking in and working on profitability, tightening the belt a little bit.”
Of course, it will not be Jassy or Amazon investors who are expected to tighten their belts, but Amazon workers. Despite the company’s announcing $1 pay increases for its warehouse associates, far below the current rate of inflation, the company is notorious for its exploitative and Dickensian working conditions.
In a TikTok video that went viral last month, an Amazon delivery driver in Florida went on a tirade after having to deliver more than 170 packages on a day when Hurricane Ian was pummeling the state with heavy winds, rain and storm surges. A pregnant Amazon worker in Liverpool, New York, was sent to clean up the facility parking lot for 10 hours this summer after attempting to talk to coworkers about organizing.
Indeed, conditions in Amazon can be fatal. Between July 13 and August 4, four Amazon employees died while working at Amazon facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Injuries at Amazon warehouses are also far above industry averages.
To this day, it also remains unknown how many Amazon workers who contracted COVID-19 while at work died because of it. Amazon’s decision to end all safety accommodations, mask mandates, ventilation and testing is part and parcel with its goal of squeezing every last ounce of labor out of its army of workers to satisfy the stock market’s demand to restore conditions required for continued profitability.
Amazon workers, rightly deemed “essential workers,” have not taken these attacks lying down. Amazon workers in Illinois and Georgia and California walked out last week in protest during Amazon’s second “Prime Day” sales event of the year. On June 1, at the company’s DEW8 facility in Bellmawr, New Jersey, workers walked out in protest over Amazon’s decision to close the warehouse by the end of the month.
Earlier this month, workers at Amazon’s JFK8 facility in Staten Island initiated a mass protest after the company tried to herd them back into the warehouse after a fire broke out in the trash compactor.
Amazon responded to this protest by suspending dozens of workers. In April, workers at JFK8 voted to become the first unionized Amazon facility in the country in April. The IAWV has responded to this firing by calling on Amazon workers to demand their co-workers be reinstated with back pay.
A recent report entitled “Cold and Costly” has underscored the difficult and dangerous conditions confronting many people who rent properties in Australia.
The report, by the Better Renting organisation, cited a 2015 Lancet study which found that more people die from exposure to the cold in Australian homes than in colder countries like Sweden and Canada.
Public housing in Sydney inner-city suburb. [Photo: WSWS]
The study said that approximately 6.5 percent of all mortalities (or about one in fifteen) between 1988 to 2009 were attributable to winter cold exposure in Australia. That compared with 3.69 percent in Canada and 4.46 percent in Sweden. Cold weather claims more lives than hot weather, with the study reporting that heat contributed to only 0.5 percent of overall mortality in Australia over the same period.
This is extraordinary considering the climatic differences between the countries. Australia’s winters tend to be relatively mild, with daily mean temperatures in capital cities Sydney and Melbourne generally between 11.0 and 13.4 degrees Celsius in July, (52 to 56 degrees Fahrenheit) the coldest month of the year, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
By contrast, Sweden’s capital Stockholm experiences mean January winter temperatures of -1.0°C, and Canada’s capital Ottawa −10.2°C (30°F and 14°F respectively).
The Better Renting report highlighted some of the factors responsible for Australia’s surprising level of cold-related mortality.
The report entailed a study of 70 renters from across Australia. Participants were given smart thermometers which monitored the temperature and humidity in their homes at one-minute intervals.
The report cited the World Health Organization (WHO), which recommends that 18°C (64.4° F) is the minimum healthy indoor temperature. Over the recording period from June 13 to July 31, the study’s participants reported indoor temperatures dropping below 18°C on average 75 percent of the time, that is approximately 18 hours per day.
For some households, there were days where the indoor temperatures did not rise above the 18°C temperature threshold. For those so affected, the incidence was around 39 percent of the time. In the state of Tasmania, one person reported temperatures of 0.2°C on July 21.
In Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), the average temperatures recorded were 13.9°C and 14.2°C respectively and in both Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) the average temperature was 15.4°C.
The report cited a study from March this year which found that eliminating cold in Australian homes, through adding insulation and proper heat containment measures, could lower rates of heart and cardiovascular disease, and increase life expectancy by an estimated 1.6 years per 1000 people.
The report found that those who reside in poorly built homes were consistently colder by about 4°C and saw temperatures decrease faster overnight and increase slower during the day compared to those who lived in well insulated homes.
The report presents the difference as simply being between rental and owned homes, but this obscures the extent of the crisis. A November 2021 report from PowerHousing Australia estimated that approximately 8 million (out of a national housing stock of 10.6 million) existing homes have “energy inefficient” designs, meaning they “are cold in winter, hot in summer, and prohibitively expensive to cool and heat.”
Participants in the Better Renting study reported that many were hesitant to turn on their heating because of energy costs. The privatization of the power industry has resulted in a crisis where millions of households pay more for energy costs.
The federal Labor government in July authorised payments of an estimated $1.5 billion to electricity generators to avoid blackouts caused by companies’ refusal to supply power because of high coal and gas prices. These payments are being imposed on regular people via increased energy bills.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) revealed that wholesale costs of electricity in the National Electricity Market (NEM) averaged $264 per megawatt-hour between March and June, a 203 percent increase on the first three months of the year. This was double the previous high of $130 in the first quarter of 2019, and three times higher than the average price in the June quarter of 2021, which was $85.
Gas prices averaged $28.40 per gigajoule in NSW, Queensland and Victoria, up 246 percent on 12 months, and almost triple the previous record of $10.74/GJ set in the September quarter last year.
Numbers of participants described the experience in their homes as “Dickensian.” One person said: “We burn tissues, pages of old books, shoe boxes for kindling. We eat two meals a day… I have to reduce groceries to pay the electricity and gas bill. We share 1 chicken breast between 3 people (9, 11, adult) and my kids are really thin.”
Prolonged exposure to the cold can have long-term health consequences and has been found to increase the likelihood of maladies such as high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Another participant reported that “every tiny headcold… I’ve caught has evolved into full-on bronchitis thanks to the lack of heating in this room… I’ve had to go to a doctor and get a stronger inhaler just to get through everyday coughs and cold.”
The report cited a Scotland study which found “that the risk of high blood pressure was two times higher below 18°C, and four times higher below 16°C.”
Many working-class families are forced to reside in poorly built homes. A December 2020 report from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) which sampled 14,486 households across Australia, said: “Over 23 percent of renters reported that they were unable to keep warm in their home during cold weather,” and “27 percent reported problems with mold, and 21 percent reported problems of dampness.” Households reported “cracks in the walls/floors were even more common (52%)” and other “common issues included plumbing problems (42%) and electrical faults (27%).”
The AHURI report added that “in privately rented dwellings 39 percent of couple-headed families with children and 42 percent of single parent-headed families” reported “living in homes with three or more building condition problems.”
Despite these problems, families often pay exorbitant rents. The Guardian reported in July that rental costs had increased by 9.1 percent in cities and 10.8 percent in regional areas over the previous 12 months, spurred on by skyrocketing inflation and the decreasing availability of rentals.
Domain reported that the national vacancy rate for rental properties in August was at a record low of 0.9 percent, down from 1.7 percent last August. The proportion of vacant rentals in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane had halved over the previous year.
For homeowners, mortgage repayments continue to climb as a result of the series of interest rate hikes imposed by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) with the complete support of the Albanese Labor government.
These rapid rate increases are deepening a crisis confronting homeowners. Some homeowners have already seen their monthly repayments increase by $1,000 or more since the hikes began in May this year.
