The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a new Global Financial Stability Report last Tuesday that warns that“ a series of cascading shocks” endanger global financial stability. The IMF notes that since its last issuing of this report, in April of this year, the situation for the global financial system had “materially worsened.”
Deepening worldwide economic problems risk turning a more localized financial insolvency into a threat to global financial markets. The agency pointed to a list of problems: the aggressive hiking of interest rates, significant sell-offs in stock and bond markets, extreme volatility in financial markets, the appreciation of the dollar, soaring borrowing costs for emerging markets, and the general tightening of financial conditions globally.
It added to these present-day problems, a series of future threats that could further exacerbate things: Inflation could remain high (even with a recession), China’s housing market problems could endanger the country’s banking system, investors could flee emerging markets, turmoil in the EU could divide the Southern vs. the Northern economies, and a decline in housing markets that could hurt homeowners, especially in developing countries.
Tobias Adrian, director of capital markets for the IMF, told the Financial Times, “We’ve seen differentiation across the risk spectrum today… What I worry about is that there could be a broader base—a risk-off event—where it’s not just the riskier spectrum that sees wider spreads or wider risk premia, but also the safer issuers.”
In simpler terms, the IMF expects problems to emerge in more vulnerable parts of the financial system, like developing markets, but is worried that safer lenders—the major Western banks and financial services—could also descend into crisis.
The IMF’s report is only the latest in a series of warnings that the global economic system risks not only recession, but financial meltdown. Nearly every central bank in the world is raising interest rates to stop inflation and a growing push for higher wages.
Last week, the American billionaire and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio said the United States economy faced a “perfect storm” and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said a recession was imminent.
In particular, the IMF report notes the fragility of developing economies amidst this coming storm. By their calculations, about a third of all banks in developing countries risk insolvency in their stress-test scenario.
They also highlight so-called “open-end investments,” and the potential risk they pose for markets. Open-ended investment funds are a growing form of mutual fund in which investors can redeem their investment at any time. The IMF states that “those offering daily redemptions while holding illiquid assets can amplify the effects of adverse shocks by raising the likelihood of investor runs and fire sales.”
Clearly, the IMF understands that the present policies of world governments threaten a financial crisis, likely beginning in developing countries. They write that “the tightening of financial conditions needs to be calibrated carefully, to aim at avoiding disorderly market conditions that could put financial stability unduly at risk.”
However, the IMF maintains that central banks must continue their tightening measures at all costs, in order to bring inflation back to its target and “avoid a de-anchoring of inflation expectations.” Put plainly, the IMF is calling on world governments to “hold the line” as they collectively work to suppress the growing movement of workers for higher wages.
The IMF, in this sense, has no real policy suggestion, except to “be careful,” as governments plunge the world economy into recession. This is a testament to the exhaustion of alternatives.
Despite all this gloom, in the forward to the report, Tobias Adrian seeks to reassure investors that nothing cataclysmic is around the corner. “A bright light,” Adrian writes, “comes from our global banking stress tests which show relative resilience for advanced economy banks.” In other words, the resiliency of the main Western banks, ostensibly improved since 2008, will keep the system together.
The IMF, it could be said, however, is like a general fighting the last war instead of the present one. The immediate risk to the global financial system is not the major banks whose difficulties were at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis. In contrast, it is the nonbank financial sector which stands to be the seat of the next crisis.
The so-called “non-banking financial sector” is composed of a variety of financial institutions that effectively play the role of banks but do not actually have banking licenses and do not hold traditional deposits. Sometimes called “shadow banking,” the category refers to a slew of companies—whether it be Quicken Loans or Fidelity Investments—who are not actual banks, but provide services like mortgages, loans, and investments. Hedge funds, mutual funds, commodity traders, investment advisors, insurance companies, credit card companies—all of these have increasingly moved into the banking sector.
This dispersal of the role of banks masks the growth of debt and financial risk in the global economy today.
In Europe, such institutions have grown from being a minority of total assets (20 out of 50 trillion Euros in 2009) to being the majority (50 out of 80 trillion Euros). Globally, they have gone from 42 percent of assets in 2008 to 50 percent at the end of 2019. In the United States, more than two-thirds of all mortgages now originate from them.
While most conventional banks may pass the IMF’s stress test, these companies, webbed in debt and long lines of financial obligations, are not put to that test.
The occupancy rate in Germany’s hospitals due to rising coronavirus infections has doubled nationwide in just one week. In several federal states, intensive care units and emergency rooms are hopelessly overwhelmed. Beds cannot be used due to staff shortages, and many hospitals have opted out of offering emergency care.
The rapid surge of the pandemic in Germany and internationally is once again bringing hospitals, which have been operating at their limits for almost three years, to the brink of collapse. This development was not only predictable, it was consciously accepted. Despite the dangers for patients and workers, the federal and state governments are not prepared to implement even the most basic protective measures.
Gerald Gass, chairman of the German Hospital Association (DKG), recently reported that planned operations and treatments are already being postponed, and urgently needed beds are being left empty due to a lack of personnel. “These are things that are probably happening in half of the hospitals right now,” Gass said. “And the situation is likely to deteriorate even further in the coming weeks.”
According to the intensive care registry of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi), 1,660 patients with COVID-19 had to be treated in intensive care units as of October 11.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s central disease control agency, reports that there were 220 active outbreaks in medical facilities last week, compared with 155 the previous week. In elderly care and nursing homes, the number has risen from 301 to 413. “These developments can be interpreted as a direct consequence of the rapid spread [of COVID] in recent weeks,” the report said.
In fact, the increase in hospital admissions reflects the dramatic increase in the overall number of infections, which has risen sharply. The seven-day incidence of infections per 100,000 inhabitants was reported by the RKI on Monday at 680. On the same day, the RKI reported 151,420 new infections. Experts assume that the number of infections is much higher, because many infected people no longer perform a PCR test and are therefore not recorded in the official statistics. The death toll is also rising sharply again. Between 100 and 200 people die from COVID-19 every day.
In Berlin, the Senate Health Department reported 904 patients with COVID-19 in hospitals across the German capital on Friday. Of these, 48 required intensive medical care. One week earlier, the number of hospitalised patients was 696, and a week prior to that 543.
The Berlin state government, consisting of the Social Democrats, Left Party and Greens—the so-called red-red-green Senate—continues to do nothing in the face of this development. The SPD, Greens and Left Party are currently discussing possible measures for the coming months, but the abolition of the so-called Covid traffic light warning system already makes it clear that the government is concerned above all with glossing over the increasing number of infections.
Health administrators claim that the “traffic light,” which has been red virtually continuously throughout the last few months, is no longer the right instrument because current infections have less severe disease outcomes.
In Brandenburg, the number of cases in hospitals has increased tenfold compared to the same time last year. Last Tuesday, the Strausberg, Seelow and Wriezen hospitals again imposed a ban on visits in order to curb the spread. The seven-day incidence in the federal state rose to 744.1 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, almost doubling compared to the previous week.
The Carl-Thiem-Klinikum Hospital in Cottbus is struggling to cope with the massive increase of patients and the simultaneous loss of staff due to COVID-19. Managing Director Götz Brodermann told the rbb on Thursday that the hospital was once again on the verge of a threshold at which wards had to be closed.
Brandenburg’s Minister of the Interior and state leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU) Michael Stübgen nonetheless stated that the CDU/Green coalition state government would not take any measures to counteract this development. He said that measures “do not make sense” because he has no data suggesting that the health care system is overburdened.
The Hessenschau reported that of the 2,025 beds in normal wards kept available in the state of Hesse for COVID-19 patients, 1,922 were occupied on Friday, 500 more than a week earlier. A further 169 patients with COVID-19 were in intensive care. There, too, almost all of the 190 beds reserved for COVID-19 patients are occupied. The Ministry of Social Affairs reports “almost nationwide” supply shortages in internal and intensive care medicine.
The situation in the Bavarian capital of Munich and its surroundings is particularly severe. Two weeks after the end of the Oktoberfest in Munich, the warnings made by doctors and virologists have been proven correct.
Markus Lerch, medical director of the LMU Clinic in Munich, explained that there are now more Covid patients being treated than in any other wave. In addition, there are also staff absences. In some cases, 500 employees were sick at the same time.
The works council for the Munich Clinic, which operates five hospitals, warned in a letter to Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) that the health care system in the city could collapse. “The emergency wards are overcrowded, the patients are piling up in the corridors,” declared the damning letter. The hospitals are “dangerously overcrowded,” and 30 to 50 percent of the employees are themselves sick.
In some cases, patients in Munich and the surrounding area are transferred from hospital to hospital, depending on which institution still has capacity. The hospital in Haag in the district of Mühldorf am Inn has closed entirely until the end of January. The remaining staff have been deployed to other hospitals in the district.
In the city of Munich, the seven-day incidence on Thursday was 1,234 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, down from almost 1,500 infections two days earlier. In Fürstenfeldbruck, the corresponding rate was 1,474 infections, and in Ebersberg 1,253. Overall, the incidence in the state of Bavaria is over 1,000 infections per 100,000 inhabitants. Bavaria is also assumed to have a high number of unreported cases.
A protester runs for cover as police fire tear gas during a demonstration, in Nantes, western France, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022. Industries across France went on strike Tuesday to push for pay hikes that keep up with rising inflation, ramping up the clash between workers and the government after weeks of walkouts that hobbled oil refineries and sparked gasoline shortages around the country. [AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez]
Over 300,000 workers and youth marched yesterday in France in a day of action to protest inflation and the Macron government’s attempts to crush a nationwide refinery strike. Strikes were called in refineries, nuclear plants and energy, as well as education and transport. Several thousands marched in Bordeaux, Le Havre, Lille, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse and Rennes, while union officials counted 70,000 attendees at the march in Paris.
With approximately 25 percent of French gas stations low on at least one type of fuel due to the continuing refinery strike, protests in solidarity with the refinery workers spread to high schools. Over 100 were blockaded by students, including dozens in Paris and Mulhouse.
Continuing the violent repression unleashed on the 2018-2019 “yellow vest” protests against social inequality, French riot police repeatedly assaulted peaceful protesters in Paris. They assaulted members of the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union’s security detachment, wounding six, including one with an open head wound.
Syrian journalist Zakaria Abdelkafi bled profusely after a rubber bullet fired by French police hit his eyebrow, though his eye was reportedly not injured.
This savage police violence, intended to terrorize and discourage legal, constitutionally protected social protests, makes clear there is nothing to negotiate with Macron. His government, and the union bureaucrats who support his policies, are hostile to the workers and support policies of inflation, austerity and imperialist war that are impoverishing the working class. The way forward is to build a movement in the working class against austerity and war, in France and internationally, in an insurrection against the union bureaucracies.
Developing such a movement requires building rank-and-file committees, independent of the national union bureaucracies, that fight to unite workers’ struggles across international lines. It also requires a deep-going political break with petty-bourgeois parliamentarians like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who seek to divide workers in France from their class brothers and sisters internationally with nationalist and populist rhetoric.
Yesterday, Mélenchon told BFM-TV there are “two realities that are marching together, on two fronts if you will: salaried workers organized in their trade unions, and what we call the people,” which he said was the workers and everyone else in France. The movement against Macron, he added, is “a sort of arm-wrestling with the government, a gradual May 1968 general strike.”
In reality, what is being prepared is not a gradual but an explosive international movement, driven by deep-rooted opposition in the working class to the mortal crisis of capitalism. All of the problems they face—inflation, the danger that the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine could escalate into World War III, and the COVID-19 pandemic—are by nature international. In this movement, the most important allies of workers in France are their class brothers and sisters in other countries.
WSWS reporters at the march in Paris distributed a leaflet calling to mobilize workers in defense of the refinery strike and interviewed workers on the march.
They spoke to Cédric Liétchi, a member of the CGT-Energy union’s municipal federation in Paris, who denounced Macron’s attempt to crush the refinery strike: “Their attempt to force refinery workers back to work is an attack on the right to strike. The refinery workers are showing the way forward. … All industries have to join together, block production and bring down this government to win a great social victory that can open up enormous perspectives for the working class.”
Calling for “an increase in wages for everyone,” Cédric said, “With the surging, historic inflation we have in France, we have a lot of electricity and gas workers whose salaries have collapsed compared to the cost of living. Starting wages paid to us are at €200 below the minimum wage, so we have to arrange things so that new hires are actually paid just above it. What we are demanding is that the fruits of our labor, which is enormous, energy corporations have made record profits across the industry this year, be redistributed to the only producers of wealth: the workers.”
Denouncing speculators who are bidding energy prices up to €1,000 per megawatt-hour whereas production costs are only €50, Cédric said: “There are more than 13 million French people who live with precarious access to energy, who cannot afford to heat their homes. So we have a message that we want to send: Get energy out of the capitalist market.”
Asked about the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine, Cédric warned that it could lead to devastating energy shutoffs in France and across Europe. “It is indeed a war between NATO and Russia, with NATO imperialism using Ukraine as an advanced base. … The scenarios for electricity cuts, we have got them already. At our company, we already have files with scenarios of what we should say to consumers when they call when their electricity is cut off. What we are planning for is two-hour blackouts on the medium-voltage network.”
WSWS reporters also spoke to Laetitia and Christophe, who work in health care and spoke of their outrage at the official handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Public sector workers are resigning outright. Public hospitals are being destroyed,” Laetitia said.
During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, “We wore garbage bags to work with patients. … We had no means of protection, not even masks.” Now, she added, “I work in a lab doing tests, we have no adequate equipment to do that work. We don’t have the personnel we need to deal with the crisis. … There are no safety precautions, we work with PCR tests, it gets onto our keyboards, everywhere, we have to muddle through.”
“COVID is all about money,” Laetitia said.
Asked about former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn’s admission that she had followed the pandemic starting in December 2019 but had not spoken out about it after informing Macron, Christophe said, “Those people have blood on their hands.”
Christophe, who works in the nursery for hospital workers’ children, added: “I had a coworker who had COVID and a 42°C fever. She was told, sorry, you have to come in to work. And she had to get up, with her 42°C fever to go take care of children who were uninfected!”
WSWS reporters also spoke to Philippe, a retired CGT official at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport who is a member of the middle class Lutte ouvrière (LO, Workers Struggle) party. Asked about LO’s role in the 2013 shutdown of the PSA (now Stellantis) auto plant at Aulnay, and why workers at the plant ignored calls for a strike by CGT and LO official Jean-Pierre Mercier, Philippe said workers have long, bitter experiences of being betrayed by union officials.
Philippe explained: “At the national level, the union officials are so totally integrated into the state apparatus that they have limits. They do not want to upset the capitalist order, they do not want revolution, they do not want workers to expropriate the bosses. … All of the national union leaders, they have become cogs of the state machine.”
Since the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, unrest in Iranian cities has continued. So far, more than 100 people have been killed in the riots, and many political activists, journalists, and college students have been arrested. On October 3, after over two weeks of silence, the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, appeared at a police graduation ceremony and blamed the unrest on the United States, Israel, and the Iranians abroad who helped them. He claimed that if Amini had not died, the United States and Israel would have found other excuses to create unrest in Iran. Surprisingly, Khamenei did not blame London, which is the center of Persian Language broadcasts that instigated the recent unrest. Historically, the British have had friendly relations with mullahs, believing religious ideas maintain social control and promote their interest in Iran. Ahmad Vahidi, the Minister of Interior, said he has some evidence that the protesters were paid by foreign agencies and some have been trained to make Molotov cocktails for the rioters. Subsequently, Khamenei, in another speech on October 14, said no one should dare to think that the Islamic Republic can be uprooted.
While Khamenei blamed the foreigners and the Iranians abroad, he did not refer to the opposition political factions at home who have demanded ending the theocratic dictatorship. Inside Iran, there has been a class war going on between the conservative Islamists and other political factions. The conservative clerics have been close to the lower class. Since the revolution, they have controlled the lower class by preaching superstitious ideas and giving them financial aid through Islamic endowments and employment in government jobs to get their political support. The opposition factions include those who want to see the demise of the theocratic regime and the “reformists, “who are led by a few moderate clerics. The reformists believe the Islamic regime can be reformed. They have the support of the affluent class and advocate neoliberal economic policies. The reformists’ faction headed the executive branch of the government under three cleric presidents: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997), Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), and Hassan Rouhani (20013-2021). However, they were not successful in implementing policies that could help the country. As a result, the potential for regime change in Iran is high, and the recent uprisings by the youth have provided a ground for it.
Iran and Oil Politics
The destiny of the Iranian people has been tied to international oil politics. It was the case before the 1979 revolution, and it is now. Iran has been a victim of oil politics. The formation of the Islamic Republic and the rise of clerics to power in Iran was the collateral damage of the cold war and the higher oil prices in the 1970s incurred on the people of Iran. At the time, the US economy had experienced a high rate of inflation, as it is currently. The US wanted to lower oil prices to reduce inflation and help its economy to recover from recessions. While the Shah had banned all opposition political parties, the only groups that could be organized to become politically active were the Islamists led by the mullahs. The Western powers pressured the Shah to support lowering the oil prices, but he was reluctant to do so. As a result, they decided to support the Islamists to topple his government and take power.
A second cold war is in progress between China and the US, and Iran’s oil is at stake. An era of higher oil prices has arrived again, and both the US and European economies are in recession and need cheaper oil to feed their economies. The Biden administration’s “Plan A” option was to re-enforce the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) to eliminate Iran’s nuclear deterrent and lift the sanctions on Iranian oil export so that the world oil supply would increase and lead to lower oil prices. The recent nuclear negotiations, which began in December 2021, reached an impasse in August 2022, and its future is bleak. Based on Iran’s advances in nuclear technology, the prospect of a new deal is not promising. Suddenly, on October 5, 2022, the OPEC+ members decided to cut their total oil production by two million barrels per day. That has caused oil prices to rise and has contributed to higher inflation rates in Europe and the United States. The Saudis no longer want to play the role of oil price adjustor as they have done before. Moreover, on September 16, 2022, Iran was embraced as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).[1] Iran’s acceptance to join SCO has provoked the Western powers to choose “Plan B” which is a media campaign to destabilize Iran and may pave the way for a regime change. Coincidently, Plan B was activated after the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16! This plan has been launched in cyberspace through the Persian language media outlets centered in London. Plan B has aimed at the Achilles’ heel of the clerical regime, the younger generation who oppose the clerical rules.
The Younger Generation’s Uprising
The uprising that started from protests over women’s hejab has continued. Many students in schools and universities have joined the protesters. Also, there have been scattered worker strikes in a few oil and petrochemical facilities. This movement is quite different from the previous uprisings against the theocratic regime. A new younger generation in this uprising demands social change. Clerics need to wake up from their nightmares and respect people’s fundamental rights.
The ruling clerics have been faced with a new generation of young Iranians who have been raised and educated under their reign. This generation, mostly in their teens and twenties, has challenged clerical repression. The regime has been caught off guard by encountering awakened students in schools and universities in the digital age. Despite incorporating religious ideas in the educational curricula and in the state-sponsored media outlets, the youth discard clerical preaching. They have realized the mullahs’ ideological preaching cannot help them to get ahead. The younger generation does not want to say some words and phrases in Arabic, like a parrot repetition, without knowing what they mean and how it can help them to live better. They do not understand how superstitious ideas such as the pilgrimage to imams’ shrines can improve their lives.
In the past few years, as the number of women in universities has reached parity with men, there has been a gender revolution going on in Iran. The traditional patriarchy in Islamic culture has been challenged by educated women. The emergence of the information age has brought them smartphones, social networking, etc., which has challenged the clerics’ superstitious ideas. Emancipated women want to live their lives and ignore the clerics’ superstitious preaching ideas.
Media Censorship has Failed
The clerical regime has monopoly power over the radio and television in Iran and has strictly censored the press and filtered the internet. All books have to obtain permission from the government before being printed. The ministry in charge of the permits often gives conditional approval pending deleting some pages and or modifying the manuscript the way that fits the clerics’ ideology. Since the revolution, more than 50 periodicals, including some newspapers with vast circulation, have been banned, and their editors have often been penalized or imprisoned. While the government has banned many books and newspapers, it subsidizes printing and promotes many religious and superstitious books written by the mullahs and their followers. Any book or article that questions such ideas is banned.
Some books that had been printed before the revolution and had criticized the clergy or questioned legends regarding the Shi’s imams are strictly banned. A number of books written by some well-known writers, such as Sadegh Hedayat, Ahmad Kasravi, and Ali Dashti are banned because of their anticlerical contents. To the displeasure of the clergy, today, new technology has made those books available on the internet and can be downloaded for free.
The Protesters Want Quick Change
Protesters want fundamental changes. If significant changes are not rapidly made, the country will be further weakened, and there could be a period of anarchy. The clerics have to choose between a quick metamorphosis or chaos in the country. They have to respect the people’s fundamental rights, end theocratic dictatorship, lift the ban on political parties, free political prisoners, allow the labor unions to demand their legitimate requests, and allow freedom of the press. If not, the foreign powers may take advantage of the situation and pursue their own imperialistic goal to destroy Iran’s defense system and impede its progress.
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.
