Honduras cuts ties to Taiwan in favor of China

Andrea Lobo

Honduran President Xiomara Castro announced on Tuesday that her government is cutting its diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favor of China.

China’s Foreign Ministry responded by expressing its willingness to establish ties with Honduras “under the One China principle.”

Chinese president Xi Jinping and Honduran president Xiomara Castro [Photo: Kremlin.ru, Office of the President of Taiwan]

Honduras will join Gambia, Sao Tome & Principe, Panama, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Burkina Faso, Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Nicaragua in making the shift in the last ten years.

The decision reduces Taiwan’s diplomatic allies to only 13—a measure of Washington’s falling economic and political influence in Latin America in relation to China, which the Pentagon has branded as the main threat in the region. At the beginning of the millennium, all seven countries on the Central American isthmus recognized Taiwan, now only Guatemala and Belize remain. The rest of those with ties to Taipei consist of Paraguay, a collection of small island nations in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and the Holy See.

In the second largest of the remaining countries, Paraguay, outgoing President Mario Abdo Benítez has warned his successor that it would be a “mistake” to break ties with Taiwan, but last September he asked Taiwan to invest at least $1 billion in the country to fend off internal pressures to make the switch.

A 2021 study in Foreign Policy Analysis found that Paraguay was losing 1 percent of its yearly GDP by maintaining ties with Taiwan.

Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Reina explained on television Wednesday that the decision to sever ties to Taipei was based upon economic considerations after Taiwan refused to increase its aid and credit lines. “Cooperation with Taiwan adds up to $50 million [yearly], which is what Honduras collects in taxes in a day,” he said. “The idea is to seek mechanisms for greater investments, trade.”

Reina then claimed that establishing greater economic ties with China is ultimately aimed at meeting the urgent needs of the “Honduran people.” However, the decision doesn’t alter the position of Honduras in world capitalism as a cheap labor platform with close access to the US market.

In the context of a “nearshoring” push by Washington to incentivize corporations to move production from Asia closer to the United States, the drive to compete for Chinese capital will only add to pressures to maintain widespread poverty as a means of keeping wages low. Currently more than seven million of the 10 million Hondurans live under the official poverty line.

Its “left” demagogy notwithstanding, the capitalist Castro administration took this decision at the behest of the Honduran oligarchy. This was shown by the reaction of Armando Urtrecho, head of the main Honduran business organization COHEP, which previously backed ties with Taiwan to maintain US support. Speaking in front of a USAID poster and the US flag at an event Wednesday, Urtecho told reporters that he neither supports nor rejects ties with Beijing.

The United States has historically and hypocritically coerced other countries to maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan to counter Chinese influence globally, even as Washington itself has formally recognized Beijing and not Taipei since 1979.

The relations between Taiwan and Central America were originally cemented on the basis of anti-communism and blood as Taipei provided aid, arms and military training to a series of US-backed military dictatorships and right-wing movements that carried out murderous repression in the region.

Legislators from both US parties responded to Castro’s announcement with threats. “Honduran President Xiomara Castro is moving her country closer to Communist China while the world is moving away. The Honduran people will suffer because of her failed leadership,” tweeted Republican Senator Bill Cassidy.

Meanwhile, Democrat Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote that the decision “will have implications lasting long beyond the current leadership… A decision to recognize Beijing is not about the competition between the US & China, but it is about the kind of future that Hondurans want to build for themselves & their children.”

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have previously threatened to introduce legislation that would cut ties with and aid to governments that switch from Taipei to Beijing. In Honduras, the Obama administration backed a military coup in 2009 that ousted president Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009), Castro’s husband, who had expressed interest to Chinese diplomats in recognizing Beijing, while also increasing economic ties with the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez.

But even the coup regime under President Porfirio Lobo (2010-2014) attempted to establish ties with Beijing, which at the time did not seek to disrupt a rapprochement with Taipei. Subsequently, president Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022), who will be tried in New York for drug charges next month, agreed to a $300 million loan from Beijing to build the Patuca III dam.

Castro had promised during her electoral campaign to establish ties with Beijing. However, reflecting fears of US reprisals, she said as recently as January 29 that establishing diplomatic ties with China was not a priority. Foreign minister Reina similarly insisted on February 2 that negotiations with China for a new hydroelectric dam did not mean they would establish official ties.

Reina even felt compelled on Wednesday to clarify, “We’re not looking to break our relationship with the United States.”

According to the Honduran Central Bank, 30.9 percent of exports and 31.4 percent of imports are with the United States, compared to 0.2 percent and 17.3 percent, respectively, with China.

The move takes place as the Biden administration rushes headlong to turn Taiwan into a frontline state for a war against China, even as the Pentagon escalates its involvement in the war against Russia over Ukraine.

Biden has effectively ended its “strategic ambiguity,” whereby Washington formally recognized Taiwan as part of China under Beijing’s “One China” policy, while arming and keeping strong relations with Taipei.

Amid frequent visits of top officials between both countries, the White House formally pledged to arm Taiwan and train its troops on US soil, while sharply increasing the presence of US troops in the island.

Last month, Washington canceled a planned diplomatic visit to Beijing and struck down a Chinese “surveillance balloon” and several other unidentified objects to whip up a war frenzy against China. On Wednesday, Australia announced that it will purchase US nuclear-powered submarines as part of the US-led military encirclement of China.

The Xiomara Castro administration, like the other “Pink Tide” bourgeois regimes in Latin American, is entirely committed to defending the capitalist nation-state framework used by the national ruling elites to institutionalize their corrupt deals and by US imperialism to plunder and dominate the region. Consequently, no bourgeois political force offers an alternative to US imperialist oppression and the drive to World War III.

Castro’s recognition of Beijing will only help drag the country and the region further into the looming conflagration between the United States and China, both nuclear powers with the world’s largest economies and militaries.

After nuclear-capable B-52 flies near Russian airspace, British and German warplanes intercept Russian jet over Baltic

Jordan Shilton

In a highly provocative move, British and German fighter jets intercepted a Russian refueling aircraft Tuesday over the Baltic Sea during a routine flight from St. Petersburg to the exclave of Kaliningrad. Coming the same day as the downing of a US drone by Russia, the interception, which was justified by Britain’s royal Air Force as necessary because the Russian plane approached Estonian airspace, underscores that tensions between the NATO imperialist powers and Russia are stretched to breaking point in the Baltic region as well as in Ukraine.

The British and German jets reportedly escorted the Russian plane for several minutes before allowing it to proceed on its way. The operation was the first time that British and German fighter jets collaborated as part of the Baltic air policing programme, which Britain will lead for the coming four months.

A B-52 bomber releases a bomb during a training operation. [Photo: US Department of Defense]

Less than 72 hours before the interception, a US nuclear-capable B-52 bomber came within a few kilometres of Russian airspace in the Gulf of Finland. The incident was clearly pre-planned and aimed as an intimidatory act. The B-52 flew northwards from Poland through Swedish and Finnish airspace before turning back shortly before reaching the Russian island of Gogland, known as Suursaari in Finnish, in the Gulf of Finland. The island, which lies just 40 kilometres off the Finnish coast and less than 200 kilometres west of St. Petersburg, is home to a Russian radar station and helicopter base. On its return flight, the B-52 passed over the Baltic republics.

Although the incident was barely reported outside of the Swedish and Finnish media, military analysts in the region made no bones about its significance. Mika Aaltola, director of the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, commented on Twitter, “The Gulf of Finland is one of Europe’s most strategically important straits, [and one] where Russia has increased its activities, for instance on Suursaari. This is how de facto allies are taken care of and a counter-deterrent message is sent.”

There is much to suggest that the B-52’s flight was a calculated provocation discussed at the highest levels. Immediately prior to the B-52’s flight, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö was in Washington for talks on Finland’s NATO membership with US President Joe Biden. As they met March 9, a story published by the Finnish state broadcaster YLE noted that Russia has stepped up military activity on Gogland significantly since 2014.

The fact that the highly unusual flight hardly received any media coverage makes it all the more sinister. Based on what is known about the flight, there is little doubt that it came perilously close to triggering a Russian response. What precisely would have happened had the B-52 strayed into or too close to Russian airspace? Would Russia have fired on it from its Gogland base? And given the highly tense stand-off in the region involving NATO and Russian land, air, and naval forces, what would have been the response to such an incident?

The flight also occurred shortly after the resumption of talks between Finland, Sweden, and Turkey on the two Nordic countries’ admission into NATO. Although Ankara gave the green light for Finnish membership Friday, Turkey continues to refuse to approve Stockholm’s application, citing Sweden’s support for organisations like the PKK that Ankara views as terrorists. Earlier this week, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson acknowledged for the first time publicly that Finland may become a NATO member prior to Sweden due to Turkey’s continued opposition to approving Stockholm’s application. When Finland joins NATO, the military alliance’s border will be significantly extended with Russia, which shares a 1,300-kilometre border with Finland.

Niinistö was in Turkey Friday for talks with Erdogan, who announced following their meeting that Turkey would give its approval to Finland joining NATO.

Finnish and Swedish NATO membership is fully endorsed by the major imperialist powers within NATO as a means to open up a northern front in the war with Russia. American imperialism is already in the process of vastly expanding its presence in the Nordic region, which will give it improved access to the Baltic Sea and Russia’s borders with Norway and Finland. Last June, an updated defence cooperation agreement came into force between the US and Norway that grants American troops unimpeded access to “agreed areas” and places the soldiers under American rather than Norwegian law. Similar agreements are in the works with Finland and Sweden. Strategic locations like the Baltic Sea island of Gotland and an airbase in the Finnish Arctic could become “agreed areas” in agreements with Stockholm and Helsinki.

The dangerous escalation of tensions in the Baltic and High North comes as Washington and its European allies prepare the ground for a further expansion of their involvement in the Ukraine war. Following Russia’s downing of the American drone Tuesday, Polish President Andrzej Duda announced that Warsaw would provide Ukraine with up to 12 MIG-29 fighter jets, with four to be delivered immediately. Slovakia followed suit Friday, committing to send a small number of MIG-29s to its Ukrainian neighbour. Although these announcements stop short of sending modern NATO warplanes to Kiev, a precedent has now been set for more jets to follow.

The increasingly desperate military situation facing Ukraine, which has suffered upwards of 100,000 military deaths since the war began according to a recent Politico report, is increasing the likelihood of a catastrophic escalation culminating in a direct clash between nuclear-armed powers. If the US and its European imperialist allies are to preserve the credibility they have staked on inflicting a devastating military defeat on Russia, they will soon have little choice but to deploy troops of their own on the ground and ship modern NATO warplanes to Kiev.

NATO is in the midst of numerous military exercises across Europe involving many thousands of soldiers. A March 13 press release reported: “In March, 20,000 NATO troops, plus Finland and Sweden, train to defend Norway in exercises ‘Joint Viking’ and ‘Joint Warrior,’ the largest drills in Europe’s Arctic this year. In the Mediterranean, ships, submarines and aircraft from nine NATO Allies conducted anti-submarine warfare drills during exercise ‘Dynamic Manta.’ France is holding its largest military drill in decades as part of ‘Orion 23,’ involving 19,000 Allied troops over three months. Around 600 German troops are practicing defending Lithuania during ‘Griffin Lightning.’ Flying out of Spain, US B-52 bombers hold joint drills with Allied air forces across Europe.”

In June, the German air force will lead Air Defender 2023, the largest military operation in the air since NATO’s founding. More than 10,000 soldiers from 18 countries, including 210 warplanes, will conduct war games in European airspace. Aircraft will operate from bases across Germany, the Netherlands, and Czech Republic between June 12 and 23.

To speak of this coordinated continent-wide military mobilization as separate “exercises” is a distortion of reality. What is increasingly coming into view is the open preparations by the US-led aggressive military alliance for a direct shooting war with Russia, which is brought ever closer due to the deepening crisis of the far-right regime in Ukraine.

Paris police assault garbage workers striking against Macron's cuts

Anthony Torres

For a week now, garbage collectors in Paris and other French cities have been striking against Macron’s pension cuts. As Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced plans to impose the cuts without even a vote in parliament, the Paris police prefecture announced they were banning the strike and requisitioning workers to force them back to work. It is critical to mobilize workers broadly to defend the garbage collectors and other workers whose right to strike is under state attack.

The French state is sending heavily-armed riot police to attack strikers, smash picket lines and force workers back to work. This requisition order is a warning to workers across France and internationally that the capitalist state is waging a frontal assault on the right to strike. This right has been constitutionally guaranteed in France since the fall of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime, which outlawed strikes.

On Thursday morning, in a signal that Macron is preparing brutal repression of continuing protests against pension cuts, police assaulted garbage workers’ pickets in the Paris suburb of Ivry.

The government faces explosive mass opposition against its illegitimate pension reform. Millions of people have been demonstrating all over France for several weeks during days of action organized by the trade unions. In a poll published in the Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD), 67 percent of French people are in favor of blockading the country. 62 percent want the mobilization to continue despite the adoption of the pension reform.

Last fall, the government also ordered the requisition of striking refinery workers for wage increases and against inflation, while France faced a fuel shortage that weakened the Borne government. This action followed the precedent of the Sarkozy government's use of the requisition order against refinery workers in 2010 to crush strikes that were eventually isolated by union bureaucracies.

Since March 6, the state, Paris City Hall and the prefecture have been working together to crack down on the garbage strike, while seeking to lay blame on each other for carrying out the measure. Darmanin had specifically asked the PS mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, to requisition the garbage collectors on strike until next Monday to remove the more than 9,000 tons of waste. Private companies that operate in other municipalities have been called in to limit the sanitary risks.

On Wednesday, March 15, Paris police prefect Laurent Nunez asked Hidalgo in a letter to requisition the garbage collectors, raising the risk to public health: 'The concentration of garbage, notably food, in certain streets of Paris, [makes] run risks to the population, in that it hinders the safe path of pedestrians, in particular that of the persons with reduced mobility, poses a problem of public hygiene and favors the proliferation of rats, vectors of diseases transmissible to the man.'

Wednesday evening Hidalgo gave her assent to the requisition but without putting it in place herself. She said it was the state's responsibility to requisition workers: 'It is paradoxical that the state asks local authorities to solve a problem that it has itself created, while the requisition is by right a state responsibility.”

Nunez finally announced this Thursday, March 16, the requisition. The city hall provided this Thursday the list of 4,000 garbage workers, so that the prefecture could proceed to the requisitions.

Defying the requisition order is an offence punishable by six months imprisonment and a fine of 10,000 euros.

In addition to the Paris garbage collectors who were on strike, the three incinerators that burn waste in Paris were stopped because of the strike of the personnel. These are also targeted by the requisition of the striking staff.

Eight buses of gendarmes intervened to smash the strike at the incinerator at Ivry-sur-Seine, including by firing tear gas volleys, after having unblocked another striking incinerator at Vitry-sur-Seine.

Strikers were assaulted, and three were arrested.

The dictatorial policy of the Macron government and ultimately of the financial markets is to impose its massively unpopular policies and rely on the police forces to physically repress workers' opposition. The mounting financial crisis and the NATO-Russia war are being seized upon by governments in France and across Europe to justify systematically repressing workers and attack the right to strike.

Bonn SDG Fellowships 2023

Application Deadline: 3rd May 2023

About the Award: The aim of this funding line is to invite post-doctoral scientists in all areas of specialization that conduct research primarily on a topic addressed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as set forth by the United Nations in its Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. The scientists should research and teach at the University of Bonn for one or two semesters. The funding is for a period of at least 3 and not more than 12 months. 

The University of Bonn currently has a large number of collaborations with universities and research institutes in Africa, Asia and South America. As shown by the SDG index, implementing the Sustainable Development Goals poses considerable challenges for many countries in these regions. Based on the 17th Sustainable Development Goal, “Partnerships for the Goals”, researchers in the above-mentioned regions are given preference for the Bonn SDG Fellowships. The goal is to support talented researchers and build and strengthen networks through them.  

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Post-doctoral scientists (with foreign citizenship), who research or teach at a university or research institute in the above-mentioned regions, and who can demonstrate proven expertise in an area of research from the thematic spectrum of the SDGs.

Selection Criteria:

• The quality of the research project to be worked on during the stay in Bonn
• Work on a topic that contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as set forth by the United Nations in its Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development
• Relevance of the research topic to developments in the region of origin
• The fellow’s contribution to academic life in Bonn (e.g. via public lectures, seminars or colloquiums)
• The fellow’s integration into the host institute (place of work, integration into existing teaching and research activities)
• Follow-on value: a plan for future collaboration projects between the fellow and the host institute in Bonn

Eligible Countries: Countries in Africa, Latin America and the South/East

To be Taken at (Country): Germany

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The funding can cover the following:

• A travel allowance (depending on country of origin)
• A scholarship of € 3,000 per month (additional funds for family members: up to € 300 for a spouse and € 250 per child)
• A research expense allowance of up to € 500 per month can be submitted to the International Office after the fellowship has been awarded. Information on applying for the allowance will be provided with your fellowship award.

Insurance benefits are not included in the scholarship.

Please note that the International Office cannot provide housing for scholarship recipients.

Duration of Award: The funding is for a period of at least 3 and not more than 12 months. When calculating costs please note the instructions in the financing plan (and use the following Excel table, download here).

How to Apply: Application includes:

• Online form
• Project description (PDF of max. 8 pages), consisting of:

1. An outline of the research project to be worked on during the fellow’s stay in Bonn
2. Reasons for the fellow’s invitation and a description of his or her contribution to research and teaching at the University of Bonn, an outline of the activities through which the fellow will enrich university life at the University of Bonn during his or her stay there
3. An overview of the collaboration between the applicant and the fellow so far
4. An outline of the integration of the fellow into the host institute (place of work, participation in teaching and research activities)
5. An outline of follow-on value: (a) plan for the outcome of the stay, (b) plan for growing the collaboration in the future.

• Fellow’s CV (PDF)
• A financing plan (please use the following Excel table

The application must be submitted by a full-time professor at the University of Bonn together with the fellow.

Electronically via:

 Application form Bonn SDG Fellowships

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Dag Hammarskjöld Journalism Fellowships 2023

Application Deadline: 24th April, 2023. 

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing nations of Africa, Asia (including Pacific Island nations), Latin America and the Caribbean.

To be taken at (country): New York, USA

Area of Interest: Journalism

About Fellowship: The Dag Hammarskjöld Fund for Journalists accepts applications from journalists of the developing nations of Africa, Asia (including Pacific Island nations), Latin America and the Caribbean to cover the United Nations General Assembly beginning in September each year. The fellowships offer a unique opportunity for promising young journalists from developing countries to see the United Nations at work and to report on its proceedings for news media in their home countries.

Offered Since: 1961

Type: Professional Fellowship

Eligibility: The Dag Hammarskjöld Fund for Journalists fellowships are open to individuals who:

• Are native to one of the mainly developing countries of Africa, Asia (including Pacific Island nations), Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Currently live in and write for media in a developing country.
• Are between the ages of 25 and 35.
• Have a very good command of the English language since United Nations press conferences and many documents are in English only.
• Are currently employed as professional journalists for print, television, radio or internet media organizations.  Both full-time and freelance journalists are invited to apply.
• Have approval from their media organizations to spend up to three months in New York reporting from the United Nations.
• Receive a commitment from their media organizations that the reports they file during the term of the Fellowship will be used and that they will continue to be paid for their services.

Number of Fellowships: not specified

Value of Fellowship: The Fund will provide: round-trip airfare to New York; accommodations; health insurance for the duration of the fellowship, and a daily allowance to cover food and other necessities. The Fund will not be responsible for other expenses of a personal nature, such as telephone calls.

Duration of Fellowship: first three months of the General Assembly session

How to Apply: Apply here

Visit the Fellowship Webpage for Details

UK budget deepens social catastrophe for workers

Budget day saw Chancellor Jeremy Hunt focus attention on £5 billion of childcare spending here and £4 billionin pension tax giveaways there, when the real story is a more than £80 billion collapse in household incomes over the next two years.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, accompanied by his ministerial team and watched by his wife and children, leaves 11 Downing Street on his way to deliver the budget. [Photo by Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) Economic and Fiscal Outlook produced alongside the budget—predicts a cumulative 5.7 percent fall in real household disposable income per head in the period 2022-23 to 2023-2024, the largest drop since records began in the 1950s. On average, each person will be £1,200 poorer two years from now, and the population £81 billion poorer. Of course, the impact will not be distributed evenly; the heaviest weight will fall on the working class.

To put this in perspective, real disposable income fell by 1.2 percent in the last two years which have seen record numbers thrown into fuel and food poverty, unable to pay the rent or afford the cost of travel to work. According to the OBR, things are about to get (almost five times) worse.

To enforce rock-bottom wages, Hunt told parliament that brutal financial sanctions on those claiming welfare benefits while unemployed, “will be applied more rigorously to those who fail to meet strict work-search requirements or choose not to take up a reasonable job offer.” Ben Harrison of the Work Foundation commented, “The UK welfare system is already damagingly punitive—of the 1.4 million people in the ‘Searching for Work’ Group of Universal Credit, one in twelve are already living under sanction.”

As wages fall, public services will be cut. Austerity is still being enforced even if the government no longer dares to speak its name and the opposition Labour Party keeps a complicit silence.

According to the New Economics Foundation (NEF), public spending will be cut in real terms by another £21.6 billion by 2027-28, based on Hunt’s plans.

“The hidden cut is a result of the Office for Budget Responsibility assuming inflation will fall well below the Bank of England’s target of 2% from 2024/​25 – including assuming zero inflation in 2025/​26. But if inflation were to fall that low the Bank of England would be expected to step in to maintain inflation at or above the target of 2%. The NEF analysis looks at what would happen if inflation does not fall below the 2% target.”

This would include an £8.8 billion real terms cut to the Department for Health and Social Care and £3.8 billion for the Department for Education. “After adjusting for population growth and a more realistic inflation forecast, the NEF analysis shows that total spending on services in 2027/​28 would be 12% lower compared with 2009/​10 in real terms.”

Adding the cuts announced in last year’s Autumn Statement and the refusal to lift budgets with inflation in the current spending period, the total public service cuts would be £67.6 billion by 2027-28, versus the original 2021 spending review plans.

This is all calculated on the far-from-assured assumption that inflation will be kept to 2 percent from 2024-25.

The latest assault on the living standards of the working class comes after wholesale gas prices—one of the major influences in the world economic crisis—have halved in the last six months and figures have been released showing the UK economy will likely grow in 2023.

As the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) reported last month, “The UK is likely to avoid a ‘technical recession’ in 2023. Though, with GDP growth set to remain close to zero in 2023 and real personal disposable income having contracted for four consecutive quarters, it will certainly feel like a recession for many.”

The NIESR explained, “We project that 7 million UK households (1 in 4) will be unable to meet in full their planned energy and food bills from their post-tax income in 2023-24, up from around 1 in 5 in 2022-23.”

What does this apparent contradiction mean? If the economy is growing, albeit glacially, and the working class is losing billions in wages and public services, then somewhere a great fortune is being built on a great crime.

While workers are not even halfway through an accelerating four-year fall in living standards, life for the major corporations and the super-rich is back on track. After total profits (net operating surplus) for private non-financial companies in the UK fell in 2020 to £208 billion, they quickly bounced back to exceed their pre-pandemic total, reaching £216 billion in 2021, and will be higher still for the year just past. Company fortunes were boosted by worker output increasing 1.3 percent per hour worked between 2019 and 2022—even as real wages fell.

From these profits, the shareholders of FTSE100 companies have drawn roughly £157 billion in dividends in the last two years, and can expect a bumper 2023, £85.8 billion, according to projections from investment platform and stockbrokers AJ Bell. They rewarded CEOs with an average pay packet of £3.9 million in 2020-21, an extra £300,000 on the pre-pandemic total.

While the rich get richer, the government is leaning on the working class to fund the one part of the state budget they are happy to increase: military spending. The Department for Defence will gain £11 billion over the next five years, lifting the percentage of GDP spent on the military to 2.25 percent of GDP by 2025, or 2.5 percent “as soon as fiscal and economic circumstances allow,” in Hunt’s words.

Money is being taken out of schools, hospitals and welfare to pay for war.The Resolution Foundation notes in its commentary on the budget, under the heading “Austerity returns”, “The Chancellor chose largely to ignore pressures on public services in this Budget, but unprotected departments face 10 percent cuts to real day-to-day spending per capita by 2027-28 – rising to 14 percent if the newly announced aspiration for defence spending to rise to 2.5 percent of GDP is met over the next parliament.”

Put another way, the £11 billionon the military accounts for substantially more than the combined spend on continuing energy subsidies (£3 billion) and the Chancellor’s “flagship” £5 billion childcare policy. This barely scrapes the sides of the crisis in that sector, where the average cost of a full-time nursery place for a child under two is close to £15,000 a year and only half of local authorities have sufficient provision available.

And because the British ruling class cannot help themselves,£4 billion will be given away to the richest people in the country by scrapping the lifetime allowance limit on pension tax benefits—previously set at just over £1 million—and raising the annual pension contribution which can be made before it is taxed from £40,000 to £60,000—roughly double the average salary.

This gave the Labour Party an opportunity to claim a semblance of difference with the Tories, pledging to reverse the measure. But on all the fundamental issues, there is nothing to tell them apart. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer responded by complaining the UK was “falling behind our competitors.”

Reviewing the two parties’ economic policies this January, research company Capital Economics concluded, “Labour’s big lead in the polls raises the question of what difference a Labour government would make to the economic outlook. The answer is probably not much. A tight grip on the public finances is likely by whichever party is in charge.”

Clashes erupt across France as Macron imposes pension cuts without parliamentary vote

Alex Lantier

Police descend on protesters at the Concorde square after a demonstration near the National Assembly in Paris, Thursday, March 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

Mass protests erupted last night in cities across France, after Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced that her government plans to impose President Emmanuel Macron’s pension cuts without a vote in the National Assembly. Anger is mounting in the working class, which is entering into a direct confrontation with the Macron government, with revolutionary implications.

Macron’s police-state machine is trampling democracy and the will of the people underfoot. He ignored the opposition to his cuts of three-quarters of the French people, and nationwide protest strikes against the cuts by millions of workers have continued for two months now. With 60 percent of the population supporting a general strike to blockade the economy and force Macron to withdraw the cuts, strikes and protests are mounting France.

Police assaulted protests by thousands in Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rennes, Brest, Dijon, Angers and Besançon. Tens of thousands gathered at Concord Square in Paris, where police armed with tear gas, water cannon, rubber-bullet guns and assault rifles guarded strategic buildings, including the Elysée presidential palace, the National Assembly and the US embassy. Clashes broke out after police charged the protest; fires burned in streets across central Paris as protesters battled riot police. At least 120 protesters were arrested.

An objectively revolutionary situation is emerging in France and across Europe, as the class struggle erupts amid the bloody NATO-Russia war in Ukraine. Millions are striking against inflation and wage cuts in Germany and Britain, strikes are continuing in the Netherlands and Portugal, and a general strike hit Greece yesterday. Even as social anger assumes titanic dimensions across Europe, Macron has nothing to offer besides repression.

Macron told his council of ministers yesterday morning that he would activate line 3 of Article 49 of France’s constitution. The 49-3 allows the government to force the National Assembly to adopt legislation without a vote, unless the Assembly votes to bring down the government. Borne’s announcement came amid reports that Macron, whose party only has a minority in the Assembly, could not get enough votes for the pension cuts from the right-wing The Republicans (LR) party.

Macron told the council of ministers that if the pension cuts went to the Assembly and were voted down, the result—amid a mounting financial crisis, fears of failures of European banks, and growing speculation on the French national debt—would be catastrophic. It would also, clearly, cut across Macron’s attempt to fund his €413 billion military budget and his participation in the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine via pension cuts.

Macron said: “My political interest and my political will were to go to a vote (in the Assembly on the cuts). Among all of you, I am not the one who is risking his position and a parliamentary seat. But I consider that in the current situation, the financial and economic risks were too great.”

Macron dispensed with the lie that his pension cuts are dictated by the need to ensure the financial viability of the French pension system. It is truly a vast handout to the banks and the war machine.

France’s CAC-40 stock index, which had fallen heavily in early trading, surged after Borne said she would use 49-3 in the parliament. With financiers expecting further massive profits, the CAC-40 rose over 120 points to close back over 7,000.

The Macron government is pledging to ram through the cuts, no matter the cost. Borne gave a prime-time TV interview on TF1 in which she defended her record, dismissed reporters’ questions on mass popular opposition to the cuts, and pledged the cuts would go through.

The trade union alliance that has called the nationwide strike protests over the last two months, including the social-democratic French Democratic Labor Confederation (CFDT) and the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT), also held a brief press conference yesterday evening. Tbey called a further one-day strike protest on March 23.

In an atmosphere of panic across the French ruling establishment, bourgeois journalists and pseudo-left politicians are peddling the line that workers should limit themselves to begging Macron to change his mind, or begging parliamentarians to censure his government and call new elections. It is a desperate attempt to buy time, give the union bureaucracy room to get control over the situation, and prevent a revolutionary struggle against Macron.

“This the beginning of something that is skidding out of control. … Representative democracy no longer allows for the expression of the voice of the people,” commented Marianne editor Natacha Polony on BFM-TV, whose editorialist Bernard Duhamel desperately asked: “The risk is that the trade union will not hold. Will the union leaderships be able to hold?”

Members of 2022 presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s New Popular Union coalition peddled illusions that Macron and the ruling elite would suddenly abandon the cuts. “We are in a major political crisis,” said Green politician Sandrine Rousseau, asking the right-wing LR party to provide the decisive votes for the motion of censure and force new elections. She added: “Things must be calmed down, the government has a responsibility to calm things down.”

“Social harmony must be re-established. Mr Macron must return to reason,” declared François Ruffin of Mélenchon’s own Unsubmissive France (LFI) party. Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) leader Fabien Roussel pledged to organize a petition campaign to gather four million signatures to ask Macron to reconsider. “What president of the Republic would act with contempt towards such a petition?”, Roussel cynically asked.

This is a fraud. If Macron is willing to trample underfoot the opposition of 50 million people in France and 3 million strikers, he can easily dismiss a petition with 4 million signatures.

The union bureaucracy is also strenuously signaling, in its behind-the-scenes talks with employers but also now in the media, that it will do everything it can to crush the workers. Jean-Christophe Deprat, the Workers Force (FO) union bureaucrat in charge of Paris mass transit, complained of the “risks of things getting out of control. It risks turning into a big mess where everyone does whatever they want.”

“A certain insurrection is possible,” warned CGT-Energy bureaucrat Frédéric Ben. “We fight against the radicalization of movements … but on a strike picket, there are not only CGT members. Workers, they do what they want.”

These statements amount to a pledge not to mobilize opposition to Macron’s coming crackdowns. Already yesterday, riot police broke up pickets by striking garbage collectors in Paris and arrested several striking CGT energy workers for distributing free energy to workers’ homes.

The Grammys, the Super Bowl and the crisis in popular music

Erik Schreiber

Popular music in the US in particular has degenerated to a remarkable extent, and its decline has serious implications for the overall cultural level and health of society.

Although their artistic quality has always been variable, popular songs once reflected daily life, gave expression to widely felt anger and protest and even addressed broader issues—all of this, of course, within the limitations imposed by the commercial, for-profit music industry.

One could find inspiration and creativity in hit songs and relate to the observations and hopes that their lyrics expressed, in various genres, such as soul, rhythm and blues, folk, country and rock and roll. There were more or less “universal” musical figures genuinely admired and even beloved, if sometimes excessively or misguidedly, by great numbers of people. There are virtually no such personalities at present. The list of the most popular musical artists in 2022 includes undoubtedly gifted individuals, but it is difficult to conceive of any of them seriously enduring or mattering deeply to a vast audience.

2023 Grammy Awards poster

Much of the music that the major corporations release and the media promote bears the unmistakable stamp of the production line. It is cold and uninspired. Worse, boorishness and retrogression have flooded the airwaves and streaming services. The lyrics to many popular songs are at an abysmally low intellectual and moral level. Bombast, posturing, vulgarity and pandering confront us from seemingly all sides, with a relative handful of individuals and firms making vast profits out of it all: revenues for the global music business rose for the seventh straight year in 2021 to $26 billion.

As we noted in a comment on Beyoncé’s Renaissance, the appearance of an album by that singer “is not primarily a musical or artistic development,” it is an economic and political one. On the one hand, a portion of the recording and entertainment industry depends on such “blockbusters.” On the other, the identity politics “industry” ties its racialist and nationalist program in part to the singer’s success.

The state of mainstream popular music inevitably reflects the state of society. American capitalism is in a condition of profound decay and degeneration. Fantastic wealth has been generated through parasitic speculation, producing obscene levels of inequality. For decades, the US government and military have waged bloody, neo-colonial wars based on lies or no explanations whatsoever. Now, the ruling elite seems intent on provoking catastrophic wars with both Russia and China.

The working population has been made to pay for this rapacity through deepening attacks on its jobs and living standards. The trade unions have become ever more open agents of the corporations and the state. Former liberals and radicals have enriched themselves and shifted sharply to the right, promoting irrationality and obsession with race and gender as “progressive” perspectives. 

Bad Bunny 2019 [Photo by Glenn Francis / CC BY 2.0]

These profoundly unhealthy and regressive developments have affected social consciousness and created an inhospitable environment for artists. Instead of facing reality and speaking honestly, many artists have successfully been encouraged to celebrate money, egotism and backwardness. Some do so consciously, having hitched their wagons to the entertainment industry and the opportunities for vanity merchandising that it creates. As we have commented, “the lumpen quasi-pornography that dominates so much of the music and entertainment world functions to pollute the atmosphere, drowning or blotting out social criticism and encouraging the worst, basest instincts.”

The emergence of rapper Kanye West as an open anti-Semite and Hitler admirer does not come out of the blue. No one should imagine that he is alone in his foul views. West has merely raised to the next level the ignorance, selfishness and anti-democratic tendencies that have been brewing for years, cultivated or accommodated to by the music corporations, the media and the so-called left.

None of this means that the spark of musical genius has gone out or even that there is not immense technical and verbal skill already present in what is currently being produced. Moreover, the new media open up previously unimaginable possibilities. A great deal of trivia or worse rises to the top at the moment, but it is not at all difficult to imagine a song that speaks directly to the seething discontent of vast layers of the world’s population attracting almost at once an audience of billions. All the more reason, from the point of view of the powers that be, to nurture the most anti-social, mercenary, individualistic and callous attitudes.

Some of the current problems were on display at the February 5 Grammy awards and the Super Bowl halftime show one week later. These spectacles provided snapshots of the current state of popular music, or a well-promoted portion of it. Many artists thump their chests or offer violence and titillation. Others say as little as possible.

Harry Styles, 2022 [Photo by Lily Rodman / CC BY 2.0]

Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican rapper and singer (and the year’s most-streamed artist in the world on Spotify), opened the Grammys by performing his song “El Apagón,” which means “The Blackout.” Bondholders and banks have plundered Puerto Rico for years, causing a scandalous deterioration in the island’s infrastructure. Despite its title, however, the song barely acknowledges this social crime, let alone the culprits. Bad Bunny makes a fleeting reference to the holes in the highways and briefly badmouths Governor Pedro Pierluisi. But the rest of the song is given over to crude Puerto Rican nationalism and machismo.

The expletive-flecked declaration that Puerto Rico is great is repeated endlessly, as is a vulgar line that praises a part of Puerto Rican women’s bodies. The lyrics are thoroughly puerile and stupid. This intellectual poverty is matched by musical poverty. The first half of the song consists only of a tom pattern and Bad Bunny’s slurred, quasi-drunken rapping. The second part is a two-note synth pattern with electro drums. Rather than protesting Puerto Rico’s misery and neglect, Bad Bunny turns it into a point of pride. Nothing progressive can come from this outlook. 

Harry’s House, by English singer Harry Styles, won the title of Album of the Year. Styles got his start in the boy band One Direction, which was manufactured by the entertainment industry like New Kids on the Block and the Monkees once were. After the band’s de facto breakup in 2016, Styles pursued a solo career, gaining notice for his gender-bending fashion sense and his upbeat, playful persona.

Styles performs an updated “blue-eyed soul” that’s light on “soul”: a pleasant amalgam of disco and ’80s synth pop suitable for piping into a hotel lobby. The album conveys little sense of musicians interacting with each other; it is a professional product, polished to a sheen.

Lizzo at the 2020 Grammys (Photo credit Cosmopolitan UK)

Styles sticks to harmless love songs and displays a modicum of cleverness, but not depth. His gentle warble is as unthreatening as can be. His demonstrations of sensitivity and words of reassurance to his romantic partners are gentlemanly and might well be sincere. But if the album is as introspective as Styles claims it is, then he spends little time thinking about anything of substance. His only comment about the outside world is that listening to the news is unpleasant. He’d rather focus on sushi restaurants, red wine and romance.

Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” won Record of the Year. The upbeat song evokes disco artists such as Chic and Donna Summer. Lizzo says that she wrote the song to “celebrate our survival and celebrate how far we’ve come” from the “major traumas and hard experiences” of the past few years. But the singer fails to name any of these “hard experiences” (such as the pandemic, police killings, inflation and the attempted fascist coup), which are by no means behind us. Instead, she celebrates alcohol and luxury goods, throwing in a few gratuitous profanities along the way. “It’s bad bitch o’clock, yeah, it’s thick-thirty. / I’ve been through a lot, but I’m still flirty,” she sings. The implicit (and false) return to normalcy has Lizzo “feelin’ fussy, walkin’ in my Balenci-ussies,” and she needs “two shots in my cup.” Lizzo is not an especially good singer, and the escapism and lack of serious commentary in this supposedly topical song are conspicuous. 

The song “Unholy” by Sam Smith and Kim Petras won the award for Best Pop Duo or Group Performance. It combines electronic instruments, mechanical rhythms, an ersatz church choir and minor chords to little purpose. Smith sings about a married man who visits a mistress or prostitute to do something “unholy” (a word that is frankly silly in this context). Petras, in her turn, demands accessories from Prada, Miu Miu et cetera before touting her discretion and continual availability for sex. This is a joyless celebration of libido and materialism; it elevates sensation over substance. The duo’s much-noted nonbinary, transgender status does not make the song any more meaningful. 

To close the Grammys, DJ Khaled performed his song “God Did” alongside rappers Rick Ross, Li’l Wayne and Jay-Z. This opus grinds on for more than eight minutes without any musical development. In an apparent attempt to create an atmosphere of reverence, the song begins with a clumsy, autotuned, unintentional insult to gospel singing. Rick Ross and Li’l Wayne indulge in braggadocio but connect it, however tenuously, with the religious theme of the song.

Rihanna, 2018 (Photo credit Fenty Beauty)

Not so Jay-Z, who makes the song all about himself. He changes the refrain “God did” into “Hov did,” Hov being his nickname (short for the modest “Jay-Hova”). Our hero sucks up all the oxygen and turns the song into a tedious paean to his wealth and power. He brags about his personal brands of marijuana and champagne, his collaboration with Rihanna on lines of makeup and lingerie, and his tax shelter in the Bahamas. Every line is about how he made a million dollars on some venture or other, yet he has the audacity to claim that his goal is to make “real” people “feel seen.” Do the real workers who toil to produce his luxury goods feel seen? Jay-Z is a foghorn of megalomania. The song is truly insufferable. 

During her Super Bowl performance February 12, Rihanna proved to be little better than her business partner Jay-Z. She sang a career-spanning medley of hits such as “Bitch Better Have My Money,” “S&M” and “Rude Boy.” The cultural and moral void of her music was embodied in lyrics such as “You wanna see me naked,” “Strippers and dollar bills,” and “Money makes the world go round.” Rihanna grimaced, grabbed herself strategically and wagged her rear end in a remarkably perfunctory performance. The robotic moves of her horde of white-clad dancers matched her robotic music. Rihanna herself showed little energy or stage presence.

The most revealing, and obviously planned moment came when she paused to apply some of her vanity brand setting and blotting powder. This was likely the first time that a Super Bowl performer has interrupted her show to advertise her own wares. Rihanna previously had refused to perform at the Super Bowl in solidarity with former quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was blacklisted by the National Football League for protesting police brutality. But perhaps her true principles are summarized in her lyric “All I see is dollar signs.” 

Today’s popular musicians are by no means responsible for the far-advanced economic, social and cultural breakdown. But how can anything remotely progressive come from artists who have embraced capitalism with both arms? This embrace commits them to a rejection of social responsibility and a refusal to address the conditions in which masses of people live. In other words, it commits them to a rejection of art’s capacity to illuminate and inspire.