Bangladeshi Prime Minister flees to India amid mass uprising

Keith Jones

Bangladesh’s longtime prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, fled the country Monday amid a mass popular uprising against her increasingly brutal authoritarian rule.

Protesters shout slogans as they celebrate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's resignation, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. [AP Photo/Rajib Dahr]

Army chief General Waker-uz-Zaman announced Hasina had resigned in a televised statement to the nation, hours after she and her sister had been spotted with army escorts at Dhaka international airport. It was subsequently learned that Hasina, who headed Bangladesh’s government for the past 15 years, had flown to India, which has enjoyed close ties to her regime.

Declaring the country of 170 million people was “going through a revolutionary period,” General Waker-uz-Zaman said that the military would oversee a peaceful transition to a new government and the restoration of order. He claimed to have already consulted with opposition leaders and “civil society” groups.

The general appealed to the population to leave the streets and ordered that schools, colleges, factories, and offices reopen Tuesday morning upon the lifting of a curfew. Trying to defuse the mass anger, Waker-Uz-Zaman postured as a friend of the people. “I promise you all,” he avowed, “we will bring justice to all the murders… Have faith in the army of the country. Please don't go back to the path of violence and please return to non-violent and peaceful ways.”

As the general was speaking, jubilant crowds were surging through the streets of the national capital, Dhaka. The prime minister’s residence and several government buildings were stormed and sacked. The New York Times cited a garment worker Monsur Ali, who said he was among the thousands of people who entered Hasina’s residence. “We went there out of anger. Nothing is left there.”

Everything suggests that the army top brass forced Hasina from power, after concluding that her attempt to cling to office through bloody repression was dangerously destabilizing Bangladeshi capitalism.

The working class has yet to intervene in the crisis as an independent political force. But in ever greater numbers working people have joined the protest movement that university students initiated at the beginning of last month over a regressive government job allocation system. They have done so to oppose the state violence and to voice their anger at mass unemployment, grinding poverty and ever-deepening social inequality.

The military and the ruling class clearly fear the continued disruption of the country’s massive garment industry will reduce profits, exacerbate the country’s economic crisis and fuel worker unrest.

On Sunday, almost one hundred people, including 13 police officers, were killed in clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces across the country. This brought the death toll since the protest movement began to over 300.

Despite the repression and a blanket government curfew, the Students Against Discrimination called for a mass march Monday on the prime minister’s official residence in, Dhaka, to demand Hasina’s resignation.

Up until Monday, Hasina had pursued a hardline, unleashing the police, including the notorious anti-terrorism Rapid Action Battalion and thugs organized by the Awami League, her political party, against peaceful protesters. She denounced the students as “terrorists,” gave “shoot-to-kill” orders for those defying a government curfew, and falsely claimed the movement had been orchestrated by the main opposition parties the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist communalist party.

While the army was deployed against the protests, the police played the principal role in the attempt to violently suppress them. This included arresting thousands. According to press reports, at a meeting last Friday junior officers expressed concern to their superiors about having to shoot unarmed protesters.

Several hours after the Chief of Army staff announced Hasina’s resignation, Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin said that he had presided over a meeting with General Waker-uz-Zaman, the heads of the navy and air force, and leaders of the opposition.

The president said that the meeting had decided parliament should be dissolved to allow for the establishment of an “interim government,” and that the army would “take measures to normalize the prevailing anarchic situation.”

The current parliament, which is dominated by Hasina’s Awami League, was elected last January in a vote that the BNP and its allies, most importantly the Jamaat-e-Islami, boycotted. They cited the government’s record of repression of its political opponents and refusal to allow for a caretaker government to be appointed to oversee the election.

President Shahabuddin also announced that the meeting agreed the BNP’s longtime leader Khaleda Zia, who was jailed in 2018 in a corruption case, should be immediately freed.

The leaders of the Students Against Discrimination have welcomed the intervention of the Bangladesh army, which is the bulwark of capitalist rule and has a notorious record of repression and dictatorship. From all reports, the student body is actively participating in the formation of the promised interim government.

Such a government will be a right-wing capitalist regime tasked with restoring order and continuing to implement the austerity and privatization measures that the Hasina-led Awami League government agreed to in 2023 in exchange for a $4.7 billion IMF bailout loan.

In all likelihood the BNP and its allies will have a prominent place in the interim government. But the military will remain the power behind the throne.

For decades official politics in Bangladesh have revolved around the bitter rivalry between Hasina and her Awami League and Zia and her BNP. Hasina emerged as leader of the Awami League following the 1975 assassination of her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the most prominent political leader in the Bangladesh independence struggle and the country’s then president, as part of a successful military coup.

Zia became the de facto leader of the BNP in 1983, two years after her husband, Ziaur Rahman the party’s founder and Bangladesh’s fifth president, was assassinated by a group of army officers.

Both parties are beholden to international capital, have extensive crony capitalist and corrupt patronage networks, have used repression and anti-democratic skullduggery against their political rivals, and met any serious opposition movement within the working class with an iron fist.

The BNP, it need be noted, only declared its “support” for the the student movement in mid-July, after masses of people had taken to the streets in outrage at the government repression.

There are many parallels between the crisis now unfolding in Bangladesh, the world’s eighth most populous country, and that which roiled Sri Lanka two years ago. In July 2022, mass protests and strikes chased President Gotabaya Rajapaksa from power. But with the assistance of the trade unions and the opposition parties a new government was soon installed under the avowedly pro-big business and pro-Washington Ranil Wickremesinghe. It has pushed through savage IMF austerity measures while building up the repressive forces of the state in preparation for a violent showdown with the working class.

Great British Energy: Profit bonanza for big business and monarchy as Starmer builds a war economy

Margot Miller

Britain’s Labour government has introduced a bill to “Make Britain a clean energy superpower.”

Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero Ed Miliband has launched Great British Energy (GB Energy), a publicly owned company with headquarters in Scotland. Former chief executive of UK Siemens Juergen Maier will be company chair.

Ed Miliband announces deal between Great British Energy and the Crown Estate [Photo: screenshot from video/Ed Miliband/X]

In GB Energy’s founding statement, Miliband outlines an unprecedented partnership between GB Energy and the Crown Estate, which has a £15.5 billion portfolio including ownership of vast swathes of land, virtually all the seabed 12 nautical miles around Britain’s coast and significant parts of London.

The monarch, King Charles, owns the Crown Estate “in right of the Crown”. It’s enormous assets and profits are controlled by the Treasury from which is funneled the sovereign grant to the private purse of the royal family at an index linked 12 percent of total assets.

Private companies will be encouraged to build windfarms, and develop tidal energy, solar, hydropower and carbon capture projects, under leasing arrangements with the Crown Estate, which is already involved in the world’s largest floating windfarm project in the Celtic Sea.

GB Energy will be voted through in parliament on September 4, as Labour has a majority from its landslide election victory, with the stated target of providing 20 million homes in the UK with clean energy, reduced bills for households, and a claimed 650,000 new jobs by 2030.

Another bill to be pushed through will enable the Crown Estate to raise loans, used to make seabeds ready for offshore turbines.

To conjure up a mythical national unity in a society rent by grotesque levels of social inequality, GB Energy is sold as part of “national renewal” and a spur to economic growth ushering in “wealth for all.”

Speaking about the involvement of the monarchy in the project, which Labour has been negotiating with for months,  Crown Estate chief executive Dan Labbad said, “The Crown estate exists to serve the national interest, including stewarding our natural resources to deliver a decarbonised, energy secure and sustainable future.”

Miliband made a xenophobic swipe at the French government owned energy firm EDF, which is one of the main six energy providers in Britain, as if both Labour and the Tories have not encouraged the energy giants to rip off customers for years since privatisation. Labour came to office specifically opposing the nationalisation of the energy providers, despite this being voted for as policy by delegates last October at Labour’s last annual conference before taking office.

The energy producers, energy grid controllers and providers have amassed even greater profits since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 pushed up the price of fuel. According to research by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, the energy giants have pocketed over £420 billion in profits since the energy crisis started. These include “the declared profits of firms ranging from energy producers (such as Equinor and Shell) through to the firms that control our energy grid (such as National Grid, UK Power Networks and Cadent) as well as suppliers (such as British Gas).”

The government pledges to stump up £8.3 billion in investment for GB Energy over the next parliament, on the basis that the royal seal of approval will attract private investment to the tune of £60 billion. Another £7.3 billion is available through the Treasury owned UK Infrastructure Bank, set up by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Conservative predecessor Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor of the exchequer. The government subvention is much less than Labour’s original pledge to invest £28 billion in green energy, which was abandoned as demanded by the City of London.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband visit Hutchinson Engineering to launch the first major partnership between Great British Energy and The Crown Estate, July 25, 2024 [Photo by Number 10/Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

As a sweetener, a “British Jobs Bonus” offers up to £500 million a year for each of the five years of government to incentivise private firms to get involved.

The foreword of the founding statement by Miliband declares, “Great British Energy stems from a simple idea: the British people should have a right to own and benefit from our natural resources. That these resources belong to all of us and should be harnessed for the common good.”

The only real benefactors, however, will be the private corporations and the Crown Estate. The statement emphasises repeatedly that, despite the pose as a publicly owned company, the purpose of GB Energy is to form “an enduring partnership with business” and the purpose of business is to make profits for shareholders.

It continues, “The government is determined to work with the private sector” and that the “transition to clean energy will require the role of both government and the private sector…

“Great British Energy will engage with investors and wider markets to create an investment offer that seizes the opportunities of the transition to our clean energy future.”

As a prince, Charles established a highly lucrative business from his life-long advocacy of clean energy and organic projects. Taking over as head of state from Queen Elizabeth, he and the royal parasites will be more handsomely rewarded than ever.

The Crown Estate is already up to its neck in reaping growing profits from renewable energy projects. Last year, it made £1.1 billion, mainly from leasing to existing windfarm companies. The royal stipend almost doubled as a result, from £86 million to £132 million.

That one of the first acts of the new Labour government is to help swell the bloated wealth of the royal family was rendered particularly obscene when followed up with Chancellor Rachel Reeves announcing that 10 million pensioners will be robbed of the £300 winter fuel allowance, including almost 2 million of the worst off. This comes hard on the heels of the government’s maintaining the Tories two-child benefit cap.

GB Energy will not sell or produce clean energy, but will be involved in procuring private investment, planning and organising supply chains. The company will make “land assessments and environmental surveys through to securing planning consent and grid connection”—providing the infrastructure with taxpayers’ money for the capitalists to make greater returns.

Critics of the scheme like Cornwall Insight, an energy market intelligence consultancy, are skeptical of the timeframe and suggest the costs to developing the necessary infrastructure will run into many billions more.

The Labour government’s energy programme is predicated on its agenda of building a war economy. Its election manifesto stated that it was “failure to invest in clean British energy that left us exposed when Putin invaded Ukraine.”

GB Energy states that it will “cut bills for good and boost energy security and we’ll pay for it with a windfall tax on those oil and gas giants that have been making record profits.”

The windfall tax is nothing new and is already baked into the soaring profits of the energy suppliers. A 25 percent windfall tax on energy companies was introduced by Sunak, as chancellor in May 2022, and increased to 35 percent by chancellor Jeremy Hunt in January 2023. In the 2024 budget Hunt extended the tax until 2029.

The promise of lower bills doesn’t stand scrutiny. While Miliband declared that profits would begin rolling in after five years for the private concerns who invest in GB Energy, neither he nor Starmer when questioned repeated their election promise that GB Energy would cut household bills by the stated at least £300 annually.

The trade unions will be on board GB Energy, with “a voice and representation”, said the government, relied on to police the workforce in line with their own nationalist agenda.

Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham “welcomed” the launching of GB Energy, while the UK’s largest union Unison echoed the government’s hype, writing, “GB Energy will boost the economy and bring bills down.”

Public concern over the climate catastrophe and soaring energy bills is being leveraged by the government to boost GB Energy, created to further the Labour government’s profit and war aims.

The consequences of global warming is among the most pressing challenges facing mankind today. The technology exists to decarbonise the world economy and transition to clean energy without job losses, but this requires massive investment and central planning nationally and globally. These problems will only be resolved when the world is rid of an economy based on production for profit and competing nation states that drives the ruling elites to trade and military war.

Tinubu government mobilises police and army to crush protests across Nigeria

Jean Shaoul

Young people have been taking to the streets across Nigeria since Thursday to protest the soaring cost of living, the removal of the electricity subsidy, high unemployment, and rampant corruption.

The protests, under the banner of #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria, are the fifth major action against the government since President Bola Tinubu, who has imposed a brutal austerity programme on behalf of Nigeria’s creditors, came to power in a heavily disputed election in May 2023.

People protest against the economic hardship on the street in Lagos, Nigeria, August 2, 2024 [AP Photo/Sunday Alamba]

They have met a savage crackdown from the security forces, aimed at intimidating and criminalising peaceful protests and media reporting, in the interest of Nigeria’s kleptocrats and the transnational energy corporations that have looted the country’s wealth.

Amnesty International said that the security forces had killed 13—at least four of whom were bystanders—across Nigeria on the first day of the protests, with some Nigerian news outlets saying that at least 17 people have been killed, including in the federal capital Abuja and in Kano. It follows warnings that the authorities would impose restrictive conditions on the planned protests in Abuja and Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city and commercial capital.

Police Chief Kayode Egbetokun had announced that the security agencies would “deal decisively” with anyone they considered a threat to public order. He accused protesters of trying to destabilize the country.

Military spokesman Major General Edward Buba said the army would intervene to forestall any protests that threatened to breach public order. He insisted that the military would not allow any repeat of the #EndSARS protests against police brutality in October 2020 that led to the deaths of 69 people and the wounding of hundreds across the country by government soldiers.

In Abuja, the federal capital, protests turned violent when police fired bullets and tear gas to stop protesters marching on the city centre and satellite towns. Nigerian police said that nearly 700 protesters have been arrested across the country while nine officers have been injured by Saturday.

A journalist’s car was hit by bullets and at least 50 journalists arrested. According to six journalists in Abuja who spoke to the AP news agency, the Department of State Service, notorious for its brutality, had dispatched hooded operatives to disperse the protesters and then fired gunshots at the journalists who were still at the national stadium. Nigeria is ranked 112th out of 180 countries in the latest World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders.

Hunger is by far the main issue. In Lagos, one of the placards read, “One day, the poor will have nothing else to eat but the rich oppressors.” Even though the protests there were relatively muted, there were armed police across the city, including in places far from the protest zones where there were no demonstrations.

The state governments of Kano, Jigawa, Yobe and Katsina imposed a 24-hour lockdown, banning people from leaving their homes on Friday, claiming “hoodlums” had hijacked the protests to loot and vandalise properties.

Borno state announced a 24-hour lockdown on Thursday night after anti-government protesters began marching in the state capital Maiduguri. According to police chief Egbetokun, this was because an “explosion” had killed four people within a crowd of protesters in Borno, while another 34 were “severely injured.” But on Wednesday night, a blast—believed to have been caused by the jihadist group Boko Haram—had killed 16 people at a teashop in the rural community of Kawori.

The government’s crackdown followed attempts to pre-empt the demonstrations. Tinubu announced a hike in the national minimum wage from N30,000 to N70,000 ($43) a month. This was far less than the N494,000 the trade unions had been calling for when they called off a general strike after two days, with the lying claim that the government was considering N250,000 a month in June. He also promised the government would develop financial programmes to alleviate the impact of soaring prices and a falling currency.

Tinubu cynically announced that he would take just half his official salary. Given that he is one of the richest men in the country, that didn’t cut much ice with Nigeria’s unemployed. Neither did the offer by National Assembly members, some of the most highly paid legislators in the world who also receive additional and even larger sums that are not disclosed, to donate half their salaries to charity.

Tinubu mobilised some of the country’s most senior imams, bishops, traditional leaders and retired military officers to intervene in a bid to forestall protests dubbed “Days of Rage” like those that had rocked Kenya and forced President William Ruto to abandon planned tax hikes and fire his cabinet last month. They warned that insurgents such as the Islamic State West Africa Province would try to take advantage of any instability in Nigeria.

None of this did anything to appease the youth who form the vast majority of Nigeria 222 million population and are unable to afford food, let alone education or find a job. Some 40 percent of Nigerians live in extreme poverty. The cost of food is so high and incomes so low that a staggering 37 percent of children in Nigeria are stunted (chronically malnourished or low height for age), more than half of them severely, while 18 percent of children suffer from wasting (acutely malnourished or low weight for height), half of them severely.

The protest organisers, NGOs and activist organisations, had called on social media for 10 days of street demonstrations starting August 1. Their demands, 19 in total, include: an end to inflation now running at 34 percent, jobs, increased security amid a rise in kidnappings for ransom, a reduction in government costs and electoral, judicial and constitutional reform.

These conditions have been exacerbated by Tinubu’s removal of the fuel subsidy, introduced decades ago because despite being a major oil producer, Africa’s largest, Nigeria has little oil refinery capacity. The removal of the subsidy, with 75 percent of Nigeria’s electricity supply coming from diesel and petrol-powered generators, tripled the cost of fuel, putting electricity and transport out of reach and driving up manufacturing costs. In addition, after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) floated the naira, previously pegged to the US dollar, to encourage foreign investment in the country, the currency fell by 70 percent, fueling inflation. The CBN has raised interest rates to an unprecedented 26.25 percent, pushing up the cost of debt servicing and eliminating any possibility of a social safety net.

Ethnic and religious conflicts have disrupted agriculture, including armed conflicts with jihadist groups in the northeast and Biafran separatists in the southeast, herder-farmer conflicts in north-central, the widespread operations of criminal gangs as well as kidnappings to extort a ransom. Nigeria, once a large net exporter of food, now imports some of its food products.

Nigeria is by no means unique. Similar conditions of poverty and police brutality are replicated across the continent that has seen youth-led mass protests and strikes in Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Algeria, Morocco and South Africa, as well as nine military takeovers in the past five years aimed at preventing the overthrow of the ruling elites.

The sheer scale of the continent’s young population—some 60 percent are under 25 years of age, of whom few have any realistic prospect of a secure job and a decent future—testifies to the powder keg that is Africa.

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo warned that Africa was staring at the abyss. Speaking in an interview with CNN affiliate Citizen TV, he said, “All over Africa, we are… sitting on a keg of gunpowder,” adding, “There’s virtually no exception (country) in Africa where the youth are not angry. They are unemployed… unempowered and they see nothing other than hopelessness.” Obasanjo warned that “if no adequate attention is paid to the needs of the youth in Africa… it will be very ugly for all of us.”

Cost-of-living crisis fuels financial stress and job losses in Australia

Mike Head

Data released last week shows that the cost-of-living crisis is having a devastating impact on financially-stressed working-class households in Australia, amid rising job losses and signs of recession.

Unemployed workers registering for social welfare outside Centrelink office in Sydney, Australia, 2020.

First of all, far from receding, inflation is resurging, further cutting real wages. The official Consumer Price Index rose from 3.6 percent in the March quarter to 3.8 percent in the June quarter, rebounding after falling from 7.8 percent in December 2022.

Costs for workers and their families rose even more sharply. Soaring rents, building construction costs, insurance premiums, fuel prices and increases in the cost of fruit and vegetable drove up price rises for essential items by an average of 4.5 percent.

Even that underestimates the shock to working-class households. The latest available Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures estimated that the living cost index for “employee households” rose by 6.5 percent over the past year, primarily fueled by much higher home mortgage payments and education costs.

The ongoing cut in living standards is reflected in falling retail sales. They dropped by 3 percent per person in the June quarter. They are down 6.7 percent per person since the June quarter of 2022—the first months of the Albanese Labor government—according to the ABS.

Other data showed that most of this drop is occurring in essential spending, especially food, despite bargain hunting in mid-year sales. By contrast, expenditure on more up-market items, such as cosmetics, sports and recreational goods, grew by 6.3 percent year-on-year.

This is another indication of the widening social and class divide under the Labor government, accelerated by its $200 billion “Stage Three” income tax cuts, which are benefiting high-income households seven times more than low-income ones.

Other data indicated rising levels of mortgage stress, especially among new home buyers in low-income areas. The proportion of homes being resold within three years, mostly due to inability to make payments, jumped to 16 percent, the highest level in results that go back a decade.

There are growing numbers of car loan defaults, which are regarded as an advance warning of deeper financial problems. Westpac bank data showed 90-day-plus automative loan arrears are now about twice the rate of two years ago.

Even if the Reserve Bank of Australia holds off on another interest rate rise this week, 13 consecutive interest rate rises since May 2022 are having the effect intended by the central bank. Backed by the Labor government, the bank is inducing an economic slump that is driving job cuts and putting downward pressure on workers’ wages.

In per person terms, the economy has been in recession since the start of 2024. Production grew by just 0.1 percent during the first three months of the year. That is far less than inflation and population growth.

Figures for the June quarter, due early next month, are expected to be equally dire. Job cuts and business insolvencies are rising sharply. Among the latest job losses are those of at least 610 aviation workers at bankrupted airline Rex, just months after another airline operator, Bonza, collapsed destroying around 300 jobs.

Up to 300 jobs are to be cut at US-based lithium giant Albemarle’s Kemerton plant near Bunbury in Western Australia, adding to the thousands destroyed in the mining industry since the beginning of the year due to falling global prices for critical minerals and iron ore.

The previously government-owned telecommunications company, Telstra, is axing 2,800 jobs, or 9 percent of its remaining 30,000-strong workforce, by the end of 2024.

Statistics reported last week from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the corporate regulator, showed that business failures surged to a record high in the past financial year. There were 11,049 insolvencies, up about 40 percent on the previous year and 124 percent more than in 2021-22. That surpassed the previous high of 10,757 in 2011-12 during the fallout from the 2008-09 global financial crisis.

Cafes, restaurants, small retailers and accommodation providers were among the hardest hit this year. The prominent collapses included online book seller Booktopia, vacuum cleaner retailer Godfreys, transport group Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics, delivery service MilkRun, beauty and skincare group BWX and craft beer company Tribe Brewing.

Construction companies were the most affected. They made up more than a quarter of the corporate crashes, as hiked mortgage interest rates, inflation and surging costs of building materials took their toll.

Thousands of jobs and employer-sponsored apprenticeships are being axed, particularly in home building. Many trade apprentices such as electricians, carpenters and plumbers have their vocational training education tied to an employer, leaving young workers stranded when businesses go bust.

There were only 163,320 dwelling approvals in the 2023-24 financial year, the weakest result since 2011-12 according to ABS data. New home approvals are down by nearly 20 percent since the Reserve Bank started increasing interest rates in May 2022.

These results expose the fraud of the Labor government’s promise to alleviate the housing crisis by getting 1.2 million new homes built over the next five years, mostly by offering concessions to corporate property developers.

Overall, the figures provide an indication of the mounting effect of the global downturn and a dramatic cut in economic growth in China produced by US tariffs, sanctions and other economic warfare measures, which are undercutting Australian capitalism’s largest export market.

This has vast longer-term implications. Prices for iron ore, the biggest export item—previously generating revenues of $124 billion a year—have more than halved from over $US200 a tonne to under $100.

According to a report in Forbes, the business media outlet, an increase in world iron ore supply from next year, as the huge Simandou mine in the west African state of Guinea starts delivering ore, could drive the price down to around $80.

That could trigger a 49 percent fall in the earnings of Australian-based mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto and a 65 percent fall in the earnings of another significant Australian ore producer, Fortescue.

It would also slash tax intakes for already debt-ridden Australian federal and state governments. Western Australian iron ore producers alone are estimated to represent nearly 18 percent of the nationwide total tax revenue.

Prices for Australian-mined lithium, nickel and other strategic minerals are plummeting as well. Nickel prices have fallen by more than two-thirds, from a high of $US50,000 per metric ton in 2022 to about $16,500 recently.

Since early 2022, the price of a key rare earth, an oxide of neodymium and praseodymium, crucial for making powerful magnets, has dived from $145 a kilogram to $47.

The Albanese government is spending billions of dollars in subsidies and corporate aid to bolster critical minerals output, supposedly to make Australia a mining superpower. In reality, the government is seeking to assist US efforts to reduce reliance on supplies and refining in China, as part of the preparations for what would be a catastrophic US-instigated war against China.

While cutting spending in real terms on public health, education, housing and other vital social services, Albanese and his ministers are allocating hundreds of billions of dollars for AUKUS and other plans for war.

Workers and young people in Australia are already paying a heavy price for this program of war and austerity.

In July, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported that real wages in Australia were still 4.8 percent lower than they were in the final quarter of 2019, just before the COVID pandemic—“one of the largest drops in real wages among OECD countries.”

This historic social crisis, on top of Labor’s support for the US-armed Israeli genocide in Gaza and US militarism against Russia and China, is intensifying the discrediting of the trade union-backed federal and state Labor governments in workers’ eyes.

If an election were held today, media polls suggest that Labor would be reduced to a minority government, relying on the support of not only the Greens but assorted independents. With a federal election due before May, Labor’s pro-genocide, pro-war and pro-business agenda could even pave the way for the widely-reviled Liberal-National Coalition to form a minority government.

Intel slashes 15,000 jobs as US unemployment rate jumps to 4.3 percent

Shannon Jones

President Joe Biden talks to Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, second from left, as Intel factory manager Hugh Green, Intel manufacturing technician Michelle Blackwell and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, left, listen, during a tour of the Intel Ocotillo Campus, in Chandler, Arizona Wednesday March 20, 2024. [AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin]

California-based chip maker Intel announced 15,000 job cuts, about 15 percent of its global workforce, in a week that saw signs of mounting global financial instability. The latest figures from the federal government showed US unemployment rose in July to 4.3 percent, sparking a sell-off on Wall Street.

The cuts at Intel are only the latest in a global offensive against jobs, particularly through the use of new labor-saving technologies. Intel plans to save $10 billion with the cuts as it faces stiff competition in the market for chips used in artificial intelligence. The cuts include a 24 percent reduction in capital spending as well as cuts to research and development and marketing.

In a statement announcing the cuts, CEO Pat Gelsinger wrote, “Our costs are too high, our margins are too low. We need bolder actions to address both – particularly given our financial results and outlook for the second half of 2024, which is tougher than previously expected.”

Jerry White, the Socialist Equality Party candidate for US vice president, denounced the Intel job cuts in a post on X/Twitter:

The mass layoffs spreading through tech, auto, logistics and other industries are the result of a deliberate class policy. The threat of unemployment is being used to terrorize workers at Michigan Medicine, Boeing, Chicago Public Schools and throughout the economy, who want to fight for substantial wage improvements to protect their families against the ravages of inflation.

The ruling class, with the full backing of the Federal Reserve, the Biden administration and both corporate-controlled parties, is waging a class war against workers. It is being aided and abetted by the labor bureaucracy in the UAW, IAM and other unions, which is doing everything it can to prevent strikes and block resistance to job cutting. At the same, the union officials are going all out to put the pro-big business and pro-war candidate Kamala Harris in the White House.

Workers must respond by mapping out an independent course of action based on their own class interests. Against the ruling class program of war, austerity and dictatorship, the working class must advance a strategy of global unity against the capitalist profit system aimed at placing the banks, transport and industry under the democratic ownership and control of the working class.

This means expanding the network of rank-and-file committees to fight to defend every job. At the same time, workers throughout the world must unite to fight for socialism, so that great advances in technology like AI and automation can be used to shorten the work week and greatly increase the living standards of workers, not throw them into the unemployment lines.

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Manufacturing activity fell in July for the fourth straight month, as did trucking, which has seen the elimination of 30,000 jobs over the past 12 months.

This week carmaker Stellantis announced a new job buyout offer to salaried employees and said layoffs may be necessary if not enough workers take the offer. Stellantis and other US carmakers have already slashed thousands of production and white collar jobs this year in the aftermath of a sellout contract imposed by the United Auto Workers, with the support of the Biden White House. Farm and heavy equipment maker John Deere, whose factory workers are also in the UAW, has also announced mass layoffs.

Earlier this month, the United Parcel Service announced it was temporarily closing several hubs for retooling into automated facilities, employing a fraction of the labor. This is part of a nationwide restructuring effort, made possible by a sellout Teamsters contract last year, which will cost tens of thousands of jobs.

Job cuts are not limited to the private sector. The White House’ decision to end pandemic funding is forcing massive cuts in school districts across the United States, including major cities like Chicago and Detroit. Chicago alone is facing a $500 million shortfall while Michigan schools in addition to the loss to pandemic support face a $1 billion cut in state funding.

Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas reported that US employers announced 25,885 job cuts in July. While this was down from June, it was 9 percent higher than the same month in 2023 and the highest total for July since 2020, in the midst of the initial wave of the pandemic. The technology sector cut the most jobs in July with 6,009, for a total of 65,863 on the year.

Challenger reports, “For the year, employers have announced plans to hire 73,596 workers, the lowest year-to-date total since 2012, when 72,858 hiring plans were recorded.”

Other layoffs include:

• Disney is laying off 140 workers, or 3 percent of its Disney Entertainment Television workforce, including 13 percent of staff at National Geographic.
• Richmond, California-based SunPower Corporation said it is laying off 290 workers as it struggles with the threat of bankruptcy.
• Gaming company Bungie said it will lay off 220 employees, the latest layoffs in a string of cuts totaling 11,000 across the gaming industry so far this year.

The rise in US unemployment from 4.1 percent to 4.3 percent last month was higher than what analysts expected. The economy created just 110,000 new jobs last month, while the number of unemployed people rose by 352,000 to 7.2 million and the number of new weekly filings for unemployment benefits rose to its highest level in a year. The BLS also revised downward its figures for May and June by 29,000 jobs.

The actual number of unemployed is much higher, with millions more forced to work part time or having given up the search for jobs altogether.

The monthly jobs data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed wage growth slowing as well. Wages have risen just 3.6 percent over the last 12 months, barely about the 3.0 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index, which underestimates in the impact of rising prices on workers.

The Washington Post wrote, “With the unemployment rate now at the highest rate since coming out of the pandemic downturn in 2021, economists, banking analysts and investors warned that recession signals are flashing.”

Global stocks were down sharply on Thursday in response to the jobs data, reflecting fears of a looming recession. The Dow Jones lost 600 points, the S&P 500 was down 1.5 percent and the tech heavy NASDAQ down 2.5 percent. Intel, which is a component of the Dow, shares were down a massive 26 percent. The Japanese Nikkei 225 index also crashed 5.8 percent Friday. US stock losses continued Friday, with the DOW down another 600 points and the NASDAQ down 10 percent from its recent high.

One of the signs at Intel's manufacturing campus in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. [AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan]

But the steady rise in unemployment is the consequence of deliberate policies from the White House aimed at smashing the growth of the class struggle through mass job cuts. The Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates to the highest level in more than 40 years while Biden, the self-described “most pro-union president in American history,” is working with the union bureaucracy to impose massive sellouts and prepare for war.

In response to the jobs report, Biden issued a complacent statement totally at odds with reality.

Today's report shows employment is growing more gradually at a time when inflation has declined significantly. Business investment remains strong thanks in part to our investing in America agenda, which is creating good-paying jobs in communities that have been left behind.

While heightened interest rates are aimed at boosting profits through attacks on the working class, this policy also contains immense dangers for the world financial system, which has become completely dependent on cheap money. While current interest rates are not high by historical standards, the fall in share values reflects concern that if rates do not come down soon, it could trigger a recession.

The Federal Reserve has signaled that it intends to begin incremental rate cuts as soon as its September board meeting. But there are concerns that the Federal Reserve has already waited too long to being reducing rates.

Democratic Senator and former banking regulator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tweeted, “Fed Chair [Jerome] Powell made a serious mistake not cutting interest rates. He’s been warned over and over again that waiting too long risks driving the economy into a ditch.” Warren and the Democrats are also worried about the potential impact of a sudden economic downturn on the November elections.

733 million of the world’s people faced hunger in 2023

Jean Shaoul

According to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, a staggering 733 million people faced hunger in 2023, equivalent to one in eleven people globally and one in five in Africa.

Global hunger levels have remained the same for three consecutive years and are running at around 152 million more than in 2019.

That so many people are unable to feed themselves in the third decade of the 21st century, amid unprecedented scientific and technological developments in food production and distribution, is a searing indictment of the capitalist system.

The annual report was published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO). These agencies are part of the international order set up in the aftermath of World War II to enforce the peace; they act as pillars of support for the predatory aims of the US and other imperialist powers. Their focus is therefore on the financial “solutions” that will best enrich the banks and global food corporations.

The UN agencies launched the report in the context of the G20 Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty Task Force Ministerial Meeting that took place in Brazil on July 24, with the official launch of the alliance set to take place at the same time as the leaders of the world’s 20 richest nations meet for the G20 Summit in November 2024. It points to the way that hunger, poverty and malnutrition are seen as business opportunities dressed up as philanthropy, humanitarianism and social concern.

Children eat porridge prepared at a feeding center in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, on July 2, 2024. In Zimbabwe, an El Nino-induced drought is affecting millions of people, and children are most at risk. [AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli]

While Asia is home to more than half the world’s hungry people, the worst conditions exist in Africa, where the percentage of people facing hunger continues to rise (to 20.4 percent). In 2023, 384.5 million people in Asia faced hunger, compared with 298.4 million in Africa. From 2022 to 2023, hunger increased in Western Asia, the Caribbean, and most sub-regions of Africa.

The report goes beyond the issue of hunger, drawing attention to widespread food insecurity and malnutrition.

In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a sharp uptick in the numbers of people facing moderate or severe food insecurity, especially in Africa where 58 percent of the population is moderately or severely food insecure. Four years later, the overall number has not changed significantly, hovering around 2.33 billion, or 29 percent of the world’s 8.1 billion population. Over 864 million people experienced severe food insecurity, going without food for an entire day or more at times

Levels of undernourishment, far from falling, have risen to levels comparable to those in 2008-09. What the report omitted to say was that more than one billion went hungry then as food prices soared thanks to hoarding by the food trading corporations, hedge fund speculation and the criminal activities of the financial institutions in 2007-08. It led to people dying of starvation and food riots and social unrest in both poor and advanced nations, bringing down the Haitian government and contributing to the 2011 Arab Spring.

The report warns that if current trends continue, about 582 million people will be chronically undernourished in 2030, half in Africa. These figures put paid to any notion of achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, Zero Hunger, by 2030. The Zero Hunger Goal, established in 2015, was supposed to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.”

Malnutrition and a healthy diet go beyond the issue of food insecurity, as the report points out, affecting over one-third of the global population. Using new food price data and methodologies, it reveals that more than 2.8 billion people were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2022, particularly in low-income countries, where 71.5 percent of the population cannot afford a healthy diet, compared to 6.3 percent in high-income countries. This increased substantially in Africa, while dropping below pre-pandemic levels elsewhere.

A recent report on the diets of under-fives from the UN’s children’s agency UNICEF found that one young child in four globally has a diet so restricted it is likely to harm their growth, brain development and chances of survival. Many of the children live in UN-designated “hunger hotspots” such as Palestine, Haiti and Mali, where it expects access to food to deteriorate over the coming months. An estimated 181 million children from almost 100 countries were consuming, at most, only two food groups on a daily basis—typically milk with a starchy food such as rice, maize or wheat.

The SOFI report points to the co-existence of undernutrition alongside overweight and obesity that has surged across all age groups. While thinness and underweight have declined over the last 20 years, obesity—which increases the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer—has risen, with levels of adult obesity rising from 12.1 percent in 2012 to 15.8 percent in 2022. This is projected to rise to 1.2 billion by 2030.

Overweight and obesity have risen because of the huge increase in the production and consumption of processed and ultra-processed foods containing high levels of salt, saturated fats and/or preservatives, and of sugar-sweetened beverages, distributed through supermarkets and local convenience stores, many of which sell little else. This is not just increasing in urban areas but also in Africa’s rural areas, driven, among other things, by mechanization of farm production and higher incomes from non-farm employment, along with longer working hours and travel time that puts a premium on convenience foods.

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) cited research showing that the rising demand for processed foods has come on the back of the rapid expansion of the food processing and modern distribution and packaging systems in the food supply chains, encompassing both small-and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the giant food companies.

The large food corporations have invested in highly automated food processing factories in Africa and elsewhere, with Indonesia’s Indofood manufacturing package snacks and ready-to-eat products like Indomie ramen noodles in Nigeria.

The SMEs involved in the processing, wholesale, transportation and retail food supply chain employ an estimated 20 percent of the rural and 25 percent of the urban workforces in Africa. Many African countries face strong opposition from large food companies with strong market power to any attempts to impose sugar taxes, the labelling of unhealthy foods and the bans on the distribution of unhealthy foods in schools to reduce demand for unhealthy ultra-processed foods.

The SOFI report has little if anything to say about the impact of the Gulf states’ land and water grabbing activities in the Horn of Africa in search of food supplies for their burgeoning populations. For example, much of Sudan’s most fertile region—the states of Khartoum, River Nile and Northern that once sustained indigenous farmers—has been bought up, particularly after the 2008 food crisis and 2013 introduction of business-friendly legislation. Land has been turned over to highly mechanised food production for export, often via agreements with agribusiness companies such as the US firm Cargill.

In other regions in the Horn and East Africa dominated by agro-pastoral subsistence economies, changes in the ownership, rearing and export of livestock have led to violent land clearances and the militarisation of livestock rearing for a rapidly expanding export market, as well as to the displacement and destitution of the local people who are often forced to live in edge-of-city shanty towns or giant internally displaced peoples’ camps that are little more than bonded-labour camps. In Sudan, ethnic and tribal rivalries exacerbated by militarised livestock production may have played a role in the ongoing intra-military civil war in Darfur and Kordofan.

The UN agencies’ report explains that food insecurity and malnutrition are worsening due to food price inflation, and conflicts, climate change and economic downturns becoming more frequent and severe. None of this is explained in concrete terms that set out the economic processes, the activities of the giant food corporations and traders, the role of the multilateral organisations acting under the umbrella of the UN and the complicity of pliant governments. Much less do they identify the (few) financial winners and (many) losers.

German government wants to cut welfare payments by 5.55 billion euros

Marianne Arens

A pro-war policy inevitably goes hand in hand with attacks on social rights. In the 2025 federal budget, Germany’s coalition government is planning to cut the “citizen’s income” welfare payments by a total of €5.55 billion or almost 11 percent.

Queue in front of a food bank in Frankfurt-Höchst

Instead of €50.5 billion this year, Finance Minister Christian Lindner (Liberal Democrat, FDP) only wants to spend €44.95 billion on social welfare next year. In a summer interview with broadcaster ARD, he said he would not be in favour of any further redistribution or tax increases, but that there would be an “ambitious structural reform and a growth-friendly policy.”

Lindner insulted welfare recipients as “free riders” and threatened them with “new sanctions and reporting obligations, new waiting-time regulations.” In January 2025, he announced a “zero round” (i.e., benefits freeze) for all recipients of the citizen’s allowance, denying them the usual annual adjustment of their payments in line with constantly rising prices.

In order to achieve the savings target of €5.55 billion, the government—a coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), Liberal Democrats and Greens—wants as many people as possible who receive citizen’s benefit to join the large and growing army of low-wage workers. Hundreds of thousands are to be forced to accept any job, no matter how bad.

According to the Ministry of Labour, every 100,000 recipients of the citizen’s allowance cost the state around €780 million a year. This means that saving €5.55 billion would require forcing over 700,000 (!) people in need into work. This would affect almost one in five of the current 3.9 million adult recipients of citizen’s allowance.

The last time such a high number was registered was in 2007, after the introduction of the Hartz IV “reforms,” when the Social Democratic-Green coalition government under Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer sealed the end of the welfare state.

Significantly, the goal now is not to be achieved (as promised by the coalition last year) through higher subsidies for further training, retraining and necessary procurement to make it easier to find work. On the contrary, the job centres, which are responsible for the citizen’s income, will also see massive cuts next year: €1.6 billion is to be cut from the job centres and €900 million from further vocational training and rehabilitation benefits.

As the WSWS has already stated, the budget for 2025 is “a war budget dictated by big business, and the working class will be made to pay for it”:

Over €53 billion has been earmarked for the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) and rearmament and billions more for domestic security, while—as Lindner boasts—it adheres to the debt brake. At the same time, the overall budget, which has been reduced by almost €8 billion, will cut the “citizen’s allowance” (welfare payments) and postpone the promised basic child protection allowance to the distant future, while the child benefit will be raised by just €5 (!).

From the outset, the WSWS has pointed out that the 2025 federal budget is an austerity and war budget that is to be tightened even further. The major media outlets now take this for granted.

In the interview with Lindner, the presenter’s very first question to the finance minister was: “How do you explain to the soldiers that the Defence Minister and the Bundeswehr are not receiving the funding they requested, but five billion less?” To which Lindner replied that after all, it was he, who, as Finance Minister under SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz, initiated the 100 billion euro “special fund for the Bundeswehr.”

In fact, the defence budget in Germany has been increasing more than in almost any other country for several years. This year, the government is spending a total of up to €90 billion on weapons, ammunition and fueling the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

In order to meet NATO’s military spending target of 2 percent of GDP, the government has already decided to increase the defence budget by almost €30 billion to around €80 billion in 2028. At the NATO summit in Washington, Scholz and Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) recently promised to station long-range weapons on German soil again. This was previously unthinkable due to the mass protests of the 1980s, and entails a huge risk of nuclear war.

The working class and, first and foremost, its most vulnerable section, the recipients of citizen’s income welfare payments, are to pay for this. They should either work or starve to death, as is being said more and more frequently.

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Secretary General Carsten Linnemann has also recently called for those who “refuse to work” to be completely deprived of the citizen’s income. He could imagine this affecting “a six-figure number of people.” Related voices are also being raised in the SPD. Hubertus Heil, who heads the Ministry of Labour, already announced in May that he would completely cancel the benefits of recipients of the citizen’s allowance for two months if they were caught working illegally.

The attacks come at a time of extreme social polarisation. For the super-rich, 2023, the year of inflation, meant a great orgy of enrichment, as the Global Health Report revealed. According to this, Germany now has 2.8 million millionaires, four times as many as 20 years ago, placing it in sixth place in the world’s millionaire rankings. As far as the super-super-rich are concerned—so-called “ultra-high net worth individuals” in financial jargon—Germany is in third place behind the US and China, despite having a much smaller population. The ranks of the 3,000 super-rich in Germany were joined by 300 more last year.

Finance Minister Lindner is guaranteeing them all that there will be no tax increases; after all, he is one of them himself. Two years ago, the finance minister’s three-day luxury wedding on the island of Sylt became infamous when taxpayers had to pay for the entire personal security of the invited politicians and the official vehicles.

Today, Lindner is pointing the finger at the recipients of the citizen’s allowance. In the ARD interview, he arrogantly threatened: “We will have to talk about our welfare state... Anyone who doesn’t work, who deliberately turns down [job] offers or who is staying in Germany irregularly, illegally and actually has to leave the country, these people cannot live off our welfare state.”

Even now, the citizen’s income is barely a pittance, although the long-term unemployed, the needy and people in precarious living situations have a constitutionally guaranteed right to it.

The citizen’s income currently amounts to €563 per month for single people and €502 for people living with a partner. This is less than the cost of a single overnight stay in a luxury hotel on Sylt or a single dinner in a top restaurant or a golfing or sailing trip. Citizen’s income recipients have to cover all their living costs except for housing for 30 days from the meagre amount they receive—an almost impossible endeavour.

Lindner is deliberately fueling resentment against immigrants and refugees in order to divide the working class. He said, “We don’t have too little money, we have too much. ... We have sharply rising social security contributions; this is also linked to irregular immigration to Germany since 2015.” For Linder, it is immigrants, not the super-rich parasites, who are therefore to blame for the fact that the welfare state needs to be “reorganised.”

This all makes clear how much the coalition government’s policies are paving the way for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), especially in view of the upcoming state elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg. The federal government knows that it is sitting on a powder keg.