Child hunger “single biggest challenge” facing UK schools

Julie Hyland

School children are eating erasers to curb hunger pains while others are hiding at playtime or pretending to eat from empty lunch boxes to disguise that they have no food.

These are just some of the harrowing accounts made to the Observer by charities and teaching staff across the UK. Their Dickensian accounts of families and children left without food comes ahead of a report by healthy eating charity, Chefs in Schools on the scale of hunger among school children.

Screenshot of the Chefs in Schools web site [Photo by chefsinschools.org.uk]

There is a “heart-breaking” increase in hungry children, the charity reports, with school chefs “actively going out and finding the kids who are hiding in the playground because they don’t think they can get a meal and feeding them.”

“We are hearing about kids who are so hungry they are eating rubbers [erasers] in school,” said Naomi Duncan, chief executive of Chefs in Schools. “Kids are coming in having not eaten anything since lunch the day before.”

Currently all infant school children from reception to year two are entitled to free school meals. After that, strict regulations mean that only those who parents earn less than £7,400 can claim.

Almost two million children receive free lunches, and some 2,000 schools are currently signed up to a national programme to provide subsidised breakfasts.

Child hunger became a political issue at the start of the pandemic in 2020 when children lost their only meal of the day during lockdowns. A campaign by footballer Marcus Rashford led to free school meals being made available for a limited period but only in the face of bitter resistance by the then Johnson government.

But child poverty is rising—from 4.1 million in 2018 to 4.3 million this year. A report by the Childhood Trust in December forecast nearly one-third of all children would go hungry that winter. The situation is much worse this year. Headteachers describe child hunger as the “single biggest challenge” schools face, amid reports of teachers buying toasters to feed children too hungry to learn.

Child hunger is driven by the raging cost of living crisis, due to the economic impact of NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine and a deliberate policy of inflation aimed at bringing on a recession to suppress wage demands. The main complaint of the international markets at the Truss government’s cut in the top rate of tax—a key measure in last month’s mini-budget, but now reversed--was that it hasn’t been immediately accompanied by cuts in welfare and spending.

Paul Gosling, of the National Association of Headteachers told the newspaper, “The government knows that when kids turn up in the morning hungry and cold, schools will step in and help. But it’s not right that it’s being left to us with no extra support.”

Headteachers have already said they may have to cut the school week due to the increases in gas and electricity charges, as well as government demanding any increase in teachers’ pay be paid out of school budgets. As millions are forced into poverty, many more children will be left without adequate food and warmth.

This social catastrophe explodes the claims of government and the media, supported by the Labour Party and the trade unions, to justify junking all COVID-19 mitigations.

Then the mantra was that schools should be fully open because “education, education, education” was the priority. Millions of children have consequently been infected and reinfected with COVID-19 as schools are a major source of transmission.

Now schools are having to factor in shortening the week because they do not have the funds to stay open. The mental and physical wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of children is greatly impacted by the stress of hunger, poverty and repeat infections, while teachers are having to function as social workers. This leaves little time for education in any meaningful sense. Especially as, with the winter coming, COVID cases will again explode as schools will not be able to carry out even rudimentary ventilation—such as opening windows—due to the cold.

Primary school pupils return to a school in Bournemouth, England on September 6, 2021 [Photo: WSWS]

There are now renewed calls for the extension of free school meals, The Daily Mirror, in partnership with the National Education Union (NEU), is recruiting footballers and celebrities to support its further roll-out amongst primary children.

NEU leader Kevin Courtney said, “Children cannot learn if they are not eating properly. It’s time government takes responsibility for a decade of austerity.”

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s Work and Pensions spokesperson, quoted Nelson Mandela to the party conference last month that “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity but an act of justice.” Labour has said it will fund breakfast clubs at every primary school should it win office. The party’s education spokesperson Bridget Phillipson said this would “enable parents to work” and “help build the economy we all need.”

These are cynical, meaningless sops. Even while criticising the government’s mini-budget for its hand-out to the banks and super-rich, Labour has refused to demand an immediate general election. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer refused to answer when asked if the party thought an election should be held, saying only that Prime Minister Liz Truss should recall parliament to try and halt the slide in the pound. Its sole concern is to build its credit with international markets, insisting that it will not make any “rash” spending decisions.

Most critically, Labour and the trade unions are working to suppress a growing strike wave and enforce below inflation pay rises, forcing millions more families into hardship. Calls for more breakfast clubs in primary schools are solely to ensure parents can be made to work on dwindling wages. None of them even question how children are to eat outside of school time, or how older children are meant to manage.

In Italy, a Setback for a More Equal Future

Sam Pizzigati

Photograph Source: Jose Antonio – CC BY 4.0

In any unequal society becoming substantially more unequal, democratic forces better directly address that growing inequality. Or else get prepared to face the consequences.

In Italy, established democratic parties have spent years leaving that inequality unaddressed. Now they’re facing those consequences. This past Sunday, just a few weeks shy of the 100th anniversary of our modern world’s first fascist putsch, Italian voters gave a smashing triumph to a party with deep roots in the neofascist movements that emerged after the fall of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s first fascist head of state.

Italy’s soon-to-be-named new leader, Giorgia Meloni, in no way stylistically resembles Mussolini. She comes across as smiley and perky, a far cry from the dour Mussolini we see in all those old grainy newsreels. No goose-steps with Meloni. But she’s promoting the essential heart of the core neofascist political playbook. Her Fratelli d’Italia party — ”Brothers of Italy” — has been steadfastly ignoring the growing economic divides that poison Italy’s future and scapegoating the country’s most vulnerable instead.

The media-magnet Meloni has been taking a grinning victory lap this week to celebrate her electoral triumph, and a sweeping triumph she has certainly scored. In the new Italian parliament, Fratelli d’Italia and its two smaller partner parties may end up with about triple the legislators connected to its center-left opposition.

But a closer look at the elections shows no massive public roar of approval for a neofascist-leaning Italian future. What the elections do show: A massive popular frustration with a center-left government unwilling to challenge Italy’s increasingly concentrated distribution of income and wealth and unable, as a result, to meaningfully address the needs of average working people.

The clearest sign of that public frustration: Sunday’s meager election turnout. Only 64 percent of Italians voted, notes Italian political historian David Broder, “easily the lowest” turnout in the republic’s entire history. More of those who did vote, observes activist philosopher Lorenzo Marsili, cast ballots for parties in the “liberal-left camp.” But the right-wing parties ran as partners while their democratic opposition remained “fractured.”

Giorgia Meloni and her fellow Brothers of Italy candidates ran as outsiders to the existing “national unity” government led by Italy’s center-left Democratic Party and topped by Mario Draghi, an Italian economist whose work at Goldman Sachs and the Bank of Italy had previously prepped him for the presidency of the European Central Bank. Draghi’s government, note analysts at Italy’s Forum on Inequality and Diversity, has done essentially nothing significant to confront the nation’s swelling maldistribution of income and wealth.

Italy, as Forbes reported this past spring, now sports more billionaires (52) than either France (43) or the UK (49). Italy’s top 1 percent overall, add analysts Paolo Acciari, Facundo Alvaredo and Salvatore Morelli, upped their share of the nation’s wealth from 16 to 22 percent in the two decades after 1995, at the same time the nation’s poorest 50 percent was watching its national wealth share plummet from 11.7 to 3.5 percent.

Draghi’s center-left government, points out Morelli, a leader within Italy’s Forum on Inequality and Diversity, did initially advance a tepid inheritance tax proposal, but then quickly left the initiative “de facto abandoned.” And the center-left Democratic Party, Morelli adds, never challenged Draghi’s core perspective that the government, at tax time, should dare not put its “hands in the pockets” of even the richest of Italian households.

That same Democratic Party made no real effort to oppose the widespread right-wing political and media assault on Italy’s most substantial anti-poverty effort, the minimum “citizenship income,” the reddito di cittadinanza. Nor did the party speak to the needs of young people facing youth unemployment rates that had left nearly 30 percent of Italy’s 25-29 age group without either jobs or student status, a level almost twice the European Union average.

Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right Brothers of Italy party, meanwhile, campaigned with no answers for the growing economic squeeze on average Italian families. Her winning center-right coalition in Sunday’s elections spent the bulk of its campaign effort attacking the lazy “undeserving” poor and promising not to raise taxes on anyone.

Italy’s richest can now look forward to lower taxes if Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and its allies make good another of their campaign promises: to replace Italy’s progressive income tax with a “flat tax” that subjects rich and poor alike to the same modest tax rates.

The political tragedy in all this? At the activist grassroots level, notes Italy’s progressive Forum on Inequality and Diversity, the nation is teeming with a “wealth of ideas and innovations that have been developing within the country’s social ferment.”

Some of these ideas even made onto the platforms of the center-left parties contesting for votes on Sunday. But these parties “rarely discussed the proposals contained in their own programs or engaged with social and labor entities, with citizens” on the campaign trail, the Forum on Inequality and Diversity points out. They never communicated “passion and hope.” They relied instead “on worn-out symbolism and images.” They opened the door to a neofascist triumph.

What next for Italian activists? Many are planning for a November 5 nationwide protest that’s evoking the spirit of the worldwide Women’s March on the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. These activists will be demonstrating against inequality and for ecological transformation, for decent social services and against violations of fundamental labor and women’s rights. Hundreds of local, regional, and national groups have already endorsed the day’s agenda.

In the wake of Sunday’s electoral debacle, many of these same insurgent social forces are also hoping to start building what the Forum on Inequality and Diversity calls a “party of social and environmental justice,” a party that can offer Italy’s “social ferment” a “democratic space for power-sharing on visions, content, and leadership,” a party “capable and brave enough to bring radical proposals for change to European and international negotiating tables.”

That vision seems a tall order at the same moment Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy stands poised to remake Italy into a dependable partner for ruling ultra-right-wing European autocrats like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. But Meloni’s party, we ought to remember, only polled 4 percent just four years ago, in Italy’s 2018 elections. If Italy’s grassroots activists blow hard enough together, the political winds can change in ways that no one now expects.

Protests in Italy against stripping of rights to Abortion

Harsh Thakor

Abortion Protest Italy

Italians thronged through Rome, Milan, Palermo and other cities Wednesday to defend right to abortion, which faces impending threat by a far-right party expected to form the next government after leading in parliamentary elections. A most significant development in light of ascendancy or consolidation of neo-fascism .which adheres to abolish right to abortion. striking to the very need of the hour.

The victory of the far right party lay a platform for resurrection of neo fascism. Preventing abortion perpetuates the bondage of women and capitalist oppression.

Waving banners reading “My body — My choice” and “Safe for All,” more than 1,000 people marched from Rome’s Esquilino neighborhood, and at least that many from Milan’s Central Station.

The marches comprised nationwide actions aimed at posing challenge to  Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy Party towards any amendments  to 1978 legislation, known as Law 194, guaranteeing access to abortion. The protests coincided with International Safe Abortion Day.

Many highlighted curbs on abortion in many U.S. states after the U.S. Supreme Court stripped a landmark legislation that had guaranteed access to abortion for decades as an indication of trends internationally.

Meloni “continues to say that she doesn’t want to touch Law 194, but that she wants to guarantee a woman’s right not to abort,″ said protester Donatella Marcelli. ”I don’t believe what she says about choice.”

Organizers said they feared Meloni’s party will launch “a triad of ‘God, homeland and family’” policies — a reference to her political manifesto.

That could lead to the imposition of  “rigid gender roles and assign women the task of reproduction and growth of a white, patriarchal and heterosexual nation,” organizers said in their declaration of the rallies in confrontation with  the agenda of Meloni, who would become Italy’s first far-right premier of the post-war period and its first woman in that office.

The elections delivered a crippling blow to  veterans of successful battles for civil rights, including divorce and abortion, as well as lawmakers still struggling for freedoms like same-sex marriage.

Perhaps Italy’s most celebrated living civil rights activist, Emma Bonino, lost her Senate seat to a Rome city councilwoman from Brothers of Italy, the party co-founded a decade ago by Meloni, who exalts motherhood and “traditional” families and decries LGBTQ “lobbies.” Lavinia Munnino’s no. 1 campaign priority was boosting Italy’s birthrate.

Bonino told the AP by phone she was too busy on Tuesday preparing an appeal for a recount in the close race to discuss worries about civil rights. While campaigning, Bonino voiced concerns that Meloni would make access to abortion difficult.

Italy allows abortion on request in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, or later if a woman’s health or life is endangered.

As a young woman, Bonino, now 74, spearheaded successful drives in the 1970s to legalize both abortion and divorce that were both aggressively opposed by the Vatican, which wields political influence in Italy.

Before the Sept. 25 election for Parliament, Meloni said she would respect the 1978 law, but would push for measures, such as economic help, for women who decide to give birth instead of aborting.

The law allows for health personnel to register as conscientious objectors so they won’t have to perform abortions. In some regions, including one where Meloni’s party governs, the percentage of objectors is so high that it is imperative for women to travel to other parts of Italy to obtain an abortion, Bonino has noted.

Among other prominent persons defeated by right-wing candidates was Monica Cirinna, a Democratic Party lawmaker responsible for introduction of a 2016 law legalizing same-sex unions. Italy was the last den in Western Europe awarding that status, but Cirinna was thwarted in efforts to permit adoption by same-sex couples.

Alessia Crocini, who heads the Rainbow Families group advocating rights for LBGTQ families, called Meloni’s victory “terrible news.” Rights activists had expected it, “but when something like this materializes it becomes real, it is pretty shocking,” she said.

“I have been an activist for a very long time and there are people who I do not know who are writing to me on Instagram, ‘I am afraid,’ ‘I don’t know what to do,’ ‘I am very worried, I want to cry.'”

Crocini claimed that Meloni’s objective is “to destroy backbone of the LGBTQ movement.”

Also defeated was Democratic Party Senator Emanuele Fiano. The son of a survivor from the Auschwitz death camp during World War II, Fiano confronted the sprouting of neo-fascist political movements. Besting him in a Senate district race in a Milan suburb was Isabella Rauti, a Brothers of Italy senator whose late father, Pino Rauti, helped found the Italian Social Movement, a party that bred fascism formed just after the end of the war.

Meloni gave no adherence to a demand by Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre, who is a senator-for-life, to eradicate from her party’s symbol the flame in the three colors of the Italian flag that belonged to the Italian Social Movement. While denouncing anti-Jewish laws of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime, Meloni upheld party’s symbol.

The elections delivered a crippling blow to  veterans who staged victorious l battles for civil rights, including divorce and abortion, as well as lawmakers still resonating  voice of  freedoms like same-sex marriage.

A movement has to crystallise to galvanise women to confronting anti-abortion steps as part of capitalist exploitation as a whole and not in isolation from overall resistance against economic exploitation.

Putin’s annexation speech and the bankruptcy of Russian nationalism

Andrei Ritsky

On Friday, September 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a lengthy speech that was meant to justify the ruling regime's actions in annexing four new territories to Russia through referendums: the Donetsk, Luhansk (Lugansk), Zaporozhzhia and Kherson regions in eastern and southeastern Ukraine.

The speech underscored the danger of a widening conflict between Russia and NATO, as the Putin regime will now consider the annexed Ukrainian lands as its own and will fight for them much more actively, as confirmed by the recent announcement of a partial mobilization in the wake of Russian defeats in the Kharkiv region.

In his speech, Putin, justifying the annexation of four regions of Ukraine, said, “People have made their choice, an unambiguous choice.” The official figures about the outcome of the referendums are indeed astonishing: in all regions 97 percent or more voted for annexation, and the turnout also showed very high participation of the population.

However, it is necessary to ask: How was it possible to hold a referendum in Zaporozhzhia, when almost half of the territory, including the capital, is controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces? The Putin regime has no answer to this. It is likely that the figures were simply taken out of thin air and exaggerated.

The same applies to other regions where referendums were held. Half of the Donetsk region is under Ukrainian control. The only region in which the entire territory is under the control of Russian forces is the Luhansk region. But even there, the question of the truth of the published results requires clarification.

Putin went on to state, “We will defend our land by all means. We will rebuild all the destroyed cities and towns. We will develop enterprises, infrastructure, and health care systems.” The first sentence deserves special attention because it suggests that the Putin regime is once again threatening to unleash a nuclear war.

If a nuclear war were to happen, the “development” of enterprises, infrastructure and the health care system would be out of the question. Suffice it to recall that almost 400,000 people died in Russia as a result of the government’s reactionary response to COVID-19. And that is only according to official figures. What prevented the Putin regime from engaging in the “development” of health care and social infrastructure earlier?

The main reason for the promises of the Putin regime is the ruling oligarchy’s serious fear of the working class, which, amid the worsening crisis of capitalism, is threatening to pursue its independent interests. Fear is the main motive behind all these promises since the Putin regime desperately needs a stable “home front” for its national-chauvinist response to the onslaught of Western imperialism.

“They want to see us as a colony,” Putin notes in his speech. “They do not want equal cooperation, but plunder.”

While Putin’s remarks about the threat of the colonialization and carve-up of Russia are no doubt correct, they also underscore the dual psychology of the Russian ruling class, which both hopes for “equal cooperation” with Western imperialism and at the same time rattles nuclear weapons in the struggle to safeguard its privileged position in a country rich in raw material resources. In the same speech that was filled with condemnations of the imperialist powers, Putin referred to “co-thinkers” of the Kremlin “in the entire world, including in Europe and the United States.”

Putin sought to falsely imbue a progressive tone to his national-chauvinist response to the threat posed by US-NATO imperialism. For example, as part of his speech he said that he was proud that in the 20th century it was Russia that opened the anti-colonial movement. A very hypocritical statement from a man who justified the invasion in a speech on February 21 by condemning the 1917 October Revolution and the supposedly bad Bolsheviks led by Lenin.

In fact, what preempted the carve-up of the former Russian Empire by the imperialist powers was the Bolshevik Revolution and the struggle waged by the Red Army under the leadership of Leon Trotsky on the basis of an internationalist program of socialist revolution. This program is politically incompatible with the reactionary nationalist policies and actions now pursued by the Putin regime.

Seeking to broaden public support for his policies, Putin declared: “The unipolar world built by the West is anti-democratic, false and hypocritical to the core.” This is certainly true, but Putin forgets that these features of Western imperialism are the very features that are also characteristic of the Russian capitalist state.

Putin continued, “The world has entered a period of revolutionary transformations, they are of a fundamental nature, new centers of development are being formed, which are ready not only to declare their interests, but also to defend them.” Coming from Putin, these words have a blatantly demagogic character. Apart from the leaders of the imperialist powers, no one fears revolution more than the Russian oligarchy. However, Putin seeks, in the hope of broadening support for the war, to exploit popular hatred of imperialism by portraying his government as a defender of national independence.

Putin did not mention that his concern is not over the independence of the Russian people, but the independence and right of the Russian oligarchy to exploit Russia’s natural resources and working class without considering the opinion of its “Western partners.”

Putin ended his speech by quoting these words from the far-right Russian nationalist ideologist Ivan Ilyin, who supported the struggle of the White armies against the Bolsheviks’ Red Army during the Civil War:

“If I consider my homeland to be Russia, it means that I love, contemplate and think in Russian, sing and speak in Russian; that I believe in the spiritual forces of the Russian people and accept its historical destiny with my instinct and my will. Its spirit is my spirit; its destiny is my destiny; its suffering is my grief; its flourishing is my joy.”

On Friday, Ukraine submitted an application for accelerated NATO membership, further escalating the conflict. The course of the proxy war between Russia and NATO in Ukraine threatens to escalate into an open conflict in which the use of nuclear weapons is possible. All this underscores once again the insanity of the ruling classes of all capitalist countries.

Ultimately, all of Putin’s statements emphasize that he is basing his response to the onslaught of imperialism on national chauvinism. It cannot be otherwise, since Putin embodies the capitalist restoration regime in Russia. His reactionary policies reflect the socio-economic role of the ruling Russian oligarchy, which emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union due to the false and blatantly counterrevolutionary policies of Stalinism.

Ebola outbreak threatens to expand into densely populated Ugandan capital Kampala

Benjamin Mateus

On September 20, 2022, Uganda’s health authorities declared an outbreak of Ebola after confirmation of the disease in a young 24-year-old man from Mubende village. He developed symptoms on September 11 consisting of high fevers, convulsions, bloody vomit and diarrhea, loss of appetite, stomach pains, and bloody eyes, according to a situation report published by the World Health Organization (WHO) on September 26.

The incubation period for Ebola ranges from two to 21 days before leading to significant multiorgan failure. The virus spreads through contact with an infected person’s blood or bodily fluids. Case fatality rates are incredibly high, and treatment remains supportive when the disease manifests. The primary zoonotic reservoir or intermediate host is not known. The consumption of bush meat or bite from an animal harboring the virus has been speculated to cause sporadic outbreaks.

After seeking assistance at two different privately run clinics, the man from Mubende village was referred to a regional hospital on September 15, where he was placed in isolation for suspected viral hemorrhagic fever. A blood sample was collected two days later and sent to Uganda’s Virus Research Institute. On September 19, the blood sample confirmed an Ebola infection with the Sudan virus genus of Ebolavirus. The young man passed on the same day.

As of September 30, the number of Ebola infections has risen quickly to 54, with 35 cases confirmed and 19 listed as probable. The death toll has reached 25, with seven confirmed with Ebola infection and 18 probable infections. Additionally, the latest situation update from the WHO African region identified at least 427 contacts and 16 that were being treated for their infection. Two patients have made recoveries.

After behind-the-scenes high-level meetings with the WHO, Uganda’s health minister Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng confirmed during a press briefing Saturday that six medical workers were diagnosed with the Sudan Ebola virus, and two more were in dire condition.

It is not clear if one of these in critical condition was Tanzanian physician Dr. Mohammed Ali, who tested positive on September 26 and died on Saturday, October 1, at a regional referral hospital in Fort Portal, about 190 miles west of the capital, Kampala. His was the second death of a health care worker after a midwife from St. Florence Clinic died of probable Ebola infection.

Thus far, no cases have been detected in the densely populated capital of 1.68 million people in the city proper, with another five million in the neighboring districts situated on the north shore of Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake and an economic and food security lifeline for 30 million people. Kampala is one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities, with an annual growth rate of over 4 percent. The country’s poverty rate, the percent of the population living on less than US $5.50 per day, stands at 89 percent.

Uganda’s economy is sustained by agriculture. However, lacking the necessary technology and infrastructure and hampered by corruption, its economic growth has slowed since 2016 while debt continues to grow. It relies heavily on external investments, which lead to higher debt servicing. Poverty has been climbing in Uganda for over a decade.

The present Ebola outbreak is situated in the communities of Mubende (epicenter in Madudu) sub-county, Kyegwegwa, Kassanda, and Kagadi district, spanning a radius of 75 miles along a busy highway that runs between Kampala and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire) to the west. Health officials fear the virus may have been spreading undetected since early August, threatening to circulate through the capital more broadly to other African countries and the rest of the world.

In their risk assessment last week, the WHO noted, “The outbreak was detected among individuals living around an active gold mine. Mobility among traders of this commodity is likely to be high, and the declaration of the outbreak may cause some miners already incubating the disease to flee. The currently affected Mubende district has no international borders. Nevertheless, the risk of international spread cannot be ruled out due to the active cross-border population movement.”

Figure 1: Map of confirmed and suspected cases of Ebola disease caused by Sudan virus, by district, Uganda (as of September 25, 2022). Source World Health Organization.

Former senior military officer and current president of Uganda since 1986, 78-year-old Yoweri Museveni, made a televised statement on September 29 saying that there would be no restrictions on moving and gatherings. He said, “I want to reassure all Ugandans and all residents that the government will quickly gain control of this outbreak as we have done before. Therefore, there is no need for anxiety, panic, restriction of movement, or unnecessary closure of public places like schools, markets, and places of worship as of now.”

However, these assurances appear entirely unwarranted, as indicated by a commentary published in Fortune by Aceng, titled, “Uganda urgently needs help to stop the Ebola outbreak in its tracks.”

Aceng wrote, “Shockingly, Uganda is still isolated in the struggle to address this new threat despite the world having just endured the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic as a single global health security problem. There has been an increased focus on the need for pandemic preparedness, resilient health systems, and a well-protected workforce to respond successfully to threats. However, the global response is not to the level of the threat we know Ebola to be to Uganda and the rest of the world.”

She added, “We urgently need more well-trained, well-equipped, and well-protected health workers who can safely help respond to stop this outbreak in its track.” Besides the threat posed by COVID-19 and Ebola, she noted recent upsurges in malaria in the North and East of Uganda, tuberculosis, HIV, non-communicable diseases, and traumas impacting the population's well-being.

The present Ebola outbreak in Uganda is caused by the Sudan virus, one of four species in the Ebolavirus genus known to cause human disease. The clinical illness it causes is indistinguishable from the Zaire Ebola genus, but is genetically distant enough that the current vaccine available for the Zaire genus, Ervebo (manufactured by Merck), is ineffective against the Sudan virus. Nancy Sullivan, head of biodefense research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases (NIAID), said of the two Ebola viruses, “[They] are not variants, and they’re not strains—they’re different viruses.”

Both viruses were first discovered in their respective geographic locations in 1976. However, the more familiar Zaire Ebola virus has garnered the lion’s share of attention, especially during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa between 2014 to 2016 that killed 11,325 people (38 percent of cases were fatal) and then in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018, in which 2,280 people died from Ebola infections. The name for the virus was given from the Ebola River in DRC, where it was first described.

Figure 2 Outbreaks of Ebola disease in sub-Saharan Africa. Source Lancet Ebola Virus Disease 2019, authors Professor Denis Malvy and colleagues.

Uganda has experienced several outbreaks of Ebola viruses. The first was from October 2000 to January 2001 with the Sudan virus, in which 224 of 425 cases resulted in fatalities, a byproduct of people attending funerals of cases and lack of adequate personal protective equipment by attendants. Eight years later, a smaller outbreak occurred with the Bundibugyo Ebola virus, the first time it was ever identified, killing 37 of 149 cases. In 2012, two outbreaks occurred with the Sudan virus. One in June infected 11 people, while another in November infected six. Most recently, in 2019, five people died from Ebola infections in Uganda.

As the WHO scrambles to build Ebola Treatment Units in the affected regions, it calls for international donors to contribute $18 million to contain the outbreak for the next three months.

Dr. Yonas Tegegn Woldermariam, Uganda’s WHO representative, said even this amount might not cover all the necessary costs. He told reporters, “If we go into the preparedness, we are talking, even for the three months, three times or four times that amount. Plus, there are things that we take for granted, assuming the system will provide them. Those are additional costs like transportation, like fuel, like human resources, which we have to consider also to fund as we go ahead.”

Meanwhile, international health agencies working with pharmaceuticals have potentially identified two candidate vaccines—one from GlaxoSmithKline, which donated the license to the Sabin Vaccine Institute in 2019 (40,000 doses available), and the other being developed by scientists at the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute (71 doses available, with Serum Institute of India working to produce 20,000 doses)—enough in development to begin emergency clinical trials to address the evolving crisis.

Ana Maria Henao-Restrepo, a WHO vaccine specialist involved in coordinating and organizing discussions between the Ugandan government, pharmaceuticals, and international stakeholders, said, “We are moving really fast this time, and people are really willing to work to get these vaccines on the ground. We are doing everything that you are supposed to do when you want to get a trial started in a week or two, [at] maximum.”

After nearly three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and under conditions in which nearly every world government is imposing a “forever COVID” policy of unending waves of mass infection, death and debilitation, world capitalism is entirely unprepared for a massive outbreak of Ebola. The danger exists that the current outbreak in Uganda could spread internationally, as was allowed with monkeypox.

To prevent this from happening 

Army launches coup in Burkina Faso amid mass protests against France

Kumaran Ira

On Friday, Burkina Faso’s army ousted junta leader Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba of the Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration (MPSR). The second military coup in this former French colony in 2022 occurred amid mass protests against France and rising opposition to French imperialist wars across the region

Soldiers loyal to Capt. Ibrahim Traore are cheered in the streets of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2022. Burkina Faso's new junta leadership is calling for calm after the French Embassy and other buildings were attacked. [AP Photo/Kilaye Bationo]

Damiba was overthrown after soldiers carried out heavy gunfire near the main military camp and residential areas of Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou. A large blast also rang out near the presidential palace where army took up positions. Several main roads were blocked by troops in the capital. Soldiers reportedly took control of administrative buildings and the national television station, which stopped broadcasting.

Friday evening, on national radio and television, the coup leaders said: “Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba has been dismissed as president of the Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration.” Damiba had himself came to power early this year in a coup toppling former President Roch Marc Christian Kabore. Damiba’s whereabouts are known, but a Facebook page under his control urged people to remain calm.

After the coup, 34-year-old captain Ibrahim Traoré declared himself the new head of the MPSR junta. The army announced the closure of the country’s land and air borders as of midnight, as well as the suspension of the constitution and the dissolution of the government and the transitional legislative assembly. It imposed a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.

The coup come after Burkina Faso, like the entire Sahel region, was devastated by deepening bloodshed since Paris launched a war in Mali, supposedly to fight Islamist terrorism, in 2013.

Despite France’s recent withdrawals of troops by ending Operation Barkhane in Mali, French imperialism retains military influence across the region and faces escalating protests.

The ousted junta leader, Damiba, was widely seen as too closely linked to France. Late Saturday, there were protests outside the French embassy in Ouagadougou and the French Institute in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso. Video on social media showed residents with lit torches outside the French embassy, and other images showed part of the compound ablaze. The crowds also vandalised the French Institute.

The attack on both institutions came after the coup leader Traoré accused France of giving refuge to the deposed Damiba and planning to attack Burkina Faso. Damiba “is believed to have taken refuge in the French base at Kamboinsin in order to plan a counteroffensive to stir up trouble in our defence and security forces,” said Traore.

The French embassy issued a statement “firmly denying any involvement of the French army in the events.” It also denied “rumours that Burkinabe authorities have been hosted or are under the protection of French military.”

“We condemn in the strongest terms the violence against our diplomatic presence in Burkina Faso,” the French Foreign Ministry added late Saturday. “Any attack on our diplomatic facilities is unacceptable.”

On Saturday, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington “is deeply concerned by events in Burkina Faso. … We call on those responsible to de-escalate the situation, prevent harm to citizens and soldiers, and return to a constitutional order.”

The regional West African economic bloc, known as ECOWAS, and the African Union both condemned the military coup. “ECOWAS finds this new power grab inappropriate at a time when progress has been made,” it said, citing Damiba’s recent agreement to return to constitutional order by July 2024.

The officer corps and the ruling elites in Burkina Faso are terrified by the rising opposition in the working class and oppressed masses of the Sahel to French imperialism. The coup aims to block social opposition from erupting outside of the army’s control, while also allowing the army to continue maneuvering for the best possible deals with the major powers.

The coup came after several hundred people demonstrated in Ouagadougou to demand the departure of Damiba and the end of the French military presence in the Sahel. A section of the Burkina military who support the new coup leader Traore have called on the government to develop military cooperation with Russia, as a counterweight to France.

“One point of contention that has divided the MPSR (junta), the army and indeed the population for months is the choice of international partners,' said Constantin Gouvy, Burkina Faso researcher at Clingendael, the Netherlands Institute of International Relations. “Damiba was leaning toward France, but we might see the MPSR more actively exploring alternative from now on, with Turkey or Russia for example.”

On Saturday, the new junta leaders presented their policy in terms of their “strong will to go towards other partners who are ready to aid the struggle against terrorism.” They added: “We have decided to act on our responsibilities, driven by a single ideal: the restoration of security and the integrity of our territory.” They added, “our common ideal was betrayed by our leader in whom we had placed all our trust. Far from liberating the occupied territories, the once peaceful areas have come under terrorist control.”

More than 40 per cent of the Burkina Faso remains outside government control, as militia attacks and bombings have escalated during the French war in neighboring Mali. The number of incidents has been sharply increased since 2020, with over 1,100 attacks in Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries. This is more than the number of violent events reported in Mali and Niger together.

Since 2015, thousands have been killed and injured, and over 2 million people have been forcibly displaced by fighting as it spread to Burkina Faso.

Last week, at least 11 Burkinabè soldiers were killed and 50 civilians went missing after an attack on a 150-vehicle military-escorted convoy taking supplies to a northern town. On September 6, at least 35 civilians were killed in another attack. The June 2021 attack in Solhan in northern Burkina Faso’s Yagha province killed at least 160 civilians, the largest death toll in a single terrorist attack in country’s history.

Across West Africa, climate change and pandemics, such as Ebola and COVID-19, have had disastrous consequences, with millions projected to be pushed into extreme poverty. These countries now face dire consequences following the US-NATO led war against Russia over Ukraine. Before the Ukraine war, the food crisis already exploded in recent years due to war, climate change and pandemics.

In a note titled “Implications of the Crisis in Ukraine on West Africa”, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that “the region’s problems will be exacerbated, with dire economic and political consequences.”

Since the NATO-Russia war broke out, rising inflation and the hikes in food and oil prices have devastated millions across the region, which relies on grain imports from Russia and Ukraine. In 2008, rising food prices led to hunger riots across the region, including in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cameroon, and Nigeria.

“It is important to point out how quickly a rising price for a staple can lead to protests, violence, and political instability. As seen with recent uprisings in the past decade it’s often a price shock that sets off conflict. Hunger can increase tensions producing inequality and simultaneously radicalize mass political movements,” the WFP wrote.

Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government to slash public sector wages, pensions

Alejandro López

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is imposing massive real wage cuts for millions of civil servants and minimum wage workers, as it also prepares deep European Union (EU) pension cuts. This takes place as Spanish corporations are making record profits, and Madrid has hiked military spending and arms shipments to Ukraine, as part of the US-NATO war on Russia that threatens to escalate into an all-out nuclear war.

Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias speaks as Spain's caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez looks on after signing an agreement at the parliament in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul White)

The government relies on the Podemos-linked Workers Commissions (CCOO), social-democratic General Union of Workers (UGT) and the Independent Trade Union and Civil Servants Central (CSIF) unions to divert and suppress the class struggle. The unions no longer serve as workers’ organisations but function as bureaucracies in the service of the capitalist state.

Last week, the Minister of Finance and Civil Service María Jesús Montero announced the slashing of wages for 3.5 million civil servants. Concretely, Madrid is offering a raise of 3.5 percent this year; 2.5 percent in 2023; and 2 percent in 2024, or 8 percent over three years.

This year’s inflation rate in Spain stands at over 10 percent. Public sector workers have already lost 6 percent of their real wages. If the PSOE-Podemos plans are put into effect, the worst would be yet to come.

If implemented, this plan would mean that civil servants would lose thousands of euros by 2025. This would be on top of the loss of purchasing power over the past decade, as successive right-wing Popular Party (PP) and PSOE-Podemos governments have rammed through EU austerity measures. The CSIF, CCOO and UGT unions estimate the cut in public sector wages at 12 to 20 percent since 2010.

Since private employers use public sector wages as the benchmark, this agreement will have direct repercussions for millions of workers outside the public sector.

On Thursday, in its second meeting with the union leadership, the government revised its initial offer, offering a 9.5 percent raise over three years. However, this would still mean a massive loss of purchasing power in the next three years.

The second announcement follows a now-familiar pattern. First, the government makes an offer, followed by “negotiations” with the unions. In the final act of this staged process, an agreement is reached, with the initial numbers slightly improved. The unions then present it as a victory for the workers, while PSOE-Podemos claims they made huge concessions.

Humberto Muñoz, coordinator of the CCOO Civil Servants Area, said: “We would have liked it to go a little further, but we value that this new proposal represents an advance over the previous one.”

UGT official Julio La Cuerda said that it is “practically certain” they will accept it. “We demanded the government an additional effort to cushion the effects of inflation to the limit of possibilities. There has been a very significant advance, and it seems to us that it is reasonably realistic.”

Francisco Lama, the secretary of the CSIF, reacted by stating, “We continue to consider it insufficient.[Inflation] is above 10 percent, so we are going to ask the government to make an effort to try to reach these figures. We are hopeful that some aspects can still be improved.”

The CSIF bureaucracy, which has close links to the right-wing PP, the neo-fascist Vox party and Spain’s fascistic police unions like Jusapol, is trying to capitalise on rising discontent by criticizing the CCOO and UGT. However, it has not proposed any concrete salary wage increases and has abstained from calling for wages above inflation levels.

On September 24, they organised a protest of 70,000 Madrid public sector workers, demanding better wages. Many health care workers participated, alongside police officers.

The PSOE-Podemos government is also preparing a massive attack on minimum wage earners. The Labour Ministry, led by Podemos leader Yolanda Díaz, is overseeing the negotiations with the unions and the CEOE big business association. The unions are demanding a 3.5 percent increase this year, to around €1,100 monthly, which represents a great loss of purchasing power for 8.8 million minimum wage workers in Spain.

In the private sector, unions are sabotaging workers’ struggles and ramming through wage increases below inflation. In construction, the unions have negotiated a 3 percent wage rise; in the metal industry, it is 2.2 percent for nearly 940,000 workers; in the chemical industry, 2 percent for 300,000 workers. In hospitality, it averages 3 percent across Spain. For 90,000 workers in the banking sector, the unions negotiated with the AEB banking association an increase of 2.5 percent over the next three years.

Pensioners are also in the cross-hairs. To receive the next disbursements of the EU-funded bailout funds to corporations and banks, the PSOE-Podemos government is set to pass a pension bill that will increase the number of years taken into account to calculate the pension, currently at 25 years. This will mean a substantial cut to future pension levels. The reform will also de-index pensions from inflation, meaning that the government could impoverish pensioners by raising prices.

All this takes place as companies make record profits. According to the Bank of Spain, companies have transferred their cost increases to prices, achieving 6.7 percent higher profits than those obtained before the COVID-19 pandemic, which were already historic records at the time.