New research finds that COVID-19 can cause cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and thyroid disfunction

Philip Guelpa

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues its global rampage unabated, there is a growing body of research on the damaging effects the disease can have on virtually every organ system.

The World Socialist Web Site recently reported on a groundbreaking study which points to a mechanism of the virus that could potentially cause the irreversible fusion of brain cells. Three other recent studies have identified an association between infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and the development of Alzheimer’s disease, thyroid dysfunction and cancer. In each case, the effects can extend over long periods, indicating that the full impact of the pandemic will continue to unfold over decades unless a determined worldwide campaign is undertaken to stop it.

In all three of the recent studies, a common feature is the influence of the immune system reaction known as the “cytokine storm” which is caused by COVID-19. During the cytokine storm, the innate immune system causes an uncontrolled and excessive release of pro-inflammatory signaling molecules called cytokines. Normally, cytokines are part of the body’s immune response to infection, but their sudden release in large quantities can cause multi-system organ failure and death.

In the case of Alzheimer’s, rapid onset of the disease has been observed in a variety of patients, including young adults, suffering from COVID-19. The study found that the affected mechanism is known as the renin-angiotensin system (RAS), which regulates innate (as opposed to acquired) immunity, various microbiota (normally occurring microbial populations within the human body), and autonomic (involuntary or unconscious) processes of the kidney, lungs and heart.

RAS exists in every cell in the body. The overstimulation of RAS has a number of consequences, including increased production of oxygen that kills cells, promotion of blood clots, promotion of the growth of blood vessels and tumors, arterial hypertension (high blood pressure), to name only a few. The last is particularly relevant to brain diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s, since it causes vascular constriction, limiting blood flow to the brain, resulting in neurological damage.

The effect of SARS-CoV-2 on RAS is also being studied with respect to its potential to cause cancer. In a study titled, “Possible cancer-causing capacity of COVID-19: Is SARS-CoV-2 an oncogenic agent?” it is posited that the effects of a SARS-CoV-2 infection may be similar to other oncogenic (cancer-causing) viruses in their impact on the RAS system.

The study notes that other coronaviruses, including Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), have already been demonstrated to lead to cancer. These viruses cause cancer by “altering tumor suppressing pathways by means of its nonstructural proteins, and triggering inflammatory cascades by enhancing cytokine production in the form of a ‘cytokine storm’ paving the way for the emergence of cancer stem cells in target organs.”

Separate research conducted at the Karolinska Hospital, based on autopsies of individuals who have died from COVID-19, has demonstrated that a significant number showed evidence of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), which is the cause of death for 70 percent of such patients, resulting from cytokine storm.

The authors of the study linking COVID-19 to cancer conclude:

Experimental studies show that SARS-CoV-2 is able to induce re-infection/reactivation and persistent infection in the same manner as seen with other viral infections. One of the most worrying long-term effects of infection is the potential to induce malignant neoplasms [cancer], which will be a major health concern over the coming decades.

The study on COVID-19’s effects on the thyroid, “Impact of Covid-19 disease on thyroid function: longitudinal study,” was conducted under the direction of Dr. Ilaria Muller, assistant professor in endocrinology, Department of Clinical Sciences and Community Health at the University of Milan, Italy. The thyroid gland produces thyroid hormones which regulate a variety of body functions, including metabolism, heart rate, digestion and body temperature. Dysfunction of the thyroid can result in higher or lower hormone production which result in a range of serious negative effects.

The clinical study, which involved one hundred patients admitted to hospital for severe COVID-19, notes that the cytokine storm can adversely affect hormone production and produce inflammation of the thyroid.

In the short term, patients’ thyroid function returned to normal once they recovered from the acute phase of the disease. However, in a follow up study 12 months later, the researchers found regions of thyroiditis (inflammation of the thyroid) remained visible via thyroid ultrasound in half of the patient population. Furthermore, four out of six patients had symptoms of thyroiditis. Determination of the long-term impacts of COVID-19 on the thyroid are unknown and will require further study.

When viewed together with other long-term effects of COVID-19, such as irreversible damage to brain cells, and potentially others as yet undiscovered, it becomes abundantly clear that the “forever COVID” policy which has been implemented across the globe, prioritizing the short-term interests of private profit over people’s lives, is condemning humanity to progressively intensifying debilitation and death.

East Timor’s Xanana Gusmão returns to power as prime minister

Patrick O’Connor

A new government in East Timor will be sworn into office this Saturday, with 77-year-old Xanana Gusmão as prime minister.

Xanana Gusmao, leader of the East Timor National Congress of the Reconstruction of East Timor (CNRT) party in Dili, May 23, 2023. [AP Photo/Lorenio L. Pereira]

The government will be a coalition of Gusmão’s National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) and the Democratic Party. In the national election held on May 21, the CNRT received 41.6 percent of the vote and 31 of the 65 parliamentary seats, just short of a majority. The Democratic Party won 9.3 percent and 6 seats.

The result indicated deep dissatisfaction with the previous Fretilin-led government, which was in office since May 2020. Parties within the incumbent ruling coalition suffered significant losses. Fretilin won four fewer seats than it did after the last parliamentary election in 2018, with 25.7 percent, down from 34.2 percent. The People’s Liberation Party of outgoing Prime Minister Taur Matan Ruak also lost four seats, winning just 5.9 percent of the vote.

The previous government presided over the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered a severe recession in East Timor while the global supply line crisis fueled inflation, including for rice and other basic food staples. Last March the government issued a report acknowledging that in 2022, nearly one quarter of the population, 300,000 people, faced “acute food insecurity.”

The country remains among the world’s most impoverished, and, more than two decades of after receiving formal independence, there is a lack of basic infrastructure including a reliable electricity supply and paved roads in rural areas. In the capital Dili, there is enormous youth unemployment and a lack of affordable education courses. The country has a significant youth population—the median age is just 21—and many voters were participating in elections for the first time.

Gusmão made a populist pitch in the election campaign, portraying himself as a champion of the poor. The incoming prime minister was a guerrilla leader during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor (1975–1999) and subsequently served as both president (2002–2007) and prime minister (2007–2015).

Gusmão represents not the interests of Timorese workers and rural poor, but rather the nascent capitalist elite. His bourgeois nationalist perspective centres on the drive to create a local oil and gas processing industry based on the extraction of the still untapped Greater Sunrise energy field, worth approximately $A70 billion. Gusmão’s return as prime minister will see stepped up efforts to pressure the Australian government to back his campaign to construct pipelines from Greater Sunrise to Suai, in Timor’s south.

The Greater Sunrise field is co-owned by the Timorese state-owned Timor Gap’s 56.56 percent stake, and Australian energy giant Woodside Petroleum, which has a 33.44 percent stake, and Japan’s Osaka Gas with 10 percent.

Woodside has for years effectively vetoed the construction of a pipeline to Timor, insisting instead that any extracted oil and gas be processed either in northern Australia or on a floating facility in the Timor Sea. Woodside executives have previously questioned the viability of the entire project. In 2020 they wrote down the value of their stake to zero dollars amid a collapse in world energy prices.

Subsequent changes in the global oil market, including as a result of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, have changed such calculations. In 2022, Woodside chief executive officer Meg O’Neill stated Greater Sunrise was likely a profitable venture, though she refused to commit to a pipeline to Timor.

Any development of Greater Sunrise will not be based on purely commercial considerations. The formation of the new Gusmão-led government coincides with stepped up preparations for a war of aggression against China by the United States and its allies including Australia. Every effort is being made to militarily and diplomatically isolate and encircle China, including by challenging its growing economic and strategic influence in the South Pacific and South East Asia.

East Timorese President José Ramos-Horta, elected last year with Gusmão’s backing, has warned the Australian government that Dili could look to China to provide the necessary investment to develop Greater Sunrise.

In September last year, when he visited Australia, Ramos-Horta told the media that he had been involved in “informal discussions” for several years with Chinese officials about their potential involvement. “They are very interested and they even told me they are very interested even to be the sole partners,” he stated.

China already has relatively small, but strategically significant investments in East Timor. These include highway construction, deep-sea port development, and electricity grids that are connected with the Tasi Mane infrastructure project that is being prepared to process Greater Sunrise oil and gas.

The Timorese president made little effort to conceal his leveraging of the threat of a heightened Chinese presence in East Timor. Noting the Solomon Islands’ signing of a security pact with Beijing—a development met with howls of outrage in Canberra and Washington—Ramos-Horta stated that Timor would never house a Chinese military base. He added, however: “Timor-Leste is very strategic. When you look at the map, far more strategic than Solomon Islands. We are a one-hour flight to Darwin, one hour to Indonesia, three hours to Singapore, in a very vital strategic waterway.”

The development of Greater Sunrise is an existential issue for the Timorese ruling elite. The Bayu-Undan gas field, which has provided the vast majority of government revenue over the last two decades, is nearly dry. The state is threatened with outright bankruptcy, as its sovereign wealth fund, currently worth $US17 billion, will be depleted within a decade unless replenished with new sources of revenue.

Australian imperialism has a filthy record in East Timor and the Timor Sea. In 1975, the Labor government of Gough Whitlam supported the Indonesian invasion of the former Portuguese colony, and in 1991, the Labor government of Bob Hawke signed the Timor Gap Treaty, carving up stolen energy resources between Indonesian and Australian corporations. In 1999, Canberra spearheaded a military operation into Timor, waving the bogus banner of “humanitarian intervention,” which in reality prioritised the maintenance of Australian imperialist interests after continued Indonesian control became untenable.

Canberra’s contempt for East Timor’s sovereignty and for basic precepts of international law has since been demonstrated on numerous occasions. In 2004, Australian spies posing as aid workers planted listening devices in the Timorese prime minister’s office, in order to gain an advantage in negotiations over the Timor Sea’s energy reserves. Successive Australian governments subsequently have hounded the whistleblower “Witness K” and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery. In 2006, Canberra launched another military intervention as part of a campaign to destabilise and remove the Fretilin government led by Mari Alkatiri.

The Australian government will likely be satisfied with the failure of the latest Fretilin-led coalition government to be elected. During the campaign, Alkatiri publicly called for the renegotiation of Timor’s maritime border with Australia. The boundary, imposed by Canberra through threats and intrigue, allows Australia to claim 20-30 percent of oil and gas revenues from Greater Sunrise, even though under international legal conventions the entire field ought to lie in Timorese territory.

Biden and Modi sign “ground breaking” military-technology agreements, hail enhanced Indo-US alliance

Keith Jones

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s four-day, June 13–16, state visit to the US concluded with the signing of a flurry of agreements, concerning everything from arms sales and joint military production to critical minerals and resilient production chains.

Modi, US President Joe Biden, their aides and the media in India and the US have all hailed the summit and accompanying agreements as marking a new chapter in Indo-US relations.

Indeed they do. Washington is integrating India ever more fully into its all-sided, diplomatic, economic, strategic and military offensive against China. And the Modi regime and the Indian ruling class are more than willing to facilitate US imperialism’s drive to thwart China’s “rise” in exchange for strategic “favours.” While the Indian bourgeoisie boasts about the country’s “world-beating growth,” it fears the window for realizing its great-power ambitions is rapidly closing and that it could soon face the wrath of the country’s rapidly growing, brutally-exploited working class.

President Joe Biden and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Thursday, June 22, 2023, in Washington. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

During Modi’s four days in America—which included a state dinner, a two-hour one-on-one meeting with Biden, a speech to a joint session of Congress and meetings with Elon Musk and other billionaires and corporate CEOs—there was much bluster about how the Indo-US “global strategic partnership” is based on “democracy” and “shared values.” Biden, with his decades-long tenure presiding over imperialist wars and intrigues, didn’t so much as blush or wince as he feted Modi, who heads a far-right authoritarian regime that is relentlessly fomenting Hindu communalism and who was himself long barred from entry to the US for his role in the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom.

At the summit’s conclusion, Modi and Biden issued a more than 6,000 word, 58 paragraph long joint statement. It listed many joint initiatives and embellished on the phony, mendacious invocations of a common commitment to democracy, diversity and human rights.

But the true foundation and impetus for the ever closer Indo-US alliance was baldly spelled out at the conclusion of the statement’s very first paragraph. It emphasized the significance of the Quad—the anti-China, quasi-military alliance between India, the US and its principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia—and did so in the language that Washington routinely employs to justify its drive to strategically encircle China and legitimize its own hegemony over Asia. “Our cooperation,” the joint statement declared, “will serve the global good as we work through a range of multilateral and regional groupings—particularly the Quad—to contribute toward a free, open, inclusive, and resilient Indo-Pacific. No corner of human enterprise is untouched by the partnership between our two great countries, which spans the seas to the stars.”

The initiatives and agreements made or reaffirmed at the summit are aimed at countering China’s influence, isolating it strategically, pressuring it militarily and weakening it economically—and all with the aim of girding US imperialism to wage war against the state it has publicly labeled its principal strategic adversary.

Many of these initiatives are directly bound up with strengthening Indo-US military ties and the interoperability of their armed forces. Others serve to promote India as an alternate production-chain hub to China—as part of US efforts to “friendshore” manufacturing—and to secure the resources needed in the production of high-tech goods and weapons.

The new or recently launched initiatives include:

• The building by the US-based Micron Technologies of a $2.75 billion microchip manufacturing and testing facility in Modi’s home state of Gujarat. Micron is to invest $825 million with the remainder of the financing to come from the Indian and Gujarat governments.

• India’s accession to the US-led Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), which is aimed at securing access to critical minerals, including rare earths, and developing refining capacity. The existing members of the MSP are the G-7 powers, the European Union, Sweden, Finland, South Korea and Australia.

• India’s incorporation into the US-led Artemis Accords on space cooperation, which is aimed at facilitating Indo-US cooperation in rocketry and other space-related technologies, many of which have military applications.

• Agreements between the US Navy and three Indian shipyards, two on India’s west coast (the Arabian Sea) and one on India’s east coast (the Bay of Bengal), to provide service and repair to US warships mid-voyage.

• Multiple mechanisms to foster the co-production and development of weapons and weapons system. These include: a defense industrial cooperation roadmap; a security of supply arrangement and reciprocal defense procurement arrangement “that will enable the supply of defense goods in the event of unanticipated supply chain disruptions;” and an India-US defense acceleration ecosystem (INDUS-X). The latter is described as “a network of university, incubator, corporate, think tank, and private investment stakeholders.” It is to foster new military technologies and “accelerate the integration of India’s budding private sector defense industry with the U.S. defense sector.”

India has also now finalized plans to buy US-made armed MQ-9B SeaGuardian UAVs or predator drones at a cost of more than $3 billion.

Both Indian and the US government spokespersons and military-security analysts have emphasized the special importance of General Electric’s proposal to jointly produce its F414 jet engine in India with the partially privatized Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). The engine will be used in India’s indigenously produced Tejas Mark 2 fighter jet, which is set to begin production in 2026. The US zealously guards its jet engine technology and has hitherto shared it only with its closest treaty allies. According to reports, under the agreement GE will share some “80 percent by value” of the technologies used in the F414 with its Indian partners.

Announcing the GE-HAL agreement beside Modi in Washington last Thursday, GE CEO H. Lawrence Culp Jr. called it “historic,” adding that GE was “proud to play a role in advancing President Joe Biden and PM Modi’s vision of closer coordination between the two nations.”

From Washington’s standpoint, the weapons sales, co-production agreements and technology transfers serve multiple purposes. They bolster India’s military capabilities vis-à-vis China; can help wean India from its dependence on Russian-made weapons and weapons-systems, with a view to diminishing and ultimately breaking the longstanding Indian-Russian strategic partnership; and make India and its military increasingly dependent on the US.

Washington and New Delhi also share the objective of making India a major subcontractor of the US weapons industry and cheap-labour producer of US-designed armaments. The Pentagon aims thereby to slash its own costs and enlarge the bottom lines of US arms manufacturers. India’s goals are increased US investment and a major boost for its military industries. Currently one of the world’s largest weapons importers, India under the BJP has set itself the goal of massively expanding indigenous arms manufacture and raising its arms exports to $5 billion annually by 2025.

The Biden administration’s drive to harness India to US imperialism’s strategic offensive against China builds on the policies pursued by the previous four Democratic and Republican administrations.

These policies have been ever more explicitly directed at transforming India into a US frontline state against China, both on land and at sea. India neighbours China and boasts that it has developed nuclear-capable missiles that can strike all parts of China from anywhere on the Indian land mass. It is also geographically the best vantage point from which to dominate the Indian Ocean, through which much of China’s oil and exports flow. With US encouragement, India is building a blue water navy and has laid claim to a growing role in policing the Indian Ocean.

Through an ever-expanding network of bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral military-security agreements and exercises with the US, Japan and Australia, New Delhi has become enmeshed in Washington’s war preparations against China.

During the past three years, Washington has also obtrusively intervened in the Sino-Indian border dispute. As a matter of course, the US now ties the conflict in the Himalayas to those it has helped incite between China and its South China Sea neighbours as examples of Beijing’s “aggression.”

Even more ominously, the Indian military is now receiving “real time” US intelligence about Chinese troop movements, intelligence that it boasts has materially impacted on encounters between Indian and Chinese troops along their disputed border, where the two countries have forward-deployed tens of thousands of troops, tanks and warplanes.

To be sure, Washington gnashed its teeth when New Delhi balked at western demands it denounce Russia as the “aggressor” in the NATO-instigated war with Russia over Ukraine and join in the imposition of sanctions. But the Biden administration and Pentagon have tempered their anger—even turning a blind-eye to India’s sharply increased imports of discount-priced Russian oil—in pursuit of what they perceive to be the more important strategic prize, strengthening their hand against China. This of course does not mean for a moment that Washington is not working in the long term to undermine and ultimately break New Delhi’s strategic partnership with Moscow.

The Modi government, with the full complicity of the Congress Party and other bourgeois opposition forces, tries for its part to cover up the aggressive and increasingly bellicose character of the Indo-US alliance with occasional affirmations that it is directed against no other country.

This is belied on a daily basis, in word and especially in deed, by both Washington and New Delhi.

The Indo-US alliance is reactionary, reckless and incendiary. It is drawing the region and the world ever closer to a catastrophic military conflagration. It has encouraged Washington in its simultaneous pursuit of confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia and China, and it has resulted in India’s border conflict with China and historic rivalry with Pakistan becoming intertwined with the US-China clash, adding to each a massive new explosive charge.

The development of an anti-war movement uniting workers across South Asia, China, the US and around the world in opposition to imperialism, the rival capitalist governments and all the political representatives of capitalism is a strategic imperative.

Australian Ballet dancers launch industrial action against attacks on pay

Sue Phillips

Last Friday night, dancers from the internationally acclaimed Australian Ballet company took limited industrial action—the first for more than four decades—in their dispute with management over a new enterprise bargaining agreement.

The action occurred at the State Theatre in the Melbourne Arts Centre and involved “holding the curtain”—i.e., delaying the evening performance of Identity, the company’s latest production, for 15 minutes.

Identity The Australian Ballet [Photo: Facebook: The Australian Ballet]

It followed an April ballot overseen by the Fair Work Commission in which 91 percent of the more than 70 dancers at the company voted for industrial action, beginning with a social media campaign and strike action.

The social media campaign, which commenced last week, has drawn attention to the cost-of-living challenges facing dancers and the need to rectify the significant financial sacrifices they have been forced to make over the COVID-19 pandemic. The campaign has already gained extensive online public support.

Negotiations over the three-year EBA between the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), which covers the dancers, and ballet company management began last September. Talks are deadlocked over the management’s refusal to maintain a long-standing clause guaranteeing dancers’ wages increase in line with the rising Consumer Price Index (CPI).

The CPI clause, which has been part of dancers’ work agreements for more than two decades, recognises that dancers face a unique situation because of their short careers in the profession.

As was the case throughout the entertainment sector, when the pandemic began it was used to launch major attacks on the rights of the dancers. Decades-long conditions and pay rates were torn up virtually overnight. 

This was imposed, at Australian Ballet and more broadly, by the MEAA. The union negotiated an agreement with company management in 2020, under which ballet dancers were saddled with a 50 percent pay cut amid lockdowns and other restrictions that prevented live performances. The following year, the MEAA negotiated a pay freeze.

Similar deals were imposed elsewhere. At the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, for instance, the MEAA agreed to a 40 percent salary cut and a clause that meant twenty vacant positions would not be filled for two years. MEAA official Paul Davies told the press: “The Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s collaborative approach, which delivered a very constructive result without industrial conflict, is a best practice model for other Australian cultural organisations.”

In other words, the wage-slashing agreements at top-tier cultural institutions served as a precedent for attacks throughout the entertainment and arts sectors.

In February this year, the Australian Ballet dancers received what management described as a 4.3 percent “catch-up” pay rise to meet the obligations of the CPI clause, after receiving only 2.5 percent in 2022 when inflation peaked at over 7 percent. Management has “offered” a 1 percent pay rise for 2023. The latest below-inflation offer has been rejected by the dancers under conditions of rising interest rate, rents and spiraling food, energy, and petrol costs.

Ballet dancers’ wages are shockingly low. Like elite athletes, they must dedicate years or decades of their life to the most intensive and all-consuming training, to hone world-class skills. The physical rigours mean that their careers are inherently of a limited duration.

But under current rates, most dancers at the Australia Ballet earn less than $A80,000 per annum, with base rates climbing to just under $100,000 for a senior dancer and a little over $150,000 for a principal. That compares with pay rates of hundreds of thousands, or even more, for some athletes who face similar career challenges.

The Australian Ballet, which was formed in 1962, is funded primarily through its own commercial and fundraising activities, including bequests, with limited amounts provided by the federal, New South Wales and Victorian governments through the Australia Council for the Arts.

Arts funding has been drastically reduced by consecutive federal Labor and Liberal-National Coalition governments over the past two decades, a process accelerated during the pandemic.

According to the Fund the Arts Coalition, the then Liberal-National Coalition government slashed arts funding in its 2022 budget by 19 percent compared to the previous year. While the MEAA have praised slight increases in arts funding by the Albanese Labor government, these are a drop in the ocean and do not come close to merely reversing the previous onslaught.

The national arts budget is minuscule compared to the billions spent on tax cuts for the rich and for new weapons and war.

The last time Australian Ballet performers took industrial action was in 1981 when they stopped work for 26 days, resulting in the cancellation of several performances of the Three Musketeers. The action was the outcome of several leading dancers being offered reduced conditions of work.

In 2017, the dancers filed for “protected” action with Fair Work Australia due to a deadlock in agreement negotiations. A deal was finally signed without industrial action that guaranteed wages would align with CPI, the clause the company is presently trying to remove.

Australian Ballet management responded to last Friday’s limited industrial action by cancelling a one-off bonus performance of a scheduled new short work to occur that night. Management is now demanding that the MEAA agrees to a “limited cap” on CPI increases for dancers.

The “limited cap”, while disingenuously not spelled out in the management’s media statement, is presently being negotiated at 1.5 percent. The management’s offer of 1 percent for this year and the 1.5 percent CPI “cap” would amount to a 2.5 percent wages deal for the next 12 months, well below inflation which is still running at over 6 percent. In union negotiations, the management is also arguing that the CPI “cap” be embedded in the present agreement but phased out completely over time.

The dancers who have already indicated their willingness to fight with a 91 percent vote for industrial action need to be warned. No faith can be placed in the MEAA to take forward the struggle. The union has demonstrated its role, not only during the pandemic, but in imposing years of cuts at other institutions, such as the major publishers and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The dancers should instead turn to the growing struggles of workers, in Australia and internationally. Whatever the differences in occupations, all of these movements are being fueled by the same issues of pay cuts, amid the worst cost of living crisis in decades, together with attacks on working conditions.

A particular appeal could be made to other entertainment workers, whose plight directly parallels that of the dancers. A unified movement must be developed, not only to win back the huge concessions imposed during the first years of the pandemic, but to defend the arts, which are under attack everywhere by the corporations and the governments that represent them.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive remains a debacle despite efforts to exploit coup attempt in Russia

Jason Melanovski

Following this weekend’s failed coup attempt by the far-right mercenary leader Evgeny Prigozhin in Russia, the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is attempting to present the coup attempt as a turning point in the war and divert attention from its obviously failing counteroffensive in southern Ukraine.

Zelensky gleefully responded in real time to the coup attempt on Saturday, claiming on Twitter that the events highlighted Russia’s “full-scale weakness.”

Later, Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, speaking with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, stated that “these last days, it’s finally destroying the myth … that everything in Russia is under control,” and that “after these events, more people in the world will be more sure about Ukrainian  victory.”

Immediately following the attempted coup, Yermak had written on Twitter, “A Russian civil war was the only plausible outcome to Putin’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine.”

These statements not only show the degree of NATO’s and Kiev’s support for the coup attempt. In fact, an earlier interview with the Washington Post indicated that Zelensky’s intelligence service had been in contact with Prigozhin for months. 

They also give, yet again, the lie to the war propaganda claims that the Zelensky government defends and stands for “democracy” in the war against Russia.

Evgeny Prigozhin is a convicted criminal, fascistic warlord and billionaire who has never even tried to claim to have anything to do with democracy. His Wagner mercenaries are known to maintain ties to the far right, and routinely glorify extreme violence on their social media channels. Until recently, Prigozhin’s main criticism of the Russian army leadership was that it did not carry out the war in Ukraine aggressively enough. 

Yet the Zelensky government cheered on the coup attempt, calculating that it would help destabilize the Putin regime and divert attention from its failing counteroffensive in southern Ukraine two weeks ahead of the critical NATO summit in Vilnius. While the Zelensky government and its imperialist backers also expressed the hope that the chaos in Russia would facilitate the counteroffensive, so far nothing of the sort has occurred. 

Amid the confusion of the unfolding coup, Ukraine launched new offensives north and south of Bakhmut, in Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Bohdanivka, Yahidne, Klishchiivka and Kurdyumivka. Yet despite the chaotic situation in Russia and the almost day-long seizure by Prigozhin of the headquarters of the Southern Military District, which oversees the Russian army’s operations in Ukraine, the Ukrainian military advanced just 17 square kilometers (6.6 square miles) compared with a week earlier, according to Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar.

All told, Ukraine’s much publicized counteroffensive has “liberated” just 130 square kilometers (50.1 square miles) of territory within three weeks at the price of the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers. Ukrainian soldiers are still miles away even from reaching Russian defenses.

This week, Russia released horrific drone footage showing Ukrainian troops being torn apart as they drive head-on into heavily mined Russian defenses.

These videos essentially confirm earlier reports from both Ukrainian and Western officials that, despite billions of dollars in training and weaponry, the Ukrainian counteroffensive was going nowhere, even as Ukraine is suffering “heavy casualties” with deaths of up to 1,000 a day.

Despite the obvious failure of the counteroffensive, Deputy Defense Minister Maliar continued to make absurd claims such as “The enemy’s casualties over the past week are eight times more than ours.”

To make up for mass casualties at the front and in a desperate attempt to mitigate the ever-growing problem of a lack of manpower, the Zelensky government is now carrying out a new wave of mobilization in at least three provinces. 

According to Volodymyr Arap, the head of the Kharkiv region’s recruiting offices, the military will be drafting men from ages 18 to 60 throughout July, regardless of military experience or desire to fight in the war.

In response to a question on whether the military was sending people to the front who do not want to go or are unmotivated, Arap bluntly stated the person’s desire to serve in the war was inconsequential.

“You are a citizen of Ukraine and must do everything in your power to protect her sovereignty and independence!” Arap responded.

As the WSWS has confirmed in interviews with Ukrainian youth, there is widespread fatigue with a war that has claimed the lives of at least 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers, wounding many more. Workers and youth who reject fighting in this bloody war, which is waged against Russia in Ukraine on behalf of the imperialist powers, are simply grabbed off the street and sent to the front.

In stark contrast to the false image of a country united in war against a common foe that has been created by the Ukrainian and NATO governments and their media, polls indicate that, in reality, the views of the war within Ukrainian society are highly ambiguous.

According to a poll by the George Soros Foundation-funded VoxUkraine, 25 percent of respondents in Ukraine and 29 percent of Ukrainian refugees abroad agree with the statement that, “The West is using Ukraine for its own purposes in the war against Russia.”

The poll also found that 29 percent of respondents in Ukraine and 35 percent of Ukrainian refugees agreed that the so-called “Revolution of Dignity” of February 2014—the official term given to the overthrow of a pro-Russian government by far-right forces with the backing of the US and EU—was, in fact, a coup.

As Ukrainian political scientist Ivan Katchanovski noted on Twitter, these results were all the more significant because they did not include areas under Russian occupation and the responses were given in an environment of widespread political censorship and terror being carried out within Ukraine.

These polls clearly indicate that among many ordinary Ukrainians there is, in fact, growing skepticism and discontent with the war. Yet these sentiments find no expression in an atmosphere of a near-permanent war hysteria that is being whipped up by NATO and oligarchical and right-wing nationalist upper-middle class layers of Ukrainians that are given the limelight in Western media and academia.

With just two weeks to go until the NATO summit in Vilnius, the only response by NATO and the Ukrainian oligarchy to the mass killings and lack of any serious advance at the front has been to prepare a further escalation of the already catastrophic conflict.   

This week, Denmark began training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets. 

While no Western country has yet delivered F-16s to Ukraine, it is clear that a campaign is being conducted to promote the eventual introduction of the American fighter jets into the war despite earlier assurances from President Biden that this would never happen because it would mean “World War Three.”  

In comments in Kiev on Tuesday, Andriy Yermak claimed that Ukraine needs at least 100 F-16s to “win the war”. “I believe that it is absolutely realistic to receive the F-16 fighter jets before the end of the year,” Yermak said.

In his words, Ukraine’s attempts to procure the F-16s and even further escalate the bloodbath are well-known and conducted with the full knowledge and support of its NATO backers.

“There is no such thing as someone not doing something and we don’t know why: Everything is open and transparent, in complete trust,” Yermak stated.

Riots erupt across Paris and France after police murder 17-year-old driver in Nanterre

Anthony Torres

Riots erupted for two nights straight in the Paris area and in cities across France, after police shot and killed a 17-year-old driver, Nahel M., claiming he had refused to stop at a police stop on Tuesday morning in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

The Nanterre prosecutor’s office indicated yesterday that it had opened two investigations: one for “refusing to stop” and “attempted voluntary homicide against public authorities,” to be carried out by Nanterre police and the local domestic intelligence office, the other for “voluntary homicide by public authorities,” by the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN). A passenger in the back seat of the car, also a minor, was held and jailed. A third passenger managed to flee the scene of the police shooting.

Police initially claimed that, sometime between 8:00 and 8:30 a.m., the driver of the vehicle, a rented Mercedes AMG, repeatedly violated traffic laws. As motorcycle-mounted police tried to stop the car, in this version of events, it accelerated towards the cops, threatening to run them over, after which one of the cops fired into the chest of the driver.

The police narrative was soon exposed as a pack of lies, however, by videos that went viral on social media. It shows two cops stopping a yellow car on François Arago Lane in Nanterre. One of the cops, leaning against the windshield, aimed his gun at the driver. When the driver restarted his car, the cop shot the driver at point-blank range from the side of the car. The car ran into a post and stopped a few meters later.

There were reports that the motorcycle cops who stopped and killed Nahel were possibly members of the BRAV (Brigades for the Repression of Violent Action) motorcycle units. These units led violent assaults of mass protesters against Macron’s pension cuts this spring.

On Tuesday evening, after the police murder, protesters gathered in front of the Nanterre police office, shouting “Justice for Nahel” and “Police everywhere, justice nowhere.” Interviewed by the daily Le Parisien, Yanis, a protester in front of Nanterre city hall, declared, “We already basically hated the police, and this just confirms it. We are angry, we do not understand, what happened to Nahel was all out of proportion, and we are outraged.”

Later that night, riots spread across much of the Paris area and cities across the country including Toulouse, Roubaix and Colmar in the night of Tuesday to Wednesday. Protesters gathered in the suburbs of Nanterre, Clichy-sous-Bois, Asnières, Colombes and broke into municipal buildings in Nanterre and Mantes-la-Jolie and set them on fire.

Yesterday, the lawyer for Nahel’s family, Yassine Bouzrou, said his clients were suing the police for “voluntary homicide” and “preparing false public documents.” Bouzrou said, “The first account that was given was a lie, and was published through normal channels in a police report.”

French police authorities initially tried to brazen it out, defending as many of their lies against Nahel as they could in the face of mounting public outrage. On Wednesday morning, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin denounced “urban violence” concentrated in the Hauts-de-Seine department around Nanterre, and appealed for calm. He reported that police had carried out 31 arrests, and that there had been “24 policemen wounded” and “around 40 cars burned” together with an annex to city hall in Mantes-la-Jolie.

The Paris police prefect’s office, which has served as the principal accomplice of the Interior Ministry in the repression of strikes and also of the “yellow vest” protests against French President Emmanuel Macron, initially refused to indict the cop who shot Nahel.

“This action is surprising,” claimed Paris Police Prefect Laurent Nuñez. “There was a first refusal to stop for a police stop, then a police search during which a shot was fired. The inquiry must shed full light on the circumstances of the police stop, what happened just before, and what happened inside the car. We must respect the presumption of innocence. If there was a mistake, it will be sanctioned.”

Authorities were forced to rapidly change their tune, however, amid mounting public outrage over the police murder documented on camera. Internationally known French actor Omar Sy and football stars including Paul Pogba and Kylian Mbappé denounced the murder, with Mbappé tweeting: “France hurts. This situation is unacceptable. All my thoughts go to the family and friends of Nahel, an angel who left us far too early.”

Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne and then Macron himself both issued hypocritical statements to try to distance themselves from the murder of Nahel. “Today there is shock, mourning, and anger. The justice system must respond,” declared Borne, who added, “The shocking images that have been broadcast show an intervention that manifestly does not seem to conform to the rules of engagement of our security forces.”

Later on, Macron himself issued a brief appeal for calm. “Nothing justifies the death of a youth,” he said, saying the police killing was “inexplicable and inexcusable” but calling for “calm everywhere” and to avoid “going up in flames.” The Interior Ministry then announced that 2,000 heavily armed riot police would be mobilized in the Paris area last night.

Riots escalated last night, however, in cities including Paris, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Rennes, with even Macron’s massive police deployment overwhelmed by the riots. Youth faced off against the police forces shooting rubber bullets and tear gas, and fired back with fireworks and Molotov cocktails.

Rioting spread across the entire Paris area, with youth storming and burning police stations in suburbs of Trappes, Neuilly-sur-Marne and Dammarie-lès-Lys. Rioting also broke out in the 14th, 15th and 19th districts of downtown Paris.

Sirens also sounded as protesters tried to storm a major Paris-area prison at Fresnes and set fire to the gates of the prison.

The explosion of anger against this police murder reflects the explosive class tensions tearing apart French and European society, and the deep discrediting of the Macron government after he rammed through his pension cuts in the face of mass protests and overwhelming popular opposition. It is broadly sensed that Macron oversees an illegitimate government that rules against the people and with contempt for basic democratic rights.

Macron’s claim that Nahel’s murder is “inexplicable” is a political lie. It is in reality the product of his brutal policies in defense of the capitalist class. He has stoked the most violently reactionary moods among fascistic cops to cultivate them as a social base against the working class. Throughout Macron’s presidency, these police units were used to brutally repress mass working class opposition to his attacks on basic social and democratic rights, and his policy of diverting billions of euros in social spending to NATO rearmament and war with Russia.

The Macron government decorated police units who carried out outrages liked the killing of 80-year-old Zineb Redouane at her window by shooting her in the face with a tear gas canister, or the violent assault of 76-year-old woman Geneviève Legay, during the “yellow vest” protests. It is the constant official promotion, by the government itself, of police violence against the people that has produced the outrageous murder of Nahel.

Over 120 million Americans under air quality alerts as wildfires continue to rage across Canada

John Conrad

Over 120 million people, or more than a third of the US population, were under air quality alerts in over a dozen states spanning from the Midwest to the East Coast, as a result of an immense smoke plume from hundreds of wildfires raging across Canada.

Canada is presently experiencing the most destructive wildfire season in the country’s history, a direct manifestation of the deepening climate crisis. Occurring annually from May until October, Canada’s wildfire season typically peaks in August. But only two months into the wildfire season, nearly 8 million hectares of land—close to 20 million acres—have been burned, already an all-time record for a single year. Over the last 24 hours alone, this number has increased by over 100,000 hectares.

Since the beginning of 2023, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre has recorded nearly 3,000 wildfires. At present, there are at least 477 fires burning in Canada, ranging from the country’s westernmost provinces to the furthest eastern regions. Of these fires, 237 are classified as “out of control,” 151 are officially considered “under control” and 89 fires are classified as “being held,” which means blazes are not under control, but stationary. On Wednesday, officials reported the highest number of current active fires in Quebec, 113 fires, and the second-highest in British Columbia, 94 active blazes.

Tens of thousands of people in Canada have been forced to flee their homes in the face of the raging fires, and millions more face “high risk” air quality from lingering smoke and smog.

Just three weeks after over 115 million people across the US East Coast and Canada were suddenly engulfed in toxic smog, this horrific environment has once again descended upon vast swaths of North America. Air quality index (AQI) scores have ranged from “unhealthy” to “very unhealthy” and even “hazardous.”

Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Toronto and Washington D.C. were among the top 10 cities with the highest air pollution in the world on Wednesday, while other major cities reached the “very unhealthy” or “hazardous” thresholds, including St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Louisville and Indianapolis.

Smoke fills the sky reducing visibility Wednesday, June 28, 2023 in Detroit. [AP Photo/Paul Sancya]

The inhalation of fine particulate smoke produced by wildfires is known to have serious negative health effects, including triggering asthma attacks and heart attacks. Longer-term health problems also result from extended exposure and inhalation of this smoke, including lung cancer. Inhalation can also exacerbate conditions for those who recently suffered pneumonia or myocarditis, which are common conditions suffered by those infected with COVID-19. Poor air quality is a leading cause of death, killing at least 6 million people internationally every year.

Under these conditions, not even the most basic public health measures were taken to ensure the safety of the population. Despite the serious health risks, businesses and schools remained open, and industrial production continued uninterrupted throughout the vast geographic region inundated with smoke. At the federal, state and local levels, both Democratic and Republican politicians either ignored the danger or only issued perfunctory “health advisories,” which businesses flaunted with impunity. At most, masking was only “encouraged,” with no explanation of the crucial importance of using a well-fitting N95 mask.

In his statement on Chicago’s air quality, newly-elected Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson, backed by the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), perfectly illustrated the neglectful, indifferent response of capitalist politicians to the lives of workers:

The City of Chicago is carefully monitoring and taking precautions as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has categorized our Air Quality Index as “unhealthy” due to Canadian wildfire smoke present in the Chicago region. We recommend children, teens, seniors, people with heart or lung disease, and individuals who are pregnant avoid strenuous activities and limit their time outdoors. For additional precautions, all Chicagoans may also consider wearing masks, limiting their outdoor exposure, moving activities indoors, running air purifiers, and closing windows. (Emphasis added.)

Everywhere the solution to this immense public health problem is presented as an individual issue. No serious protective and preventative public health measures have been taken to ensure the health and safety of the population. The Chicago Department of Public Health waited a full day before issuing an alert on the dangerous air quality and has done nothing to ensure that every resident be provided with N95 masks, improved ventilation or any other public health measures. The same can be said for every major city affected by the wildfire smoke.

In a rational society, not one which subordinates everything to the altar of profit, schools and non-essential production and businesses would be temporarily closed with full compensation provided to affected workers, while essential workers would be given the best protective equipment and ventilation technology available.

However, as has been demonstrated over the last three years by the criminal response of the ruling class to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this is not how the decaying capitalist profit system operates. The corporate-financial oligarchy which runs society will not tolerate any interruption to the production of profits. Thus, over the past two days, workers in the most polluted areas have been forced to continue working.

Workers from across the Midwest have sent reports to the World Socialist Web Site documenting horrific working conditions amid this public health and environmental catastrophe. Forced to work in smoke-filled factories, they have often barely been able to breathe, with multiple witnessing co-workers collapse on the line. Inside many factories, the air quality has been worse than outside, registering AQI scores of over 200.

A worker at the Warren Truck Assembly plant in Detroit told the WSWS, “It’s muggy and thick in the plant. You can definitely tell a difference in the plant air when you walk outside.”

A worker at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, described conditions workers faced Tuesday afternoon and evening:

The air was bad yesterday already but when I walked into the plant for my shift it was even worse. The whole area around the chassis line was filled with thick smog. It smelled real bad too, like chemicals. Everyone was talking about it and taking pictures of the smoke, posting on our local’s Facebook page. Lots of workers were saying that they were having asthma attacks and couldn’t breathe, and their eyes were burning because of the smoke. I heard that someone went down from having an asthma attack too.

Photo from inside a smoke-filled auto plant on Tuesday [Photo: WSWS]

Another autoworker commented on social media, “They [the company] won’t do anything until someone with compromised breathing (asthma, emphysema, COPD) literally goes down. And even then, it’s a long shot. They give zero f*** about us. … Look out for you. No one else does in that place.”

A Dearborn Ford worker commented on social media, “Currently working at the Dearborn Truck Plant being smothered by the smoke. It’s all in the building.”

Not a peep of opposition to these horrendous conditions has come from the trade union bureaucrats, including the newly-elected and DSA-backed United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain. As took place at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the union apparatus, dominated by wealthy bureaucrats, has obediently carried out its duties as a labor police force for the ruling class by keeping workers on the job.

The same GM worker told the WSWS:

The UAW didn’t do a single thing and was keeping us working despite the health danger of working in this bad air quality. Our local union chairperson responded to questions on our app about the air quality, dismissing and avoiding the issue, saying people were leaving a few overhead doors open and that’s why the smoke was getting in. He didn’t call for us to walk out or anything. The union doesn’t care about our health and safety. They just want to make sure we don’t walk out no matter how bad things get and to keep making profits for the company. We should all be refusing to work in these hazardous conditions.

The worker at Dearborn Ford commented, “our union [UAW] ain’t sh**. They so-called tested the air quality in the building saying that they don’t detect anything. Straight bullsh**! You can taste it in the air.”

Workers reported “smelling chemicals. Something like burning plastic and rubber tires.” This indicates that the smoke from the wildfires, composed of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), through interaction with ultraviolet radiation from the sun, has likely created benzene and formaldehyde compounds in the atmosphere. These are toxic air pollutants that can have extremely serious negative health consequences.

The unfolding climate and public health disaster across large portions of the US and Canada, for the second time in less than a month, is yet another devastating exposure of the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. The ruling elites and their representatives in the capitalist political parties and trade unions have nothing but contempt for the working class, whom they view as simply fodder for exploitation.