GM workers in Brazil strike against mass layoffs

Eduardo Parati

On Saturday, GM announced the summary firing of 1,200 workers in Brazil at three plants in the state of São Paulo in the cities of Mogi das Cruzes, São Caetano do Sul and São José dos Campos. It took place after the majority of workers rejected the proposal for voluntary dismissal programs (PDV) at the three plants.

Striking GM workers gathered at a mass assembly São Caetano plant. [Photo: Sindicato dos Metalúrgicos de São Caetano]

To the surprise of the company and the unions, the announcement was met with explosive opposition. Assemblies held on Sunday and Monday approved indefinite strikes, immediately putting 11,500 workers in struggle against GM’s measures.

On Monday, the union bureaucrats published a joint letter pointing out the obvious contradiction between the auto giant’s financial prosperity and the massive job cuts, stating: “All the cuts are unjustifiable. The automaker claims a drop in sales, but on the contrary, it recorded an 18.18 per cent increase in Brazilian sales between April and June this year... In addition, it made a net profit of 2.57 billion dollars (R$12.94 billion) in the second quarter of this year, an increase of 51.6 percent year-on-year.”

A month ago, the company sent letters to workers in the São Paulo plants proposing to “discuss” their “voluntary dismissal.” Such letters were also sent to workers at GM’s Gravataí plant in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, with management stating that workers would suffer cuts from that moment on. However, even faced with the prospect of a widespread attack, the unions did not organize any kind of response.

On September 19, after the PDV proposed by GM suffered a mass rejection, news emerged that the company had started laying off employees at the São Caetano plant. However, the president of the São Caetano do Sul Metalworkers Union, which is affiliated to the Força Sindical union federation, Aparecido da Silva, known as Cidão, played down the threats, saying: “So far [only employees who had already retired] have been fired.”

The fact that workers in São Paulo went on strike in direct opposition to their own layoffs has forced the union to adopt a false rhetoric in favor of keeping their jobs while waiting for more favorable conditions to impose the layoffs demanded by GM. However, due to their widespread discrediting among workers, the unions’ ability to deflect the huge opposition seems to be increasingly in check.

In their joint letter, right after the union bureaucrats lament that “GM has failed to comply with layoff agreements signed with the unions,” they state that “the three unions are seeking negotiations with the automaker to reverse the layoffs and guarantee jobs.” In other words, even though GM’s management has clearly shown its indifference to the agreements signed with the unions, the bureaucracy has no other response than to repeat this maneuver, which is widely distrusted by the workers.

The reality is that the announcement of the layoffs directly exposes the union bureaucracy itself, which in recent years has promoted the claim that it would be enough to submit to the “agreements” between the union and the company to guarantee “job stability.”

In March 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, GM announced 15,000 layoffs that would cut wages and benefits. The union in São Caetano, under the leadership of Cidão, immediately worked to force the layoffs through an “online vote” that never took place. The layoffs did not prevent further cuts in the negotiation of the collective bargaining agreement in 2021, with the union abandoning the workers’ 13-day strike in deference to a court decision, stating that “Obviously the union respects the position of the assembly, but the court decision must be followed.” At the beginning of 2022, even as Ford closed its plants and left the country, violating all the agreements made with the union, the bureaucracy forced the workers to remain on the production line until the last day.

A decisive role in the suppression of auto workers has also been played by the São José dos Campos Metalworkers Union, which is affiliated to the CSP-Conlutas union federation, controlled by the Morenoite Unified Socialist Workers Party (PSTU). While presenting itself as an “opposition” union, it oversaw the dismissal of 12,000 workers between 2010 and 2020.

Today, amid the biggest inflationary crisis in decades and after years of job and wage cuts in the automotive plants, the explosive opposition of GM workers in Brazil against yet another round of layoffs threatens to break the unions’ straitjacket, also putting the upper echelons of the bureaucracy of the trade union federations and the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers Party – PT) on alert.

This week, the major union federations produced a joint note repeating the points of the local unions’ letter, and the president of the ABC Metalworkers Union, affiliated to the CUT, the PT-controlled union federation, Moisés Selérges, visited the São Caetano plant to give a speech in “solidarity.” Selérges’ history of betrayal and his visit to striking workers should be taken as an indication of the betrayal being prepared in the plants with the help of the PT’s union apparatus.

Selérges assisted Mercedes-Benz in imposing a PDV at the São Bernardo do Campo plant exactly one year ago. During the strike, which was sparked by huge opposition to the cuts, the union authorities blamed the Chinese workers, essentially adopting the same fascistic rhetoric as then-president Jair Bolsonaro, and sought to cultivate illusions that a new Lula government would mean a new period of improved living conditions and increased employment. Meanwhile, they sought to pit outsourced workers against permanent ones, insinuating that the mass layoffs were an opportunity for new temporary contracts.

The unions also appealed to the Lula government and to the governor of São Paulo and former minister in the Bolsonaro government, Tarcísio de Freitas. In their letter, they called for “immediate intervention by the Federal Government, the Ministry of Labor, the Government of the State of São Paulo and the Labor Attorney’s Office.”

Biobot Analytics files protest against CDC issuing wastewater surveillance contract to Verily

Benjamin Mateus

On Friday, Biobot Analytics resumed publishing data on levels of SARS-CoV-2 in US wastewater. In mid-September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) abruptly ended their long-standing contract with the Massachusetts-based company, which had been instrumental in transforming the national public health agency’s national wastewater surveillance program during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The contract bid went to Verily, a life sciences research company owned by Alphabet, also the parent company of Google. Verily utilizes the Stanford University-based WastewaterSCAN in partnership with Emory University, whose national expansion was funded by the Sergey Brin Family Foundation and Bloomberg philanthropies. Multi-billionaire Sergey Brin is a co-founder of Google and has a significant financial interest in seeing his company flourish.

According to Politico, Verily’s bid for the contract was accepted outright by the CDC, which will pay the company $38 million over five years. Biobot’s most recent contract with the CDC was for $31 million over less than 18 months, or nearly three-fold higher. The funding provided through various foundations means Verily could easily underbid any other contract proposition. An epidemiologist familiar with these proceedings who asked not to be named remarked, “The CDC must be dumping something for a bid that low.”

Although CDC Director Mandy Cohen has declined to comment on why the bid went to Verily, given the potential financialization of wastewater data, it is clear that Verily was more than eager to obtain the contract and has the monetary resources to weather a deficit. The science of wastewater monitoring has advanced considerably during the pandemic, and wastewater can now be used to track not just infectious viral agents in real time, but almost any molecule flushed into the sewers across the country.

The most important issue at play is the financialization of public health in the US through these private-public enterprises, whereby critical information disease outbreak, the opioid crisis, and the population’s general health indices can be accumulated and monopolized by giant conglomerates like Alphabet. This has significant implications for insurance companies, federal agencies, surveillance of the population, and more.

What has clearly emerged from handing the keys to Verily is the sudden deleterious impact in being able to track SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. With contact tracing and data reporting essentially abandoned by the CDC and home-self testing on decline, the data which were being published by Biobot provided the only clear perspective on the state of the pandemic over the past summer. Since the beginning of October, the country was suddenly flying blind as to the real situation.

David Larsen, chair of the public health department at Syracuse University and wastewater researcher, told the World Socialist Web Site that there are potential ethical issues at play if Verily has unlimited and unsupervised access to wastewater data and tests they decide to run. Clearly, the large underbidding begs the question, what is Verily getting in turn? However, the terms of the contract have not been disclosed.

Larsen also explained that wastewater data from Biobot have been well correlated to clinical rates of COVID-19 infection in the US. Shifting to using WastewaterSCAN data also means “loss of historical comparability.” The implication here is that case estimates will be harder to discern if the historic data is not folded into Verily’s analysis. Over time, these will stabilize but as the country enters the winter wave of infections, this could be problematic in providing the public with a clear assessment. In a statement to Politico, Larsen noted, “It’s not ideal to change methods.”

However, Biobot has filed a protest stalling the transition for the management of the national wastewater surveillance by Verily. Neither they nor the CDC has issued a statement on the ongoing legal proceedings, but as another epidemiologist told Politico, “The existing gap in wastewater data will continue for possibly several months as we head into flu season and another COVID surge.”

What emerges from the resumption of Biobot’s analysis on Friday is that the decline in the most recent COVID wave that began in late-June has stalled across every region of the country at high levels of viral transmission. In early October, scientist Mike Hoerger, the founding director of Louisiana’s HealthPsych, estimated that by the end of October transmission rates would be upwards of 745,000 cases per day.

In conjunction with these estimates of viral transmission, COVID-19 hospitalization rates in the US have also stalled at more than 16,000 admissions per week for the week ending October 21. Infectious disease modelers and experts have been forecasting that cases will begin turning upwards in November in conjunction with colder weather and the holiday travel season.

COVID-19 deaths, a lagging indicator, reached 1,339 for the week ending September 30. In other words, around 190 people are dying each day from COVID-19, predominately the elderly and immunocompromised, a trend that will likely hold throughout October once data begin to be compiled and published.

Experts are concerned about the upcoming fall-winter surge, driven by new variants that continue to evolve at a rapid clip.

Currently, the Omicron HV.1 subvariant accounts for more than 25 percent of the various Omicron progenies circulating across the US. It is a mutation of the EG.5 (Eris) lineage of the XBB.1.5 family. However, another subvariant called JN.1, whose phylogenetic parent is BA.2.86 (Pirola), has caught the attention of variant trackers. It was first identified in Luxembourg in late August and then in England, France and the US.

Compared to the XBB.1.5 and HV.1 strains, JN.1 contains 41 additional unique mutations, and most are located on its spike protein. This will likely give it higher infectivity and immune evasion. Investigators believe that it is possibly a recombinant of BA.2 and later XBB lineages, according to scientist William A. Haseltine writing for Forbes.

Haseltine notes, “What catches my attention about JN.1 is not the reemerging mutations from earlier variants but the novelty of select mutations in the spike protein. Several of these mutations have only been sequenced a few thousand times from a database of over 16 million samples throughout the pandemic. None, however, as unique to JN.1.”

Alarmingly, Haseltine also notes there are several mutations outside of the virus’ spike region that can significantly affect its “pathogenicity and spread.” In particular, he underscores six mutations to NSP3, an active protein in the virus involved in RNA binding and other processes. Though the exact nature of the mutation needs to be discerned, he believes these may enhance efficiency mechanisms that are leading to a “more functional and pathogenetic virus.”

Haseltine concludes:

There are several explanations for the mutations within and particularly outside of the spike protein. The first is adaptation to more aggressive infectivity. The second is to escape from neutralizing antibodies. The third is adaptation to more efficient post-infection pathogenesis, including replication aided by mutations in the N protein. The fourth is immune evasion from T cell recognition.

As winter begins across the Northern hemisphere, federal officials have reported only about 7 percent of US adults and 2 percent of children have received the latest iteration of the COVID booster shots. These have much to do with the commercialization of the life-saving treatments and persistent attempts by government officials to downplay the ongoing threat posed by COVID-19.

ECB keeps rates on hold as euro area moves towards recession

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank (ECB) decided at its meeting on Thursday not to lift interest rates after 10 consecutive rises. But the decision did not reflect an improvement in the European economy as official inflation levels start to come down.

Rather, the main motivation appears to have been a worsening of the euro zone economy which is on the brink of a recession led down by its main component, Germany.

Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank [Photo: Bernd Hartung/European Central Bank]

In her opening remarks to the press conference on the decision, ECB president Christine Lagarde, after noting that inflation was still expected to stay “too high for too long,” provided an overview of the worsening outlook.

“The euro area economy remains weak,” she began. “Recent information suggests that manufacturing output has continued to fall. Subdued foreign demand and tighter financing conditions are increasingly weighing on investment and consumer spending. The services sector is also weakening further. This is because weaker industrial activity is spilling over to other sectors, the impetus from reopening effects is fading and the impact of higher interest rates is broadening. The economy is likely to remain weak for the rest of the year.”

The best prospect she could advance was that as inflation came down further, household incomes recovered, and exports picked up, “the economy should strengthen over the coming years.”

The latest data confirm the downbeat ECB outlook. While inflation fell in September to 4.3 percent from 5.2 percent in August, higher borrowing costs and energy prices, combined with a slowdown in international trade, are having a major impact.

Data from S&P Global showed that activity in manufacturing and services was down to its lowest level since November 2020 at the worst point of the pandemic. Excluding the pandemic months, the fall in activity was the sharpest since 2013.

The downturn is being led by Germany. Business surveys showed that private sector economic activity contracted for the fourth straight month in a row in October. This is amid what a Guardian report described as a “collapse in manufacturing output, suggesting the country may have already entered a recession.”

The industrial sector also suffered “a new shock on Thursday, when shares in the engineering firm Siemen Energy plunged as it sought a bailout from the German government, after a string of technical problems and higher costs such as at its wind turbine arm.

According to the Bundesbank, the country’s central bank, the economy is likely to have shrunk in the third quarter this year, following zero growth in the second quarter and a 0.1 percent contraction in the first.

The ECB does not expect conditions in the euro zone to improve and they could get worse.

“The risks to economic growth remain tilted to the downside,” Lagarde said. “Growth could be lower if the effects of monetary policy turn out to be stronger than expected. A weaker world economy would also weigh on growth.”

The data is also emerging on the effect of monetary policy since the ECB began lifting rates 15 months ago as Lagarde reported.

Funding has become more expensive for banks, with interest rates for business loans and mortgages rising.

“Higher borrowing rates, with the associated cuts in investment plans and house purchases, led to a further drop in credit demand in the third quarter… Moreover, credit standards for loans to firms and households tightened further. Banks are becoming more concerned about the risks faced by their customers and are less willing to take on risks themselves,” she said.

Expanding on this point, she said banks were saying they were more attentive to risk and also that corporates were “putting a brake on their investment because of the level of interest rates.”

Despite the worsening economic situation, Largarde insisted the pause in rate increases was not the prelude to cuts.

In response to a question as to when and at what level would the ECB begin to cut rates, she said the issue was “not discussed at all, and the debate would be absolutely premature.” She then emphasised the point, adding “even having a discussion on a cut is totally premature.”

Noting that Lagarde mentioned several times that the “economy basically stagnates,” one questioner asked whether there was a risk that the ECB might have gone too far in its rate increases.

This was brushed aside as Lagarde insisted the “mission” was to return inflation to 2 percent.

Besides the impact of higher ECB rates on the economy there are also concerns about the effect of the bond market selloff. This has seen the yield rise on the US 10-year Treasury, in many ways the benchmark for the global financial system. This approached 5 percent, for the first time since before the global financial crisis of 2008.

Yields at this level were not a problem in the past, in fact they were quite normal. However, more than a decade of ultra-low interest rates and the trillion of dollars pumped into the financial system by central banks have transformed the situation.

The mountain of debt and speculative deals built up during the period of so-called quantitative easing are now susceptible to sudden shifts in the bond market and could become a risk for financial stability.

Asked about this, Lagarde said that the movement in bond yields was outside the euro area and was not directly related to its fundamentals. She then handed the question over to ECB vice-president Luis de Guidos.

He indicated that it was an issue of concern.

“The increase in yields is something we are looking at very carefully. Why? Because the main risk that we have identified in the past, and continue to identify in the near future, is very high valuation in different kinds of assets.”

In the real estate market, he continued, an increase in yields “can give rise to an important correction.”

“So this is something that we are taking into consideration very, very closely and simultaneously all the factors such as the higher yields can have an impact on the non-bank financial intermediaries.”

This is a reference to hedge funds and other financial institutions outside the banking system which play an increasingly important role.

There was a “concentration of potential vulnerabilities” in term of liquidity risks and mismatches that can give rise to problems in this area “that is not totally isolated from rest of the financial system” because it has “important liaisons with the banks.”

US attacks Iranian “proxies” in Syria, as Israel intensifies assault on Gaza

Andre Damon

Two Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons return from a mission during Agile Spartan in the US Central Command area of responsibility, March 6, 2023. [Photo: Air Force Tech. Sgt. Daniel Asselta ]

Hours before Israel initiated a communications blackout of Gaza and intensified its massive assault on Palestinians, the United States dropped dozens of bombs on what it called Iranian “proxy” forces in Syria as part of its escalating standoff with Tehran.

The coordinated military escalations make clear that the military conflict is rapidly spreading into a war throughout the Middle East.

“Today, at President Biden’s direction, US military forces conducted self-defense strikes on two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated groups,” said US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a statement late Thursday night.

He continued, “Iran wants to hide its hand and deny its role in these attacks against our forces. We will not let them. If attacks by Iran’s proxies against US forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people.”

Two US Air Force F-16 fighters and Reaper drones dropped more than 30 bombs on what US officials said was a weapons storage facility and an ammunition storage facility near Abu Kamal, Syria.

Austin absurdly claimed that the strikes against pro-Iranian forces are “separate and distinct from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.” This is a bald-faced lie. The United States clearly sees Israel’s assault on Gaza as one component of a massive military operation now underway throughout the Middle East.

US officials have made clear that they would support Israel’s actions no matter what atrocities it is carrying out. “We’re not drawing red lines for Israel,” said White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby.

“The US sent a message tonight,” Mick Mulroy, a former defense official, told the New York Times. “We will directly respond against Iran, and specifically the IRGC, if they continue to attack our military positions and personnel in Iraq and Syria.”

On Thursday, the White House sent Congress a war powers notice regarding the strikes. “On the night of October 26, 2023, United States forces conducted targeted strikes against facilities in eastern Syria,” Biden wrote. “The precision strikes targeted facilities used by the IRGC and IRGC-affiliated groups for command and control, munitions storage, and other purposes.”

Biden continued, “The United States stands ready to take further action, as necessary and appropriate, to address further threats or attacks.”

Thursday night’s strikes followed Biden’s threat to Iran on Wednesday “that if they continue to move against those troops, we will respond.”

In response to Thursday night’s bombing, sections of the US political establishment demanded an even more aggressive escalation. “At least President Biden finally responded after more than a dozen provocations, but the Administration still isn’t grappling with the root cause of the region’s violence: Iran,” wrote the Wall Street Journal in an editorial.

“Pinprick bombing of weapons and ammo lockers aren’t proportionate to the enemy attacks,” the Journal continued. “Iran’s proxies have lobbed rockets or drones at U.S. positions at least 19 times since Oct. 17.”

The Journal wrote, “But a better example for restoring deterrence is former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Syria in 2018 when Russia’s Wagner Group and Bashar al-Assad fighters attacked a U.S. military position. As Gen. Mattis told Congress, he directed the attacking force ‘to be annihilated.’ And it was.”

The US is surging ships, troops and aircraft to the Middle East. The US has dispatched the USS Gerald R. Ford, its most advanced aircraft carrier, to the Mediterranean Sea, with its complement of 75 aircraft and up to five supporting warships. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its carrier battle group is on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

American imperialism has 30,000 military personnel stationed in the Middle East, which are being supplemented by 2,000 Marines aboard the vessels steaming toward the Middle East. In addition, the Pentagon said Thursday that 900 troops have either deployed or are getting ready to leave for the Middle East.

The US has also sent dozens of aircraft and has flown nearly 100 heavy-lift aircraft missions to the region.

Commenting on the situation, The Economist wrote, “It is fairly easy ... to envision scenarios in which American offensive action goes further to respond to attacks on allies rather than on Americans.”

It commented, “It is a measure of Joe Biden’s concern for how quickly things could spiral out of control that the White House has demanded a ‘contingency’ plan for evacuating up to 600,000 American citizens living in Israel and Lebanon. … It turns out there may yet be another chapter in the forever wars.”

The United Nations General Assembly voted Friday in favor of an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” in Gaza. The motion, which passed by a vote of 120 to 14, took place over the “no” vote of Israel and the United States. An amendment introduced by Canada that would have directly condemned Hamas’s incursion into Israel did not receive a two-thirds majority and failed.

The US escalation throughout the Middle East takes place as Israel intensifies its genocide in Gaza. On Thursday, Gaza’s Health Ministry published the names of more than 6,747 people who had been killed by Israeli bombings. The report noted that between October 7 and 26, 7,028 Palestinians were killed, and that another 281 bodies had not yet been identified.

The publication follows a statement by Biden that he has “no confidence” in the death toll published by Palestinian authorities.

UN officials likewise substantiated the death toll cited by Palestinian authorities. “We continue to include their data in our reporting, and it is clearly sourced,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told Reuters in a statement.

Dr. Mike Ryan, Executive Director World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, said the numbers are “generally consistent or within logic for the scale of killings one would expect, given the intensity of bombardment in such a densely populated area.”

In his remarks Wednesday stating that Palestinian authorities were inflating the US death toll, Biden asserted that the deaths of civilians is the “price of war.”

Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance 2024/2025

Application Deadline: 

• Early Admission Deadline: September 30, 2023
• Regular Admission Deadline: October 31, 2023

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance is a platform for highly educated young African social, business and political entrepreneurs, attending leading universities in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Our mission is to capture, inform and engage Africa’s global intellectual capital in the development of Africa.

Harambeans are African innovators who have pledged “to work together as one” to unlock the potential of Africa. Over the last decade, Harambeans has spawned a series of tech-enabled unicorns such as Andela, Flutterwave, and Yoco, which have collectively generated over 3000 jobs, raised over $700m from Google Ventures, CRE Ventures, and Accel.

African innovators interested in becoming Harambeans must submit an application to the Alliance and be interviewed by Harambeans. Candidates who make it past the interview stage are given the designation of Harambean Affiliates and invited to attend the Harambeans Bretton Woods Symposium, where they will be officially recognized as Associates of the Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance.

To become Harambeans eligible candidates must be of African birth or origin; currently enrolled in a college or university or be a recent graduate, and be at the early idea stage or advanced stages of a social or business venture focused on or related to Africa.

To gain access to specific opportunities within the Alliance i.e. Fellowships, Prosperity Fund, Scholarships please refer to the specific eligibility criteria for the opportunity.

Type: MBA

Eligibility: 

• Born in Africa and current passport holders of an African country
• Exhibited entrepreneurial leadership in their field of interest
• Two or more years of work experience
• Hold a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent
• Candidates must arrange to have official university transcripts, letters of recommendation and standardized test scores arrive at Yale School of Management by the appropriate application deadline

Selection: With over 3000 applications per year and 30 spots in each class, our competitive selection process enables us to assemble an exceptional cadre of African innovators.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: 

• Fellowships and Grants from our partners
• Scholarships (Fletcher / Oxford Skoll / Yale / Oxford Pershing Square)
• Mentors
• Venture Capital
• The Harambean Network

HBWS participants must cover the following costs:

• Flights to and from the symposium
• $50 Registration Fee: This fee will cover accommodation and meals for the 3 nights and 4 days of the HBWS XIV.

How to Apply: 

• Candidates must complete online HEA Application Apply Now

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

War in Gaza threatens global oil and gas price surge

Gabriel Black

In the almost four weeks since the October 7 rebellion by Hamas, bomb and missile strikes by the Israel Defense Forces have reduced large sections of the Gaza Strip to rubble, killing, officially, almost 7,000 Palestinian civilians. A total of 1.4 million people are thought to have been displaced from their homes. Drinkable water, food, fuel, electricity and the internet are all being denied to the 2.3 million people living in Gaza.

This genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state has ignited mass protests around the world—in many cases the largest anti-war protests since those against the Iraq war in 2003.

The Biden administration, already deeply committed to the proxy war against Russia raging in Ukraine, has now asked for $105 billion in additional funds for war. This is in addition to its over $1 trillion annual military budget. The US has moved two of its 11 aircraft carrier strike groups to the eastern Mediterranean in preparation for a broader war in the Middle East involving Iran. The Associated Press reports that the US has decided to “rush defenses and advisers to Middle East,” both to aid Israel’s imminent ground invasion of Gaza and to prepare for the outbreak of a far broader war involving Iran and the US.

The frenzied preparations of US imperialism—and its key allies—for a new, regional war in the Middle East, we wrote, “marks a major step in the escalation of what is, in fact, the initial stages of a third world war.”

The Middle East has long been a central concern of global geopolitics because of its disproportionate holding of the world’s best and largest oil and gas reserves.

OPEC, whose principal members are located in the Middle East and North Africa, holds approximately 65 percent of the world’s existing oil and gas resources. Since at least the 1930s, British and American imperialism have been fixated on using a combination of military force, assassinations, coups, bribery and other means to control this region. It is for this simple reason that President Biden explained to Congress recently, “[Israel] is the best three billion dollar investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.”

Oil prices have already climbed significantly since the war began. Brent crude, the leading price benchmark used for global oil trades, climbed by almost ten dollars per barrel in the opening two weeks of the war. Because oil and natural gas comprise two-thirds of the energy used in the global economy, movements in their prices have a broad and disproportionate impact on the prices of all goods. Oil fuels not just cars but the global trucking, shipping and aviation industries, as well as an assortment of critical petrochemical products and industrial processes. Natural gas is the leading fuel used for heating and electricity generation worldwide. Solar, though quickly growing, accounts for just 2 percent of the world’s current energy use.

Right now, oil prices remain volatile. The minute-to-minute news of the escalating war is causing speculators to nervously place bets in different directions. When two hostages were released by Hamas, prices went down. But after the relentless bombardment by Israeli forces over the last 48 hours, prices went up as traders worried about a spiraling conflict.

At the time of writing, Brent crude is traded for $88.50 a barrel on the open market. Should, however, the war unfold, and the United States launch major strikes against Iran, it is possible that the price for oil could double or even triple.

Fire and smoke billowing from Norwegian-owned Front Altair tanker said to have been attacked in the waters of the Gulf of Oman on June 13, 2019 [Photo: Iranian Students News Agency]

According to a recent research note from Bank of America, the price for oil could go as high as $250 a barrel should the war significantly escalate.

A $250 per barrel oil price would have catastrophic impacts on consumption and economic growth worldwide, likely triggering a global recession within months. The price of oil has never climbed that high. The closest it has gotten to that level was in 2008, about a month before the unraveling of the global financial crisis, when it climbed to $210 in today’s dollars.

Bank of America writes that $250 would be a more extreme case. But even its more moderate suggestion, that prices almost double to $150, would cause major duress.

The key reason behind these possibilities is that one third of the world’s sea-traded oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz every day (about a quarter of the world’s overall oil). Iran’s capacity to stop trade going through the strait is one of its leading forms of defense against a potential war with the United States.

Map of Strait of Hormuz [Photo by Goran_tek-en / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The Guardian quotes Nicholas Farr, of Capital Economics, who laid out a potential scenario of escalation.

Iranian-backed Hezbollah has exchanged missile fire with Israel from Lebanon, which has the potential to open up a new front in the conflict. If Iran were drawn into the war this would create major global risks by disrupting energy supplies and pushing up oil prices. Natural gas prices could be affected too if there’s disruption to LNG [liquefied natural gas] exports.

As General Frank McKenzie, the former head of US Central Command, stated in an interview with NPR, a regional war involving Hezbollah, the US, and Iran is “uniquely possible.”

Platts, a leading oil research service, describes oil markets as “on edge,” but notes that, at present, the majority of OPEC, which includes Iran, has no interest in disrupting global oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Washington-based think tanks are beating the drum for retaliatory economic and military strikes against Iran.

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a major Israeli-supported American think tank, writes, “so far America has dispatched, among other assets, two aircraft-carrier groups, their associated guided-missile destroyers and a Marine Corps expeditionary unit capable of conducting amphibious operations.”

For the Washington Institute, however, this is not enough. They continue:

America’s display of force in the Mediterranean is impressive, to be sure—and there is more to come: the Pentagon says it will send a THAAD air-defence missile system and Patriot missile battalions to the region. But it remains unclear whether this muscle-flexing is actually curbing the involvement of other actors, or will prevent the war from spreading. For America’s deterrent threat to be credible, it will have to act decisively against emerging provocations.

The institute recommends “increasing economic pressure” against Iran, ultimately declaring, “Washington may have no choice but to engage militarily.”

The logic of these positions, swirling in the minds of war planners at the Pentagon and in Tel Aviv, leads to global war. They are openly admitting that satisfying the ambitions of US imperialism in the region requires—whether they like it or not—a direct military confrontation with Iran.

Given the broader geopolitical context—the war against Russia and highly advanced plans for war with China—such a “strike of the match” could explode into a world war, or at the very least mark the first major stage of one.

But the initiation of such a conflict would, as the question of energy shows, contain enormous contradictions within it. Should the desires of the Washington Institute, and its supporters at the Pentagon and in Tel Aviv, be realized, Iran could likely retaliate through the “energy weapon.”

In 2022, following Russia’s provoked invasion of Ukraine, the NATO powers, led by the US, initiated a global ban on Russian oil and gas exports. While the actual efficacy of those measures is debated—it reduced the price at which Russia was able to sell its energy, but not block sales, instead redirecting flows to Asia—the consequences, globally, were tremendous.

The year 2022 marked an incredibly challenging year for billions of people across the globe as the prices for nearly everything surged. In the United States, the annual rate of inflation reached 8.3 percent. In Europe, a horrible winter of high electricity prices dug into all working people and slowed industrial production. In Sri Lanka in July 2022, an uprising against the government was triggered by the skyrocketing cost of fuel and cooking gas.

While inflation, globally, is not as high as it was in 2022, prices have not gone down; they are just not rising as quickly.

The machinations of US imperialism, globally, are leading the world into a spiraling crisis of global war. As the unfolding genocide against Gaza demonstrates, the pursuit of US geopolitical aims will lead to catastrophic, unforeseen and cascading impacts.

Thousands march in Costa Rica against right-wing Chaves administration

Andrea Lobo

At least 10,000 people marched from downtown San José, Costa Rica, to the presidential building on Wednesday to protest the escalation of the assault on living standards and deepening social austerity under President Rodrigo Chaves, who is openly following the diktats of his former employer, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

Workers march on the office of the presidency in San Jose

Broad sectors of the population already engaged in an escalating wave of social protests against Chaves coalesced around numerous demands in the largest demonstration since at least 2019, with the defense of public healthcare and education being the most central issues.

Since thousands protested in August 2022 to oppose cuts to universities, the country has seen an ongoing wave of protests, including in March 2023 by farmers’ associations, in July and August 2023 by high school students against budget cuts, along with several partial strikes and demonstrations by healthcare workers, among others. 

This upsurge takes place in the context of a resurgence of the class struggle internationally. In the rest of Central America, Panamanians opposing a destructive mining concession and Guatemalans resisting an attempt by prosecutors to prevent the elected President Bernardo Arévalo from taking office have carried out mass protests and roadblocks for weeks. 

The demonstration on Sunday was convoked by a “Mesa de Diálogo Social” and the “National Front of Struggle for the Defense of Social Gains” comprised of over 60 organizations, including trade unions, public universities, high school and university student groups, professional associations and neighborhood, peasant and farmers movements. 

The leaderships of these organizations explicitly seek to channel the social ferment in the working class behind talks with the Chaves administration. 

For decades, the political establishment, including all political parties, trade unions and university and state bureaucrats have betrayed countless efforts by workers to resist attacks against their social and democratic rights. There is nothing to be gained for workers through back-room talks between these forces. 

Workers and youth marching in San José, on the other hand, expressed a clear radicalization and militant determination to put a stop to these attacks on their social and democratic rights. 

Yorleny, a nurse at the Jiménez Núñez Clinic in San José, explained: “We must raise our voices. We must demand that every day we are paid what is fair. The sacrifices our families make—one deprives oneself of many things—at least it should be recognized economically. We are demonstrating because of the waiting lists [for medical services], because of all the lies they are telling that the Caja is bankrupt while the Government does not pay the debt it owes. We have had our salaries frozen for many years. We do not earn the millions that they say public employees earn. We are nurses and we are paid as auxiliaries. They overload us with work and don’t pay us for those nursing services. And if something happens, we are judged as nurses.”

The Chaves government outright refuses to pay an accumulated debt to the healthcare and pension system, called the “Caja,” of $5.8 billion. Meanwhile, next year’s public debt repayments for bankers and bondholders will amount to $11 billion, which could more than cover the debt to the Caja. But the 2024 healthcare budget will not even cover two-thirds of its yearly operational needs, according to official figures. 

Yamileth and Yorleny, nurses at the Ricardo Jiménez Núñez Clinic

Her co-worker Yamileth, added: “For every 10 people there is one assistant or nurse. It’s too exhausting, we work so hard and don’t get any recognition at all. Besides, with the pandemic, they recruited a lot of people, and as soon as it was over, they sent a lot of people home. Now they are unemployed. Internationally, it’s the same issues. Frontline workers were laid off, and now we are all facing money problems to provide for our family.” 

Elena, a worker and student at the Tecnológico college (TEC) said, “There are many countries in South America that for years have been taking to the streets to defend their rights and we have been late. We all should demand and have the right to demand improvements in education, food, security.”

“The time to fight is now,” Sergio, another worker at TEC said. “We are running out of time. If we could unite across countries, it would be much better. The cuts are obviously due to the government’s preference to distribute funds to other financial entities to further impoverish the country. Like education. If it were to be private, only the rich would be able to study.”

A co-worker explained: “It is a profitable business. Without public education, without access, people are cornered into going into debt for private education. Because of the long waiting lists, if you are deprived of access to public healthcare, you have to pay for private services.” 

Marta, a professor at TEC, noted: “I am a product of a public school, a public high school, and a public university. In Costa Rica, education has always been our “Sunday dress,” something we can be proud of, and now it is not. Public education is being limited in all its aspects. What some people in the government want is to have people without education.”

As a result of a massive assault against the jobs, wages and benefits in the public sector, compensation has dropped from over 7 percent of GDP in 2013 to 3.66 percent last year. Meanwhile, the fastest growing expenditure has been servicing the debt. The government plans to spend nearly half of the 2024 budget in debt repayment and interests to the local and global financial aristocracy. This compares to 22.3 percent for employee compensations, 20.6 percent for education, 13.1 percent for social programs, 7.9 percent for security, 3.1 percent for infrastructure, 2.8 percent for healthcare and 0.4 percent for the environment. 

Chaves has prided himself on opposing the constitutionally mandated 8 percent of the GDP for public education and plans to spend 5.2 percent next year.

Gustavo, a student at the University of Costa Rica who was holding a Palestinian flag, connected the fight for social rights in Costa Rica with the struggle in defense of Palestinians and against war. 

“I came to march against the government, in defense of the Caja, but this takes place in the context of a genocide being carried out in Palestine by the illegitimate and terrorist state of Israel,” he explained and added:

Today, in spite of all the propaganda in favor of Israel in the imperialist media, people are no longer buying the story that there are child terrorists and that they organize terrorism. It is not true. The genocide that Israel has been carrying out for decades is terribly disproportionate in terms of human lives killed and technical, scientific, military and other tools that Israel has against the Palestinians, who use extremely rudimentary weapons to defend themselves. The numbers speak for themselves. 

I connect their struggle with the struggles here, which are precisely about the people removing the yoke of imperialism. 

They only care about the people paying with what we have won historically, such as the Caja, so that they can have their profits. We must be very conscious of this: the children who are dying in Gaza, the brave people who are rising up in Niger and other African countries, the Ukrainians and Russian brothers and sisters fighting—because in the end they are brothers!—have much more in common with us here in Costa Rica trying to get rid of the IMF cuts, than politicians who are very Costa Rican but who sell us out. Costa Rica is not an island isolated from the world. It is a cog in a much larger machine.

Johanna, an activist of the Committee of Struggle for Housing La Morocha in the working class suburb of Alajuelita explained that Chaves is cutting funds for the Bank for Housing (Banhvi), the CEN-CINAI [daycare] and other social programs.

Johana, a worker fighting for housing in Alajuelita, and her son

Banhvi, which develops social housing and provides housing assistance, warned earlier this year that the cuts planned by the Chaves administration would leave 6,000 families homeless and affect the jobs of 28,000 construction workers. 

She explained:

If they cut off our water and electricity, how can we iron our children’s uniforms? The struggle for housing should not be cut back any further. We are hundreds of families who need that housing. Not only for me, but for the children. 

There are single mothers who cannot work. I am one of them. I have four children; how can I work?

Drive out those officials who want to make cuts against the poor, who work so hard to pay for decent insurance for our children! They want to take this away from us. It is not fair.

A fellow member of the committee added: “We are broke. We are in bad shape. We have had to struggle too much.”