On the night of Thursday, 19 August, police in Vénissieux, a suburb south of Lyon, shot and killed two men during a traffic stop. The passenger, aged 20, was killed instantly; the driver, aged 26, was taken to hospital where he was declared dead on Saturday. After being taken into custody for an interview after the incident, the officers involved in the killing were released without charge on Friday.
According to the police account of the incident, the two men were in a stationary car when they were approached by police. After police had surrounded the car, the driver began to move the vehicle and hit a police officer. Then the other fired eight rounds into the vehicle, killing its two occupants. So far, no witnesses have come forward to verify or contradict the official account. The officer who was allegedly struck by the car did not suffer any serious injuries.
This is the third police shooting of this kind since Macron’s re-election on April 24. The first occurred that very night of Macron’s re-election, when police killed two occupants of a car on Pont Neuf bridge in central Paris. Then, on the morning of June 4, a passenger was killed after police fired nine rounds into a car in Clignancourt in the north of the city.
After a series of exposures of official accounts of recent acts of police violence, there is little reason to accept the officers’ account of the Vénissieux shooting on face value. The accounts of passengers and witnesses in the June 4 killing contradicted the police account of the event, which was very similar to the explanation given for Thursday’s shooting. Witnesses of the June shooting claimed that police shot the driver before the vehicle began to move forward, not after, as the police claimed.
The official police account of the police rampage against Liverpool fans at the Champions League final in late May was also contradicted by subsequently released evidence. A massive cover-up involving the upper echelons of the police was indicated by the deletion of hours of CCTV from the Stade de France on the night of the final. The affair was so embarrassing for the French government that the chief of Paris police was forced to resign.
It is also highly significant that Vénissieux killing came amid a massive campaign recently initiated by the French state directed against working class areas of Lyon.
The transfer occurred after members of the public intervened to save a man being chased by three plainclothes officers in La Guillotière, a neighborhood of Lyon just 2.5 kilometers north of Vénissieux, at the end of July. The officers were chasing a man accused of petty theft. None of them were seriously injured during the public’s intervention.
The incident was the subject of a hysterical campaign by pro-government media denouncing as a “lynching” the intervention of the public to save a man being chased by cops whom residents could not in any way identify as law enforcement officers.
On a trip to Lyon in the aftermath of the incident, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin deliberately inflamed the situation, stressing the need to “retake control” of the district. As part of these measures, Darmanin sent 70 additional police officers to La Guillotière and added more cops to the newly formed Specialized Field Brigade (BST) unit in Lyon.
In response to this minor incident, the police-initiated a series of roundups in the city. The first saw the arrest of 18 individuals, a number with little connection to the incident in question. A week later, a further round-up involved 10 more arrests. It was in this extremely tense atmosphere that cops shot the two young men dead in Vénissieux on Thursday evening.
An official inquest into the officers’ actions has been opened but will be under the jurisdiction of the General Inspectorate of the National Police, which itself is a section of the national police answerable to Darmanin.
In response to Thursday’s incident, Darmanin made clear that police violence will continue to have the full support of the Macron government. Even before the conclusion of his own minister’s investigation, he presented the police account as established fact, denouncing, a “clear [act of] aggression against these police officers … I want to say to all the police and gendarmes of France, who face refusals to obey every day, since there is one every half hour, that I support them a priori.”
Darmanin’s promise of “a priori” support for police in the aftermath of deadly violence reiterates the government’s unconditional support for the police to shoot and kill individuals with impunity.
In the face of an escalating war with Russia, deepening economic crisis, and mass deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, the French capitalist state is fast dispensing with the last vestiges of respect for basic democratic rights.
Macron’s victory in the April 24 election has only accelerated his efforts to construct a police state in France. Amidst the crisis facing the French and European ruling class the president has vowed to “double” the number of police on the streets.
The French ruling class aims to have at its disposal a police force that is experienced in the use extreme violence against the population. Well-publicized “a priori” government support for cops involved in deadly shootings is aimed at normalizing police murder. This is manifestly a preventive measure against the outbreak of protests against Macron’s policies of war, slashing living standards through inflation, and mass infection with COVID-19, anticipating an eruption of protests in France and internationally that would eclipse even those of his first term.
In Lyon, the local section of pseudo-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) party, part of the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES), reiterated its support for the Macron government’s build-up of the police in response to the shooting.
While a communique from the LFI local 69 called for the abolition of newly introduced specialist BST units, it also stated: “We must significantly increase the training time for police officers, including on carrying weapons. We must also give them more means to investigate and prevent crimes.”
The explosion of police violence must be taken as a warning: a crisis-ridden capitalist state, pursuing fundamentally unpopular policies, aims to maintain its grip on power by brute force. The police’s role as defenders of the capitalist state mean they cannot be “trained,” as LFI claims, to avoid brutality. Police murder is the inevitable outcome of the ruling elite’s use of the police as the last line of defense against explosive popular opposition to Macron.
To be taken at (country): Universities, Universities of Applied Sciences, or Universities of the Arts in Germany
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About Heinrich Böll Foundation Scholarships: The Heinrich Böll Foundation grants scholarships to approximately 1,000 undergraduates, graduates, and doctoral students of all subjects and nationalities per year, who are pursuing their degree at universities, universities of applied sciences (‘Fachhochschulen’), or universities of the arts (‘Kunsthochschulen’) in Germany.
The special focus regions for international students are Central and Eastern Europe; EU neighborhood countries and the CIS; the Middle East and North Africa; transition and newly industrialized countries; and conflict regions worldwide.
Selection Criteria: Heinrich Böll Foundation Scholarship recipients are expected to have excellent academic records, to be socially and politically engaged, and to have an active interest in the basic values of the foundation: ecology and sustainability, democracy and human rights, self determination and justice.
Eligibility: The following general requirements apply to international student applicants (except EU citizens) who wish to study in Germany:
You must be enrolled at a state-recognized university or college (e.g. Fachhochschule) in Germany at the time the scholarship payments begin.
You should provide proof that you have already graduated with an initial professional qualification. This programme mainly supports students aiming for a Masters degree.
You need a good knowledge of German, and require you provide proof of your proficiency. Please note that the selection workshop (interviews, group discussions) will normally be in German. Exceptions (interview in English) are, however, possible.
Unfortunately, the current guidelines specify that the foundation cannot support foreign scholarship holders for stays abroad in third countries for more than four weeks.
You should definitely apply for a scholarship before the start of your studies, in order to ensure long-term support and cooperation.
The Heinrich Böll Foundation cannot award you a scholarship, if you are studying for a one-year Masters degree and were not previously supported by the foundation.
Applications are possible before you begin your study programme or within the first three semesters.
Applicants must provide proof that they have been accepted as a doctoral student by an institution of higher education in Germany or an EU country (for doctoral scholarship).
Number of Scholarships: Approximately 1000
Duration of Heinrich Böll Foundation Scholarships: Scholarship will be offered for the duration of the undergraduate, Masters or Doctoral programme
How to Apply: The application form will be completed online; additional application documents will be submitted as PDF.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced that his administration is moving forward with plans to cancel $10,000 of student debt for those who earn less than $125,000 per year. A total of $20,000 will be forgiven for recipients of Pell grants, who are students from low-income backgrounds.
While student debt relief is urgently needed, the Biden administration is carrying out the debt decision on the most cynical grounds. The $10,000 amount of relief is entirely inadequate at addressing the pressing needs of millions of Americans saddled with debt and struggling to make ends meet.
About 15 million students and former students will see their debt entirely erased. For students owing the average total debt of $30,000, about one-third will be erased. For those with much higher debts, however, particularly those with debt from graduate and professional education, the proportion will be much lower.
Graduating college students (Wikimedia Commons)
The measure is a carefully planned maneuver, timed to coincide with the upcoming midterm elections, hoping to encourage votes for Democratic candidates. This political calculation is also demonstrated by the extension of the payment moratorium, set to expire in September, until January 1, 2023.
The moratorium was first provided by the Trump administration in March 2020 in the initial response to the COVID pandemic, applying to 41 million student loan borrowers. It has been subsequently extended, most recently by Biden in May, until August 31, 2022, with the first payments due by October 1, 2022, only a month before the midterm election.
In his remarks at the White House announcing the plan, Biden said, “the cost [of a college degree] is so heavy that even if you graduate you may not have access to the middle-class life that the college degree once provided.”
The White House stated that the cancellation will go into effect sometime before loan payments resume at the end of the year and that in the next few weeks an application process will be created to prove income qualifications.
In total, the cancellation would cover about $300 billion of the over $1.6 trillion in total student loan debt. The cancellation applies only to loan debt held by the federal government through the Department of Education and not any privately held debt.
A total of 45 million people in the United States now have student loan debt to the government. An additional 3 million have debt through private financiers that is unaffected by the president’s decision.
Biden also said that under the decision, monthly payments for loans will be reduced to a maximum of 5 percent of an individual’s income and that debt not paid off after 20 years of consecutive payments will be forgiven.
While millions of debt holders will welcome the relief the cancellation will provide, the fact is that the vast majority of student debt remains and the cancellation plan removes only a fraction. Well over $1.3 trillion dollars in students’ debt will still remain after the forgiveness takes full effect.
In his remarks the president made several references to his “Republican friends” who oppose the cancellation of debt. Biden stressed that the cancellation will not significantly add to the inflation crisis, at least not more than the forgiveness of business loans that Republicans supported.
What was not mentioned at all by Biden, and is missing from the reports in the major media, is that the government has raised the interest on current student loans in keeping with the rate rises set by the Federal Reserve, most recently (in July) from 3.7 percent to 5 percent. This means that current and future students will accumulate debt even faster than the previous generation of borrowers.
And rates can only be expected to increase further as Kansas City Federal Reserve President Esther George said in an interview the same day as the president’s announcement, “We have to get interest rates higher to slow down demand and bring inflation back to our target.”
For example, taking the average amount of loan debt of $30,000 over 10 years at a 5 percent rate, a borrower will pay $8,183 in interest on top of their loan principal. If rates are increased to 6.5 percent, future students will pay over $10,000 in interest on their loans.
Much of the Democratic Party congressional leadership was pushing for a much larger cancellation, closer to $50,000 per student, in a desperate effort to strike a populist stance before the midterm election, but Biden decided on a policy that represents essentially the least he could do, while still hoping to generate some electoral payback.
At the same time, the move is under ferocious right-wing attack, from business interests, the right-wing media, the entire Republican Party, and the most right-wing sections of the Democratic Party, including Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell absurdly denounced the action as “socialism,” while the Wall Street Journal postured as the defender of Fedex drivers and construction workers who, they claimed, would be paying for student loan forgiveness for privileged youth.
The United States has assumed a commanding lead as the global epicenter of the monkeypox pandemic, far outpacing other countries in Europe and the Americas. As of August 25, 2022, the US has reported over 16,500 monkeypox infections out of almost 46,000 such cases worldwide. Every state in the country has reported cases, with New York and California leading. The seven-day average of new cases has consistently been over 1,100 in August.
Monkeypox
Early during the global outbreak the World Health Network (WHN), concerned about the dangers posed by the growing outbreak, declared monkeypox a pandemic on June 22, 2022, ahead of the first emergency committee meeting held by the World Health Organization (WHO). It would be more than a month later and under extraordinary circumstances that Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus overruled the committee’s opinion at its second reconvening and declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
Back in June the WHN had warned that though the disease was so far found predominantly among men who have sex with men, inaction on the part of governments and federal public health agencies would lead to the expansion of the outbreak among vulnerable populations, such as children, pregnant women and immunocompromised individuals.
Historically, the case fatality rate with Clade I of the monkeypox virus (also known as the West African clade) has been around 1 percent but higher among those with HIV and the youngest. The WHO has said there have been 12 deaths confirmed so far during the present outbreak.
Indeed, concerns over the spread of monkeypox among the pediatric population is mounting. According to the tracking website Tableau Public, 44 pediatric cases have been reported so far in the US. Florida, where the fascistic Governor Ron DeSantis has repeatedly dismissed the dangers of the pandemic, has recorded the most with 18 of the state’s 1,669 confirmed cases among children. Notably, Florida’s K-12 schools opened on August 10. California has reported six pediatric cases, Texas five, and Virginia four.
There is much that remains unknown about the way monkeypox transmits, duration of contact needed, how the virus enters the host’s cells, and the course of the disease. This includes the risk of asymptomatic transmission during the incubation period and after all lesions have healed. The route of transmission has been speculated to be predominantly through close contact with lesions on the skin, though indirect contact through contaminated clothing or bedding of an infected person and airborne transmission have been found.
Previously, experts on monkeypox had recommended PCR testing on respiratory mucosa to prove the disease is cleared after lesions had healed, before allowing infected individuals to leave isolation. Though quarantine as a result of close exposure has not been recommended by the public health officials, a quarantine period under medical observation ensures attention can be provided immediately and prevents others from inadvertently being infected.
The precautionary principle requires an earnest and transparent approach given the limits of our understanding of the disease. This means employing appropriate measures until researchers can test these critical questions and analyze the data.
However, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to play fast and loose with its guidelines, recalling CDC Director Rochelle Walensky’s criticisms of the agency in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not a failing of the CDC’s medical and research functions but a demonstration of its role in doing the state’s bidding. In this regard, current CDC guidance on monkeypox for schools is analogous to its previous guidelines on COVID-19: enforcing the reopening of schools by downplaying the dangers posed by monkeypox’s entry into pediatric populations.
As an example, in the instructions posted as Frequently Asked Questions, the CDC claims that “at this time, there is no need for widespread vaccination for monkeypox among children or staff at K-12 schools or early childhood settings.” It added, “children, staff, and volunteers who are exposed to a person with monkeypox do not need to be excluded from an educational setting in most cases.” It also noted, “Individuals exposed to monkeypox virus can continue their routine daily activities (e.g., go to work or school) as long as they do not have signs or symptoms consistent with monkeypox.”
Even if not fatal, the course of the disease can be quite debilitating, with as many as 13 percent of those infected needing hospitalization. Besides suffering from high fevers, malaise, headaches and very tender and enlarged lymph nodes, patients find the lesions quite painful and possibly prone to infection. Involvement of eyes is not uncommon, and even blindness can result, although it is rare. Some patients have developed painful groin and rectal lesions and mouth sores that have been described as incapacitating. Yet the CDC has not requested the current vaccines be authorized for children as post-exposure prophylaxis. For them to be effective they should be given as soon as possible, within four days of exposure.
The shift of the virus into the pediatric population has also been confirmed by Brazilian health officials, who have reported 77 such cases. According to a report in the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) published August 23, more than 25 percent of Brazilian pediatric cases were in children under five.
So far, a large majority of confirmed cases in the US and UK have come from men who have sex with men. However, as the social network for monkeypox continues to grow, the demand for vaccines will outstrip availability. There is already a national and global shortage of the Jynneos Bavarian Nordic smallpox vaccine, a problem that is very far from being remedied.
The White House’s response continues to focus on the LGBTQ+ community through a vaccine-only approach. Experience with COVID-19 has demonstrated the failure of this approach, which ignores the tenets of public health: contact tracing, testing, case detection and confirmation, isolation and ring vaccination. Additionally, frequent and open communication about the status of the outbreak with communities is critical to gain their trust and cooperation.
Scientists, doctors, educators and parents have expressed alarm on social media in response to the CDC guidelines. The handling of the COVID-19 pandemic by the Trump and Biden administrations has been widely seen as disastrous. Increasingly it is being recognized that the public health guidelines are being shaped by political policy aimed at maintaining private profits at all costs over human life.
The distrusted and discredited CDC and the entire political establishment in the United States are once again pushing children back into underfunded and poorly ventilated schools after another summer of doing little or nothing at all to improve the safety conditions for children, teachers and support staff.
The National Education Association estimates that there are 300,000 teacher and staff vacancies in the US after two years of mass resignations and early retirements. Under these conditions how can children be properly supervised? How can undetected cases of monkeypox and COVID-19 be avoided?
It is also worth noting that there are incalculable dangers posed by the unfettered spread of two global pandemics at the same time. Post COVID-19 studies have shown that the virus can cause damage to nearly every organ system in the body, including the neurological and immune systems. It has affected young and old patients alike, in both severe and mild cases of the disease. The consequences can be considerable in light of the rise of large outbreaks of new pathogens in rapid succession. In just the last two decades we have faced SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Ebola, SARS-CoV-2, monkeypox and polio.
At the same time, environmental destruction causes other species of animals to seek out new habitats and come into more frequent contact with humans, increasing the likelihood of the emergence of new zoonotic diseases in the human population, posing new risks. The possibility of other pandemics emerging is a looming threat the world over.
Liz Truss, foreign secretary and most likely the next Conservative prime minister of the UK, has declared that she would launch a nuclear strike on Russia, even though the result would be “global annihilation.”
During a Tory Party leadership husting in Birmingham Tuesday to determine who will replace Boris Johnson, John Pienaar of Times Radio told Truss that if she became prime minister, she would be quickly shown the procedures for launching nuclear missiles from Britain’s Trident submarines. “It would mean global annihilation,” Pienaar said. “I won’t ask you if you would press the button, you’ll say yes, but faced with that task I would feel physically sick. How does that thought make you feel?”
With dead eyes and an emotionless expression, Truss replied, “I think it’s an important duty of the Prime Minister and I’m ready to do that.”
“I’m ready to do that,” she repeated, soliciting a round of applause from the assembled Tories.
Truss’s robotic and instantaneous reply must sound a warning to workers throughout the world as to how close we now stand to nuclear Armageddon.
She speaks as one of the foremost hawks among the NATO powers in supporting the proxy war against Russia being waged by the Ukrainian regime and a leading propagandist for direct military conflict with Moscow. In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov citing “unacceptable” remarks “by various representatives at various levels” about possible “clashes” between NATO and Moscow: “I would not call the authors of these statements by name, although it was the British foreign minister.”
Truss had recently told Sky News, “If we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, we are going to see others under threat: the Baltics, Poland, Moldova, and it could end up in a conflict with NATO.”
But Truss also speaks on behalf of the entire British ruling class. Not only would her leadership rival Rishi Sunak have also replied in the affirmative, but so would any other member of the UK political establishment seeking the country’s highest office.
Ever since tensions with Russia and China began to be ratcheted up by London and Washington, it has become necessary to openly declare a readiness to start a nuclear war. This began in 2015, when Jeremy Corbyn first won leadership of the Labour Party, above all based on his opposition to the Iraq war and leadership of the Stop the War Coalition. When asked in an interview on September 15, 2015 whether he would instruct the UK’s defence chiefs to use the Trident nuclear weapons system if he became prime minister, Corbyn said no. He came under relentless attack, with the Tories, Blairites and military figures declaring him unfit for office, and he capitulated on all fronts.
In a July 18, 2016 debate, then-newly installed Tory Prime Minister Theresa May declared her own readiness to launch a nuclear strike framed as an attack on Corbyn. Corbyn’s replacement as Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, was also asked by the BBC on February 10 this year whether he would be willing to use nuclear weapons and replied, “Of course.” This was just 14 days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Starmer was speaking following a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, on which he commented, “Whatever challenges we have with the government, when it comes to Russian aggression we stand together.”
This is the broader international significance of Truss’s declaration for nuclear war. Not only is this the policy of British imperialism. It is the policy being actively pursued by all the NATO powers, led by the US.
The NATO summit in Madrid, Spain in June adopted a strategy document outlining plans to militarize the European continent, massively escalate the war with Russia, and prepare for war with China. It pledged specifically to “deliver the full range of forces” needed “for high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitors.”
Russia and China were named respectively as a “threat” and a “challenge” to “our interests.” NATO’s “nuclear deterrence posture”, centred on US nuclear weapons “forward-deployed in Europe” is placed at the centre of a strategy to “deter, defend, contest and deny across all domains and directions”.
NATO military figures already feel free to openly discuss waging nuclear war. At a symposium in June, the head of the German Luftwaffe, Ingo Gerhartz, declared, “For credible deterrence, we need both the means and the political will to implement nuclear deterrence, if necessary,” before adding, “Putin, don’t mess with us!” On August 13, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the former commanding officer of the UK’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, wrote in the Telegraph to insist, “Britain should prepare for nuclear war.”
Truss translated these discussions into the fascistic barks and grunts that have made her the darling of the Tory Party.
According to a recent National Institutes of Health survey, United Press International reports, “use of marijuana and hallucinogens among young adults in the United States reached an all-time high in 2021.”
According to the survey, 43% of young adults admitted to having used cannabis in the past year, with 8% saying they’ve tried LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, or other “hallucinogens.”
That, believe it or not, is good news. Both of these “drug” categories have a history of use as long as the history of humanity, with known medical and mental benefits, few negative side effects, and virtually no correlation to violent behaviors.
None of these items should have ever been illegal to use, possess, sell, or grow/manufacture in the first place, and increasing familiarity with them continues to feed growing opposition to the “war on drugs.”
They’re all, in three words, “safer than alcohol.”
Which, the same survey says, remains the most popular “drug,” with binge drinking rebounding from a 2020 low and “high-intensity” drinking steadily increasing.
That’s the bad news.
If I knew one of my children (all now thankfully and safely out of their teens) was going out to “party,” and that recreational substances would be involved, I’d much rather they got into a bag of weed or some mushroom caps than into a case of beer or a fifth of bourbon. There’s just less potential for senseless brawls, sexual assault, or driving while impaired.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve personally got nothing against alcohol, and don’t think it should be illegal. I use it, although these days I drink maybe a six-pack of beer and a few ounces of whiskey a year; it used to be … well, quite a bit more.
Here’s the thing:
People have both self-medicated and recreationally dosed themselves with various things since there have been humans.
They’ll keep doing so, even if politicians get together and decree that they mustn’t.
The choice we face is not between a society of junkies and a “drug-free America.” History has taught us that neither of those things is going to happen.
The choice is between a society where we’re free to choose what we eat, drink, smoke, or otherwise ingest — and are responsible for what follows — or a society where eating, drinking, smoking, or otherwise ingesting the “wrong” substance may mean prison whether we harmed anyone else or not.
We’re moving in the former direction. And should continue to do so.
Thousands of people will die this autumn and winter in Britain as a result of fuel poverty, in what National Health Service (NHS) bosses warn is a looming “humanitarian crisis”.
Last Friday the NHS Confederation, representing the health service in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said it needed to make an “unprecedented move” and warn of the terrible implications of tens of millions more people being plunged into fuel poverty.
NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor said, “The country is facing a humanitarian crisis. Many people could face the awful choice between skipping meals to heat their homes and having to live in cold, damp and very unpleasant conditions. This in turn could lead to outbreaks of illness and sickness around the country and widen health inequalities, worsen children’s life chances and leave an indelible scar on local communities.”
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, warns “The country is facing a humanitarian crisis. Many people could face the awful choice between skipping meals to heat their homes and having to live in in cold, damp and very unpleasant conditions. This in turn could lead to outbreaks of illness and sickness around the country and widen health inequalities, worsen children’s life chances and leave an indelible scar on local communities."
The organisation wrote to Conservative Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi ahead of an announcement to be made on August 26 on the new energy price cap, noting “latest estimates suggesting that the cap could go as high as £4,200 by January.”
Introducing the letter, the body raised its concern “that widespread fuel poverty will increase the already high number of annual deaths associated with cold homes estimated at around 10,000 a year.”
The letter states, “Even taking into account the £400 cost-of-living rebate promised by the government,” price rises “will push over two thirds of UK households into fuel poverty, exacerbating health inequalities that were already widened during the pandemic.
“Healthcare leaders warn that rising rates of fuel poverty will be a public health emergency, causing and exacerbating physical and mental illness across the whole population and further straining already stretched health and care services.”
The energy cap figures cited by the NHS Confederation likely underestimate the catastrophic financial burden being imposed on the working class. According to predictions published Tuesday by consultancy Auxilione, due to expected rising natural gas prices, average yearly energy bills are set to rise to £3,576 from October 1, £5,066 in January 2023 and, in just seven months’ time, £6,552 from April 2023.
Millions of households are already in fuel poverty, but price gouging on this scale will plunge most of the population, especially workers, into dire straits.
In April, 22 million people saw bills shoot up by an average of £693, from £1,277 to £1,971 per year. Prepayment customers, mainly the poorest people, saw an increase of £708 from £1,309 to £2,017. This rise led to 6.32 million households being thrust into fuel poverty. Within weeks, as new bills from October run into many thousands of pounds, tens of millions of people will be unable to afford to cook, turn the heating on, or even wash.
According to research published by the University of York last week, two thirds (65.8 percent) of all UK households will be trapped in fuel poverty by January. This equates to 18 million families, or 45 million people.
In a country with over 14 million already living in crushing poverty, the staggering increases in energy bills alone will wipe out all disposable income for millions and most of if not all the savings of millions more.
The crisis is massively compounded by price surges that set a new record each month. Last week the lower consumer prices index (CPI) measure of inflation reached over 10 percent for the first time in 40 years, while the more accurate retail prices index (RPI) measure shot up to nearly 12.5 percent. This week US financial services group Citi predicted that CPI would hit 18 percent in the first quarter of 2023, and the retail prices index rate would soar to 21 percent.
This impossible situation is driving sharp increases in poverty, malnutrition and suicide attempts. At the weekend Karim Brohi, a Trauma and Vascular Surgeon and Director of the London Major Trauma System, tweeted, “Multiple admissions for attempted suicide overnight, again. ‘Jumped because can’t afford to eat’. Again.”
Many people were moved by the shocking case of Kelly Thomson, a single mother of two children who after paying bills was left with just £40 per week to feed herself and her two children. After being signed off from work as the pandemic worsened in December 2020, Kelly was forced to try to survive on rock bottom welfare payments. This led to her being hospitalised for malnutrition twice in the last 18 months. Kelly lost two stone in weight. She needed blood transfusions to bring her iron levels back to normal.
The Metro newspaper reported that during this period the “family resorted to lighting their home with candles and relying on neighbours to heat their food.” The mother told the Metro , “I’m worried for my health, I’m faint with hunger all the time. In June, my children watched me collapse. I’ve never been so scared in my life and the impact on their mental health must be awful.”
Hundreds of people donated to a Go Fund Me appeal, raising over £8,700 for the family. But those in ruling circles are impervious to any such cries for help, including demands by the NHS that immediate relief must be provided for millions of families.
Ahead of an August 11 meeting between outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and the heads of 15 energy companies earlier this month, Downing Street insisted that no emergency measures would be rolled out to prevent mass suffering and death this winter. Johnson, in between topping up his suntan during several holidays abroad, said it would be down to his successor, due to be announced September 5, to make any fiscal decisions.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson attended an energy round table at No11 Downing Street. The roundtable was hosted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng also attended along with CEO’s/Representatives of energy companies. [Photo by Kyle Heller/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0]
The energy firm heads, even as they collectively reported surging profits of over £15 billion so far this year, strolled in and out of the meeting refusing to make even minimal concessions on energy prices.
Workers are being made to pay for the billions in military spending Britain has committed for NATO’s proxy war against Russia through the hike in energy prices that has followed. Johnson, speaking from Kiev Wednesday to mark Ukrainian independence day and celebrate the war, declared that UK households would have to “endure the pressure” of rising bills. He was supported by Armed Forces Minster James Heappey, who said that backing Ukraine’s war against Russia means that a “really expensive winter lies ahead” and has to be borne by working people, “whatever the short-term pain and cost might be”.
The Labour Party is playing a major role in this drive to force workers to bear the brunt of what is in reality “a cost of keeping the corporations in profit crisis” and to pay for the massive ramping up of military spending. Party leader Sir Keir Starmer put forward a plan calling only for a freeze in the current energy cap level of £1,971 a year, an amount already unfordable for millions of families. This would be paid for by a vast subvention of £29 billion, paid for by the taxpayer, handed over to the energy firms to make up the difference between soaring wholesale costs and what they charge.
Moreover, Labour’s freeze proposal only applies to projected energy cap rises in October this year and January 2023, but not from April 2023 when bills could reach £6,500 annually. Labour’s plan even cancels the £400 discount off bills, despite them being over 50 percent higher than last winter, already announced by the Conservative government!
Starmer refused to back calls for the nationalisation of the energy firms, declaring, “If you go down the nationalisation route, then money has to be spent on compensating shareholders.”
Labour would of course never contemplate seizing the assets of the major shareholders. But it will not even consider nationalisation of the “Big Five” energy retail companies—British Gas, E.ON, EDF, Scottish Power and Ovo—with £2.85 billion compensation for shareholders. Doing so might suggest that the holy-of-holies, the “free market”, is being placed under threat and alienate the corporate elite Labour speaks for.
Considering the forever-COVID policy being adopted by almost every major industrial country across the globe, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeated his warning at last week’s press brief, stating, “We’re all tired of this virus and tired of the pandemic, but the virus is not tired of us.”
The financial oligarchs and their political lackeys have essentially abrogated all mitigation measures against the continued spread of COVID. They have forced their populations to accept the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a permanent fixture of daily life.
Approaching the end of the third year of the COVID pandemic, there have been close to 600 million infections reported, with almost 6.5 million deaths. However, the global excess deaths are fast approaching 23 million or 3.6 times higher than official figures.
Though global infection rates are projected officially at around 650,000 per day, current estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) are closer to 13.3 million per day, 20 times as high, underscoring the lack of testing and reporting that has become part and parcel of the efforts to conceal all relevant metrics—and dangers—from the working class.
Figure 1: Seven-day average COVID infections per capita Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the US from January 1 to August 22, 2022. Source Our World in Data.
The WHO director-general added that weekly COVID deaths over the last month had reached 15,000, a figure “completely unacceptable when we have all the tools to prevent infections and save lives.” Given the changes in reporting criteria and database dismantling, it is not surprising that excess deaths, according to the Economist’s modeling, are running five to six times higher than official figures.
Nonetheless, accepting these conservative official estimates would mean around three-quarter million people will succumb to COVID annually. Placing this figure into context by comparing it to HIV, global annual deaths from HIV are presently about 680,000, and in the last four decades, it has killed 40.1 million people. When weighed against another deadly contemporary pathogen, COVID is not mild by any yardstick.
This makes Japan’s case illustrative of the dangers posed by the current deadly policies that have been adopted to ensure national economies remain unfettered by any public health concerns.
A country of almost 125 million people, Japan had been lauded by the mainstream press for handling the pandemic. However, it is facing its harshest wave of infections and deaths with the highly contagious BA.5 subvariant of the Omicron, despite 80 percent of its population being fully vaccinated and two-thirds of all its citizens (nearly 90 percent of seniors), having received their booster shots. It holds the dubious distinction of being the epicenter of the COVID pandemic for the moment, along with South Korea and Australia.
People wearing masks to help protect against the spread of the coronavirus walk in front of a screen showing the news on U.S. warning against visits to Japan Tuesday, May 25, 2021, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Japan has reported more than 17 million COVID cases, up from only 1.7 million on January 1, 2022. With over 37,000 COVID deaths to date, more than half of these deaths occurred during the Omicron phase of the pandemic. The seven-day average of fatalities is currently at a pandemic high of 266 per day, which translates to over 700 per day compared to a country the size of the United States, where the COVID death rate is currently 500 a day. However, excess deaths estimates for 2020-21 had placed the figure at five times above reported COVID deaths, implying the current figures are gross underestimates.
On August 19, 2022, the country reported its highest single-day number of infections at close to 261,000. Since the beginning of the month, the seven-day average of cases had consistently remained over 200,000 per day, far outpacing its previous peak of nearly 100,000 infections per day in early February when the original Omicron variant, BA.1, washed over the county.
As in other countries, when faced with a deluge of infections, the Japanese press notes that ambulances transporting patients to health facilities struggle to find hospitals that can admit them. In turn, this is leading to delays in responding to urgent calls for medical assistance.
Meanwhile, health systems are buckling under the pressure of tending to these patients as they deal with staffing and supply shortages that further complicate the overall health delivery so critical to the functioning of society. According to Japan Times, 15 of 47 prefectures have seen COVID occupancy rates reach over 50 percent. Kanagawa prefecture, a highly urbanized and populated region south of Tokyo, has the highest rate at 71 percent.
The Japan Times wrote, “Even when beds for COVID-19 patients are open, the seventh wave is affecting the health system more generally due to staff shortages caused by workers recovering from the disease or needing to isolate, experts say. As of Monday, Fukuoka University Hospital had closed two wards, as 120 of the 1,900 medical staff were either infected or deemed close contacts.”
Shigeru Omi, the president of the Japan Community Health Care Organization and the head of the government’s COVID-19 expert panel, told reporters in Tokyo, “People who could have visited fever clinics are now calling ambulances because the clinics aren’t able to accommodate them.” Dr. Hiroki Ohashi, vice president of the Japan Primary Care Association, added, “We need to work on increasing the number of fever clinics, but at the same time, we would also like every citizen to help us overcome this crunch in the medical system by recuperating at home first, as most cases of the Omicron variant present symptoms similar to that of the flu.”
Meanwhile, infected elderly patients in nursing homes or extended care facilities cannot be transferred to overcrowded hospitals. Dr. Hideki Yamazaki, a psychiatrist and director of Seizankai, a corporation that runs dozens of nursing homes and facilities for the elderly with dementia, told the Times that the patients are “trapped.” He said, “Every nursing care home is working very hard to keep infections at bay, but it’s impossible to prevent all cases from entering the facility. Elderly people who get infected should be moved to hospitals … now such facilities are too crowded to take in infected elderly. So, now we have had no option but to continue taking care of them.”
Yet the government has pledged it wouldn’t impose restrictions on business or people’s movement. In fact, at the height of the current surge, the government added insult to injury when it announced it was planning to scrap its entry requirements for travelers. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is isolated and working from home after contracting COVID during a week-long vacation, like his counterpart, President Joe Biden.
After winning a second-round vote against Taro Kono and replacing Yoshihide Suga last September as prime minister, Kishida vowed he would bring COVID to an end. Instead, his government ended pandemic restrictions in March. As Bloomberg recently, “The world’s third largest economy recovered to its pre-pandemic size in the second quarter, as consumer spending picked up following the end of coronavirus curbs on businesses.” Yet, inflationary pressures continue to haunt Kishida’s leadership which has seen his approval rating plunge from a month ago.
Figure 2: Seven-day average COVID deaths per capita for Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the US from January 1 to August 22, 2022. Source Our World in Data.
Like the US, UK, and the EU, Japan is shifting to a vaccine-only strategy by promoting the latest bivalent COVID vaccine boosters. The UK approved Moderna’s bivalent booster jab last week, though it is formulated to deliver the spike protein equivalent of the original and BA.1 strain, combined. The US has asked the two mRNA COVID vaccine manufacturing giants, Pfizer and Moderna, to concoct a bivalent jab tailored to the BA.5 subvariant despite the lack of any clinical data to inform this decision.
As Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and the director of the vaccine education center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, observed after the June 28, 2022, virtual FDA advisory committee meeting about updating COVID-19 vaccines, “It is not reasonable to assume that data generated for an Omicron BA.1 vaccine can easily be extrapolated to BA.4 and BA.5. These new Omicron subvariants are highly transmissible. Therefore, they will require a very high level of neutralizing antibodies present at the time of exposure to prevent symptomatic infection.” Given that the BA.1 component of the vaccine only offered a modest rise in neutralizing antibodies, he added, “Why would we think using BA.4 and BA.5 would be any different?”
As many are waiting in the wings, BA.4 and BA.5 are not the last subvariants. However, as the sequencing of these new variants has plummeted, scientists, researchers, and public health experts are entering the fourth year of the pandemic, blind to the developments with the coronavirus.
The experience in Japan only highlights that previous immunity, high levels of vaccination, and reliance on bivalent vaccines offer little in attenuating the number of infections and the continued high number of deaths the world is experiencing.
As the director-general noted, in a warning echoed last year and the year before that, “With colder weather approaching in the northern hemisphere and people spending more time indoors, the risks for more intense transmission and hospitalization will only increase in the coming months, not only for COVID-19 but for other diseases, including influenza.” This has significant implications as the US and EU, as well as northeast Asia, enter the fall and winter months, and schools return to in-class instruction.
The ultra-right Polish government of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) is playing a central role in NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. It acts as a provocative and aggressive ally of US imperialism in the region.
After the US and UK, Poland has promised Ukraine the third largest sum in arms deliveries, $1.8 billion, although its gross domestic product is only a fraction that of the major imperialist powers. While large parts of the already impoverished Polish population are being thrust into penury by the rapidly rising inflation and the consequences of the pandemic, Warsaw is using the war in Ukraine to push ahead and expand long-cherished rearmament plans.
Tanks of the Polish Armed Forces on 'Army Day' 2008
At the end of last year, PiS leader and then Minister of National Security Jaroslaw Kaczynski presented the “Plan for the Defence of the Fatherland.” This revised the modernisation plan for the armed forces adopted in 2017. The defence budget was to be increased from 2.2 percent (about $13 billion) to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2030. By 2035, some $115 billion was to be invested in the army and its strength was to grow from 110,000 to 250,000 troops.
A few months after the start of the war, the pace of rearmament was then increased again significantly. Instead of 2.5 percent, the budget is now to increase to 3 percent of the GDP, and not in 2026, as was said, but in the coming year. In addition, there will be billions more from a special fund to support the armed forces.
The special fund is a centrepiece of the new law to ensure the financing of rearmament. It escapes parliamentary control and also circumvents the legal obligations (comparable to Germany’s debt ceiling) to consolidate the budget. Its financing is fed from various channels—from government bonds and bonds issued by the national development bank BGK, from the state budget and the profits of the National Bank of Poland.
Since the government had a problem issuing government bonds due to economic reasons and high inflation, it rushed an amendment to the law through the Sejm (lower house of parliament) allowing for separate defence bonds. According to the government, the support fund will be worth 20 billion zloty (€4.2 billion) this year and around 50 billion zloty (€10.5 billion) next year.
The Defence of the Fatherland Act came into force on April 23. Prior to that, it had been adopted almost unanimously and without objection by both chambers of the Polish parliament (Sejm and Senate). The approval of all opposition parties makes clear that the war policy is supported both internally and externally by all sections of the ruling class. As far as there is criticism of the PiS, this is merely a matter of tactical differences.
The militarisation of society and strengthening of extreme right-wing forces
A central component of Poland’s rearmament plans is the introduction of a one-year voluntary basic military service. Poland had abolished its general conscription in 2010. Since then, NATO’s nominally eighth-largest army has had problems finding enough personnel. The massive expansion of the military and paramilitary units goes hand in hand with the strengthening of Poland’s longstanding state-sponsored radical right-wing forces.
The new system is clearly designed to exploit the abject poverty of large sections of the Polish working class, especially the youth. It relies on financial incentives to integrate young people into the murderous machinery of militarism. A full scholarship entices a commitment to a five-year service, and there is also supposed to be priority treatment when applying for jobs in public administration. Those who still hesitate are lured with the statement that “you can quit at any time.”
After an extremely shortened basic training of 28 days, for which they receive a full soldier’s salary of 4,400 zloty (€925), the recruits are sworn in and admitted into the reserve. Then they have the choice of completing voluntary military service after another 11 months of military training or being taken over by the professional army. Alternatively, they can join the Territorial Defence Forces (WOT) after the 28-day basic training.
The paramilitary WOT, which reports directly to the defence ministry, is a central component of the rearmament programme. Unlike the classic reserve, it is composed of soldiers and volunteers and is of a limited duration. It conducts exercises several times a month, with pay and corresponding time off work. According to government plans, the WOT will also grow from around 30,000 to 50,000 forces.
Like its Ukrainian counterpart, the Territorial Defence, where neo-Nazi formations such as the Azov Battalion and the International Legion set the tone, the WOT is also dominated by ultra-right forces.
It was created in 2016 by then Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz, who is a militant anti-communist and anti-Semite with close ties to radical right-wing circles. Macierewicz has played a key role in the PiS’s campaign to strengthen anti-Semitic forces, in particular, denying the responsibility of Polish nationalists for anti-Jewish pogroms such as those in Jedwabne and Kielce.
Today, Macierewicz is vice-chairman of the PiS, and the WOT is now under the leadership of Mariusz Błaszczak, his successor, who also holds ultra-right positions. For example, he described the march of 60,000 fascists in Warsaw in November 2017 as a “beautiful sight.”
Propagating the views of the extreme right is also officially one of the tasks of the WOT, which is euphemistically described as “strengthening the patriotic and Christian foundations of the Polish system and armed forces.” The WOT explicitly serves domestic security purposes.
Deputy Defence Minister Wojciech Skurkiewicz described the establishment of a 66-member WOT orchestra in Radom as “the beginning of a great project, the creation of a central institution in our city to popularise a defence culture and WOT tradition.” In addition to the orchestra, the intention is to set up centres where the “popularisation of defence” will be carried out in cooperation with local authorities, NGOs and social partners, he said. There is also to be a “centre for culture and tradition.”
In other words, the WOT serves as an instrument for the complete militarisation of society and as a vehicle for the massive social and political strengthening of radical right-wing forces.
What the militarisation offensive looks like could be seen from mid-May, when the recruitment campaign based on the new law began. Throughout Poland, 32 “military picnics” were organised, and 70 recruitment centres set up. On August 15, the traditional Army Day (marking the anniversary of the Battle of Warsaw in 1920), instead of the traditional military march, there was also a “Weekend with the Army” (Weekend z wojskiem) with extensive festivities and events.
The “military picnics” sought to entice visitors with “numerous attractions for children and adults,” getting hands on with military technology, military orchestras, stalls and presentations. The images of these are repulsive: Bouncy castles stand next to armoured personnel carriers; children pose with machine guns.
The Territorial Defence Forces also specifically advertise among schoolchildren, students and apprentices to use their summer holidays for the 16-day reception training course, which is cynically advertised as a “holiday with the Territorial Defence Forces.” Here, too, the lure is the equivalent of about €100 on completion of the course.
Tomasz Klucznik, press spokesman for the 7th Pomeranian Territorial Defence Brigade, even encouraged secondary school teachers take part in the training. “Teachers can brush up on their practical knowledge of how the force works and get to know our modern equipment,” Klucznik said.
The background to this is the change in teaching the subject “Safety Education” (EdB) ordered in March by Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek. From September onwards, defence education is to be part of the school curriculum in the eighth grade of primary schools and the first grade of secondary schools—including firearms training.
After two years of the pandemic, defence education replaces the previous module on health promotion, of all things. Other new learning content includes survival in hostilities, first aid during the use of conventional weapons and cyber security.
The whole thing is framed by a comprehensive right-wing education reform, also known as Lex Czarnek. In addition to the authoritarian surveillance and control of pupils and the work of teachers, the focus is on “national education.”
The textbook History and the Present—1945-1979 (by Wojciech Roszkowski) for the new subject of the same name resembles a right-wing extremist pamphlet. Even representatives of the official opposition parties accuse it of being influenced by an ultra-nationalist and arch-Catholic view of society. It rails against atheists, communists, Greens, neoliberals, blacks, LGBTQ, artificial insemination and even rock music.
Should ideological indoctrination and aggressive advertising campaigns fail to produce enough “volunteers,” the defence reform also stipulates that all Polish citizens aged 18 and over will be required to register for the purpose of “keeping military records and military qualifications.”
In order to fill the military database, the army will have access to the entire data of all conceivable institutions “for any purpose, without control, without limiting the catalogue of data or the time of their processing,” according to Wojciech Klicki of the Panoptykon Foundation Against the Surveillance Society. “Thanks to the new regulations, the military authorities can check how often we are sick, what taxes we pay, whether we have been punished, whether there is a case for legal proceedings against us.” And this, Klicki continues, with direct access to the data servers. Through the law on the “defence of the fatherland,” the army itself thus becomes an unrestricted secret service.
Poland’s orgy of rearmament and the growing tensions in Europe
The scale of the rearmament shows that Poland has greater ambitions than just playing one of many violins in the NATO war orchestra. The country has long been a key ally of the US in Europe. The Three Seas Initiative, which Ukraine officially joined in June, blatantly harks back to the Pilsudski regime’s Intermarium project from the time between the two world wars and has been officially supported by Washington since 2017. Then as now, the Polish bourgeoisie dreamed of playing the role of a great power in the shadow of the US, at least regionally.
PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński made clear that the ruling PiS is using the NATO alliance to position itself against Germany as well. On the fringes of a press conference, he remarked that he was not at all sure whether the upgrading of the Bundeswehr (armed forces) initiated by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was really directed against Russia—or perhaps against Poland after all. At the beginning of August, Kaczyński had publicly railed against the “German plan for domination” in Europe and worldwide.
It is therefore not surprising that Poland’s long shopping list does not include a single German product.
In the last six months alone, Poland’s Defence Minister Błaszczak has signed arms purchases worth over $11 billion. That is almost half the size of all arms purchases in the last seven years combined. In addition, there are other purchase announcements and signed framework agreements.
The biggest items among them are:
Three Miecznik frigates for the equivalent of about $2 billion, to be built under British licence in Polish shipyards. The last of the three ships is to be handed over to the Polish Navy in 2034.
250 M1A2 Abrams tanks including support vehicles, bascule bridges and a logistics and training package for $4.75 billion from the American company General Dynamics, expected to be completed by 2026. To date, this is the largest purchase in the history of the Polish army. In mid-July, the purchase of 116 used M1A1 Abrams tanks was also announced.
A battery of the Polish short-range missile defence system Narew, based on the British CAMM surface-to-air missile from MBDA for $360 million. In the long term, the Narew programme is expected to cost over $13 billion and comprise 23 units. It is part of the “Shield of Poland,” a multi-layered missile and air defence programme announced back in 2015, which in addition to Narew also includes the Wisła medium-range defence system and the Pilica anti-aircraft gun.
Wisla consists of US Patriot batteries, two units of which were already purchased in 2018 for $4.75 billion. At least six more batteries are to follow.
Serial production for Pilica started this year. It consists of a 23mm anti-aircraft gun supplemented by two Piorun missiles and radars. Six batteries of this type are to be delivered to the Polish army this year for $160 million by the Polish state-owned company Mesko.
The Piorun missiles are also produced as a shoulder-launched variant. Poland has also delivered an unknown number of them to Ukraine. According to the manufacturer, the production quantity is to be doubled to 600 this year and increase to 1,000 from 2023. Poland had ordered 3,500 more for $750 million in June.
Four modules of the Gladius unmanned drone system from the Polish WB Electronics Group for $440 million. It includes several hundred reconnaissance and suicide drones.
Three Kormoran-class mine hunting vessels worth about $800 million, built by a shipyard of the state-owned defence company PGZ in Gdansk.
32 AW-149 multi-role helicopters for $1.8 billion from Italy’s Leonardo Group. Production is to be taken over entirely by the Polish subsidiary PZL-Świdnik.
70 ZSSW-30 gun turrets for the Rosomak wheeled tank for $370 million. This order will also be taken over by the state-owned PGZ armament group. At the same press conference, Błaszczak announced that the final tests are underway for the new Borsuk infantry fighting vehicle, which is also scheduled to go into series production by the thousand in 2024.
In addition to these already sealed purchases, there are other, much larger purchase plans.
32 Kruk combat helicopters for an estimated $2.3 billion. According to the Ministry of Defence, the US companies Boeing and Bell are in the final selection for cooperation partners.
Three new Orca-class submarines for around $2.6 billion. In 2019, Poland received German, French and Swedish offers, but has not yet decided.
In May, Defence Minister Błaszczak announced that the acquisition of a total of 500 HIMARS missile systems would be examined. The self-propelled multiple rocket launcher system has been blamed for sensitive Russian army losses since the Ukrainian army has had it. Poland already has 80 units and had ordered 20 more in 2019 at a cost of $414 million, which are due to arrive next year.
In July, a framework agreement was signed for the delivery of Poland’s new Ottokar Brzoza anti-tank vehicle in unknown numbers. Its armament—British Brimstone guided missiles with a range of 12 kilometres—comes from MBDA.
The climax of the armaments orgy so far was reached a few days ago: On August 6, the conclusion of a framework agreement for the purchase of 1,000 main battle tanks from South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem Group was announced, with 180 K2 tanks ordered immediately for $2.2 billion. The remaining 820 are to be manufactured in Poland as a modified licence build (K2PL) from 2026. In total, the purchase is likely to cost well over $10 billion.
In addition, further South Korean purchases are being discussed. For example, 672 K9A1 self-propelled howitzers and 48 FA-50 light combat aircraft, both of which are to be built under Polish licence. The self-propelled howitzers alone are estimated to cost another $2.5 billion.
Officially, the massive arms purchases are being justified by the fact that Poland, which has made extensive arms deliveries to Ukraine, needed to restore its defence capabilities. In fact, Poland is the third largest supplier of military equipment to Ukraine after the US and the UK. According to the international military portal Oryx, it has supplied 230 T-72M tanks, 40 APC 1 infantry fighting vehicles, 20 T-72 Goździk self-propelled howitzers, 20 Grad BM 21 multi-lead rocket launchers, 100 air-to-air R-73 missiles, 10,000 Grot assault rifles and FlyEye reconnaissance drones.
Behind the Polish military purchasing policy is also the unconditional solidarity with the US Army. In the case of several purchases, Defence Minister Błaszczak explained that the decisive factor was the greatest possible compatibility with the US military. The South Korean army is already closely integrated with the US military.
This became clear at the opening of the Abrams Academy in Poznan. This is to train Polish soldiers on borrowed Abrams tanks under the guidance of the 5th US Corps until the newly ordered tanks arrive.
The Corps previously provided the Forward Rotation Command of the US armed forces but became the permanent headquarters a few months ago after President Biden announced it. In doing so, Biden openly violated the 1997 NATO-Russia agreement that ruled out a “permanent” deployment. Commanding General John Stephen Kolasheski praised Poland as a bulwark and declared: “Soon no one will be able to distinguish between a Polish and an American tank. Only the strongest military alliance will be visible.”
Defence Minister Blaszczak resurrected anti-communism à la Ronald Reagan and pathetically declared that “the evil empire” had already been stopped once. “Today, the rulers of the Kremlin want to rebuild the empire of evil, but the free world” would win. In reality, the Reagan era saw the beginning of an international wave of social counterrevolution that bloodily suppressed all resistance with the help of far-right paramilitary forces.
In this respect, the minister has indeed chosen the appropriate comparison. While Poland is using the Ukraine war to prepare for a new world war, the massive militarisation and build-up of right-wing paramilitary forces is primarily directed against the working class of Poland and Europe.
According to experts, Poland is on the verge of a recession after its GDP slumped by 2.3 percent in the second quarter of 2022, more than other countries in Eastern Europe. At 15.5 percent, inflation in Poland is one of the highest in Europe and by far the worst since 1989 and is expected to rise further to 18.8 percent by next year.
Three-and-a-half million refugees from Ukraine have found asylum in Poland, which itself has a population of almost 38 million. In some cities, the high number of refugees has increased the population by 15 to 20 percent, in Gdansk by as much as 34 percent. From the beginning, almost all the aid for the refugees has come from working people, although their own living conditions are rapidly deteriorating. The PiS government refuses to provide any significant help to the refugees.
For the autumn, many commentators predict a wave of workers’ protests and strikes, especially among the 500,000 teachers whose nationwide strike in 2019 was betrayed by the unions.
