It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
Cavers find pristine mineshaft frozen in time for 200 years
Experts describe cobalt mine at Alderley Edge as ‘time capsule’ thanks to lack of oxygen
Ed Coghlan and Jamie Lund, right, inspect one of the timber props installed by the miners. Photograph: Paul Harris/National Trust Images
A pristine 200-year-old mineshaft that had been undisturbed since it was abandoned by miners during the Napoleonic wars has been discovered by cavers in Cheshire, revealing an almost unique “time capsule” of their underground life. The cobalt mine, at Alderley Edge, was sealed by the miners when the shaft was abandoned, at a date that can be pinpointed fairly accurately thanks to one man who used candle soot to write his initials “WS” and the date 20 August 1810 on the rock wall.
The resulting lack of oxygen in the two centuries since means the mine is in an exceptional state of preservation, according to the National Trust, which owns the land. While the items left behind are humble – clay pipes, a leather shoe, a small bowl – the context in which they were found is “really very unusual”, said Jamie Lund, an archaeologist with the trust.
“This mine hasn’t been disturbed by later mining, it’s not been broken into by kids in the 1960s, it’s not been filled with bottles or other rubbish. It literally is a time capsule in terms of giving a glimpse into the environment that these miners, who were extracting cobalt, encountered.”
Blobs of clay putty stuck to the walls to hold the men’s candles still show their fingerprints, while one wall bears an imprint of corduroy where a miner leaned against it. Wooden support struts and a windlass still wound with a hemp rope are remarkably well preserved.
Intriguingly, the small bowl had been deliberately placed on the floor with a rock wall built around it, leading to one interpretation that superstitious miners might have put it there to show gratitude for a rich seam of the material, which was prized for adding colour to blue and white pottery.
An inscription on the wall by ‘WS’ dates the mine to 20 August 1810.
Photograph: Ed Coghlan/Derbyshire Caving Club
However, Lund said he was “paid always to be sceptical when anybody says that an object might have ritual or good luck connotations”.
He continued: “The explanation that appeals to me is slightly more jokey,” suggesting that it might have been walled up by the miners to tease one of their number who always brought his breakfast down the mine. No one will ever know, however. “At the end of the day, it’s a bowl. That much we are sure of,” Lund said.
Similarly, efforts to identify WS have so far been fruitless, after wage records were lost in a fire.
Alderley Edge, a dramatic escarpment that overlooks the Cheshire landscape, has been mined for copper, lead and cobalt since the bronze age. The mine in question, which extends 10 metres (33ft) underground, was discovered in autumn 2021 when a dip was spotted in the landscape, suggesting a collapsing shaft seal. Members of Derbyshire Caving Club, who manage the subterranean spaces in the landscape on behalf of the trust, were the first to explore and make it safe before archaeologists entered.
Unusually for such a rare find, it will not be studied for much longer, said Lund. “We quickly agreed that the real significance of this site is the fact that it has that pristine nature of an environment that the miners might have left yesterday,” he said. As a result, it will shortly be sealed again with the artefacts inside, the oxygen allowed to run out “and the policy will be to stay out”.
Happily, however, a detailed 3D scan has been made of the mine, which can be navigated interactively. “That’s the benefit of living and working in the 21st century,” said Lund. “It feels like we timed this discovery really well.”
UN envoy to seek longer, expanded truce in Yemen civil war
UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg speaks to reporters upon his arrival at the Sanaa International Airport, in Sanaa, Yemen June 8, 2022. (Reuters)
The Associated Press Published: 12 July ,2022
The UN special envoy for Yemen said Monday he plans to explore the possibility of a longer and expanded truce with the country’s warring parties in the coming weeks.
Hans Grundberg said an extension could be a good step in moving toward a cease-fire in the country’s eight-year civil war. He didn’t provide details of the length or expansion he is seeking ahead of the August 2 expiration of the current two-month truce extension.
Grundberg told the UN Security Council that renewing the truce would provide time and the opportunity to start serious discussions on Yemen’s economy and security and to begin addressing priority issues such as revenues and payment of salaries.
“I ask the parties to engage with me on these issues with a sense of urgency and flexibility,” he said.
The cease-fire between Yemen’s internationally recognized government and Iran-backed Houthi militia initially took effect April 2 and was extended June 2. Though each side at times accused the other of violating the truce, it was the first nationwide halt in fighting in the past six years of the conflict in the Arab World’s most impoverished nation.
“To date, the truce has been holding for over three months,” Grundberg said.
Civilian casualties have been reduced by two-thirds, compared to the three months before the truce began, he said. And since the renewal of the truce June 2, seven fuel ships carrying nearly 200,000 metric tons of various fuel products have been cleared to enter Yemen’s main port of Hodeida.
Since the start of the truce, 15 commercial round-trip flights have transported almost 7,000 passengers between Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and the Jordanian capital, Amman, Grundberg added. He said discussions are under way with Egyptian authorities about regular flights to Cairo.
Under the truce, the parties committed to meet to agree on road openings, including lifting the Houthis’ ground blockade of Taiz, Yemen’s third largest city. Grundberg said the Houthis rejected the latest UN proposal on a phased opening but his efforts to reach a solution will continue.
“An agreement on road openings in Taiz and other governorates would be momentous, and its benefits would reverberate across Yemen,” he said.
The UN envoy expressed concern at “worrisome escalatory rhetoric by the parties questioning the benefits of the truce” in recent weeks.
He called this “a dangerous move,” urged the parties to halt such rhetoric, and warned that the alternative to the truce “is a return to hostilities and likely an intensified phase of conflict with all of its predictable consequences or Yemeni civilians and regional security.”
Grundberg said the UN continues to receive reports from both sides about alleged incidents including direct and indirect fire, drone attacks, reconnaissance overflights and new fortifications.
“The parties are also allegedly sending reinforcements to main front lines including in Marib, Hodeida, and Taiz,” he said.
Fighting in Yemen erupted in 2014, when the Houthis descended from their northern enclave and took over the capital, forcing the government to flee into exile in Saudi Arabia. An Arab coalition entered the war in early 2015 to try to restore the government to power. IT WAS A SAUDI COALITION WHICH INVADED YEMEN
The conflict has killed over 150,000 people, including over 14,500 civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, pushing millions of Yemenis to the brink of famine.
Joyce Msuya , assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the council that the Yemeni rial is still falling and “many more families are going hungry again.”
But she said the UN World Food Program was forced to cut rations for millions of people several weeks ago because the UN appeal for $4.27 billion for humanitarian aid for Yemen this year has received just over $1.1 billion.
In addition, Msuya said, a UN verification and inspection system created in 2016 to facilitate vital commercial imports to Yemen is also running out of money and will shut down in September unless it gets $3.5 million to cover operations for the year’s final months.
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Shinzo Abe shooting: who are the ‘Moonies’ and why are they in the spotlight?
Suspect Tetsuya Yamagami blames the Unification church, also known as the Moonies, for bankrupting his family
The Unification church in Seoul, South Korea. The Moonies’ strong anti-communist stance helped build ties with politicians in Asia, including Shinzo Abe’s grandfather. Photograph: Lee Jae-Won/AFLO/REX/Shutterstock
The apparent motive given by the man accused of assassinating Shinzo Abe has cast a spotlight on the Unification church and its ties to politicians.
Tetsuya Yamagami has confessed to killing the former Japanese prime minister during a campaign speech on Friday. He blamed the global religious movement – whose members are often referred to as Moonies – for bankrupting his family, and believed that Abe had championed its activities in Japan.
The Japan branch of the church has confirmed that Yamagami’s mother is a member, but declined to comment on the suspect’s claims that she had made a “huge donation” more than 20 years ago that left the family struggling financially.
The branch’s president, Tomihiro Tanaka, told a press conference that Yamagami’s mother became a follower in the late 1990s, adding that the family had suffered financial ruin around 2002.
Tomihiro Tanaka, president of the Japanese branch of the Unification church, at a news conference in Tokyo on Monday. Photograph: KYODO/Reuters
The organisation’s official name is the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, although it is better known as the Unification church. It was founded in South Korea in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon, whose strident anti-communism would lead him to build ties with conservative politicians around the world, including in Japan. Advertisement
Moon, who died in 2012, said he had had a vision aged 15 in which he was told by Jesus to complete his unfulfilled mission to restore humanity to a state of “sinless” purity.
The church’s early adherents were effective recruiters, and membership soared from an initial group of 100 missionaries to around 10,000 in a few years. Experience: I escaped from the Moonies
Often described as a cult motivated by financial gain, the church became known for conducting mass weddings in huge sports stadiums – involving thousands of couples who were meeting for the first time – and at one time claimed to have about 3 million followers worldwide.
But global membership of the church, whose teachings comprise new interpretations of the Bible, has fallen sharply to several hundred thousand from its 1980s peak, according to some experts.
Its connection to Japan is inseparable from the instability of the postwar years, when conservative politicians sought to build alliances that they believed would prevent the country from embracing communism.
They included Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who reportedly set up an organisation with ties to the church. It was Kishi’s decision to court Moon and his followers in Japan that reportedly drove Yamagami to target his grandson. Advertisement
Yamagami reportedly told investigators that he had fired a shot from a homemade gun at a Unification church facility near his home the day before he targeted Abe. The Asahi Shimbun quoted residents as saying they had heard a loud bang in the early hours of 7 July.
The Japan chapter was founded in 1959 – the penultimate year of Kishi’s three-year term as prime minister – as the church sent missionaries to Japan and the US to forge links with influential politicians and business leaders.
Last September Abe delivered a congratulatory address via video link at an event organised by an affiliate, the Universal Peace Federation. Donald Trump is among other conservative politicians who have publicly associated themselves with the church.
Abe had been criticised for speaking at events organised by church affiliates. Last year lawyers representing people who say they lost money because of the church filed a letter of protest after he delivered the video message. They also protested when Abe sent a telegram to a mass wedding in 2006.
Moon, who moved to the US in the early 1970s, had longstanding ties to Japan, having studied engineering at a high school in Tokyo. He was indicted on tax evasion charges in the US in 1981 and served 11 months in prison.
In 2008, Moon passed control of the church to his youngest son, Hyung Jin Moon, who later formed a breakaway organisation, the Sanctuary church, after falling out with his mother, Hak Ja Han. She now controls the Unification church.
The police have not publicly identified the group Yamagami blamed for his family’s financial troubles, and most Japanese media organisations refrained from naming it until Monday’s press conference.
With Agence France-Presse
How Biden’s “forever war” in Ukraine was prepared: Billions of dollars for weapons and military training since 2014
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed last week that the billions in military weapons sent to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on February 24 have “finally” started working, despite staggering losses in both casualties and territory.
Ukrainian soldiers fire at Russian positions from a U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region Saturday, June 18, 2022. [AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky]
“Finally it is felt that the Western artillery—the weapons we received from our partners— started working very powerfully,” Zelensky said in a video address posted to the Office of the President’s website. “The losses of the occupiers will only increase every week, as will the difficulty of supplying them.”
As the Ukrainian forces have continued to lose territory in the eastern Donbass region, including the entire Lugansk province, and reportedly suffer record casualties of over 500 per day, Zelensky and his entourage have implored the United States and its NATO allies to rapidly send even more powerful weaponry in an attempt to continue the war for as long as possible.
While Zelensky and his advisers are attempting to portray themselves as scrappy underdogs taking on a treacherous bully, in reality, billions in military aid have already been sent to the country in order to provoke and exacerbate a war, which in its current form would never have occurred without massive training and funding from Western sources.
According to the Department of Defense, amid rapid worldwide inflation the US has contributed approximately $7.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on February 24, including an additional $820 million authorized on July 1. The Biden administration has pledged over $50 billion in military and economic aid since coming into office.
The supplies include anti-aircraft systems, tactical drones, rocket systems, howitzers and artillery rounds. Recently, Ukraine has claimed success in hitting Russian ammo depots after the arrival of the first four American-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) with four more on the way. In addition, Ukraine is also receiving 18 tracked Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) from the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Norway.
While the United States and NATO have moved to rapidly arm Ukraine since February, the history of NATO involvement and funding reveals that the current war was both planned for and provoked by the imperialist powers for years.
The ties by NATO to Ukraine go back to the Stalinist destruction of the Soviet Union and restoration of capitalism. In the 1990s, Ukraine’s Yaroviv Combat Training Center in the Lviv region of western Ukraine became the center of NATO operations and training. In March, the base, which had housed as many as 1,000 foreign fighters being training as part of the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, was hit by a Russian missile strike.
Since 1997 Ukraine has also cooperated with the United States and NATO forces annually in the “Sea Breeze” multinational military exercises on the northwestern Black Sea coast. Russia participated only once in 1998 and since then has openly opposed the presence of NATO and US warships so close to its Black Sea fleet as the exercises were obviously intended to displace Russia as the predominant naval power in the region.
However, prior to 2014, previous Ukrainian administrations had attempted to maintain historical economic and political relations with Russia while simultaneously increasing ties with Western imperialism and NATO. In 2006 as prime minister and later in 2010 as president, Viktor Yanukovych had effectively stopped Ukraine’s path towards NATO membership leading the NATO Review Journal to condemn what it called a “significant slow-down” in the country’s NATO integration.
In 2014 in a US-and EU-backed coup, the Yanukovych government was overthrown. The coup triggered not only the Russian annexation of Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea, which hosts Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and an eight-year-long civil war in East Ukraine. Above all, it marked the beginning of the systematic, multi-billion dollar transformation of Ukraine’s military into what is essentially a proxy army of the NATO alliance, in order to prepare for all-out war with Russia.
Building up and restructuring the Ukrainian army
Following the 2014 coup, NATO pushed Ukraine to conduct a major restructuring and buildup, providing billions in funding for military training and equipment.
The Ukrainian army, which had over 800,000 personnel in 1991, had shrunk to just 130,000 in 2014. Out of these, it was estimated in 2014 that only between 6,000 and 7,000 Ukrainian troops were combat-ready in terms of training, equipment and personnel when hostilities in the Donbass first began. Mass desertions quickly crippled the war effort of Kiev against pro-Russian separatists in the civil war in East Ukraine that raged for eight years before Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
Thanks to massive funding from NATO and an increase of Ukraine’s military spending to a massive 6 percent of GDP, the armed forces roughly doubled in size between 2014 and 2022, reaching 246,445 in 2021 (with over 195,000 military personnel). Thus, within just a few years, Ukraine’s army became one of the largest armies in the region, second only to Russia’s armed forces.
Beginning in late 2014, the Ukrainian army was also rapidly transformed to operate according to NATO standards. At the same time, the Ukrainian government authorized the formation of far-right militias, such as the Azov Battalion, who could now count on government assistance and training both foreign and domestic.
Such forces would be used to continue the civil war against Russian-backed Donbass separatists while Ukraine collaborated with the US and NATO to transform its moribund and corrupt military. By 2020, Reuters estimated that such militia forces, largely consisting of and run by far-right extremists, constituted 40 percent of Ukrainian forces and numbered 102,000.
The internal transformation of Ukraine’s Army to NATO standards was achieved with significant training from both NATO and the US, focusing on changes to command structure and the building of non-commissioned officers (NCOs), who were given permission to quickly make their own decisions in contrast to a more hierarchical Soviet command structure. Interoperability with other NATO forces was a major goal, recognizing that any “winning” of a war with Russia would require fighting alongside NATO forces. Officers suspected of being Russian sympathizers were arrested, discharged or chose to flee to Russia or the Donbass.
In 2016, the Poroshenko government, which came to power after the 2014 coup, signed the first Strategic Defense Bulletin of Ukraine, outlining the goals and priorities of Ukraine’s NATO-led defense reform. Notably, the first “strategic objective” stated “joint command of defense forces conducted in compliance with principles and standards accepted by the NATO states.”
A central aim of NATO’s efforts to transform Ukraine into a launching pad of war against Russia was, in its own words, to increase “its presence in the Black Sea” through “stepped up maritime cooperation with Ukraine and Georgia.” The UK, in particular, has invested heavily in “modernizing” the Ukrainian navy. As of February 2022, NATO had 18 warships stationed in the Black Sea.
Ukraine’s National Security Strategy of 2015 already adopted as its first main goal “to create conditions for the restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine within the internationally recognized state border.” The two goals combined make clear that the “retaking” of Crimea with the assistance from NATO forces was a major part of Ukraine’s military planning during both the Poroshenko and Zelensky presidencies. By spring 2021, the “retaking” of Crimea and the Donbass by military means was proclaimed Ukraine’s official military strategy.
NATO also initiated a series of programs, including the Comprehensive Assistance Program, in 2016 to “support Ukraine’s goal to implement security and defense sector program reforms according to NATO standards.” In June 2020, under recently elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, NATO granted Ukraine an upgraded status as an “Enhanced Opportunities Partner,” signaling that despite the popular vote for Zelensky, who had run on a platform promising a peaceful resolution of the conflict, Ukraine would remain on the path towards war with NATO’s help. In fact, Zelensky made the joining of NATO a major priority of his administration.
The Ukraine crisis also became the central pretext for a massive rearmament of NATO. According to NATO’s own data, aggregate member defense expenditures increased significantly after 2014. Between 2015 and 2022, NATO member defense expenditures increased by an average of 3.5 percent, passing from $910 billion in 2014 to an astounding $1.051 trillion so far in 2022.
In April it was reported that world military expenditures passed $2 trillion for the first time ever, making it clear that the world capitalist ruling class is arming itself to the teeth. Confirming that Ukraine has been central to planning World War III, the data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute stated world military expenditures “have increased for 7 consecutive years” following “declining military spending between 2011 and 2014.”
Preparing for war: Weapons and training by the imperialist powers before 2022
Leading the push towards war, the US passed the Ukraine Freedom Support Act in December 2014 with support from both Republicans and Democrats, pledging $350 million in military assistance to Ukraine. Although the Obama administration at the time publicly demurred from sending lethal weapons to Ukraine, it did not limit the private export of US-made lethal weapons to Ukraine.
Moreover, the State Department worked with the Department of Defense to allow direct commercial sales of lethal arms to Ukraine, permitting $27 million of commercial defense articles and services to Ukraine in 2016 and about $68 million in 2015, portions of which included lethal weaponry, according to the right-wing think tank the Atlantic Council. Through this program, lethal weapons such as rocket-propelled grenade launchers made their way into the hands of the notorious neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who were pictured using the weapons in training in the summer of 2017 in Mariupol.
Despite the at least public limitation on lethal weapons to Ukraine, between 2014 and 2016 the United States sent the country more than $600 million in military assistance, including body armor, night-vision goggles, vehicles and training, according to the Washington Post.
In regards to Ukraine, former US President Donald Trump is regularly labeled a “Russian asset” by the Democratic Party, but he in fact went even further than his predecessor Barack Obama in arming Ukraine. In 2017, Trump approved the largest US commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons, most notably anti-tank Javelin missiles publicly reversing Obama’s policy.
The sale marked a significant escalation by the United States as it prepared for a proxy war with Russia. As one unnamed “senior congressional official” told the Washington Post at the time, “We have crossed the Rubicon, this is lethal weapons and I predict more will be coming.”
The first sale of 210 Javelin missiles and 37 launch units was completed in March 2018.
Despite the Trump administration becoming embroiled in scandals over Trump personally holding up $400 million in assistance to Ukraine, the weapons deliveries continued nonetheless with the approval of another 150 missiles with 10 launchers for $39 million by the State Department in October 2019.
In addition to the United States, the United Kingdom, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic and Poland all delivered weapons and ammunition to Kiev free of charge following 2014. The major arms suppliers to Ukraine from 2016 to 2021 were the Czech Republic, France, Lithuania, Poland and Turkey, according to the Forum on the Arms Trade.
As much of Europe held back from openly sending their own lethal weapons to Ukraine following the 2014 coup, Lithuania quickly emerged as the most brazen conduit for funneling lethal weapons to Ukraine. In 2016 Lithuania sent the country 150 tons of ammunition among other items, and in November 2017 a plan was unveiled to send more than 7,000 Kalashnikov rifles, almost 2 million cartridges, more than 80 machine guns, several mortars, anti-tank weapons and other military equipment to Ukraine.
While total weapons sent by Lithuania from 2014-2022 amounted to just over $6 million, the policy had its intended effect of antagonizing Russia and escalating tensions in the region. Russia would lodge a formal diplomatic complaint with Lithuania over weapons deliveries to Ukraine in 2015, which Lithuania ignored.
Huge amounts of money have also been invested in sending “trainers” from various NATO member countries to train Ukrainian soldiers, including members of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. NATO and US trainers increased their presence following 2014, and according to Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Hilbert, the 7th Army Training Command alone had trained a total of 23,000 Ukrainians in Yavoriv up to January 2022. According to British Foreign Minister Ben Wallace, the UK had also trained some 20,000 Ukrainian troops after 2015.
Just prior to the invasion, clearly leaked reports from Yahoo News revealing that a “secret intensive training program” for a CIA-trained insurgency post-invasion also made clear that the United States had placed its bets on the outbreak of a full-scale war with Russia for years.
Ukrainian troops have also received systems training from Canadian, Lithuanian and Polish military instructors.
Fueling and prolonging the war: The imperialist powers flood Ukraine with weapons
With the beginning of the full-scale war in February, the supply of weapons to Ukraine became a massive global operation, costing supplier countries huge amounts in both resources and logistics.
Reporting on the logistical operation being staged by the US, NPR wrote that from the Dover Air Base in Delaware: “They all work 12-hour shifts round the clock. Pallets come in and quickly go out on a waiting aircraft. There are three flights each day bound for an air base in eastern Poland. There’s an address sticker on the pallet, a military district in western Ukraine, right down to the street address. The Ukrainian military has been desperate for the Howitzers and the shells to help push back the Russian forces.”
In May, Mark Cancian, a former Marine colonel and expert on military procurement, revealed to NPR that the United States had already sent a third of its Javelin missiles to Ukraine and that “The stocks are getting low. There’s some risk on certain US war plans that may not be enough for our own purposes.”
As the war continues, the historically unprecedented pace and scale of pledges for military assistance to Ukraine is becoming almost impossible to track. US aid alone to Ukraine would make it 14th in the world’s annual military budgets. In relative terms, Ukraine has already received one-third of total US military aid to the entire world in 2020, and the year is only half over.
While NATO and US trainers were reportedly pulled from the country following the invasion after President Biden promised to not involve American soldiers, this obscures the reality that US and NATO forces are still on the ground in Ukraine. According to recent reports from the New York Times, NATO, CIA and US Special Operations Forces are all currently operating a “commando network” within Ukraine charged with both bringing in weapons and training Ukrainian forces in their use.
According to the Times report, training of Ukrainian forces is currently taking place at military bases on Germany, France and Britain. In addition, despite the risks of a full-scale war with a nuclear-armed Russia, CIA officers continue to operate within Ukraine along with a “few dozen commandos” from NATO member countries. The US Army’s 10th Special Forces Group, which had been training Ukrainian commandos prior to the war, also “quietly established a coalition planning cell in Germany to coordinate military assistance to Ukrainian commandos and other Ukrainian troops.”
The article concedes that such an operation is of considerable size and scope and could not have taken place without substantial prior planning by American forces.
As House Representative Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat on the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, acknowledged, “It’s been critical knowing who to deal with during chaotic battlefield situations, and who to get weapons to. Without these relationships, this would have taken much longer.”
The UK, too, is continuing its training of Ukrainian troops. UK special forces have been revealed to train Ukrainian soldiers in the war zone, and thousands of Ukrainian troops are receiving military training at a special camp in Manchester. While the current program by the British Ministry of Defense envisages the training of 10,000 troops within the next few months, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an interview, “If the Ukrainians ask for more, we’ll be open to more.” Asked how many, he said, “We could do thousands and thousands.”
The billions that are being spent on continuing and escalating the war with weapons and training have had devastating consequences for the working class of both the imperialist countries, which is being made to pay for the war, and, more immediately, the population of Ukraine. Less than five months into the war, 12.1 million out of 40 million Ukrainians have become refugees and an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. The casualties among Russian troops are also estimated in the many thousands.
Such carnage has had no effect on the war plans of the ruling class. On the contrary, at every step of the way in the past months, the imperialist powers have done everything they could to escalate and prolong the war, that is ultimately only the opening stage of a new struggle for the imperialist redivision of the world. Speaking at the close of the recent NATO Summit in Madrid when asked how long the war could continue, US President Biden replied, “As long as it takes.”
South Korea's Yonsei students under fire for suing underpaid cleaners over 'noisy' protests
Kim Hyun-ok, branch president of the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union at Seoul’s prestigious Yonsei University, speaks at a press conference on Wednesday attended by union members and supporting students as well as the media.
South China Morning Post
Students at an elite South Korean university who filed a lawsuit over "noisy" labour protests have found themselves under attack for their perceived lack of empathy for the rights of the less privileged.
In May, three students at Seoul's private Yonsei University sued the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers' Union's (KPTU) branch president at Yonsei and the team's vice-president for allegedly holding "illegal and unregistered protests that generated stress and invaded one's right to learn for over a month". The move quickly attracted backlash.
As the controversy on the institution's Sinchon campus grows, increasing numbers of people are expressing support for its workers, who are dealing with heavier workloads due to lay-offs and other unfavourable conditions, while the wealthy university is coming under fire for not taking steps to improve the situation.
The ongoing protests, which began in March after eight months of negotiations with the leading educational institution led nowhere, have demanded basic rights including a 440 won (S$0.47) rise in the hourly wage to match the national minimum wage. The workers also want access to showers during very hot weather.
"But four months of protesting during our lunchtime have got us nowhere," said Kim Hyun-Ok, a cleaner and the head of KPTU's university team.
She said she "wasn't disappointed" in the three students who filed lawsuits. "We unfortunately disturbed the students who were studying, but we also needed to raise our voices as the school didn't take care of us. We don't want to be looked on as a group that merely protests. We consider ourselves as a group that needs to be protected and provided for as we don't have the means to ourselves."
Across May and June, the three students filed one criminal and three separate civil lawsuits asking for a combined 6,386,000 won in compensation for "tuition, mental damages and psychiatry treatment sessions".
In a live television interview at the end of June, 23-year-old Lee Dong-su, one of the students, said he "couldn't hear his professor because of the noise from the protest".
"I think protesting loudly inside the school is also considered abuse towards the students. I worry that this could end up traumatising me."
Following the interview, netizens labelled the political science major as an "ungrateful student" with a "wrong sense of privilege". Lee wrote online that half his lesson was blotted out by noise from "protest chants and songs coming from the megaphones outside".
"You could even hear the noise from inside the library," he wrote, attaching a video to his post.
Yonsei University is one of the top colleges in South Korea. PHOTO: South China Morning Post via Instagram
But netizens rushed to disagree. "He's missing the real cause of the problem and taking his anger (out) on people he views as an easy mark," read one comment.
"It really shows that educational background isn't everything," read another.
Han-seul, chair of the university's student committee - which is supporting the union and its members - led a press conference on Wednesday attended by around 30 students and 15 union members as well as the media.
In addition, there were almost 3,000 signatures from students who supported the cause, while law graduates showed up to offer advice.
"Yonsei University is a famous private institution that's known for having a lot of capital, but it has rejected the requests of labourers for the past 15 years and has looked on idly even as students have solidified in the fight with the labour union," Han-seul said. "This lawsuit happened because the school didn't teach about justice."
A mission statement on the university's website says Yonsei "is dedicated to educate future leaders of our society in the spirit of Christianity" and its philosophy talks of contributing "to the prosperity of humankind".
But many are now questioning whether these kinds of guiding principles are being applied. One student told This Week In Asia the protest/lawsuit case was a "sensitive topic among students on campus".
Cleaners and security workers at the prestigious private Yonsei University in Seoul have been fighting for more pay and better working conditions for months. PHOTO: Yonsei Annals
"I think it's evenly split between students who agree with the students who filed the lawsuit, the students defending the labour union, and others who are simply not interested in the matter."
Professor Na Yoon-kyeong, from the university's cultural anthropology department has included the recent protest/lawsuit case in a social justice class. "I can't help but question these students' sense of justice ," she wrote online.
While Lee, one of the suing students, estimated that workers on campus make 3-4 million won a month, Kim said the true figure was around 1.94 million won.
"The school has been telling us that they can't act alone in changing the wages and conditions of work as other institutions would complain about acting alone," Kim says. "I really don't know why a school that's considered the best in the country can't become a leader and stand for the right changes."
According to Han-seul, speaking at Wednesday's press conference, it would cost the school less than 0.1 per cent of its annual budget - one of the highest among the nation's universities - to meet the demand for an increase in its workers' pay.
The university's official budget summary showed that the main Seoul campus had a total budget of 592.2 billion won this year. The entire university had a total budget of 1.077 trillion won in tuition and other costs this year.
Yonsei University also has the third-largest financial reserve among Korean universities, at 757.4 billion won, according to data from the education ministry.
The university has declined to comment on the issue.
Progressive reforms for cleaners at many other universities have continued for over a decade, with student organisations often supporting workers and unions.
Lee Joo-hwan, a researcher at the Korea Labour and Society Institute, has called the Yonsei case "exceptional" for being such a high-profile example of opposition to the progress made.
"This is a prime example of individuals inside a community being socially fragmented and cut off from other members of the same community. In this case, the members who were cut off were the more vulnerable," Lee says. "These students who pressed charges viewed the workers as outsiders who brought them an unfavourable situation."
It surprised Lee that such a breakdown in community could happen on a university campus, of all places, but recent data can help to explain changes in attitude and behaviour.
Statistics from the Korea Institute of Public Administration show that the percentage of people who "trust in others" fell from 72.2 per cent in 2013 to 59.3 per cent last year.
Workplaces that are "strenuous and physical" are also generally associated with a lower status in society," Lee added.
South Korea has also had one of the highest rates of occupational accidents among OECD states. While numbers have been falling, there were still 855 accidents recorded in 2019, the government said.
Such social perceptions have contributed to youths vying for office jobs in major corporations and public service workplaces seen by many as more stable working environments.
Some South Koreans are already feeling nostalgic for the recent past.
"In this day and age, where indirect employment of subcontracted workers is practised widely by big institutions, we can't help but to think back to the days when students were taught to respect and co-operate with vulnerable members of the community," said Lee.
On Sunday, the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) hosted a meeting of Indian and German Ford workers, who are fighting to stop the closure of their factories by the US-based transnational corporation.
Attending the meeting were Ford India workers involved in the five-week wildcat strike against the closure of their factory on the outskirts of Chennai, the capital of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Working in collusion with Ford management and Tamil Nadu’s DMK government, the Chennai Ford Employees Union (CFEU) called off the militant strike by 1,500 mainly young workers on July 2, giving the company a freehand to move ahead with plans to shutter the plant by July 31. The closure would destroy 4,000 jobs at the plant and as many as 40,000 in related industries.
Workers occupying Ford’s Maraimalai Nagar assembly plant. (Supplied to the WSWS by a Ford worker)
Ford workers at the Saarlouis plant, near the French border in Germany, also participated in the meeting. With the assistance of the World Socialist Web Site, the Saarlouis Ford workers have established an independent action committee to defend jobs. The Ford Workers Action Committee has fought to unite German workers with their counterparts in Spain against the bidding war the unions and works councils in their respective countries have conducted to secure production of a new electric vehicle in 2026.
The IG Metall union in Germany and the UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores, General Union of Workers) in Spain submitted competing offers to gut the wages, benefits and working conditions of their members. Last month, Ford executives announced they had selected the plant in Almussafes, Spain to produce the new EV, condemning 4,600 workers at the Saarlouis plant and another 1,500 workers in the adjacent supplier park to unemployment. The plant is slated to close at the end of 2025.
Ford workers demonstrate after the announcement of the closure of the Saarlouis plant, June 22, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]
Also attending Sunday’s online meeting was Will Lehman, a Mack Trucks worker in the United States who is running for president of the United Auto Workers (UAW). Lehman is fighting to mobilize workers to break the stranglehold of the UAW bureaucracy and build a powerful rank-and-file movement to defend the jobs and living standards of workers in every country.
In opening the meeting, WSWS Labor Editor Jerry White said, “Autoworkers need a global strategy to fight the global strategy of Ford.” Under Ford’s “Global Redesign” project, he said, the company is ending operations in India, Brazil and Russia. It has cut 12,000 jobs and sold or closed six plants in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Russia and the Czech Republic in the last three years alone.
Ford is redirecting $30 billion towards electric vehicles and has teamed up with Volkswagen to fight for control of the expanding EV market. It has also hired a former Tesla executive to run its newly separated EV business. In the coming months and years, White said, the automaker plans to accelerate its attack on workers at factories making internal combustion engine vehicles, while working with the unions to create a new, low-paid and contingent workforce in their EV and battery factories.
The courageous fight by Indian and German Ford workers was part of the growing resistance of autoworkers around the world to these attacks, including the GM strike in the US and the revolt by Mexican workers in 2019, the 2021-22 strikes at Volvo Trucks, John Deere and CNH in the US, and the recent strike vote by 50,000 Hyundai workers in South Korea. The purpose of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), which was founded last year, is to coordinate the movement of the working class across national borders.
Speaking first in the discussion was a young worker at the Chennai Ford plant who was involved in the recent wildcat strike. “I am happy the WSWS has been organizing the international workforce,” he said. “At the point that the union, management and the government tries to throw us down, your organization is trying to give us a perspective and program.
“Ford announced it would shut the plant last September, but due to the continuous struggle by workers they were forced to extend that deadline, now to July 31. This struggle by workers for job security was isolated and defeated by the unions. The government and the labor commissioner have been working hand in hand with Ford management. Now the union is saying that the severance settlement has been increased from 115 to 121 days’ pay, just six days.
Striking Ford Chennai workers voice their support for building a rank-and-file committee to spearhead their struggle for job security. (WSWS Media)
“After we complete production of the backlog of cars, the union says, then they will talk further with management about increasing the severance pay package. In this way, the union has never won any of the demands of the workers,” he said, which was to preserve their jobs and incomes. “Ford management has not called back the full workforce, only 1,200 workers, and we have not been told if other workers will receive their pay. The union has also called on [Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister MK] Stalin from the DMK to intervene,” he said, but the government has proven again and again to be on the side of Ford, not the workers.
Another Tamil Nadu autoworker at the nearby Renault-Nissan plant said, “We are going through the same issues. The fact that the WSWS is organizing this meeting is a very good initiative. The unions never talk about the issues in other industries; they are not happy about workers uniting in different industries. The trade unions are working to isolate the working class. For example, our union is United Labor Federation, but even in the other industries where they have that union, they are not uniting the workers, even at other automobile companies. But they claim to be ‘United Labor,’ that’s their namesake, but they are not uniting, they are blocking workers from fighting back.
“For the past three years we have not had a new wage agreement at Renault-Nissan. The union knows workers are suffering, but they are working hand in hand with management. I appreciate the WSWS because we workers believe that the trade union is the only way to fight our issues, that the trade union is in support of workers. But that perspective has broken down, and we agree with your analysis. We can see the role of the unions throughout the globe when we talk to workers in other countries. So I believe that this international alliance proposed by the WSWS should be expanded, and it should reach greater numbers of workers.”
The Ford Chennai worker responded briefly to these comments, stating, “Ford workers are being thrown out of our jobs. This same situation is expected to come to Renault-Nissan workers. I believe the unions are going to let us down, so I believe the WSWS through the international unity can fight for workers’ rights. I hope that the WSWS reaches the workers in Tamil Nadu and India because the workers here are not exposed to this international perspective. They still believe in the unions and courts, and those illusions need to be shattered.”
Will Lehman, a Mack Trucks worker in Macungie, Pennsylvania, in the United States, was invited to speak about the significance of his campaign for presidency of the United Auto Workers .
“I’m proud to be among you in this meeting of international workers. My campaign is not for a seat at the trade union bureaucracy’s table but to oppose the national isolation program of the UAW...
“Workers are increasingly seeing that it is the companies and the union bureaucracies that are the enemy, and workers in other countries as our brothers and sisters. I want to make workers aware of the vastly more powerful stance of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees...
“Ford is not an ‘American’ company; it is an international company. If it is to be fought successfully, it must be fought by workers internationally; the same for Mack Trucks’ parent company, Volvo, and the rest. The global nature of production will be made clear in my campaign. The only valid method of struggle of workers will be through international solidarity,” he concluded.
Shift change at Ford Saarlouis (Photo: WSWS)
A German worker from Ford’s Saarlouis plant then spoke. “Competition between the works council between Germany and Spain was a perfidious maneuver. Saarlouis did not have a chance, and we were simply used to push down conditions for our Spanish colleagues and to extract concessions from them. In the works council we have a real Mafia that intimidates workers and tells them that it is illegal to strike. IG Metall has also done everything to prevent a strike.
“I want to express my deep respect for my Indian brothers and sisters and would like to know: How were you able to organize and carry out a strike?”
A reporter from the WSWS who has reported on the struggle in India replied, “The union never called for the strike. They also said it was illegal to strike. But the young workers initiated the strike from the beginning and kept the momentum going. In September when the plant was due to be closed, the workers demanded a vote on what they wanted to do.
“The union was forced to carry out a vote, and the majority of workers in Chennai voted to demand job security. By the next month, October, the union tried to convince the workers that job security was not possible, and the young workers accepted that initially. Ford claimed they were going to bring an electric vehicle into the Chennai plant, but this was to hoodwink the workers into completing the production of 40,000 cars before it closed the plant.
“The unions knew the electric vehicles were not going to come, but they convinced the workers to complete the production. After workers reduced the backlog from 40,000 to 1,400 cars, management said that no electric vehicle was going to come, and you are going to get a low-wage severance package. The workers got alerted and mounted a wildcat strike in defiance of the union leadership.
“From the beginning of the strike on May 31, the unions tried to isolate the struggle, concealed its talks with management and tried to liquidate this protest. The key thing to note is that the Stalinist unions never raised anything about the loss of more than 2,300 workers because they are in an alliance with bourgeois parties and the bourgeois parliament.
“Through the intervention of the WSWS from the beginning, we exposed what the unions were doing and urged the workers to demand to know what was happening in the secret talks with management and the labor commissioner. We distributed articles about what was happening to the Ford workers in Germany and Europe, and this had a powerful impact on the workers. It was both their militancy and the intervention of the WSWS explaining the isolating role of the unions which brought the consciousness to workers about forming a rank-and-file committee, and this kept the momentum going on.”
The meeting also heard a report about the revolutionary upheaval in Sri Lanka, across the Palk Strait from southern India, where months of mass protests by workers and youth against crushing price hikes and food and fuel shortages have forced the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapakse. The capitalist opposition parties, with the full backing of the unions, are now trying to cobble together an interim government to impose a brutal IMF austerity program.
The Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka has rejected any participation in this political trap and is fighting for the expansion of action committees, workers’ control over the distribution of vital necessities, the repudiation of foreign debt, and the replacement of the capitalist government with a government of workers and peasants, committed to socialist policies.
The meeting concluded with the unanimous passage of a resolution declaring a commitment to developing the fight against the closure of the Chennai and Saarlouis plants and the restructuring of the global auto industry as the expense of the working class:
This meeting of rank-and-file workers from the closure-threatened Ford assembly plants in Tamil Nadu, India and Saarlouis, Germany, calls on all autoworkers to join us in fighting for a global workers counter-offensive against the drive of Ford and the other transnational automakers to restructure the industry at the expense of our jobs, wages and working conditions.
The nationally based, pro-capitalist trade unions are adamantly opposed to such a struggle. That is why we are fighting to build a network of rank-and-file committees as advocated by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
We welcome the initiative taken by our fellow autoworker Will Lehman in standing for president of the US-based United Auto Workers (UAW) union. In fighting for a rank-and-file rebellion against the bureaucratic union apparatus and fighting for the international unity of the working class, Brother Bill Lehman is showing the way forward for all workers.
Ryanair on strike in Spain as airline strikes spread across Europe
European airline workers are continuing strikes, defying state threats to ban strikes using reactionary “minimum service” laws against which unions are organizing no opposition.
Workers are striking in defiance of the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government’s demand that workers provide “minimum service” of between 57 and 82 percent of flights, depending on the airport and route. Confident of government complicity, Ryanair last month threatened to sack all strikers.
USO and SITCPLA are pathetically appealing to the PSOE-Podemos government, especially Podemos Deputy Prime Minister and Labour Minister Yolanda DÃaz. In a joint statement, they implored DÃaz: “Do not allow Ryanair to violate labor legislation and constitutional rights such as the right to strike and act against a company that does not abide by court rulings, does not comply with the law and uses fear, coercion and threats with its employees.”
Unsurprisingly, DÃaz refused to reply. Her anti-worker record is notorious: she spearheaded the back-to-work campaign with the trade unions during the pandemic that led to millions of infections in workplaces and the deaths of thousands of workers and their family members. She also passed a reactionary labour reform extending the widely-hated one approved by the right-wing Popular Party (PP) in 2012.
DÃaz belongs to a government that has repeatedly attacked strikes. In November, it deployed armoured vehicles and riot police against striking metalworkers in Cadiz; in April, it mobilised 23,000 police to crush a truckers strike against rising fuel prices amid NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine. Two weeks ago, DÃaz cynically gave her condolences after Spanish and Moroccan police ran riot, killing at least 37 refugees on the border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla.
Initially, the unions at Ryanair only planned 24-hour stoppages in June. However, under rising pressure from workers, USO extended the strikes, which it blamed on the “indifference of the company.” Trying to split up the action and minimize its impact, the unions have called for 24-hour stoppages that will start today and continue intermittently on 13-15, 18-21, and 25-28 July.
Setting out to divide its members, USO called for separate strike days for its EasyJet members, who are fighting for similar demands. At EasyJet, Europe’s second budget airline after Ryanair, USO has called for six new strikes on July 15-17 and 29-31 to demand a 40 percent increase in their basic salary.
On only one day, July 15, will Ryanair and Easyjet strikes coincide, even though workers are defending the same demands: improved working conditions, higher salaries to offset inflation levels of 10 percent, remuneration for training hours and supplements for seniority.
The combined strength of airline workers at Ryanair and Easyjet was demonstrated last month. The strikes at both companies left at least 241 flights canceled and 1,440 delayed: 26 cancellations and 185 delays at Ryanair, and 215 and 1,255 at EasyJet. Most EasyJet cancellations were to or from Malaga-Costa del Sol airport, but operations at Barcelona-El Prat and Palma de Mallorca-Son Sant Joan airports were also affected.
Ryanair pilots in Frankfurt
The critical question for workers is breaking the obstacles posed by the airline unions and building rank-and-file committees to coordinate their struggles across national borders. A powerful, Europe-wide mobilisation of airline workers is already underway. Over the past month, Ryanair workers in Belgium, Italy and Portugal have mounted strikes. Strikes have hit Air France, Transavia and Brussels Airlines, and there were demonstrations by US pilots at Southwest Airlines.
In addition, ground crew at airports across Europe—baggage handlers, security guards and check-in staff—also struck last month, leading to thousands of cancelled flights, hours-long waits at airports, and capacity curbs at Europe’s biggest hubs.
Terrified of the emerging international mobilisation of the workers, USO is whipping up nationalism to try to divide the workers and strangle the strike.
USO said that crew members in Spain earn a salary base of €950, or €850 less than their French or German co-workers. “The conclusion is clear: at EasyJet there is money for everything, except for Spain,” said USO general secretary Miguel Galán.
Galán has begged Ryanair to grant token concessions to avoid strikes. A new meeting has been scheduled tomorrow, after which USO hopes to call off the strike.
USO has also complained that Ryanair is bringing in crews to operate from Spain to break the strike, which once again demonstrates the impotence of the USO’s national one-day strikes. According to reports, some are Portuguese, but others are non-EU, from the United Kingdom. USO has said it will file corresponding complaints with the Labour Inspectorate in each city where Ryanair has Spanish bases.
The same nationalist perspective is shared by trade unions across Europe. Last week, French and Belgian pilots unions called strike actions on days not called by the Spanish unions, for 23-24 July.
In Northern Europe, the SAS Pilot Group (SPG) union at Scandinavian Airline Systems (SAS), the Scandinavian airline giant established in 1946 by the governments of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, has been delaying strike action for a month. On June 9, they submitted their notice to strike on June 29, which they ultimately postponed to July 4.
Since last week, nearly 1,000 SAS pilots have been on strike. SAS is operating at around 50 percent capacity due to the pilot strike, affecting 30,000 passengers daily. Thousands of flights have been cancelled. According to Norwegian broadcaster NRK, the strike is costing SAS $8 to $10 million daily. In solidarity, 200 SAS aeroplane mechanics in Denmark are to join the strike on Thursday, refusing to service any planes.
With this immense power, the SPG agreed to break its own strike, flying some charter flights to help stranded passenger return home. It then had to call off its strike-breaking when pilots realised that they were being deployed to “popular and well-trafficked holiday destinations, such as Rhodes, Crete, Larnaca, and Split, from where there are already alternative travel options,” SPG admitted.
The anger of pilots is the culmination of a number of betrayals with SPG complicity. Pilots were forced to accept a two-tier system whereby new pilots came in on lower salaries and benefits in the SAS Link and SAS Connect subsidiaries. After the COVID-19 pandemic began, the union agreed to a “temporary” wage cut for its members. Last week, negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement broke down, resulting in the strike.
Once again, these strikes are showing the immense power of airport and airline workers, a powerful section of the working class that can rapidly shut down much of the world economy. This could not only impose improved working conditions and wages, but set off a broader movement in the working class against the war, the criminal official handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the surging cost of living.
The key question, however, is the need to unify workers struggles internationally and break free of the debilitating, nationalist hold of union bureaucracies that work closely with management and capitalist governments at their members’ expense. For this, workers need to build the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) and fight for a socialist perspective to subordinate socially created wealth to social need.
