Marx’s axiom that history repeats itself, the second time as farce,is, unusually for Marx, incorrect. If the current conflict situation is allowed to continue then the result will be, as in the first time around, a tragedy of  cataclysmic proportions. So called ‘leaders’ of many States are irresponsibly throwing as much inflammables on to the conflagration as possible.

The German ‘Green’ Party, demonstrating that it is as supportive of capitalism as any  other Party, is pushing , successfully, to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

The German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said, “We  we are fighting a war against Russia.”

“Arguing in favour of sending tanks to Kiev, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said EU countries were fighting a war against Russia. US and EU officials have previously gone out of their way to claim they were not a party to the conflict in Ukraine.

“And therefore I’ve said already in the last days – yes, we have to do more to defend Ukraine. Yes, we have to do more also on tanks,” Baerbock said during a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Tuesday. “But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe, because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.”

While Chancellor Olaf Scholz has insisted that Germany ought to support Ukraine but avoid direct confrontation with Russia, his coalition partner Baerbock has taken a more hawkish position. According to German media, her party – the Greens – has been in favour of sending Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev, and eventually managed to pressure Scholz into agreeing. Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht, who was reluctant to send tanks to Ukraine, was pushed to resign.

This is not the first time Baerbock has made waves with her position on the conflict. She told an EU gathering in Prague last August that she intends to deliver on her promises to Ukraine “no matter what my German voters think.”

Quoting Baerbock’s words on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the West just keeps admitting that they had been planning the current conflict for years.

“If we add this to Merkel’s revelations that they were strengthening Ukraine and did not count on the Minsk agreements, then we are talking about a war against Russia that was planned in advance. Don’t say later that we didn’t warn you,” Zakharova insisted.

Former German chancellor Angela Merkel told German media in early December that the 2014 ceasefire brokered by Berlin and Paris was actually a ploy to “give Ukraine valuable time” for a military build-up. Former French president Francois Hollande has confirmed this, while Ukraine’s leader at that time, Pyotr Poroshenko, openly admitted it as well.

Russia’s operation in Ukraine was a “forced and last-resort response to preparations for aggression by the US and its satellites,” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev claimed on Monday.”

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Dave C.

Emergency Call Out

Accident and Emergency is crammed

While ambulances queue in the car park,

A triage nurse frets, trying to make work

This seized up system, regularly damned

By comfortable commentators who

Cite bed blocking elderly for lying

In hospital beds rather than dying.

Others claim they’d have more funds flowing through

To pay for enhanced social care, and yet

Every penny paid towards such cost

Is a unit of capital’s profit lost.

So stringent limits will always be set

Whichever party does the fashioning:

Whatever the need there’ll be rationing.

D. A.

 Union Pacific, one of the largest rail corporations in the United States, successfully fought off workers’ demands for paid sick leave.  Union Pacific was one of the major rail carriers involved in White House-brokered contract talks late last year that produced an agreement without any guaranteed paid sick days, rejecting a central demand of rail workers. Labor unions representing a majority of U.S. rail workers rejected the proposed agreement and threatened to strike, but Congress intervened in the long-simmering contract dispute in December to impose the White House-backed deal on employees

It said that it brought in record revenue and profits last year.

The company reported $7 billion in net income for 2022 as a whole and said it spent a whopping $6.3 billion repurchasing its own shares—significantly more than the $4.6 billion it spent on employee pay and benefits last year.

“Instead of buying back their own stock, UP should be investing in their employees by offering paid sick leave, reasonable schedules, and a better quality of life for railroaders,” Ed Hall, the newly elected president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, responded.

“President Biden campaigned on a week of paid sick leave for all working people, and then he had the opportunity right here but didn’t take action. He favored the corporations,” Matt Weaver, a rail worker and member of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED) in Ohio.

While Blocking Paid Sick Leave, Union Pacific Spent More on Stock Buybacks Than Workers (commondreams.org)

 “Banks in Argentina are suffering from a shortage of space to store the quickly depreciating national currency banknotes, Bloomberg reported, citing sources in the banking industry.

According to the report, Banco Galicia and the local unit of Spain’s Banco Santander have been forced to install additional vaults to store peso bills. Banco Galicia has already added eight vaults for cash storage over the past year to the two it had since 2019, and reportedly plans to set up two more in the coming months.

Argentina, which boasts the second biggest economy in South America after Brazil, has been plagued by economic instability for decades but the situation has worsened in recent years. The country has once again defaulted on its debt in 2020, and has had to resort to capital controls to protect its currency. Inflation is currently approaching 100%, while Buenos Aires also owes roughly $40 billion to the IMF.

Argentina’s largest denomination banknote – 1,000 pesos – is currently worth around $5.40 on official exchanges, but barely reached $2.65 when valued at informal exchange rates last week. Amid the surge in prices, Argentinians have been forced to carry hundreds of banknotes to pay for ordinary purchases, with transactions becoming increasingly difficult due to the need to use a greater number of bills.

Since 2019, the amount of money in public circulation in the South American state has soared from 895 billion to 3.8 trillion pesos, according to the Central Bank. The country’s banks and business groups have been calling on the regulator to print higher-value bills for years, saying it would make the system more efficient for banks, businesses and citizens.

“Transporting, mobilizing and withdrawing a greater number of bills every time increasingly provokes unsafe situations beyond creating complications and expenses,” Fabian Castillo, head of the Federation of Commerce and Industry of Buenos Aries (FECOBA) said in a statement earlier this month.

The president of the Argentine Chamber of Commerce and Services (CAC), Mario Grinman, also stressed that there should be at least 5,000 peso bills.

“Since its appearance in November 2017, the 1,000 pesos has lost almost 100% of its purchasing power. In 2017 it covered almost half of the basic basket and today it does not reach 6%. Today to go to the supermarket you have to carry a bag of banknotes. Logistically it is a disaster,” he told news outlet La Nacion.

However, the central bank said last week that no announcement was expected on larger-denomination bills and declined to comment on the requests for them.”

https://www.rt.com/business/

Dave C.

 Len Wallace of the Industrial Workers of the World and of the Socialist Party of Canada

Work, in all its forms, is what keeps society running. At best, our own work can be interesting and creative, if we’re not stuck in an unfulfilling role. Capitalism turns work into employment, with our job roles shaped by how profitable or cost-effective they are likely to be, more than by how useful or manageable they are. Even so, countless important tasks rely on volunteers and other unpaid labour.

 Russia is putting together a much larger military force.

An Army Division comprises of between 10000 to 15000 personnel.

An Army Corps comprises of between 20000 to 45000 personnel.

“The chief of Russia’s armed forces, Army General Valery Gerasimov, has said that Moscow intends to set up new military districts and put together fresh units to counter the most pressing security threats it faces, including a hybrid war in Ukraine, as well as Finland and Sweden potentially joining NATO.

“At the moment, such threats are the aspirations of NATO to expand by incorporating Finland and Sweden, as well as the use of Ukraine as a tool for waging a hybrid war against our country” by the US and its allies, Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov, who also heads Russia’s joint forces in Ukraine, said in an interview in newspaper Argumenty i Fakty on Monday.

According to the general, the Russian military’s response to those challenges will, among other things, include the creation of the Moscow and Leningrad military districts and the formation of three motorized rifle divisions in Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, which joined Russia in autumn after referendums, as did the Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Also on the agenda is putting together an army corps in the Republic of Karelia, located in Russia’s northwest and bordering Finland.

Speaking about the conflict in Ukraine, Gerasimov pointed out that the Russian military hasn’t seen hostilities of such scale and intensity in the country’s modern history and that Moscow was “opposed by almost the entire collective West.” 

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Dave C.

 Analysts at Retail Economics found that the UK’s least affluent households have almost £40 a month less spare cash than they did a year ago while the richest have gained a similar sum in the same period. 

The differing fortunes recorded on its cost of living tracker reflect a higher rate of inflation of 16.5% for those at the bottom end of the income scale, who spend two-thirds of their income on essentials such as food and energy, compared with 13.3% for those at the top, who spend just under half.

The wealthiest 20% of households had £36 a month more in discretionary income in December compared with a year before, as they enjoyed record earnings growth which offset rising energy and food bills. 

Richard Lim, the chief executive of Retail Economics, said: “…the wealthiest are actually seeing their discretionary spending power rise on the back of record earnings growth, while the least affluent see their spare cash eroded by inflation…”

Poorest in UK have £40 a month less to spare than a year ago, study finds | Family finances | The Guardian

Egypt with around 107 million inhabitants, is the region’s most populous nation. It also has the Middle East’s most powerful military. In Egypt food prices have doubled, salaries have halved, the value of the Egyptian pound plummets and banks are restricting withdrawals. 

Egypt’s currency has devalued by around one-third since late October and inflation currently stands at over 20%. Some economists suspect it’s even worse than that. They put the unofficial rate — which includes Egypt’s huge informal economy — as high as 100%.

Could Egypt soon become “the new Lebanon?”

“There are remarkable similarities between Lebanon’s now abjectly failed economy and Egypt’s struggling one,” Robert Springborg, an adjunct professor at Canada’s Simon Fraser University, wrote in a 2022 report for the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy. “The consequences of the collapse of confidence in Lebanon have been devastating but they would pale into near insignificance if repeated on an Egyptian scale,” he warned.

Egyptian poverty levels, for instance, are nearing those of Lebanon with at least 60% of Egyptians living in or near to the poverty line. 

“And then there’s the willingness of the political elite to callously enrich themselves at the expense of the state and the public,” said Timothy Kaldas, an expert on Egypt’s political economy and a policy fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “That’s definitely also something the two countries also share.”

Egypt “on the brink of a financial and economic abyss,” Rabah Arezki, a former chief economist at the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Region, wrote on January 18.

The pandemic decimated Egyptian tourism, one of the country’s big money earners. Then the war in Ukraine disrupted wheat supplies to the country, the world’s biggest importer of wheat.

Since 2014, the Egyptian government, led by President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, has promoted national “mega-projects” including the world’s longest, driverless monorail — at a cost of $23 billion (€21 billion); and a whole new city, the $50 billion (€46 billion) New Administrative Capital, near Cairo. These have artificially driven growth in the country. 

Many of the projects are also connected to the Egyptian military’s vast money-making business network. 

Policies like these, allowing state and military-owned enterprises to dominate the economy, have depressed the private sector in Egypt, discouraged foreign investment and seen the country become more dependent on foreign credit for its survival. Egypt owes over $155 billion (€138 billion), and roughly one-third of its national income goes toward servicing that foreign debt.

“The reason why the pandemic and the Ukraine war have had such a big impact is because of the investment strategy led by Sissi for nine years: Massive spending on huge projects, some of which were totally unnecessary or poorly conceived,” Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, told DW. “This made Egyptian finances very vulnerable, without providing the economy with real gains.”

A new IMF bailout may bring Egypt back from the brink yet again but it’s hard to say whether it can provide real relief for long-suffering citizens. The government and the country’s elites will try to retain their advantages and wealth, all the while seeking to wriggle out of concessions around, for example, decreasing the military’s economic power, Kaldas said. 

Economic crisis: Is Egypt the ‘new Lebanon?’ – DW – 01/20/2023

 Humpty Dumpty, meeting Alice in Wonderland, informed her that ‘When I use a word,’  ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

In George Orwell’s, 1984, the ‘Ministry Of Peace’ was responsible for carrying out war.

The European Union has a  “European Peace Facility’, a fund that the bloc uses to finance foreign militaries. Ukraine has already received €3.1 billion ($3.36 billion) from this fund, with the aid doled out in seven successive packages since the beginning of Russia’s military operation last February.” The “Peace” fund is now going to forward a further 542 million dollars of military aid to Ukraine, because, the EU “remains steadfast in our support for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

To all those who question why the wealth extracted from the global working class isn’t used to ameliorate all the suffering of millions in the world (caused by capitalism), what further proof is needed of where capitalism’s priorities lie?

“EU foreign ministers approved a fresh tranche of military aid to Ukraine on Monday, Swedish officials have said. The arms bonanza is worth $542 million, but does not include the German tanks that Kiev and its allies have their hopes pinned on.

The bloc’s 27 foreign ministers agreed on the €500 million ($542 million) package following discussions in Brussels. Sweden, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Council, announced the agreement on Twitter, stating: “We remain steadfast in our support for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

Money for the weapons will be drawn from the ‘European Peace Facility’, a fund that the bloc uses to finance foreign militaries. Ukraine has already received €3.1 billion ($3.36 billion) from this fund, with the aid doled out in seven successive packages since the beginning of Russia’s military operation last February.

This supply of arms to Ukraine represented an about-turn from the EU’s long-standing policy of not purchasing arms for use in foreign wars. Before last February, the ‘Peace Facility’ had only been used to supply non-lethal equipment to Georgia, Mali, Moldova, Mozambique, and Ukraine, for a total of less than $125 million.

To date, the US has underwritten most of Ukraine’s expenses, allocating more than $110 billion to the country’s economy and military since the conflict began and supplying progressively heavier and more powerful armaments.

However, Washington refuses to donate its M1 Abrams main battle tanks, leaving Ukrainian officials and their most fervent European supporters – predominantly the Baltic and Eastern European states – to press Germany into filling that role. 

Kiev has repeatedly requested that Germany supply its military with Leopard 2 tanks, and allow other European users of the Leopard to donate their fleets. Berlin has not yet made an official decision on sending its own Leopards, but Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Sunday that her government would not block Poland from sending its stock of the tanks to Ukraine.”

Russia has warned that Western arms deliveries will only prolong the conflict, while making Western nations de-facto participants. Should Germany give in and send its tanks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this week that they “can burn and they will burn like the rest [of the Western weapons.”

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Dave C.