On International Working Women’s Day we salute our unsung heroes

 Written by: Alice M. on 7 March 2022

On 8th March, International Working Women’s Day, women across the world join in solidarity in the long struggle for women’s rights, equality, an end to economic and sexual exploitation, oppression and violence against women. Women demand an end to barbaric imperialist wars.  We fight for peace, justice and self-determination for all countries and peoples.

We fight for our liberation from patriarchal capitalism and imperialism and all forms of oppression enslaving women. Women carry the day to day heavy burden of capitalist economic and environmental crises and imperialist wars.  

We pay tribute to women in every corner of the world, of all ages, organising and taking militant action against the injustices, inequality, oppression, climate change and wars of aggression, born of capitalism and imperialism.  We are humbled by work of many women committed to improving the lives of ordinary people in the long struggle for socialism and communism and the liberation of humanity.

In Australia, we pay tribute to the First Peoples' women whose lands were invaded and violently occupied 240 years ago by British colonialism.  The occupation, dispossession and oppression of First People continues today under US imperialist domination. We are inspired by their resilience, dignity and struggles to unite their Peoples, asserting their unceded sovereignty in the long battle for self-determination.  They persist in struggle to lift their communities out of Third World living conditions, in a country replete with wealth seized from their stolen lands by a tiny handful of corporations.

Angry women’s voices are growing in numbers, loudly asserting the rights of women to equality, equal pay, respect and justice. A life free of sexual harassment, discrimination and violence at work and at home. More voices join them demanding end to the economic exploitation and abuse of women.

Little has changed for women in the past 12 months since March 2021 when hundreds of thousands of angry women across the country spilled out into the streets demanding end to sexual harassment, abuse and violence.  Demanding equality and equal pay.  Women’s wages are still lower than men’s and equal pay has become a distant dream and our hope for future generations of women.

After more than 60 years of patiently waiting on empty government and bosses’ promises to stamp out sexual abuse, violence and discrimination, and give us equal pay, women refuse to politely wait any longer. Our wages are still lower than men’s, childcare is still unaffordable for many women, workplaces are still unsafe for many of us, sexual and domestic violence is unabated, women’s health services are underfunded, more women are homeless and living in poverty.  

The capitalist patriarchal culture and structures continue to commodify women, entrench and encourage economic and sexual exploitation, harassment, abuse and violence.  

Women’s militancy
No longer will we be distracted and divided by the window dressing of capitalist ruling class’ fairy tale myths of “equality”, covering up the double exploitation and discrimination of working women.  

We are immensely encouraged by the growing numbers of courageous young women fearlessly condemning inequality, harassment, abuse and the denigration of women.  They are growing in numbers, refusing to be cowed and belittled by male supremacy, the bosses, the patriarchal capitalist system.  

We are inspired by thousands of NSW nurses fighting, uniting, striking and defying anti-workers laws, winning the battle and showing the way to all working people.   They have opened the window to a vision of independent working class struggle.

We are the majority of underpaid and overworked front line workers fighting and dealing with the deadly Covid pandemic in hospitals, homes and communities.

We are inspired by the resilience of women in workplaces and communities from different nationalities and ethnicities, uniting and fighting the bosses for decent wages, conditions and secure work.  They deeply understand from life experiences and their own relationship with the boss class, that workers have no choice but to fight the bosses’ relentless attacks on their wages and conditions, and which exploit women workers even more. 

And where would capitalism be without women’s unpaid domestic work at home and in communities?  The unpaid organising, nurturing and the caring, the educating, the cleaning, keeping families, households and unpaid community services functioning, enable capitalism to exploit and extract profit from working class labour more efficiently.

Women demand Peace and Justice!  No Imperialist war!
This year’s International Working Women’s Day is in the midst of a world torn by open contention between the world’s greatest superpowers – US/NATO, Russia and China - competing for global control of natural resources, markets and spheres of influence.  

The inter-imperialist rivalry over control of Ukraine has spiralled into a military conflict.  Ukraine is a proxy in a war between the US/NATO and Russia. The Ukrainian people are pawns on a chessboard of imperialist powers’ rivalries and war.  In imperialist wars the ordinary people suffer massive scale destruction, the hardships, displacements, homelessness, impoverishment, thousands of deaths and physical and mental injuries. Women carry the heavy burden of the direct onslaught of these brutal wars of aggression unleashed on the people by global corporations and their billionaire class.

But let’s not forget the women and children bombed and starved in northern Africa, Syria, Palestine, Philippines, Myanmar, Afghanistan and other countries, whose suffering and struggles to survive continue with little outrage or comment by politicians or media.

In Australia, we are also facing a possible military conflict between the US and China.  Australian governments are subservient to US imperialism and have aligned with the US in the economic and military contention with China. As a client state of the US, Australia has been deeply integrated into the US imperialist economic, cultural and military hegemony and preparations for war.  

Women are building a broad peace movement demanding the $100s billions of people’s taxes the government is spending on the US-Australia military alliance and imperialist wars be spent instead on underfunded public health, education, child care, action on climate change, the homeless, supporting women fleeing domestic violence, eradicating discrimination and violence against women.

Oppression breeds resistance 
Working women will always fight for our rights, equality and liberation.   We join the struggle for socialism and communism, the social systems that will put an end to the exploitation and oppression of women and all humanity, and end imperialist wars.

Global warming: Australia is part of the “atlas of global suffering”

 

Written by: Nick G. on 4 March 2022

With everything else happening in the world at the moment, it’s easy to lose sight of the continuing danger posed by climate warming.

Climate warming is largely the responsibility of giant fossil fuel corporations and the governments that work for them.

Last Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its latest report. Thousands of scientists pooled their research to prepare the report.

UN Secretary General António Guterres described the report as “an atlas of human suffering”.

The report’s release comes in the wake of disastrous bushfires in Wester Australia, where over the space of a few weeks, some 60,000 hectares of land was burnt with loss of houses and sheds. In South Australia, a volunteer fire fighter lost her life fighting a blaze in the state’s south-east.

The report came at the same time as people along the eastern coast of Australia faced unprecedented flooding. Ten people are reported to have drowned. Hundreds of homes and small businesses have been flooded, and the armed forces have been deployed to rescue people from their roof tops. Many have lost everything, unable to afford the cost of soaring insurance premiums.

Capitalist-induced global warming has even spawned new items of vocabulary. We now talk of “rain bombs” to describe unprecedented levels of rain being dumped in very short periods of time. Last December, such a rain bomb fell on north-eastern Brazil with many killed.  Parts of Europe witnessed similar flooding last year. 

On the very day that the report was delivered, 2,145 homes and 2,356 businesses were submerged in Brisbane. Another 10,827 properties were partially flooded above the floorboards. And that is in a capital city.  The devastation in rural centres, like Lismore where 15,000 people had to be evacuated, was worse on a per capita basis.

The Australian government is an international pariah for its refusal to at on climate change. On Monday, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg shrugged off the floods, omitting any mention that warming global temperatures contribute to more extreme weather patterns, remarking instead that “forever it’s been thus”.

Well, that’s his view.  Ours is that we’re not putting up with indifference to, and inaction on, climate change.

We will be back in the streets placing our demands on the big corporations to stop the human suffering caused by their selfish pursuit of profits. 

We demand real action on climate change, and we demand it now.

We oppose Putin’s invasion, and the white-washing of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism

 Written by: Nick G. on 4 March 2022

Last night, there was a moment of high drama on the ABC’s Q and A talk show when host Stan Grant suddenly turned on a young lad and threw him out of the show’s audience.

The show’s main focus was on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and both the panel and the audience were strongly behind Ukraine’s resistance.

For our part, we have condemned Putin’s invasion and labelled it an act of criminal aggression.

The young lad, Sasha Gillies-Lekakis, had an opposite view. 

"As someone who comes from the Russian community here in Australia, I've been pretty outraged by the narrative depicted by our media, with Ukraine as the good guy and Russia as the bad guy," he said.

"Believe it or not, there are a lot of Russians here and around the world that support what Putin's doing in Ukraine, myself included. Since 2014, the Ukraine has besieged the Russian populations in Donetsk and Luhansk unprovoked, killing an estimated 13,000 people."

At this point, Sasha was heckled by members of the audience. Grant did not stop the heckling but disputed the figure quoted, saying that not all of those killed were Ukrainian Russians.

He then ignored the questioner.

The show went on to other topics, notably, the flooding that has hit the eastern coast.

After ten or fifteen minutes, Grant suddenly addressed the young man, saying "Something has been bothering me, I have to admit, since we had Sasha's question earlier about Russia, and it's been playing on my mind," and demanded that he immediately leave.

It was a Stan Grant “Putin moment” when a person who had politely raised an unpopular and dissenting view, was silenced and removed. He had not been disruptive, and had only managed to ask a part of his question that challenged the mainstream US/NATO narrative.

Grant has spoken eloquently, passionately, about racism in Australia. That is good. However, he is a very conservative person who acts as a cheerleader for US imperialism and advocates its “leadership of the free world”. 

He is a Senior Fellow of the US armament companies-funded think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI – also called the “Australians Supporting Predatory Imperialism”).  

Last night that slip was showing when he took offence at Sascha’s challenge to the US narrative on the Ukrainian crisis, and threw him out of the audience. 

The ruthless censoring of Sasha's views challenging the US/NATO war narrative reflects the intensifying imperialist conflict and the sycophantic Australian government as mouthpiece of US imperialism.

We repeat our condemnation of Putin’s invasion.  

But there must be no white-washing or refusal to acknowledge that dark side of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism manifested in the likes of the Azov Battalion, which had been referred to in the show that preceded Q and A, Foreign Correspondent.

 

While Morrison Government Rants About China, Workers' Struggles Are On The Increase

 

Written by: Ned K. on 26 February 2022

As inflation in Australia rises above the 3%, petrol prices hit $1.99 a litre and finding and/or keeping a roof over your head becomes more and more expensive, more workers are organizing to fight for wage increases just to survive. 

In Victoria for example security industry workers are demanding higher wages through collective bargaining where Hong Kong owned Wilson Security dominates the industry.

In the middle range of wage scales, nurses in NSW recently went on strike for a pay increase and defied the bosses’ courts in doing so.

At the high end of wage scales, MUA members have been defying attempts by stevedoring multinational companies to cut workers' wages by fiddling with rosters.

In SA, essential service workers in hospitals won wage increases and job security after two years protracted struggle against the Marshall Liberal Government.

Where workers are in weaker collective bargaining positions to win wage increases to keep their heads above water, turn-over of labour is high as workers move to places they hear about where there is a labour shortage and they can earn slightly more. This has led to employer association demands that international borders be relaxed so they can return to the good old pre-Covid days of having a plentiful supply of cheap migrant workers to exploit.

To make ends meet, migrant workers often work on Australian Business Number (ABNs) and get paid $10 per hour less than the Award for the industry they are in. Often their "employer" is another migrant worker in an equally precarious situation who is paid by the principal contractor to provide and pay workers needed on a particular site.

The principal contractor has a commercial contract to provide a service to a business or government department. The migrant workers do not even appear on the principal contractor's books. 

Sometimes these contracted migrant workers on ABNs pay a manager or labour hire operator an up-front amount of up to $1,000 for the "privilege" of being given a job!

However more of these workers are not putting up with this anymore and demanding the legal minimum wage at least or demanding employment directly with the business owner or at least with the principal contractor.

School cleaning and agricultural sector are renowned for this type of exploitation. However, the tide is turning as more migrant workers are speaking out and not putting up with it anymore.  In one case in school cleaning, the Catholic owned college was made aware by cleaners that the contract cleaning company at the school no longer employed most of the cleaners but had used cheap ABN labour with workers being paid just over half the Award rate. The cleaners settled with a significant wage increase.

The economic situation of any of these workers in Australia is nowhere on the Morrison Government's radar as the federal election gets nearer. 

All his beat-up about national security and threat of China mean little to most workers. It is likely that for those workers eligible to vote, that they will vote against the Morrison Government because they see it as unconcerned and/or disinterested in the issues for workers that confront them in the day-to-day struggle to survive.

The same can be said for the state governments in NSW and SA.

Potential new governments at federal and state levels this year will face a working class on the move and not satisfied with "more of the same" from in-coming governments.

 

The right to live without the roar of imperialist shells in Ukraine - CPA (M-L) Statement

 Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 25 February 2022

Imperialist rivalry, brinksmanship and now Russian invasion threatens death and suffering for the masses of ordinary people in and around Ukraine. Many are already dead and wounded. 

Our comrades in the Ukrainian Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement) said not long before the Russian invasion:

We Marxist-Leninists of Ukraine are firmly against all the forms of imperialist aggression in our country. We call on our comrades from all countries not to accept the thought that some imperialists can be `better` than others. Imperialism, capitalism is always war and pain. The aspirations of the Ukrainian workers are not to follow any kind of bourgeois propaganda, and to struggle for the real rights, for decent wages and adequate social protection, for higher standards of living. And, of course, they have the right to live without war, without the roar of shells under the lying words of the Kremlin or the Western bourgeoisie!

They call for struggle against imperialist invaders, for unity and for socialism.  

Our class demands peace

Imperialism is characteristic of the most powerful capitalist countries whose major corporations demand that “their” governments secure for them areas in which to invest, raw materials for them to extract, cheap labour to exploit and markets to saturate with their commodities. To the greatest extent possible, they seek to deny these things to competitors and control them as their own spheres of influence. 

Ukraine has become the plaything of the rival imperialist blocs of the US-NATO-EU and of the Russian Federation. A struggle over imperialist spheres of influence is at the heart of the crisis. It arises due to the uneven development of the strengths and weaknesses of the powers and of their abilities to protect their respective spheres of influence.

The US-led bloc wants to extend its military power to the borders of Russia, while Russia seeks to push back by incorporating the “republics”, and eventually, all of the Ukraine within its political and military sphere of influence.

Far-right nationalist passions have been aroused in both the “republican” and greater Ukrainian regions. The two imperialist blocs share responsibility for this.
In opposition to the clamour for war promoted by both imperialist blocs, the working class is demanding peace. 

“Peace” was the leading demand in the slogan “Peace, bread and land” that united the Russian and Ukrainian working classes behind Lenin’s revolutionary Bolshevik Party. 

Peace becomes a reactionary slogan only when used to disarm the masses who struggle for justice. 

Lecturing others about invasion from stolen lands

No corner of the world is safe from imperialist rivalry. 

Here the Coalition and ALP pledge total allegiance to the US imperialist regime. 

They and the media express outrage against invasion. Yet Australia is built on ongoing invasion and on dispossession of First Peoples. 

They lecture others about democratic values and democratic allies. Yet our jails are filled with First Peoples, the poor, the mentally ill and the illiterate. Exactly what democracy do these sermon makers mean?

The Prime Minister even uses the reckless threat of war to get himself re-elected.

We have to make it backfire on him!

Nature of class war, democracy and nationalism

Despite the propaganda, and rewriting of history, our peoples are not fools. 

We have a hundred years of imperialist wars into which Australia followed its colonial and corporate masters to mass slaughter. 

Our party connects with women workers from Russian and Ukrainian backgrounds, decades long friends in struggles for working class unity here in Ausralia, who call out as equally corrupt, Russia and Ukraine and the US.

Times like these, when people are thinking and worrying, compel us to raise questions about the nature of class war against imperialist war, about class dictatorship disguised as democracy, about bourgeois nationalism that divides us to conquer, and its opposite – revolutionary love of Country and place and peoples undivided.

As struggle for control of the Ukraine rises, we raise again the demand for Peace. We refuse follow US imperialism into another war!

Yes to peace. Russia get out! US and NATO stay out!
No to Australian involvement imperialist war. 
Remove all US bases and troops from Australia.
Struggle in unity for an independent, socialist Australia.

CPA (M-L) Central Committee, 25 February 2022

 

Book Review: "BIG: THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE MODERN ECONOMY"

 

Written by: Duncan B. on 22 February 2022

The COVID pandemic exposed weaknesses in the capitalist system such as the use of casual labour, supply chain problems with overseas-made products, and the crisis in public hospitals and privately-run nursing homes.

Many of the problems can be traced back to the neo-liberal ideology of the 1980’s and 1990’s with its call for smaller governments and the privatisation of most government services. Since COVID struck, we have seen a number of commentators in the daily press exposing the situation and calling for a return to more government involvement.

A new book Big: The Role of the State In the Modern Economy (Monash University Publishing. $20) continues this trend. The author Richard Denniss is Chief Economist at the public policy think tank, the Australia Institute.

He exposes the neo-liberal claims that we need smaller government, less taxation and balanced government budgets. Obsession with these fallacies has meant Australia has suffered poor hospitals, schools and infrastructure and the limited response to climate change that contributed to the ferocity of the 2020 bushfires. This book is definitely worth reading for its exposure of the mess that this ideology has got Australia into. 

Under capitalism, the capitalist state acts as the “committee of management” for the capitalist class. The state provides the legal system, transport, electricity and other infrastructure that capitalism needs. The state controls the banking and finance system and arranges education for prospective workers. Most importantly for the capitalist class, the state controls the police and armed forces, to protect the capitalist system from the working class. 

The advocates of smaller government want the government to look after what benefits the capitalists (e.g. defence) and leave the rest (e.g. health, aged care, education etc.) for the capitalists to exploit. This thinking gave us the disastrous privatisations of utilities, transport, aged care, the Murray-Darling Basin irrigation water, council services and so many others. 

In his article The State, Lenin pointed out that the state, no matter what form it takes, is a machine for maintaining the rule of one class over another. We must always remember this in any consideration of the role of governments.

It is not enough to reform the government or get it more involved in operating services. It is not enough to do as Denniss suggests, “follow the lead of the Nordic countries in the provision of great public health, education, housing and infrastructure, and in doing so boost economic productivity and deliver higher standards of living at lower cost.”

What the Australian people need is not the reforms of the system that Denniss advocates. We need the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a state led by the working class, which will run Australia in the interests of the majority of Australians.

 

US to reopen Solomons Island embassy in fight for influence in South Pacific

 Written by: (Contributed) on 21 February 2022

The decision by the Biden administration to re-open its embassy in the Solomon Islands at Honiara is a move likely to further escalate already fraught diplomatic tensions with China in the South Pacific. Many of the diplomatic hostilities have already been played-out in the wider Pacific in recent years; many of the countries are small but with important voting rights in regional trade forums which raises issues of strategic significance.

The Solomon Islands has, furthermore, been pushed to the forefront of the rivalries by switching diplomatic links from Taiwan to China in 2019; subsequent ethnic unrest caused widespread concern about the ability of government institutions to contain the problem.

In mid-February, during a high-level diplomatic visit to Australia and the Pacific, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, stated the US intention of re-opening their embassy in the Solomon Islands. Their previous embassy in Honiara closed nearly thirty years ago, and since that time the US has relied upon their diplomatic facilities in neighbouring PNG to conduct diplomatic business. The recent move indicates an upgrade of the Solomon Islands with US regional intelligence assessments.

Behind the scenes it is not particularly difficult to establish the reasoning behind the US diplomatic and military thinking: recent US intelligence assessments have included the increased ability of China to develop long-range strike capacity with weaponry. It was noted, for example, 'much of our northern base infrastructure is highly vulnerable to attack … the challenge facing Australia's military is how to counter China's long-range strike and power projection'. (1) Countries neighbouring Australia's northern approaches have, therefore, been assessed as highly strategic and important allies.

The Solomon Islands, historically, has been regarded by western powers as a backwater, inhabited by a population which largely exists on subsistence agriculture. Political unrest, throughout the previous twenty years has, however, caused Australia considerable concern. The most recent problems arising included further tensions between Malaitian ethnic groupings and those in Guadacanal, with Honiara as the capital city.

In between 24-27 November last year, groups of rebel Malaitians laid siege to Honiara and attempted to storm Parliament House, torched a police station and ransacked Chinatown causing damage estimated at US$67 million. (2) The rioters aimed to topple the government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, who later rebuffed an attempted vote of no confidence. The stated cause of the unrest was the switching of diplomatic links from Taiwan to China in 2019: residents of Malaita, historically, had strong links with Taiwan for decades and have benefited financially from their aid programs.

While the ethnic unrest was soon contained by military personnel from Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, simmering tensions continue to cloud political life and have revealed how fragile and vulnerable institutions of state and government are in the Solomon Islands.

The re-opening of the US embassy is, therefore, part of a concerted plan to stabilise the country for 'US interests'; it was said that 'Washington seeks to beef up its presence in the region where China is rapidly expanding its influence'. (3) Diplomatic missions and embassies, however, are also synonymous with espionage; it has been noted 'countries spy and most … send spies overseas disguised as diplomats'. (4) They invariable organise strings of agents, operating both legally and illegally to gain advantage over others. It is, therefore, no surprise to find the re-opening of the US diplomatic facilities in the Solomon Islands was accompanied by an announcement they were already planning to re-start their Peace Corps program, which ceased in the country in 2002. (5)   

The US Peace Corps has always been closely associated with a 'hearts and minds' strategy to boost 'US interests'. In fact, their official website has provided clear guidelines for their 'motivated change-makers … and … working side by side with local leaders'. (6) The organisation has three stated goals: training, promotion of the US and a better understanding of other peoples. (7) Since its establishment in 1961, the US Peace Corps has placed over 240,000 'volunteers' in 142 countries; the Solomon Islands will soon be re-added to the list. (8)

The Peace Corps, however, has been closely associated with the US diplomatic services and are renowned for using their facilities for supposed aid programs. In reality, the Peace Corps exists in a shadowy world of spooks and 'ground human'; while increased technological capacity and satellite systems have enhanced the ability of the US intelligence services to spy on remote regions and countries, they nevertheless require localised and specialist knowledge of terrain to make accurate assessments. The Peace Corps, by their very nature, are used to fulfil the requirement. Declassified US intelligence material from the previous Cold War reveal the close working relationship between diplomatic officials, aid programs and personnel from the military and intelligence services. (9)

While the Solomon Islands have been pushed into the forefront of US-led regional diplomatic struggles in recent times, Blinken also used his visit to Australia to hold a video conference with seventeen other Pacific Island nations. He used the cyber forum to push 'US interests' stressing greater regional involvement, 'pledging more support from Washington'. (10)

US diplomatic influence was also brought to bear elsewhere in the Pacific: the move also accompanied by an official announcement from five Micronesian countries to suspend their plans to withdraw from the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). The regional trade body has important representation opportunities for its eighteen members, including Australia. The announcement was particularly important for the US as the small sub-region of the Pacific is centred upon Guam which hosts US regional military facilities linked on an arc which swings from the Pine Gap US intelligence facilities to the US base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and across sensitive parts of Asia.

The Micronesian delegation to the PIF has, however, claimed in recent times they were side-lined by more dominant Melanesian and Polynesian countries which also had strong links with China. They announced their intention to leave the PIF last year, effectively weakening US diplomacy in the wider region. It was, therefore, noted by Malaysian media that the forum formed part of the 'diplomatic and security game in the region', for 'US interests'. (11)

Blinken also used his working visit to the Pacific to visit Fiji, which has the largest deep-water harbour facilities in the Pacific. The country has enormous strategic significance for naval considerations and the US clearly aim to strengthen their ties with Suva.

The recent high-level diplomatic visit of Secretary State Blinken to Australia was undertaken in line with general regional war-mongering and the strengthening of intelligence capacities:

                                        We need an independent foreign policy!

 

1.     Can ADF fight hemispheric war? Sovereign Missiles Special Supplement, Australian, 10 February 2022.
2.     Solomon opposition figure, rfi., 14 December 2021.
3.     US to re-open Solomon Islands embassy after 29 years, The Straits Times, 12 February 2022.
4.     In the spying game, all sides parade spooks as diplomats, Australian, 28 March 2018.
5.     Solomon Islands welcomes US announcement, The Solomon Times, 14 February 2022.
6.     Web-site: The Peace Corps, Changing lives the world over, February 2022.
7.     Ibid.
8.     Wikipedia: the Peace Corps, February 2022.
9.     See: Counter Insurgency Operations, A Handbook for Suppression of Communist Guerillas and Terrorist Operations, US Military, early 1960s, reference: 19960709 – 052, with specific reference to Chapter Five, pp. 29-32, which contains information about the role of US diplomatic officials with military and civilian agencies.
10.   US in Solomons to counter China, Australian, 14 February 2022.
11.   Straits Times, op.cit., 12 February 2022.