Skin Deep, Journey in the Divisive Science of Race, by Gavin Evans

Philip Guelpa

Skin Deep, Journey in the Divisive Science of Race, by Gavin Evans (Oneworld, 2019), is a timely and welcome review of the substantial body of work demonstrating the complete lack of a biological basis for the category of “race,” as well as the historical falsifications and scientific distortions that have been used to promote racism. It is well written and accessible to the non-specialist.

The book’s biographical sketch of Evans states that he was “born in London and grew up in Cape Town, where he became intensely involved in the anti-apartheid struggle. He studied economic history and law before completing a PhD in political studies, writing extensively on race and racism. He lectures in the Culture and Media department at Birkbeck College, London.” His strong antipathy toward racism is clear throughout.

Evans presents a review of relevant research and examines the results with a scientifically based and critical eye, identifying weaknesses in studies that purport to identify racial differences in physical and intellectual capabilities. These weaknesses are due to such limitations as small sample sizes, unwarranted extrapolations from weak statistical correlations, and the assumption that correlation necessarily denotes causation. He also examines exaggerations or misinterpretations presented in the popular press as well as by individuals or groups who distort the science to support predetermined conclusions.

It is impossible in this brief review to effectively summarize all of the topics examined in Skin Deep. We will highlight a few.

Evans provides a good, up-to-date summary of the evidence and interpretations regarding the genetic, paleontological, and archaeological data on human evolution. There is still much to learn. A number of recent fossil discoveries indicate the existence of a greater variety of early hominins than previously known (e.g., Homo flore siensis, aka the “Hobbit,” Homo luzonensis, and Homo naladi), suggesting local adaptation of populations in relatively isolated environments.

However, the one central fact is the overwhelming genetic similarity of all modern humans (Homo sapiens, as opposed to other members of the genus)—a much greater uniformity (99.9 percent) than is the case for most other mammals. This indicates that modern humans either replaced earlier forms and/or genetically subsumed them, when they moved out of Africa, with the latter making only minimal genetic contributions, except for Neanderthals and, perhaps Denisovans.

The bottom line is that all living humans are much more alike than they are different. Within population variation is greater than that between populations. Indeed, those differences are, metaphorically speaking, not even “skin deep.”

Archaeological evidence indicates that sophisticated tool manufacture and other evidence of abstract, symbolic thought (e.g., various forms of art), almost certainly associated with fully developed language, are nearly as old as the appearance of anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ), about 200,000 years ago, before dispersal out of Africa. Consequently, early, anatomically modern humans were already equipped with sophisticated mental capabilities that allowed them to adapt primarily through the use of culture to the new environments into which they migrated—Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, rather than by physical adaptation.

This runs counter to claims by “hereditarianists” (those who claim that human behavior is largely determined by genetics) that it was the challenge of adapting to new environments encountered in the move out of Africa that prompted biological selection for increased intelligence. This latter contention bears the stated or implicit conclusion that those who remained in Africa were not so challenged and, therefore, did not develop the more advanced intelligence acquired by the emigrants.

Of particular value is Evans’ debunking of the conception that there can be individual genes that control either intelligence in general or categories of behaviors such as “criminality.”

Research has shown that hundreds of genes may have some influence in any particular aspect of intelligence, each one contributing only a tiny amount to the observed variation. Even then, the interactions between them are complex and difficult to isolate. In short, the quest to identify one or a few genes that have a major determinative effect on intelligence has found no scientific validation.

An example of the extremely dangerous and reactionary implications of pseudo-scientific, genetically based interpretations of human behavior is illustrated by Evans. Steve Bannon, shortly before becoming the chief of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, wrote a piece for the fascist publication Breitbart.com promoting the belief that black males have a disproportionately high frequency of an “extreme warrior gene” that leads them to an increased rate of violence. Thus, according to Bannon, “Here’s a thought: What if the people getting shot by the cops did things to deserve it? There are, after all, in this world, some people who are naturally aggressive and violent.”

The gene allegedly identified as promoting extreme warrior behavior, the MAOA-2R allele, is cited by such hack writers as Richard Lynn and Nicholas Wade, to “explain” the supposed overly aggressive behavior of black males. Evans provides an extensive review of research regarding this gene. The bottom line is that there is absolutely no scientific justification for such a claim. Nevertheless, this and similar pseudo-science is employed by Bannon and others to provide an ideological justification for racism to their fascistic base.

A graph showing the spread of human migration

Another important aspect of the concept of race examined by Evans is the mistaken idea that, until recently races corresponded to broad geographic units—Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. And that these populations were cohesive wholes, genetically distinct, and historically stable. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. Human populations have been on the move for hundreds of thousands of years, mixing and remixing genetically, culturally, and linguistically, with the rate of movement accelerating significantly following the development of agriculture, beginning roughly 10-12 thousand years ago.

While biological adaptation did occur, these are minor and superficial. Current configurations of physical characteristics simplistically described as races are simply a snapshot in time, reflecting a single moment in an ever-changing landscape. Evans cites dozens of examples of such migrations, including the movement of early agriculturalists from the Middle East into Europe and the southward migration of Bantu-speaking farmers in Africa. Many are only recently being identified through genetic research, such as the discovery of a significant admixture of Eurasian DNA into East Africa dating to about 3,000 years ago.

Evans summarizes the historical data that exposes the promotion of racism by Europeans as an ideological justification for colonialism, that Africans, due to supposed inferior intelligence, were incapable of developing advanced civilizations. Examples cited include ancient Nubia and the Great Zimbabwe.

A ruin from Great Zimbabwe

The bulk of Skin Deep presents an extensive review and critique of the claims by some scientists (very few in number) and others that significant differences in intelligence between races can be identified by IQ tests or other means, championed by the likes of Nicholas Wade and Richard Lynn. Such claims, based on simplistic and unfounded characterizations of what constitutes intelligence and how it can be measured, have been refuted time and again. Evans’ critique is interlaced and supported by countless examples of historical distortions, pseudo-scientific fabrications, religious dogma, and outright lies that have been employed over the last few centuries to justify the characterization of one population or another as inherently inferior and others as superior.

Evans takes particular aim at The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray. This work of pseudo-science, which purports to document genetically determined differences in intelligence between races, is based on selective, manipulated, and fabricated data and interpretations. It has been repeatedly critiqued by a variety of researchers and demonstrated to have no validity. Nevertheless, its use by those with a racist agenda persists. Evans brings together numerous lines of research that conclusively demonstrate not only the scientific worthlessness of The Bell Curve, but that of others who have followed in this line of “research.”

Time and again, claims of racial differences in intelligence, often based on culturally biased IQ tests, are in fact attributable to historical, social, and economic factors, which have nothing to do with intelligence. An extreme example Evans cites is the conclusion by one researcher that San peoples of the Kalahari Desert have an IQ equivalent to that of an eight-year-old European child. Aside from the fact that the test is based on a cultural context with which the San had little or no experience, Evans observes:

I presume Lynn [the researcher in question] has never met a San person, but my experience suggests the notion that their average intelligence is that of a European eight-year-old is absurd. And the idea that a European child could survive alone in the Kalahari is laughable; the kind of statement that could only be made by someone who’d never set foot in a desert.

And further, regarding San whom Evans has met, “They were all fluent in at least two languages, some in four or more.”

In a critique of one of the most recent examples of “scientific racism,” Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance, Evans states, “No one disputes that human populations evolved for skin color, lactose tolerance, altitude tolerance, defenses against malaria and the rest, but no scientist has provided evidence of population-specific evolution for wealth-making, authoritarianism, tribal loyalty or, indeed, intelligence.”

This is the crux of the matter. Pseudo-scientific works such as Wade’s conflate clearly biological phenomena with historical/cultural behaviors, and claim, without evidence, that the latter evolve in the same manner as the former, in the tradition of Social Darwinism, sociobiology, and the like

The fundamental question one is left with is: Why in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that, while humans exhibit only a limited range of variation in a few, superficial genetic characteristics, does the concept that races exist as some sort of overriding, bounded phenomena, demarking distinct entities, nevertheless persist?

For all of the valuable information provided by Evans, the book has one significant weakness. His contention that racism is a “belief” rather than an expression of “power” (since “a powerless person can be a racist”) is fundamentally idealist, in the philosophical sense, and leaves the reader with no satisfying explanation as to why such a mistaken and pernicious belief should persist and at times become a justification for vicious behavior and mass murder, even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence otherwise.

Evans suggests that race science, apparently as an expression of underlying racism, is a constant phenomenon that occasionally bubbles to the surface under certain conditions. In the section “What Motivates Race Science?,” Evans cites Stephen Jay Gould’s observation that each resurgence of race science coincides with waves of political attacks against the poor, which are promoted by the far right. Evans observes, “The process is influenced by the political climate, as illustrated by the proliferation of race science on social media in the wake of Trump’s election campaign and since.”

He attributes the latest resurgence to “the combination of the economic fallout from the 2008 banking crash, the decline of manufacturing and mining jobs in the West, the recalibration of the world economy as information technology changes the world, and to the wars in Syria and elsewhere in years to come.”

And further, “The current wave [of race science] is particularly strong and persistent for reasons … that relate to the rise of ethnic nationalism, which in turn is partly prompted by the existential insecurity, particularly of young white men, in response to a rapidly changing social and economic milieu.

“With the rise of the alt-right, fascists taking to the streets all over Europe, populist, nativist right-wingers winning power in several parts of the world; far-right terrorism on the increase; it is clear that racism, and the ideas that feed it, are more resilient than we hoped. The twentieth century showed us where bad ideas about race can lead. If we don’t want the twenty-first to echo those themes, bad ideas need to be countered whenever and wherever they appear.”

In a number of instances throughout the book, Evans points to the use of racism, including purported differences in intelligence, as ideological justification for oppression, such as colonialism. However, he does not go deeper and make a class analysis. Throughout history, racism and other forms of discrimination (e.g., xenophobia, religious bias) have been used by ruling classes as a weapon of domination—to “divide and conquer” the lower classes. This is nakedly obvious in recent centuries under capitalism—the Nazis’ anti-Semitism and anti-black racism in the US, for example.

Therefore, one must conclude that the driving force behind racism and the like is not simply the result of wrong ideas or bad science, whatever any individual’s subjective motivations for adopting such views may be, and regardless of the “scientific” justifications that may be concocted in their support. Rather, such ideas are promoted and sustained as tools of class rule, as the overt promotion of racism currently undertaken by both the right and “left” wings of the American bourgeoisie (e.g., Trump’s drive to build a fascist movement, on the one hand, and the New York Times ’ 1619 Project, on the other) clearly demonstrates.

Now, as world capitalism plunges into extreme crisis, the bourgeoisie feels seriously threatened by the resurgence of the working class. It, therefore, reaches for one of its deadliest weapons—racism and similar forms of ethnic and religious bigotry—to keep it divided. While detailed critiques of pseudo-science and historical falsification, such as Skin Deep, are important and indeed vital resources in the struggle against such biases, these will never be overcome until the root cause, namely class society, is eliminated.

Growing poverty and inequality in New Zealand

Tom Peters

Numerous reports point to worsening poverty and social inequality in New Zealand, more than two years after the formation of the Labour Party-led government, which pledged to end the former National Party government’s austerity regime, imposed since the 2008 financial crisis.

Labour and its two coalition parties—NZ First and the Greens—promised to reduce child poverty and homelessness, and properly fund services such as healthcare and education. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern even created a new role for herself: Minister for Child Poverty Reduction. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, from the right-wing NZ First Party, declared that he chose a coalition with Labour instead of National in order to restore “capitalism’s human face.”

These pledges have proven to be a fraud. Like social democratic governments around the world, the Ardern government has carried out a thoroughly pro-business agenda, including low taxes and strict spending limits, resulting in the further enrichment of the country’s billionaires, while broad layers of the working class are being driven deeper into poverty.

Figures released on December 9 by Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft show 17 percent of children are in households below the poverty line of 50 percent of the median income—up from 16 percent when Labour came to power in 2017. The figure is 23 percent, 254,000 children, after housing costs are deducted. Some 148,000 children, 13 percent, are going without six or more “essentials,” such as decent shoes, warm clothes, enough food, and the ability to see a doctor.

In a damning TVNZ interview on November 17, Becroft described the Ardern government’s response to the crisis as “weak, supine, passive… We can’t fiddle while Rome burns.” He called for raising unemployment and other welfare payments by 20 to 40 percent—a key recommendation from the government’s own Welfare Expert Advisory Group that was rejected by Ardern.

In a speech in October celebrating two years in power, Ardern falsely declared: “We have lifted between 50,000 and 70,000 children out of poverty.” There is no statistical data to support this claim. These figures are actually a government target for the year 2021, i.e., after next year’s election. By then, the government says increases to some benefits and tax credits will give 385,000 families an extra $75 a week. However, this will be outstripped by the cost of living. Median weekly rents, for instance, have already risen in the past two years by $50.

There are many signs of growing hardship. Research by Auckland City Mission, published in October, estimated that 10 percent of the population, almost 500,000 people, cannot afford to eat properly—up from 7 percent 10 years ago.

In the three months to September, the government spent $167 million on 573,588 emergency Hardship Assistance Grants, mostly for food—a major increase from 345,000 grants in the same period of 2018.

Fleur Wainoho, principal of Whare Tapere o Takitimu, a Maori school in Hastings, recently wrote in Stuff: “I’ve seen a family of four children share one sandwich, breaking that up knowing it’s the only meal source they’ve got for the day. Just seeing that is heartbreaking… a hungry child is only thinking about where the next meal is coming from. They can’t be expected to write a story or be engaged in a lesson.” Wainoho described a solo mother who works full time but pays $520 a week for housing and is forced to rely on charity for food.

The Human Rights Commission reported on November 25 that 7 percent of working households, more than 50,000 homes, are living below the poverty line (defined as 60 percent of the median income or about $600 a week). After housing costs, the figure rises to 67,000 or 9.2 percent. More than 12 percent of households with just one working parent are in poverty.

For the past decade, wages and benefits have remained stagnant, while the cost of living soared. New Zealand now has the highest housing costs relative to income in the OECD, with poor families typically paying half their income, or more, on rent.

An estimated 41,000 people, one in 100, were homeless in 2013 and the figure today is undoubtedly higher. A record 14,000 families are waiting for public housing, while the number of state houses per capita is the lowest it has been since the 1940s. The New Zealand Herald reports that 10 years ago there was one state house for every 65 people, now there is one per 80. The government is building 1,600 houses per year, while demand is increasing by 2,000.

Media commentators and politicians increasingly frame discussion of social inequality as a generational divide, contrasting supposedly comfortable “Boomers” with struggling “Millenials.” This superficial analysis diverts attention from the fundamental class division in society, which cuts across all ages and ethnic groups.

The scapegoating of older people is also an attempt to soften up the population for raising the age of pension entitlement, or implementing means testing, which both the Labour and National parties have proposed at different times.

For about 40 percent of people over 65, pensions are their only income. Between 2013 and 2017 the number of hardship assistance grants for this age group soared from 36,000 to 56,000 annually. About 12 percent of older people in Auckland are malnourished, according to a Massey University study last year.

The real wealth gap is between the working class and the capitalist elite, who are making billions from the housing bubble and other parasitic activities. The richest 10 percent controls 53 percent of the wealth and the top 1 percent holds 19 percent. New Zealand now has nine billionaires, up from eight last year, plus five billionaire families. The individuals on the annual National Business Review “Rich List” increased their wealth from $81 billion last year to $90 billion this year.

Workers have attempted to fight back. Tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, doctors and other healthcare workers have held nationwide strikes in the past two years. The trade union bureaucracy, however, isolated and strangled these struggles, enforcing the government’s cap on public sector wage rises at 3 percent per annum, below the real increase in cost of living. On average, wages increased in the year to September by just 2.4 percent, while rents increased by more than 5 percent.

The Ardern government’s record demonstrates that none of the parties in parliament represents the interests of the working class. As the global economy deteriorates, Labour and its allies will respond with more attacks on jobs, wages, benefits and social services, while protecting the fortunes of the super-rich.

Strikes continue in Finland after Social Democrat prime minister resigns

Jordan Shilton

Finland’s prime minister, the Social Democrat Antti Rinne, was forced to resign last week after disagreements erupted within his five-party coalition government over the handling of a nationwide strike by 10,000 postal workers. His Social Democratic successor, Sanna Marin, took office yesterday amid three days of strikes by over 70,000 workers in the technology and industrial sectors.

The two-week strike at the national postal service Posti was triggered by the revelation that 700 parcel delivery workers would be transferred to a collective agreement with an outsourced subsidiary of Posti, resulting in wage cuts of up to 30 percent. In response, thousands of transport workers launched a solidarity strike, resulting in the cancellation of some 300 flights by national airline Finnair.

The upsurge of class struggle in Finland is part of an international process that has seen strikes and protests spread across every continent over the past two years. The issues driving the strike wave in Finland—savage austerity, rising inequality, attacks on wages, and growing opposition to the entire political establishment—are the same as those radicalising working people around the world. The strikes continuing in the technology sector this week are in opposition to a push by the employers’ organisation to enforce a wage increase of 0.5 percent for 2020, which amounts to a cut in terms of real wages.

Prime Minister of Finland Sanna Marin, center, chairs her first government meeting in Helsinki, Finland on Tuesday Dec. 10, 2019. (Jussi Nukari/Lehtikuva via AP)

The broad support for the postal workers was driven by sustained austerity measures implemented by successive governments aimed at gutting public services and deregulating the labour market.

Faced with the threat of Finland’s ports being shut down by a sympathy strike, which would have hit corporations hard in a country where 40 percent of GDP is made up of exports, Posti management withdrew the outsourcing proposal in late November. Shortly before the final deal was reached, Prime Minister Rinne demagogically asserted that workers’ rights would not be trampled underfoot while his government was in office.

This comment proved too much to bear for the Centre Party, the second-largest party in Rinne’s coalition. A liberal party with a predominantly rural support base, Centre enforced sweeping spending cuts and attacks on wages and working conditions under Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, who ruled between 2015 and 2019 in coalition with the right-wing National Coalition Party and the far-right Finns Party. Centre Party leader Katri Kulmuni denounced Rinne, a former trade union leader, alleging that he had sided with the workers in the postal negotiations when it was necessary to remain neutral.

After extended government talks, the Centre Party withdrew its support for Rinne and threatened his government with a vote of no confidence, prompting the Prime Minister to resign on 3 December. Marin, the new Prime Minister, was Transport Minister in Rinne’s cabinet, while Kulmuni will occupy the post of Finance Minister.

The end result of the change of faces in the Finish government will thus be a political turn to the right. Behind all the hype about the country having the world’s youngest prime minister, a coalition made up of five parties led by five women and a government pledge to make the country carbon neutral by 2035, the SDP-led government will deepen the assault on working people and public services.

Marin has already stated her determination to implement the coalition’s goal of eliminating Finland’s budget deficit over the coming four years. This is to be accomplished through the privatisation of more than €2 billion of state assets and a reform of social services and health care designed to expand the involvement of the private sector.

However, the government lacks any popular support for these policies. Earlier this year, the Centre Party lost a third of its support in parliamentary elections after presiding over savage austerity for the previous four years. Particularly unpopular was the Sipilä government’s Competitiveness Pact, which, with trade union support, imposed wage freezes, cuts to holiday pay and three additional days of work per year for public sector workers without any corresponding wage increase.

The election was a blow not just to the Centre party, however. For the first time in over a century, no party managed to obtain more than 20 percent of the vote. This underscores that the vast majority of the population is not only hostile to the austerity imposed by the political right, but alienated from the entire political establishment.

The SDP, which emerged as the winner of the election with just 17.7 percent of the vote, a slight improvement on its worst ever result in 2015, moved swiftly to form a coalition with the widely-despised Centre Party. They were joined by the Green League, Left Alliance, and Swedish People’s party. The Finns, which conducted a racist, anti-immigrant election campaign, finished just 0.2 percent behind the SDP in second place.

Although the coalition is typically referred to as centre-left, it has embraced most of the key demands of big business. Barely two months after Centre Party Prime Minister Sipilä had been forced to tender his resignation in March due to the failure of his government to pass its health care reform in parliament, Rinne’s SDP-led government announced in late May that it would implement largely the same health care reform. The plan will put an end to the running of health care services by over 290 local municipalities across the country by placing health care under the control of 18 elected regional governments. These authorities will have the option of engaging third sector and private health care providers to offer certain services, a move being dressed up as improving patient choice.

While the Green League and Left Alliance made much of their opposition to the Centre Party’s drive to privatise health care when they were in opposition, both parties signed up to the slightly revised plan. As Green League leader Pekka Haavisto put it, “Third sector and private services can be used, but this will be left to the self-governing areas to decide how much.”

The five-party coalition is also committed to increasing the employment rate to 75 percent from its current level of 72 percent by the end of its term in office. Given that economic growth is set to slow to less than 1 percent over the coming years due to trade tensions, Finance Ministry officials recently suggested that cutbacks to social security and the further deregulation of the labour market would be necessary to force more people into work.

The SDP-led coalition will also continue the previous government’s deepening military partnership with US imperialism. Finland, together with the other four Nordic countries, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden signed a Nordic Defence Agreement aimed at Russia in 2015. One year later, Helsinki concluded a bilateral defence partnership with the US, and in 2018, the US, Finland and Sweden announced an enhanced trilateral statement of intent to coordinate the three countries’ defence policies. These agreements have been backed by a military rearmament program, including the purchasing of US-built F18 fighter jets and other modern equipment that is interoperable with NATO members.

Although Helsinki remains outside of NATO, it signed up as one of NATO’s Enhanced Opportunity Partners in 2016. Finnish soldiers took part in NATO’s Trident Juncture exercise last year, the largest of its kind since the end of the Cold War. Like previous governments, the current coalition is unlikely to push for full membership. A majority of Finns oppose joining the military alliance. At the same time, sections of the ruling elite rely on economic ties with Russia, with which Finland has a 1,300 kilometre border.

The leading role of the Social Democrats and Left Alliance in enforcing such a reactionary program is entirely in keeping with the political records of both parties. Following an economic crisis in the early 1990s, it was an SPD-Left Alliance government that prepared Finland for membership in the euro, which required imposing attacks on the working class. Then, after the global economic crisis of 2008 threw the export-dependent Finnish economy into recession, the SDP and Left Alliance joined the conservative-led government of Jyrki Katainen in 2011. Katainen’s government supported the enforcement of vicious EU-dictated austerity in Greece and Portugal, while enforcing budget cuts at home amounting to 5 percent of the national budget. It also initiated closer Nordic defence cooperation to support US imperialism’s aggressive encirclement of Russia.

Australian economy remains in slump as trade tensions mount

Mike Head

Data released last week underscores how vulnerable the Australian economy, like many around the world, is to the fallout from the aggressive economic war launched by Washington against its rivals, particularly China.

Largely mirroring international trends, Australia is mired in slump, despite record low interest rates and large tax handouts, mostly to companies and the wealthy. The impact is hitting working class households the hardest. Corporate profits and share prices have soared in 2019, but at the expense of falling real wages and rising unemployment and under-employment.

Combined with widespread nervousness over the global instability, this produced the worst retail and car sales, and other household consumption statistics, since the 2008-09 global financial crisis. Business investment also fell sharply in the September quarter.

Desperate to provide “good news,” many media outlets, and the Liberal-National government, claimed that the results confirmed the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) proclamation of a “gentle turning point” after months of recessionary conditions.

However, the gross domestic product (GDP) rose only 0.4 percent in the quarter, an annual rate of 1.6 percent. The three-month result was down from 0.6 percent in the June quarter, and 0.5 percent in the March quarter. The September quarter result was well short of the government’s budget forecasts, which were 2.25 percent for 2018-19 and 2.75 percent for 2019-20.

The RBA has cut interest rates three times in the months after the May federal election, to a record low of 0.75 percent, and the government paid out nearly $5 billion in income tax rebates. Yet consumer spending rose just 0.1 percent, the poorest result since the 2008-09 meltdown.

Reflecting the nervous mood, spending shrank 0.3 percent on discretionary items such as new cars, clothing and footwear, and cigarettes. Any growth was concentrated on essentials, led by health and rent.

Separately calculated retail figures showed that in the three months to September the volume of goods and services bought fell 0.1 percent. That trend continued in October, with clothing, home wares and department stores sales falling. The retail sector had already suffered its worst 12-month period since the 1991 recession.

In another sign of consumer hardship, sales of new cars fell 9.8 percent in November, the 20th monthly decline in a row, according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries.

Suffering one of the highest levels of household debt in the world—nearly twice as much debt as income on average—many consumers evidently decided to try to reduce their indebtedness.

Over the year to September, inflation-adjusted spending grew by a mere 1.2 percent, also the least since the 2008-09 financial crisis. Australia’s population grew by 1.6 percent in that time, meaning the volume of goods and services bought per person went backward.

A significant economic indicator was a 2.1 percent drop in business investment during the September quarter, with mining investment tumbling 7.8 percent. Non-mining investment rose 1.2 percent, but was still stuck around 25-year lows. These trends point to further contraction ahead. Profits are being poured into the stock market and other speculative operations, not production and research and development.

In the anxious words of the Australian Financial Review, stock exchange indexes have been volatile, “amid fears that US President Donald Trump could hit every second nation with tariffs—China of course, but now Argentina and Brazil and possibly everyone in NATO.” Even so, the newspaper warned, the benchmark ASX 200 index remained about 20 per cent higher for the year to date—way out of line with the underlying slump.

“Private sector activity—consumption and business investment—is at recession levels,” the financial newspaper said. Only mining exports, population growth and government spending were keeping the economy afloat.

Government spending grew 0.9 percent in the quarter and 6 percent over the year, mostly on infrastructure projects demanded by big business. Despite chronic underfunding, government outlays also rose on health, disability and aged care costs.

The GDP figures strengthened the betting on the financial markets that the RBA will be forced to cut interest rates again at its first meeting for 2020, in February. Most corporate economists reportedly expect another cut will follow in the ensuing months, taking official rates down to 0.25 percent, far below the “emergency” 3 percent level reached in 2009.

Company profits were up 2.2 percent in the quarter and 12.7 percent over the year. Average wage and superannuation payments grew at about half those rates—1.2 percent and 5.1 percent—and even that statistic covers over the wage-cutting that is affecting low-paid workers in insecure jobs.

The only discernible effect of the record low interest rates has been to fuel a new rise in house prices in the two most populous cities, Sydney and Melbourne, partially reversing the collapse of the housing bubble that prevented a slide into recession between 2012 and 2018.

At the same time, insufficient housing is being built for a growing population. Housing investment was down 1.7 percent over the September quarter and 9.6 percent over the year. Rising prices has made home ownership impossible for many young people, and put upward pressure on rents.

There was another glaring problem. Even though profits and stock prices rose, GDP per hour worked, which is a measure of productivity, fell 0.2 percent during the September quarter and 0.2 percent over the year—another result of the lack of productive investment.

Extreme weather conditions, bound up with climate change, also had an impact. Drought-affected farm production fell 2.1 percent over the quarter and 6.1 percent over the year.

All this means that the jobs situation is likely to deteriorate. Employment fell by 19,000 jobs in October, taking the official jobless rate to 5.3 percent, and the underemployment rate to 8.5 per cent. As measured by the Roy Morgan polling company, nearly 1.1 million Australians were unemployed (7.8 percent) with an additional 1.2 million (8.9 percent) under-employed.

While the government boasts of “creating” 1.5 million jobs since 2013, this simply reflects population growth, plus a rise in workforce participation as older workers postpone retirement because of mortgage debts, low superannuation balances and poor returns on any savings due to ultra-low interest rates.

Taken as a whole, these results mean that Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government is under increasing pressure from the financial elite to cut government spending, to avert a budget deficit, and mount an offensive against workers’ conditions in order to drive up the rate of exploitation.

Last month, credit ratings’ agency S&P Global told the government that any increased spending could threaten the country’s triple A rating. “As the official cash rate in Australia moves toward zero there have been growing calls for the government to increase fiscal stimulus, including infrastructure spending, to stimulate and support the slowing economy,” it said, before warning: “While spending initiatives are likely to support the economy, they’re also likely to weaken Australia’s fiscal flexibility to respond to future unforeseen economic shocks.”

Multiple deaths from New Zealand volcanic eruption

Tom Peters

Five people are dead and eight missing, presumed dead, after a volcanic eruption on White Island, also known as Whakaari, in the Bay of Plenty, off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Another 31 people are in hospital, many with serious burns, and reports indicate that some may not survive.

The small, uninhabited island is one of New Zealand’s most popular tourist attractions, with 17,500 visitors last year. It is the country’s most active volcano.

Forty-seven people, reportedly from two separate tour groups, were on the island when the crater suddenly erupted at 2:11pm on Monday producing a huge cloud of rock and ash. Several tourists were photographed shortly before the eruption standing near the crater. Most were from the visiting cruise ship Ovation of the Seas, owned by Royal Caribbean International, and were being guided around the island by White Island Tours. Two guides are thought to have died. A few visitors were part of a helicopter tour by Volcanic Air.

The identities of most of the victims have not been revealed, but reportedly they include people from New Zealand, Australia, the UK, China, Malaysia and the US. The injured were evacuated by boat and helicopter. One survivor who gave first aid to the victims, Geoff Hopkins, told the New Zealand Heraldthat almost all were “horrifically burnt” and in agonising pain, with some drifting in and out of consciousness.

Tourists on White Island, April 2019 (Wikimedia commons/Kimberley Collins)

Conditions remained too hazardous today for search and rescue teams to explore the island. Bodies were sighted this morning by reconnaissance flights. There is a risk of further eruptions and landslides.

The full circumstances of the tragedy are yet to emerge, but questions are already being raised about why visitors were allowed on the island.

Professor Ray Cas, a volcano expert from Monash University, told Sydney’s 2GB radio station that he had felt for years that White Island “is a dangerous place to allow the public to visit.” He noted its isolation, 50 kilometres offshore, with “no emergency services immediately available” and no means to escape in the event of an eruption, which can happen without warning. Tour groups typically explore inside the crater, which was transformed on Monday into a horrific inferno.

GNS Science, a government agency monitoring seismic activity, raised the alert level for White Island from 1 to 2 due to increased seismic activity on November 18, indicating that eruptions were more likely than normal.

Professor Shane Cronin, a vulcanologist at the University of Auckland, told Radio NZ that GNS could issue advice and warnings, but had no authority to stop people visiting the island, which is privately owned by the Buttle family. He said “people often underestimate” the volcano and “we’ve probably taken it a little bit too much for granted.”

Tours have been taking place for about 30 years and there have been several minor eruptions over that time, none of which resulted in casualties. This appears to have been purely by chance.

White Island Tours’ website was shut down following the eruption. Previously, it carried a warning that due to “heightened volcanic unrest, there is the potential for eruption hazards to occur” on the island. But this did not prompt it to suspend the tours, which are highly profitable. The Herald reported in February that the company, owned by Maori tribe Ngati Awa, “enjoyed a significant revenue increase from $0.5m to $4m between 2017 and 2018.”

In an interview with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Radio NZ’s Kim Hill bluntly stated: “It does seem crazy to make it so accessible given that it’s an unpredictable live volcano.” Ardern replied that she would not make “assumptions” and promised an eventual “inquiry” into the disaster. She declared that New Zealand took “pride” in keeping visitors safe.

In reality, there have been many avoidable tragedies in New Zealand’s tourism industry, which is the country’s largest industry in terms of foreign exchange earnings. Successive governments have cut back on regulations and allowed companies to essentially self-regulate their safety procedures, placing lives in danger.

These include the country’s worst-ever disaster, the 1979 plane crash at Mount Erebus in Antarctica, which killed 257 people. A subsequent royal commission of inquiry found that Air New Zealand had jeopardised the safety of the crew and passengers, then sought to cover up its safety breaches. No one was ever held legally accountable.

In 1995 a viewing platform collapsed at Cave Creek in Paparoa National Park, killing 14 people. The Minister for Conservation was forced to resign after an inquiry found the platform had been built by unqualified workers and was extremely unsafe.

There are frequent jet-boat crashes, including one in Queenstown in February 2019 which injured nine tourists, and another in March which killed one person in Fiordland National Park. In May, Auckland Jet Boat Tours Limited was fined $25,000 and ordered to pay reparations after admitting illegal and unsafe practices which led one passenger to break her collarbone in 2017.

The political establishment and much of the media have rushed to defend the Labour Party-NZ First-Greens coalition government and tourism businesses over the White Island eruption. Opposition National Party leader Simon Bridges declared, “I think it’s right to let the recovery happen before the serious questions are asked in earnest.”

The Daily Blog, which is funded by three trade unions, agreed that debate over the causes must wait until “after the bodies have been recovered.” Editor Martyn Bradbury gushed, as he did following the Christchurch mass shooting: “Every time there is a shock to us as a nation, Jacinda [Ardern] steps up with such amazing empathy & sympathy—she leads with healing & courage & in times as sad as this, she is constantly the silver lining. This is what political leadership looks like.”

There is rising anger, however, among the victims’ relatives. The brother of Whakatane man Hayden Marshall-Inman, who was killed in the eruption, said it was “Pike River all over again,” a reference to the 2010 Pike River coal mine disaster, which killed 29 men. He told Stuff that the family had not been contacted by authorities regarding recovery of bodies.

The experience of Pike River is a warning that any investigation by the government into the causes of the White Island disaster will be a whitewash, aimed at defending those responsible for the lack of safety procedures. Nine years after the coal mine exploded, no one in Pike River’s management has been held accountable, despite overwhelming evidence gathered in a 2012 royal commission that the company ignored warnings that the mine was a death trap. Politicians of every stripe, along with union bureaucrats, government regulators, the courts and the police, all helped to shield company leaders from justice.

The “Afghanistan papers”: The criminality and disaster of a war based upon lies

Bill Van Auken

The publication Monday by the Washington Post of interviews with senior US officials and military commanders on the nearly two-decades-old US war in Afghanistan has provided a damning indictment of both the criminality and abject failure of an imperialist intervention conducted on the basis of lies.

The Post obtained the raw interviews after a three-year Freedom of Information Act court battle. While initially they were not secret, the Obama administration moved to classify the documents after the newspaper sought to obtain them.

The interviews were conducted between 2014 and 2018 in a “Lessons Learned” project initiated by the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). The project was designed to review the failures of the Afghanistan intervention with the aim of preventing their repetition the next time US imperialism seeks to carry out an illegal invasion and occupation of an oppressed country.

SIGAR’s director, John Sopko, freely admitted to the Post that the interviews provided irrefutable evidence that “the American people have constantly been lied to” about the war in Afghanistan.

Afghan villagers pray over the grave of one of the 16 victims killed in a shooting rampage by a US soldier in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, March 24, 2012. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)

What emerges from the interviews, conducted with more than 400 US military officers, special forces operatives, officials from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and senior advisers to both US commanders in Afghanistan and the White House, is an overriding sense of failure tinged with bitterness and cynicism. Those who participated had no expectation that their words would be made public.

Douglas Lute, a retired Army lieutenant general who served as the Afghanistan “war czar” under the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told his government interviewers in 2015, “If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction... 2,400 [American] lives lost. Who will say this war was in vain?”

Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser under Bush, was even more explicit in his admission of US imperialism’s debacle in Afghanistan—and elsewhere. He told his SIGAR interviewers that Washington had no “post-stabilization model that works,” adding that this had been proven not only in Afghanistan, but in Iraq as well. “Every time we have one of these things, it is a pickup game. I don’t have any confidence that if we did it again, we would do any better.”

Ryan Crocker, who served as Washington’s senior man in Kabul under both Bush and Obama, told SIGAR that “Our biggest single project, sadly and inadvertently, of course, may have been the development of mass corruption. Once it gets to the level I saw, when I was out there, it’s somewhere between unbelievably hard and outright impossible to fix it.”

This corruption was fed by vast expenditures on the part of the US government on Afghanistan’s supposed reconstruction—$133 billion, more than Washington spent, adjusted for inflation, on the entire Marshal Plan for the reconstruction of Western Europe after the Second World War. As the interviews make clear, this money went largely into the pockets of corrupt Afghan politicians and contractors and to fund projects that were neither needed nor wanted by the Afghan people.

The US National Endowment for Democracy’s former senior program officer for Afghanistan told his interviewers that Afghans with whom he had worked “were in favor of a socialist or communist approach because that’s how they remembered things the last time the system worked,” i.e., before the 1980s CIA-backed Islamist insurgency that toppled a Soviet-backed government and unleashed a protracted civil war that claimed the lives of over a million. He also blamed the failure of US reconstruction efforts on a “dogmatic adherence to free-market principles.”

An Army colonel who advised three top US commanders in Afghanistan told the interviewers that, by 2006, the US-backed puppet government in Kabul had “self-organized into a kleptocracy.”

US military personnel engaged in what has supposedly been a core mission of training Afghan security forces to be able to fight on their own to defend the corrupt US-backed regime in Kabul were scathing in their assessments.

A special forces officer told interviewers that the Afghan police whom his troops had trained were “awful—the bottom of the barrel in the country that is already at the bottom of the barrel,” estimating that one third of the recruits were “drug addicts or Taliban.” Another US adviser said that the Afghans that he worked with “reeked of jet fuel” because they were constantly smuggling it out of the base to sell on the black market.

Faced with the continuing failure of its attempts to quell the insurgency in Afghanistan and create a viable US-backed regime and army, US officials lied. Every president and his top military commanders, from Bush to Obama to Trump, insisted that “progress” was being made and the US was winning the war, or, as Trump put it during his lightning Thanksgiving trip in and out of Afghanistan, was “victorious on the battlefield.”

The liars in the White House and the Pentagon demanded supporting lies from those on the ground in Afghanistan. “Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable, but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone,” an Army counterinsurgency adviser to the Afghanistan commanders told SIGAR.

A National Security Council official explained that every reversal was spun into a sign of “progress”: “For example, attacks are getting worse? ‘That’s because there are more targets for them to fire at, so more attacks are a false indicator of instability.’ Then, three months later, attacks are still getting worse? ‘It’s because the Taliban are getting desperate, so it’s actually an indicator that we’re winning.’” The purpose of these lies was to justify the continued deployment of US troops and the continued carnage in Afghanistan.

Today, the carnage is only escalating. According to the United Nations, last year 3,804 Afghan civilians were killed in the war, the highest number since the UN began counting casualties over a decade ago. US airstrikes have also been rising to an all-time high, killing 579 civilians in the first 10 months of this year, a third more than in 2018.

The lies exposed by the SIGAR interviews have been echoed by a pliant corporate media that has paid scant attention to the longest war in US history. The most extensive exposure of US war crimes in Afghanistan came in 2010, based on some 91,000 secret documents provided by the courageous US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning to WikiLeaks. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is now being held in Britain’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison facing extradition to the United States on Espionage Act charges that carry a penalty of life imprisonment or worse for the “crime” of exposing these war crimes. Manning is herself imprisoned in US Federal detention center in Virginia for refusing to testify against Assange.

On October 9, 2001, two days after Washington launched its now 18-year-long war on Afghanistan and amid a furor of war propaganda from the US government and the corporate media, the World Socialist Web Site posted a statement titled “Why we oppose the war in Afghanistan.” It exposed the lie that this was a “war for justice and the security of the American people against terrorism” and insisted that “the present action by the United States is an imperialist war” in which Washington aimed to “establish a new political framework within which it will exert hegemonic control” over not only Afghanistan, but over the broader region of Central Asia, “home to the second largest deposit of proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world.”

The WSWS stated at the time: “The United States stands at a turning point. The government admits it has embarked on a war of indefinite scale and duration. What is taking place is the militarization of American society under conditions of a deepening social crisis.

“The war will profoundly affect the conditions of the American and international working class. Imperialism threatens mankind at the beginning of the twenty-first century with a repetition on a more horrific scale of the tragedies of the twentieth. More than ever, imperialism and its depredations raise the necessity for the international unity of the working class and the struggle for socialism.”

These warnings have been borne out entirely by the criminal and tragic events of the last 18 years, even as the Washington Post now finds itself compelled to admit the bankruptcy of the entire sordid intervention in Afghanistan that it previously supported.

The US debacle in Afghanistan is only the antechamber of a far more dangerous eruption of US militarism, as Washington shifts its global strategy from the “war on terrorism” to preparation for war against its “great power” rivals, in the first instance, nuclear-armed China and Russia.

Opposition to war and the defense of democratic rights—posed most sharply in the fight for the freedom of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning—must be guided by a global strategy that consciously links this fight to the growing eruption of social struggles of the international working class against capitalist exploitation and political oppression.

Australian PM defends secret “national security” trials

Mike Head

Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week publicly supported the holding of criminal trials in total secrecy if they allegedly involve “national security information”—that is, any information about the undercover activities of Australia’s military and intelligence agencies.

Asked by a journalist at a media conference if he thought it appropriate to have a “permanently secret legal proceeding in Australia in 2019,” Morrison replied in the affirmative. He specifically backed the government’s use of the National Security Information (Criminal and Civil Proceedings) Act (NSI Act) against an ex-intelligence officer known only as “Witness J.”

Morrison’s statement is a further warning of the creation of a police-state framework. No known Australian precedent exists for what happened to “Witness J.” In effect, he was thrown into a legal black hole. He was prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned in Canberra last year via a criminal trial that was completely hidden from public knowledge, let alone scrutiny.

This violates the fundamental democratic principle of public jury trials established by centuries of struggle against tyranny, including the English Revolution of the 1640s. Among the outrages that led to the overthrow of Charles I and the end of the absolute monarchy was the use of the secretive and arbitrary Star Chamber court to suppress political dissent and execute opponents of the regime.

Jailed for 15 months last year in a high-security facility—with the first month in solitary confinement—“Witness J” was released in August. However, he and the media are still gagged by undisclosed “Commonwealth orders” from informing anyone about the details of his case.

No one even knew of his fate until a sketchy outline emerged last month via a related lawsuit he took to challenge the Australian Federal Police (AFP) seizure of two manuscripts he wrote in prison.

At Morrison’s media conference, the prime minister not only defended the secret trial of “Witness J.” He endorsed the wider use of such suppression orders and indicated that they would be applied to two trials currently underway against whistleblowers and lawyers who exposed war crimes and illegal spying conducted by the Australian military and intelligence apparatus.

“The National Security Information Act was invoked to manage the protection of national security information on those proceedings and in proceedings like these,” Morrison said. “And the attorney-general has said that the information is of the kind that could endanger the lives or safety of others.”

Asked if that applied to “Bernard Collaery and Witness K,” Morrison said: “I’ve just answered the question.”

Collaery, a Canberra lawyer, is being prosecuted for helping his client, an ex-intelligence officer known only as “Witness K,” to expose the Australian Secret Intelligence Service bugging of East Timor’s government during oil and gas negotiations in 2004.

The government is also demanding closed-door proceedings in the trial of an ex-military lawyer, David McBride, who revealed a cover-up of civilian killings and other violations conducted by Australian Special Forces units during the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

Similar provisions could be invoked in any trials of the journalists who were subjected to intimidating AFP raids in June. Police ransacked the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst, who reported plans for domestic surveillance by the Australian Signals Directorate. The AFP also raided the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which had published information about Special Forces war crimes in Afghanistan.

These raids followed the global precedent set by the April 11 arrest in London of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder and journalist, and charging with “espionage” for exposing the war atrocities and anti-democratic conspiracies of the US government and its allies, including those in Canberra.

“Witness J’s” imprisonment confirms that the highest echelons of the political, military and intelligence establishment are engaged in intensive operations to deny the public any knowledge of the crimes, abuses and mass surveillance committed by the US-linked “security” agencies.

According to information reported by the ABC, “Witness J” is an ex-military officer who served in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq—all targets of Australian military interventions. His intelligence career ended in South East Asia, another sensitive region for predatory Australian military and spying operations.

“Witness J” was not a whistleblower. But he was convicted of allegedly divulging classified material after he sent complaints via email and “other unsecure electronic means” to a head of security and a departmental psychologist about his treatment by the agency that employed him.

A recent series of tweets, published under the name of “Witness J,” denied the claims of Morrison and Attorney-General Christian Porter that he endangered lives and “consented” to the suppression orders imposed on his trial. “The accusation that I disclosed recruited agents (for those who understand the professional definition) while overseas is categorically untrue,” he wrote.

It was also “unequivocally untrue” that he had consented to his secret trial, another tweet stated. “I was not informed of, nor given an opportunity to give my consent to, these orders … Why would I consent to orders that restricted my own friends and family from coming to visit me?”

A further tweet said: “For me the scariest aspect to my Kafkaesque situation is that Shane Rattenbury, as ACT [Australian Capital Territory] Minister for Corrections, claims he did not know of my existence in his tiny territory.” That is, the minister nominally responsible for Canberra’s prison system, a Greens member of a Labor Party-led coalition government, said he knew nothing about the secret jailing.

“Kafkaesque” is a reference to Franz Kafka’s dystopian novel, The Trial, in which the accused man, Josef K., is arrested, tried and ultimately executed without knowing what crime he allegedly committed.

With the Labor Party’s support, the Howard Liberal-National government introduced the NSI Act in 2004 under the guise of protecting the population against terrorism following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US.

The WSWS warned at the time that the NSI Act’s draconian provisions would not only be used against those accused of terrorist-related offences: “The Act permits trials on terrorism, espionage, treason and ‘other security-related’ charges to be held in complete or partial secrecy.”

We also explained that the Act facilitated frame-ups: “In closed court sessions, judges can allow government witnesses to testify in disguise via video and, in some circumstances, exclude defendants and their lawyers from trial proceedings.”

It is now clear that the Act enables governments to go further, by conducting trials that no members of the public even know are taking place. This raises a disturbing question. How many other such trials have been held?

The NSI Act is just one aspect of a myriad of secrecy measures imposed to protect the operations of the police-military-intelligence apparatus. A 2010 Australian Law Reform Commission report identified 506 secrecy provisions in 176 pieces of federal legislation, including 358 criminal secrecy offences.

Since then, these walls of secrecy have been extended repeatedly by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments. This was taken to a new level by last year’s “foreign interference” legislation, which criminalised the leaking or publication of any material deemed to damage the country’s military, intelligence or economic interests.

This assault on basic legal and democratic rights goes beyond covering up the past crimes of the military and intelligence apparatus. It is being driven by preparations for even greater crimes. Amid Washington’s increasingly frenzied economic and military confrontations against its rivals, particularly China, the Trump administration is demanding that the Australian ruling elite take a front line in the conflict with China.

These police-state developments highlight the importance of fighting for the freedom of Assange and the courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The demand for their release is central to the struggle against war and authoritarianism, and their source, the capitalist profit system itself.

Samoa: Anger grows over escalating measles toll

John Braddock

The population of Samoa was subjected to an unprecedented nationwide quarantine last week as the government struggled to stem the Pacific country’s deadly measles epidemic. Police were reportedly deployed “in force” to impose the shutdown.

On December 5–6, all public and private services, offices, and businesses were closed and road travel prohibited to all except essential traffic. The government previously closed schools and banned children from public gatherings. People not yet vaccinated were told to remain indoors and tie a red cloth in front of their homes while awaiting mobile vaccination teams.

Despite more than 20,000 inoculations carried out over the two days, the toll from the disease has continued to rise. Over the past 24 hours the total number of deaths has reached 70, of which 61 are children aged 4 years or younger. Another 112 new cases were registered, bringing the total to 4,693 since the outbreak began. Currently 159 people are hospitalised, including 17 critically ill children.

According to Auckland University immunisation specialist, Dr Helen Petousis Harris, up to 3 percent of Samoa’s population of 200,000 could be hit with the deadly virus before it is eventually contained.

Addressing a press conference last Friday, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi admitted the epidemic remained beyond the government's ability to control it, despite an influx of international medical aid and personnel. He launched an urgent financial appeal for $US10.7 million to help the overwhelmed health system. UN spokesperson Simona Marinescu warned that there are still 110,000 vulnerable people at risk.

The government faces mounting public anger over its failure to prevent what was an entirely foreseeable and preventable outbreak. Relatives of children who have died maintain the authorities must have known that the population was at grave risk of infection.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the last five years levels of vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) collapsed in Samoa, particularly among the most at-risk groups of infants, from 90 to just 31 percent.

Dr Petousis-Harris posted on social media that while the compulsory immunisation campaign may mitigate the crisis, “for many it is too late.” The low immunisation coverage has left Samoa extremely vulnerable to measles, comparing it to “a lit match to dry tinder and gasoline.” With the global resurgence of measles, the risk of an outbreak was “almost inevitable.”

Already low immunisation levels were exacerbated by a medical mishap in July 2018 that killed two babies, causing widespread distrust in the vaccination program. Two nurses were prosecuted and jailed for negligent manslaughter after mistakenly diluting the powdered vaccine with a dose of anaesthetic instead of water.

In an act of wanton negligence, the government suspended all MMR immunisations for 10 months, leaving thousands of children unimmunised. Failure to inform the public that it was not the vaccine that caused the deaths helped boost a pernicious anti-vaccination campaign. In June, anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a nephew of President John F. Kennedy, visited from the US and was photographed alongside Samoan government officials.

Community leader Tupai Molesi Taumaoe, whose 20-month-old nephew died of measles, told the UK Telegraph the government did not react quickly enough to falling vaccination rates. New Zealand had warned the government in August about a possible epidemic, he said, “but they did nothing.” Tuilaepa flatly denied leaving the response too late, asserting the disease “came from New Zealand.”

The Samoan government displayed the indifference and contempt with which the local ruling elite, based largely on traditional tribal chiefs, routinely treats the people. Taumaoe told the Telegraph that “the community points the finger at the government, and the government points the finger at the parents.”

Prime Minister Tuilaepa blamed the victims’ “mindset,” telling media the people had a “lackadaisical attitude to all the warnings that we had issued.” He told TVNZ the crisis had forced people to finally take vaccinations “seriously.” A leading health official exhorted everyone to “stop relying on the government to do everything” and to “look after their own family welfare.”

New Zealand’s Labour-NZ First-Green Party government also shares responsibility. It waited until November 19, nearly a month into the outbreak, before sending an initial team of 10 doctors and nurses to Samoa.

The Samoan epidemic, followed by smaller outbreaks in Tonga, Fiji and now American Samoa originated in New Zealand. There have been 2,149 confirmed NZ cases since January, including more than 1,711 in working class South Auckland. A 1991 survey showed that only 42 percent of NZ-resident two-year-olds from Pacific Island families were vaccinated. Earlier this year alerts were issued throughout the WHO’s Western Pacific region about a potential spread of the disease.

Sapeer Mayron, a former New Zealand reporter now with the Samoan Observer, told the Telegraph that South Auckland was well-known for low vaccination rates among Samoan families. “It was obvious to me what was going to happen,” she said.

NZ’s National Verification Committee for Measles and Rubella Elimination explicitly warned the Ministry of Health in July: “Steps should be taken to prevent measles spreading to Pacific Island nations from New Zealand, via communications to Pacific Island governments on vaccination requirements.”

The Listener magazine’s editorial on December 5 noted New Zealand’s responsibility for the spread of the 1918 influenza epidemic, which killed 22 percent of Samoa’s population. It questioned whether the Ardern government had been “forceful enough” dealing with the known risk of measles spreading to the islands. Dr Petousis-Harris has bluntly accused New Zealand of “failing” to protect its neighbour.

The worldwide resurgence of measles is a product of deepening inequality, poverty and sweeping corporate attacks on basic health provision. There were nearly 10 million cases and an estimated 142,000 deaths globally last year. Three times as many cases have been reported this year than at the same stage in 2018.

Vaccination rates have stagnated for a decade. The WHO says globally just 86 percent of children get the first dose of vaccine and fewer than 70 percent the second. A 95 percent coverage is required for what is known as herd immunity, to avoid outbreaks. Most of the dying are small children, while thousands more suffer ongoing harm including pneumonia and brain damage.

Commenting on the extraordinarily high death rate in Samoa, NZ Immunisation Advisory Centre director Nikki Turner told Stuff, “it is not unusual to see more people die of measles in low-income countries than other countries.” Children in poverty-stricken regions are often malnourished, access to primary healthcare is limited and hospitals are insufficiently resourced.

WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated the death of any child from a vaccine-preventable disease like measles “is frankly an outrage and a collective failure to protect the world’s most vulnerable children.” To save lives, he said, “We must ensure everyone can benefit from vaccines, which means investing in immunisation and quality healthcare as a right for all.”