In Australia, calamities have unfolded across the states of Queensland and New South Wales (NSW) over the past few days as dozens of cities, towns and villages have been impacted by widespread rain and flooding, which has reached historic levels in some cases.
So far, at least eight people have lost their lives, including a Queensland State Emergency Services (SES) volunteer who attempted to rescue a family in distress. Three more people are still reported to be missing in the Queensland capital of Brisbane, and at least 1,000 remain unaccounted for in the northern NSW city of Lismore.
Huge volumes of rain fell across the region. In Brisbane, the country’s third largest city, total rainfall over three days was 611 millimetres (24 inches), surpassing all records since monitoring of the area began in 1840.
Residents of over 140 Brisbane suburbs have been threatened by rising water levels in creeks and the Brisbane River—which was at 3.5 metres last night. The levels in the river have not passed the 4.4-metre record set during the last devastating floods in 2011, but the flooding is more widespread.
Some areas that were not affected by the 2011 floods, including the Brisbane suburbs of Wilston and Windsor, were inundated. An estimated 20,000 homes across the state have been damaged, including 15,000 in the Brisbane area, mainly in low-lying working-class suburbs, including Goodna and Beenleigh.
The extreme weather system that dumped the rain moved slowly south over several days, from north of Brisbane to the neighbouring state of NSW, where it flooded the regional city of Lismore and then headed down the NSW coast toward Sydney.
Hundreds of people have been displaced. In Queensland, over 1,000 people have been evacuated, while more than 1,500 people are in evacuation shelters across the state, and at least 53,000 homes were without power as of last night. In NSW, approximately 60,000 people in the state’s north have been affected by evacuation orders. More than 300,000 have been warned they may need to flee their homes.
First to be inundated was Gympie, 170 kilometres north of Brisbane. The highest flood levels in 100 years stranded hundreds of people, with more than 3,600 properties affected and a thousand submerged. On Sunday morning, the water level of the Mary River peaked at 22.8 metres, the highest ever recorded since 1893. Hundreds of residents remain in evacuation centres, waiting for the water to recede.
Families being rescued in Maryborough, Queensland, February 2022 [Source: Queensland Fire and Emergency Services]
Further downstream, the city of Maryborough, 250 kilometres north of Brisbane, was at the centre of another emergency late on Monday as the Mary River climbed to a forecast peak of 10.7 metres, barely 50 centimetres short of the height of its flood levee.
In Brisbane, many residents who were flooded in 2011 were hit again. Despite the 2011 disaster, in which 35 people died and thousands of homes were destroyed, the authorities failed to issue timely warnings of the impending disaster.
On Sunday afternoon, people were rescued from their homes and others fled as water lapped at their doorsteps. Residents complained to the media about the lack of warning, saying they could have sandbagged or saved their belongings if they had been given time to organise. Many flood victims said they were uninsured because of the exorbitant premiums for flood cover.
Despite the 2011 catastrophe, homes are still being built, and bought or sold, in flood-prone areas of Brisbane. Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner laid the responsibility on homebuyers, saying they were aware of the risks.
In scenes reminiscent of 2011, drifting boats and large chunks of debris caused havoc and damage in the Brisbane River and major city roads were cut. Some 60,000 homes were without power. Schools and the rail system were closed yesterday.
Wivenhoe Dam, west of Brisbane, went from some 40 percent of capacity to over 180 percent in three days, forcing the authorities to begin releasing water, adding to the flows into the Brisbane River. As in 2011, it appeared that water releases began too late to avoid worsening the disaster.
Apparently unanticipated by government authorities, flooding has now happened in Brisbane River tributary catchments. The suburban Enoggera Reservoir, which does not have a gate and releases water when it is over capacity, was at 270 percent capacity on Sunday night.
Yesterday, flooding spread to northern NSW. The regional city of Lismore experienced the worst-ever floods in its history, engulfing the homes of thousands of people in the middle of the night without any prior official warning.
In each location, there has been a clear contrast between the efforts of local people and SES volunteers, who rescued many, and the response of the state and federal governments.
In Brisbane there was anger among flood victims that the state Labor Party government had earlier said that the situation would be safe, and was not on the scale of 2011.
At a press conference, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk reacted defensively when asked why successive state governments had failed after a decade to make adequate preparations for a disaster of this magnitude.
Many of the 177 recommendations made to the previous state Labor government under Premier Anna Bligh by an official inquiry after the 2011 floods, including an early flood warning system, and changes to training and procedures at the Wivenhoe dam, have not been implemented.
Palaszczuk claimed that her government was powerless in the face of the extreme weather, despite advance warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology of major flooding events. She insisted that “we didn’t know that this was going to happen. This is Mother Nature.”
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that catastrophic flooding is becoming more likely internationally due to global warming. Recent scientific studies into intensive rain systems, dubbed “atmospheric rivers,” have shown that they make devastating floods more likely in a warmer world under climate change.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison flew to Brisbane to make a show of concern for the victims of the floods. As in the 2019–20 bushfire crisis, his main focus was on deploying military personnel to assist the emergency and recovery operation. That exposes the lack of adequate civilian disaster resources.
Federal Defence Minister Peter Dutton provoked outrage on social media for setting up a GoFundMe fundraiser and appealing for donations to pay for the recovery of the Pine Rivers Community in his Queensland electorate. His appeal served to underscore the inadequacy of the government’s financial response.
The federal Liberal-National government’s $4 billion Emergency Response Fund has reportedly not spent a cent on disaster recovery since the fund’s creation in 2019, while accruing $800 million in interest.
In Queensland, state government grants of just $180 for individuals and $900 for families of more than five people have been made available in some flood-affected areas, while the federal government has offered only one-time payments of $1,000 for each eligible adult and $400 per child.
As Russia’s offensive in Ukraine and NATO’s military threats threaten to provoke a generalised military conflagration in Europe, a political gulf is visibly emerging between the mass of workers and the main presidential candidates in France.
Workers are opposed to a war towards which all the capitalist governments are moving ever more rapidly. According to a 24 February poll for CNews, 70 percent of French people oppose a direct French military intervention in Ukraine. In 2015, polls found that 77 percent of Germans, 65 percent of Italians, 66 percent of Spaniards and 59 percent of French people opposed a policy of arming the Ukrainian regime against Russia.
Eric Zemmour, Anne Hidalgo, Valérie Pécresse, Christiane Taubira (Images from Wikimedia Commons)
The presidential candidates in France, on the other hand, are backing NATO’s escalation of military and financial threats against Russia, including the arming of the Ukrainian regime against Moscow. They are lining up against the workers, who constitute the vast majority of the electorate, and behind NATO’s imperialist moves that threaten to unleash a Third World War.
Emmanuel Macron, as yet undeclared incumbent, called on Putin to “immediately halt his military operations”, claiming: “France stands in solidarity with Ukraine. It stands by the Ukrainians and acts with its partners and allies to stop the war.” His foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was more threatening, reminding Russia that NATO “is also a nuclear alliance,” before promising that Western sanctions would strike “at the heart” of Russia.
Right-wing LR (Les Républicains) candidate Valérie Pécresse “condemned in the strongest terms the war started by Russia in Ukraine.” In a tweet she said that “the response of France and Europe must be vigorous, coordinated and harsh.”
The extreme position of the traditional ruling parties allows the far right to present themselves as advocating a less aggressive policy. Marine Le Pen of the National Rally (RN) is often criticised for her alleged ties to Putin, but she too has condemned the invasion of Ukraine. She called for “France to take the initiative for a diplomatic meeting, under the aegis of the United Nations.”
The pro-Vichy journalist Eric Zemmour denounced the invasion and called on Macron to go to Moscow and Kiev as soon as possible to negotiate a ceasefire. He called for a strengthening of French military power, supposedly to oppose both the United States and Russia.
The most virulent criticisms came from the parties that the media falsely treat as being “left wing.” The Socialist Party (PS) candidate and mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, “condemned with the greatest energy the brutal attack ordered by Vladimir Putin” and called for “a firm reaction to this unjustified and criminal act.”
Christiane Taubira, former Minister of Justice and Radical Party presidential candidate, reacted on Twitter: “This is war, and that is the level on which France, the European Union, the Council of Europe, the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) and the UN must react.”
None of these presidential candidates cared to explain the political and historical chain of events that led to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or the impact of NATO’s threats to send missiles and other weapons of war into Ukraine, including now to fight the Russian army.
It is undoubtedly the case, however, that US imperialism saw the Stalinist dissolution of the USSR in 1991 as an opportunity to impose its global hegemony. It set into motion the dismantling of Yugoslavia, wars across the Middle East and Africa, color revolutions in Eastern Europe and the 2014 coup in Ukraine with the help of far-right forces to overthrow a pro-Russian regime. The debacles suffered by the US and its allies in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a wider confrontation between the imperialist powers, against Russia and China.
Putin justified his reactionary invasion on a nationalist and anti-communist basis, in line with the interests of the capitalist ruling elites that emerged from the Stalinist restoration of capitalism in the USSR in 1991. But the healthy opposition of the workers to this counterrevolutionary policy must, in order to halt the rapidly-escalating danger of war, be directed also and above all against the bloody policy of the NATO imperialist powers.
Indeed, as it threatened Russia with the possibility of arming Ukraine, NATO effectively used the latter as bait to lure Russia into a war.
Against the threats of a catastrophic war provoked by the major capitalist powers, the struggles of the working class must be united in an international anti-war movement. This requires a fundamental, uncompromising break with the established political parties and corrupt national trade union bureaucracies.
Thus Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on the subject of Ukraine, called in a statement for “an immediate meeting of the OSCE” to achieve an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of all foreign troops from Ukraine. He gave the following assessment of the war, based on speculations as to the psychology of the Russian president and his aides: “Russia is attacking Ukraine. An initiative of pure violence manifesting a will to limitless power. An unbearable escalation is being provoked.”
By calling for a meeting of the OSCE, Mélenchon is proposing that workers abstain from class struggle and instead take a back seat to the diplomacy of the capitalist states. Unable to call for a mobilisation of workers in Russia, Ukraine and the imperialist centres against the war, Mélenchon sows the illusion that diplomacy based on the nation-state system will be able to stop the race to war. In fact, an escalation of military and economic threats between NATO and Russia is ongoing.
This is the opposite of an attempt to mobilize workers internationally in a movement of demonstrations and strikes against the danger of war. One must recall that Mélenchon got 20 percent of the vote, or 7 million votes, in the last presidential elections in 2017. However, he does not call for mobilizing his voters against the war, in strikes or protests, but for proposing to the state and its imperialist strategists various tactical initiatives to defend their own interests.
The invasion of Ukraine and the reaction unmasks the class nature of Mélenchon and his party, LFI. They have applauded the wars waged by French imperialism, especially in Africa and with the wars in Libya and then Mali. During Macron’s five-year term as president, Mélenchon supported compulsory military service and demanded an increase in the army’s budget, while downplaying the danger of a war with Russia.
His remarks calling for a faster increase in the military budget made clear his militarist class perspective. “Why we criticise this Military Planning Law,” he said, “is that it tries to please everyone… And I recall that General de Villiers [the former head of the army] resigned in July, explaining that he needed an immediate increase in these resources, and therefore one that rises immediately and stabilizes towards the end.”
LFI was built to serve as a trap for millions of people who voted or participated in LFI via Internet to support Mélenchon in 2017. They applauded some of LFI’s tactical criticism of the PS, of endless austerity in Europe and of imperialist crimes like Trump’s bombing of Syria in April 2017. But LFI’s criticisms were tactical and fraudulent. Despite these criticisms, however, the LFI leadership functions as petty-bourgeois supporters of war and the military.
Stopping the race to a truly devastating war requires the independent mobilisation of workers across Europe and the world in an anti-war movement, independent from and in conscious opposition to the impotent and cynical policies of Mélenchon and LFI.
Australian state, territory and federal governments have announced the removal of virtually all remaining public health measures against COVID-19.
While all objective evidence points to the fact that current conditions are worse than at almost any other time, Australian governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, have effectively declared the pandemic over.
This is part of a process underway globally, with the exception of China, which continues to implement a highly successful zero-COVID strategy. The major capitalist governments, basing themselves on the demands of the financial elite, are eliminating any impediments to corporate profit-making activity, in a program of “forever COVID.”
Across the country, 1,413 deaths from the virus were recorded in February. While this is lower than the total of 1,519 in January, the worst month on record, the daily average increased slightly to 50.46. More than half of the 5,171 COVID-19 deaths since 2020 occurred in just these two months. Based on pre-pandemic averages, the virus remains the leading cause of death in Australia.
Since the Omicron surge began in December, the country’s testing and contact tracing infrastructure has been almost entirely dismantled, in line with the Labor-dominated “National Cabinet’s” decree that COVID-19 “management” will be “consistent with influenza, or other infectious diseases.”
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for COVID-19 is at the lowest level since June 2021. The majority of testing is now left up to individuals, who must in most cases source, pay for and administer rapid antigen tests (RATs) themselves. While it is mandatory to report positive test results, this is totally unenforceable. Negative RAT results are not recorded, meaning it is impossible to gauge the real level of infection within the community.
Despite the massive decline in testing, more new infections continue to be recorded each day than at any point in 2020 or 2021. In the last seven days of February, 161,663 new COVID-19 infections were reported across the country, an average of more than 23,000 per day. There are currently 204,220 active cases of COVID in Australia, higher than on all but 48 days of the pandemic.
In New South Wales (NSW), Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), indoor mask mandates were scrapped last Friday in all but a handful of settings, including public transport, health and aged care facilities, airports and aircraft. This follows the February 18 removal of most density limits, reopening of dance floors and, in NSW, elimination of QR code check-ins.
From today, Victorians will no longer receive a $450 payment if they need to self-isolate while waiting for COVID-19 test results.
Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk smugly declared last week: “Smiles are back. Masks will no longer be required in shops, workplaces, schools and hospitality venues from 6pm on Friday 4 March.”
Announcing the slashing of public health measures, Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews stated: “We’re going to a situation on Friday where there are essentially no COVID-19 rules, or so few that it’s unrecognisable to what it was a year ago.”
The critical difference is that, a year ago, there were just 72 active cases of COVID-19 in the entire country, approximately the same number of new infections recorded every five minutes yesterday.
Work from home orders have also been rescinded in NSW, Victoria and the ACT, meaning it is now up to employers whether office workers are allowed to continue working remotely.
There is substantial opposition to this drive among workers. A recent survey by consulting firm Bendelta found that 81 percent of office workers would prefer to work from home and 70 percent opposed an employer mandate on the number of days per week they are required to be in the office.
The return to offices is being heavily pushed by governments as a means to “revitalise” cities. While this is couched in terms of restoring trade to struggling cafes and other small businesses, it is really about protecting the fortunes of commercial landlords and property developers, as well as further promoting the dangerous lie of a “return to normal.”
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet recently stated that attending offices in-person was a “civic duty.”
Western Australian Labor Premier Mark McGowan announced yesterday that “level two” COVID-19 restrictions will be introduced on Thursday, when the state’s “hard border” is dropped.
Despite an existing surge of cases, with more than 1,000 new infections recorded each day since the four-digit milestone was reached for the first time on Friday, McGowan is proceeding with the border reopening.
The new restrictions, which mainly target home gatherings and hospitality venues, are designed to have minimal impact on business. The limited measures will do nothing to prevent a major surge in infections, illness and death when the border is reopened.
McGowan has previously said that the state’s plan is modelled on the example of South Australia. In that state, 173 people have died from COVID-19 since the domestic border was reopened on November 23.
Northern Territory (NT) Labor Chief Minister Michael Gunner said yesterday he planned to end the territory’s indoor mask mandate “sooner rather than later—like very soon.” While the territory has not set out a definite timeline for the winding back of public health measures, Gunner reiterated that QR code check-ins would soon be scaled back.
All of the territory’s 22 COVID-19 deaths have occurred in the past three months, including 20 in February. The vast majority of the victims were indigenous. While this is not reported in official figures, Central Australian Aboriginal Congress CEO Donna Ah Chee said on Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio on February 23 that 14 of the 15 deaths recorded at that time were of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Currently, 96 NT residents are hospitalised for the virus, higher than at any point before January 27, with 4 in ICU and a further 17 requiring oxygen. Around 90 percent of those hospitalised in the territory are indigenous.
The NT has the highest per capita COVID-19 infection and hospitalisation rates in the country. According to official figures, 1.78 percent of the territory population is currently infected with the virus. Over the past week, an average of 573 infections have been recorded each day, more than the total number recorded in the territory before 2022.
The surge of cases and deaths is a direct result of the NT Labor government’s opening of domestic borders on December 20.
The resumption of face-to-face teaching in schools has been a major driver of COVID-19 infections. State education departments have released only scanty details of case numbers in schools. In NSW, more than 20,000 students and 500 educators tested positive in just the first two weeks of term one. In Victoria 18,875 students and almost 2,000 teachers tested positive in the same period.
The Committee for Public Education has compiled reports from teachers, students and parents revealing at least 862 schools have been affected. This is only a fraction of the total.
Despite the high infection numbers among schoolchildren, most of whom have not yet received two doses of COVID-19 vaccine, let alone three, the few public health measures in place in schools are rapidly being done away with.
Masks are no longer required for high school students or staff in NSW and Victoria and from next week, Queensland school students will not need to wear masks. Mandatory twice-a-week rapid antigen testing for school students in NSW has now been scrapped.
More than 700 students at the Australian National University in Canberra have tested positive for COVID-19 since an outbreak in campus residence halls began when students arrived for orientation week on February 14.
By removing the last remaining COVID-19 restrictions, Australian governments are creating the conditions for the next wave of the virus to be even more devastating than the last. The Omicron surge was itself fueled initially by Perrottet’s removal of most restrictions on December 15, just as the new variant was beginning to take hold, together with similar measures in Victoria and elsewhere.
Students, teachers and workers must reject the false claims of the Australian and global ruling elite that the worst of the pandemic is over, or that future outbreaks are “inevitable” and must be “lived with.”
COVID-19 can and must be eliminated, but only the global working class can carry this out. Fundamentally, what is required is a fight to abolish the capitalist system, under which vital public health measures, including the shutdown of non-essential business, are blocked at every turn by the profit demands of big business.
Facing mounting foreign debt and a deepening economic crisis, the Rajapakse government and the Sri Lankan ruling class are watching the developing war in Ukraine with bewilderment.
Russia’s reactionary invasion was provoked by US imperialism’s moves to integrate Ukraine into its NATO alliance as part of a military encirclement of Russia. The war is now threatening to escalate into a dangerous nuclear conflict of the major powers.
Jayanath Colombage [Credit: Sri Lanka Ministry of Foreign Affairs]
Addressing a media briefing on Friday, Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Jayanath Colombage declared: “We are watching the situation [in Ukraine] but won’t take sides. Each can have their own reasons…” He did not elaborate, even to name the “sides” involved in the conflict or explain why Sri Lanka chose to be neutral.
Colombage immediately went on to speak about the economic impact of the conflict on Sri Lanka saying, “We will have to pay more for our fuel and gas, our tea market will be affected.”
Following his briefing, the foreign ministry issued a statement of three paragraphs, each containing just one sentence. It said Sri Lanka is “deeply concerned” about the escalation of violence in Ukraine and called upon “all parties concerned to exercise maximum restraint… [and the] cessation of hostilities, in order to maintain peace, security and stability in the region.” It urged the protagonists to “resolve the crisis through diplomacy and sincere dialogue.”
Sri Lanka is a small country, and by no means a major player on the geopolitical stage. Its perfunctory “not taking sides” declaration is an indication that conflict over Ukraine is extremely sensitive for the government.
President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s government is acutely nervous about making any statement that might antagonise the US or European powers. His regime is under pressure from the US and its allies, which are now involved in the Ukrainian war crisis, to break all its relations with Beijing and line up with Washington’s aggressive geopolitical and military moves against China.
In order to intensify this pressure, Washington and the major European countries passed a resolution in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in March 2021 for an investigation into war crimes during Colombo’s brutal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam that ended in 2009. The resolution also contains accusations of human rights violations, including the arbitrary arrest of political opponents, after President Rajapakse came to power in November 2019.
The US and the European countries, which are notorious for their own war crimes, cynically use the issue of “human rights” to twist the arms of various regimes and bring them into line. They used the same war-crime allegations against previous President Mahinda Rajapakse, the brother of the current president, and ultimately orchestrated a regime-change operation to remove him from office.
The Sri Lankan government has been unable to denounce these imperialist machinations. In fact, over the past year Colombo has sought to appease the US and EU to try and evade any investigation into war crimes. Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who served as defence secretary under his brother’s government, is directly responsible for the bloody final offensives of the communal war that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians.
Russia and China have supported Sri Lanka in the UNHRC and voted against the Washington-led resolutions. At the end of this month, Colombo will have to face a review of last year’s resolution, with indications that the US and the European powers will send ultimatums to Colombo and demand action.
The Sri Lankan government, which is reeling from an economic crisis that has dramatically worsened under the COVID-19 pandemic, is deeply concerned about the economic impact of the war.
The country’s foreign reserves are drying up and it is teetering on the brink of default. Lacking enough foreign exchanges to buy oil for electricity generation, Sri Lankan authorities have been forced to impose extended power cuts, vital transport services are being curtailed and imports of many essential items have been limited.
An Institute of Policy study yesterday noted that Russia and Ukraine are major markets for Sri Lankan imports and exports, with annual tea exports to Russia alone worth about $US150 million. Sri Lanka imports 45 percent of its wheat and more than half its soybeans, sunflower oil, peas and asbestos from Russia and Ukraine.
None of the main parliamentary opposition parties—the Samagi Jana Balawegaya and the United National Party—has issued a political statement on the Ukraine war crisis. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, which previously engaged in anti-imperialist demagogy, has also kept its mouth shut.
The pro-US Tamil National Alliance (TNA) appears to be in a quandary because it hopes to win support for its political agenda in Sri Lanka from New Delhi and Washington. However, India, which acts as a major strategic partner of the US in the region, has so far refused to follow Washington and denounce Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Sri Lanka’s parliamentary parties, moreover, are nervous that the escalating war will deepen the economic and political crisis and set off widespread strikes and protests by the Sri Lankan working class over wages, jobs and social rights.
The government’s insistence that it will not be “taking sides,” however, will not last. As the war intensifies so will Washington’s pressure on Colombo, which will rapidly line up with US dictates.
An editorial entitled “Ukraine—a pawn in big power rivalries,” in the DailyMirror, a mouthpiece of the Colombo elite, anxiously noted, “If the war is not brought to an end fast, more people in Africa, Asia and Latin America will die of starvation, than those killed by war in Ukraine.” The editorial ends by declaring: “Invasion is not the answer to problems. It is time for negotiations. NATO needs to halt its expansionist designs, Russia needs to withdraw, and good sense needs to prevail. War is no solution.”
Like the rest of the ruling elite, the Colombo-based DailyMirror is worried about the deepening economic and political crisis. Its calls for “negotiations” and “good sense” are an attempt to divert the concerns of workers and youth about the danger of a nuclear-armed conflict into futile appeals to the very powers that are responsible for the catastrophe.
Despite the thoroughly antiscientific alteration to mask guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the aggressive campaign by state and health authorities across the US to declare the pandemic over, the latest data on pediatric infections, hospitalizations and deaths betray an entirely different reality.
The CDC evidently did not consult its own data on the record child deaths that have occurred, and continue to occur, during the surge of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, as consequences of the staggering level of infections and hospitalizations among children since early January.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks during an event on Dec. 8, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Over the last month alone, from January 31 to February 27, the CDC Data Tracker Demographics section has added 212 pediatric deaths, a rate of 7.5 children per day. Nearly 70 percent of these, 148, occurred in the last 13 days, a rate of over 11 per day. Finally, 84 were added across the five days from February 23-27, a staggering rate of nearly 17 per day.
As of Sunday, the most recent update shows that 1,430 children have been killed by COVID-19 in the US since the start of the pandemic. Age data has been released for only 807,877 deaths, meaning the ages for 137,811 deaths, using the CDC’s current death toll of 945,688, have not yet been processed.
While there are no dates attached to these figures, a troubling limitation in itself, the majority have been added over the past few months. Health care expert Gregory Travis has tracked this data set and found that over half of all child deaths have been added since November 2021, during the Delta and Omicron waves fueled largely by the full reopening of schools.
The latest American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) report for the week ending February 24, which uses different data sources from the CDC, recorded another 20 child deaths in 14 states across every region of the country. The AAP cumulative child death toll stands at 891, a vast undercount compared to the CDC’s demographics data. Indicative of the limitations, the report is missing five states which have never publicized age mortality data, four states which no longer publicize this information, and Texas, which now only releases the data once per month.
Of the states with confirmed child deaths last week, Louisiana, Mississippi and California each added three pediatric deaths. These are the highest single week increases in these states since at least mid-November.
The AAP report also shows another 126,774 child infections, the 29th straight week of over 100,000 child infections. An additional 474 children were hospitalized last week, a significant undercount because only 25 states plus New York City provide age information for hospitalizations.
Just as the CDC’s reduction in quarantine and isolation guidelines was a clear capitulation to lobbying by Delta Airlines, among other major corporations, the latest change follows a campaign by the White House and state authorities which demanded the agency provide justification for removing mask mandates.
With the seeming flip of a switch, most of the country transitioned from living in high-risk to low- or medium-risk areas overnight, while 70 percent of the population is now encouraged to stop wearing masks.
Again betraying her role as a shill for the Democratic Party and an enemy of teachers, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten hailed the new guidelines in a press release, writing, “We welcome these long-needed new metrics for a safe off-ramp from universal masking. The CDC’s guidance is informed by science, not politics, and sets us on a path to a new normal in schools and other public places.”
The change also comes on the eve of Biden’s first State of the Union address tonight, which he will deliver to a “mask optional” audience. He will seek to chloroform the public about the dangers of the ongoing pandemic, as over 2,000 people continue to die from COVID-19 each day in the US.
States have pounced upon the CDC’s new guidelines. The last three states with statewide mask mandates in schools—California, Oregon and Washington—announced Monday that they will drop them earlier than previously stated. Clearly working in tandem, the change will go into effect on March 11 in each state.
Delaware’s school mask mandate ended today, a month earlier than Democratic Governor John Carney initially proposed, with state officials citing the CDC’s new guidelines. Illinois also ended its school mask mandate on Monday, and Maryland’s was ditched last Friday.
Also citing the CDC, New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the state’s school mask mandate will end Wednesday, one week earlier than expected. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is prepared to end the city’s school mask mandate on March 7, as well as the Key2NYC vaccine requirement for restaurants, gyms and theaters.
Educators and parents widely denounced Adams on Twitter.
One teacher wrote, “I love my work and my students but I cannot risk the lives of my unborn twins by being in a 43% vaccinated environment with no ventilation and no masking. And what about high risk students & families? Anti-safety activists should not get the final say for the rest of us.”
Another said, “There is no mechanism to report and count positive home rapid tests, even as more and more people have begun using them - including @NYCSchools whenever students are exposed and right now as they return. And no school vaccination requirement. Terrible idea to drop it all now.”
Statements made by Adams last week underscore the true priority of the entire political structure in the United States, which demands the full reopening of schools and businesses in order to secure corporate profits. Politico quoted Adams saying at a press conference, “The best thing we can do to deal with Covid is get back to work… New Yorkers did their job: vaccinated, boosters, taking testing. Now I need them to do one more job: go back to their job.”
In another press conference, he said, “I’m hearing people saying, ‘Hey Eric, you’re not focused on Covid.’ I’m like, ‘What are you saying?’ We have masterfully kept our schools open. Brought down rates inside our schools so that parents can go to work.”
This is a blatant revision of history. In fact, epidemiologist Isaac Michaels noted that between January 3-14 alone, there were 85,492 confirmed cases among students in New York City’s K-12 schools, an unprecedented increase above 2020-2021.
The dropping of school mask mandates is not based on popular support. A recent UC Berkeley poll of registered voters in California found that 65 percent support mask requirements and 64 percent support vaccine requirements in K-12 schools. In addition, a nationwide CBS-YouGov poll from mid-February found that 56 percent of respondents supported mask mandates in all indoor settings.
The scrapping of the last remaining measures that reduce the spread of COVID-19 comes as the BA.2 Omicron subvariant has been identified in every US state and threatens to prolong the current wave, if not unleash a new surge in itself. The variant is known to be more transmissible and potentially more virulent than the BA.1 Omicron variant.
Without masks, children have effectively no protections against COVID-19 in schools or public places. Vaccination rates remain very low among children. Ages 0 to 4 remain ineligible for vaccination, while only 25.6 percent of 5-to-11-year-olds and 57.5 percent of 12-to-17-year-olds have received two shots.
According to the Coronavirus in Kids Project, only 11.5 percent of children ages 12-17 are “optimally” vaccinated, meaning those whose primary series was recently completed and are not overdue for a booster.
On Monday, researchers from New York’s Department of Health released a preprint study showing a major drop in the Pfizer vaccine’s efficacy among 5-to-11-year-olds compared to the 12-17 age group. Pfizer’s is the only approved COVID-19 vaccine for 5-to-11-year-olds, and they receive one-third the dose of the older group.
According to their data, between December 13, 2021 and January 30, 2022, vaccine efficacy (VE) against infection declined from 66 to 55 percent for 12-to-17-year-olds and dropped from 68 to 12 percent for 5-to-11-year-olds.
Efficacy against hospitalization also declined dramatically between the two groups. Over the same time period, VE against hospitalization declined from 85 percent to 73 percent among 12-to-17-year-olds, and from 100 percent to 48 percent among 5-to-11-year-olds.
Educators, parents and students must recognize the enormous dangers posed by the latest decisions of the White House, the CDC and local authorities. Like his predecessor Trump, Biden has sought to accustom the population to mass death, in preparation not only for continuing pandemic fatalities, but also for the deaths that will inevitably occur as a result of his administration’s reckless provocation of war with Russia.
The past year has proven that the Democratic Party is wholly immune to pressure from the population and is indifferent to the suffering and deaths of millions. The CDC itself has demonstrated that its principal job is to bolster the political establishment and corporate elite, rather than protect human life.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government deployed emergency powers, under the never-before-used Emergencies Act, for ten days last month to put an end to the far-right Freedom Convoy’s occupation of downtown Ottawa and blockades of various border crossings. Apart from the country’s most powerful business lobby groups, the Business Council of Canada and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, some of the strongest support for this authoritarian action has come from Canada’s “progressive” and ostensibly “left” organizations.
Left: Jagmeet Singh at the OFL Convention in 2017 (Wikimedia Commons/OFL Communications Department), Right: Justin Trudeau speaks during a media conference at the end of an EU-Canada summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Tuesday, June 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Even before Trudeau declared a “public order emergency” on Feb. 14, the leader of the trade union-backed New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, had pledged his party’s support. A week later, when the minority Liberal government sought the House of Commons’ mandatory retroactive approval for its invocation of the Emergencies Act, it secured it thanks to the unanimous support of Canada’s social democrats. Charlie Angus, who is often portrayed as a “left” voice on the NDP’s frontbench, summed up the party’s attitude when he declared during the Commons’ debate, “(W)hat we saw yesterday was policing at its best in this country… We cannot be made to look like a failed state to the world.”
Party elder statesman Ed Broadbent, who was a member of the NDP caucus that voted against Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s invocation of the War Measures Act in 1970, gave his seal of approval to the party’s support for the current Liberal government and its use of emergency powers. “The Emergencies Act is not the War Measures Act,” Broadbent claimed, adding, “The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not suspended. There is parliamentary oversight. And the act would expire in its application after 30 days.”
“Progressive” media outlets struggled to contain their enthusiasm for the massive police operation mounted, using the emergency powers, against the Ottawa occupation. Supported logistically by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, it brought together tactical police units from across the country and involved the establishment of a police No-Go zone covering a large part of downtown Ottawa. The title of a National Observer article approvingly declared that Convoy participants had gotten “a reality check,” while another article applauded the police for moving in “calmly and forcefully.” The Canadian Labour Congress, Canada’s largest union federation, was so little troubled by the government’s resort to emergency powers that it did not make any public mention of it, including in a February 15 statement on the Convoy titled “Canada’s unions stand with those who stand against hate.”
A dangerous precedent
Workers should reject such complacency and political stupidity. The Trudeau government deployed the Emergencies Act to uphold the predatory geostrategic interests of Canadian imperialism and the profits of big business, not protect the democratic and social rights of working people.
The invocation of this never-before-used legislation and its endorsement by the House of Commons marks a major shift to the right within official politics. It breaks a “political taboo” on using emergency powers and sets the stage for a more ruthless enforcement of Canadian imperialist interests against the working class at home and Ottawa’s geopolitical rivals abroad. This process can only be halted through the independent political mobilization of the working class on the basis of a socialist program.
The successor to the draconian War Measures Act, the Emergencies Act permits the federal government to employ coercive measures that “may not be appropriate in normal times.” When the act is in force, the federal government is empowered to make new laws by decree and expand its powers as it sees fit. The only provisos are that parliament must retroactively approve the act’s invocation, can repeal any or all of the emergency powers the government arrogates, and the emergency must expire after 30 days unless its extension is approved by parliament.
To put an end to the far-right Convoy the Trudeau government arrogated the power to: impose No-Go zones in which protests and gatherings were prohibited, with violators subject to immediate arrest; ban participation in public assemblies deemed to “go beyond lawful protest”; and order financial institutions to freeze the accounts of anyone or any organization identified as responsible for the “public order” emergency. The federal government also gave itself the power to commandeer equipment and other resources needed to end the emergency, such as tow trucks to clear the far-right occupation of Ottawa.
Anyone who violated any of these emergency provisions is liable to fines of up to $5,000 and/or imprisonment for up to five years.
Broadbent’s argument that adherence to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms serves as a check on these extraordinary powers is a lie. First, the Charter’s very first clause stipulates that all rights contained within it are subject to “reasonable limits” determined by a “free and democratic society. This gives the government and state institutions vast leeway to limit and run roughshod over democratic rights, especially in an “emergency.” Second, any determination that the government has abused its prerogative under the Emergencies Act to limit and suspend democratic rights would come only years after the fact, after a lengthy judicial process culminating at Canada’s Supreme Court.
The political justifications that Trudeau and his ministers advanced for invoking the Emergencies Act make clear that it did so to defend Canada’s geostrategic and economic relationship with the United States, uphold the authority of the state, and ensure, to use the words of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, that Canada retains its reputation as a “competitive” place for “investment” and “business.”
The order-in-council published in the Canada Gazette explained the Emergencies Act was required due to “the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property, including critical infrastructure, for the purpose of achieving a political or ideological objective.” Further reasons included “the adverse effects on the Canadian economy recovering from the impact of the pandemic,” the “adverse effects” on “Canada’s relationships with its trading partners, including the United States,” “the breakdown in the distribution chain and the availability of essential goods, services, and resources,” and “[t]he potential for an increase in the level of unrest and violence that would further threaten the safety and security of Canadians.”
It is not hard to imagine how during a future major strike by industrial workers, cries will be raised from big business demanding state repression because strikers are causing “adverse effects on the Canadian economy.” Or perhaps the Conservatives and their right-wing media backers, who fraudulently portrayed the occupation of downtown Ottawa by a far-right mob threatening to overthrow the government as a movement standing up for “working Joes,” will demand a police state crackdown the next time a popular protest takes place against Canadian imperialism’s role in the US-led war drive against Russia, because it poses a threat to “Canada’s relationships with its trading partners, including the United States.”
Because the NDP and unions have rallied round the Trudeau government and its use of emergency powers, the door has been opened for the Conservatives and the right-wing media to cynically posture as defenders of “civil liberties” by opposing the resort to emergency powers. Thus, the likes of the TorontoSun and interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen—that is, the very same forces who incited and fashioned the Convoy into a far-right extra-parliamentary movement in order to push politics far to the right—are now feigning concern over democratic rights.
This is no less absurd than the assertion by Trudeau and his “progressive” apologists that deploying the Emergencies Act will safeguard “democracy.” The Ottawa occupiers were not engaged in a peaceful protest, but rather a menacing act of political intimidation. For 24 days they besieged downtown Ottawa, flouting anti-COVID restrictions and bullying and terrorizing local residents. The initiators and leaders of the Convoy publicly declared their aim to be the ouster of the democratically elected government and its replacement by an authoritarian junta. To claim under such conditions that workers should oppose the Emergencies Act because they have an obligation to defend the “democratic rights” of the far-right activists and outright fascists is preposterous.
The far right and the capitalist state’s “bodies of armed men”
Working-class opposition to the Emergencies Act is necessary because history shows that whenever institutions of the capitalist state are strengthened in the name of combatting the far right and defending “democracy,” they are invariably turned against the working class—and with far more speed and violence. Moreover, the very institutions supposedly tasked with defending “democracy,” the police, intelligence agencies, and the military, have proven time and time again to be breeding grounds for the very far-right and fascistic forces they are allegedly suppressing.
In July 2020, a far-right military reservist who was on active duty attempted to assassinate Trudeau at his official residence. Corey Hurren denounced the Prime Minister for trying to introduce a “communist dictatorship” in a note discovered by police after his arrest while heavily armed on the grounds of Rideau Cottage, where Trudeau resides.
In December, a report by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, the state watchdog agency tasked with ensuring the intelligence agencies do not violate the law, noted that white supremacists and neo-Nazis in the Canadian military pose an “active counterintelligence threat,” and that the authorities are “limited in their ability” to identify these forces in the ranks.
As the Convoy approached Ottawa, the military was so concerned about support for the far-right mob within its elite Special Forces unit, Joint Task Force 2, that it circulated a code of conduct among its members to remind them of their obligation to stay “above the fray of political debate.” On February 13, the Ottawa Citizen revealed that two soldiers from the unit, which is responsible for counterterrorism missions and providing security to the Prime Minister, were under investigation for participating in the occupation.
As for the RCMP, which is now being touted by “left” and “progressive” politicians as a key prop of “democracy” and the “rule of law,” this institution of savage state repression—whose origins lie in Canadian capitalism’s bloody and violent dispossession of the Native population—has a more than century-long record of infiltrating and repressing left-wing movements and critics of Canadian capitalism. Just three months ago, RCMP officers in British Columbia illegally seized two journalists documenting the police’s aggressive assault on protests by the Wet’suwet’en First Nation and their supporters against the Coastal Gas Link pipeline. Photojournalist Amber Bracken and documentary filmmaker Michael Toledano were seized by heavily armed officers November 19, 2021, in a violent raid that made Bracken feel like she was being “kidnapped.”
Throughout the Ottawa occupation, the police treated the far-right occupiers with kid gloves. Whether due to support for the Convoy among police commanders, or the fear that their officers might balk at taking action against the far-right occupiers, the police avoided the deployment of the ruthless violence and riot-control methods that are ubiquitous when left-wing protesters take to the streets.
The same tendencies are evident internationally. In Germany, the ruling elite systematically built up the neofascist Alternative for Germany as a major opposition party. Germany’s state institutions, including the military, intelligence agencies, and police, are infested with right-wing extremist networks that have openly laid plans to assassinate political opponents on a so-called “Day X.” In France and Spain, senior military officers have engaged in antidemocratic conspiracies, including open coup plotting.
In the United States, ex-President Donald Trump’s attempted fascist coup on January 6, 2021, enjoyed strong support from substantial sections of the Republican Party, military veterans, and the police. The ease with which the far-right and fascist thugs seized control of the US Capitol, one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the world, and almost took congressmen hostage as part of Trump’s months-long plot to overturn the presidential election result underscored that his authoritarian power grab was tacitly approved, if not actively supported, by significant sections of the state’s security apparatus.
Canada’s ruling elite is moving in the same authoritarian direction. Over recent years, the Trudeau government and its provincial counterparts have virtually outlawed the right to strike, at least whenever workers find themselves in a position of strength. In the name of the “war on terror,” the intelligence agencies have been given since 2001 vast new powers to spy on and disrupt political opponents—powers that are directed principally towards suppressing social opposition from below. Calls are already being made from many quarters for some of the powers the Trudeau government invoked during last month’s ten-day emergency, such as the ban on protests in the environs of “critical infrastructure,” to be made permanent.
The ruling class views its vast repressive state powers as essential if it is to withstand mounting popular opposition to unprecedented levels of social inequality, the reckless drive to war, and the prioritization of corporate profits over the safeguarding of human life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The vast majority of workers for whom the reactionary views of the far-right Freedom Convoy are anathema should not permit their opposition to fascistic political violence to be corralled behind support for the Trudeau government and the capitalist state. This requires first and foremost a settling of political accounts with the NDP and trade unions, which proved throughout the Convoy’s occupation of Ottawa to be the chief impediments to an independent political response by the working class to the danger of far-right political violence and the ruling elite’s pandemic policy of mass infection and death.
