Biden’s new “forever war”

Andre Damon

On Saturday, US President Joe Biden ended his week-long tour of Europe to mobilize NATO for conflict with Russia with a belligerent rant in Warsaw, Poland. Media coverage of Biden’s speech was focused on its final passage, apparently ad-libbed, in which the American president said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”

But an even more important aspect of the speech went largely undiscussed: Biden’s declaration of a “commitment” by the United States to “decades” of war.

President Joe Biden delivers a speech Saturday, March 26, 2022, in Warsaw. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Against the backdrop of the largest land war in Europe since World War II, Biden declared, “We must commit now to be in this fight for the long haul. We must remain unified today and tomorrow and the day after and for the years and decades to come.”

To what “fight” is Biden committing the United States?

Just nine months ago, when Biden announced the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, he said, “We’ve been a nation too long at war. If you’re 20 years old today, you have never known an America at peace.” He declared, “It’s time to end the forever war.”

Now, Biden is committing the American population to a new perpetual war—one that he said will have immense “costs” and “will not be easy.”

In his speech, Biden declared that the decades-long “fight” the US is initiating is a “great battle for freedom: a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

Biden picked a strange place to launch a struggle for “democracy.” This year, the Berlin-based Civil Liberties Union for Europe accused the Polish government of “seizing further control of the justice system, civil society and media, while cutting basic human rights and fueling divisions by scapegoating migrants and other minority groups.”

The Polish government is controlled by the ultra-right, chauvinist, anti-Semitic and authoritarian PiS party. President Duda—Biden's constant companion during his warmongering crusade—heads a government that has completely banned abortion as a form of family planning, persecutes the LGBT community, and criminalizes the exposure of Polish complicity in the Holocaust.

As with the “war on terror,” which saw the most grievous violations of democratic rights in American history, Biden’s new decades-long war invokes “democracy” as a throwaway line that no one is to take seriously.

In his speech, Biden himself made clear the extent to which the United States had provoked Russia’s invasion by arming a NATO proxy on Russia’s border.

“In the years before the invasion, we, America, had sent over $650 million, before they crossed the border, in weapons to Ukraine, including anti-air and anti-armor equipment. Since the invasion, America has committed another $1.35 billion in weapons and ammunition.”

Everything that Biden has done over the past week has been intended to stoke up the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine. He called the Russian president every name imaginable, from “butcher” to “murderous dictator” to “war criminal” to “thug.” He has poured weapons into Ukraine and doubled the forces deployed on Russia’s borders. As Edward Luce of the Financial Times commented, “US liberals are at least as hawkish as conservatives.”

Biden’s speech in Poland followed the conclusion of the NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium, where the leaders of the NATO alliance plotted out a major escalation of the conflict. At the summit, NATO announced a doubling of its forces on Russia’s border, and the New York Times reported plans by the US for full-scale war with Russia.

The actual causes of this new “forever war” are to be found in the documents of US military planners.

In 1991, amidst the dissolution of the USSR, then US President George H. W. Bush declared that the Gulf War against Iraq would usher in a “New World Order” led by the United States.

The following year, the Pentagon published a Defense Planning Guidance, termed the “Wolfowitz Doctrine,” proclaiming that the United States’ “first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.”

The outpouring of US militarism initiated by the first invasion of Iraq was followed by three decades of perpetual war, including the bombing and breakup of Yugoslavia, the destruction and occupation of Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the overthrow of the Libyan government and the years-long regime change in Syria.

Now, these wars are metastasizing into a direct US conflict with Russia and China, with potentially incalculable consequences.

The 2018 National Defense Strategy announced a pivot from US military engagements in the Middle East to efforts to combat Russia and China. “Inter-state strategic competition,” it proclaimed, “not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.”

In this context, it is clear that Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was nothing but a redeployment of forces in preparation for military conflicts on an even greater scale.

Despite the efforts by the White House to walk back Biden’s statement, Biden’s ad-libbed declaration was the inescapable conclusion of the entire speech. Biden’s statements clearly reflect the actual US policy, the aim of which is the military isolation and economic ruination of Russia, the ouster of its government and the installation of a puppet regime that would turn it into a rump state.

Biden’s declaration of a new, decades-long commitment comes just days after his proclamation before leaving for Europe, that “there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it.”

Seven years ago, in his preface to A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony 1990-2016, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North wrote:

The last quarter century of US-instigated wars must be studied as a chain of interconnected events. The strategic logic of the US drive for global hegemony extends beyond the neocolonial operations in the Middle East and Africa. The ongoing regional wars are component elements of the rapidly escalating confrontation of the United States with Russia and China.

The events of this week make one thing abundantly clear. The US’s plans for “great-power conflict” with Russia and China are leaving the planning stage and are being put into practice. Having instigated the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States is seizing upon it to carry out plans, decades in the making, to assert US hegemony through military means against nuclear-armed adversaries.

Omicron BA.2 wave begins its assault on the United States

Benjamin Mateus

A growing number of public health experts in Europe and the United States predict that the US will see a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections in the coming weeks due to the spread of the highly infectious and immune-resistant Omicron BA.2 subvariant. These assessments are based on the current wave of COVID-19 infections now impacting 18 countries across Europe, where surges have consistently proved a harbinger of another wave in the US.

It is necessary to place the immune evasive characteristics of BA.2 into context, as it will have significant implications for the US. In the UK, despite high levels of population antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, believed to be roughly 97–99 percent from vaccinations and previous infections, the Office for National Statistics indicated that between 6–9 percent of the population tested positive for COVID-19 last week.

Following the explosion in infections in the UK, hospitalizations across England have accelerated upwards again, approaching the highs seen during the last Omicron wave when there were 14,256 admissions in one week in mid-January. After dramatically falling in February, admissions have clawed back up to 12,576. As expected, many of these patients are the elderly and most vulnerable, but there has also been a sharp rise in hospitalization among children, who remain the least vaccinated age group.

Emergency medical technician Thomas Hoang, left, of Emergency Ambulance Service, and paramedic Trenton Amaro prepare to unload a COVID-19 patient from an ambulance in Placentia, Calif., Jan. 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

The death toll due to COVID-19 in the UK has swung upwards by 22 percent over the previous week. The seven-day average of daily new deaths has doubled since the first day of March, with 128 deaths per day.

Though population immunity in the US from previous infections and vaccinations remains considerable, vaccinations and booster uptakes have been much more stagnant, with less than 3 percent of the population receiving a booster shot in the past two months. This means that the American population can expect a more pronounced impact when the momentum from the surge accelerates.

There is a growing body of evidence of the impending BA.2 surge in the US. First, the number of sequenced cases of the BA.2 version in the US has doubled in the last two weeks and now accounts for 34.9 percent of all new infections. In Europe, COVID-19 cases began to turn upwards when BA.2 sequences surpassed the 50 percent mark, which will likely happen by the end of next week. In New England, half of all sequenced COVID-19 infections are now BA.2.

In Boston, daily cases have jumped almost three-fold in recent days to nearly 200. Former New York City Council Member Mark Levine recently tweeted, “Manhattan is driving the current increase in cases in NYC,” where test positivity rates are soaring. The 14-day change in daily new cases in New York is up by 44 percent, the highest increase in the country. Twelve states, including six in the Northeast, have reported upward trends, despite overall decreases in population testing and a shift towards home-based rapid antigen test kits that go unreported.

Presently, the national average of daily new cases has started to rise and is now just over 30,000 COVID-19 infections per day. The last time the number of daily new cases across the US were at the current figure was in the early summer months of 2021. Numbers had plummeted to under 13,000, leading President Joe Biden to infamously declare on July 4 that the US had gained its independence from the coronavirus.

Within weeks of this short-sighted gaffe, Delta swept across the country, leading to record hospitalizations and deaths, which was then followed by the even more disastrous Omicron surge. Almost 400,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 in the last nine months, while the cumulative death toll in the US exceeded 1 million this week, according to Worldometers.

Presently, an average of 735 Americans are dying from COVID-19 each day. However, the Biden administration has squandered the time provided from the natural ebb of the BA.1 wave to put into place the necessary measures to ensure the country is prepared against future variants. Instead, the White House claims there is no more funding for pandemic preparedness, while refusing to invoke the Defense Production Act to requisition the needed supplies and resources.

The refusal of the entire political establishment to address the pandemic will have devastating consequences for the American population.

Last week, the White House issued a fact sheet noting that without $22.5 billion in immediate emergency funding, the government will not be able to secure sufficient booster doses. Health care providers will no longer be able to submit claims for testing, treating and vaccinating the 25 million uninsured. There is no further funding for monoclonal antibodies or antivirals once existing stockpiles are used. Programs to rapidly identify and assess emerging variants of the virus will be dismantled. The nearly 10 million immunocompromised Americans will be left in the lurch.

One source of essential data on the pandemic state that is infrequently referenced and threatened by a loss of funding are wastewater analyses of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material. Wastewater-based epidemiology for SARS-CoV-2 has proven effective, reliable and has demonstrated it can detect early surges of cases in communities, acting as an early warning barometer if such tools are utilized to warn and implement mitigation and containment measures.

Currently, wastewater data from California, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri and other states have seen a rise in levels of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material in their samples, yet no significant warning is made about the dangers of another surge.

Because both asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals shed viral fragments in their feces after infection, wastewater is ideal in identifying early community outbreaks. Community outbreaks can be detected weeks before many infected individuals are diagnosed and test positivity rates begin to increase.

Under a rational plan, this would give ample time for public health officials to begin their investigation and end outbreaks before they escalate into uncontrolled community spread. Several studies have demonstrated the accuracy and feasibility of wastewater surveillance and have previously predicted the onset of new waves. However, throughout the pandemic these invaluable tools have been stymied and are not comprehensive, formalized or integrated in the pandemic response guidelines.

CDC leadership, top national public health figures and the political establishment as a whole are entirely disregarding all of these developments with BA.2. After having lifted all mitigation measures nationally during the downturn of the Omicron BA.1 surge, they are now actively downplaying the dangers posed. At most, they acknowledge the inevitability of the BA.2 wave and then minimize the risks it poses to the population with a wave of a hand and false assurances.

Earlier this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical advisor, told ABC’s This Week, “The bottom line is we’ll likely see an uptick in cases, as we’ve seen in the European countries, particularly the UK. Hopefully, we won’t see a surge. I don’t think we will.”

Contrary to Fauci’s dismissal of BA.2, SARS-CoV-2 has repeatedly been shown to be a dangerous virus. There is overwhelming evidence that infections, besides death, lead to the population’s sickening.

Recent studies have demonstrated that all-cause mortality among the previously infected increases considerably even with mild COVID-19 infection. Prior infection increases the risk of developing diabetes. The effect on the brain, pulmonary and cardiovascular system will leave hundreds of thousands and potentially millions of people chronically disabled. The dangerous long-term impact is only beginning to be understood.

Fundamentally, the concerns behind allowing BA.2 to rip across the globe are not just for the immediate impact on the population’s welfare, which is considerable. Viral evolution will spawn newer variants that constantly adapt to the population immunity, breeding more immune-evasive and contagious versions of themselves. Fauci’s assumption that this wave will not have the same impact is not borne by evidence. It sets the conditions necessary for the following variant that will continue to endanger communities worldwide.

A COVID-19 elimination strategy remains practical and feasible, and is the only strategy that assures a permanent end to the pandemic. It will end the repeated cycle of devastation once and for all, and the lives and well-being of billions will be spared.

Biden’s student debt scam: Restructuring debt, not forgiveness

Chase Lawrence

An email from the Department of Education obtained by National Public Radio (NPR) indicates that the Biden administration may extend the freeze on student loans, started under the Trump administration, for a fourth time. The email directed loan servicing companies not to reach out to borrowers about the May 1 deadline, despite these companies being required to give a month's notice before repayment begins.

The email follows on the heels of an appearance by White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain on the podcast Pod Save America where he hinted that it was possible the repayment pause could be extended beyond the May 1 deadline.

There is no doubt that the motivation behind the delay in restarting the debt payments is a cynical political calculation. The Democratic Party is planning to use the delay to posture as proponents of some form of debt forgiveness in the midterm elections.

President Joe Biden speaks from Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol to mark the one year anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol by supporters loyal to then-President Donald Trump, Thursday, Jan. 6, 2022, in Washington. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP)

While campaigning for president Biden declared repeatedly that “we should forgive a minimum of $10,000/person of federal student loans, as proposed by Senator Warren and colleagues.”

However, those who hold student loan debt must be warned, the current proposal under consideration for “forgiveness” is actually a restructuring of student debt, a far cry from Biden’s original pledge.

The magnitude of the proposed “relief” pales in comparison to the mountain of student debt.

Even if his campaign promise was applied to all the 43.4 million federal student loan borrowers, it would entail $434 billion in forgiven loans, only a little more than a quarter of the $1.61 trillion in federal student loans. Outstanding private student loans, which stand at $136.31 billion according to Nerdwallet, would not be canceled under this arrangement. Moreover, “Total Parent Plus debt,” where parents take on debt on behalf of their student children, constituting $103.6 billion in debt and 3.6 million borrowers, would be untouched.

Even more importantly, there is no plan to reduce, let alone eliminate the astronomical education costs that currently prevail. This means that the one-time forgiveness would not do anything for future borrowers. Students would still go into massive amounts of debt because of the astronomical cost of college. Loan companies and the federal government would continue to profit off of student loans, and higher education would continue on its trajectory towards being a privilege afforded to the wealthy instead of a public good for all.

Despite this reality, the mainstream media has sought to portray Biden’s actions on student debt as somewhat progressive. Forbes recently reported, for example, that Biden has forgiven $15 billion in debt. Not only does this figure represent a drop in the bucket of the total debt, but it also covers up more devious actions. The figure cited by Forbes includes people involved in public service loan forgiveness, which has existed for decades. Nerdwallet accurately described it as “a federal program designed to encourage students to enter relatively low-paying careers,” forgiveness of now-defunct ITT Tech student loans (ITT is a private university that abruptly closed in 2016), and Borrower Defense to Repayment, which covers loans to defunct institutions.

Tweet from Biden in 2020 where he promised student debt forgiveness

That is, a small section of student loan borrowers have become disabled and are unable to make repayments, been able to prove they were defrauded by either a scam or hold a degree from a non-existent institution, or work a low-paying job and have therefore been granted “forgiveness.”

Additionally, the Department of Education identified 100,000 borrowers with $6.2 billion in cancellable debt as part of an October 2021 change to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness rules, which has also been touted in the media as a great victory for students. This figure constitutes a fraction of the total student loan borrowers and total debt (0.2 percent and 0.4 percent, respectively). Moreover, this change mainly involves adjustments in how payments are counted towards forgiveness, such as counting prior student loan payments towards forgiveness, payments made before loans are consolidated, getting credit towards forgiveness if the wrong repayment plan was used, and similar matters.

Even the debt forgiveness plans that are presented as more radical, upon closer look, are incredibly limited and unserious. For example, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed student loan cancellation be limited to student loan borrowers who earn up to $125,000, with the possibility of Congress or the president setting an even lower threshold, much like the stimulus check for the COVID-19 pandemic which had a $75,000 income threshold.

Democratic Senator Patty Murray, chairwoman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who advocated extending the payment freeze to at least 2023 explained that her reason for continuing the freeze is to fix the “broken” repayment system. The Washington Post wrote at the time that “Murray said she is pleased to see the administration considering another extension because there is plenty of work to do before payments resume.“

“Chief on the list is to finalize a new income-driven repayment plan.” The “fix” consists of consolidating four “income driven plans” into one, a far cry from canceling student debt, let alone making higher education affordable.

Student loans are also on the government's balance sheet, meaning that any forgiveness would be paid for by a cut to social spending.

Just as the Democrats have removed all remaining pandemic protections amid mass death and infections so that big banks and corporations could continue to profit, they are moving to shift ever more money towards the military as part of the drive by US imperialism to war with Russia and China. The US military budget passed in the Senate stands at a whopping $782 billion. While both parties claim there is no money for student loan forgiveness or for making higher education free, trillions are expended on war and propping up Wall Street.

Biden himself holds a great deal of responsibility for the student debt crisis from his time as a US senator from Delaware. His home state is infamous as the location of choice for giant corporation headquarters seeking to evade taxes, regulations and scrutiny of all kinds, something which the president often brags about. In 2005, along with 17 other Democratic senators, he voted to pass the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which tightened the bankruptcy code so that private student loans were stripped of bankruptcy protections.

Biden received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from credit card companies preceding the vote. The tightening of bankruptcy protections led to the tripling of debt over the course of a decade, locking student debtors in endless ruinous payments.

For the Biden administration, “student debt forgiveness” is a convenient slogan used to try to deceive a section of young voters.

New Zealand government ends COVID-19 restrictions amid escalating death toll

John Braddock

As New Zealand’s COVID-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths continue to mount, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Wednesday announced the removal of most remaining public health restrictions.

A COVID-19 vaccination centre in Hamilton [Source: Waikato District Health Board Facebook page, September 29, 2021]

The announcement came in the same week that New Zealand passed the grim milestone of 200 COVID-related deaths. Today, the toll increased by 20, to 254. Total deaths from the virus have more than doubled in the past fortnight. The deaths are not limited to elderly people. On Monday, a person aged in their 20s died of COVID, and on Friday someone aged in their 30s perished.

There are 841 people in hospital with the virus, and more than 118,000 known cases in the community. The real number, however, is likely much higher.

Until October, when the Labour-Green Party government ditched its successful elimination policy, there had been only 32 deaths in a population of 5 million. Ardern repeated all the false claims used by governments overseas that vaccination meant there was no need for public health restrictions, and that the Omicron variant is “mild.”

New Zealand is now being brought fully into line with capitalist governments internationally and their criminal “live with the virus” program. The Ardern government is implementing the agenda of big business and of the far-right protesters who recently occupied parliament grounds for three weeks demanding an end to all restrictions.

From this weekend, all outdoor gathering limits have been axed, opening up major sports events and concerts. Limits for indoor gatherings have been increased from 100 people to 200, with only some rules on distancing retained. Outdoor face mask requirements have been removed. Scanning of QR codes has ended.

On April 5, all vaccine mandates will be abolished, except for workers in the health sector, aged care facilities, prison staff and border and managed isolation workers. Previously about 40 percent of the workforce was subject to some form of mandate. Education, police and the Defence Force will no longer need to mandate their workforces.

Mandates in the health sector will be reviewed and vaccination requirements may be narrowed to a smaller part of the workforce. Already, nurses who are COVID-positive can be called on to return to work in some circumstances. Hospitals in major centres are reporting that 10 to 15 percent of staff are currently unable to work due to the virus.

A few measures are still in place: for the general population, the self-isolation period remains at just seven days for people with COVID-19 and their family contacts. Face masks are still, in theory, required for most indoor settings. Ardern told the media that the restrictions will be further eased “as soon as possible.”

The government had already announced in February a phased reopening of borders to quarantine-free international travel, initially for NZ citizens and then for visitors and tourists. A decision earlier this month, under intense pressure from the tourism industry to accelerate the process, allows tourists from Australia to enter in time for Easter and the school holidays.

Scientific experts, who are often reluctant to strongly criticise the government, expressed considerable opposition to the latest changes. Prior to Ardern’s announcement, a group of public health specialists called on the government to “pump the brakes” on loosening COVID-19 restrictions.

Writing on the Otago University Public Health Expert blog, epidemiologist Michael Baker and his colleagues warned that not only will the virus keep mutating, but immune protection wanes over time. The result will be “thousands of cases a day for the rest of the year,” with at least 200 or 300 people in hospital all the time, placing a huge strain on the health system.

Auckland University epidemiologist Rod Jackson told Radio NZ that the worst may be yet to come/ The“clamour to ditch vaccine passes and change the traffic light setting is poorly timed,” he stated. Jackson added: “It makes absolutely no sense to remove any effective public health measures when we’re still at the top [of infections]. It’s crazy. I think it’s political nonsense to be pushing to take them away now.”

Government spokespeople dismissed the concerns. COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins told TV 1 that vaccine mandates have “served their purpose.” He denied the government was “letting down our guard,” pointing to what he called “very high rates of vaccination across the country.” In fact, only two thirds of the eligible population has had the booster shot necessary for meaningful protection against Omicron, leaving millions of people particularly exposed.

A key government advisor, epidemiologist David Skegg, made it clear that Ardern has been guided by the interests of business. Skegg, chair of the COVID-19 Public Health Advisory Group, told Radio NZ that the pandemic has not gone away but the government has to balance between “keeping everyone safe” and the “social and economic costs” of ongoing restrictions.

The drive to prioritise “the economy” over public health is the product of an increasingly raucous campaign by business and the media to establish a “new normal” and place the pursuit of profits ahead of all other considerations.

Right-wing radio host Kate Hawkesby recently declared it is time to “drop the scaremongering epidemiologists.” Taking aim at Jackson, she continued: “Only [!!] half a million of us have even caught Covid. Yet he still wants the ‘team of 5 million’ to remain punished, fear-ridden, and holed up like hermits.” The term “hermit kingdom” was coined several months ago by former National Party prime minister and banker John Key to deride strict border measures.

The opposition National and ACT parties have both been pushing the government to go harder with loosening COVID restrictions. National wants to drop all scanning requirements for businesses and to scrap vaccine passes for all but large indoor events. The party also wants to get rid of all vaccine mandates for young people aged under 18, and to move to five-day isolation periods.

However, there is concern and alarm among broad layers of the population. Some of the country's most at-risk people say the government is trading off their safety by easing restrictions so soon.

One unnamed mother told the New Zealand Herald that trying to keep her immunocompromised husband and toddlers protected was “hard enough,” but the announcement had pulled the rug from underneath them. “We felt safe before, and now we don’t feel safe. We’ve done everything right, but this drop in the rules, the stance and the whole attitude change from the government is really quite gutting,” she said.

The trade unions are playing the central role in promoting the government’s policies, having suppressed opposition from the working class to the reopening of schools and non-essential businesses. Post-Primary Teachers’ Association president Melanie Webber welcomed the decision to remove vaccine mandates, falsely stating that it had been “based on the best public health advice.” She said unvaccinated teachers would now be able to return to work, despite the risk they pose to themselves and others.

According to Ministry of Education data, over 70 percent of schools nationwide have reported COVID-19 cases since schools were re-opened in February. In the 10 days leading into March 24, more than 64,000 cases were recorded in schools and early childhood education centres.

The sharp shift in New Zealand demonstrates that the fight for scientifically-grounded COVID policies aimed at eliminating the virus now depends directly on the development of an independent movement of the working class. This must be directed against the entire political establishment, including the Labour government and the trade unions, and the profit system they defend.

Solomon Islands drafts military agreement with China, defying US-Australian threats

Patrick O’Connor

The Australian political and foreign policy establishment met with uproar a leaked draft memorandum of understanding on military cooperation between Solomon Islands and China. The draft agreement threatens to undermine one of the longstanding pillars of US and Australian imperialist strategy in the region—shutting rival powers out of the South Pacific.

The Solomons’ government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare switched the country’s diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China in 2019. Honiara and Beijing have since deepened their relationship, including on security issues.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare (Photo: solomons.gov.sb)

China last month donated police equipment and has sent six police trainers to work with Solomon Islands’ officers. When this development was first mooted last December, an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reporter stated that in Canberra “privately officials are fuming.” The Solomon Islands and China have nevertheless proceeded, and on March 18 signed a memorandum of understanding on police cooperation.

The draft “framework agreement” on “security cooperation” includes clauses potentially giving the Chinese military wide scope to operate within Solomon Islands.

Chinese police officer leading a training session in Honiara [Credit: Royal Solomon Islands Police Force]

The document outlines that Honiara can request a military intervention “to assist in maintaining social order, protecting people’s lives and property, providing humanitarian assistance, carrying out disaster response, or providing assistance on other tasks.”

In addition: “China may, according to its own needs and with the consent of Solomon Islands, make ship visits to carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands, and the relevant forces of China can be used to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in Solomon Islands.”

In a statement issued yesterday, the Sogavare government confirmed the authenticity of the leaked document, stating: “Solomon Islands is working to broaden its security and development cooperation with more countries. […] Broadening partnerships is needed to improve the quality of lives of our people and address soft and hard security threats facing the country.”

The draft memorandum was leaked on social media by officials working with Daniel Suidani, the premier of Malaita province, in an apparent effort to blow up the agreement.

Since 2019, Suidani has provocatively refused to recognise the diplomatic switch to Beijing. He has maintained separate ties with Taiwan and illegally barred Chinese personnel and investments from Malaita. Suidani’s supporters in the now proscribed Malaita For Democracy (M4D) separatist group have issued pogromist threats against ethnic Chinese people in the province.

In November last year, M4D led a violent coup attempt in Honiara. Hundreds of people travelled from Malaita to the capital and attempted to storm the parliament and overthrow the government. After that failed, they spent three days looting and burning shops, schools, and police buildings in the city.

Suidani and his supporters have been financed and politically supported by Washington since 2019. USAID has funneled tens of millions of dollars in so-called aid directly to Malaita, bypassing the central government. Suidani and his colleagues have received political “training” from personnel with the International Republican Institute, an organisation with close ties to the US intelligence agencies.

The prospect of a Solomons-China military agreement has exposed the “democratic” and “humanitarian” façade of US and Australian imperialist policy in the South Pacific.

As a sovereign nation, the elected government of Solomon Islands has every right under international law to enter into military agreements with any country of its choosing. As far as Washington and its ally Canberra are concerned, however, the South Pacific has been its “patch” since 1945 and must remain so. Any Pacific government that fails to abide by this is immediately targeted.

In Australia, the Labor Party has led the chorus of opposition to the Solomons-China deal. Opposition leader Anthony Albanese and numerous Labor parliamentarians have denounced the government for being “asleep at the wheel” and negligent in its foreign policy operations in the South Pacific. Ahead of a federal election, this forms part of the Labor Party’s efforts to present itself as the more ruthless representative of Australian economic and geostrategic interests in the region, and the more reliable ally of the US.

Former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd weighed in on developments in the Solomons in an interview with ABC Radio yesterday, describing the draft military agreement as “one of the most significant security developments that we’ve seen in decades.”

Rudd explained: “The doctrine that Australia has adhered to for decades, under governments both Labor and conservative, going back to the end of the Second World War, is that our job under the ANZUS [Australia-New Zealand-US] treaty, was to keep the Pacific island countries as a part of the region which was basically consistent and compatible with overall American and Australian national security interests. That’s what our job was, that’s what our core responsibility has been under the framework of the ANZUS alliance.”

These remarks point to the high stakes involved for the Australian government, which is no doubt now under close scrutiny from Washington.

The Wall Street Journal issued an editorial on Thursday, “Meanwhile, Watch China in the Pacific: With the world focused on Ukraine, bad actors in Asia are on the march.” After referring to developments in the Korean Peninsula and South China Sea, the leading organ of American finance capital raised the alarm over the Honiara-Beijing military agreement. It concluded, in the style of a mafia don, “Our advice to the Solomons and other smaller nations is to think twice before getting in bed with Beijing or Moscow.”

Within Australian foreign policy circles there is now debate on how to respond, including open discussion on an illegal military intervention into Solomon Islands.

Jonathan Pryke of the Lowy Institute think tank declared that any Chinese military base in the South Pacific would represent a “red line” for Canberra. In the vocabulary of imperialist geopolitics, “red lines” represent triggers for military action.

In a piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald today, New Zealand academic and long standing anti-Chinese agitator Anne-Marie Brady called for a “cull of sacred cows,” including an “over-emphasis on sovereignty,” in other words, any even notional commitment to international law in the South Pacific.

Brady denounced the Sogavare government, labelled the Solomons a “failed state,” and declared: “When war broke out in 1914 and 1939, governments in Canberra and Wellington knew immediately what to do.” She did not explicitly elaborate what she meant by this reference—but in 1914 and 1939, Australia and New Zealand occupied strategically significant outposts across the South Pacific.

Brady’s call for military intervention was detailed by another commentator, David Llewellyn-Smith, the former owner of the foreign affairs journal, the Diplomat. In a piece published on the MacroBusiness website, “Australia must ready Solomon Islands invasion,” and extensively cited in articles in the Murdoch-owned news.com.au as well as the Daily Mail, Llewellyn-Smith hysterically compared the situation in the Solomons to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. He declared: “There is no way that Australia can allow this deal to proceed. If it must, the nation should invade and capture Guadalcanal such that we engineer regime change in Honiara.”

Australia has a long record of imperialist interventions and “regime change” operations in the region. This includes East Timor in 1999 and 2006, and Solomon Islands from 2003–2017, when military and police were stationed in the country together with Australian officials who effectively took control of the state apparatus as part of the neo-colonial Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) operation.

The Australian government still wields considerable influence in Honiara, and around 50 Australian Federal Police office are working in the country. Canberra will no doubt do everything it can to sabotage the Solomons-China military agreement before it is finalised, including by working to destabilise and remove the Sogavare government.

China battles to contain Omicron outbreaks

Peter Symonds

The current spread of COVID-19 cases in China is continuing, driven by the highly infectious Omicron strain and even more contagious BA.2 variant of Omicron. The public health measures taken by Chinese authorities appear to have largely contained multiple outbreaks in major cities over the past three weeks, with the national total of daily infections running at around 4,000 and 5,000. These are by far the highest figures since the initial COVID outbreak in the city of Wuhan in 2020 was suppressed.

A health worker in protective suit takes a throat swab sample from a resident at an outdoor coronavirus testing site, Wednesday, March 23, 2022, in Beijing, China. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

The latest report from China’s National Health Commission recorded 1,366 new cases of confirmed infections and another 3,622 new asymptomatic cases on March 24 nationally. While the focus of attention has been on a major outbreak in the northeastern province of Jilin, the latest concerns are with Shanghai, which by some estimates is China’s largest city, and a major manufacturing and financial centre.

According to the National Health Commission, Shanghai identified only 27 new symptomatic cases on March 24 but a large number of asymptomatic cases—1,582—across a number of the city’s districts, the highest being 489 in Minhang district. Two weeks ago, the total number of cases in Shanghai was less than 100. As in other cities where outbreaks have occurred, authorities have rapidly instituted mass testing, contact tracing and the isolation and treatment of confirmed cases, as well as the lockdown of neighbourhoods most at risk.

The US and international media are responding to the latest surge in China with a deluge of propaganda aimed at blackening Beijing’s dynamic zero-COVID measures and pressing for China to adopt the criminal “let it rip” policy that has led to a million deaths in the United States alone.

An article published yesterday by the British-based Guardian entitled “Frustration with COVID response grows in China as daily cases near 5,000” was typical. It drew together a series of disparate complaints and criticisms expressed on Chinese social media—from concerns over access to food and other essentials and frustration over testing, to a trending topic on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter entitled, “Why can’t China lift safety measure just like foreign countries?”

The Guardian failed to make the obvious distinction between criticisms over deficiencies in the overall zero-COVID policy, which is overwhelming supported by the population, and those who are pushing for its complete overturn—a relatively small social layer of sections of business and the upper-middle class.

The article highlighted the death of a nurse who attempted to gain treatment for acute asthma, claiming that she had gone from hospital to hospital only to be turned away. In fact, the tragedy occurred when the nurse went to the hospital where she worked, only to find that the emergency department was closed for disinfection due to the pandemic. She was taken to a nearby hospital and later died.

The central focus of Western media coverage, alongside adding another prong to the demonisation of China, is an underlying concern about the economic impact of pandemic lockdowns on global supply chains and the global economy more broadly. As the world’s largest manufacturer and second largest economy, China not only produces goods for many of the world’s largest corporations but its economic growth is a significant driver for global economic growth.

CNN for instance last week cited estimates by Goldman Sachs analysts that a four-week lockdown of 30 percent of China could reduce its gross domestic product (GDP) by around 1 percentage point. It also referred to Nomura analysts who predicted that the zero-COVID strategy would make it hard for Beijing to achieve its 5.5 percent growth target for 2022. Lower growth in China would only contribute to the economic turmoil produced by the pandemic globally, now compounded by supply chain disruptions caused by the escalating war in Ukraine.

The Chinese Communist Party leadership (CCP) has adhered to its zero-COVID policy for more than two years—successfully suppressing the initial Wuhan outbreak and subsequent outbreaks, which have all been associated with infections that have entered from outside China, including the latest Omicron variants. The strategy stems in large measure from widespread popular support rooted in the sentiment arising from the 1949 Chinese revolution that people’s social needs should take priority. The CCP, which has presided over four decades of capitalist restoration, is deeply fearful of any social opposition and continues to promote itself as the defender of people’s welfare.

The CCP regime, however, is undoubtedly under considerable pressure to dispense with its zero-COVID policy not only from the Western media, global investors and corporations, but from powerful sections of business within China, as well as upper-middle class layers who regard public health restrictions as an intolerable imposition on their lifestyles.

Chinese President Xi Jinping gave the first indication that the government could shift its policy when he reportedly told a meeting of the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee that China must “strive to achieve the maximum prevention and control at the least cost, and minimize the impact of the epidemic on economic and social development.” The committee is China’s top decision-making body.

While deliberately vague and ambiguous, Xi’s comments appear to have opened up a broader public debate among the country’s health experts, including in Shanghai. Unlike other cities previously hit by significant COVID outbreaks, Shanghai has not implemented a city-wide lockdown at this stage, even though infection numbers continue to climb.

Wu Fan, a member of the Shanghai government expert panel on COVID-19, is cited on a South China Morning Post twitter video as saying on March 20 that the city did not have the luxury of imposing a full lockdown. “Shanghai is irreplaceable to China’s economy… If the whole city stood still for a week or 10 days, it could be beneficial to curbing the pandemic. But the loss would be unbearable for small businesses and ordinary people,” he stated.

On Tuesday, the chief government epidemiologist Liang Wannian insisted China must “not waver” and stick to its plan, while waiting for a range of things to happen: outbreaks to ease overseas, the virus to mutate to become less dangerous, and better treatments and vaccines to become available.

In a Weibo post on Thursday, Shanghai epidemiologist Zhang Wenhong said maintaining a normal life should be stressed as much as the “dynamic zero-COVID” policy. He called on authorities to ensure people’s livelihoods, alleviate the pressures on hospitals and protect private businesses while fighting the COVID outbreak.

“These problems exist and we should not avoid them,” Zhang said. “In the future fight against the epidemic, we must solve these problems one by one. Otherwise, success against the outbreak will mean less.” Zhang last year came under fire for comments hinting that China needed a long-term strategy for coping with the pandemic.

The public discussion in China, however, is a far cry from the homicidal “herd immunity” policy adopted by governments around the world. Commenting last week on the huge COVID surge in Hong Kong where public health restrictions have been eased, Zhang declared that an opening up approach would be disastrous for China. He called for a “moderate and sustainable” lasting strategy once the current outbreaks have been contained.

The Western media commentary is pressing China to adopt the “live with the virus” policy that conservative estimates suggest would mean the death of over a million Chinese citizens this year alone. While media pundits speculate on why China has not adopted such a policy, the real question is why governments around the world have not learnt from the methods successfully employed in China to suppress the pandemic. Putting profits ahead of lives has led to the preventable death of millions and the emergence of more infectious and dangerous variants that now threaten an even greater catastrophe.

UK’s spring budget reduces living standards to levels last seen after World War Two

Robert Stevens

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spring mini-budget did not advance even a single minimal measure to alleviate the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades.

Sunak made his statement on the day it was announced that the CPI measure of inflation, which does not factor in costs including housing, hit 6.2 percent in February—its highest rate in 30 years. RPI inflation reached 8.2 percent and is surging towards a crushing 10 percent.

Chancellor of Exchequer Rishi Sunak briefing the Cabinet at the Prime Minister’s weekly Cabinet meeting before delivering his Spring Statement to the House of Commons . 23/03/2022. (Picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr)

Following more than a decade of grinding austerity that has shredded living standards and two years of a pandemic accelerating a social catastrophe for millions, Sunak managed, despite calls from even the most right-wing newspapers for some minimal relief to stem growing discontent, to funnel even more money to the wealthy.

Talk before the budget was that, in the words of the Times, Sunak would “help families deal with the cost-of-living crisis by spending some of the government’s £30 billion ‘war chest’ from higher tax receipts.” Nothing of the sort happened.

Sunak offered a five pence cut in fuel duty and minimal tax cuts, both of which will benefit the richest the most. The hardest hit would have to scrape from a national pot of just £500 million available to councils.

The budget was a Marie Antoinette moment, as a fabulously rich chancellor decided that he would be able to regulate intolerable levels of social misery purely with jingoism and a whipping up of patriotic war fever in the upper middle class.

Sunak, a former investment banker and hedge funder, has an estimated personal wealth of £200 million. But the bulk of his family’s wealth is derived from his marriage to Akshata Murthy, daughter of N.R. Narayana Murthy, the sixth richest man in India, with his wealth estimated at £3.1 billion.

While millions can no longer afford life’s necessities, the Mirror reported this week of the Sunaks that they “recently built a £400,000 leisure complex at his £2 million Yorkshire mansion. The couple is believed to own at least four properties and their main residence, a five-bedroom mews house in Kensington, is believed to be worth around £7 million.”

Sunak declared on Wednesday, “We have a moral responsibility to use our economic strength to support Ukraine and work with international partners to impose severe costs on Putin’s regime. We are supplying military aid to help Ukraine defend its borders. Providing around £400 million in economic and humanitarian aid as well as up to $0.5 billion in multilateral financial guarantees.”

These costs would have to be borne by the working class. “The actions we have taken to sanction Putin’s regime are not cost free for us at home”, the chancellor warned, adding that “the war’s most significant impact domestically is on the cost of living.”

Sunak said inflation would rise, “averaging 7.4 percent this year”, while still claiming that the budget would deliver for the “British people today and into the future.”

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) refuted this nonsense from the oligarch in Number 11. It forecast that inflation would surge to 8.7 percent later this year, with nominal earnings growing by only 5.3 percent. The result would be a decline in living standards not seen in Britain since World War II. There would be an overall reduction in disposable income of 2.2 percent, the largest fall since records began in 1956-57. The Telegraph said this fall would be “Larger, in other words, than after the 2008 financial crash from which many have yet to recover their losses.”

The Financial Times warned of “dark, economic times”, with columnist Robert Shrimsley commenting, “Help was targeted at potential Tory voters while the poorest were largely neglected”.

The i newspaper displayed a graph with forecasted inflation disappearing in a vertical line upwards off the page and the headline, “Biggest hit to living standards since age of rationing”. The graphic pointed to coming rises in energy costs of 23.7 percent, travel of 6.1 percent and food of 4.6 percent. Keeping warm at home will soon be impossible for millions, with the OBR predicting that the energy price cap will likely rise by another 42 percent in October, increasing average bills by a further £830 a year and taking the average annual bill to around £2,800.

The Resolution Foundation thinktank said, “absolute poverty is expected to rise by 1.3 million people next year, while only one-in-eight workers will actually see their tax bills fall by the end of the parliament… With real wages in the midst of a third major fall in a little over a decade, average weekly earnings are on course to rise by just £18 a week between 2008 and 2027, compared to £240 a week had they continued on their pre-financial crisis path. This lost growth is equivalent to a £11,500 annual wage loss for the average worker.”

Sunak’s flagship measure, knocking 5p off a litre of fuel in duty costs, does nothing to help the millions on the lowest incomes for whom car ownership is a distant aspiration. And even this reduction was all but wiped-out as petrol stations run by the oil giants put their prices up overnight.

Sunak ignored calls to abolish his planned 10 percent increase in National Insurance Contributions, set to raid the wages of many poorer workers to the tune of £12 billion from April. All he offered as a sop was increasing the threshold at which National Insurance starts to be paid by £3,000 from July, taking it to £12,570. Sunak said he would be able to reduce income tax by one percent, but not until 2024.

As a result of Wednesday’s statement, the tax burden—falling disproportionately hard on the poorest households—will rise from 33 percent of GDP in 2019/20 to 36.3 percent of GDP in 2026/27, the highest level since the late 1940s.

Sunak emphasised that the government paid out £400 billion in extra spending during the first two years of the pandemic, by which he means bailouts for the corporations and super-rich. This must now be paid back, with Sunak warning, “In the next financial year, we’re forecast to spend £83 billion on debt interest—the highest on record. And almost four times the amount we spent last year.”

With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, it was forecast that Sunak would announce a rise in military spending of up to £10 billion this year. He did not do so on Wednesday. But taking all spending into account, the Financial Times noted that Sunak “banked most of a £50bn windfall in the public finances”. With the corporate media and retired senior figures in the armed forces demanding a rapidly expanded military force, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the Tories are preparing for a seismic uplift in money spent on preparations for war in Europe with Russia in the immediate future.

The Labour Party is at one with the Tories that British imperialism’s militarist agenda requires vast financial support, at the expense of the National Health Service, education, housing and welfare. It will not be lost on many workers that Labour’s response to the budget was to complain on behalf of the armed forces that Sunak was not doing what was expected of him.

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves said that “just one month after the [Russian] invasion so much has changed with repercussions for years to come. But the Chancellor has failed today to explain why he chose to sign off on a reduction in our country’s armed forces last October… Labour will support whatever is needed on defence and security, in order to keep our country safe.”