UK schools face teacher shortage as government makes derisory pay offer

Ioan Petrescu

A reception class teacher, left, leads the class at the Holy Family Catholic Primary School in Greenwich, London, Monday, May 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

UK schools are facing a severe staffing crisis. After an initial fall in the number of COVID-19 cases at the beginning of the year, numbers have been rising dramatically since March. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in schools.

All mitigation measures (insufficient to begin with) were eliminated completely in January, together with free testing in most schools. Last Friday, free testing was ended in special schools as well, leaving even the most vulnerable children with no protection against the spread of the virus.

More and more teachers are being forced to call in sick, meaning schools are having to send children home, sometimes for days at a time. In most cases, online teaching is not available owing to the lack of teachers.

More than 10 percent of pupils missed classes in Wales in the week ending March 25, according to WalesOnline .

On the Isle of Man, four schools had to close last week due to teacher absences, leading to the cancellation of face-to-face lessons for hundreds of students.

The Sighthill Community Campus in Glasgow, which houses several primary schools, announced March 22 that parents would have to keep their children at home for three days per week until the Easter holidays. According to the Glasgow Evening Times, more than half of the campus’ teaching staff are currently absent due to COVID.

School closures due to teacher shortages have taken place across the UK.

COVID absences are compounded by a general shortage of staff throughout the sector. Teacher recruitment was already falling before the pandemic due to years of funding cuts and stagnant pay. After a brief uptick in 2020, the decline has got worse. Government data released in early March showed the number of new teacher applications has fallen by 23 percent compared to February 2021.

Researchers at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) say there is a “substantial risk” that hiring targets are not going to be met for multiple subjects in the 2022 recruitment cycle. Out of the 19 subjects considered, 14 are estimated to be at risk of falling below target, with subjects that were understaffed before the pandemic (Physics, Modern Foreign Languages, and Computing) joined by subjects that had generally recruited well such as Biology, English, Geography, and Art).

The overwhelming reason for poor recruitment is the abysmal pay and conditions that characterise the sector. The 2008 global financial crash precipitated a decade of “austerity” in the public sector. As a result, after inflation is considered, median teacher pay is about seven to nine percent below the 2010-11 rate, according to the NFER. This is set to get much worse. Inflation has rocketed to 8.2 percent (RPI), on its way to above 10, while teachers’ pay was frozen for the 2021-2022 school year.

On March 4, the Department for Education (DfE) recommended to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) that the starting salary for teachers should reach £30,000 by 2023. It also acknowledged that a “significant” pay rise is needed to overcome the shortage of staff. In its submission to the STRB, the DfE proposed a 16 percent pay rise over two years, with 8.9 percent in 2022-23 and 7.1 percent in 2023-24. However, this only applies to new hires, with the proposal to increase existing teachers’ salaries by only 5 percent over two years. Given the rate of inflation, this amounts to a significant pay cut on top of the losses already suffered.

To receive this pittance, teachers are being asked to work more hours. NFER data shows that before the pandemic the average teacher workload was 47 hours a week. After a brief dip to 40 hours during the first lockdown in 2020, it rose back to 46 hours last academic year.

Jack Worth, NFER’s school workforce lead, said, “teacher workload remains a significant issue as more than half of full-time teachers perceive that they work too many hours”. In a TES (formerly Times Educational Supplement ) survey from January 2022, 67 percent of almost 3000 surveyed teachers said their workload was unmanageable.

Teachers are often not even paid for the extra hours they spend working. A report published in February by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) revealed that almost a third (31 percent) of teachers worked unpaid overtime in 2021, up from a quarter (25 percent) in 2020, based on Office for National Statistics (ONS) Labour Force data from July-September 2021.

In the last two years, heavy workloads and poor pay have been coupled with repeated exposure to COVID. Hundreds of education workers have been killed by the disease. According to the latest ONS figures, the teaching and education sector suffers the joint highest rate of Long COVID of any sector, at 3.79 percent, with 1.64 percent affected for longer than a year.

Low pay, long hours and COVID are combining to drive teachers out of the profession in large numbers. According to NFER’s autumn survey of school leaders, a fifth said that staff turnover was higher than before the pandemic. Fifteen percent of new teachers go on to quit after just a year, 25 percent do so within three and 40 percent within ten.

The education trade unions have made a show of outrage in response to the latest recruitment figures. Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, warned that school leadership supply is “teetering on the brink”. Dr Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said there was “clear and unshakeable evidence of the enormous damage that has been inflicted on the morale of teachers after more than a decade of real-term cuts to teachers’ pay”. Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, referred to the “huge damage” caused by “pay cuts, high workload and the imposition of PRP [performance-related pay]”.

What goes unmentioned is that these unions have actively collaborated with the government in imposing the dire conditions teachers confront. They have refused to mobilize teachers in opposition the government’s pandemic policies or austerity agenda, suppressing any kind of opposition in the membership.

This was highlighted by the announcement of last year’s pay freeze. Despite denouncing the action, the unions did not put forward a single ballot for industrial action let alone organise a joint campaign of all educators and other public sector workers who confront a similar assault on their wages .

The NEU responded by conducting yet another “survey” of its members on pay. Their survey revealed that two-thirds (63 percent) of teachers have considered leaving the profession because of concerns on pay. Well over half of teachers (58 percent) report that they are underpaid compared to other graduate professionals. The survey was the largest on teachers’ pay progression, with over 25,000 responding. The NEU has done nothing with the results other than to hand them over to the pay review board whose recommendations are consistently rejected by the government.

The unions’ opposition consists entirely of the hot air in which they specialise. Their real agenda is to facilitate the demands of Johnson’s Conservative government.

Survey of US high school youth finds mental health issues climbed in second year of pandemic

Alex Johnson

Youth wearing mask (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

A recent survey of high schoolers conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned of an increase in “mental health threats” among youth in the United States as a result of the devastating conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been allowed to run rampant, officially sickening more than 80 million and killing 1 million.

The CDC data came from the Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey (ABES), a nationwide poll conducted among 7,705 high school students from January to June 2021. It is the first nationally representative survey of public- and private-school high school students to assess the mental health and well-being of American youth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While no doubt prevalent prior to 2020, the data in the CDC report point to a dramatic growth in youth psychological and emotional trauma over the past two years, as the pandemic has wreaked havoc on schools and communities nationwide. In 2021, 37 percent, more than a third, of high school students reported they experienced poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly half, 44 percent, reported they persistently felt sad or hopeless in 2021.

The report notes more than 55 percent of high schoolers experienced emotional abuse, such as swearing, insulting or belittling at the hands of a parent or other adult in the home. Those surveyed indicated 11 percent experienced physical abuse by a parent or guardian, including hitting, beating or other expressions of violent harm.

A JAMA Network research study in 2013 found parental abuse to be substantially lower, with 13.9 percent of respondents ages 14 to 17 reporting emotional abuse during the preceding year, and only 5.5 percent reporting physical abuse.

The significant rise in these figures over the last two years is an indicator of a deep social crisis in the United States. As Debra Houry, CDC Acting Principal Deputy Director, described it: “These data echo a cry for help.” Houry explained further: “The COVID-19 pandemic has created traumatic stressors that have the potential to further erode students’ mental wellbeing.”

More than 25 percent of students who identified as lesbian, gay and bisexual reported that they attempted suicide in the past year, along with 12 percent of female students. These groups also reported greater emotional abuse from a parent or caregiver and having attempted suicide more than their counterparts.

A large chunk of students, 36 percent, reported experiencing racism before or during the pandemic. The highest levels were reported among Asian students, with 64 percent saying they experienced racism, while 55 percent of black students and students of multiple races each responded in the affirmative. As the CDC news release notes: “experiences of racism among youth have been linked to poor mental health, academic performance, and lifelong health risk behaviors.”

The alarming statistics on racism point to a toxic social climate that has been fostered by the far right, which has deliberately whipped up racist sentiment during the pandemic. This campaign was spearheaded by former-President Donald Trump and far-right opponents of public health measures who repeatedly use racist terms to describe COVID-19 like “Wuhan virus” and the “Chinese Plague” in their efforts to scapegoat Asians for the US government’s criminal handling of the pandemic.

The Republican Party’s fascistic strategy has also encouraged racial prejudice in the name of a crusade against Critical Race Theory in schools and racial and gender politics, which it falsely associates with socialism and Marxism. The Democratic Party has sought to confine all opposition to the far-right by promoting identity politics, aimed at sowing divisions among workers and youth while covering up the fundamental class divisions in society.

The ABES survey follows a rare public health advisory issued from the US Surgeon General last December, warning of a “devastating” rise in adolescent depression, anxiety and mental health distress that were already widespread before the onset of the pandemic in the spring of 2020.

In addition to mental and emotional distress, more than a quarter of high schoolers reported a parent or other adult in their home lost a job, and 24 percent reported they experienced hunger.

Indeed, the corporate assault on workers’ jobs and living conditions intensified throughout 2021. Corporations and Wall Street exploited the pandemic as an opportunity to reap massive profits while families saw their living standards slashed due to layoffs, inflation and the rise in the cost of living. Corporate profits surged to their highest levels in decades, rising 25 percent year over year to $2.81 trillion.

Meanwhile, millions of young children and households have had to endure chronic unemployment, unaffordable rents, hunger, and parents and teens risking their lives working under threat of a deadly virus. Food insecurity for US families shot upward to 26.8 percent in the past year and 45.4 percent for low-income families.

Income data point to the social catastrophe worsening for millions of households in the coming year, with projections that the average American household will see $5,200 in lost income in 2022 due to inflation. Politicians on both sides of the aisle assert nothing can be done to stop this social disaster, all while the federal reserve continues to pump billions into Wall Street every month and Congress proposes record-breaking military budgets to wage imperialist wars.

The combined evils of social inequality and the forced resumption of workplaces and schools in the face of a raging pandemic have inflicted immense levels of trauma on young people.

The response of the American ruling-class, led first by the Donald Trump administration and now the Biden presidency, has been to subordinate the health of the entire population to the defense of corporate profits. This has led to over 1 million American lives lost, tens of millions infected and many having to endure the potentially life-long consequences of Long COVID.

The mainstream press, which has dutifully parroted the narrative of both the Democrats and Republicans that the pandemic is over even as hundreds still lose their lives each day, responded to the ABES study with indifference. A New York Times article headlined, “Many Teens Report Emotional and Physical Abuse by Parents During Lockdown,” carries a substantially watered-down examination of the study’s dismal figures.

The Times piece makes no reference to the social and economic conditions that have plunged millions of families into dire poverty and traumatized an entire generation of youth. No mention is made of the more than 200,000 American children who have now lost a parent or primary caregiver to COVID-19, and the trauma that has accompanied being orphaned at such an early stage in life.

To the extent that any analysis is made, the piece makes a transparent effort to promote the idea that staying home in the early stages of the pandemic, instead of being forced back into infected classrooms, contributed to the dysfunctional environments children have been subjected to during the pandemic. The author argues that the research suggests “home was not a safe place” for teenagers who were “ordered” to remain out of school.

The article cites statements from Kathleen Ethier, head of the adolescent and school health program at the CDC, which seeks to reinforce the notion that being in school protects students from harmful households. The Times quotes Ethier as saying the data “underscores the protective role that schools can play in the lives of young people.” Ethier argues further: “Schools provide a way of identifying and addressing youth who may be experiencing abuse in the home.”

While schools may lend a protective buffer against potentially harmful home environments, the explanations provided by Ethier are disingenuous at best, as mental health problems among young people predate the pandemic and have risen sharply over the last 20 years. Research from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Mental Health America, showed that the mental health of young people had been on a downward spiral the past two decades.

The share of youth aged 12 to 17 reporting a major depressive episode had doubled between 2009 and 2019. The rate of hospital emergency room visits for children’s deliberate self-harm rose by 329 percent from 2007 to 2016 and youth suicide rates consistently increased over the past decade. By 2018, suicide became—and still is—the second leading cause of death for ages 10 to 24.

Furthermore, according to the KIDS COUNT Data Center, the percentage of high school students reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness increased over the past decade from 26 percent in 2009 to 37 percent in 2019. In California, this figure reached nearly half of high school students in 2019. In a similarly troubling trend, the share of young adults ages 18 to 24 reporting zero poor mental health days had been declining prior to the pandemic, with only 46 percent, less than half, reporting no poor mental health days in the past month between 2017 and 2019.

In fact, immediate access to mental health services and treatment were largely inaccessible to broad sections of young people as a result of decades of austerity and cuts to public health services. Funding for public education and social support for students has been bled dry to satiate the ruling-class’s unbridled appetite for profit. Although the youth mental health crisis was vastly intensified by the pandemic, it remains only a symptom of a failed capitalist order.

Capitalist politicians and their media mouthpieces who lament over school closures as being the cause of worsening mental health are the same figures who have overseen or advocated for the systematic destruction of social services, the starving of education, and the decades-long continuation of wars and militarism abroad, which have been supplied with trillions of dollars every year with wide bipartisan approval.

The same conditions that are driving the rise of mental health disorders and suffering among youth are also giving rise to social opposition. There is an immense striving on the part of students, youth and workers to fight back against the unbearable conditions created by the capitalist system.

Earlier this year, thousands of high school students throughout the country staged walkouts and protests in opposition to the unsafe return to in-person learning amid a massive surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the Omicron COVID-19 variant.

In the past month, thousands of teachers launched strike action in Sacramento, California and Minneapolis, Minnesota. There is an ongoing strike by 600 oil refinery workers in Richmond, California.

General strike in Greece against destruction of living standards worsened by Ukraine war

Robert Stevens

Greek workers from every sector of the economy mounted a 24-hour general strike yesterday.

The strike was called in opposition to a cost-of-living crisis hitting millions and rising social inequality. It paralysed much of the country.

Public transport largely ground to a halt in the Athens where no services ran on the subway, tram, trolley or suburban railway. Buses ran only 12 hours from 9a.m. with two three-hour stoppages by bus workers at the start and end of their shifts. Ferries which play a critical role serving Greece’s many islands remained in ports. Schools were closed as state-run services closed. Health care workers treated only emergency cases in state-run hospitals.

Demonstrators shout slogans as they march during a 24-hour nationwide strike in central Athens, Greece, Wednesday, April 6, 2022.

The strike would have had an even greater impact but for the anti-democratic, intervention of the Civil Aviation Service who secured a court order making illegal the participation of air traffic controllers, electrical engineers, and telecommunications personnel.

The movement of Greek workers is part of global eruption of the class struggle fueled by the decimation of workers living standards, fueled by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Strikes and mass protests have broken out against savage austerity in many countries in recent weeks, including Sri Lanka, Spain, Sudan, Tunisia and Canada.

The income of millions has been slashed particularly by soaring energy prices that have been made much worse by Greece’s participation in economic sanctions against Russia. Forty percent of Greece’s annual energy needs comes from gas supplies imported from Russia.

This assault is made on a working class that has suffered a nearly 15 year social and economic war on its living standards by successive governments led by the social democratic PASOK; the pseudo-left SYRIZA (in government from 2015-2019) and the conservative New Democracy (ND).

The strike was called by Greece’s two main unions representing 2.5 million workers, the private sector General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSSE) and the public sector Civil Servants’ Confederation federation (ADEDY). The Stalinist Communist Party (KKE)-run All Workers Militant Front (PAME) federation participated.

Rallies were held in all main cities and towns with over 70 taking place throughout the day. Tens of thousands participated in the Athens rallies, with the Associated Press reporting that “9,000 protesters held marches in Greece's second-largest city of Thessaloniki in the north.”

In Athens, three rallies were held in different squares, led by the different federations and leftist political parties.

The thousands attending rallies spoke for millions, using the occasion to denounce the ND government’s heavy involvement in the war deliberately provoked by the US and NATO powers. Thousands attended the PAME rally in the main Syntagma square, in front of the Greek Parliament. The poster promoting the rally included the slogans “Against the cost-of-living increase”, “For Collective Bargaining and increases to wages” and “No to Greece’s involvement in the war”. PAME’s constituency includes members and their descendants who recall the fascist occupation of the country by Hitler’s troops in the Second World War and the taking of power by the US-backed fascist junta in 1967, which remained in power until 1974. There is growing anti-imperialist sentiment and opposition to a ruling elite more broadly in the working class, with Greece deepening its ties with NATO and functioning as a key base for provocations against Russia.

Demonstrators march during a 24-hour nationwide strike in Athens, Greece, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Such is the strength of feeling that the trade union bureaucracy is forced to make a tactical shift. The Press Project website reported, “For its part ADEDY has given an anti-war tone to the strike action” with its call for an immediate cessation of the war. It is “accusing the government of utilizing the war to shift its own responsibility for the rise in the cost of living, cuts to workers’ wages and to continue its anti-worker and neo-liberal policies.”

Inflation is rising exponentially, surging from 6.2 percent in January to 7.2 percent in February and according to preliminary data released last week, reaching 8 percent in March. A Greek Statistical Agency study in February found that inflation has pushed electricity prices up by a staggering 71.4 percent. The cost of natural gas is up by 78.5 percent. Many families rely on heating oil to warm their homes, now priced 41.5 percent higher. Prices for fuels and lubricants rose by 23.2 percent.

Such prices are simply unaffordable in a country where the minimum wage is just €663 a month (US$723) following a tiny increase in the rate by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ ND government in January. Given the soaring rate of inflation on top of terrible reduction of living standards already imposed, a 13 percent rise in the minimum wage called for by the GSSE would take it to just €751.

Energy price rises and the rising price of basic goods, as well as shortages of bread and other flour-based products has triggered a social crisis. Greece imports about 250,000 tonnes of soft wheat from Russia and Ukraine, 30 percent of its total wheat imports. Even before the Ukraine war, the wholesale cost of wheat had already surged 80 percent higher than in 2020, mainly due to energy costs. Two weeks ago, supermarket imposed restrictions on how much flour, oil and other items could be bought.

“Our life now is just being in debt,” Georgios Alexandropoulos, a 60-year-old courier worker told Reuters during the strike. “I owe the electricity company and my landlord, I'm two months behind in rent, and I owe the last two electricity bills. Soon we will be in debt to everyone... we can't go on like this.” Psychologist Michalis Tokaras said he was forced to “cut back on everything”, adding, “We have to choose between paying our mortgage or paying bills. We've reached the bottom.”

The GSEE said on calling the strike, “For the last 14 years, workers have been carrying the burden of a deep crisis that has affected everyone’s incomes and lives.”

The demands of the trade union bureaucracy, with ADEDY also calling for wage increases at least equal to GDP growth and inflation and abolition of the hated solidarity tax of between 1 percent and 4 percent of income—first introduced in 2011 and supposed to expire in 2015—are deeply cynical. The unions have collaborated with governments to suppress every struggle of the working class year after year.

The struggle by workers against the systematic lowering of its social position and super-exploitation by corporations is now intersecting with growing opposition to war, imperialism and dictatorship.

For weeks, workers in Thessaloniki at the Greek railway company TrainOSE refused to transport NATO military armoured vehicles to the Ukrainian border that had arrived in Greece on US cargo vessels at Alexandroupolis port in the north. They were to be sent to Romania and Poland on the Ukrainian border for use by the Zelensky regime. Despite TrainOSE threatening workers with dismissal, they were unable to secure agreement to move the train. In the end the company had to recruit scabs to take the train to Alexandroupolis.

According to reports, eight strikers were arrested yesterday in Thessaloniki, including, according to the Ta Nea daily, members of the KKE central committee. A rally was held yesterday evening at the police headquarters in the city to demand their release.

The political significance of the action in Greece was underscored by the response of Ukrainian neo-Nazis who yesterday denounced “Members of the red rabble in Greece… A platoon of Ukrainian nationalist formations would solve the problem once and for all.” Referring to the fascist junta that ruled Greece, they added, “Let's bring back the power of the ‘black colonels’—quickly and efficiently.”

In the face of a tidal wave of government and media propaganda demonising Russia and demanding everyone sacrifice their living conditions to back the NATO operation, TaNea reported that a majority of two thirds in a poll conducted for the Journal of the Editors said that shipping war material to Ukraine puts Greece at risk.

A majority supported only humanitarian aid being sent. Only 32 percent answered that both humanitarian aid and war material should be sent. Only a slim majority (53 percent) believed that the war will be limited locally, and 40 percent feared it is likely to lead to a global conflict.

Billionaire Elon Musk buys his way onto Twitter’s board of directors

Kevin Reed

Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on Earth, has purchased 9.1 percent of the social media and microblogging platform Twitter and secured a seat on the company’s board of directors.

According to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday, Musk disclosed the purchase of more than 73 million shares of Twitter stock between January 31 and April 1. He spent a total of $2.64 billion or an average of $36.16 per share.

On Monday, following initial reports of the investment, the value of Twitter shares jumped by 27 percent. The Wall Street response to news that the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX had become an active Twitter investor increased Musk’s net worth by $1 billion, a 40 percent return.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk (Wikipedia photo)

The appointment to the board of directors was acknowledged by Twitter executives on Tuesday. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted in the morning that he was “excited to share that we’re appointing @elonmusk to our board!” Agrawal added, “He’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on @Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term. Welcome Elon!”

Musk replied, “Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!”

Later, Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted, “I’m really happy Elon is joining the Twitter board! He cares deeply about our world and Twitter’s role in it. Parag and Elon both lead with their hearts, and they will be an incredible team,” to which Musk replied, “Thanks Jack!”

According to Forbes “The Real Time Billionaires List,” Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in the world with a net worth of $279.5 billion at the time of this writing. His wealth is approximately $100 billion greater than the second person on the list, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who has a net worth of $184.5 billion.

Musk first overtook Bezos as the richest man in the world in January 2021 following a dramatic rise in the value of Tesla stock. Shares of the electric car maker increased ten-fold, going from $88.60 to $880.02 in twelve months. During this time frame, Musk’s net worth went from $30 billion to nearly $200 billion.

The speculative basis of Musk’s wealth is shown by the fact that current Wall Street value of Tesla is $1.08 trillion, six times the value of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler (Stellantis) combined. These three companies produce far more cars at dozens of factories, exploiting the labor of many tens of thousands of workers. Tesla only recently began turning a profit.

Musk is a major user of Twitter, having joined the platform in 2009 and posted more than 17,300 tweets. He has more than 80 million followers and has used the platform to spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, campaigned against economic lockdowns and refused to comply with shelter-in-place orders, ordering a restart of auto production at Tesla facilities in California in defiance of government policy.

Many corporate media reports have focused on Musk’s comment about making “significant improvements to Twitter in the coming months,” and interpreted this to mean he will be involved in making product changes. As evidence of this, the reports have pointed to a tweet survey by Musk that posed the question, “Do you want an edit button?” Of the 4.4 million people who responded, 74 percent answered, “yes.”

Another conversation with Musk on Twitter included a conversation about the need to remove Crypto spam bots from the platform, to which he said that this was “the single most annoying problem on twitter imo.”

While Musk himself has not articulated an agenda for the company, other reports have concentrated on his role in relationship to the company’s censorship policies. On March 26, about a week before his investments in the company had become public, Musk tweeted another survey that asked, “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?,” to which more than 2 million people responded, with 70 percent of them answering, “No.”

He followed up the survey with questions: “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?” and “Is a new platform needed?”

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial that called on Musk to intensify his “disdain for Twitter’s heavy-handed censorship, which the company uses to silence prominent voices (e.g., Donald Trump) and stifle views that disagree with the prevailing progressive consensus.”

Predictably, the Journal ignored the growing and blatant online political censorship of left-wing and anti-capitalist views and instead accused “Big Tech” of “serving as handmaiden to the woke speech police.” The Journal editors said it would be “refreshing” if Musk were to “stake some of his own wealth in the cause of promoting political free speech.”

Far-right and fascist supporters of Donald Trump are urging Musk to restore Trump’s Twitter account, which was permanently suspended in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021, mob attack on the US Capitol aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election. QAnon conspiracy supporter Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Republican of Georgia) tweeted, “Will the new majority shareholder return freedom of speech to Twitter?”

On Tuesday, the Washington Post published analysis by Timothy L. O’Brien with the headline, “Elon Musk’s Twitter Investment Could Be Bad News for Free Speech,” which said, “Maybe he wants to bring Twitter to heel.” Calling him a “free speech absolutist,” O’Brien wrote that Musk’s Twitter “rants and raves have been wide-ranging and unfettered. He once tweeted, then deleted, a meme comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Hitler. He’s tweeted transphobic memes. He’s slagged a British cave explorer as a ‘pedo guy.’”

The entry of Musk into Twitter underscores the control of social media and the internet as a whole by a tiny layer of capitalist billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg at Meta (which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, and a dozen smaller companies), Sergei Brin and Larry Page at Google (which owns YouTube), Jeff Bezos at Amazon and a handful of others.

While the internet offers unprecedented scope to the development of human cooperation and interaction, within the framework of capitalism it becomes a further source of profit and wealth accumulation for the ruling class, resources which, as Musk demonstrates, are deployed at the whim of reactionary and even buffoonish figures.

US boosts arms shipments to Ukraine, admits to training Ukrainian fighters

Andre Damon

In the wake of unsubstantiated allegations by the United States that Russia has executed civilians in the outskirts of Kiev, the United States has increased its weapons shipments to Ukraine. On Wednesday, it also admitted to training Ukrainian forces on American soil. Both actions increase the likelihood of a direct military clash between the US and Russia, the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced yesterday that Washington is sending an additional $100 million in arms, consisting primarily of anti-tank weapons, to Kiev.

Blinken said this was the sixth major tranche of war materiel dispatched to Ukraine since August 2021. He said that the new disbursement brings the total “assistance commitment to Ukraine to more than $2.4 billion since the beginning of this administration, and more than $1.7 billion since” the start of the war. Blinken noted that more than 30 countries, including the majority of NATO’s members and the European Union, have been funneling arms to Ukraine.

Ukrainian military forces train to use a US-supplied NLAW anti-tank weapon on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

He justified the escalation of US involvement in the proxy war by pointing to alleged Russian war crimes, saying, “The world has been shocked and appalled by the atrocities committed by Russia’s forces in Bucha and across Ukraine.”

On Monday, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” Biden demanded a “wartime trial” of the Russian president, according to the official White House transcript of his remarks.

In a statement Wednesday, the United States admitted to training Ukrainian troops in the United States, teaching them how to use the “switchblade” “kamikaze drone,” hundreds of which are being put into use now in Ukraine.

“We took the opportunity, having them still in the country, to give them a couple of days’ worth of training on the Switchblade,” John Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said on Wednesday.

Other NATO powers are similarly escalating their involvement. The UK is planning to send armored vehicles to Ukraine, the Times of London reported Wednesday.

“The UK is adding to its offer of lethal weapons in the belief that the next three weeks will be critical in determining the outcome of the war. … These [armored vehicles] could enable Ukrainian forces to push further forward towards Russian lines,” observed the newspaper.

A senior government source told the Times of London, “The next three weeks will be critical. [The Ukrainians] have already partly won. They have exhausted the Russian army, won the battle of occupation and condemned Putin to eternal isolation. Can they push back the Russian army? Can they break the Russian army? Possibly. Depends on what help we can all give.”

The United States, meanwhile, is continuing its threats against China and India, two former colonial countries, unless they join the economic warfare against Russia.

“Our message to the Indian government is that the costs and consequences for them of moving into a more explicit strategic alignment with Russia will be significant and long term,” National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said.

On Thursday, the United States will lead an effort in the United Nations to remove Russia from the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The last time a country was removed from the body was when Libya was taken off in 2011. Shortly afterwards, Islamist terrorists funded by the United States sodomized Libya’s president to death with a bayonet. The United States remains a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Explaining the European Union’s motives in stoking up the war by arming Ukraine, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell declared, “We want [the war] to end as soon as possible, but not in any way. … That is why we have to continue arming Ukraine. ... More weapons, that is what the Ukrainians expect of us, and that is what we are doing.”

Speaking Wednesday, Biden pledged to intensify the United States’ economic war against Russia, declaring, “We’re going to further increase Russia’s economic isolation,” Biden said. “The United States will continue to stand with the Ukrainian people in their fight for freedom.” The White House announced a new round of sanctions, targeting Russia’s largest banks, and prohibiting investment in Russia by Americans.

The US proxy war is being used to rapidly intensify the global arms race being led by the United States and targeting not only Russia but China.

On Tuesday, the White House announced an agreement by the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) partnership to produce a new generation of nuclear weapons targeting China.

Citing “Russia’s unprovoked, unjustified, and unlawful invasion of Ukraine,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom declared they were “pleased with the progress in our trilateral program for Australia to establish a conventionally armed, nuclear‑powered submarine capability.”

They further pledged to commence new trilateral cooperation on hypersonics and counter-hypersonics, and electronic warfare capabilities.

That same day, the Pentagon approved a $95 million weapons sale, centering around the Patriot missile system, to Taiwan.

It is increasingly clear that the Ukraine war, incited by the United States and NATO, is now being used as the occasion for putting into effect long-running plans for “great-power conflict” in the United States.

The record $813 billion Pentagon budget proposed by the Biden administration for a massive expansion of the US military-industrial complex makes this clear.

All 28 Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee have published a letter calling for expanding military funding even further. Committee Chairman Mike Rogers told Fox News Monday, “Our nation faces unprecedented threats from China and Russia, and it’s unconscionable that President Biden has chosen to once again shortchange our warfighters.”

He added, “Xi Jinping is watching as President Biden continues to falter. … In fact, while China has the largest navy in the world and is rapidly expanding their nuclear arsenal… Luckily, Congress calls the shots when it comes to funding our military.”

AUKUS pact expanded to base hypersonic missiles in Australia

Mike Head

On the eve of calling a federal election, Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week took another critical step to placing Australia on the frontline of US preparations for war against China.

Morrison heralded a major expansion of last September’s AUKUS military pact, an agreement that has bipartisan support from the opposition Labor Party, which is equally committed to the intensifying US military alliance.

In a joint statement, Morrison, US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared that the AUKUS treaty between the three governments would be extended to include the development of ­“advanced hypersonic and counter-hypersonic capabilities” and electronic warfare technologies.

The UK Carrier Strike Group 2021, led by HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, departing the UK (credit: Royal Navy/Flickr)

Land-based hypersonic missiles, which would have a range of more than 2,000 kilometres, would be stationed in Australia, while air and sea versions could be deployed on the country’s jet fighters and warships.

This would make Australia an even more crucial base for the US, from which to launch a potential nuclear war against China, which is regarded by Washington as the chief threat to US global dominance.

Hypersonic missiles are capable of travelling at least five times the speed of sound, dramatically reducing the warning time. Coupled with their manoeuvrability, this makes them virtually impossible to intercept. They can carry nuclear warheads.

No price tag was mentioned. But these programs would require the spending of billions more dollars, on top of the near $600 billion already allocated for Australian military weaponry over the current decade.

Bloomberg reported last November, based on internal Pentagon estimates, that the missiles would cost more than $100 million each, adding about $30 billion to spending to develop some 300 missiles, starting this year.

CNN revealed on Wednesday morning that the American military had secretly tested hypersonic missiles last month.

The full extent of the AUKUS partnership, directed against China, is becoming increasingly apparent. The treaty was initially headlined by the provision of long-range nuclear-powered attack submarines to Australia. That was itself a major step toward confrontation with China, against which the submarines would be deployed.

The latest announcement said the allies would also work together to overhaul their military innovation systems, and deepen information-sharing on the development of advanced military capabilities. AUKUS covers a wide range of weaponry and intelligence collaboration, including cyber warfare, artificial intelligence, quantum technology and undersea drone systems.

The announcement referred vaguely to work progressing on “other critical defense and security capabilities” as well. These would include agreements struck over the past two years to expand the US use of air, naval and land bases in Australia.

In addition, the announcement revealed a series of top-level government and military meetings between the three allies to advance their war plans. Senior national security advisers from each country met on March 10 to review the partnership’s “pleasing” progress, and multiple steering group meetings have occurred.

According to the Australian Financial Review, 17 trilateral working groups are working under the AUKUS banner, with nine focused on the submarines, and eight relating to other advanced military capabilities.

In February, officials from the three countries inspected locations across Australia, reportedly to review sites to build and operate the submarines. Shortly after that, Morrison said $10 billion would be spent building a submarine base and another $5 billion expanding a repair and maintenance shipyard.

While not naming China as the target, the announcement showed how the US and its allies are exploiting the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which the US and NATO deliberately provoked, to prepare for a similar conflict with China. The three leaders said action was needed to combat “coercion” in the light of Russia’s invasion. That allegation that has been levelled increasingly against Beijing, with unsubstantiated claims that it could invade Taiwan.

US Democratic Party congressman Joe Courtney, who co-chairs the Friends of Australia Congressional Caucus, which has its own “AUKUS Caucus” taskforce, underscored the importance attached by the Biden administration to Australia as a base for war.

Courtney told the Australian Financial Review: “It’s blindingly obvious that when you look at the aggression and the size of the Chinese navy, the US clearly has to pivot into the region, and the region is so vast that we need allies like Australia ready.”

Morrison is planning a “khaki election,” based on beating the drums of war in order to divert from the intense political and social crisis produced by the deadly “live with the virus” policies that have intensified the COVID-19 pandemic, soaring levels of social inequality and the devastating impact of climate-related floods and bushfires.

The Liberal-National Coalition prime minister trumpeted AUKUS as “the most significant defence agreement this country has entered into since the ANZUS Treaty 70 years ago” and said he had achieved what “no other prime minister has been able to secure”—a US commitment to share its nuclear technology.

A day earlier, Morrison and Defence Minister Peter Dutton declared that Australian fighter jets and warships would be armed with long-range strike missiles by 2024, three years earlier than promised, as part of another $3.5 billion military upgrade.

US military industry giants Raytheon and Lockheed Martin would work to “rapidly increase” Australia’s ability to maintain and manufacture guided weapons. This would further integrate Australia into US military operations.

Dutton, who is vying to replace the increasingly discredited Morrison, stepped up his aggressive accusations against China. He told the Nine Network that China was “on course” to take over Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping was an “autocrat” and “China is arming herself with more nuclear weapons.”

The AUKUS expansion is part of a series of escalating military commitments. Last month Morrison’s government said it would spend $1 billion to build missiles and guided weapons in Australia.

However, led by Anthony Albanese, Labor is just as ready to conduct a “khaki election.” Labor has insisted it has no difference with the anti-China offensive. In fact, Albanese has sought to outdo the Coalition, boasting that Labor initiated the US alliance during World War II.

Moreover, Albanese has criticised the government for leaving “gaps” in military capabilities until the submarines are delivered over the next two decades.

This week, Albanese told an April 5 Canberra doorstop media conference he was concerned about “government cuts to our important Defence Budget.” That dovetails with the criticisms being made in key ruling circles, such as by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a pro-US thinktank that has pushed for an even more aggressive anti-China stance.

Likewise, Australian foreign editor Greg Sheridan yesterday accused the government of making “self-congratulatory artificial timing announcements.” He said there was a “fundamental mismatch” between its “rhetoric of national security and its astonishing lack of action.”

Labor’s response is a warning. Like the current Coalition government, a Labor-led government would only increase the vast military build-up, and seek to impose its burden on working people through deeper cuts to public health, education, housing and other essential social programs.

Bank of International Settlements chief says new era of inflation has begun

Nick Beams

The head of the Bank for International Settlements has warned of a “new inflationary era” that will require major changes in the policies of central banks.

In a speech delivered in Geneva on Tuesday, Agustin Carstens, the general manager of the BIS, the umbrella organisation of the world’s central banks, made clear these changes will be directed against the working class as he pointed to the increased risk of a “dangerous wage-price spiral.”

Carstens acknowledged that for himself and other central bankers the inflation surge had come as a complete surprise, puncturing the long-cultivated myth that the leading capitalist economists and financial officials have some superior knowledge about the workings of the economic system over which they preside.

A graph on the BIS website (bis.org)

“The shift in the inflationary environment has been remarkable,” he said. “If you had asked me a year ago to lay out the key challenges for the global economy, I could have given you a long list, but high inflation would not have made the cut.”

On the same day, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development reported that consumer prices in the world’s 30 richest countries had risen by 7.7 percent in February compared with just 1.7 percent a year ago.

Carstens noted that almost 60 percent of advanced countries had price rises of more than 5 percent—the highest proportion since the 1980s—with the inflation rate in more than half of emerging market economies running above 7 percent.

The inflation surge may have been completely unanticipated but when it comes to dealing with it, the representatives of the profit system have an unerring class instinct.

The change in circumstances meant that a change in the paradigm was called for, Carstens said. “That change requires a broader recognition in policymaking that boosting long-term resilient growth cannot rely on repeated macroeconomic stimulus, be it monetary or fiscal. It can only be achieved through structural policies that strengthen the productive capacity of the economy.”

Long experience has revealed the meaning of these words. In a capitalist economy, based on the drive for profit, increasing “productive capacity” means deepening the attacks on the working class, whose labour power is the source of all profit, through a combination of wage cuts, the reduction of social spending and the development of more intense work methods.

Carstens indicated that in his view loose monetary policy and expanded government spending programs had helped cause the “flare up” in consumer prices. “Policy settings, at least over the past year, may have served as a springboard for the rapid expansion.”

Noting that by some metrics, labour markets look even tighter than they did pre-COVID, he said inflation had started to affect the “cost of living” and there were early signs that wage growth had become more sensitive to inflation over the past year. That was an oblique reference to the rise of wages struggles around the world.

No one wanted a repeat of the 1970s, Carstens said, recalling a period when major struggles by the working class shook the profit system.

But the “good news” was that central banks were aware of the risks and it was clear that “policy [interest] rates need to rise to levels that are more appropriate for the high-inflation environment.” Most likely this would require that interest rates rise “in order to moderate demand.”

As always, these prescriptions are cast in language aimed at obscuring their essential class content, as if the economy did not involve the lives of billions of workers but was some kind of machine.

The content of his remarks was that if workers fight for wage increases to compensate them for past losses and seek to combat the rampant inflation of today, then central banks must hike rates to bring about a recession and create unemployment. Carstens described this euphemistically as “moderating demand.”

Officials of the world’s major central bank, the US Federal Reserve, are singing from the same song sheet. On Tuesday, Lael Brainard, a member of the Fed’s board of governors and awaiting Senate confirmation as Fed vice chair, issued a call for “stronger” action if necessary to lift interest rates. She indicated she was also in favour of a “rapid” reduction in the Fed’s $9 trillion holdings of financial assets.

Speaking to a conference organised by the Minneapolis branch of the Fed, she said it was of paramount importance to get inflation down. The Fed would continue to tighten monetary policy both by lifting interest rates and by “starting to reduce the balance sheet as a rapid pace as soon as our May meeting.”

Minutes of the Fed’s March meeting, released yesterday, showed it was developing a plan to cut its asset holdings by $95 billion a month from next month.

Brainard’s remarks were significant both because of her position and also because last year she insisted that the Fed should not be premature in pulling back stimulus measures.

Following Fed chair Jerome Powell, she also invoked Paul Volcker who, as Fed chair in the 1980s, drove interest rates to record highs, resulting in deep recession, to crush wage demands.

But the Fed’s attempts to restore economic order are far from plain sailing under conditions of worsening global turmoil. Those responsible for directing the policy of the state face a resurgent working class on the one hand and a fragile financial system caused by continuous injections of money on the other.

In his annual letter to shareholders issued earlier this week, Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan, the biggest US bank, said the US economy was facing unprecedented risks.

Dimon warned that the war in Ukraine could collide with inflation. These developments, he wrote, “present completely different circumstances than what we’ve experienced in the past and their consequences may dramatically increase the risks ahead.”

The letter was in marked contrast to that of a year ago in which Dimon held out the prospect for a “Goldilocks” economy in which there would be sustained growth coupled with a small upward drift in inflation and interest rates.

Today, the Fed could move interest rates higher than markets expect—a process that would cause “lots of consternation and very volatile markets.”

The war in Ukraine along with sanctions, would “at a minimum” slow the global economy amid turmoil in commodity markets. Additional sanctions, which he supports, could “dramatically and unpredictably” worsen the situation.

“Along with the unpredictability of war itself and the uncertainty surrounding global commodity supply chains, this makes for a potentially explosive situation.”