Inflation surge past 11 percent in UK a disaster for millions

Robert Stevens

In speeches to Parliament and big business, UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s declared war on the working class. He confirmed that no measures will be taken to stop millions being hammered by a never-ending surge in the cost of living.

Addressing MPs Tuesday, Sunak stated, “Families up and down the country are being hit hard by the rise in prices of fuel, of food and of heating.” But, he added, “There is no measure any government can take and no law we can pass that can make these global forces disappear overnight.”

Sunak spoke just 24 hours before the latest inflation surge was announced, with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure to April increasing 2 points (7 percent to 9 percent) to a 40-year high. The more accurate Retail Price Index (RPI) measure, which includes housing costs, shot up into double digits from 9 percent to 11.1 percent.

This is a devastating blow for workers whose wages and welfare benefits lag far behind both inflation measures.

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak addesses the Confederation of British Industry on Wednesday (Credit: Rishi Sunak/Twitter)

Speaking to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Wednesday, Sunak declared, “The Bank of England now expect inflation to peak at 10% later this year.”

The reality is that inflation is headed far higher. Sky News economics and data editor Dan Conway commented that “what we're facing now is a very broad-based inflation… producer price inflation, which measures those costs manufacturers face, rose from an annual rate of 11.9 percent in March to a whopping 14 percent in April. In short, it's clear that this period of high prices isn't coming to an end any time soon.”

Numerous reports attest to acute social distress, including millions of people suffering soaring levels of hunger.

This week Sky News published a survey showing that 27 percent of Britons aged 16-75 “skipped meals” in April. Sixty-five percent sought to reduce costs by not turning on their heating. Research cited this week by the Labour Party found that 250,000 families, including 500,000 children will be plunged into absolute poverty over the next year. Even prior to the pandemic which massively accelerated the social crisis, 14.5 million people, more than one in five of the UK population, were already in poverty.

April’s inflation hike is primarily due to the massive increase in household fuel and energy costs. Almost three-quarters of the increase was accounted for by the 54 percent increase in the energy price cap which came in this month. This will lead to household energy bills soaring up to £1,971 by October, before another massive increase is imposed.

Inflation impacts hardest on the poor, who spend a far higher portion of their income on gas and electricity. The Financial Times cited Heidi Karjalainen, economist at the Institute of Fiscal Studies who “estimated that inflation for the poorest 10 percent of Britain’s households was running at 10.9 percent in April, compared with 7.9 percent among the richest 10 percent. With state benefits rising only 3.1 percent in April, it meant ‘big real-terms cuts to the living standards’, said Karjalainen.”

Last month, financial expert Martin Lewis warned that unless people were fed and able to keep warm, there would be “civil unrest”. Repeating the warnings this week to ITV’s Robert Peston he said, “The government needs to get a handle on it… and they need to stop people making choices of whether they feed themselves or feed their children. And we are in that now. We used to have a relative poverty condition in this country and we are moving to absolute poverty, and we cannot allow that to happen.”

Donations being made from supermarket customers to a foodbank in Warrington, England (Credit: Asda/Westbrook-Facebook)

Pointing to a projected household energy increase in October pushing up bills to hitherto unseen levels, Lewis declared the “public mood is desperate, it’s angry and… If we don’t sort this, when those bill rises come in the middle of October to £2,600 in the middle of winter, I worry about civil unrest.”

Tens of millions of people face catastrophe, but those at the top have never had it so good. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), “End-of-year rewards in the financial sector will jump 20 percent year-on-year in 2021-22, following a record period of deal-making.” It noted that “bonuses in professional services firms, which include the likes of lawyers and accountants, will soar 31 percent.”

Sunak told the CBI that he had already “introduced the biggest two-year business tax cut in modern British history”. There would be no respite for the working class, said the multi-millionaire chancellor, but “in the autumn budget we will cut your taxes…”

In contrast there has been a collapse in workers’ wages. Average wage rises are at 4 percent, now nearly three times less than RPI. The poorest 10 percent of workers saw pay increase by just 0.9 percent. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) calculated that real pay collapsed by 2.9 percent in March taking CPI inflation into account

The ONS’s April survey of average weekly earnings shows that real terms wage growth is effectively over. It reported, “In real terms (adjusted for inflation), in December 2021 to February 2022, growth in total pay was 0.4% and regular pay fell on the year at negative 1.0%.”

This is the result of a policy aimed at forcing workers to pay for the hundreds of billions in public funds handed out to big business during the pandemic and the £3 billion and counting that has been funnelled by the Johnson government, with Labour’s backing, to Ukraine for NATO’s proxy war against Russia.

The contribution of wages to inflation growth is negligible. Inflation is being driven mainly by the massive rise in asset values though speculation and share buy-back schemes—accelerated by the gigantic sums of finance made available to big business in quantitative easing (QE). A further £500 billion in QE was made available to big business by the Bank of England during the pandemic, taking the total to £895 billion since 2009.

Yet Bank of England (BoE) Governor Andrew Bailey has twice in a matter of weeks insisted that workers show wage restraint, even as he described the surge in food prices as “apocalyptic”. The Bank’s main policy response is to increase interest rates. On May 5, interest rates were raised from 0.75 to 1 percent, the fourth successive increase to their highest level since February 2009.

During Bailey’s appearance at Parliament’s Treasury Committee Monday, he said, “The most important thing we can do is to get inflation back to target [of 2 percent] and to get back to target without unnecessary disruption to the economy”. The Financial Times commented, “He implied the BoE would not shy away from generating a recession to do that if it was necessary.”

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (centre) with Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (left) and (right) Dame Carolyn Julie Fairbairn, Director General of the CBI, London, September 24, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

Sunak’s declaration that there is nothing that can be done to stop the onslaught against the working class is based solely on the ability of the Tory government and the capitalist class to rely on the imposition of below inflation pay awards and the suppression and betrayal of strikes by their industrial police force: the trade union bureaucracy.

Biden sends US troops back into Somalia

Alex Findijs

The Biden administration has ordered the redeployment of 450 US soldiers to Somalia at the request of the Pentagon. Government officials state the decision is aimed at countering the advances of the Islamist group al-Shabab, which controls much of the countryside in southern and central Somalia.

US Marines at Baledogle Military Airfield in Somalia in 2020 (Credit: Cpl. Patrick Crosley)

Biden’s decision is a reversal of a Trump administration order to remove 700 US soldiers from the country and deploy them to neighboring countries in January 2021. Trump portrayed the action as part of his campaign promise to roll back US involvement in “forever wars,” though US troops continued to conduct military activities inside of Somalia from their new bases in neighboring Kenya and Djibouti.

The stated goal of the redeployment is to target a dozen leaders of al-Shabab, which is considered a terrorist organization by the US government, and to “maximize the safety and effectiveness of our forces and enable them to provide more efficient support to our partners,” according to Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council in an interview with the New York Times.

Al-Shabab has been engaged in military confrontations with the central Somali government for over 15 years and has been the target of repeated US military operations and airstrikes. Having consolidated control over large parts of the country, the organization is believed to have 5,000 to 10,000 armed fighters and close ties to Al Qaeda.

Several deadly bombings have been linked to the group, including a truck bombing in the capital Mogadishu in 2017 that killed at least 587 people.

Capitalizing on the violent tactics and Islamist ideology of al-Shabab and other groups, the United States has used the threat of terrorism to justify military involvement in the impoverished East African country for 30 years. According to CNN, a senior Biden administration official argued that al-Shabab had the “intent and capability to target Americans.”

However, it should be noted such concern for the safety of American citizens was not shown to the Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a dual US and Palestinian citizen assassinated by Israeli forces last week.

The United States has been militarily involved in Somalia since 1992 when it ostensibly deployed troops to protect United Nations aid workers. George H. W. Bush deployed 25,000 US troops to the country that had descended into fierce conflict between rival clans after the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

The Bush and Clinton administrations understood the strategic importance of Somalia for controlling trade through the Suez Canal and Red Sea. Up to $700 billion in maritime shipping passes by Somalia every year, encompassing nearly all trade between Europe and Asia. Seeking to establish US control over the region amid the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US imperialism sought to impose its domination through military force.

The campaign resulted in disaster, however, when the Battle of Mogadishu ended in the deaths of 19 US soldiers and hundreds of Somalis, including civilians, in October 1993. Better known as the “Black Hawk Down” incident, the failure of the US to control local warlords resulted in a drawback of direct US involvement.

For the next 15 years US imperialism took on a reserved role in Somali politics. However, the rise of al-Shabab in the mid-2000s prompted the US to steadily increase its military involvement throughout the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. Obama authorized multiple airstrikes against top al-Shabab leaders and the Trump administration increased troop deployments up to 700 soldiers before announcing his plan to withdraw them.

Significantly, reporting of Biden’s decision corresponds with the election of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as president of Somalia, who was sworn in this Monday.

Returning for a second term after his previous term from 2012 to 2017, Mohamud’s election ends a 15 month period of crisis after outgoing President Mohamed Abdulahi Farmaajo attempted to extend his term by two years, throwing the country into further violent clashes between rival clans and political groups.

Farmaajo was defeated by Mohamud by a vote of 110 to 214 in the legislature. Somalia’s elections do not include the 15 million people who live in the country. Instead, clan elders select delegates to represent them in parliamentary elections. The parliament then elects the president itself without any direct input from the general populace. Effectively, only 101 people have the right to vote in federal elections.

Mohamud is a member of the Hawiye, one of the five largest and most politically influential clans in Somalia. He also leads the Union for Peace and Development Party, which currently controls a majority in both legislative chambers, securing his victory.

In an insult to the very concept of democracy, the US State Department issued a statement congratulating “the people of Somalia on the conclusion of their national electoral process.” It continued by congratulating Mohamud on his election and encouraged him to “prioritize strengthening democratic governance and institutions.” How Mohamud is supposed to strengthen something that does not exist is unclear.

Despite claiming to be defending democracy in Ukraine, the United States is not concerned with democracy in Somalia as long as its leaders are beholden to its imperialist aims. Mohamud was voted out of office in 2017 due to the intense levels of corruption and political infighting. Despite this, his return to office was facilitated by the United States, which took action to sanction Somali officials by restricting visas on the grounds that they were “undermining the democratic process in the country.”

International donors also threatened to withdraw $400 million in loans from the International Monetary Fund unless Farmaajo ceased his efforts to stall new elections.

The US now has its favored puppet, but it will not solve the intense social crisis in Somalia. Severe drought and decades of war have displaced hundreds of thousands and left 6 million people in acute food insecurity, including 1.4 million children. The US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine has worsened the situation in Somalia, which relies on exports from both countries for 90 percent of its wheat supply.

Such conditions are what allow al-Shabab to persist, even thrive, despite regular attacks by the US, Somali government and African Union forces.

Al-Shabab has consolidated its power to operate effectively as its own state. It collects taxes, runs its own courts, organized a COVID-19 medical care site and has even issued a ban on single-use plastic bags in areas it occupies. According to Omar Mahmood, a senior Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group, al-Shabab is now often capable of “providing services that are more competitive than the federal government.”

The fact that US imperialism is not concerned with even attempting to alleviate these conditions is shown by the fact that three successive administrations have conducted military operations within Somalia without any clearly stated plan or end goal. Now US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is calling for a “persistent US military presence in Somalia” indicating that the US does not intend to leave anytime soon.

The ultimate goal of the US is to strengthen its hold on the geostrategic region in its pursuit of a confrontation with China. Should war with China break out, the US could use Somalia as a chokepoint for shutting down Chinese trade through the Suez Canal to Europe. The claims of countering al-Shabab is merely conducive to this end.

Senate passes $28 million bill that does not resolve US baby formula supply crisis

Kevin Reed

One day after President Biden invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) in response to the US baby formula shortage, the Senate approved a bill by unanimous consent Thursday that falls far short of addressing the devastating crisis facing families with infant children across the country.

People wait in line during a baby formula drive to help with the baby formula shortage Saturday, May 14, 2022, in Houston [AP Photo/David J. Phillip]

The Access to Baby Formula Act, which was first approved by the House on Wednesday, purports to ensure that families receiving government assistance benefits can continue to purchase baby formula during the shortage. The bill allows the Agriculture Department to waive the requirement that those using the federal program Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) must purchase only one brand of baby formula.

The $28 million bill also provides emergency funding to increase the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection staff, increase resources for personnel working on formula issues, stop fraudulent baby formula from entering the US marketplace and improve data collection on the formula market. 

However, the bill does nothing to fundamentally address the nightmare facing parents looking to buy formula for their infants when none can be found on store shelves. Stocks of formula have been down by 43 percent since the beginning of May. The crisis, which has been developing for months, was allowed by the Biden administration and Congress to reach catastrophic proportions before the latest measures were taken.

In commenting on the vote, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat from New York) was focused on the fact that the Democrats and Republicans agreed on a face-saving bill that will not address the immediate crisis that is facing millions of families. Schumer said, “It's rare that we have unanimity in the Senate on important measures, and I wish we had more. But this is one of these important issues and I'm glad we're acting with one voice.”

In some states, such as Tennessee, Texas and Iowa, more than 50 percent of the most used products are out of stock. The supply shortage is hitting poor and working class families the hardest where the need for baby formula is highest due to lower levels of breast feeding of infants because mothers are often forced to return to work sooner.

As Dr. Ann Kellams, a University of Virginia faculty pediatrician and board president of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, told the Guardian, “Those women are less likely to have flexibility in their jobs to be able to pump and express milk. They are the ones I worry most about right now. They are going to be the ones who are less likely to have a relative in a pocket of the US where they still have enough formula on the shelves to send it to them.”

The formula shortage is of a piece with the capitalist response to the pandemic in the US and internationally. The supply of baby formula was already impacted by pandemic-related supply chain issues when Abbott Labs, manufacturer of the popular Similac product, shut down its factory in Sturgis, Michigan in February following the hospitalizations of as many as eight children, and deaths of two of them, from a bacterial infection.

While the FDA was notified by a whistleblower of the horrendous conditions in the Sturgis facility as early as October, the federal agency slow-rolled its investigation and three months went by before the plant was inspected. Between November and January, the FDA received numerous reports of babies getting ill from formula that was produced in Sturgis.

Initially, the company attempted to brush the crisis off with a recall of its products from store shelves. Even after two babies died from infections associated with the Cronobacter bacteria that was found at the Sturgis facility, the company is denying responsibility for the deaths.

The US baby formula market is dominated by four monopolies that provide 90 percent of the available products: Abbott Nutrition, Mead Johnson Nutrition, Nestle USA and Perrio Company. Of these four, Abbott controls half of the market.     

Abbott Labs is a multinational medical devices and health care corporation based in Abbott Park in the northern suburbs of Chicago. The conglomerate, which split off its pharmaceuticals business into AbbVie in 2013, has a Wall Street value of $197 billion. According to the company’s 2021 annual report released in March, Abbot Labs sold $4.3 billion of pediatric nutritionals, with one half of this amount sold in the US, which includes its Similac, Pedialyte and PediaSure products.

During the pandemic, Abbott Labs’s Wall Street stock value has more than doubled. This is due, in part, to the spectacular increase in profits achieved following the launch of its over-the-counter, hospital lab and rapid point-of-care COVID-19 tests. In the first quarter of 2021, for example, the company tripled its profitability from the previous year to $1.79 billion, largely due to the FDA “emergency use authorization” of Abbott’s BiNaxNow home rapid test.

Since then, the company has been engaged in a massive stock buyback program, which increases the ownership stake of shareholders and further drives up the stock value, worth a combined $5 billion. On March 31, 2022, for example, Abbott Labs was busy buying back $2.3 billion worth of its stock clearly in anticipation of the negative impact of the shutdown of its baby formula factory in Michigan.

A measure of how much opposition exists within the US ruling establishment to any measures whatsoever to deal with the baby formula crisis was demonstrated in the House vote on the emergency legislation. The GOP leadership in the House was among the 192 Republicans who voted against providing $28 million to the FDA, saying the funding was unnecessary.

Covid rips through US schools during sixth surge

Renae Cassimeda

Elementary school students that have returned for in-person learning [Credit: AP Photo/LM Otero]

COVID-19 is again ripping though schools throughout the US, fueled by the highly infectious and immune-resistant Omicron BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 subvariants. Total daily COVID cases throughout the US have reached over 100,000 per day and total COVID deaths have surpassed one million.

Safety and mitigation measures have largely been abandoned in schools, including testing, other surveillance such as contact tracing and quarantine and mask mandates, the consequence of the deliberate policies of the Biden administration. Biden has continued to double down on the lie that schools are the safest place for a child to be, yet students and staff continue to fall sick in droves, risking death, long term physical and mental illness and passing on the virus to loved ones. 

According to the latest American Association of Pediatrics report, cases among children have been rising since students returned from spring break in April. For the week ending May 12, officially reported child cases jumped to 93,511. The report also notes significant increases in cases throughout every region of the US. 

On May 18, the death toll among children reached 1,547 according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) with 29 new deaths reported this month alone. The next day, on May 19, the CDC removed 980 previously recorded COVID deaths, including 29 children reducing the number of child COVID deaths to 1,518. There was no footnote or explanation on the data tracker accompanying this reduction. Thursday’s revision recalls an episode earlier in the spring, when the CDC removed over 72,000 deaths from their data tracker. 

At least 12 million children have contracted COVID in the US, undoubtedly an undercount due to lack of systematic testing and contact tracing. As a result, hundreds of thousands of children are at risk of Long-COVID, an illness which expresses an array of symptoms that persist for months and even years after initial COVID-19 infection and can affect almost every organ in the body, including the brain, heart, lungs, kidneys, immune system. 

According to a recent study published in eClinicalMedicine, mild COVID-19 cases may result in lingering cognitive symptoms. A significant minority of severe COVID cases result in chronic decline of cognitive function equivalent to 10 IQ points or early-stage dementia.

This reality demonstrates the self-serving hypocrisy of the political establishment, which insists on keeping schools open without restriction on the grounds of professed concern for “learning loss” among children and the need for a “return to normal.”

The mass infection policies enforced by the federal government have left teachers, staff and students entirely unprotected. For the vast majority of schools in the US, mask mandates have been lifted, school buildings have been left with poor ventilation systems, and COVID surveillance, including tests and contact tracing, are no longer systematically in use.

On Tuesday, New York City moved its COVID alert level to “high” in response to a surge which has surpassed 300 daily new cases per 100,000 and a hospitalization rate over 10 per 100,000 residents. As of Wednesday, the city’s Department of Education was tracking 2,083 current COVID cases across New York City public schools, 74 percent of which are student infections. The Department of Education has no classrooms or school buildings in the entire district that are currently closed.

Despite the alarming surge, Democrat Mayor Eric Adams has reiterated that mask mandates will not be implemented in schools or other indoor spaces. At a press briefing Wednesday Adams showcased his insistence that the “pandemic is over,” stating, “I am proud of what we are doing, how we are not allowing COVID to outsmart us. We’re staying prepared and not panicking … variants are going to continue to come.”

A teacher in Westchester, New York told the World Socialist Website, 'We had a school play in the first week of May and 86 were out. 12 were staff/teachers. Covid is definitely spreading in our district as well as every other. But there's also the flu and stomach bug spreading like crazy too.”

Schools throughout California have also seen a major uptick in cases. In Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest district in the US with over 530,000 students, there have been at least 3,444 reported cases this week. Los Angeles County presently has 41 active outbreaks in K12 schools, with the largest outbreak currently reported at Chatsworth Charter High School in LAUSD, where there are 81 COVID cases on site. 

As of May 17, the Sacramento City Unified School district reported 515 positive cases among students and staff, higher than in March or April. COVID cases in San Diego Unified, the second largest district in the state, have risen to 891 cases with 14 school outbreaks in the district. Significantly, less than one-fourth of the student population is tested on a weekly basis, meaning the real number of infections is far higher.

Proms and end-of-year functions have also led to major outbreaks throughout California and the US. At least 90 students at San Mateo High School tested positive for COVID after a prom at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in early April. In Sacramento, at least 21 students tested positive who attended the C.K. McClatchy High School junior prom. The event was held indoors at the city’s Masonic Temple without masks or any other protective measures including testing.

Another teacher in California told the WSWS, “Just in the very small special education part of my school, we have both students and staff out with COVID. Just this week we had more positive cases in multiple classrooms, including two kids and my daughter’s class who were at school for a week with COVID. There’s also a nasty stomach bug going around. However, it is teacher appreciation week and the very kind parents are making us lunches and so everyone is sitting together in one little room eating. I take my stuff and leave because, thank you to the wonderful food and no thank you to the germs.”

In Pennsylvania, the positivity rate has reached 14 percent and is rising. In Pittsburgh public schools, three schools announced they will being closing due to infection rates higher than 5 percent. 

A parent in eastern Pennsylvania said, “The school sends daily emails letting us know that anywhere from three to eight children are testing positive each day for the past week. The 16 in one day, luckily, hasn’t been seen since early May. 

“The cases are accumulating quickly and we are only seeing maybe 10 to 30 percent of all positive cases via symptomatic testing. There is likely a much higher rate of transmission currently occurring.

“We can see the vaccines or prior infection has little impact on odds of infection so anyone can become infected, contagious and have longer term health issues from just mild symptoms. This is not endemic. This is a pandemic by every measure of the definition. This will not become endemic until we change strategies. With thousands of flights everyday all over the world, it is not going to become endemic.

“Nationally the curve is getting steeper, showing the exponential growth. At this stage, hundreds of thousands are getting infected every day.  As prevalence grows, so do viral loads in any one space. Higher viral loads equals increased odds of more severe symptoms and long term systemic damage. If 15 percent to 30 percent have long term health issues, and just 5 percent become disabled by it, that is catastrophic. This is a mass disabling event. Every day, tens of thousands more will suffer for months, years and many will die 10 to 20 years younger than they otherwise would have.” 

In Washington, COVID cases have skyrocketed throughout the state, rising by 124.8 percent last week as 22,365 cases were officially reported. The previous week had 9,949 new cases. Hospitalizations have also more than doubled over the past month from an estimated 200 to 450. 

In Seattle Public Schools (SPS), the largest school district in the state with over 55,000 students, cases have risen back to the levels from January during the Omicron surge. According to the official COVID-19 dashboard for the district, there have been 1,577 cases reported among students and staff over the past two weeks.

Throughout the US there has been widespread suppression of data and updates to safety protocols. Catherine Brown, a principal at Cleveland High School in Seattle, was recently fired for “disobeying a directive” to “withhold information about COVID-19 Contact Tracing” from students, staff and families. This troubling firing speaks to the overall efforts by districts to treat COVID as if it is over. Parents have come out in defense of this principal on social media.  

In Michigan, the 343 students and staff tested positive for COVID last week, according to the Department of Public Health. There are 46 school outbreaks throughout the state, including a major outbreak at Dewitt High School in Clinton County, where 62 students and staff have tested positive. This was just one of seven outbreaks involving 10 or more infected people. 

A Flint, Michigan parent shared her reaction to a letter from her child’s school informing her that two first grade students tested positive this week. The letter said that the situation is “low risk,” and testing in this district is voluntary and only offered for asymptomatic children. “I feel it’s very irrational,” she said. “How someone can deem something low risk in this completely unsafe predicament?  It’s saddening that I have to yet again keep my kindergartener home from school to provide a safety net for her and my other children who cannot be vaccinated yet. They’re literally jeopardizing the lives of so many and they keep getting away with it.

“I’m fearful every day I walk out of my front door, it’s outrageous that people are still acting as if nothing is wrong.”

More than 1,000 COVID-19 deaths in New Zealand

Tom Peters

This week New Zealand’s total COVID-19 death toll passed 1,000, reaching 1,039 today.

The stark reality is that hundreds and hundreds of people are dead who would still be alive if the Labour Party-led government had maintained its zero COVID policy, instead of switching to the homicidal program of mass infection.

Wellington Hospital

Acting on the instructions of the corporate and financial elite, the government has put an end to lockdowns and reopened all schools and nonessential businesses. As in every country, the pro-capitalist trade unions played a key role in preventing any organised opposition from the working class to this criminal agenda.

Last October, when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the change in policy—without any pretence of consulting the population, and going against the advice of public health experts—New Zealand had recorded only 32 deaths from the pandemic. Since then, the toll has increased about thirty-fold. The vast majority of the country’s infections and deaths took place following the start of the school year in February.

More than 1 million COVID-19 cases have been officially recorded, that is, one in five people, but disease modeler Dion O’Neale told Radio NZ this week that “probably by this point around half of the population, very roughly, have been infected.” As in every country except China, there is no effort made to systematically test non-symptomatic people. Testing is now being left up to individuals, who must obtain their own, notoriously unreliable, rapid antigen test kits.

On May 14, Ardern herself tested positive for COVID and went into isolation, after her partner tested positive about a week earlier.

The government’s response to the surging death toll was grotesque. In a statement on May 18, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins dishonestly declared, “We recognise the pain of losing a family member or friend, and do not wish to diminish that.” He then proceeded to boast about New Zealand’s relatively low number of deaths.

He claimed that the death rate in New Zealand has not exceeded that of the previous two years of the pandemic, and “this reflected the benefits of our COVID-19 response in reducing exposure to the virus and protecting our more vulnerable New Zealanders.” 

Associate Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall added that “if New Zealand had a similar rate of COVID-19 mortality as the United States, we would be reporting approximately 15,000 deaths from COVID-19 today.”

The ministers did not mention the obvious fact that the country’s relatively low toll is due to public health measures which have now been removed. Along with reopening the economy, the government has ditched mandatory masking in schools, dismantled contact tracing systems, ended vaccine mandates and passes, and closed border quarantine hotels.

Just 2.6 million people have received a third (or booster) dose of the Pfizer vaccine—slightly more than half the population—leaving millions of people without substantial protection from severe disease. Vaccination alone is not enough to prevent significant numbers of deaths. According to the Ministry of Health, out of 967 deaths, 261 (26.9 percent)​ had received two doses of vaccine and 488 (50.4 percent)​ had received three.

According to the Worldometers data aggregation website, New Zealand recorded 112 deaths in the last seven days, a rate of 22 per million. This is the fifth-highest death rate in the world—higher than anywhere in Europe except Finland and Iceland (which are ranked third and fourth). By comparison, in the same period the UK recorded 16 deaths per million, and Australia 12.

In addition to the deaths, more than 10,000 people have received hospital treatment for COVID, including 714 children under 10 years of age. There is no end in sight. As New Zealand heads into winter, experts are predicting a further surge in hospitalisations and deaths, brought about by a combination of COVID, influenza and the respiratory virus RSV.

A recent report by the International Science Council, led by New Zealand’s former chief scientist, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, predicted that in 2027 there would still be regular surges of COVID-19 worldwide, due to the failure of governments to stop the virus. The report noted that, in addition to more than 15 million deaths, about one in 10 people who are infected develop long-term debilitating symptoms from Long COVID—which can affect the brain, lungs, heart and other organs.

The University of Otago’s Dr Ross Griffiths has predicted that at least 200,000 people in New Zealand could develop Long COVID. That is based on an estimate of 2 million people infected, meaning the real numbers suffering from long-term symptoms could be even higher.

Hospitals, which were understaffed and overstretched before the pandemic, have been thrown into crisis, with 10 to 15 percent of staff becoming sick, and wards overwhelmed with patients. These conditions, along with the soaring cost of living, are driving workers into struggle—including 10,000 healthcare workers who held a nationwide strike on May 16.

The government has no response, other than telling people to get used to endless waves of illness and death. Minister Hipkins told the media this week that COVID is “not going to go away as a health condition. It is going to be something we live with over the medium to long-term.”

Hipkins, who is also the education minister, has downplayed the mass infection of children in schools as something families should just accept. He told Newsroom on May 18: “I really don’t think parents should be as anxious about that as some are—a proportion of children will get COVID, that’s just the reality of living in a community where COVID is circulating.” He said people expressing concern about the virus ripping through schools were “catastrophising.”

The claim that children being infected is nothing to worry about is an outrageous lie aimed at justifying the ruling elite’s “let it rip” agenda. Hipkins is foreshadowing a crackdown on “truancy,” targeting large numbers of parents—including many with diabetes, asthma and other health conditions—who have decided to keep their children at home out of entirely justified fears that they will get COVID and spread it to the rest of the household.

Over 100 monkeypox infections detected in 10 countries as unprecedented outbreak spreads globally

Benjamin Mateus & Evan Blake

An unprecedented outbreak of monkeypox virus has officially spread to 10 countries outside of Africa, with 107 confirmed or suspected cases reported as of this writing, in the United Kingdom (9 cases), Portugal (34), Spain (32), France (1), Belgium (2), Sweden (1), Italy (3), Canada (22), the United States (2), and Australia (1).

Much remains unknown about what is causing the outbreak, which is the most geographically dispersed and rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak since the virus was first discovered in 1958. In the coming days and weeks, more data and scientific understanding will emerge, but already there is profound concern within the scientific community and among the public, which has found wide expression on social media.

In preliminary posts, scientists speculate that the virus, which is endemic in parts of Africa, could have evolved to become more contagious and better suited to human-to-human transmission. In addition, nearly all people under 42 years old have not received a smallpox vaccine (which is 85 percent effective at preventing monkeypox infection) since smallpox was eradicated in 1980. As a result, they have no immunity, and younger adults can be infected as easily as children. Since 2017, annual monkeypox cases have been steadily rising in Africa.

The fact that this monkeypox outbreak takes place amid the deepening COVID-19 pandemic has caused unease among a growing number of people, particularly those who have been alerted to threats to public health by the COVID pandemic. Over the past two years, the criminal negligence and policies of deliberate mass infection by the majority of world governments have needlessly killed over 20 million people worldwide. If capitalist society has disastrously failed to stop the preventable spread of COVID-19, what will transpire in the coming weeks and months with new or previously rare infections?

Since the peak of the global Omicron BA.1 surge in January, nearly every government outside China has scrapped all mitigation measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, falsely claiming that the virus has become “endemic.”

In the US, the Biden administration is presently doing nothing to stop the growing surge of the highly infectious Omicron BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 subvariants, which have once again driven the 7-day average of daily new cases above 100,000.

Due to the deliberate undermining of public health during the COVID-19 pandemic, world society is deeply unprepared for this latest infectious disease outbreak, which could potentially develop into another parallel global pandemic.

On May 13, the World Health Organization (WHO) was first notified of two confirmed and one probable case of monkeypox in the same household in the UK. A British citizen who traveled to Nigeria developed a classic monkeypox rash on April 29, and subsequently returned to the UK on May 4, is considered a likely index case. Upon his return, he was immediately isolated and contact tracing identified chains of transmission, though health authorities indicated that onward risk of infections from this case is minimal. The source of infection in Nigeria has not been determined.

Regarding the UK cases, the WHO has stated, “In contrast to sporadic cases with travel links to endemic countries, no source of infection has been confirmed yet. Based on currently available information, infection seems to have been locally acquired in the United Kingdom.”

The emergence of multiple cases across different countries is deeply problematic. Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, the Deputy Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) division of high consequences pathogens and pathology, told STAT News, “Given that we have seen now confirmed cases out of Portugal, suspected cases out of Spain, we’re seeing this expansion of confirmed and suspect cases globally, we have a sense that no one has their arms around this to know how large and expansive it might be. And given how much travel there is between the United States and Europe, I am very confident we’re going to see cases in the United States.”

Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, added his concerns, stating, “There could be dynamic transmission here that we just haven’t appreciated because of the potential number of contacts.”

In nearly every public statement by epidemiologists, they have all admitted to being bewildered by how entrenched the virus already is in communities, given that it is normally extremely rare. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told STAT News, “this is starting off with much more of a foothold, in a much more distributed way, and we don’t understand how it got into those networks.”

The monkeypox virus was first identified by Danish virologist Preben von Magnus in 1958 from crab-eating macaque monkeys used as laboratory animals, hence the name of the disease and the virus that causes it. Unlike the single-stranded RNA-based SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, the monkeypox virus is a double-stranded DNA zoonotic virus, one of the human orthopoxyviruses that includes the variola virus which causes smallpox.

The incubation period lasts about one to two weeks and symptoms of overt infection begin with fever, headache, fatigue, muscle aches and swollen glands. After a few days of high fever, distinct lesions appear, first on the face before spreading to other parts of the body. The lesions begin flat, then raise, containing fluid and pus. The lesions then scab over and can leave scars. The course of illness usually takes two to four weeks.

Close-up of monkeypox lesions on the arm and leg of a female child in Bondua, Grand Gedeh County, Liberia. http://phil.cdc.gov (CDC's Public Health Image Library)

According to the WHO, human-to-human transmission is normally limited, requiring close contact with respiratory secretions or skin lesions of an infected person or recently contaminated objects. Saliva and respiratory droplet transmission are possible, placing health care workers and their family members at risk of infection. Some studies have shown that monkeypox could potentially be airborne, similar to SARS-CoV-2, although this has not been definitively proven.

Asymptomatic transmission is theoretically possible. Patients with monkeypox can suffer from secondary infections, respiratory distress, gastrointestinal disturbances, vision problems, and brain inflammation. Treatment is supportive.

The number of severe side-effects of the smallpox vaccine makes its use in a mass vaccination campaign problematic. However, due to the long incubation period for monkeypox, the smallpox vaccine can work as a post-exposure prophylaxis in a “ring vaccination” model.

Monkeypox is endemic to Central and West Africa and found mainly in the rainforest regions. There are two natural groups of viruses split into clades (groups with common ancestry) from the Congo Basin and West Africa. The first human transmission was reported in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, then known as Zaire) in a nine-year-old boy in a region where smallpox had been eliminated two years earlier.

Since its emergence in human populations, monkeypox outbreaks have been primarily limited to the African continent. In a World Health Organization (WHO) surveillance between 1981 and 1986 in the DRC, 338 confirmed cases and 33 deaths gave the Congo Basic clade a case fatality ratio of roughly 10 percent, similar to SARS-CoV-1. The clade that has caused the current outbreak in Europe and North America is the milder West African clade, with a fatality rate comparable to SARS-CoV-2.

The first monkeypox outbreak outside Africa occurred in the Midwest of the US in the spring of 2003. The zoonotic source was pet prairie dogs that had been infected by African rodents brought in from Ghana. Since then, there have been more frequent reports of cases across the globe.

An outbreak in Nigeria that started in 2017 has been ongoing. The UK reported its first case of monkeypox in September of 2018 from a Nigerian national, and three additional cases were identified that winter. In May 2019, a middle-aged man traveling from Nigeria was hospitalized with monkeypox in Singapore.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, three cases in a UK household with connection to Nigeria were identified on May 24, 2021. On July 16, 2021, an American traveling from Nigeria was hospitalized.

A report published in the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases in April 2021, by Dr. Raina MacIntyre of the Kirby Institute in New South Wales, Australia, detailed the emergence of monkeypox in Nigeria, noting, “[t]he effect of a decline in individual-level immunity among vaccinated persons, as well as population growth in the [smallpox] postvaccination era, has substantially reduced the overall population immunity level within the past 45 years.”

Critical to the current global outbreak of monkeypox was the ending of the mass vaccination program for smallpox after it was eradicated in 1980, leaving the youngest in the population susceptible to monkeypox.

MacIntyre et al. wrote, “This contemporary susceptible population is composed mainly of working adults who maintain wider social contact and are more likely to engage in activities that include risk of animal exposures, such as hunting, farming, or trading bush meat. In addition, the expanding unvaccinated population means that entire households are now susceptible to monkeypox instead of just children, which enhances the risk of human-to-human transmission. In fact, the index case in 2017 was part of a five-member family cluster of cases.”

These observations for the Nigerian population are just as applicable to the global population. In a world deeply interconnected by travel and commerce, local outbreaks in one country are no longer isolated events.

As with COVID-19, the emergence of monkeypox and the lack of any internationally coordinated response by health authorities to address the crisis speaks to a much broader decay of public health precautions under the impact of the deepening crisis of capitalism.

The past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and the deepening propaganda campaign that workers must “learn to live the virus” underscores the inability of capitalism to protect the lives and livelihood of the world’s population against any such threat.

Biden administration pushes for NATO accession of Finland, Sweden, as Senate passes $40 billion aid package for Ukraine

Clara Weiss

Following the defeat of the Ukrainian army in Mariupol on Tuesday, a city of great strategic significance in the Ukraine war, the American ruling class is taking further steps to prolong and expand its proxy war with Russia in Eastern Europe. 

On Thursday, the Senate voted 86-11 in favor of a massive $40 billion aid package for Ukraine. All votes against the bill came from the Republican right. The bill brings the total US aid for Ukraine in just over the past two months to $54 billion. It has been rammed through above all by the Democrats, all of whom support the unprecedented US arming of Ukraine’s army and fascist forces and the stifling of any public discussion about its implications. Once US President Joe Biden signs the bill, it will go into effect.

A few hours before the Senate vote, Biden held a joint press conference with Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö and Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, both of whom had just applied for NATO accession. In the press conference, Biden provided yet another display of the extraordinary recklessness and arrogance that now dominate the highest levels of the American state. 

Following objections by Turkey, a NATO member, against the accession of Finland and Sweden and warnings by the Kremlin that Russia will be forced to respond with appropriate “military technical means” to such a step, Biden effectively declared that the US will do everything to ensure the fastest possible accession of both countries to the military alliance.

The US president emphasized that both countries had the “the full, total, complete backing” from the US for their membership requests. He also all but acknowledged that Washington had been the principal driving force behind the move of Finland and Sweden to join NATO. According to Biden, discussions with Finland’s Sauli Niinistö already took place last December; further meetings took place in the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and then again in March. “We’ve consulted closely at every stage,” the US president stated.

Clearly, the plans for Finland and Sweden to join the alliance had been made well before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine—an invasion that NATO has worked to provoke for years and is now exploiting the long-awaited pretext to realize plans for massive rearmaments and a direct military confrontation with Russia. 

Biden thanked Democratic Party leaders for helping “to move this to the Senate as quickly as possible” and announced that the White House would submit a bill to Congress later that day to approve the request by Sweden and Finland. 

He also reiterated that the US was committed to Article 5 of the NATO treaty which obliges all NATO countries to help a member in case of a military attack. The US will “defend every inch of NATO territory,” Biden said. The US president stressed that Finland’s and Sweden’s request to join NATO underscored that “NATO’s door remains open.”

For years, Ukraine has sought admission to the alliance. A guarantee that NATO not admit Ukraine was one of the main security guarantees that the oligarchic Putin regime demanded—and was denied—before it decided to invade Ukraine. 

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, for his part, stressed that the Finnish army was “one of the strongest in Europe,” while Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson promised that her country would “reach 2 percent of GDP [for military spending] as soon as practically possible.” Both indicated that they counted on their countries joining NATO in a “swift” process and said that they were in the process of conducting negotiations with all NATO members, including Turkey, now and over “the coming days.” 

The Senate vote and the demonstrative press conference on Thursday are calculated moves to further escalate the NATO proxy war in Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s seizure of the strategic port city of Mariupol in the southeast of the country. Mariupol had been under siege by Russian forces for almost three months with both Russia and Ukraine focusing much of their military fighting power on gaining control over the city. The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which has been fully integrated into the Ukrainian army, played the central role in the Ukrainian military’s combat operations against Russian troops and were the last to surrender at the Azovstal factory.

Now, according to Russian press reports, over 1,800 Azov fighters have surrendered. The Putin regime, which itself appeals to Russian far-right forces and Great Russian chauvinism, is exploiting its military victory in Mariupol to bolster its own war propaganda, in which the Kremlin falsely portrays its reactionary war for security guarantees from the imperialist powers as a fight against fascism.

The victory in Mariupol also strengthens Russia’s military and strategic position after three months in which the Russian army has suffered catastrophic military losses, including thousands of soldiers, several generals and the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, the Moskva. With control over Mariupol, Russia can establish a land bridge in eastern Ukraine, connecting the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea, which Russia annexed in March 2014 after the US-backed coup in Kiev in February, and the territories around Donetsk and Lugansk, where fighting still continues to range.

From both a military but also a political standpoint, the loss of Mariupol is, thus, a significant blow to the Kiev regime and its war strategy. As of 2020, far-right paramilitary forces made up some 104,000 troops, or 40 percent, of the Ukrainian army. Azov, which has been headquartered in Mariupol since 2014, is by far the largest of them. 

The Azov Battalion has also played a major role in the propaganda of the Kiev regime and the imperialist powers which have consistently portrayed them as “heroes” and the best defenders of Ukraine. Now, the pro-imperialist media is doubling down on the legitimization of these Hitler-admiring fascists. 

The Washington Post on Thursday ran a editorial declaring that the Azov Battalion had been “reformed” and that they “deserve the accolades they are receiving from their government.” In fact, the neo-Nazi orientation of the Azov Battalion is beyond dispute. It openly places itself in the tradition of the Nazi collaborators of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which murdered tens of thousands of Jews and Poles in World War II and uses symbols and emblems that hail back to Nazi formations like the SS. The founder of the Azov Battalion, Andrei Biletsky, publicly called for a “crusade of the white nations of the world against the Semitic-led sub-humans.”

It is not despite but because of the Azov Battalion’s fascist orientation that they have been built up by the Ukrainian state and the imperialist powers as shock troops in the war against Russia. Fascists from around the world have been encouraged to join Azov in Ukraine, and a good portion of the tens of billions of NATO weapons and tanks that have been pouring into the Ukrainian army are ending up in their hands. 

With the push for the NATO accession of Sweden and Finland and the gigantic $40 billion aid package, Washington is signaling unambiguously that the response of US imperialism to this setback is not a return to the negotiating table but a further escalation of its proxy war with Russia.

Commenting on the implications of the expansion of NATO to Scandinavia, Nikita Liponuv noted in the Kremlin think tank magazine Russia in Global Affairs that the Kremlin had “for many years” warned Finland and Sweden “publicly and privately about the military-political consequences of joining the alliance.”

With Finland and Sweden in NATO, Liponuv warned, the Baltic Sea would effectively become territory controlled by NATO. The alliance’s border with Russia will double in size and “the entire region is becoming another theater of confrontation between Russia and the West. … In the long-run, we can forget about a nuclear-free Northern Europe.” 

He continued, “The accession of the two Nordic countries to the alliance will affect the politico-military situation not only in Europe, but also in the Arctic: Seven of the eight permanent members of the Arctic Council will represent NATO. The trend among Western Arctic powers to increase defense spending and military buildup in the High North, which began even before the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis, will continue and may intensify.” 

Tax documents reveal Black Lives Matter improperly spent tens of millions in donations

Trévon Austin & Barry Grey

The Associated Press reported on May 17 that tax filings for fiscal 2020 by the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) list millions of dollars paid to entities controlled by relatives and close associates of then-Executive Director and co-founder Patrisse Cullors.

The filings with the Internal Revenue Service are the first and to date only public disclosures of the Black Lives Matter foundation’s finances. They show that the “non-profit” took in $76,872,002 in fiscal 2020, mainly in donations from corporate backers and individuals, and paid out $25,997,945 in grants to other non-profits and contractors.

Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter [Wikimedia Commons]

Cullors, the only BLMGNF board member listed on the 63-page filing, resigned as executive director in June of 2021. She did so just weeks after two mothers of victims of police violence—Lisa Simpson, the mother of 18-year-old Richard Risher, killed by Los Angeles police in 2016, and Samara Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, killed by Cleveland police in 2014—released a statement demanding that BLMGNF stop exploiting the deaths of their children to make money.

They wrote: “We don’t want or need y’all parading in the streets accumulating donations, platforms, movie deals, etc. off the death of our loved ones, while the families and communities are left clueless and broken. Don’t say our loved ones’ names, period!”

The same month as the mothers’ statement was published, the New York Post revealed that Cullors and her wife had purchased four properties worth approximately $3 million between 2016 and 2021.

Last month, New York Magazine reported that in October 2020 the organization spent $6 million of donated money to purchase a mansion in Southern California. The 6,500 square foot property, with seven bedrooms and bathrooms, a sound stage, music studio and pool, was supposedly bought to serve as a “safe house” and headquarters for BLM leaders to create social media content.

Last June, Cullors and two other BLM leaders, Alicia Garza and Melina Abdullah, recorded a video outside the mansion to mark the first anniversary of the police murder of George Floyd.

According to the fiscal 2020 tax filings, BLMGNF’s biggest payout—$2,167,894—went to the Bowers Consulting Firm, which is owned by current BLMGNF board member Shalomyah Bowers. Defending his lucrative take, Bowers called Black Lives Matter “the largest black abolitionist nonprofit organization that has ever existed in the nation’s history.”

Los Angeles-based Trap Heals LLC, owned by Damon Turner, received $969,459 for “live production, design and media.” Turner, a rapper and artist, is the father of Cullors’ son.

The BLM foundation also paid $840,993 to Cullors Protection LLC, a company owned by Patrisse Cullors’ brother Paul and established in July 2020.

Kailee Scales, a consultant whose name appears on the original Delaware registration of BLMGNF, was paid $139,625.

According to the tax filings, the Black Lives Matter foundation still has more than $50 million in donations. It invested $32 million of that in the stock market.

Cullors gave an exclusive interview to MSNBC in an attempt to clear her name. She said that BLM was unprepared for the rush of donations and complained that her “mistakes” were being weaponized against her.

Her mistake was failing to conceal the blatant self-dealing, nepotism and corruption of BLMGNF. She and her cronies have enriched themselves by fraudulently portraying their operation as a movement in defense of oppressed African Americans and in opposition to police brutality.

This is not simply a matter of individual moral depravity, although there is plenty of that. It has rather a broader social and political significance. Exposed here is the reactionary character of racial politics and the right-wing social interests it serves.

The grasping proponents of black capitalism are massively promoted and subsidized by sections of the corporate elite, the so-called “liberal” media and the Democratic Party. They are well paid for services rendered in promoting racial divisions and obscuring the common class interests of all workers.