Living and dying with COVID-19

Benjamin Mateus & Evan Blake

“The Omicron sub-variant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen. It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level.”—Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute

The highly infectious and immune-resistant Omicron BA.5 subvariant is now dominant throughout much of the world and is fueling yet another wave of infections, hospitalizations, debilitation with Long COVID and deaths. Since reaching a trough on May 30, the official seven-day average of daily new cases worldwide has nearly doubled to 926,123.

While Europe is currently the epicenter of the BA.5 surge, in recent weeks cases have risen precipitously in countries throughout the world, including Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico, Tunisia, Iraq, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and more.

Official infection figures in every country are significant undercounts. Over the past seven months, the political establishment and corporate media of nearly every country outside China falsely claimed that Omicron was “mild” and dismantled testing and data tracking systems. While telling everyone it was safe to take off their masks, they universally adopted the mantra that society must “learn to live with the virus” without ever explaining the real implications of this new reality.

Masses of people are not living with the coronavirus. They are dying or being debilitated by COVID-19. The new status quo, enforced through relentless propaganda and economic compulsion, means that populations can expect recurring waves of COVID-19 at evermore frequent intervals. As many experts have predicted and the World Socialist Web Site warned since last year, two or three waves of infections and reinfections every year are becoming the norm.

Despite the fact that the European Union has among the highest vaccination rates in the world, the entire continent is undergoing a massive surge of infections, with hospitalizations and deaths rising in tandem. On a per capita basis, the worst-impacted countries in Europe are now France, Italy and Greece.

In France, an average of 127,212 people are officially being infected each day, up more than eight-fold from the trough reached on June 13. In the past week alone, COVID-19 hospital admissions have risen 40 percent in France, while this figure has risen by more than 20 percent in several other European countries. In the past three weeks, official deaths from COVID-19 have nearly doubled in France and Spain, while across the EU deaths have risen by 60 percent.

In Greece, the seven-day average of daily new cases has risen nearly five-fold in the past month and now stands at 17,750 cases per day. Over 2,000 people are presently hospitalized with COVID-19 across the country, and official deaths from COVID-19 have more than doubled in less than a month. In an effort to conceal the increasingly dire situation, this week the National Public Health Organization (EODY) switched from daily to weekly reporting.

In Italy, an average of 104,078 people are now officially infected with COVID-19 each day, up more than six-fold since June 3. According to official figures, more than 11 percent of all new cases are now reinfections of people previously infected with COVID-19, the highest such figure to date. Official deaths from COVID-19 have doubled in the past month.

In the United States, BA.5 became dominant at the end of June. While the number of official infections has hovered just above 100,000 cases per day for the past two months, the true figure has been estimated to be up to six times higher. Test positivity has soared nationally to 18 percent from a low of 2 percent in March. Official deaths from COVID-19 are once again beginning to rise, with Los Angeles County reporting a doubling in average daily deaths over the past week and other cities reporting similar surges.

Virologists and infectious disease experts are particularly concerned about BA.5 due to its enhanced immune-escape properties and its ability to cause reinfections and breakthrough infections. A preprint study from the Kirby Institute in Australia also found that the tissue tropism of BA.5, or ability to infect cells, appears to favor an increased infection of the lungs instead of the upper airways, causing increased disease severity in animal models. Their study also found that BA.5 produces a higher viral load than all other Omicron subvariants.

What can people expect from “living with COVID,” in which waves of mass infection and reinfection hit global society at least twice per year?

A recent preprint study by Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, et al. from Washington University in St. Louis, found that people with reinfections compared to those with only one previous infection had a doubling of their all-cause mortality, as well as heart and respiratory illnesses. They faced a three-fold risk of hospitalization after the acute phase of their infection ended. Three or more infections became cumulatively worse, affecting every major organ and metabolic system in the human body.

With massive waves of infection, which in reality are infecting hundreds of millions or even billions of people, as took place last winter, tens of millions more patients will go on to develop lingering symptoms known as Long COVID, which can impact roughly 10-30 percent of those infected. Previous vaccinations minimally reduce these risks and reinfections continue to predispose one to acquiring Long COVID. One-third of those with Long COVID may face such debilitating consequences that they are unable to care and provide for themselves or their families.

The latest real world data from the surge of BA.5 and recent scientific studies once again expose the lie that the coronavirus will evolve to become milder and harmless. The current global surge of infections is occurring amid high levels of population immunity from previous infections or vaccinations, debunking any notion that “herd immunity” will ever be achieved with existing vaccines or through the homicidal strategy of allowing the virus to spread unchecked.

New variants are now waiting in the wings. Omicron BA.2.75 has been detected across several countries, with most cases seen in India so far. Offshoots of BA.5 are growing steadily in Germany (BA.5.3.1), the UK (BA.5.1), and elsewhere. A CDC spokesperson speaking on conditions of anonymity told Fortune that “the variants and sub-variants are fragmenting quickly. There’s not one or two, but hundreds of variants and sub-variants.”

In the US and many other countries, health officials have begun to adopt a more worried tone. On Tuesday, for the first time in weeks White House COVID Response Team Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha advised Americans to wear masks. He framed this as an individual choice and said nothing about mask mandates.

Clearly nervous about the worsening surge of BA.5, Dr. Jha stated, “[t]here are obviously a lot of Americans who got infected with BA.1 — BA.1.1 in the January wave. I think we have very clear evidence that their level of protection at this point is very minimal, certainly against infection, from BA.5.”

This was echoed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who said, “[i]f you were infected with BA.1, you really don’t have a lot of good protection against BA.4 or 5 … the overall principle is that we know immunity wanes with coronaviruses, whether that is natural infection or vaccination.”

It must be recalled that these two health authorities, along with the entire political establishment and corporate media, last winter welcomed the supposedly “mild” and highly contagious Omicron variant as the long-awaited variant to finally achieve “herd immunity” by sending the virus into an “endemic” state.

On January 17, a day when over 800,000 Americans were infected with COVID-19 and 1,397 died from the disease, Dr. Fauci stated during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “It is an open question as to whether or not Omicron is going to be the live virus vaccination that everyone is hoping for.”

That same day, Dr. Jha appeared on CNBC and stated, “I’m hoping Omicron gives us the lessons we need to manage the rest of this pandemic, however long it lasts, and move to a new normal, where we treat this virus much more as an endemic thing. And so I’m hoping that this really is the transition variant that gets us into a different footing for future variants and lets us manage them much more effectively.”

This was part of a global trend. Also in January, World Health Organization Regional Director for Europe Dr. Hans Kluge stated, “It’s plausible that the region is moving towards a kind of pandemic endgame.”

In his March 1, 2022, State of the Union address, US President Joe Biden stated, “I can say we’re moving forward safely, back to more normal routines … thanks to the progress we’ve made in the past year, COVID-19 no longer need control our lives.”

These were all lies intended to disarm the population to accept “living with COVID.” As early as August 2020, the WSWS warned of the potential for new variants to evolve and continue to wreak havoc, writing, “With SARS-CoV-2 virus proliferating around the world, the opportunity arises for further mutations and the emergence of new strains of the virus.” We have repeatedly stressed this danger and the possibility that more infectious, vaccine-resistant and lethal variants could emerge.

According to a tracker of excess deaths from The Economist, 3.8 million people have died since January 3 as a result of the continued pandemic and the efforts to force society to “live with COVID.” This deepening catastrophe must be stopped, and those responsible must be held accountable!

Sri Lanka’s acting president orders military, do “what is necessary to restore order”

Peter Symonds

In a political conspiracy against the Sri Lankan population, President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, as he fled the country in a military aircraft in the early hours yesterday morning, formally appointed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as acting president. 

Wickremesinghe immediately exercised the sweeping powers of the country’s executive presidency to declare an island-wide state of emergency. He also imposed a 24-hour curfew across Colombo and the surrounding province and mobilised soldiers and police to enforce it. After, the curfew was extended island wide.  

However, as has repeatedly occurred over the past three months, anti-government protesters defied the curfew and took to the streets. Pitched battles occurred as police and military personnel used tear gas and water cannon in a failed attempt to prevent thousands of demonstrators from taking over the prime minister’s offices. Scores of people were injured in the clashes with at least 84 being hospitalised. 

A section of the crowd outside the Presidential Secretariat on 13 July 2022 (WSWS Media)

In a televised statement, Wickremesinghe ominously announced that he had instructed the military and police to do “what is necessary to restore order.” He has appointed a committee, comprising the Chief of Defence Staff, Commanders of Army, Air Force and Navy and the Inspector General of Police to carry out his instructions.

Given that the security forces had failed to hold back the protesters with tear gas and water cannon, the presidential order can only signify that the police and military have been ordered to gun down unarmed civilians. 

“We can’t tear up our constitution,” Wickremesinghe stated. “We can’t allow fascists to take over. We must end this fascist threat to democracy.” The official buildings occupied by protesters, he added, must be returned to state control.

What a disgusting slander! Just days ago, in the wake of a massive anti-government protest of hundreds of thousands, Rajapakse announced that he would resign as of yesterday. Wickremesinghe declared that he would also step down once an all-party interim government had been installed. 

Behind the scenes, however, both men connived with the armed forces to cling onto power. Rajapakse fled the country in the manner of a criminal, with the assistance of the military, after emigration officials at Colombo International Airport stymied his efforts to leave via a commercial flight. He is in the Maldives seeking asylum in Singapore, and has not yet tendered a resignation.

His co-conspirator Wickremesinghe has no prime minister and no cabinet. He is the sole elected parliamentarian of his rump United National Party and his offer to step in as president was rejected by the overwhelming majority of parliamentary parties at an all-party meeting on Sunday. 

Ranil Wickremesinghe [Source: United National Party Facebook]

The constitution that Wickremesinghe vehemently defends is a thoroughly anti-democratic document that enshrines an executive presidency with the powers of an autocrat: to appoint and dismiss ministers and governments, to assume ministerial posts, to impose a state of emergency, and call out the military. 

As the despised Rajapakse-Wickremesinghe cabal takes a big step towards military dictatorship, the acting president employs the technique of the Big Lie pioneered by the Nazis to declare that he is defending “democracy” against “the fascists”—in reality, the millions of workers, rural toilers, youth and professionals who have taken to the streets over the past three months calling for Rajapakse to resign and an end to the social disaster they confront. 

Masses of working people are having to deal with intolerable conditions—soaring inflation and shortages of essential items including food, fuel and medicines and lengthy daily power outages. Hunger is rife and starvation is staring many people in the face. The public health system is in a state of collapse.

Moreover, Wickremesinghe is committed to implementing the severe austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund in return for emergency finances. These policies, including further privatisation and deep cuts to public spending, will dramatically worsen the social crisis facing the vast majority of the population. 

All of the opposition parties, including the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), support the IMF’s austerity agenda to heap the burden of the country’s deep economic crisis onto working people. Their efforts to hold back the mass uprising and to steer it behind the political charade of an all-party, interim government opened the door for the Rajapakse-Wickremesinghe conspiracy.

While Wickremesinghe remains in the presidency, he will determine the shape of any interim government as well as its policies. The agenda announced earlier this week by the parliamentary speaker to elect a new president next Wednesday is now in question as Rajapakse has not submitted his resignation. Wickremesinghe has called on parliament to nominate a prime minister acceptable to all parties. 

Opposition leaders have issued feeble protests against the installation of Wickremesinghe as acting president, but they are just as terrified as he is of unleashing a new round of massive protests and strikes. Right-wing SJB leader Sajith Premadasa tweeted: “An MP with one seat is appointed as PM. Now the same person is appointed as acting president… What a farce. What a tragedy.”

JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake warned Wickremesinghe that his actions threatened to trigger an “unprecedented crisis.” Far from calling for any action by working people, he made an appeal to the very body that facilitated the Rajapakse-Wickremesinghe conspiracy—the military. 

“We appeal to the tri-forces and police to listen to people,” Dissanayake  declared. “We hope that the security forces will be with the people rather than using their weapons to protect a clique hell-bent on clinging on to power.”

The JVP, a party mired in Sinhala communal politics, which in the past falsely claimed to be revolutionary and Marxist, is now frantically endeavouring to prop up bourgeois rule. Dissanayake is thrusting himself forward as the leader of an interim government to defend the interests of big business and the country’s international creditors.

“The cost of living is tearing us apart”—Inflation rate in US hits 9.1 percent

Jerry White

The rate of inflation in the United States hit 9.1 percent in June, with consumer prices rising at the fastest pace since November 1981, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released Wednesday. Across-the-board hikes in fuel, food, housing, medical care, clothing and other living expenses are squeezing household budgets. Everything is going up except workers’ paychecks.  

The increase in the Consumer Price Index, which rose from an already four-decade high of 8.6 percent in May, continued to be driven chiefly by surging energy and food costs. Energy prices shot up 7.5 percent last month and are up 41.6 percent over the last 12 months. Gasoline rose 11.2 percent in June and is up 59.9 percent over the last year. 

The current national average for a gallon of gas was $4.63 yesterday, according to the American Automobile Association, with prices in California at $6.02 a gallon. This means it takes $60 to fill up an average passenger car or $120 for a pickup truck or SUV. With an average manufacturing wage of $24.95 an hour before taxes, a factory worker now must labor anywhere from three to six hours just to pay for gas to go back and forth to work. Many now carpool to work, while lower-paid and part-time workers find it increasingly unaffordable to drive at all. 

Chicken on display in a market in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, July 12, 2022. [AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar]

With electricity costs rising another 1.7 percent in June and 13.7 percent year-over-year, working class families and seniors on fixed incomes are shutting off lights and air conditioners despite the summer time heat wave. Natural gas rose 8.2 percent last month and 38.4 percent over the last year, leaving many wondering how they will heat their homes come the fall and winter.  

Food costs also continued to jump, with prices rising 1.3 percent between May and June and 10.5 percent over the last year, the highest increase since 1981. Many common food items have risen even higher over the last year, with eggs and margarine up 36 percent, chicken parts up 23 percent and whole milk prices up 18.8 percent.

The anti-hunger Feeding America program reported in March that 65 percent of its 200 food pantries had seen increased demand compared to previous months. One of its affiliates, the Killeen Food Care Center in central Texas, reported that it served a record 8,830 people in June, including 1,600 seniors. “We have fed the highest amount of people in our 35-year history,” Raymond Cockrell, the center’s executive director, told the Killeen Daily Herald.

Housing costs continued to rise last month too, up 0.6 percent in June and 5.6 percent over the year, the largest rise since 1991. The average price of a home in June was $350,000, up from $318,000 in June 2019. Financial speculators have exploited and exacerbated the situation, with corporate investors buying a record 18.4 percent of the homes sold in the US in the final quarter of 2021, according to real estate brokerage firm Redfin. 

Inflated housing prices, in addition to higher mortgage rates, have not only led adult children to postpone leaving their parents’ homes but also forced older adults to double and triple up to share costs.  

The rising price of private homes is also driving up the cost of rentals, which increased 0.8 percent in June, the largest monthly jump since 1986. The ending of eviction moratoriums and the drying up of government subsidies is leading to an explosion in evictions. Evictions in the greater Phoenix area have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Landlords in Phoenix filed 5,792 evictions in June, compared with 5,669 in June 2019, before the pandemic began. On Tuesday night, the Democratic-controlled Tucson City Council said it would end a moratorium on evictions in city-owned housing by August 1. Biden’s Department of Housing and Urban Development is pressing public housing authorities across the nation to collect more rents to keep HUD subsidies, the city council members said.

After the release of the inflation figures, Biden and other White House officials feigned concern, continued to blame Russia for spiking prices and claimed the situation was improving. On his way to visit the blood-soaked Saudi king to request the release of more oil, Biden said at a press conference in Israel that the Consumer Price Index report was “out-of-date” because it did not include the recent decline in gas prices. 

The chief concern of Biden is not the devastating social impact of inflation but the growing demands of workers for wage hikes to keep up with the surging cost of living. The White House is fully behind the moves by the US Federal Reserve, which is expected to raise interest rates by three-quarters of point at its next meeting on July 26-27, to drive up unemployment and even trigger a recession to beat back what Fed Chief Jerome Powell complained are the “highest wage increases in decades.” In reality, real income for workers, adjusted for inflation, fell another 1 percent in June and is down 3.6 percent from a year ago. 

“The cost of living is tearing us apart,” a young worker in Detroit who works for General Motors subsidiary, GM Subsystems, told the World Socialist Web Site on Tuesday. “Gas, food and everything else is high, but we’re not making any money. I can barely cover my bills.” The new two-year contract just signed by the United Auto Workers raises starting wages from $15 an hour to $18.50 but leaves them earning half the pay for doing the same work previously done by GM workers. 

“I’m still going to be bringing home around $700 a week. I’m a single parent. It takes two weeks for me to save enough to pay my $700 a month in rent. What is it like for people paying $1,200 a month or more for rent?” The worker said her grandparents worked at GM and Ford and that she was making less in real terms than they did 40 years ago. “It’s like everything else, we’re not moving forward,” she said.

“Inflation is hurting our bottom line all the time,” a worker at the Stellantis (Chrysler) Warren Truck Assembly Plant in Detroit said. “Food, gas and everything else is up. The oil companies are price-gouging, and I don’t understand why Biden isn’t stopping them. I guess it’s because government answers to big business, not us.”

He continued, “The stock market keeps going up, and the shareholders are making lots of profits. This is only widening the distance between us and the top 1 percent, who are making money hand over fist. A little more than 10 years ago, the government bailed out the banks. They did it again when the pandemic hit. Where did all that money go? It went for the big bonuses of the executives and shareholders. Biden is also finding billions for war. They could have bailed us out, but they didn’t.” 

There were 153 strikes involving approximately 73,500 workers between January and May, compared to 78 strikes involving around 22,500 workers over the same time period in 2021. Over the last two weeks alone, tens of thousands of workers have voted to walk out or have struck chiefly over wage demands. This includes railroad workers, Michigan nursing home workers, St. Louis public transit workers, defense industry workers at a General Dynamics plant, AT&T telecom workers in Alaska and concessions workers at Dodgers Stadium ahead of next week’s All-Star game in Los Angeles. 

The trade unions are working with the corporations and the Biden administration to keep a lid on this movement, which is part of a global upsurge of the working class against inflation, the profits-before-lives pandemic policy, and the efforts to force workers to pay the massive cost of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia. The high point of this movement is the revolutionary upheaval in Sri Lanka, where mass protests by workers and young people have forced the resignation of the president and prime minister. 

Over the last several weeks, the AFL-CIO unions have blocked strikes by 115,000 railroad workers, 24,000 West Coast dockworkers, tens of thousands of nurses and other health care workers in Michigan, Minnesota, New York and California, and auto parts workers at Ventra and GM Subsystems.

German finance minister attacks the long-term unemployed

Marianne Arens

The German government wants to massively cut benefits for the long-term unemployed. This was revealed in the draft for the 2023 federal budget presented by Finance Minister Christian Lindner (Free Democratic Party, FDP) shortly before the summer break, which the cabinet has already approved.

Current leaders of the “traffic light” coalition government during last year’s election campaign. Left to right, Green Party economy minister Robert Habeck, Green Party foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz, and FDP finance minister Christian Lindner. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Together with Labour Minister Hubertus Heil (Social Democratic Party, SPD), Lindner has written massive social cuts into the 2023 budget. To save €609 million, reintegration assistance payments for people who have been out of work for more than six years are to be eliminated without any replacement.

This example shows once again that the cabinet of the SPD, FDP and Greens is financing its war budget at the expense of the working class. The same budget provides for defence spending of over €50 billion for 2023, which will increase by another €12.4 billion by 2026; as well as approving the €100 billion “special fund for the Bundeswehr,” which would make Germany’s army the biggest in Europe.

Spending on welfare, education, and health, on the other hand, is being subject to the “debt brake,” which is to be applied again mercilessly from next year.

At a July 8 press conference, the question was asked, “Is it true that the federal government plans to cut benefits for the reintegration of the long-term unemployed by €600 million in the upcoming budget?” In response, a press spokeswoman for Labour Minister Heil said it was “correct that the draft budget for 2023 provides for a cut in the area of integration assistance.”

Specifically, a cut in “benefits for integration into work” from €4.8 billion to €4.2 billion is apparently planned. The money was previously used to finance multi-year subsidies for the long-term unemployed. The program most affected is the “social labour market,” under which employers could receive government wage subsidies since 2019 if they hired the long-term unemployed. In special cases, the state would reimburse wage costs for up to five years—100 percent in the first two years, 90 percent in the third, 80 percent in the fourth and still 70 percent in the fifth.

Originally intended for up to 150,000 participants, the program has only applied to an annual average of just under 20,000 participants since 2019. Now it is to be eliminated altogether. It is just one example of what is meant by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s promise that his government supposedly puts “respect” and “social wellbeing” at the top of the list.

His policies betray the same ruthless duplicity familiar from Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD). Lauterbach can warn forcefully against the impact of Long COVID and, practically in the same breath, abolish free coronavirus tests. He is also in the process of driving up health insurance premiums to record highs.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) is equally duplicitous. She has just called for the abolition of nuclear weapons in Nagasaki, Japan, although she herself had only recently called for a “credible nuclear deterrent” to be part of Germany’s defence capability. Previously, she also had herself photographed wearing a steel helmet in Ukraine.

FDP leader and Finance Minister Christian Lindner himself, who is currently pushing through the latest cuts, had no problem enjoying a lavish celebrity wedding on the island of Sylt. The three-day binge, to which he had invited several ministers, cost a small fortune. Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Friedrich Merz, for example, flew in with his wife on his own private jet.

The attacks on the long-term unemployed are already meeting with opposition on social media. Twitter users point out that the coalition government “has not provided any money for other reform projects so far in the coming year,” and cite as examples the basic child allowance, the citizen’s funds, or air filters for schools—which are apparently not budgeted for in any way. One user writes, “Leaving aside the fact that the long-term unemployed have big problems anyway: cutting off funding there in particular ... is so bad!”

Workers rightly understand that these attacks are directed at them. After all, who couldn’t end up in a similar situation sooner or later? Many long-term unemployed used to have good positions, but at some point, fell out of the labour force due to illness, accident or some other coincidence of fate.

How many hundreds of thousands are currently affected by plant closures and job cuts? How many are at an age where they can no longer hope to be rehired? How many are scarred because of Long COVID and are unable to handle the stress of a job for a long time to come?

In fact, the foul decision of Lindner, Heil and Scholz is only the spearhead of a general attack by the government on the entire working class. All the costs of the financial crisis, the pandemic and, most recently, the Ukraine war are being shifted onto their shoulders. Workers are confronted with a phalanx of bankers, employers, politicians, top journalists and union bureaucrats who, in every sphere, regard the crisis as an opportunity to benefit themselves.

At the same time, workers must cope with rising inflation, heating and fuel shortages, social cutbacks, mass layoffs and/or increased work stress, while the war in Ukraine continues to escalate.

NASA releases first images and data from the James Webb Space Telescope

Bryan Dyne

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), jointly operated by NASA, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), has been successfully commissioned. The images and accompanying data released on July 12 are a first glimpse of the full capabilities of the new astronomical observatory and mark a major step forward in humanity’s ability to understand the Universe and our place within it.

By all accounts, the imagery unveiled is a stunning scientific achievement. Hundreds of commands from ground control to the astronomical observatory since it launched on December 25 were carried out flawlessly. Thousands of researchers, scientists and engineers in the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere in the world worked tirelessly to understand and characterize the spacecraft’s performance while in orbit. As a result, the data taken has already pushed past many of the previous capabilities set by earlier space telescopes.

The event also has a mass social character. The first light of the JWST has been anticipated by astronomers and the public for more than a decade. The telescope builds off of the legacy of other space observatories like Chandra, Spitzer and, above all, Hubble which have produced groundbreaking scientific results and have simultaneously captivated and inspired workers and youth across the globe.

Webb's First Deep Field is an image which focuses on SMACS 0723 and was taken with the telescope's NIRCam instrument. The image also demonstrates gravitational lensing, magnifying galaxies otherwise invisible, some as old as 13.1 billion years. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Millions watched live as the images were unveiled and millions more have read reports, watched videos, posted on social media and talked among co-workers and friends about what the JWST has so far observed. After many years of delays and a near cancellation in 2011 by the culturally backward American state (the telescope’s $10 billion cost could have, after all, been spent on yet another aircraft carrier), the JWST has successfully joined and advanced the constellation of humanity’s space-based observatories.

The first operational image taken by the telescope, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, depicts the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. Light from the cluster took 4.6 billion years to reach Earth, providing a snapshot of the galaxies within from that period in cosmic history. The cluster is so massive that it also acts as a lens, its gravity so powerful that light from more distant galaxies is focused and amplified. The JWST was as a result able to gather light from one galaxy that has traveled for 13.1 billion years, originating just a 700 million years after the Big Bang.

The most striking aspect of the image, however, is the improvement in resolution of this deep field over those previously taken by Hubble. One of the chief design considerations of the JWST was to have a 6.5-meter diameter primary mirror, which has a light-collecting area about six times that of Hubble. As a result, it is capable of capturing internal structural details of galaxies that Hubble simply cannot, such as star clusters and other diffuse features.

It is also worth noting that the JWST was able to use its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument to collect the necessary data to produce its image of SMACS 0723 in just 12.5 hours. In comparison, it took Hubble weeks to collect comparable but less resolved data.

The JWST will also be capable of looking back further in time. While the galaxy GN-z11 is the most distant object Hubble has observed, light having traveled 13.4 billion years to be captured, it is expected that the new telescope will break past this milestone in the coming months. The JWST primarily observes wavelengths in the infrared, compared to the visible for Hubble, and is thus designed to observe light that has traveled for even longer.

The top image is a view by Hubble of the Carina Nebula's "cosmic cliffs" and the bottom image is a similar one taken by the JWST. The composite demonstrates the higher resolution of the newer observatory and its increased capability to see star formation otherwise hidden by the clouds of gas and dust. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, The Hubble Heritage Team; acknowledgment: N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley)

Another object imaged using the NIRCam was the Carina Nebula. It is located about 7,600 light years from Earth and is a rich target for those studying star and planetary formation. The JWST in particular imaged what are known as the nebula’s “cosmic cliffs,” which look like a range of mountains and valleys but are in fact the edge of a colossal cavity carved out by stars emitting intense ultraviolet light during their early years after formation.

Past observations of this region have shown star formation, but none have been able to pierce through the gas and dust to the extent achieved by the JWST and at the current resolution. The observations were also aided by the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), revealing previously suspected but hitherto unseen areas of star birth.

Astronomers also used NIRCam and MIRI to observe Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies first observed in 1877. While the leftmost galaxy is not a true member of the cluster (it is 40 million light years away, while the other four are 290 million light years from Earth), the other four are gravitationally bound to each other and a very well-studied group showing how galaxies can be ripped apart as they interact with each other.

The JWST has captured fresh data from these galaxies, including clusters of young stars as well as regions of star formation induced by the mutual interactions. The telescope also imaged a shock wave produced as the galaxy NGC 7318B crossed through the cluster, as well as outflows produced by the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 7319. The high resolution provided by the JWST’s large size also provided more detail on the hundreds of galaxies in the background, essentially another deep field.

The last image released to show the capabilities of NIRCam and MIRI was of the Southern Ring Nebula, which consists of a binary star system about 2,500 light years away where one of the stars has lost much of its mass at the end of its life through recent periodic ejections of gas and dust. As the stars revolved, they churned the emitted material into a complex network of shells. In addition, the distance of each shell from the binary pair and its molecular composition provide a history of the system over thousands of years, analogous to studying geological epochs using layers of rocks on Earth, allowing researchers to better understand how such star systems evolve.

The JWST's operators used the NIRISS instrument to conclusively demonstrate that the atmospheric composition of the large gas giant exoplanet WASP-96 b includes water, one of the key ingredients for Earth-like life. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

NASA has also released data taken by the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) of the exoplanetary system WASP-96. During a 6.4-hour observing campaign, the instrument watched as a gas giant in that system, one with half the mass and 1.2 times the diameter of Jupiter, passed in front of its parent star. It confirmed previous evidence of water in the atmosphere of a planet 1,150 light years away and provided evidence of haze and clouds that had not previously been detected.

The JWST is also capable of imaging objects in our own Solar System. Part of its commissioning included imaging Jupiter in an attempt to image objects moving rapidly through the telescope’s field of view. The Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) proved fully capable of ensuring that such objects can be tracked and imaged successfully, and as a bonus the NIRCam was shown to be capable of simultaneously imaging both the bright planet and its fainter rings and moons.

These NIRCam images of Jupiter demonstrate that the JWST can track fast moving objects within the solar system, such as planets and near-Earth asteroids, as well as simultaneously image bright and faint objects in its field of view. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Overall, these initial images demonstrate that the JWST is capable of achieving the scientific goals for which it was built: peering farther back into cosmic history and viewing complex astronomical phenomena with more clarity than ever before. Moreover, the final results from the commissioning indicate that the telescope well exceeds its pre-launch specifications in virtually every area of operation. To quote the JWST Science Performance from Commissioning document, “almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected.”

Among the most significant improvements is the telescope’s life expectancy. In order to maintain its orbit, which is at Lagrange Point 2 (1.5 million kilometers from Earth), it must use a finite supply of propellant to maintain its station. Initial estimates predicted that the JWST would have enough fuel to last 10.5 years. Final calculations indicate that the launch and insertion into its orbit were so smooth that the spacecraft will be able to carry out observations for at least 20 years.

Of course, the release of the images and the beginning of the telescope’s science operations were marred by the intervention of the Biden administration, which released the deep field image of SMACS 0723 a day early. Vice President Kamala Harris, once a career state prosecutor, declared that the JWST will be “for the benefit of humankind.” Biden himself, heading a war drive against Russia that threatens to engulf the planet in nuclear annihilation, provided a nationalist overtone, stating the telescope is “for America and all humanity.”

But the hypocrisy of Biden and Harris do not diminish the immense scientific and cultural achievement of the James Webb Space Telescope. It is ultimately a demonstration of social progress, of what can be done when humanity’s collective energy is put toward social need, in this case a deeper understanding of nature and how humans interact with it. That same understanding is increasingly being applied by the world’s population to social questions, inevitably leading them to realize the necessity of sweeping away Biden and the capitalist socioeconomic system he and his ilk internationally defend and construct a new and higher social order.

President Rajapakse flees Sri Lanka after popular uprising

Saman Gunadasa

Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse fled the country in the early hours of Wednesday morning on board a military aircraft that landed in the neighboring Maldives.

The secret operation followed a massive popular uprising on Saturday. Workers and young people stormed the presidential palace in Colombo and insisted on an immediate end to the widely-despised regime.

Masses in front of the Presidential Secretariat on Monday, July 11, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

That upheaval, which involved hundreds of thousands of workers and young people, followed three months of continuous demonstrations. There is mass anger over a soaring cost of living, shortages of essentials, and a government austerity agenda aimed at making working people pay for the deepening economic crisis.

After Saturday’s uprising, Rajapakse and his Prime Minister (PM) Ranil Wickremesinghe announced that they would step down, a demand they had rejected for months.

Increasingly isolated, Rajapakse flew to Male, the capital of the Maldives, arriving at about 3 a.m. local time. His brother Basil Rajapakse, the former finance minister, has also fled. Both had reportedly attempted to leave the country yesterday, but had been blocked from departing by immigration officers.

The ignominious departure of the president points to the immense power of the movement that has emerged in the working class.

The Sri Lankan upheaval is part of an international upsurge of the class struggle.

The acute social, economic and political crisis in the island is the sharpest expression of a global crisis of capitalism intensified by the criminal “let it rip” response of governments around the world to the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

Everywhere, workers are entering into conflict with the capitalist program of austerity, mass COVID infection and a stepped-up offensive on wages and living conditions amid skyrocketing inflation.

The scenes of a president sneaking out of his country in the dead of the night have no doubt been watched with concern by governments all over the world. In every country, the traditional parties of capitalist rule are in a deepening crisis and explosive social opposition is building up.

Police stationed near the Presidential Secretariat on Monday, July 11, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

There are also real dangers as the Sri Lankan ruling class desperately seeks to salvage its rule. Immediately prior to his departure, Rajapakse was involved in shadowy talks with the military.

On Monday, he reportedly came out of hiding for a closed-door meeting with the commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force. No details were released. However, hundreds of security personnel were deployed yesterday to the country’s main public TV stations—the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation and Independent Television Network.

Rajapakse is due to quit his post today. Until he formally resigns, he retains the sweeping powers of the executive presidency, including to dismiss the government, declare a state of emergency and mobilise the military.

Whether Rajapakse stays in the Maldives and resigns or not, the threat remains of a military intervention against the mass movement of workers and rural poor, with the social and economic crisis deepening and the official parties offering nothing but further austerity.

The official annualized figure for food inflation hit 80 percent last month and prices for all essentials continue to skyrocket. The health system is breaking down amid acute shortages of medicines and medical supplies. Workers’ real wages have fallen by more than 50 percent this year. More than 70 percent of the population has been forced to skip meals due to the lack of food.

Slogans on the walls near the Presidential Secretariat on Monday, July 11, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

The outpouring of popular anger is triggering intense fears in ruling circles. The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce issued a statement on Sunday calling on the president to resign and party leaders to ensure a smooth transition of power in accordance with the Constitution. “It is hoped that the party leaders will put aside their ideological differences and get together as Sri Lankans at this historic moment to save the country from falling into anarchy,” it declared.

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe issued a special statement on Monday, declaring: “I will safeguard the Constitution. No one can go beyond it and no one can force or dictate [to] parliament from outside.” His defence of the Constitution, which enshrines the autocratic powers of the executive presidency, is nothing but the defence of the capitalist state, private property and the exploitation of workers.

Wickremesinghe has declared that he will step down once an interim, all-party government, which is being hurriedly cobbled together behind closed doors, is installed. Parliamentary party leaders participated in a meeting convened by Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardhane on Monday, who announced parliament will vote to elect a new president on July 20.

The so-called ten-party alliance, including the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the breakaway “independent” group of Rajapakse’s own Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), met last Sunday. It decided to nominate SLPP parliamentarian Dullas Alahapperuma and SJB leader Sajith Premadasa as its candidates for president and prime minister. The SJB is the largest parliamentary opposition party.

On Monday, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake also assured the ruling class of his readiness to rule on its behalf. He told the media: “We are ready to take over the government for a certain period of time… We are ready to take up the responsibility.” He received encouragement from the US ambassador to Colombo, Julie Chung, who, after meeting with JVP leaders, declared the JVP to be “a significant party” with “a growing presence”, with which she has “a good understanding.”

The leaders of the Galle Face Green protests in central Colombo met with opposition parties, trade unions and so-called “mass organisations” yesterday to discuss their “Action Plan”. It is completely directed towards pressuring an interim government to implement measures to alleviate the social crisis. To that end, these self-appointed leaders call for the establishment of “people’s councils” to engage with the interim government.

The pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), which has been prominent in the protests, is playing a particularly insidious role in promoting the illusion that an interim government and new elections would alleviate the suffering of the masses. Its leader Kumar Gunaratnam told the media that an interim government “should implement nothing but the objectives of the struggle” and create the conditions to hold a “free and fair” election.

Mounting uncertainty over effects of central banks’ tightening policies

Nick Beams

There is a growing sense in financial markets, reflected in media commentary, that for all their attempts to project an air of certainty under so-called “forward guidance,” central banks are confronting an economic and financial situation that is rapidly running out of their control.

In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008 and again amid the market meltdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, central banks, led by the US Fed, pumped trillions of dollars into the global financial system to prevent a total crash.

Now they are hiking rates and tightening monetary policy in the face of the highest inflation in 40 years to try and suppress wage demands. But they are doing so under conditions never experienced in the past, where they have become the central prop for the financial system.

As a result of its asset purchases, especially over the past two years, during which it has outlaid a further $4.6 trillion, the Fed holds a quarter of all outstanding Treasury bonds and a third of all mortgage-backed securities.

The European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE) own just under 40 percent of their own governments’ bonds and the Bank of Japan holds nearly half of all government debt.

The move to tighten monetary policy through interest rate increases and the reduction of these holdings is producing gyrations in financial markets because no one has any real idea of where it will lead.

Wall Street, which has just experienced its worst opening half-year for 50 years, moves up one day in the belief that the interest rates already carried out so far are producing a recession and the Fed will be forced to pull back, only to fall the next when inflation numbers and other economic data indicate monetary tightening will continue.

Commodity markets are also experiencing major swings. After escalating earlier in the year, because of the US-led NATO proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine, many commodity prices have fallen back sharply on recession fears. But as the Financial Times noted “even the commodities that have been on a downward path could rocket again tomorrow.”

Currency markets are also in turmoil—an expression of the so-call smile effect which describes a situation in which the US dollar tends to rise when the American economy is growing, as well as at other end of the scale when recession fears see massive amounts of money seeking a so-called “safe haven” in US assets.

The US dollar index, which tracks the US currency against a basket of six others, is now at a 20-year high as the euro has dropped to near parity with the dollar—a level not seen for almost 20 years—while the Japanese yen is at a 24-year low against the US currency.

Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

While Fed officials, following the lead of chairman Jerome Powell, appear to be on course for another interest rate increase of 75 basis points at the end of this month, warnings are being sounded about the effects of monetary tightening.

On Monday, a voting member of the Fed’s policy making body, Kansas City Federal Reserve chair Esther George, who voted in favour of a rise of only 50 basis points at the June meeting, said during a speech that “moving rates too fast raises the prospect of oversteering.”

She said the present rise—the 75-basis point increase was the first since 1994—was a “historically rapid pace” for businesses and households to adapt to and “more abrupt changes in interest rates could create strains, either in the economy or financial markets.”

In a plea for greater certainty, she said communicating the path for interest rises was “far more consequential” than the speed with which they took place. But certainty is a commodity in very short supply. George said she found it “remarkable” that just four months after rates started to rise “there is growing discussion of recession risk, and some forecasts are predicting interest rate cuts as soon as next year.”

Interest rate hikes and their effects are not the only issue leading to turbulence and extreme uncertainty in financial markets. A potentially even bigger issue is the impact of the decision by the Fed to reduce the size of its financial asset holdings which started this month.

The BoE and the ECB have also decided to stop reinvesting the maturing assets on their books and, according to estimates by Morgan Stanley, the combined balance sheets of the major banks will contract around $4 trillion by the end of 2023.

No one knows what the outcome will be because such measures have never been undertaken on this scale and the trillions of dollars injected into the final system now form the foundation of the financial system.

As investment manager Guilhem Savry of the Swiss firm financial Unigestion told the FT: “Liquidity is driven by central banks. Over the past 10 years there has been large liquidity in the US and everywhere else, and now investors know it’s finished. It’s over.”

When the first steps were initiated towards “quantitative tightening” (QT) in 2017, the then chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen said it would be uneventful and “like watching paint dry.”

It proved to be anything but. At the end of 2018, after Fed chair Jerome Powell had indicated that the Fed’s reduction of its balance sheet would proceed on “auto pilot” at the rate of $50 billion a month, Wall Street went into its biggest December decline since 1932 during the Great Depression.

Powell did a U-turn. Further interest rate rises were put on hold and the Fed began cutting rates in July 2019 and asset reduction was halted. Beginning in March 2020, when the US market froze at the start of the pandemic, the Fed then bought up more than $4 trillion of financial assets.

The Fed can never say publicly that the aim of the operation was to prop up Wall Street and so the measures were couched in terms of encouraging banks and other lenders to increase their lending to businesses to promote growth. Nothing of the sort took place and the provision of essentially free money was used to finance the orgy of Wall Street speculation that took place in 2020 and 2021.

Now, amid rising inflation combined with the growing risk of recession, the issue is whether this financial house of cards will collapse.

Recalling the events of 2018, one senior bond trader told the FT: “Remember that had a huge impact, and that was just on QT. There was no inflation scare, no growth scare like we have now.”