Appeals court blocks Biden’s student loan relief plan

Barry Grey

Late Friday, October 21, the US Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the Department of Education from beginning to discharge student loan debt of borrowers who qualified for partial debt relief under the program President Joe Biden enacted by executive order in August.

President Joe Biden speaks about student loan debt forgiveness in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022, in Washington. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

Biden, citing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, enacted the program by invoking a 2003 federal law that allows the education secretary to modify financial assistance programs for students “in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency.”

The program, which was officially launched October 17 with the opening of a website for borrowers to apply, cancels $10,000 in debt for those earning less than $125,000 a year or $250,000 for a household, and $20,000 for those who received Pell grants for low-income families. If implemented in full, the plan would cancel an estimated $430 billion in student loan debt, barely a quarter of the massive $1.7 trillion in US student loan debt held by 43 million borrowers.

The average amount of student loan debt is currently just under $29,000. Average monthly student loan payments are $234 for those with undergraduate degrees and $570 a month for those with master’s degrees.

Despite the inadequate level of relief offered by the plan—the estimated cost of the program is $400 billion over 30 years, or $13.3 billion a year, compared to the nearly $1 trillion annual military budget—so crushing is the burden of student loan debt that some 22 million borrowers applied for relief under the plan in the first five days of the website.

With the Biden administration set to begin writing off debt as early as Sunday, October 23, the appeals court issued a stay on any debt relief pending its issuance of a ruling on an emergency petition filed by six Republican-led states for an injunction against the program.

The appeals court, based in St. Louis, consists of 10 Republican-appointed judges, including four appointed by Donald Trump, and only one Democratic (Obama) appointee. It ordered the government to file its brief opposing an injunction by Monday, October 24, and the plaintiffs to file their response by Tuesday, October 25. It indicated that it could issue its ruling either vacating the stay or enjoining the debt forgiveness program as early as this week.

Either way, the appeals court’s action, which followed by one day the dismissal of the Republican state governments’ suit by the US district trial judge, could set the stage for an indefinite delay in the implementation of the debt relief program, if not its complete scuttling, as the program gets entangled in endless litigation.

For one thing, the Republican plaintiffs, backed by private lenders and other corporate interests, could respond to a negative ruling from the appeals court by seeking emergency intervention by the Supreme Court, dominated by right-wing Republican justices. This is despite the highly dubious legal basis of their suit, which was dismissed by the trial judge on the grounds that the state governments lacked legal standing to go to court on the issue.

The suit filed by the governments of Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina is only one of many legal challenges to the Biden debt forgiveness program. On Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett dismissed without comment a suit opposing the program brought by a Wisconsin county taxpayers’ group. But lawsuits have also been filed by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and right-wing groups such as the Job Creators Network Foundation and the Cato Institute.

The state governments’ suit argues that Biden lacks the constitutional authority to enact the debt forgiveness program and unapologetically shills for banks and loan companies, arguing that the plan must be scotched because it would deprive private lenders of revenues from the servicing of loans they currently hold.

On Friday, in advance of the Eighth Circuit’s action, Biden spoke at Delaware State University in Dover, Delaware, where more than 75 percent of the students receive Pell grants. He denounced Republican opposition to the debt relief program, noting that one of its most vocal critics, the fascistic congresswoman from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, had received a $180,000 loan, subsequently forgiven, from the so-called “Paycheck Protection Program.” This did not prevent Biden from continuing to refer to the Republicans as his “Republican colleagues.”

Following the appeals court’s announcement, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a statement stressing the temporary character of the court’s action and the fact that it did not block the Department of Education from continuing to accept and process applications for debt relief.

However, the Biden administration has already made clear that it does not have the stomach to seriously fight a concerted drive by financial interests and the entire Republican Party to block even modest debt relief. On September 29, the same day that the six Republican-led states first filed their legal challenge, the administration abruptly narrowed the eligibility criteria for student debt relief in an attempt to moot the Republican suit.

As noted above, that suit cited alleged damage to private lenders who hold a portion of government backed student loans, namely loans granted under older and now defunct federal student loan programs in which the loans were guaranteed by the government but still held by private companies. Biden’s plan allowed these borrowers—some 4 million of the 43 million student debtors, accounting for $108 billion of the $1.7 trillion student loan debt—to consolidate their loans into government-held loan programs and thereby qualify for debt relief. Borrowers were told they had until December 31, 2022 to apply.

But on September 29, the Department of Education’s website suddenly announced that after that date, borrowers could no longer consolidate their privately-held loans into government-held loan programs and were therefore no longer eligible for debt forgiveness. The change excluded some 800,000 borrowers from the program.

Moreover, the overt opposition to the debt relief program is by no means limited to Republicans. On September 29, the Washington Post, owned by multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos, published an editorial denouncing the administration’s plan as irresponsibly expensive as well as unconstitutional. The newspaper, generally aligned with the Democratic Party, fully supports pouring tens of billions of dollars into the US/NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, in support of a government in Kiev allied with fascists, but declares a few billions of dollars a year to somewhat lessen the debt burden on millions of students and working people an extravagance.

On Saturday, following the appeals court’s action blocking the debt relief program, the Post published another editorial spelling out in greater detail its opposition not only to the student debt plan, but to any increase in social spending. Headlined “Congress and Biden have to help the Fed fight inflation,” the editorial denounced Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed in February 2021, as “too big,” demanded “fiscal discipline,” with “no new major spending that isn’t fully or mostly paid for with higher taxes or reduced spending elsewhere in the budget,” and called for more deregulation.

The same day, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by its right-wing, anti-abortion columnist Ross Douthat (“The Three Blunders of Joe Biden”) similarly denouncing the American Rescue Plan as excessive. Both the Post editorial and the Times column cited Lawrence Summers, treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and head of Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, who has denounced Biden’s fiscal policies as irresponsible.

The Times also published a glowing puff piece on Tim Ryan bearing the headline, “Tim Ryan Is Winning the War for the Soul of the Democratic Party.” Ryan, a House member from the Mahoning River Valley in Ohio, a devastated former center of steel and auto production, is running an extremely right-wing campaign for the US Senate against Trump acolyte J. D. Vance. He is attacking Vance as soft on China and Russia, while boasting of his own support for Trump’s protectionist policies and military budgets. At the same time, he opposes the student loan debt relief program, echoes Republican attacks on Biden for failing to “secure the border,” and proclaims his opposition to a bid by Biden for a second term.

Australian and Japan sign far-reaching anti-China security pact

Oscar Grenfell

On Sunday, Australia and Japan unveiled a new security pact, featuring expanded military, intelligence and strategic cooperation. The high-level character of the agreement was underscored by the fact that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida travelled to Perth to announce the deal with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (left) with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Perth, Australia, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022. [AP Photo/Stefan Gosatti]

The agreement does not mention China, but there is no question that it is directed against Beijing, as has been noted in the Australian press. The deal is part of a web of military alliances and partnerships, deepened under the umbrella of the Biden administration and aimed at advancing the aggressive American confrontation with China that threatens war in the Indo-Pacific.

Significantly, the security pact was signed little over a week after the Biden administration released a new National Security Strategy, which sets out a plan for global conflict aimed at ensuring the dominance of American imperialism.

In the introduction to that document, Biden stated: “We are now in the early years of a decisive decade for America and the world. The terms of geopolitical competition between the major powers will be set.”

Even as the US is devoting massive resources to waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, the National Security Strategy emphasised that its primary target is China. “We will effectively compete with the People’s Republic of China, which is the only competitor with both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order,” it declared.

The US preparations for war with China were bluntly spelt out by US Naval Operations Chief Admiral Michael Gilday at an event in Washington last Wednesday. He declared that the US and China could fight a war over control of Taiwan this year.

The US had to accelerate a military build-up, the admiral declared, so that it would have the weaponry required to “fight and win.” He did not want to “field ships out there in a fight that aren’t lethal, capable and ready to win… It’s readiness over capacity; the ships that we put out there have to be ready to fight.”

Both Japan and Australia are central to this war strategy. Japan, which invaded and occupied China in the 1930s and 1940s, has been encouraged to remilitarise by the US and its allies for a war that would eclipse the catastrophic consequences of World War II in the Pacific.

For its part, Australia plays a major political role, as an attack dog for US imperialism throughout the region. It has also been earmarked to play the role of a “southern anchor” in the event of a war with China, enforcing naval blockades aimed at choking Chinese supplies and serving as a launching pad for missiles and aircraft directed against Chinese forces.

Together with the US and India, Australia and Japan are also members of the Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue, a quasi-alliance of the four largest militaries in the region directed against China.

The Japan-Australia security pact is couched in bland diplomatic jargon that is common to such documents, but its meaning is nevertheless clear.

“We recognise that our partnership must continue to evolve to meet growing risks to our shared values and mutual strategic interests,” the statement asserts. “We affirm our unwavering commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” it declares, repeating a key catch-cry of aggressive US intervention in the region.

Australia and Japan declare their commitment to a “rules-based order” in the region, code for the existing imperialist order in the Indo-Pacific presided over by the US. They will work towards “a favourable strategic balance that deters aggression and behaviour that undermines international rules and norms.”

The agreement states they will uphold “an open, stable, and secure maritime domain underpinned by adherence to international law, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea [UNCLOS], in which States can exercise freedom of navigation and overflight and are not subject to coercive or destabilising actions.”

Under cover of hypocritical references to “international law,” this is a declaration that the US allies will continue provocative flights and naval interventions in the western Pacific close to the Chinese mainland.

For years, the US has conducted “freedom of navigation” exercises in or near waters claimed by China in the South China Sea. Over recent months, other US allies including Australia and Canada have conducted similar operations in the South and East China Seas, including military flights dangerously close to Chinese warships and fighter jets.

The agreement pledges to assist in developing “countries that are resilient to aggression, coercion, disinformation, malicious cyber activity and other forms of interference.” Australia has been at the forefront of a bogus campaign against Chinese “foreign interference,” domestically and elsewhere in the region. This has the character of a McCarthyite witch hunt justifying attacks on democratic rights at home, legitimising military aggression against China and demonising Beijing’s trade and diplomatic ties with Indo-Pacific countries.

The document also commits to deepening collaboration on cybersecurity, trade and in other economic areas.

While the details are vague, the pact outlined plans for expanded military cooperation between Japan and Australia, including calls for enhanced “interoperability” of their defence forces. Already, Japan has participated in military exercises in Australia, including war games last August in the country’s north rehearsing an aerial conflict.

There will be “more sophisticated joint exercises and operations, multilateral exercises with partners, mutual use of facilities including maintenance, asset protection, and personnel links and exchanges. We will reinforce security and defence cooperation including in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, capacity building for regional partners, advanced defence science and technology, defence industry and high-end capabilities.”

Media commentators in Australian have noted that Japan and Australia both have key signals and satellite facilities. Expanded collaboration will deepen the web of US-led surveillance that has been place in the region for decades. Some have speculated that Japan may directly join the high-level US-dominated Five Eyes intelligence network, of which Australia is a member.

The document also sketches out greater political collaboration, including regular leader-to-leader meetings and lower-level engagements. 

It makes clear that all of this is being developed, within the framework of the US war drive in the region. “Our bilateral partnership also reinforces our respective alliances with the United States that serve as critical pillars for our security, as well as for peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific. Deepening trilateral cooperation with the United States is critical to enhancing our strategic alignment, policy coordination, interoperability and joint capability,” it states.

The Australian Labor government is at the forefront of the US confrontation with China, aggressively campaigning against Chinese influence and seeking to line up states throughout the Indo-Pacific behind the US imperialism. Significantly, Albanese, despite having only assumed office after the May 21 election, has already held four meetings with Kishida.

The Japanese and Australian populations have been placed on the frontline of these catastrophic plans. In both countries, defence spending is increasing rapidly, but militarist think tanks are demanding much more, as working people are forced to bear burdens through record inflation, stagnant wages and the dismantling of social programs.

Poverty skyrockets in Ukraine

Andrea Peters

Poverty in Ukraine has increased more than tenfold since the outbreak of the US/NATO-Russia war, according to the latest data from the World Bank (WB). Officially, 25 percent of the country’s population is now poor, up from supposedly just 2 percent before February 2022. Both numbers are a huge underestimate, as Ukraine already had the lowest or near-lowest GDP per capita of any European country before the Russian invasion, and its government has long set an absurdly low poverty line in an effort to undercount the number of people living hand to mouth.

People queue up to wait a ration food from World Central Kitchen organisation in the center of Mykolaiv, Monday, Oct. 24, 2022. [AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti]

With officials predicting that the poverty rate could rise to as much as 60 percent or more next year, levels of deprivation are emerging in Ukraine that have not been witnessed on the European continent since the end of World War II.

Unemployment is now running at 35 percent, and salaries have fallen by as much as 50 percent over the spring and summer for some categories of workers. The lowest paid segments of the workforce—students and unskilled laborers—are estimated to be surviving on a monthly wage of about $291. With its economy on track to contract by 35 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, Ukraine’s public debt has now soared to 85 percent of GDP.

Basic goods and services are both unavailable and unaffordable for millions, as inflation, which stood at 24.4 percent as of September, eats away at workers’ salaries and pensions. A recently released joint study by the World Health Organization and Ukraine’s Ministry of Health found that 22 percent of people in Ukraine cannot access essential medicines. For the country’s 6.9 million internally displaced, that number rises to 33 percent.

Eighty-four percent of survey respondents said that prices are too high, and 46 percent said that what they need is simply not on the shelves. The medications that are hardest to get—those that treat blood pressure, heart problems and pain, as well as sedatives and antibiotics—reveal a population struggling to cope with decades of poverty-induced ill health and the physical and psychological trauma of war.

While US and NATO officials are able to dispatch massive amounts of firepower to Ukraine’s front lines within a matter of weeks, the delivery of life-saving humanitarian goods is seemingly an impossible logistical challenge.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 is spreading, with another 23,000 cases recorded between just October 10 and 16. Ukraine’s coronavirus vaccination rate is under 45 percent, and only a small fraction of the population has ever gotten a first or second booster dose. Even before the outbreak of the war, Ukraine was, in the words of President Zelensky himself, “medically naked” as the result of years of austerity measures imposed by overseas lenders.

More than 7 percent of the country’s housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, and millions have lost access to heat, electricity and water. Last week, 30 percent of the country’s power stations were knocked offline. According to news reports, in preparation for the winter, people are gathering wood and building makeshift stoves in abandoned buildings that still have roofs. Under these conditions, the government in Kiev recently made the helpful suggestion that everyone charge their devices and stock up on batteries and flashlights, in anticipation of ongoing rolling blackouts.

Among the most vulnerable are the elderly, immobile and disabled. Out of a prewar population of 44.13 million, Ukraine has 2.7 million people officially registered as having a disability. Thousands among them are housed in grossly underfunded and often horrific orphanages and nursing homes, where they are especially vulnerable to the ravages of war. Human Rights Watch and other nonprofit groups issued statements in August noting that authorities had overlooked many of those institutionalized in these settings in their evacuation plans, leaving them stranded. Reports surfaced of the mentally infirm chained to beds and undernourished children left to lie in their own waste. In September, the Western media carried news stories claiming that Russian forces were using these populations as “human shields,” failing to mention the fact that for the Ukrainian government they had long been human trash.

The government in Kiev is requesting large amounts of aid from international agencies and foreign states, as the overwhelming majority of its domestic budget is being eaten up by military expenditures and debt servicing, as well as the payment of salaries and pensions. According to Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, 60 percent of Ukraine’s budget is now devoted to defense. World Bank regional country director for Eastern Europe Arup Banerji recently stated that if Ukraine does not receive more financing soon, it will have to either further cut social spending or resort to simply printing money, thereby driving up the inflation rate.

Speaking last week at an annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund, Ukrainian President Zelensky requested another $55 billion from the international community—$38 billion to cover next year’s budget deficit and $17 billion for infrastructure. The World Bank estimates, however, that Ukraine’s overall rebuilding costs at more than six times that amount, $349 billion.

But foreign governments are not nearly so generous with their purses as they are with their stocks of arms. While financiers and politicians have repeatedly spoken about the necessity of giving Ukraine grants in Marshall-Plan-like funding schemes, much of what the country is currently promised is coming in the form of loans or not coming at all.

In an October 12 commentary published in the South China Morning Post, right-wing economist Anders Aslund noted that of the $35 billion the IMF has pledged to Ukraine to help it keep its government running and schools and health care facilities open, it has released just $20 billion. And of the 9 billion euros the EU committed to the country in May, just 1 billion has been sent.

Speaking about Ukraine’s “very large” financing needs, in mid-October IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva noted that her agency is gearing up for talks with Ukrainian officials “to discuss Ukraine’s budget plans and a new IMF monitoring instrument, which should pave the way for a full-fledged IMF program once conditions allow.”

In other words, should there be anything left of Ukraine, the IMF is intent on using the physical destruction of the country to increase its oversight of the government and economy and force through privatizations and massive cuts to social spending. The recent appointment of Ukraine’s Minister of Finance Sherhiy Marchenko as rotating chair of the IMF’s Board of Governors is an expression of the full commitment of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie to this longstanding project. International lenders have been bleeding Ukraine dry for decades.

And even under conditions in which grants, as opposed to credits, are extended to the country, Ukraine will be kept on a tight leash. A recent analysis by Deloitte Insights, an online publication by the international financial management, first emphasized the importance of “anti-corruption” and “fraud prevention” in all ongoing funding deals with Ukraine. When it suits them, the international community will, once more, discover that Kiev’s “freedom fighters” are a bunch of thieves.

In an expression of what is being prepared, over the course of the summer the Ukrainian government pushed through, with the avid support of its Western allies, a series of “reforms” gutting salaries and workers’ rights on the basis of the fact that martial law had been imposed in the country. So-called “zero-hour” contracts are now legal. In addition, all those employed by small- and medium-sized enterprises, about 70 percent of the workforce, have been denied the workplace protections granted in the national labor code, which is no longer applicable to their category of employment. While allegedly these measures are to be temporary, the government clearly intends for them to continue indefinitely.

In motivating the passage of the new legislation, Zelensky’s grossly misnamed Servant of the People party insisted that Ukraine suffers from “extreme over-regulation of employment” that “creates bureaucratic barriers … for raising the competitiveness of employers.” Minister of Parliament Danylo Hetmantsev denounced labor regulations as being at odds with a country that is “free, European, and market-oriented.”

Fascist Giorgia Meloni heads new Italian government

Peter Schwarz

Giorgia Meloni, leader of the fascist Fratelli d’Italia, is the new head of the Italian government. State President Sergio Matarella swore in Meloni and her 24-member government Saturday morning. On Sunday, former Prime Minister Mario Draghi handed over the reins to her. Confirmation in parliament, scheduled for early this week, is considered a formality.

It is the first time since World War II that a party with fascist roots has led the government in a major European country. Such parties have been involved in governments, such as the predecessor of the Fratelli in Italy from 1994, but they have never provided the head of government. So far, a comparably right-wing government exists only in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán prides himself on having established an “illiberal democracy.”

Orbán was then also among the first to congratulate Meloni. “Today is a great day for the European right,” he tweeted. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right Rassemblement National, also sent congratulations. “All over Europe, patriots are coming to power and with them the Europe of nations we hope for,” she wrote.

The fact that Meloni’s assumption of power falls almost exactly on the centennial of Benito Mussolini's seizure of power on October 30, 1922, who exercised a brutal dictatorship against the working class for the next 22 years, gives it additional explosiveness.

Meloni, now 45, had joined at age 15 the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), which had upheld the tradition and memory of Mussolini since the end of the war and was implicated in the far-right terrorist attacks of the 1960s and 1970s. After the MSI renamed itself Alleanza Nazionale in 1994 and eventually dissolved into Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, Meloni and others formed Fratelli d’Italia in 2012 to continue the MSI’s tradition.

New Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni shakes hands with outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi. [Photo by Governo Italiano / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0]

Because they were the only party represented in parliament not to participate in Mario Draghi’s all-party government, the Fratelli, which had received only 4.3 percent of the vote in 2018, became the strongest party in the September election with 26 percent.

Meloni, meanwhile, presents herself as a pragmatic conservative politician and declares fascism, from which she has never distanced herself, to be a historical issue. But this is pure tactics. This is demonstrated not only by their party’s close ties to neo-Nazi organizations such as CasaPound, violent soccer hooligans, Mussolini admirers, right-wing networks in the state apparatus, and international far-right parties such as Spain’s Vox and the Trump wing of the US Republicans, but also by their appointments to top state and government posts.

Already last week, the Fratelli and their alliance partners, the far-right Lega and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, elected longtime neo-fascist Ignazio La Russa to the second-highest state office, as president of the Senate.

The politician, born in 1947, whose middle name is Benito, was active in the MSI for decades and was one of the founders of the Fratelli with Meloni. His private apartment is decorated with busts, medals and photos of Mussolini, which he proudly presented in a video. Just days before the September election, he had declared: “We are all heirs of the Duce.” La Russa was Italian defense minister from 2008 to 2011. He is said to have convinced head of government Berlusconi to join the war against Libya, a former Italian colony.

Lorenzo Fontana, a right-wing extremist, was also elected to head the second chamber of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. The 42-year-old Lega deputy is a member of an arch-Catholic sect and a supporter of the fascist theory of “population replacement,” according to which a conspiracy is trying to replace the majority European population with immigrant Muslims. He calls same-sex marriages a “mess that we don’t even want to hear named.”

Unlike Germany, for example, Italy does not have a written coalition agreement. But the composition of the new government, in which the Fratelli hold nine posts, the Lega and Forza Italia five each, and nonpartisan experts another five, makes its political orientation clear.

Meloni was guided by two criteria in selecting ministers. On the one hand, she tried to reassure the financial markets and prevent them from giving the thumbs down to her government, as in the case of Liz Truss in the United Kingdom.

Given the country’s high level of debt and the €200 billion it is entitled to from the so-called EU reconstruction fund, the financial markets would hardly accept Italy leaving the war alliance against Russia and the European Union. The rise in yields on Italian government bonds had already contributed significantly to the euro crisis in 2010.

Foreign and economic policy departments were therefore filled with ministers who have good international connections.

Antonio Tajani (Forza Italia), a close Berlusconi henchman, is the new foreign minister. Tajani spent almost his entire political career in Brussels. He was president of the European Parliament and the European People’s Party (the umbrella group of right-wing parties) and has excellent connections in other European capitals.

The economic and financial portfolio went to Giancarlo Giorgetti (Lega), a friend and kindred spirit of the previous head of government and former ECB banker Mario Draghi. Giorgetti is expected to ensure that government spending is further reduced and to continue Draghi’s policy of social cuts.

The Ministry of Defence is taken over by Guido Crosetto (Fratelli d’Italia), an arms lobbyist and manager of a defense company who has the confidence of the military. He is supposed to guarantee NATO that Italy remains firmly behind the war course against Russia—a stance that is controversial within Forza Italia and the Lega.

Domestically, Meloni has also sent clear signals to her fascist following, appointing notorious right-wingers as ministers and even renaming some ministries to underline her nationalist course.

Thus, the Ministry of Economic Development is now called the “Ministry of Business and Made in Italy”; the Ministry of Agriculture is also responsible for “sovereignty over food” (the preference for Italian products) and the Ministry of the Family for “natality,” for birth promotion.

Eugenia Roccella (Fratelli d’Italia), the Minister for the Family, is considered a member of the “Theocons,” the advocates of ultraconservative family policies. She agitates against abortion, homosexual partnerships, artificial insemination and living wills.

The Interior Ministry will continue the rabid anti-migration policies for which Lega leader Matteo Salvini, who headed the department from 2018 to 2019, is notorious. Meloni did prevent Salvini, considered her fiercest competitor and political rival, from making his mark again as interior minister, fobbing him off with the infrastructure ministry. She justified this by saying that Salvini is still on trial for abuse of office for illegally blocking refugee ships. He could face up to 15 years in prison. His former cabinet chief Matteo Piantedosi (nonpartisan) became interior minister in his place.

Meloni filled other posts with loyal followers. For example, her brother-in-law, Francesco Lollobrigida, a great-nephew of the famous actress, is responsible for agriculture in the government. His wife, Meloni’s sister Arianna, advances to the top of the party.

The takeover of the government by a fascist in the third largest country in the EU was met with serenity and open approval in Europe.

“I am ready and happy to work in a constructive way with the new Italian government to find answers to the challenges we face,” tweeted Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, who congratulated Meloni as the “first woman to hold this position.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also wrote on Twitter: “I look forward to continuing to work closely with Italy in the EU, NATO and G7.” Petr Fiala, the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, which currently holds the EU presidency, said: “I know their position on European integration and I believe that good cooperation is possible.”

French President Emmanuel Macron will be the first foreign politician to meet the new head of government. Macron, who was baptized a Catholic at the age of 12, travelled to Rome on Sunday for a Catholic meeting, where he will meet with the pope as well as Meloni.

Meloni’s rise and the response she is meeting in Europe is part of a worldwide shift to the right by the ruling elites. They respond to the growing resistance of the working class against social cuts, war and pandemic with two methods. On the one hand, they are trying to sabotage and paralyse it with the help of the corporatist unions. On the other hand, they strengthen ultra-right parties—such as the Spanish Vox, the German AfD or the French RN—and the state apparatus in order to intimidate and suppress the opposition.

Meloni, unlike Mussolini a hundred years ago, cannot rely on a mass fascist movement of Blackshirts. It owes its electoral success to the vacuum left by the bankruptcy of the so-called center-left parties and their pseudo-left appendages. These have played the leading role in attacking the living standards of the working class over the past three decades, supporting NATO’s imperialist wars and co-sponsoring a pandemic policy that has cost the lives of 180,000 people.

RSV and other viruses strain US children’s hospitals, filling up pediatric beds

Kate Randall

Children’s hospitals in many parts of the US are straining under the weight of unusually high numbers of children infected with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and other respiratory viruses. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia are currently experiencing this spike, with 71 percent of US pediatric beds full across the country, the highest occupancy levels seen by hospitals in two years.

Nearly three-quarters of pediatric beds are now occupied, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), although the agency does not specify the reason for hospitalization. This compares to about two-thirds of pediatric hospital beds being full on an average day over the past two years.

More than 94 percent of pediatric beds are occupied in Rhode Island, Delaware and Washington D.C., while Maine, Arizona, Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Missouri report 85 to 90 percent of beds occupied. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is limited to facilities that report such data, meaning that the situation is likely more dire than official figures.

RSV began surging in late summer, months before its typical season, which runs from November to early spring. According to the CDC, the US has been reporting about 5,000 cases per week. This is on par with last year, but far higher than October 2020, in the first autumn of the coronavirus.

This surge in cases is especially troubling given the threat of a surge in COVID-19 cases in the coming fall and winter months and the elimination of virtually all mitigation measures to fight the deadly virus. Other viruses contributing to the bed emergency include parainfluenza, adenovirus and human metapneumovirus.

Jesse Hackell, chair of the committee on practice and ambulatory medicine for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), told the Washington Post, “It’s very hard to find a bed in a children’s hospital—specifically an intensive care unit bed for a kid with bad pneumonia or bad RSV because they are so full.”

The CDC says that most children catch RSV at some point before they turn two. Symptoms are similar to the common cold and include runny nose, decreased appetite, coughing, sneezing, fever and wheezing. RSV usually resolves in a week or two with rest and fluids.

In some children, particularly young infants, however, RSV can lead to serious problems such as dehydration, breathing trouble, as well as serious illnesses such as bronchiolitis or pneumonia.

Dr. Juan Salazar, physician in chief at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, told the Hartford Courant, “I’ve never seen this level of occupancy beyond our capacity for a sustained period of time as I’m seeing it right now.” Salazar said the hospital is trying to hire pediatric nurses and is talking to the National Guard and the Federal Emergency Agency about emergency measures, such as tent facilities, to treat pediatric patients.

Salazar said beginning in June there has been a steady increase in children being admitted at Connecticut Children’s with respiratory viruses, including RSV, rhinovirus and flu. “Our hospital is full right now,” he said. “All the beds are taken and currently we have about 15 kids waiting to be admitted in the Emergency Department that don’t have a bed to go to” in the units, and at times as many as 25 children with RSV have been waiting for a bed.

Salazar and other doctors point to children born in the past three years being protected from respiratory pathogens due to separation from other children, social distancing and masking. Extremely low COVID-19 and flu vaccination rates also pose a real danger.

Salazar said another theory is that children exposed to COVID-19 have weakened immune systems. He told the Post that it’s possible that even if babies contracted asymptomatic or “mild” cases of COVID-19, the percentage of infection-fighting B-cells might have dropped, creating “a certain level of immunosuppression” when they are hit with a new virus.

As the full extent and severity of Long COVID among young children is not known, and the government does not take the syndrome’s debilitating impact seriously, health care providers are essentially flying blind in the face of the RSV outbreak.

Dr. Thomas Murray, associate medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, also in Connecticut, said RSV is common for children under three, but they are seeing significantly more cases this year. He told the Courant that Yale New Haven is seeing one to three cases of children admitted with COVID-19 and 30 admitted with RSV each day. He said RSV cases seen in the Emergency Department jumped from 57 in the week beginning October 10 to 106 the following week, though not all were admitted.

While RSV is most dangerous for children under three and the elderly, adults who come down with the infection may be unaware that they have been infected and may unwittingly pass it on to the more vulnerable. Infants and toddlers are always putting toys or other items in their mouths, potentially passing the virus on to other children. Unlike SARS-CoV-2, RSV is often spread through surfaces in addition to being airborne.

Several hospitals in the Washington D.C. area have been near capacity for weeks. On one day last week, 18 children were waiting for a room in the ICU at Children’s National.

The University of Rochester-Golisano Children’s Hospital in Rochester, New York, is seeing 20 to 30 more patients a day as a result of a crush of patients with respiratory illnesses, about of fifth of whom are infected with RSV.

Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, went on diversion for a few days in early October as a consequence of the RSV surge, meaning it could not take emergency admissions. While it is taking patients again, it is still inundated with RSV cases.

Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston is the largest pediatric medical center in the US. As of October 21, the hospital had more than 40 RSV inpatients, including several children in the ICU. RSV cases usually spike in December or January in Texas.

James Versalovic, pathologist in chief at Texas Children’s, said the early surge of RSV this year could be attributed to how different viruses interact. Speaking about how the pandemic may have changed children born in the last three years, he told the Post, “Their immune systems and immunity may have been altered in ways that we’re just beginning to appreciate.” He said that the pandemic has changed people’s “pattern of susceptibility to respiratory viruses.”

CNN reports that at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, nearly half the urgent care unit is filled with RSV cases. Hospital spokesperson Kim Brown said that between October 2 and 8, there were 210 cases there, rising to 288 a week later.

In Austin, Texas, Dell Children’s Medical Center, St. David’s Children’s Hospital and Austin Public Health said in a joint statement October 22 they were seeing a spike in respiratory illnesses and that emergency departments were “inundated with children suffering from symptoms of flu-like illnesses.”

As pediatric hospitals see their emergency departments, hospital beds and ICUs filling up with RSV patients, in the coming months hospitals across the country are seeing a triple threat of RSV, influenza and COVID-19 as state and federal governments abandon any mitigation efforts to stop the spread of these potentially deadly viruses.

Medical centers will be hard pressed to recruit sufficient numbers of nurses, doctors and other health care workers to deal with a deluge of patients, both young and old. Health care workers and ancillary staff are leaving the profession in droves due to short-staffing, overwork and low pay.

The coming fall and winter will be a medical catastrophe unless the working class takes immediate action to counter the criminal “herd immunity” policies of the government and for-profit health care institutions.

Rishi Sunak: The UK’s new, multi-millionaire prime minister

Thomas Scripps

The Conservative Party has anointed Rishi Sunak as its new party leader. Worth around £730 million, he will now become the richest prime minister in British history by far.

Sunak was nominated by just over 200 Tory MPs and declared the victor Monday after his only remaining challenger in the leadership election, Penny Mordaunt, pulled out at the eleventh hour.

Rishi Sunak leaves the Conservative Campaign Headquarters in London, Monday October 24, 2022. Rishi Sunak will become the next Prime Minister after winning the Conservative Party leadership contest. [AP Photo/Aberto Pezzali]

A swift, unchallenged coronation of Liz Truss’s replacement was what the bulk of the Tory Party had hoped to achieve, to foist the third prime minister in three months on the population and shield their crisis-ridden government from popular anger. But the thoroughly anti-democratic, right-wing leadership election has nevertheless been laid bare over the last four days by the vampire-like return of Boris Johnson from the political grave, ousted by the biggest cabinet resignation in history just six-weeks ago amid overwhelming popular hatred.

In an open insult to the millions who suffered under his “let the bodies pile up in their thousands” response to the COVID pandemic, Johnson surged towards the necessary 100 nominations to get on the ballot and claims to have reached the threshold before ending his campaign on Sunday night.

His bowing out of the contest says as much as his joining it. Johnson announced, “A general election now would be a disastrous distraction,” worrying “You can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament… Therefore I am afraid the best thing is that I do not allow my nomination to go forward and commit my support to whoever succeeds.”

Johnson lies more easily than breathing. But whether he really had enough MPs backing him to get on the ballot or he was forced into this course of action by a lack of support, and whatever his next steps, the reason for his retreat is the same.

There is enormous pressure being placed by the ruling class on the Tories to pull back from the brink and suppress the factional divisions tearing the party apart. Above all, they are tasked with not tipping the country into a general election, which might become a focus for the massive opposition in the working class to the planned agenda of “eye-wateringly tough” austerity, continued war with Russia, and continued mass infection with COVID-19.

Sunak has won the support of the bulk of the Tory party as the man best-equipped to carry forward these policies. Johnson’s chancellor, he was the second-most senior figure in the government which played a leading role in NATO’s war drive over Ukraine. He continually pushed to remove restrictions on the spread of the pandemic to free the flow of profits.

At the height of the pandemic in September 2020, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (centre) meets at 11 Downing Street with (left) Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress and (right) Dame Carolyn Julie Fairbairn, Director General of the Confederation of British Industry. London, September 24, 2020. [AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

Where Sunak is seen as an upgrade on his predecessors is on economic policy. Truss had her political throat cut by the global financial oligarchy, which tanked the British economy in protest against her plans for massive government borrowing. In Sunak, an obscenely wealthy former hedge fund partner, they have engineered her replacement by one of their own. Ultimately, the Tories who put him in office were acting on the dictates of the markets.

Current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, again brought in, by Truss, at the behest of the markets to prepare a slew of spending cuts and tax rises for an October 31 (Halloween) fiscal statement, is one of Sunak’s leading backers. He wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, “To restore stability and confidence, we need a leader who can be trusted to make difficult choices.”

Sunak’s job would be “Acting in the national interest, even when unpopular.”

Former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King spelled out what this means in an interview with the BBC. Asked if he would compare the cuts being planned to the austerity of former Tory Chancellor George Osborne between 2010-15, King replied, “In some ways it could be more difficult.”

He added, “That doesn’t make a very happy picture for the next few years, but what we need is a government that will tell us honestly there is a reduction in our national standard of living because we’ve decided to help Ukraine and confront Russia, and that means all of us are going to have to share the burden.”

Osborne’s cuts led to over 330,000 excess deaths in 2012-2019, according to “a conservative estimate” by the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH). Each was the brutal consequence of cuts to social services and an unprecedented stagnation of wages which left workers facing the worst cost-of-living catastrophe in living memory.

Sunak’s coronation is a devastating exposure of the actions of the Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer.

The Labour leader has spent the days since Truss’s resignation appealing to the Tory Party to “put country first” and help vote out the government, while promising to continue where the Tories left off in imposing austerity and waging war if necessary.

Speaking to Sky News Sunday, Shadow Levelling Up Secretary Lisa Nandy said of a vote of no confidence, “It’s entirely up to Tory MPs now… We are calling on them to put country before party and do the right thing.”

Starmer set out his right-wing pitch in an interview with the Sunday Times, making clear that Labour would make no change of direction in government, but offer the ruling class a change of personnel to provide “stability”.

Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of Britain's Labour Party makes his speech at the party's annual conference in Liverpool, England, September 27, 2022. [AP Photo/Jon Super]

He argued, “We need a serious, credible Labour government that will be the party of sound money and that is the single most likely thing to settle the market completely… there are investors with huge amounts of money who don’t have confidence in what this chaotic, shambolic party are doing.”

Warning that the Tory crisis “reduces the confidence that the markets and others have in our economy and it trashes our reputation abroad,” he added, “Talk to any business person who has travelled in the last few weeks and they will tell you”.

He summarised, “We all have a duty to reduce the risk and that is with a general election” and “an incoming Labour government, with Rachel Reeves as the chancellor, with absolutely clear fiscal rules.”

In the end, the Tories appealed to by Starmer lined up behind Sunak to make a show of a united Conservative Party. This may fall apart. Labour may yet find an audience for its appeal to Tory rebels for a no-confidence vote among disaffected Johnson supporters.

Tory MP Nadine Dorries tweeted, “Rishi and Penny, despite requests from Boris refused to unite which would have made governing utterly impossible. It will now be impossible to avoid a GE [General Election].”

Zac Goldsmith MP said, “I don’t see how we can have a 3rd new Prime Minister—& a policy programme that is miles away from the original manifesto—without going to the country.”

Another Tory MP, Chris Chope, told BBC Radio 4, “Unless we can have somebody as our leader in parliament who commands the support and respect of the parliamentary party, we are in effect actually ungovernable… a general election is essentially the only answer.”

British politics has been turned into this Byzantine system of palace coups, court intrigues and backroom deals because the real opposition, the working class, is kept excluded from political life by Labour and the trade union bureaucracy.

Millions of workers are pushing for strike action as they are plunged into desperation and poverty. Yet no more than 180,000 have been on strike at any one time—and that only for one day.

Franco-German tensions shape EU summit

Peter Schwarz

Thursday’s EU summit was marked by sharp tensions between Germany and France, who have set the tone in the European Union for 30 years.

As usual, the 27 leaders gathered in Brussels pledged their support for NATO’s war against Russia, applauded Ukrainian President Zelensky, who joined by video, and promised more arms deliveries. In addition, the EU wants to support the Ukrainian state budget with 18 billion euros in the coming year. Kiev can count on 1.5 billion euros from Brussels every month, vowed Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The summit participants, however, argued bitterly about who should bear the devastating economic consequences of the war. At the centre of the dispute was the question of how the EU should respond to the energy crisis triggered by the sanctions against Russia. Astronomical gas and electricity prices are driving millions of working families into poverty and ruining small and medium-sized businesses, while major corporations are closing plants or moving them to other countries where energy costs are lower.

Thus far, EU member states have responded to the energy crisis with national measures. They have tried to dampen the price increases sufficiently to prevent open rebellions or uprisings, and to ensure that at least some of their smaller businesses would survive. Essentially, this amounts to government support for prices and thus a subsidy of the large energy companies, which are making record profits.

French President Emmanuel Macron, left, greets German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as he arrives for an EU summit at the Palace of Versailles on March 10, 2022. [AP Photo/Michel Euler, File]

France, Italy and about two-thirds of the member states lobbied for a European gas price cap. It would mean that the EU and its members would only buy gas up to a certain price ceiling.

Germany vehemently opposes this. Chancellor Olaf Scholz justified his opposition by saying that the energy companies would then sell their gas elsewhere. What is decided must also work, he said.

“It should not mean there will be no gas afterwards,” he declared. “That doesn’t help anyone either.” He was supported by the Netherlands, which produces its own gas and imports large amounts of liquefied natural gas through its ports. He was also backed by Ireland, Hungary and some smaller countries.

Proponents of the gas price cap accuse Germany of using its economic power to gain a competitive advantage. In particular, the €200 billion energy price defence shield, which the German government adopted in September without consulting the EU to finance a gas price brake for Germany, has been met with outrage across Europe. It puts Germany in a position to obtain gas supplies even when prices are high, while poorer countries with high debt levels cannot raise such sums.

The conflict reached such intensity that French President Emmanuel Macron publicly attacked the German chancellor before the summit. “I’ve been trying to create unity for five years,” Macron said, accusing Germany of going it alone. He added, “It’s not good for Germany or for Europe if Germany isolates itself.”

Berlin and Paris cancelled a long-planned joint government meeting. Instead, President Macron and Chancellor Scholz will meet in Paris next Wednesday.

After an eleven-hour overnight session, the EU summit agreed to a formulaic compromise that accommodates both sides but leaves all concrete issues unresolved. The gas price cap has been replaced by a “temporary dynamic price corridor,” with the stipulation that it not jeopardize security of supply.

The aim is “to ensure that arbitrarily set prices do not make it impossible to obtain gas,” Scholz said.

The EU Commission is now to draw up a corresponding legislative proposal in cooperation with the specialist ministers of the member states. Joint European gas purchases should also be possible up to a certain amount.

Both Scholz and Macron expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the summit. “We have come together,” commented Scholz. Yet it is obvious that nothing has been resolved. The gas price cap is, moreover, just one of many issues dividing Paris and Berlin.

For example, there is a fierce dispute over the so-called Midcat pipeline. Berlin has long pushed to build the pipeline through the Pyrenees to supply Germany with natural gas via France, and later with green hydrogen from Spain. Paris has long blocked the project, citing possible environmental damage. Now Macron has reached an agreement with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to build a pipeline through the Pyrenees connecting Barcelona to Marseille instead.

Sharp tensions also exist over arms policy. Germany’s efforts to emerge as Europe’s leading military power are increasingly fueling misgivings in Paris. Whereas the French government had previously pushed for Germany to increase its arms spending, it is now outraged that Germany is buying US fighter jets and supplying tanks to Eastern Europe while the joint FCAS arms project falters.

There is a real problem of confidence, Stern magazine quotes French defence expert Gaspard Schnitzler as saying. “There is concern that Germany is gaining a foothold in Eastern European countries.”

Scholz’s recent proposal to build a European air defence system involving 15 countries is also seen as an affront in Paris, Schnitzler said. France, which is developing its own system with Italy, is not participating. “There is the impression that Germany is forging ahead alone,” Schnitzler added.

Differences also arose at the summit over relations with China, which summit participants discussed on Friday. The European External Action Service presented a five-page strategy paper on the issue, which advocates a confrontational course with China. It warns against “isolated and uncoordinated initiatives that could weaken our united stance.”

Eastern European EU members that are close to the US on foreign policy are pushing for a tougher stance on China. By contrast, Germany, France and Italy, some of whose companies have close ties to China and generate high profits there, are pursuing a more restrained course. Chancellor Scholz is traveling to Beijing with a large business delegation in early November, and President Macron is preparing a similar trip.

On this issue, too, the summit ended with a formulaic compromise. The EU wants to pursue a two-track approach in dealing with China, Council President Charles Michel reported. It wants to become more independent of China, but at the same time avoid a confrontational posture. Indirectly, he warned against unreservedly taking the American side in the conflict between the United States and China. The EU must develop its own strategy, he said.

The summit showed once again that the European Union embodies neither the “unity of the European peoples” nor “democracy.” It is a union of imperialist predators, each of which looks after itself. The war offensive against Russia and the associated spending for rearmament go hand in hand with brutal attacks on the working class and the exacerbation of national tensions that have already driven Europe into two world wars.