Mounting problems in Chinese economy will have global effects

Nick Beams

After a delay of a week, China statistics officials have released gross domestic product data for the third quarter, showing the economy grew by 3.9 percent over the year.

While this was higher than market expectations of 3.3 percent growth, it was well below the government target of 5.5 percent, itself the lowest rate in more than three decades.

A man wearing a protective mask walks in front of an electronic display board in the lobby of the Shanghai Stock Exchange building in Shanghai, China, Friday, Feb. 14, 2020. [AP Photo/AP Photo]

No official reason was given for the delay in the release of the data, but much commentary suggested it was because it would distract from the Chinese Communist Party congress held last week at which President Xi Jinping was given a third term as CCP leader.

The delay was accompanied by another surprise decision. Contrary to usual practice, the National Bureau of Statistics released the figures without holding a press conference to discuss the quarterly data.

The figures showed a series of mounting problems for the Chinese economy. Retail sales rose by only 2.5 percent, well below a forecast by Reuters of 3.3 percent.

Industrial production was up by 6.3 percent, better than expectations, and fixed investment increased by 5.9 percent over the first nine months of the year. However, the property market continued to contract under the impact of the unresolved financial problems of the giant developer Evergrande and other companies.

It has been estimated that property development accounts for more than 25 percent of the Chinese economy when its flow-on effects to other areas are considered. Property sales were down 22 percent, new construction starts have fallen by 38 percent and property investment has dropped 8 percent.

The conclusion is being drawn that the lower growth is not a conjunctural downturn but signifies a major shift in the Chinese economy. Some of the key issues were summed up in a blog post by Alex Brazier and Serena Jiang, two economists at the giant investment fund BlackRock.

As part of the international pressure on China from governments and financial interests to relax or even end its “zero COVID” policy, much of the blame for lower growth has been placed on public health measures instituted by Chinese authorities.

According to the BlackRock economists, the “big focus on Covid-related ups and downs in activity” ignores the more fundamental issues.

“The Chinese economy grew apace in the ten years prior to the pandemic, by 7.7 percent on average each year. But it now faces a set of acute challenges that … mean it is entering a stage of significantly slower growth.”

Covid controls were reducing potential economic output and, while they may be eased, the potential growth rate of the economy might have fallen to below 5 percent and could go even lower to just 3 percent by the end of the decade, they wrote.

Outlining the reasons, they continued: “Most importantly, the working age population, having grown rapidly is now shrinking. …Fewer workers mean the economy cannot produce as much without generating inflation, unless productivity growth accelerates.”

But that requires the development of new technologies which is being constricted by the sweeping restrictions imposed against China as part of the war preparations by the Biden administration.

Having crippled the tech giant Huawei, the US is extending the attack to the whole of the technology sector. These moves recall the oil embargo imposed on Japan in the late 1930s, which played a key role in sparking the war in the Pacific, part of World War II.

According to the BlackRock blog, “international trade and tech restrictions, as well as tighter regulations on companies operating in China, will dampen productivity growth.”

The growth slowdown, both in the short- and longer-term, will have a major effect on the global economy.

Drawing out the global implications of the shift in the Chinese economy, the BlackRock economists wrote: “In the past, when countries faced a slowdown, they could still rely on Chinese consumers and companies to buy up their cars, chemicals, machinery, fuel—even as consumers at home tightened their belts.”

And they could also rely on China to continue supplying an abundance of cheap products as the rapidly growing population enabled it to keep production costs low.

“Not so anymore. Recession is looming now for the US, UK and Europe. But this time, China won’t be coming to its own, or anyone else’s rescue,” they concluded.

The release of the GDP data coincided with a violent response in the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock markets on Monday to the consolidation of power by Xi and his appointment of his supporters to key posts.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Tech index fell 9.7 percent, its second-largest one-day fall, exceeded only by its slump in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Overall, the Hong Kong market dropped by more than 6 percent for the day.

The selloff extended to Wall Street where the NASDAQ Golden Dragon index, which tracks the shares of Chinese companies listed in the US, fell by a record 14.4 percent, leaving it down by around 50 percent so far this year.

In mainland China, markets fell by 3 percent and the renminbi dropped to a 14-year low against the US dollar.

The executive director of research at Kingston Securities, Dickie Wong, described the fall on the Hong Kong market as a “panic selling moment.” He attributed the fall to the Chinese CCP “leadership reshuffle and the tensions between China and the US” which continued to drag down sentiment and add to uncertainty.

The general response in the markets was that the appointments by Xi meant that he would continue with policies that were not “market friendly” under conditions where the key focus is on “national security” in response to the measures of the Biden administration.

The New York Times noted that in his opening address to the party congress on October 16, Xi mentioned security six times more than he referenced the economy.

Arthur Kroeber, head of research at Gavekal, a China-focused research firm, told the Times: “It is clear that before the party congress there had been a lot of wishful thinking in large swathes of the financial community that there would have been some kind of clear signal of commitment to the traditional liberal economic reform, and that has now been exposed as a delusion.”

The expected long-term decline in Chinese economic output as a result of the tech restrictions being imposed on it, and the immediate market selloff in response to the party congress, are both responses to the accelerated war drive against China by the US. As the recent National Security Strategy document makes clear, the US regards China as the greatest threat to its continued global dominance.

What is behind the pseudo-left’s renewed support for Lula in Brazil?

Tomas Castanheira

In one week, a second round of Brazil’s presidential elections will take place between current fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party (PT).

Lining up with the most traditional representatives of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, the parties of the pseudo-left have expressed their support for the PT candidate. From the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) to the Stalinists of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and Popular Unity (UP), and the Morenoites of the Unified Socialist Workers Party (PSTU), all are calling for a vote for Lula on October 30.

Lula campaigning in Rio de Janeiro [Photo: Marcio Menasce]

Amid the explosion of the world capitalist crisis, growing social inequality and the deepest political crisis in Brazil in four decades, the pseudo-left’s support for the PT is a vote for the ruling class to intensify levels of exploitation and break the ability of the working class to resist.

The last four years of Bolsonaro’s administration have revealed that a dictatorial project has a fertile base of support in the bourgeoisie, the upper echelons of the state, and especially among the armed forces and the police.

Aided by these reactionary forces, Bolsonaro has attempted to cultivate a fascist movement politically associated with the military and the legacy of the brutal 1964-85 US-backed dictatorship in Brazil. He has made systematic advances against democratic forms of rule, including by preparing an electoral coup should he be defeated at the polls next Sunday.

The PT and Lula are incapable of even minimally confronting the mortal threats posed to the Brazilian working class. On the contrary, they represent and defend the same economic, social, and political system that produces mass misery and the destruction of democratic rights: capitalism.

Lula’s candidacy has as its main thrust the defense of the interests of the financial elite and big business under an explosive global scenario of economic recession and the drive to world war. The PT and its capitalist backers argue that Bolsonaro is responsible for “institutional instability” that is harmful to the business environment and repels international investors.

The incompatibility of these capitalist goals with the most basic interests of the working class prevents the PT from making any meaningful social appeal. Challenging Bolsonaro for support within the right-wing camp, Lula is competing with Bolsonaro over who best embodies the ideals of religion, the fatherland, and its military.

At the same time, through the trade union federations, the PT is cultivating instruments to defend capital and repress workers’ struggles in the workplaces.

In recent years, the unions have overseen the implementation of massive attacks on the working class in Brazil: job and wage cuts, plant closures, destruction of labor rights, and, most recently, the homicidal COVID-19 policies in the workplaces. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), in the last decade more than a million industrial jobs were slashed and the average industrial worker’s salary was reduced from 3.5 to 3 minimum wages.

As the CUT and Força Sindical union federations explain in the “Industry Plan 10” that they presented as a program proposal for Lula’s potential government, their goal is not to promote struggles to achieve gains for the working class at the expense of the capitalist profits. On the contrary, they propose the creation of “multipartite” bodies—comprised of the companies, unions and the state—that will regulate labor power’s value in favor of the competitiveness of national capitalism.

These anti-worker organizations, “unions” in name only, update the tradition of corporatism, inaugurated in Brazil by Getúlio Vargas’ Estado Novo, that fostered a state-controlled unionism inspired by the police state model of the fascist trade unions.

The PT and the corporatist unions are not, in any real sense, workers’ organizations. Without a definitive break with them and their national-bourgeois political perspective, the Brazilian working class is unable to confront the increasing attacks on its living conditions and democratic rights.

The sabotage of this necessary political advance is the fundamental role played by the pseudo-left organizations. Faced with the global resurgence of class struggle, they desperately seek to sever the ties of Brazilian workers to the international working class and redirect them to the union bureaucracy and the bourgeois state.

The return of PSOL to PT’s coalition

In order to fully support a return of Lula to state power, the PSOL refused to launch its own presidential candidate for the first time in its history. Founded in 2004 by parliamentarians expelled from the PT for voting against an assault on pensions by Lula’s first administration, the party presented itself over the last two decades as the official “left opposition” to the PT.

The distinctive political trait of the PSOL was its explicit denial of the relevance of the working class in modern society and the promotion of middle-class identity politics in vogue in the universities. As a result, the party has forged itself as a central instrument for the current right-wing shift of the ruling class.

Adapting itself to the fascist moods resurging in bourgeois politics, in the 2020 elections the PSOL launched dozens of candidates from police and military backgrounds and allied itself locally with far-right parties such as the Christian Social Party (PSC). Guilherme Boulos, who ran in 2018 as the PSOL’s presidential candidate, used his platform, this time running in the second round for mayor of São Paulo, to call for an “anti-Bolsonaro front” that would attract “sectors of the old Brazilian right.”

In 2021, the PSOL acted alongside the PT to disorient mass demonstrations that exploded in opposition to the Bolsonaro government’s homicidal COVID-19 policies. They sought to transform the protests into mere instruments for the consolidation of their alliance with the right. PSOL president Juliano Medeiros attacked as “sectarian voices” anyone outraged at being forced to march alongside right-wing parties like the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB).

These criminal political services earned Medeiros and Boulos a prominent position in organizing Lula’s campaign and negotiating with the right-wing politicians and capitalist associations that gave him support.

The rapid lurch by the PSOL to the right exposes, above all, the various Pabloite tendencies—longtime renegades from Trotskyism—that claimed that the PSOL would be a vehicle for building socialist politics in Brazil.

Among such tendencies are different supporters of the Pabloite Unified Secretariat; the Morenoites of the International Workers Unity (IWU-FI), the International Socialist League (ISL) and the Trotskyist Fraction (FT-CI); and the “state capitalists” of the International Socialist Alternative (ISA) and the International Marxist Tendency (IMT).

Some of these tendencies concluded that the PSOL’s blunt support for Lula since the first round undermined its false image of “political independence” with which they seek to sell themselves to youth and workers seeking an alternative to capitalism. In response, they declared support and launched their candidates through the PSTU-led electoral front, named “Revolutionary Socialist Pole.”

The “Revolutionary Socialist Pole”: a new fraudulent alternative of the pseudo-left

On its website Esquerda Diário, the Revolutionary Workers Movement (MRT) promoted the “Revolutionary Socialist Pole” as a political front that stands for “class independence.” They claimed that it would fulfill a central role for the “necessary process of reorganization of the Brazilian left in the face of the even greater challenges ahead.”

The idea that the PSTU and its “Revolutionary Socialist Pole” stand for the political independence of the working class is yet another fraud promoted by the Morenoites of MRT. For the past seven years, the MRT called for building the PSOL, claiming that it would fulfill the same role they attribute to the PSTU today.

Despite its title, “A socialist program for Brazil!” the electoral program presented by the PSTU in the current elections revealed their clear orientation to the bourgeoisie and its state. In one of its points, they state: “We defend democratic liberties, but not bourgeois democracy. We will only defend that regime in the event of an attempted military coup.”

The idea that the threat of a fascist coup can be countered by defending Brazil’s rotting “bourgeois democracy” is radically contrary to the tradition of Trotskyism. Trotsky directly linked the crisis of bourgeois democratic forms of rule to the deadly crisis of the capitalist system itself, and explained that it could only be confronted through the international socialist revolution.

Attacking the same program advocated by the PSTU today, Trotsky wrote in 1929: “Democracy stands or falls with capitalism. By defending a democracy which has outlived itself, Social Democracy drives social development into the blind alley of fascism.”

The anti-Trotskyist position presented by the PSTU is not just a theoretical slip. It is firmly based on the reactionary tradition of Morenoism upon which it stands. That was precisely the criminal policy supported by Nahuel Moreno and his Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT) on the eve of the bloody 1976 military coup in Argentina.

By publicly supporting the right-wing government of Isabel Perón and the formal bourgeois democracy established by the Argentine ruling class in 1973 through its “process of institutionalization,” Moreno’s PRT acted to disarm the working class and pave the way for the fascist military coup.

Consistent with this reactionary program, the PSTU appealed resolutely to the repressive apparatus of the ruling class in the elections. “It is also necessary to have policy for the armed sectors of the state,” it declared in the program it presents as “socialist.” The PSTU has run military police officers as its candidates, among them Sergeant Guimarães for congressman, and even for state governor of Espírito Santo, Captain Sousa.

The reactionary defense of the bourgeois state by the PSTU springs not only from its own political history but also from its material bonds to the corporatist unions, which confront the effects of capitalist globalization with a bankrupt nationalist perspective.

Throughout the 26 pages of its program, the PSTU argues that the crisis faced by Brazilian workers should be solved through the “defense of sovereignty and a break with imperialism.” According to the PSTU, it is not world capitalism that faces a mortal crisis, but “the country [that] is in decay due to the rule of the multinationals,” which force Brazil to “have its economic center determined by the world market.”

In other words, imperialist capitalism does not need to be confronted through the unification of the global working class under the perspective of international socialism. Countries like Brazil can simply “break” from imperialism and develop their economies separately from the world market. This is a shameless replay of the Stalinist policy of socialism in one country, which Trotsky defined as a “reactionary utopia.” It is 10 times more reactionary today in the face of the profound integration achieved by the global productive forces.

This reactionary ideology reflects the PSTU’s practice in the unions it controls. In 2020, the party promoted through the Metalworkers Union of São José dos Campos a chauvinist campaign titled “Embraer for the Brazilians. Re-stratification now,” which brought together the main leaderships of bourgeois parties like the PT and the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), and appealed to the supporters of “national sovereignty” within the Brazilian military. They argued against the sale of the company, which manufactures commercial and military aircraft, to the US-based Boeing on the grounds of defending the “strategic interests of the Brazilian nation.”

The very essence of this nationalist program is, in fact, the quest for an accommodation to imperialism. This is demonstrated by the unconditional alignment of the International Workers League (IWL-FI), which has the PSTU as its main section, to the “strategic interests” of US imperialism in the global arena.

Fervently supporting US-NATO in its proxy war against Russia over Ukraine, the IWL-FI dismisses the threats of a nuclear exchange and demands “taking the war until the end.” It declares in one of its statements: “We believe that it is absolutely correct to mobilize to demand that the governments (especially the imperialist countries) give the Ukrainian resistance arms and all the necessary materials (ammunition, food, medicine) directly and unconditionally.”

Ebola infections take hold in Uganda’s capital Kampala

Benjamin Mateus

After assuring the press last week that Uganda’s densely populated capital remained Ebola-free and that the outbreak would be rolled back and wiped out by the year’s end, Health Minister Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng tweeted on Monday that the case count in Kampala had risen sharply to 14 after nine more people who had been under quarantine were confirmed with Sudan Ebola virus infection.

Aceng wrote, “Yesterday, October 23, 2022, nine individuals were confirmed positive for Ebola in Greater Kampala region [all under quarantine at Mulago hospital], bringing the total number of cases to 14 in the last 8 hours. The nine cases are contacts of the fatal case which came from Kassanda district and passed on in Mulago hospital.”

She added, “[These are] seven family members from Masanafu and one health worker who managed him [the deceased] in a private clinic together with his wife from Seguku [who was confirmed a day after giving birth]. Fellow Ugandans let’s be vigilant. Report yourself if you have had contact or know of a person who has had contact. Let’s cooperate to end Ebola.”

As for the first five cases confirmed 48 hours previously at the Mulago isolation unit, they have been transferred to the Entebbe Ebola Treatment Unit located 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the capital on the shore of Lake Victoria. They were among 60 people in isolation after exposure to known Ebola cases.

Although Mubende and Kassanda, the two districts in central Uganda at the epicenter of the current outbreak, were placed under a three-week lockdown, it remains to be seen if such necessary control measures will be implemented in the capital.

According to the Ugandan independent daily newspaper The Daily Monitor, cumulative confirmed cases have reached 84 in the country as of October 24, 2022. Adding the probable cases raises the figure to over 90 cases since the declaration of the outbreak on September 20.

As for the death toll, there have been at least 44 fatalities (28 confirmed), bringing the case fatality rate of confirmed cases between 30 to 50 percent. Among recent deaths is another health care worker, Dr. John Grace Walugembe, a laboratory technician at Mubende Regional Referral Hospital, who died last Sunday, raising the number of medical personnel succumbing to the Ebola infection to five.

Twenty-six people, including six health care workers, have recovered and have been discharged. However, the number of contacts has risen to at least 2,007 individuals, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Of these, 931 (46 percent) have completed the 21 days of follow-up, the incubation time for Ebola infection.

However, the World Health Organization (WHO) noted that at least eight confirmed Ebola cases have no known links with current cases. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters, “We remain concerned that there may be more chains of transmission and more contacts than we know about in the affected communities.”

Map of Ebola outbreak in Uganda and affected districts. [Photo: European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention]

The recent report of a confirmed Ebola infection in a female patient who fell ill and was being treated at a hospital in Mityana district, east of Kassanda, exemplifies the concerns raised by the WHO on the complex chains of infection. The patient’s mother had died a week prior inside a shrine and was buried in the Madudu subcounty in Mubende district. The infected woman’s child had also recently passed away at Manyi health center in Mityana district, raising suspicions of Ebola. The health workers who were in attendance have been isolated while health authorities attempt to trace all the contacts of this particular case.

Additionally, the recognition of Ebola cases in Kampala has raised the dial on the ECDC’s risk assessment for the European Union (EU) citizens living and traveling in the country. Before cases were confirmed in Kampala, they wrote that the current risk remains low in “the absence of transmission in densely populated areas (e.g., the capital city of Kampala).” They added, however, a cautionary note, “An increase in cases and, most importantly, the occurrence of chains of transmissions in populated areas and cities … would increase the likelihood of exposure of EU/EEA [European Economic Activity] citizens to Ebola virus.”

The treatment centers in Uganda are presently treating 19 active cases. In their effort to fight Ebola across the country, the government has set out to reinforce its public health complement by recruiting more than 1,000 health care workers from every sector of the field, including epidemiologists, physicians, pediatricians, laboratory technicians, health inspectors, psychologists and social workers.

Aceng told The Daily Monitor, “We are recruiting 1,490 additional staff, not only for Kampala but to support the entire response. This is in addition to those that are already in the system. Currently, we have many mobile laboratories which are ready for deployment and expect more from our partners. Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) is training more than 20 laboratory people that will be able to handle these laboratories.”

On top of the two isolation centers in and around the capital—Mulago hospital, with a capacity for 120 people, and Entebbe hospital, which can take in 62 patients—the government will build another isolation unit on the playground at Mulago Dental School that will accommodate 60 people. Construction was to commence on Monday and be ready by one month’s time, equipped with “all the amenities so that it operates like a full hospital,” said Aceng.

According to the US CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the WHO are expediting the “fill and finish” of around 8,000 doses of the Sabin Vaccine Institute experimental vaccine to be deployed as part of a clinical trial in Uganda.

Meanwhile, the Serum Institute of India is planning to manufacture up to 30,000 doses of Oxford’s Ebola vaccine, which has been shown to induce an immune response in both the Sudan and Zaire strains in their phase one trials. These are expected to be available by the end of November.

Most recently, there have been attempts to downplay the dangers of the deadly epidemic. Commenting on the “rapidly evolving” outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, the United Nations health agency’s regional director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, stated last week, “The Ministry of Health of Uganda has shown remarkable resilience and effectiveness and [is] constantly fine-tuning a response to what is a challenging situation.”

Dr. Ahmed Ogwell, the acting head of the Africa CDC, said at another press conference last Thursday, “[The Ebola] numbers that we are seeing do pose a risk for spread within the country and its neighbors.” But, as to the risk of cross-border contamination, he added, “it’s a manageable risk” and not one that presently requires a “full emergency mode.”

Yet, the predicted emergence of Ebola in Kampala raises the threat that the virus could become more enmeshed in dense human populations and break out to neighboring countries and continents. The experience with the 2014-16 outbreak that began in a small village in Guinea in December 2013 has significant parallels to the current outbreak in Uganda.

By March 2014, the Zaire ebolavirus had spread to the country’s capital city, Conakry, a city with 1.66 million inhabitants. By the summer, the virus was present in its neighboring countries, Liberia and Sierra Leone. On August 8, 2014, the WHO declared the deteriorating situation in West Africa a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

Before the epidemic was contained and Guinea was declared Ebola-free in June 2016, two and a half years after the first case was discovered, 28,652 confirmed and probable cases were reported, with 11,325 deaths. Besides small outbreaks in Nigeria and Mali and one case in Senegal, three countries in Europe—Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom—each had one case, while the United States had four cases either after exposure in West Africa or in a health care setting.

Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, with the imminent collapse of public health infrastructure, rising geopolitical tensions over the growing conflict in Ukraine and a resultant global economic crisis, concerns are mounting over the genuine threat posed by the sudden emergence on the world stage of a far deadlier pathogen than SARS-CoV-2 and monkeypox and the refusal of governments to adequately prepare or respond to it.

Three dead, six injured in St. Louis, Missouri school shooting, fortieth in the US this year

Cordell Gascoigne

A shooting Monday morning at the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School (CVPA) in St. Louis, Missouri left two people dead—a health teacher and a student—along with six wounded. The gunman was killed by police.

Police investigate the scene of a shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School Monday, Oct. 24, 2022, in St. Louis. [AP Photo/Jeff Roberson]

The teacher has been identified as 61-year-old Jean Kuczka, the student as Alexis Bell, and the shooter as 19-year-old Orlando Harris, a graduate of the school the year prior.

An active shooter call was placed to 911 where officers were notified of a man with a “long gun,” according to St. Louis Police Commissioner Mike Sack, inside the CVPA high school. Police arrived at 9:10 a.m. and entered the school where a firefight soon ensued, fatally wounding the suspect.

“While on paper we might have nine victims, eight who were transported and one remained, we have hundreds of others,” Sack said at the news conference. “Everyone who survived here is going to take home trauma.”

One survivor, mathematics teacher David Williams, reported Harris made the declaration, “You’re all going to fucking die!” Another reported the gunman having said he was “tired of everybody.”

Adrianne Bolden, a freshman, recounted his experiences to NBC News, explaining that he and his classmates initially thought an intruder drill was activated. However, upon hearing police sirens outside the building they realized it was no drill. “The teacher, she crawled over and she was asking for help to move the lockers to the door so they can’t get in,” he said.

Bolden continued, “[W]e had to wait a little longer before the assistant principal came up to one of the windows that was locked, and when we opened it, the teacher said to ‘come on’ and we all had to jump out of the window.” To escape the gunman, Bolden and his classmates jumped out of a window, risking sprained ankles or broken bones.

Another student, 16-year-old Taniya Gholston, told the St. Louis Police Dispatch, “All I heard was two shots and he came in there with a gun,” continuing ,“And I was trying to run and I couldn’t run. Me and him made eye contact but I made it out because his gun got jammed. But we saw blood on the floor.”

Another survivor, teacher Michael de Filippo, also reported, “Once you heard the boom, all the chuckling and laughing in the back of the room stopped.”

According to Sack, the doors at the school were locked, but did not elaborate on how Harris was able to enter. Sack said security guards were able to quickly alert cops who arrived within minutes with officers entering the school with “no hesitation,” engaging the suspect with gunfire, drawing a contrast to the 376 law enforcement officers that refused to engage 18-year-old Uvalde, Texas, elementary school gunman Salvador Ramos as he killed 19 children and two teachers.

During a news conference, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, a Democrat, issued the typical hollow words of a pre-written script regarding the school shooting, an all too familiar phenomenon in the United States, saying it was “a devastating and traumatic situation.”

Jones continued her remarks, saying, “Our children shouldn’t have to experience this; they shouldn’t have to go through active shooter drills in case something happens. And unfortunately, that happened today.”

The shooting at CVPA High School is the fortieth school shooting this year. According to Education Week, 2022 holds the record for most school shootings in a single year since the news organization began recording data in 2018. From January 2009 to May 2018, the United States experienced 288 school shootings.

As the days go on, the statistics become ever more harrowing. Since the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre in Littleton, Colorado, more than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence in school. Thirty-two were killed in the 2007 Virginia Tech University shootings in Blacksburg, Virginia, 26 in during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, 17 in 2018 at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and 19 children aged from 9 to 11 were gunned down along with two teachers, this year at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. These are but the deadliest school shootings over the past three decades.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, 2022 has tallied 36,154 deaths as a result of firearm: 16,552 by homicide and 19,602 by suicide. From 1999 to 2017, the CDC reported a 33 percent increase in suicides and in 2020, “the firearm homicide rate increased nearly 35 [percent], reaching its highest level since 1994...”

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.”