Former French prime minister under investigation over COVID-19 response

Jacques Valentin

Former French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe was heard on October 18 by the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), which judges crimes committed by French government ministers in office. After the indictment of his former health minister, Agnès Buzyn, on September 10, 2021, on charges of mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, Philippe was made an “assisted witness” but was not indicted.

Outgoing French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, left, speaks while newly named Prime Minister Jean Castex listens after the handover ceremony in Paris, Friday, July 3, 2020. French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named Jean Castex, who coordinated France's virus reopening strategy, as the country's new prime minister. [AP Photo/Michel Euler]

The CJR’s decision confirms that there is significant evidence that the Philippe government’s pandemic response involved state criminality. In French law, an “assisted witness” is a person implicated in a criminal case against whom there is evidence to suggest guilt in the offence. Philippe is an assisted witness for the offences of “endangering the life of others” and “voluntary abstention from fighting a disaster.”

Thousands of individuals, doctors and associations have filed complaints against members of the government for their role in the pandemic, which has killed more than 156,000 people in France and almost 2 million across Europe to date.

The CJR therefore opened an investigation in July 2020 into the two charges against Philippe. The investigation targets several ministers: Philippe, Buzyn, her successor as Health Minister, Olivier Véran, and the Philippe government’s spokesperson, Sibeth Ndiaye. As for French President Emmanuel Macron, whose responsibility in imposing the policy of 'living with the virus' is massive, he enjoys legal immunity as president.

The CJR ordered searches, which took place in October 2020, at the homes of Philippe, Véran, Buzyn and Ndiaye, Jérôme Salomon, the director general of health, and Geneviève Chêne, the director of Santé Publique France. Amongst the failures Philippe will be required to explain are:

• the drastic decrease in mask stocks before the pandemic;
• the failure to recommend wearing a mask at the beginning of the pandemic;
• the holding of municipal elections in March 2020;
• the failure to activate the Inter-ministerial Crisis Committee (CIC) in a timely manner;
• the failure to implement measures laid out in pre-existing pandemic plans.

Philippe delayed activating the CIC, even though he had signed a document less than a year earlier requiring the improvement of “government action in crisis management.” This document called for the ICC to be activated “sufficiently in advance, as soon as the extension of the crisis to several sectors is envisaged.” Despite alerts from China as early as December 2019 and the first cases in France in January 2020, the ICC was only activated on March 17, 2020, as France’s first confinement began.

The CJR's incoherent decision to grant Philippe the status of assisted witness while indicting Buzyn raises the most serious questions about the CJR procedure. It suggests that the CJR is trying to divert focus to Buzyn in order to clear the main culprits, Philippe and Macron.

The lawyer for CoeurVide19, an association of COVID-19 victims, Me Yassine Bouzrou, said, “We do not understand this decision, because it is obvious that the actions of Ms Agnès Buzyn ... could not have been done without the agreement of the head of government.” The lawyer added: “I remind you the standards courts [in France], after complaints were filed, did absolutely nothing.”

Buzyn, who was indicted on September 10, 2021, has already faced around 20 hearings and is trying to defend herself in the press.

This week, Le Monde published an article, “COVID-19: Agnès Buzyn’s truths about the pandemic response,” which tries to rehabilitate Buzyn, based on documentation she has gathered to clear her name. Shocking reports are glossed over in a few words, like the fact that “For fear of leaks, she insists on delivering her concerns to him [Macron] in private, outside the council of ministers.” According to Médiapart, until she left the health ministry, Buzyn did not issue any alerts in the council of ministers.

Buzyn's defence has no credibility. It presents her as a medical personality who is apolitical and was not listened to enough. In reality, she was appointed by Macron to the Ministry of Health in May 2017 because of her many connections in the ruling class. She has held a range of positions in the health administration, before being appointed at the end of 2015, under Hollande, to the High Authority for Health.

Above all, however, Buzyn's inaction directly raises the responsibility of Macron and Philippe. Buzyn did nothing because she concluded, correctly, that they did not care about the health of the French people, especially insofar as its preservation threatened to reduce the flow of profits to the banks. She is now before the CJR not at the initiative of Macron or Philippe, but at the initiative of civil groups.

The CJR's investigation reveals that the official narrative on COVID-19 is a tissue of lies. Since the end of the first lockdown, the media and the ruling elite have denounced the public health measures taken to halt the first wave of the virus. The political establishment promotes a false narrative that the chief danger the pandemic poses is that scientists may seek to stop it and thus save lives.

Since the pandemic began, pseudo-left parties in France like Olivier Besancenot's New Anti-capitalist Party and Nathalie Arthaud's Workers’ Struggle have joined their voices with those of the libertarians and the far right, hostile to any policy to eliminate the virus. A consensus in favor of “living with the virus,” at the expense of mass death, dominates capitalist media and the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties.

The deadly policy was pursued in France and across the European Union, which is determined to minimize social spending and enrich the financial aristocracy at the expense of public health. During the first strict lockdown—imposed in France in March 2020 in response to a wave of strikes across Italy and Europe, and which almost eliminated the circulation of the virus—Macron gave only miserly aid to the masses. On the other hand, following the first confinement, he helped design a bailout package that gave trillions of euros to the banks.

The EU pursued this policy, which fueled inflation and enriched French and European billionaires, at the expense of millions of lives and the health of workers. Indeed, Macron made no effort to ensure that the low level of infections in May 2020 was followed by a serious attempt to trace contacts and eliminate the spread of the virus, as in China. The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) cited the great Marxist Friedrich Engels to describe this policy as “social murder.”

Now, the French justice system has confirmed that there is evidence in the official documentation that this policy was a state crime, according to its own standards.

It is necessary therefore to issue the most serious warnings about the CJR investigation. The working class already has bitter experience that such investigations, carried out within the political framework of the capitalist state, end up clearing the main culprits.

Indeed, the CJR was created following the terrible health scandal of contaminated blood and the role of the big-business Socialist Party government of Mitterrand in the contamination of haemophiliacs in France by the AIDS virus in 1982-1985. Despite the convictions of health officials during the 1990s, the CJR cleared all PS politicians in 2003. The decision not to indict Philippe is the first step in a new attempt to cover up guilt at the highest levels of the state.

Attack on Russian fleet leads to collapse of deal ensuring vital grain shipments

Andre Damon

A swarm of Ukrainian air and naval drones carried out a massive attack Saturday on the Russian Black Sea Fleet docked at Sevastopol in Crimea, provoking the breakdown of a grain shipment agreement and threatening hunger for millions of people around the world.

Russia claimed that at least one of the drones was launched from the security zone guaranteed by the grain corridor.

Russian Black Sea fleet ships are anchored in one of the bays of Sevastopol, Crimea, March 31, 2014. (AP Photo, File) [AP Photo]

The Russian foreign ministry said the strikes were “directed, among other things, against Russian ships that ensure the functioning of the specified humanitarian corridor.” Following the attack, the ministry claimed that “the Russian side cannot guarantee the safety of civilian dry cargo ships participating in the ‘Black Sea Initiative.’”

The Black Sea Grain Initiative was an agreement between Russia and Ukraine, brokered by Turkey in July, that allowed the transportation of 9.5 million tons of food products out of Ukraine and onto global markets, against the backdrop of an unprecedented surge in food prices.

Like the bombing of the Kerch Bridge and the assassination of Russian fascist ideologue Daria Dugina, the announcement of the Ukrainian attack followed a similar pattern. The New York Times reported that Ukrainian forces carried out the attack, confirming the assertions of Russian officials.

The Times’ confirmation came in the form of an article published Saturday, “With Western Weapons, Ukraine Is Turning the Tables in an Artillery War,” which declared, “The new capabilities were on display in the predawn hours Saturday when Ukrainian drones hit a Russian vessel docked in the Black Sea Fleet’s home port of Sevastopol, deep in the occupied territory of Crimea, once thought an impregnable bastion.”

As with previous attacks, Ukrainian officials denied being involved, absurdly claiming Russia blew up its own ships. Other US reports treated the claims that Ukrainian forces were involved as unsubstantiated allegations by the Kremlin.

As with previous attacks on Russian forces in Crimea, both sides had an incentive to conceal the extent and impact of the Ukrainian attacks on Russian forces.

The Guardian, reviewing footage published by Ukrainian journalists, claimed that Russia’s Black Sea flagship vessel, the Admiral Makarov, was damaged in the incident.

The Guardian reported that the “frigate was one of three Russian ships to have been hit on Saturday. A swarm of drones—some flying in the air, others skimming rapidly along the water—struck Russia’s navy at 4.20 a.m.”

The newspaper continued, “Ukrainian officials said it was unclear if the Admiral Makarov was badly crippled, or had escaped with light damage. Unconfirmed reports said its hull was breached and radar systems smashed.”

The Guardian citied Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko, who concluded, “There is a good chance that several ships are not just damaged but sunk.”

The incident follows the sinking in April of the Moskva, then the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, which was the first time Russia had lost a flagship since 1905. It was the second-largest vessel to be sunk in war since 1945.

Global grain markets are expected to see a surge in food prices Monday when trading resumes following the suspension of the grain deal, with experts warning about “catastrophic consequences” for low-income countries.

“We’ll see a substantial spike in prices” as a result, Andrey Sizov, managing director of Black Sea grain consultancy SovEcon, told the Financial Times.

Arif Husain, chief economist at the UN World Food Program, told the FT that “dozens of countries” would be affected by the disruption of global grain supplies. “In the good times [this] would be bad,” he said, “but in the current state of the world, it’s something that needs to be resolved as soon as possible.”

Responding to the announcement by Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared, “In suspending this arrangement, Russia is again weaponizing food in the war it started, directly impacting low- and middle-income countries and global food prices, and exacerbating already dire humanitarian crises and food insecurity.”

It was clear, however, that the main purpose of the Ukrainian attack was to blow up the deal, creating the pretext for intensified US/NATO military intervention.

Earlier this year, figures such as retired Admiral James Stavridis, the former NATO supreme allied commander Europe, called for the United States to carry out an attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the name of establishing a “humanitarian corridor” for grain shipments. The announcement of the agreement between Russia and Ukraine to ship grain from the Black Sea had temporarily put a stop to these calls.

As if choreographed beforehand, the breakdown of the grain deal was immediately met with demands within the US political establishment for direct US naval intervention in the Black Sea, which would risk triggering a shooting war between Russian and US naval vessels.

“This may lead the international community to escort the grain shipments in defiance of Russian threats,” Stavridis wrote on Twitter Saturday.

In an editorial Sunday, the Wall Street Journal wrote, “The best response is for the U.S. to organize a coalition of the willing to escort grain shipments from Odessa and through the Black Sea. It needn’t be a NATO operation, though the U.S. would have to lead it.”

Last week, Newsweek carried an article headlined “Finland Will Allow NATO to Place Nuclear Weapons on Border With Russia,” which reported that Finnish defense officials gave a “commitment” to NATO that they would not seek “restrictions or national reservations” on the placement of NATO nuclear weapons in the country’s application to join NATO is accepted.

The collapse of the Black Sea grain agreement will have devastating consequences for the working people of the whole world, who are being made to pay the cost of the US-NATO effort to militarily encircle and defeat Russia.

Over 150 dead in Halloween disaster in South Korea

Ben McGrath

A crowd crush of people in Seoul, South Korea has left at least 154 people dead and another 149 people injured. The tragedy took place Saturday night as people, mostly in their late teens and 20s, gathered for Halloween parties in the city’s Itaewon district, known for its nightlife. It is the single largest loss of life in the country since the Sewol Ferry sinking in 2014. 

Rescue workers and firefighters try to help injured people near the scene of a crowd surge during Halloween festivities in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, Oct. 30, 2022. [AP Photo/Lee Jin-man]

The disaster took place in an alleyway off Itaewon’s main road near the Hamilton Hotel, located by the district’s subway station. The alley is only about 3.2 meters across, and was unable to handle the large numbers of people gathered there. Many of the side streets and alleys in Itaewon are similarly narrow, in addition to being very hilly, leading to over-crowding even on a normal Saturday night.

Authorities have announced an investigation into the exact cause and whether businesses where the tragedy occurred had followed safety regulations. Despite no clear evidence, the corporate media is already trying to blame the victims themselves. Some have suggested that people rushed to catch a glimpse of a celebrity rumoured to be making an appearance, or even the unlikely possibility that masses of people were under the influence of drugs, in a country where illegal drug use is uncommon.

A man in his 20s injured in the disaster, identified only by his family name Kim, told the media, “People started pushing around 10:30 p.m. and then from around 10:40 people fell over one-by-one and were piled 5 or 6 bodies high.”

A woman in her 20s stated that she and a friend “were going to the subway station, but there were so many people, we couldn’t move. We were pushed back and forth repeatedly and then, as people suddenly pushed us, my friend was knocked to the ground.”

People accused nearby stores and bars of refusing to allow people inside as they attempted to escape the crowds. One witness stated, “Bars in Itaewon put tables in the street and people coming and going were tangled up in the more cramped spaces. People collapsed and tried to escape into nearby stores, but they were thrown out into the street and told that it was closing time, and more casualties occurred.”

Whatever the exact cause, basic safety measures were clearly not in place to deal with the large influx of people for the Halloween festivities in Itaewon. The district is popular with both young Koreans and foreigners living in South Korea, and is a traditional gathering spot during holidays and events. Among the identified victims were at least 26 foreigners from 14 countries, including from China, Japan, Russia, the United States, France, Uzbekistan, Iran, Australia, and Norway.

The large crowds Saturday night were predictable, especially as the right-wing Yoon Suk-yeol government has misled people into believing the COVID-19 pandemic is over and removed nearly all virus mitigation measures. It was one of the largest public gatherings since the pandemic began and is indicative of the official approach to public safety, with tens of thousands in confined spaces without masks or other precautions, all in the pursuit of profits.

On average each day, 35,000 people continue to be infected with the deadly and debilitating virus while two dozen die, according to official numbers. The complete removal of pandemic safety measures goes hand-in-hand with the disregard for public safety in other aspects of life.

On Sunday, Yoon stated the tragedy “should never have happened,” saying, “As president responsible for the lives and safety of the people, my heart is heavy and it is difficult to contain my sorrow.” He announced, “The government will establish a period of national mourning until the handling of the accident is complete. It will place the highest national priority on managing the accident and on follow up measures.”

However, all of this is the pro forma official response to such tragedies. Whatever the government’s investigation finds, responsibility for the tragedy will be swept under the rug and none of the root causes of the disaster will be addressed. Anyone held liable will merely be used as a scapegoat. There will be no serious efforts to put crowd control and other measures in place for future events, despite the responsibility of local officials to ensure public safety.

Furthermore, while the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea and its allies will almost certainly seize on this tragedy to paint President Yoon as “incompetent” in order to further their electoral ambitions. However, Saturday’s disaster is ultimately the result of the profit system, which both the Democrats and ruling People Power Party defend.

South Korea's entire ruling class has a long history of ignoring safety for profits. This has led to numerous tragedies, including the Sampoong Department Store collapse in 1995, which killed 502 people; the Sewol Ferry sinking in 2014, which killed 304 people, mostly high school students; and an April 2020 fire at an Icheon construction site that killed 39 irregular and subcontract workers.

Similar incidents have taken place in other parts of the world in recent years, including last November at the Astroworld musical festival in Texas, United States, in which ten people were killed in a crowd crush. Following that tragedy, Keith Still, a professor at the University of Suffolk, specializing in the applications of crowd safety and crowd risk analysis, explained in an NPR interview, “Once you’re in a high-density surge environment, there’s very little you can do as an individual. It is up to things like the building design or the operations manager or the safety design of any system to make sure they’ve got a safe environment.”

Does the U.S. Chip Ban on China Amount to a Declaration of War in the Computer Age?

Prabir Purkayastha

Sanctions can at best slow China from taking the global lead in chip manufacturing. At their worst, they will raise the chances of chip wars spilling into a physical or economic sphere.

The United States has gambled big in its latest across-the-board sanctions on Chinese companies in the semiconductor industry, believing it can kneecap China and retain its global dominance. From the slogans of globalization and “free trade” of the neoliberal 1990s, Washington has reverted to good old technology denial regimes that the U.S. and its allies followed during the Cold War. While it might work in the short run in slowing down the Chinese advances, the cost to the U.S. semiconductor industry of losing China—its biggest market—will have significant consequences in the long run. In the process, the semiconductor industries of Taiwan and South Korea and equipment manufacturers in Japan and the European Union are likely to become collateral damage. It reminds us again of what former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

The purpose of the U.S. sanctions, the second generation of sanctions after the earlier one in August 2021, is to restrict China’s ability to import advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors. Though the U.S. sanctions are cloaked in military terms—denying China access to technology and products that can help China’s military—in reality, these sanctions target almost all leading semiconductor players in China and, therefore, its civilian sector as well. The fiction of ‘barring military use’ is only to provide the fig leaf of a cover under the World Trade Organization (WTO) exceptions on having to provide market access to all WTO members. Most military applications use older-generation chips and not the latest versions.

The specific sanctions imposed by the United States include:

• Advanced logic chips required for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing
• Equipment for 16nm logic and other advanced chips such as FinFET and Gate-All-Around
• The latest generations of memory chips: NAND with 128 layers or more and DRAM with 18nm half-pitch

Specific equipment bans in the rules go even further, including many older technologies as well. For example, one commentator pointed out that the prohibition of tools is so broad that it includes technologies used by IBM in the late 1990s.

The sanctions also encompass any company that uses U.S. technology or products in its supply chain. This is a provision in the U.S. laws: any company that ‘touches’ the United States while manufacturing its products is automatically brought under the U.S. sanctions regime. It is a unilateral extension of the United States’ national legal jurisdiction and can be used to punish and crush any entity—a company or any other institution—that is directly or indirectly linked to the United States. These sanctions are designed to completely decouple the supply chain of the United States and its allies—the European Union and East Asian countries—from China.

In addition to the latest U.S. sanctions against companies that are already on the list of sanctioned Chinese companies, a further 31 new companies have been added to an “unverified list.” These companies must provide complete information to the U.S. authorities within two months, or else they will be barred as well. Furthermore, no U.S. citizen or anyone domiciled in the United States can work for companies on the sanctioned or unverified lists, not even to maintain or repair equipment supplied earlier.

The global semiconductor industry’s size is currently more than $500 billion and is likely to double its size to $1 trillion by 2030. According to a Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting Group report of 2020—“Turning the Tide for Semiconductor Manufacturing in the U.S.”—China is expected to account for approximately 40 percent of the semiconductor industry growth by 2030, displacing the United States as the global leader. This is the immediate trigger for the U.S. sanctions and its attempt to halt China’s industry from taking over the lead from the United States and its allies.

While the above measures are intended to isolate China and limit its growth, there is a downside for the United States and its allies in sanctioning China.

The problem for the United States—more so for Taiwan and South Korea—is that China is their biggest trading partner. Imposing such sanctions on equipment and chips also means destroying a good part of their market with no prospect of an immediate replacement. This is true not only for China’s East Asian neighbors but also for equipment manufacturers like the Dutch company ASML, the world’s only supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines that produces the latest chips. For Taiwan and South Korea, China is not only the biggest export destination for their semiconductor industry as well as other industries, but also one of their biggest suppliers for a range of products. The forcible separation of China’s supply chain in the semiconductor industry is likely to be accompanied by separation in other sectors as well.

The U.S. companies are also likely to see a big hit to their bottom line—including equipment manufacturers such as Lam Research Corporation, Applied Materials, and KLA Corporation; the electronic design automation (EDA) tools such as Synopsys and Cadence; and advanced chip suppliers like Qualcomm, Nvidia, and AMD. China is the largest destination for all these companies. The problem for the United States is that China is not only the fastest-growing part of the world’s semiconductor industry but also the industry’s biggest market. So the latest sanctions will cripple not only the Chinese companies on the list but also the U.S. semiconductor firms, drying up a significant part of their profits and, therefore, their future research and development (R&D) investments in technology. While some of the resources for investments will come from the U.S. government—for example, the $52.7 billion chip manufacturing subsidy—they do not compare to the losses the U.S. semiconductor industry will suffer as a result of the China sanctions. This is why the semiconductor industry had suggested narrowly targeted sanctions on China’s defense and security industry, not the sweeping sanctions that the United States has now introduced; the scalpel and not the hammer.

The process of separating the sanctions regime and the global supply chain is not a new concept. The United States and its allies had a similar policy during and after the Cold War with the Soviet Union via the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) (in 1996, it was replaced by the Wassenaar Arrangement), the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile Control Regime, and other such groups. Their purpose is very similar to what the United States has now introduced for the semiconductor industry. In essence, they were technology denial regimes that applied to any country that the United States considered an “enemy,” with its allies following—then as now—what the United States dictated. The targets on the export ban list were not only the specific products but also the tools that could be used to manufacture them. Not only the socialist bloc countries but also countries such as India were barred from accessing advanced technology, including supercomputers, advanced materials, and precision machine tools. Under this policy, critical equipment required for India’s nuclear and space industries was placed under a complete ban. Though the Wassenaar Arrangement still exists, with countries like even Russia and India within the ambit of this arrangement now, it has no real teeth. The real threat comes from falling out with the U.S. sanctions regime and the U.S. interpretation of its laws superseding international laws, including the WTO rules.

The advantage the United States and its military allies—in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and the Central Treaty Organization—had before was that the United States and its European allies were the biggest manufacturers in the world. The United States also controlled West Asia’s hydrocarbon—oil and gas—a vital resource for all economic activities. The current chip war against China is being waged at a time when China has become the biggest manufacturing hub of the world and the largest trade partner for 70 percent of countries in the world. With the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries no longer obeying the U.S. diktats, Washington has lost control of the global energy market.

So why has the United States started a chip war against China at a time that its ability to win such a war is limited? It can, at best, postpone China’s rise as a global peer military power and the world’s biggest economy. An explanation lies in what some military historians call the “Thucydides trap”: when a rising power rivals a dominant military power, most such cases lead to war. According to Athenian historian Thucydides, Athens’ rise led Sparta, the then-dominant military power, to go to war against it, in the process destroying both city-states; therefore, the trap. While such claims have been disputed by other historians, when a dominant military power confronts a rising one, it does increase the chance of either a physical or economic war. If the Thucydides trap between China and the United States restricts itself to only an economic war—the chip war—we should consider ourselves lucky!

With the new series of sanctions by the United States, one issue has been settled: the neoliberal world of free trade is officially over. The sooner other countries understand it, the better it will be for their people. And self-reliance means not simply the fake self-reliance of supporting local manufacturing, but instead means developing the technology and knowledge to sustain and grow it.

Sunak prepares scorched earth UK November budget

Robert Stevens

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is readying a UK autumn budget based on up to £50 billion in spending cuts or tax rises.

According to reports it is set to be more devastating for the working class than Conservative government budgets imposed by then Chancellor George Osborne between 2010–16, dubbed by his Prime Minister David Cameron the “age of austerity”, which led to the excess deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Sunak’s Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was brought into government nine days ago at the behest of the financial markets and Bank of England, in the last days of the short-lived Truss government, in order to tear up her unfunded tax giveaway budget for big business and replace it with “eye-wateringly” brutal austerity. Naming his new cabinet this week, Sunak ensured Hunt remained in place.

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss appoints Jeremy Hunt as her new Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cabinet Room of No. 10 Downing Street. October 14, 2022 [Photo by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Hunt intended to unveil a debt-cutting austerity plan on October 31, but on Wednesday this was put back to November 17 on the basis that it would become a standard Autumn Statement—in all essentials a full budget.

The Financial Times pointed out that Hunt was able to do this as he had thrown out his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng’s giveaways entirely based on borrowing, thus immediately lowering government borrowing costs in the bond markets. The “calmer markets” had given “the government some economic breathing space”, it stated.

On Thursday, the Telegraph reported an assessment by the Resolution Foundation that, based on “the interest rate paid on government gilts reducing rapidly – and the international gas price falling… the delay of the fiscal statement would save the Treasury between £10 billion and £15 billion. Ministers had been facing an estimated black hole in the Treasury’s finances of about £35 billion.” The newspaper declared, “there is growing confidence in Downing Street that more minor changes to public finances than previously thought may be necessary.”

Within 24 hours all projections of smaller cuts were blown out of the water, with three national newspapers and the BBC reporting that the spending cuts and tax rises required would be “up to £50 billion a year.”

Relaying the government’s real intentions and allaying the markets, the FT reported, “Ministers were alarmed some media coverage on Thursday suggested that swingeing spending cuts and tax rises could be avoided on November 17, because of an improved outlook for government borrowing costs.” All four media outlets cited a “Treasury source” insisting, “Markets have calmed somewhat, but the picture is still bleak… People should not underestimate the scale of this challenge, or how tough the decisions will have to be. We’ve seen what happens when governments ignore this reality.”

The government calculated that a delay in its budget plans would mean the Office for Budget Responsibility would base forecasts not on data that included the economic volatility of Truss’s time in office, but on calmer conditions. However, in reporting the new £50 billion cuts plan Friday, the Times noted, “The OBR has yet to provide final forecasts but is expected to downgrade significantly its March forecast of growth of 1.8 percent next year. The Bank of England and other forecasters are now expecting a recession and the OBR may follow suit.”

The cost of borrowing is still much more expensive for the government than at the beginning of the year, with the Times pointing out, “Although yesterday ten-year gilt yields were back at similar levels to before Truss’s mini-budget, at about 3.5 percent, this compares to 1.5 percent in March.”

The FT reported, “The huge [upcoming] budgetary tightening of about 2 percent of gross domestic product would be the equivalent of chancellor George Osborne’s austerity Budget of 2010 if most of the amount was secured through spending cuts.” It added, “Sunak and Hunt met on Thursday to discuss the ‘pretty grim’ fiscal outlook”.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (left) and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt (centre) at the first Cabinet meeting in 10 Downing Street the morning after assuming office. October 26, 2022, London. [Photo by Number 10 Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Everything is being considered for the axe, including welfare benefits and the state pension, relied on by tens of millions, by keeping payment increases well below the rate of inflation. According to Bloomberg’s Alex Wickham and Joe Mayes, based on sources at the Treasury and Office for Budget Responsibility, “The government has drawn up a menu of 104 options to cut spending to get public finances back onto a sustainable track.”

The Telegraph’s Christopher Hope commented Wednesday that he was told by “informed sources that the plans worked up by the Chancellor show that the Treasury is looking at double-digit spending cuts across the board for all departments. One said that Mr Hunt has penciled in cuts between 10 percent and 15 percent.”

Hunt, who carried out brutal cuts as health secretary (2012-2018) in the Cameron/May governments—demanding £22 billion in cuts—declared after ripping up Kwarteng’s budget “I’m going to be asking every government department to find further efficiency savings.” On Thursday, the Times reported that Hunt met with Osborne, “as he draws up an autumn statement expected to set out painful spending cuts and tax rises.”

Sunak and Hunt have been careful not to adhere to any previous spending commitments including a manifesto pledge to maintain the state pension “triple lock.”

Maintaining the triple lock means the state pension and pension credit benefit rise each year in line with the highest of three possible figures: CPI inflation, average earnings, or 2.5 percent. CPI inflation currently stands at 10.1 percent.

Were the budget only to increase benefits in line with earnings, they will rise by just 5.5 percent, costing the poorest around £7 billion annually. According to the Resolution Foundation, tying to earnings would result in annual savings of £5.6 billion if applied to the state pension and pension credit. An additional £2.4 billion would be cut from public spending if the formula was applied to working-age benefits such as universal credit.

Given the importance of the vote of pensioners to the collapsing electoral position of the Conservatives, and with some of the party’s MPs pledged to vote against a budget that axes the triple lock, Tory-backing newspapers are demanding larger cuts elsewhere instead. On Friday the rabidly right-wing Daily Express launched a front-page campaign calling on readers to “Join Crusade to Save Triple Lock”.

Central to these populist calculations is that the government has already saved at least £1.6 billion in pension costs due to the mass deaths of over-65s during the pandemic. Hundreds are still dying from COVID every week, the overwhelming majority pensioners.

According to Office for Budget Responsibility data published in March 2021, with 144,000 lives already lost at that stage to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, the Treasury had factored in paying £1.5 billion less in state pensions. The OBR stated that “with virus-related deaths rising sharply again in recent months, we have revised up the number of excess pensioner-age deaths in 2020-21 from 90,000 in our November forecast to around 100,000 in this one.” As a result, spending on pensions fell by £600 million in 2020/21 and £900 million in 2021/22, relative to its March 2020 forecast.

Since March last year COVID deaths have surged to over 209,000, with tens of thousands more pensioners dead.

Savage austerity is being imposed on a working class already bled white. Out of a 68 million UK population, 14.5 million people live in poverty, including 8.1 million working-age adults, 4.3 million children and 2.1 million pensioners.

Research published in September by the Legatum Institute found that even if the previous energy cap on annual average bills stayed at £1,971, another 1.3 million people would be thrown into poverty. Under measures enacted by Truss, average household prices were capped at £2,500. In junking Kwarteng’s budget, Hunt ditched plans to extend the cap beyond next April, when bills are predicted to shoot up to over £4,300 annually.

The most accurate level of inflation, RPI, is heading towards 13 percent, but this is being outstripped by food inflation which has soared to 14.5 percent. For the poorest who rely on budget food items it is even worse, with the cost of these rising by 17 percent.

Hip hop celebrity, millionaire Kanye West emerges as full-blown anti-Semite

Nick Barrickman

Hip hop celebrity and multi-millionaire Kanye West has revealed himself to be a full-blown anti-Semite and fascist over the past few weeks, producing widespread outrage.

The furor erupted when West premiered a line of clothing at his Yeezy Paris Fashion Week show in early October, featuring the phrase “White Lives Matter” emblazoned on it. The phrase is widely associated with neo-Nazi circles. The clothing drew swift condemnation.

Celebrity, rapper, millionaire, Ye/Kanye West at the red carpet of the Met Gala in New York City, New York in 2019. [Photo by Cosmopolitan UK / CC BY 3.0]

This episode did not stop West, who then posted an October 8 screed on Twitter declaring he would go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” making use of a military term (“defcon 3”) meaning “force readiness increased above normal levels.”

The rapper then asserted that Jews “have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.” These comments resulted in West being barred from his accounts on Twitter and Instagram, where he had posted similar comments.

West doubled down a week later on the Drink Champs podcast, blaming “Jewish Zionists” for the media backlash. “Jewish people have owned the Black voice,” he ranted on the podcast. “Either it’s through us wearing the Ralph Lauren shirt, or it’s all of us being signed to a record label, or having a Jewish manager, or being signed to a Jewish basketball team, or doing a movie on a Jewish platform like Disney.” Despite this, West claimed that he, “as the blood of Christ,” could not be considered an anti-Semite.

West also referenced the views of far-right propagandist and personal friend Candace Owens on the podcast, falsely claiming the 2020 police murder of George Floyd was caused by the presence of drugs in his system rather than by brutal, deadly force on the part of law enforcement.

West has received support from and emboldened ultra-right elements. On Saturday, a group of neo-Nazis hung a banner from an I-405 freeway overpass in Los Angeles proclaiming “Kanye is right about the Jews.” They were photographed giving the Nazi salute. What precedent is there for a major American entertainer to be celebrated by fascist trash?

CNN reported Thursday that “[s]everal people who were once close to” West revealed the celebrity had “long been fascinated” by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. 

CNN cited an unnamed business executive who had broken ties with West due to his “obsession” with the fascist leader. “He would praise Hitler by saying how incredible it was that he was able to accumulate so much power and would talk about all the great things he and the Nazi Party achieved for the German people,” the individual alleged.

Various businesses have severed links to West. In the past week, shoe designer Balenciaga, Vogue, the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), the MRC Entertainment studio, Amazon, Adidas and Gap have cut ties with the 45-year-old rapper. According to Forbes, the loss of West’s Adidas partnership cost him over $1 billion, capping “a stunning, self-induced downfall for one of the brashest and most volatile personalities to have graced Forbes’ pages.”

This followed a statement by media entertainment CEO Ari Emanuel, published in the Financial Times, calling on businesses to separate themselves from West.

Music streaming platform Spotify declared it would not remove West’s music. According to Spotify executive Daniel Ek, the de-platforming of West’s music, which has 51 million listeners on the service, was “up to his label,” and that the rapper’s songs violated no policy. West’s former label, Def Jam, ended its contract with him in 2021, and the rapper’s current label G.O.O.D. Music is self-owned.

West’s behavior is the latest in a series of inflammatory outbursts over the years. The rapper’s fame and wealth, reaching far beyond his actual talent, has played a central and negative role here.

In 2018, the World Socialist Web Site commented on West’s promotion of President Donald Trump and his description on TMZ Live of American slavery as “a choice” that black people had personally made. Former TMZ staff member Van Lathan recently noted on a podcast that West had also made pro-Nazi remarks during his slavery rant at the publication.

Donald Trump and Ye/Kanye West meeting in the White House on October 11, 2018. [Photo: The White House]

“He said something like, ‘I love Hitler, I love Nazis.’ Something to that effect when he was there,” Lathan said to the “Higher Learning” podcast. He added, “they took it out of the interview for whatever reason. It wasn’t my decision.”

In 2013, the rapper wore a jacket adorned with the Confederate flag, famously remarking that “It’s my flag now.” The rapper-producer’s music has contained various affronts, including sampling the famous anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit” for a paranoid, narcissistic song about partying, drug usage and other trivial subjects (2013’s “Blood on the Leaves”). West has made innumerable self-aggrandizing statements and gestures since the beginning of his career.

Prior to his embrace of the far-right, West’s public displays of backwardness and money worship were celebrated and encouraged by the media, “left” publications included.  For these types, such behavior was entirely excusable, when carried out under the banner of racial politics.

As the Socialist Worker, speaking for the entire middle class left, proclaimed in 2009:

It can never be forgotten that Kanye is indeed a Black man living in a white man’s world. He is a performer in an industry that is greatly dominated by exploitation and oppression. As LBoogie over at Democracy and Hip-Hop Project explains: “Kanye’s arrogance, his braggadocio, his loud-mouth interventions are scattered pieces of an anti-racist sentiment that historically has been a rallying cry for people of color to reclaim what is rightfully ours.”

As recently as six months ago, Jacobin magazine was defending West, asserting that his “turbulent antics and generalized disorder” were “an essential piece of the remarkable—and remarkably chaotic—career he has built.”

His former champions are embarrassed now that West, still possessed of over $400 million in personal wealth despite his falling out with his corporate sponsors, has openly made common cause with far-right and fascistic elements.

The advocates of identity politics have continued to make excuses for West in light of the recent developments. “[I]t’s all very well to cancel Ye, but as a Black purveyor of anti-Blackness and antisemitism, he was low-hanging fruit,” writes the Washington Post’s Karen Attiah. The critic demands that blacks be given the “structural power” to “cancel the rabidly racist White men in our culture and politics, just as we’ve done for an ignorant Black rapper who makes really ugly shoes.”

Apologists for West attribute his anti-Semitic rants to mental problems. Fascist demagogues have not generally been known for their psychological stability, but West’s outburst is hardly an isolated event. The WSWS only 11 days ago took note of a rant by Donald Trump and the overall growth of anti-Semitism in the US.

The WSWS perspective pointed out that anti-Jewish propaganda has invariably been used in the modern era as “a weapon of the capitalist class aimed at diverting class tensions and providing a convenient scapegoat for mass anger over deteriorating social conditions” and that “anti-Semitism assumes a particularly toxic character during times of extreme social and economic crisis, emerging in explosions of violence.”

West comes from a middle-class background; his mother is a former college professor. He is quite conscious about what he is doing, or as conscious as such a person can be.

Many media publications have sought to separate West’s crude comments from his supposedly “genius” musical persona, in the hopes that he might recover his reputation (and money-making powers). “Eventually, he finds some way to make a comeback, be it via apologizing or releasing a game-changing album,” speculates a commentary in the Washington Post.

Whatever West’s individual fate, a Rubicon has been crossed. A popular cultural icon has openly embraced fascist ideology. Elements in the upper-middle class and ruling elite are reviving all the political filth of the 20th century as the capitalist system enters into terminal crisis.

New COVID wave in New Zealand

Tom Peters

COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalisations are continuing to increase sharply in New Zealand. A third Omicron wave is spreading unimpeded as a result of the Labour Party-led government removing all public health measures.

Yesterday the Ministry of Health reported 3,168 new cases, up from 2,430 on the same day last week—a 30 percent increase. This included 379 new reinfections, 12 percent of the total. There were 272 people in hospital with COVID, up from 203 a week earlier.

Medical staff talks to a shopper at pop-up community COVID-19 testing station in Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, April 17, 2020. [AP Photo/Mark Baker]

The official figures underestimate the actual spread. Messages encouraging people to get tested if they have symptoms have largely disappeared, as part of the government’s efforts to encourage maximum complacency about the deadly coronavirus.

Last week 41 new deaths were reported among people who had COVID—up from 34 deaths the previous week. They included one child aged between 10 and 19, one person in their 30s, two in their 40s, one in their 50s, five in their 60s and 31 over the age of 70.

The ministry of health has linked 2,095 deaths to COVID since the pandemic began—nearly all of which occurred this year following the Ardern government’s adoption of the criminal policy of mass infection.

The real death toll is certainly higher. The ministry records that 1,075 more people died within 28 days of contracting COVID; it asserts that 695 of these deaths were not COVID-related and 380 were from unknown causes. These claims should be treated with scepticism: only last week the ministry admitted that it vastly undercounted COVID hospitalisations in recent months.

Highly infectious Omicron sub-variants have been identified in New Zealand, including BQ.1.1 and the XBB variant, which is widely described as a “nightmare variant” that can evade antibodies generated by previous infections and possibly vaccinations. In Singapore, which has a similar sized population to New Zealand, XBB is fueling around 40,000 to 50,000 reported cases per week, compared with 16,000 last week in NZ.

There are growing warnings about the looming wave of Long COVID. So far, more than 1.8 million total infections have been recorded, out of a population of 5 million people, suggesting hundreds of thousands of people will develop long-term health problems.

This week, the health ministry’s official “Unite against COVID-19” Twitter page published a short video statement by Auckland University virologist Dr Natalie Netzler, who said: “A lot of people aren’t aware that every time you catch a COVID infection, your risk of having other severe issues start to rise.”

Netzler explained that “with reinfection, your chances of getting diabetes goes up almost double. Your chances of getting mental health issues like anxiety and depression goes up double, and there are even more risks, higher risks, for things like blood clots, or breathlessness, or chronic fatigue: your risks of those go up three times with reinfection compared to that first infection. So it’s really important that we do everything we can to try and prevent ourselves getting sick, not just once, but many times with COVID.”

The statement is an indictment of the Labour government, which is doing “everything it can” to help the coronavirus spread. One Twitter user replied to Netzler’s video by suggesting that the ministry “change their account name to ‘Act individually against COVID’, because ‘uniting’ and acting collectively are no longer @nzlabour policy. More truthful tweets would be like: ‘You’re in grave danger, and you’re on your own. Good luck.’”

Last October, acting on the orders of big business, the Ardern government abandoned its zero-COVID policy, which had kept New Zealand mostly free from the virus up to that point. This year, with the assistance of the trade unions, all businesses and schools reopened, shutdowns were banned, and mask mandates and other protections were progressively dropped.

The sharp rise in COVID hospitalisations, as well as chronic understaffing, is fueling a worsening crisis in public hospitals. Across Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Waikato, Health NZ has 112 full-time nursing vacancies in hospital emergency departments (EDs) alone.

Nationwide, nearly one in four people showing up to EDs have to wait more than six hours to be seen—up from one in 10 when the Labour Party-led government was first elected five years ago. In the MidCentral region and Capital and Coast region, 45.2 and 43.8 percent of patients wait longer than six hours.

The death of a 50-year-old woman in June has been linked to overcrowding at the Middlemore Hospital ED in Auckland. Two more deaths, at Christchurch Hospital and Wellington Hospital, are under investigation.

One of these was a four-year-old boy, Sebby Chua, who died last month from suspected complications after a strep throat infection. His parents told the media he was initially misdiagnosed and sent home from Kenepuru Hospital. Admitted to Wellington Hospital’s ED a few days later, he had to wait more than three hours before a blood sample was taken.

After another four hours, during which time Sebby’s parents say he received only pain medication, he died. His mother Abegail Chua told Newshub: “I really want to know why he wasn’t assessed properly and why nothing was done within the first seven hours.”

The crisis is just as severe in primary care. In New Plymouth, which has about 80,000 people, Radio NZ (RNZ) reports that not one of the city’s 17 clinics is accepting new patient enrolments.

Christchurch general practitioner Angus Chambers told RNZ on October 25 that people there were also struggling to get appointments. The urgent care facility at his clinic sometimes has “wait times of four or five hours,” he said. “We’ve never ever had that before, and it’s extremely stressful for everybody really, patients and our staff.”

In the latest sign of the growing anger among healthcare workers, some 4,200 primary healthcare nurses held a nationwide four-hour strike on October 27 in protest against an insulting below-inflation pay offer of 3 percent.

The biggest obstacle facing workers in healthcare, education and every other sector is the trade unions, which enforce the government’s policy of mass infection and have for decades accepted stagnant wages, deteriorating levels of staffing and poor conditions.