Central bank gold purchases highest in more than half a century

Nick Beams

It has not attracted much attention in the financial press but the World Gold Council (WGC), a think tank and lobby group for the industry, has reported that purchases of the precious metal, once the basis of the international monetary system, were the highest in 2022 for 55 years.

The buying surge has been led by Russia and China with a number of smaller countries also increasing their holdings. It appears to be a response to two developments—the freezing of the Russian central bank’s dollar holdings after the invasion in Ukraine and growing uncertainty over the stability of US financial markets and its political system.

A police officer goes through the gate of Russia's Central Bank building in Moscow, Russia. [AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin]

Reporting on the gold buying moves, the Financial Times (FT) cited the remarks of Adrian Ash, head of research at BullionVault, a gold trading firm.

He said the move to gold “would suggest the geopolitical backdrop is one of mistrust, distrust and uncertainty” in the wake of the freezing of Russia’s dollar assets.

Nicky Shiels, a strategist at MKS PAMP, a precious metals trading company, underscored the same issue in comments to the FT.

She said the sanctions, which froze $300 billion of Russia’s assets, had prompted nations outside the West to ask: “Should we have exposure to so many dollars when the US and Western governments can confiscate that at any time.”

The WGC estimated that in 2022 world official financial institutions bought 673 tonnes of gold. Some 400 tonnes were purchased in the third quarter alone, the largest amount in a three-month period since quarterly records began in 2000.

Russia has ceased issuing monthly data on its purchases, but it is widely believed to be active in the market. The Central Bank of Russia has said previously that it would be desirable for gold to comprise up to 25 percent of its reserves.

The People’s Bank of China reported that in November it made its first increase in gold holdings since 2019, buying 32 tonnes worth around $1.8 billion. Major buyers in the third quarter were Turkey, Uzbekistan and Qatar.

In its report on the surge in gold buying, the FT noted: “The last time this level of buying was seen marked a historical turning point for the global monetary system. In 1967, European central banks bought massive volumes of gold from the US, leading to a run on the price and the collapse of the London Gold Pool of reserves. This hastened the eventual demise of the Bretton Woods System that tied the value of the US dollar to the precious metal.”

Under the Bretton Woods System, established in 1944 in order to stabilise the global financial system after its virtual collapse in the 1930s, the dollar essentially became the global currency. But it had a material foundation in that the dollar was redeemable by the US for gold at the rate of $35 per ounce.

Problems began to emerge in the system in the 1960s due to a contradiction at its very centre. World trade and finance depended on the continued outflow of dollars from the US. But the more offshore dollar holdings increased, the greater the discrepancy between these amounts and their gold backing held in the US.

This contradiction was covered over in the 1950s when the US, because of its vast industrial power, enjoyed a positive balance of trade. But the rise of other major powers, after they had recovered from the devastation of the war, meant that the global trade position of the US was weakened and when the balance of trade turned negative US president Nixon removed the gold backing from the dollar. The gold window was closed.

For the first time in history, world trade and finance rested entirely on a fiat currency, that is, one without a backing in gold or any other material asset.

The result was a surge of inflation igniting a major upsurge of the working class during the 1970s.

One of the major geopolitical consequences, evident most clearly in the recent period as the US has increasingly turned to military means to achieve its strategic objectives, has been the “weaponisation” of the dollar.

Under Bretton Woods, the US was always constrained by the fact that its rivals could exert pressure on Washington by turning their dollar holdings into gold, as French President de Gaulle did in the 1960s.

But in today’s financial system that option does not exist. Countries or corporations which engage in trade or investment deemed to be contrary to US interests can be cut out of the financial system through the imposition of sanctions by Washington, crippling their global operations.

This method has been used to pressure European countries and businesses which want to trade with Iran in defiance of US sanctions. They have been forced to comply under the threat they will be excluded from financial operations based on the dollar.

The threat of exclusion also hangs over those who might seek to defy the high-tech sanctions imposed by the US against China.

Weaponisation made a qualitative leap with the freezing of Russia’s assets. It signified that the unimpeded flow of finance and trade—the nostrum of the “free market”—was a fiction.

There is another factor at work. The dollar functions as the global currency and is regarded as a store of value and a means of facilitating international transactions. This is true not only in trade but above all in finance.

However, the dollar is not grounded on a material foundation. It is sought after because it is regarded as a store of value and is considered to be a store of value because it is eagerly sought after.

In other words, its global role rests on confidence in its stability. But that confidence has been severely shaken in the past 15 years, beginning with the global financial crisis in 2008, which was sparked by the rot and decay at the very heart of the American banking system, produced by speculation and in some cases outright criminal activity.

It was shaken again in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, when the $24 trillion US Treasury market, the basis of the global financial system, froze. A full-scale collapse was only prevented by the pouring in of trillions of dollars by the US Federal Reserve.

Consequently, there has been a small, but nonetheless significant, shift away from the dollar as the key reserve currency. In a blog post last June, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) noted that while the dollar still dominated trade, bond issuance and international lending and borrowing, “central banks aren’t holding the greenback in their reserves to the extent that they once did.”

According to the IMF, the dollar’s share of global currency reserves “fell below 59 percent in the final quarter of last year [2021], extending a two-decade decline.”

Political factors are also no doubt playing a role. The dollar’s preeminent global role depends on confidence not only in its economic foundations but in the stability of its political system. That confidence has been undermined by the coming to power of Donald Trump, his near successful coup attempt of January 6, 2021, and the ongoing political crisis since then.

The buying of gold at the highest levels in more than five decades does not, at least to this point, signify a collapse of the dollar-based financial system and the mountain of debt built on it. But it does point to underlying shifts in the financial tectonic plates that could have major consequences in the future.

Another indication of the shift away from the dollar is the move by China to buy oil and natural gas from Iran, Venezuela, Russia and parts of Africa in its own currency, the yuan (renminbi).

According to Credit Suisse analyst Zoltan Pozsar, whose recent note to clients was reported in the FT, the meeting between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Saudi and Gulf Co-operation leaders in December marked “the birth of the petroyuan.”

China’s objective, he said, was to “rewrite the rules of the energy market” to de-dollarise sections of the world after the freezing of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves.

A letter to the newspaper, which it chose to feature, pointed to a move by Ghana to make payments for oil in gold rather than dollars.

The writer said one should not infer too much from one small country “getting creative with money.” However, if Ghana’s problems were “reflective of the wider issue of global dollar reliance,” it suggested that “gold is being used for its money-like qualities in a way that has seemed unfashionable for much of the past 50 years.”

He concluded with the observation that the surge in gold purchases in the third quarter of last year made one wonder “if this portends moves afoot in the world, if not to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency, at least to chip away at its dominance at the fringes, with all the geopolitical implications that come with this.”

Australian report shows growing homelessness

John Harris

The Australian Homelessness Monitor 2022 report, released last month by the Launch Housing group, revealed that the rate of homelessness is increasing faster than Australia’s overall population growth. It found that the monthly average of people using homelessness services rose by eight percent from 2017–18 to 2021–22, nearly double the increase in Australia’s population over that same period.

The report used statistics provided by specialist homelessness services (SHS) through the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). Nationally, it found that the average monthly number of people seeking support from the SHS increased from 84,800 people in 2017–18, to 91,300 people in the 2021–22 fiscal year.

Homeless woman in Chatswood Mall, Sydney, June 2019 [Photo by Sardaka / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The report stated that based on a population-wide survey “evidence suggests that two-thirds of people experiencing homelessness do not in fact seek support.” This indicates that real levels of homelessness could potentially be as high as 270,000 people.

The report pointed to an increase in “unassisted demand.” A homeless support worker from the Salvation Army said that homelessness services have been overwhelmed, explaining: “[O]ur family and domestic violence service in Karratha has reported having to turn away individuals on 600 occasions in the last 12 months, while the family accommodation program is currently turning away five to ten families a week and has closed the waitlist as they do not want to give families a false hope.”

In an indication of the intensifying cost of living crisis, up to 67 percent of service providers in regional areas observed notable changes in the profiles of those seeking out homelessness services. In particular, there was “an increase in the representation of low to moderate wage earners experiencing homelessness for the first time.”

An online survey respondent wrote: “We are getting more families and low to middle wage earners… The price brackets for rental stress [have] reached families receiving government payments and low to middle income wage earners… we are seeing people seeking assistance who have not accessed homelessness services previously, people who were working and maintaining housing but have lost jobs or been forced out of the private rental market.”

The report provides the reasons people gave for accessing homelessness services. Some 26,121 said it was because of “housing affordability,” up from 20,545 in 2017–2018, a 27 percent increase. 30,315 said they had experienced “financial difficulties;” 30,595 said they had gone through a “housing crisis,” such as eviction, and 13,703 reported that it was because previous accommodation had ended.

These figures are limited, as respondents could identify two or more factors that led to their homelessness. Regardless, the overwhelming cause of the rise in homelessness has been the dramatic increase in rents across the country, skyrocketing inflation and housing shortages.

In November, SQM research reported that rents in Sydney had increased by 28 percent over the previous year to an average of $709 per week. Similar rent rises were recorded in capital cities throughout the country, with a 24 percent rise to $574 per week in Brisbane.

In an indication of the rental affordability crisis, among the 46,000 private rental properties advertised in March 2022, only 1.4 percent would have been affordable for a couple on the aged pension. Similarly, for a single person on the minimum wage, just 1.6 percent of all houses were affordable.

For a single adult with a child over the age of 8 on the Centrelink JobSeeker payment, no houses were affordable last year. That is in part a result of the decision of the previous Labor government to force hundreds of thousands of single parents off family benefits and onto the poverty-level unemployment payment.

Figures from the state of Victoria underscore the trend. In the five years to June 2022, the number of available homes deemed affordable for low-income families decreased from 17 percent to 11 percent.

The report noted the decline in affordable housing across regional areas in the state, dropping from 58 percent in 2017 to just 24 percent this year.

This has been compounded by an overall collapse in rental vacancies. The report noted that in regional areas across the country, private rental vacancies were at historic lows of 0.6–0.7 percent and vacancy rates in the capital cities sat at 1.1 percent in June this year.

According to recent data compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics from 2019–20, even before the pandemic and the inflation crisis, approximately 58 percent of all low-income renters spent more than 30 percent of their household income on rent. Approximately a fifth of low-income private renters, or some 185,000 households, “were paying rents equating to more than half of their household income.”

Another indication of the growing social tensions and the economic pressures is the number of those who identified domestic violence as a trigger for homelessness. This accounted for 31,732 of those who applied for the SHS, up 8.8 percent over the past four years.

Aboriginals, the most impoverished and exploited section of the working class, saw the fastest growth in accessing SHS services over the four-year period, increasing by 23 percent. Moreover, indigenous people account for 27 percent of all those who had approached the SHS. This was followed by a cohort of people suffering from mental health issues which had increased by 20 percent.

A correspondent wrote that “many real estates will not even answer/return our call (as they have 80-100 applicants for every property). The waitlists for social housing have increased, availability of housing is reduced (due to the rental crisis).”

The report pointed to the continued dwindling of Australia’s social housing stock. From 1991 to 2021, leases available from social housing providers had decreased from 52,000 to 30,000, a decline of 42 percent. Proportionate to the population increase over the same period, this equates to a fall of over 61 percent in social housing stock.

According to figures cited in the report from the Productivity Commission, social housing stock increased from 420,000 to 431,006 between 2016 and 2021, an increase of only 2.6 percent.

The architects of the gutting of public housing were the Hawke and Keating federal Labor governments. Beginning in 1983 they imposed a market-driven model, providing cash subsides to those on welfare benefits if they were not able to secure public housing. The purpose of this was to channel low-income households into the private rental market away from public housing. Public housing was subsequently bought up by private firms through joint venture partnerships, torn down and replaced with private dwellings.

Between 1990–91 and 2000–01, real funding for public housing construction was slashed by 25 percent. By 2008, public housing properties constituted only 4.9 percent nationally of all properties. By 2018, it was just 4.6 percent.

The report promotes illusions in the new Labor government’s pathetic promises to provide $350 million to build up 10,000 new homes, with state and territory governments expected to pitch in to build an additional 10,000 homes. The Labor government claims the new National Housing Accord will construct 40,000 new “affordable homes” over five years beginning in mid-2024.

This “commitment” will do nothing to resolve the social housing crisis. Maiy Azize, a spokesperson for Everybody’s Home, told the Guardian earlier this month that there was an “enormous social housing shortfall of 500,000 homes.”

No trust can be placed in Labor to resolve the housing and homelessness crisis, it is a loyal servant to the needs of big business. The budget unveiled in October indicated that it would cut funds going to the “National Housing and Homelessness Agreement,” which provides public housing and accommodation for people with special needs, by 14.6 percent. In 2021–22 approximately $4.1 billion was allocated to these housing programs, a figure that is expected to fall to $3.28 billion by 2025–26.

The growth of homelessness and the broader housing crisis is one expression of the incompatibility of capitalist society, which subordinates everything to the private profit interests of the ruling elite, with the most basic needs of ordinary people.

The CDC cover-up of Omicron XBB.1.5 and the growing winter COVID surge

Evan Blake

Last week, it was revealed that over the past month the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concealed the fact that a dangerous new variant of the coronavirus, known as the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant, has rapidly become dominant across the United States.

On December 29, epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding leaked CDC data showing that XBB.1.5 was already dominant in the US. After this Twitter thread went viral, on the following day the CDC updated its COVID-19 variant dashboard with the exact data that Dr. Feigl-Ding had leaked. This same process unfolded between October 13-14, 2022, at which time Dr. Feigl-Ding leaked CDC data showing that the Omicron BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 subvariants were becoming dominant, which was then confirmed by the CDC the following day under growing public pressure.

After both leaks, the CDC has issued no public statement and the corporate media has dutifully omitted the very fact that there was a cover-up, with the World Socialist Web Site the only outlet that has made this clear.

The new XBB.1.5 variant, which now accounts for 40.5 percent of all sequenced COVID-19 infections in the US, rose to dominance more quickly than any other variant since Omicron first spread globally in November 2021. The XBB.1.5 variant is believed to have evolved in New York in October and is fueling a wave of infections and hospitalizations throughout the Northeast region, with hospitalization rates among people aged 70 and older approaching pandemic highs in some states. This age group already accounts for over 90 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in the US.

Due to the dismantling of PCR testing and the promotion of at-home rapid tests, which are not tallied by the government, official figures on infections in the US are now totally inaccurate. Wastewater data, however, show that the US is presently mired in the second-worst surge of infections of the entire pandemic, which is being driven by XBB.1.5 in the Northeast region.

Multiple scientists raised alarm bells about XBB.1.5 throughout December and earlier, with the variant earning the nickname “Kraken.” A recent blog post by scientist Dr. Eric Topol describes the biological characteristics of XBB.15 and the research that scientists have done so far.

In short, XBB.1.5 is believed to be the most immune-evasive variant to date, meaning that vaccinations and prior infection offer virtually no protection against breakthrough infection or reinfection. It has also been shown to bind more tightly to the hACE2 receptor, which scientists believe will make it more infectious than any previous variant.

Expressing her concern over XBB.1.5, Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, one of the world’s top immunologists who has led pioneering research on Long COVID, tweeted on Monday, “Please protect yourselves and others by wearing N95 masks. I am truly concerned about the #longCOVID wave that follows this infection.”

In a follow-up tweet, Dr. Iwasaki elaborated that the features of XBB.1.5 “will increase tropism and possibly persistence in cell types that are long lived,” meaning that the likelihood of developing Long COVID after infection with XBB.1.5 could be higher than previous variants.

One scientist, whose models on the spread of XBB.1.5 were correct throughout December, created the visualization below to show the likely timeline of the coming wave. They estimate that by the end of January, XBB.1.5 will account for over 75 percent of all infections throughout the US, at which point the nationwide surge will be in full swing.

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Furthermore, the US-grown XBB.1.5 variant is being exported globally, as shown in the visualization below. It has been detected across Europe, as well as in India, Australia, Colombia, China and other countries, with scientists predicting that it could become dominant globally

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Given what scientists have learned about the dangers of COVID-19 reinfections, as well as breakthrough infections, this potential global surge would have immense societal repercussions. Masses of people could be infected or reinfected with COVID-19, causing spikes in hospitalizations and deaths, and compounding damage to the overall health of the population.

Under these conditions, the deliberate withholding of data on XBB.1.5 from the public ranks among the most significant cover-ups in the history of the CDC or any other global public health agency. There is no innocent explanation for the CDC cover-ups in December or October, which were clearly deliberate and intended to prevent any public alarm that might disrupt the holiday shopping and travel season.

Three years into the worst pandemic in a century, the CDC stands totally discredited as a public health agency. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been increasingly politicized, tailoring science to match all the lies of both the Trump and Biden administrations, in order to suit the needs of Wall Street and corporate America.

Over the course of 2022, the CDC deepened its antiscientific policies, publishing guidelines that discouraged the safe isolation of infected patients, masking and other critical mitigation measures, while manipulating data to match Biden’s lie that “the pandemic is over.”

Throughout December, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and White House COVID Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha remained silent on the clear dangers of the XBB.1.5 variant and the pandemic more generally.

On December 30, Walensky broke her silence with a tweet stating, “We can’t stop the spread of #COVID19.” She praised the CDC’s new policy requiring that all travelers from China must test negative for COVID-19 within two days of flying to the US. The same policy stipulates that the agency will conduct more genomic sequencing from China and other countries, ostensibly to “decrease the chance for entry of a novel variant of concern.”

Walensky’s tweet, released the day after Dr. Feigl-Ding’s leak of the CDC data on XBB.1.5, was roundly denounced for its hypocrisy and implicit xenophobia against China. Some have speculated that the new CDC policy itself, released a day before the data on XBB.1.5 was leaked, could have been in preparations for a crude attempt to foist blame onto China for the emergence of XBB.1.5.

Walensky’s claim that “We can’t stop the spread of COVID-19” also provoked a flood of hostile comments, indicating the continued opposition that exists to the “herd immunity” policy now in place internationally.

In order to maintain the status quo and prevent the growth of an organized movement of workers and scientists to stop the pandemic, the powers that be rely on a layer of affluent official scientists in the government and media to promote misinformation and cultivate a sense of apathy in the population, in order to implement their criminal pandemic policies. In the US, Drs. Walensky, Jha, Anthony Fauci and others lead this work. In Germany, virologist Dr. Christian Drosten stated in December that the pandemic is “over,” prompting politicians from numerous parties to call for the ending of all mitigation measures in the new year. The same coordinated lies and deception have been pushed internationally.

The relentless propaganda campaign in the West itself had an impact within China, where sections of the middle class and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bureaucracy became increasingly convinced that Omicron is “mild” and Zero-COVID must be scrapped. The encirclement of China with a global “forever COVID” policy, combined with relentless economic and geopolitical pressures, prompted the CCP to lift Zero-COVID, unleashing a tidal wave of infections and deaths throughout the country.

In the World Socialist Web Site’s 2023 New Year statement, Joseph Kishore and David North warned:

The lifting of Zero-COVID in China and the adoption of a “forever COVID” policy marks a new and potentially even more dangerous stage in the pandemic. Scientists have warned that mass infection increases the likelihood that new variants will evolve. The world’s capitalist ruling elites are playing Russian roulette with society, raising the danger that a more infectious, immune-resistant and deadly variant could unleash an even more lethal global wave of infections.

At this point, the XBB.1.5 variant does not appear to be more lethal than prior variants, but only time will tell. The warnings that it could be more likely to cause Long COVID are ominous, as there are already hundreds of millions of people globally suffering from this affliction.

Germany’s president and chancellor beat the drum for Ukraine war and invoke national unity

Peter Schwarz

The continuation of the Ukraine war and the invocation of the unity of the nation were the focus of the traditional Christmas and New Year speeches of the German president and chancellor.

New Year’s address by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Christmas address by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, both Social Democrats, advocated continuing the Ukraine war until Russia’s complete defeat, even if this entailed enormous social and economic costs and the risk of nuclear war. Both invoked the “cohesion” and “togetherness” of society in seeking to pass on the disastrous consequences of the war to the mass of the population.

Steinmeier, who delivered the Christmas address, sanctimoniously declared, “This year, our most ardent wish is probably that peace will reign again.” Only to immediately add, “But this peace is not yet tangible.” It had to be “a just peace” that did not reward land grabbing, he said. Until then, “it is an imperative of humanity that we ... stand by those who are attacked,” he said.

In plain language, this means that Germany and NATO will continue to escalate the war with billions in arms deliveries and military support until Russia capitulates. According to experts, this could take two to three years and claim hundreds of thousands more victims. The risk of the war spreading to the whole of Europe and involving the use of nuclear weapons is being deliberately accepted.

Scholz was even more explicit in his New Year’s address. Several times, he repeated the phrase “the turn of the times,” which he had employed in the spring to justify increasing the arms budget by €100 billion and vowed, “We will continue to support Ukraine.” He claimed that thanks to the “cohesion and strength” of our “dear fellow citizens,” Germany “has not bowed to Russia,” and praised the unity of the European Union and NATO.

Steinmeier also praised his “dear compatriots,” going on to say, “You are feeling the consequences of this war, especially the economic consequences. But you bear the burdens because you are not indifferent to the fate of Ukrainians; because you care about their struggle for freedom; because you express solidarity and compassion.”

Ukraine was “standing its ground with great courage. Europe is standing together. And our country is once again rising above itself in the challenge,” Steinmeier continued. This year, he said, had shown that “together we can get through this period.” His Christmas wish was “that we strengthen everything that unites us.” These are outright lies.

Firstly, NATO is no more concerned with freedom and democracy in Ukraine than it was in its previous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, where it devastated entire countries, killing millions and driving countless more to flee. NATO deliberately provoked the Ukraine war by systematically advancing eastward, supporting the 2014 coup in Kiev, and arming the Ukrainian military since then, and is now using this to bring Russia to its knees.

Ukraine itself is also a valuable prey. Not only is it rich in coal and gas reserves, but it has critical raw materials—lithium, cobalt, titanium, beryllium and rare earths—worth an estimated €6.7 trillion, according to the Brussels-based Carnegie Endowment think tank.

This does not at all justify the Putin regime’s military attack. It is playing into NATO’s hands and strengthening the most reactionary forces—in both Ukraine and Russia. But the main initiative for the war came from NATO, which does not want it to end until it achieves its goal.

The aggression with which the ruling class is proceeding, echoing Hitler’s plans for conquest, is shown in an interview with Stefan Meister, the Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), published by newsweekly Der Spiegel in its latest issue.

Meister accuses previous German governments of having adopted the “convenient but false interpretation of history” that “there could be change through rapprochement, in the style of Willy Brandt.” At least 80 percent of the German elites had “collectively lied to themselves” and expanded their dependency on Russia.

What was needed, he said, was “a genuine long-term Russia policy” that was “ultimately about regime change in Moscow.” This required leadership, Meister said, rather than a “system of systematic irresponsibility” in which political elites were afraid of “electoral risks,” i.e., facing the will of the voters.

Secondly, the German population is not, as Steinmeier and Scholz claim, united behind the war. Large sections of it are sceptical or opposed to it. Conversely, the war and the incessant war propaganda in the media serve to intimidate and suppress the growing opposition to war and social inequality.

For decades, a tiny minority has shamelessly enriched itself at the expense of the majority. According to the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the richest 10 percent in Germany own more than two-thirds of all wealth, while the entire poorer half owns only 1.3 percent. The real incomes of the poorest 10 percent have risen by only 5 percent since 1995, while those of the richest 10 percent have increased by 40 percent.

The Ukraine war is accelerating this divergence of income and wealth. The trade unions, which support the government’s war policy, have signed collective bargaining agreements cementing wage “increases” far below the rate of inflation, which was 10 percent in 2022 and will average 7.2 percent in 2023, according to Bundesbank estimates. Added to this are skyrocketing energy costs and unaffordable rents. For the younger generation, in particular, the future looks bleak, even if they have studied for years.

Steinmeier and Scholz invoke the “cohesion” of society primarily because they fear open class struggles. Scholz spent much of his New Year’s speech enumerating the support programs the government has put together to dampen the rise in prices somewhat. But they are nothing more than a drop in the ocean and, in any case, largely benefit the wealthy and the corporations, which are making record profits despite the pandemic and the war.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung also fears a rebellion against war and social inequality. “There is still a majority in this country for financial support for Ukraine, for sanctions against Russia, for arms deliveries,” comments its former editor-in-chief Kurt Kister. “But if acclimatisation, loss of trust and personal disadvantages grow in the second year of the war, things may look different in December 2023.”

In the existing political system, this growing opposition to social inequality and war finds no expression. All parties in the Bundestag (federal parliament), from the Left Party to the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens to the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), support the war course.

A record year of death: Who were the victims of police violence in the US in 2022?

Niles Niemuth

Police in the United States killed at an unprecedented rate in 2022, taking the lives of at least 1,176 people, for an average of 3.2 deaths every day, according to a year end tally by Mapping Police Violence. There were just 12 days where police did not kill someone. People were killed in every state by local and state police, county sheriffs’ deputies and federal agents. 

Killed by the police in 2022: Left, Clesslynn Jane Crawford, age 2; Top Right, Jayland Walker; Bottom Right, Maggie Dunn (17) and Caroline Gill (16) [Photo: Family photo/Family photo/Brusly High School]

While African Americans continued to be killed by the police at a rate disproportionate to their share of the population, accounting for nearly a quarter of killings in 2022, as in previous years, victims were of every race and ethnicity, with those classified as white accounting for the largest number of deaths.

It was also a deadly year for migrants encountering border police. There were at least 40 fatal encounters with Customs and Border Protection agents, according to a tally maintained by the Southern Borders Communities Coalition, the highest total for any year tracked by the group except for 2021. 

Despite the grim, nearly daily occurrence of murders and homicides by the police, cops continued to kill with impunity, almost never facing criminal charges or significant disciplinary action. Police officers were criminally charged in just ten cases last year, less than 1 percent. 

Those who face punishment after killing someone, typically paid leave and slap on the wrist, are quickly returned to the streets. Las Cruces Police officer Jared Cosper was returned to duty just a few months after he shot and killed 75-year-old Amelia Baca in the doorway of her home in April, 2022. A still unidentified Jacksonville, Florida sheriff’s deputy has remained on the job and faced no charges or disciplinary action despite killing Kevin Mahan, a 43-year-old white man who was suffering from a mental health emergency in April.  

The details of police killings largely go unnoticed in the national media, with only brief local reports, which uncritically reproduce the official police account, often full of lies and obfuscation, thus giving a glimpse into the deadly reality of policing in America. 

A selection of killings last year gives a sense of the reign of terror being waged by police forces across the country:  

• One of the first people to be killed in 2022, was James Williams, of Canton, Ohio. The father of six was shot and killed by police officer Robert Huber without warning while ringing in the New Year with his family with celebratory gunfire in their fenced-in backyard. 

• Jayland Walker was killed in Akron, Ohio, on June 27, 2022, in a hail of 90 police bullets after a car chase and brief pursuit on foot. His death sparked multiple nights of protests demanding an end to police violence, which were met by brutal police repression. The eight officers who shot him have not officially been named or charged, and were put on paid leave before returning to desk duty in October. 

• One of the oldest victims of the year, 82-year-old Jose Antonio Suarez, was killed by police in Margate, Florida on March 27. Police claim that he was pointing a gun at people and firing it into the ground. When he allegedly pointed the gun at officers they opened fire, killing him on the spot. 

  “He was a frail old man. He was 82. He was hard of hearing,” Suarez’s son told CBS4, noting that the elderly man had recently been under intense stress. 'His wife has dementia, his bathrooms, he had mold in the house that was making him and his wife ill, he was stressed out about that. He had been reaching out to us for a month. He said he didn't feel well. He wanted to die. He even went to the doctor and said he wanted to die. He wanted to catch COVID.”

• The youngest recorded victim of the year was two-year-old Clesslynn Jane Crawford, killed by a police bullet during a shootout between her father and officers in Baxter Springs, Kansas. 

• Thomas Siderio, Jr., 12, was shot in the back in March as he ran from plainclothes cops in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The cop who killed him, Edsaul Mendoza, has been charged with first and third degree murder and is set to go to trial this year. This marks the first time in the history of the city that an officer will face first-degree murder charges. 

• Dakota L. Coleman, 27, was killed during a traffic stop in Oconto, Wisconsin. According to police she approached the sheriff’s deputy with a knife and did not comply with his order, so he shot and killed her. According to a friend, Coleman, who was homeless, had been in an abusive relationship with the vehicle’s driver and had discussed leaving him just two weeks before she was killed.

• Among the final tragedies of the year were the deaths of Maggie Dunn, 17, and Caroline Gill, 16. The pair of high school students was killed when Addis, Louisiana, officer David Cauthron, 42, slammed his police cruiser into their vehicle during a high speed pursuit on New Year’s Eve. Dunn and Gill, both cheerleaders, were mere bystanders, having nothing to do with the allegedly stolen vehicle Cauthron and other officers were recklessly pursuing. Dunn’s brother, Liam Dunn, a college student at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, was also in the struck vehicle and has been left in critical condition. Cauthron was arrested Sunday on two charges of negligent homicide and one charge of negligent injuring. 

Nearly three years since the mass protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd by four police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the reign of police violence continues unabated. Groups like Black Lives Matter which present police killings solely as a racial issue promote “community oversight” and “racial equity” as solutions, which has meant in practice the enrichment of a narrow layer of middle class minorities. The leaders of Black Lives Matter have enriched themselves off popular anger against police violence, signing lucrative corporate deals and buying themselves mansions, while the families of the victims of police violence languish.   

Meanwhile the Democrats and Republicans continue to work to outdo one another on their support for the police. The latest federal budget signed by President Joe Biden includes more $1.3 billion for local police agencies, including $324 million in grant money for the hiring of 1,800 new officers across the US. Meanwhile, Republican-controlled legislatures have passed laws which restrict the ability of people to film and protest police brutality. 

The record level of police violence in 2022 makes clear that the police, as Friedrich Engels explained, are “special bodies of armed men,” established and maintained to defend the capitalist system and the inequality which it creates. In their defense of private property the police target the working class, in particular the most vulnerable—the poor, the homeless and the mentally ill. The most backward fascist and racist elements are deliberately cultivated within their ranks to suppress any sign of opposition from workers. 

Putting an end to police killings is not a matter of reform but of ending the system which has produced historic levels of inequality and violence, and reorganizing society to meet the needs of the working class rather than a privileged few at the top.

German government plans to remove all coronavirus protections

Tamino Dreisam

In an interview with Tagesspiegel towards the end of December, virologist Christian Drosten declared that in his view, the pandemic in Germany was “over.” Within a very short time, politicians from all major parties took this as an opportunity to call for the removal of the remaining protective measures.

Virologist Christian Drosten [AP Photo/Markus Schreiber]

Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (Liberal Democratic Party, FDP) wrote on Twitter: “We are in an endemic state. As a political consequence, we should end the last #Coronavirus protections.” FDP deputy chairman Wolfgang Kubicki told Tagesspiegel that there was no basis for “any [...] restriction of fundamental rights to contain the coronavirus” and called on the federal and state governments to end their limited protective measures as soon as possible.

Green Party health politician Janosch Dahmen also joined in the propaganda in Tagesspiegel about the end of the pandemic: “At the moment, there is much to suggest that the coronavirus is hardly changing and that its currently still strong spread will finally decrease significantly with the end of this winter.”

Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democratic Party, SPD), whose position is generally portrayed in the media as more moderate, in fact fully endorses this narrative. In an interview with broadcaster ZDF’s heute journal news programme, he stated:

It is true that we are now moving into an endemic state. That is, the waves that are coming now no longer cover the entire population, but only the parts that are not sufficiently vaccinated or have previous damage. So, a big wave that would cover the whole population again is not to be expected at the moment. The new variants are not as contagious or as dangerous as they appeared to be in the laboratory a few months ago. This defuses the situation somewhat.

At the same time, Lauterbach knows exactly how dramatic the situation is: “We still have full hospitals at the moment, even children can’t be cared for well. We have a high excess mortality rate; people die every day from coronavirus who didn’t necessarily have to die.”

In this situation, however, Lauterbach is not suggesting taking serious measures to save lives and prevent hospitals from collapsing. He simply advocates postponing the lifting of all measures for a few weeks. This is completely in line with his previous policy. Lauterbach himself actively promoted and implemented the almost complete winding down of protective measures as Minister of Health.

Support for the lifting of the remaining measures is also coming from the opposition. The Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) are calling for a special conference of federal and state governments at the beginning of January at which the last protective measures—such as mandatory mask wearing in doctors’ surgeries and hospitals and on public transport (in most states)—are to be lifted.

The CDU/CSU’s parliamentary health spokesperson Tino Sorge told RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND): “It is time to declare the pandemic finally over. The coalition [government] can no longer shirk this above all political decisions.”

Apart from a few exceptions, the obligation to wear a mask and quarantine must be replaced in the New Year by recommendations, demanded Sorge. Europe was returning to normality, only the coalition government did not have the courage to do so, he said. “A conference of the chancellor with the heads of the state governments at the beginning of January would be the appropriate format to coordinate such a step together with the federal states,” the CDU politician said.

Contrary to government and opposition claims, however, the pandemic is by no means over. Currently, more than 100 people are dying from COVID on average every day in Germany and hospitals are on the verge of collapse. The adjusted hospitalization rate is 15 (per 100,000 inhabitants), which corresponds to almost 12,500 hospitalizations per week.

Intensive care units have been filling up for weeks, with 1,230 people currently receiving intensive care. Only 9.3 percent of intensive care beds are currently free. Ten percent is considered the threshold value for the responsiveness of hospitals, below which it should not fall.

The president of the German Society for Internal Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, Christian Karagiannidis, warned that the situation will worsen. “We will certainly have regional bottlenecks [on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day], but not across the board,” he said in an interview with RND. “I’m more concerned about January and the mood that’s resonating right now. Hospitals will be running at full capacity in January, and staff are slowly starting to resign under the constant burden.”

Additionally, a growing staffing shortage is putting a strain on hospitals. In the last two years alone, he said, hospitals have lost 25 percent of high-care intensive care beds because of a lack of staff. “It’s an illusion to think those beds will ever be reinstated,” Karagiannidis said. This capacity has been lost forever, “This is the new reality for which we have to find a solution.”

However, the consequences of the pandemic still go far beyond the immediate situation in the hospitals and the number of deaths. Even seemingly harmless infections attack organs and can seriously damage them. Hundreds of thousands of people in Germany are already struggling with the consequences of Long COVID. Life expectancy has fallen by half a year and excess mortality is reaching record levels.

In the future, the murderous “herd immunity” policy of allowing the virus to rip through the population, which has already led to more than 160,000 deaths in Germany alone, is to be implemented even more brutally. In addition to the planned elimination of protective measures, numerous vaccination centres will also be closed in 2023. Yet more than one in five people are still not vaccinated. Only 63 percent of the population has received one booster vaccination, and only 15 percent has received two.

The impact of China abandoning its Zero COVID policy, which Western governments and the media have long called for, can now be added to this. The ever-escalating COVID disaster and the rapid infection of millions of people with the virus threaten to lead to the emergence of new more infectious, dangerous, and resistant variants.