COVID-19 wastewater levels and hospitalizations continue to rise across the US

Evan Blake

The latest wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, entirely hidden from the public, is continuing apace. On Thursday, Biobot Analytics released its latest data, showing that the level of SARS-CoV-2 viral particles in wastewater across the US has risen by 125 percent over the past six weeks. Every geographic region is undergoing a surge in wastewater levels, an advance indicator of the spread of the virus.

Scientists are forced to estimate the spread of COVID-19 by sampling wastewater because the federal government has stopped counting the number of COVID-19 cases. In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped reporting the daily number of people who tested positive for COVID-19, in a deliberate effort to cover up the spread of the disease in order to condition the public to accept perpetual mass infection.

Extrapolating from wastewater data, infectious disease modeler J.P. Weiland estimates that they translate to roughly 419,000 Americans currently being infected with COVID-19 each day, or one in every 790 Americans. Given that a COVID-19 infection lasts for 10 days on average, this means that roughly 4.2 million Americans are likely currently infected with the virus.

Hospitalizations from COVID-19, a lagging indicator, have also risen nationwide for two weeks straight. According to official figures from the CDC, 8,035 people were hospitalized due to COVID-19 infections for the week ending July 22, a 12.1 percent increase from the prior week and 24.6 percent higher than two weeks prior.

The ongoing wave appears to be driven largely by the Omicron EG.5 subvariant, a descendant of the XBB variants. Coinciding with the latest surge, over the past six weeks EG.5 has risen from 0.4 percent of sequenced cases to 17.3 percent, which is now the highest percentage of all variants in the US. Other Omicron subvariants contributing to the wave are XBB.1.16 and XBB.2.3, which combine to account for 26.8 percent of all sequenced cases.

While official COVID-19 death figures are presently low, these data have been distorted over the past two years and are not reliable. Excess deaths above the pre-pandemic baseline remain elevated throughout the world, with the cumulative total now standing at 24.5 million, according to The Economist. The majority of these deaths are directly due to COVID-19, either in the acute phase of the infection or the result of heart attacks, strokes and other causes of death associated with the aftereffects of COVID-19 infection.

The ongoing wave of the pandemic in the US began in the immediate aftermath of the Biden administration and the World Health Organization (WHO) ending their COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declarations. These unscientific decisions prompted the corporate media to completely stop covering the pandemic, playing a critical role in what is effectively a government-media conspiracy against the population.

Since the emergence of the Omicron variant in November 2021, there has been an ever-deepening propaganda campaign designed to cultivate fatalism, as well as illusions that COVID-19 is now “endemic” and essentially no more harmful than the common cold.

This escalated dramatically after the ending of the PHEs in May, affecting even many people who had previously continued to take precautions against infection. Recent months have seen numerous anecdotal reports on social media by people noting that their friends or family members, who had remained vigilant and protected themselves from the virus through disciplined masking with an N95, let their guard down after the ending of the PHEs and quickly became infected.

At the same time, the horrific effects of Long COVID continue to be covered up, with virtually no reporting in the corporate media despite the constant publication of new and alarming research. Within the scientific community, it is now abundantly clear that the societal health impacts of Long COVID will reverberate for decades to come.

Last month, Nature published a major review of scientific literature on Long COVID by a group of leading immunologists, which warned sharply:

The oncoming burden of Long COVID faced by patients, health-care providers, governments and economies is so large as to be unfathomable. If 10% of acute infections lead to persistent symptoms, it could be predicted that ~400 million individuals globally are [presently] in need of support for Long COVID.

The latest summer surge, which is the fourth in four years of the pandemic, upends all the lies that COVID-19 is now “endemic” and equivalent to the cold or flu. In reality, the virus is continuing to mutate rapidly, more than twice as fast as the common flu, and new variants that can bypass prior immunity threaten to unleash repeated waves of infections, hospitalizations and deaths for the foreseeable future.

The effective policy of the ruling class in the US and internationally is that the pandemic is now a matter between individuals and their insurance companies, if they are lucky enough to have insurance.

With virtually no social supports whatsoever, masses of people are being denied access to any treatment for Long COVID by these profit-driven insurance monopolies. Care is only provided for people with proof of a positive PCR test, under conditions in which these tests are now unavailable and overpriced for the vast majority of Americans.

Furthermore, the latest estimates show that roughly 3.85 million Americans have been disenrolled from Medicaid since the ending of expanded access on March 31, with only 41 states and Washington D.C. reporting. The overwhelming majority, 74 percent, lost access due to procedural reasons, i.e., they did not fill out the paperwork properly or on time.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that up to 24.4 million Americans, including 7.2 million children, could lose their healthcare coverage by next May, among the most horrific results of the bipartisan propaganda campaign claiming that “the pandemic is over,” which has been spearheaded by the Biden administration.

The latest figurehead for this campaign is newly installed CDC Director Mandy Cohen. Since replacing Rochelle Walensky—widely loathed among anti-COVID advocates and scientists for her blatantly pro-corporate and anti-public health policies—Cohen has stepped into her role with vigor. Since July 10, she has tweeted no less than 43 photos of herself maskless in a wide variety of indoor settings, including with large groups and in front of packed audiences at the CDC.

In an interview with NPR this week, Cohen stated bluntly, “We know COVID is here with us. It’s going to stay with us. And it’s—sadly, it is still killing folks every single day.”

Cohen was previously the head of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services from 2017 until late 2021, just as the Omicron variant was first sweeping the globe. Under her lead, North Carolina was one of the first states to begin reopening after limited lockdowns on May 8, 2020, just as cases were again rising and hospitals were being inundated with patients. She was also among the most ardent promoters of lifting mask mandates in May 2021, after Walensky falsely told vaccinated Americans this would be safe, setting the stage for the horrific Delta and Omicron waves.

Based on these credentials, Cohen was hand-picked by Jeff Zients, Biden’s multimillionaire Chief of Staff and former White House COVID Response Coordinator who oversaw the disastrous pandemic response in 2021 and early 2022.

The cover-up of the latest COVID-19 wave in the US and the relentless efforts to normalize disease, debilitation and death express the reactionary and bankrupt character of the capitalist system. Public health is now a dead letter in America and throughout the world, as the ruling elites rush headlong into World War III and a deepening climate catastrophe which threaten to kill millions and potentially destroy human civilization.

Notes on police violence in the United States

Jacob Crosse

Two separate databases maintained by Mapping Police Violence (MPV) and the Washington Post have cataloged over 570 police killings so far this year in the United States.

As of July 31, the Post has recorded 572 killings, while Mapping Police Violence has recorded 602 killings as of July 8. The figure recorded by Mapping Police Violence is just under the pace of last year’s 1,201 recorded police killings, the most recorded by MPV in the last decade.

In the early morning hours of July 31, Ricky Cobb II, an African American father of five, became one the latest victims of police violence. Cobb was shot and killed by Minnesota State Trooper Ryan Londregan, shortly after 2:15 a.m. during a traffic stop. According to police, Cobb was pulled over because his taillights were not operational. During the traffic stop, police claim they discovered that Cobb was wanted on a “probable cause arrest for a felony order-for-protection violation.”

Londregan and two other police involved in the traffic stop, but who did not fire their weapons, troopers Brett Siede and Garrett Erickson, have been placed on paid administrative leave pending the completion of a so-called “independent” investigation by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). The BCA is managed by the same state agency as the troopers—the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

Body camera and police dash-cam footage were released earlier this week by the Minnesota State Patrol following protests from the family of Cobb and community members. The footage shows that Cobb was unarmed when he was shot in the driver’s seat of his vehicle on Interstate 94 in Minneapolis, the same city where George Floyd was murdered over three years ago, sparking massive international, multiracial protests against unending police violence.

In the video released by police, Cobb is shown in his car pulled over on the side of the road. Three troopers approached Cobb’s vehicle with Trooper Seide going to the driver’s side, while Londregan approached the passenger’s side of the vehicle. Seide repeatedly told Cobb that he had to get out of the vehicle without giving him a reason.

At one point, Cobb asked Seide if the stop is over a warrant, and Seide replied “No,” and that he had to “give me your keys.” After a minute of demanding Cobb step out of the vehicle, Seide opened the door and went “hands on” with Cobb. At the same time Londregan opened the passenger side door pulled out his gun and immediately pointed it at Cobb, yelling, “Get out of the car now!”

After yelling at Cobb to exit the vehicle, Londregan fired two shots at Cobb, striking him. It is unclear if Cobb began to drive away before the shots were fired or after. Bleeding and dying, Cobb drove his vehicle for approximately a quarter of a mile before crashing into the center divider on the interstate.

In a statement released Thursday, the BCA claimed that during a search of Cobb’s car, police discovered two shell casings and a handgun. The BCA statement did not say if the handgun was loaded or if any bullets were found in the vehicle. However, the statement did note that at no time in any of the video obtained by police is Cobb seen holding the gun.

A statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union following the shooting notes that none of the footage provided shows a “clear justification” for the use of force.

In a press conference held on Wednesday, Cobb’s family called for the firing and charging of the police involved in the shooting. Octavia Ruffin told reporters her brother was a “good man ... a provider for all of us.”

Family members of Ricky Cobb II, who was shot and killed by a Minnesota State Patrol trooper, speak at a news conference outside Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis on Wednesday, August 2, 2023. [AP Photo/Trisha Ahmed]

According to police, the BCA investigation will take at least 60 days after which a Hennepin County grand jury might be impaneled to consider charges.

While police are empowered by capitalist politicians and the courts to take the lives of workers and the poor in an instant if they ever feel “threatened,” so-called “justice” for victims of police violence rarely, if ever, comes.

In a particularly heinous case of police violence, on Thursday, the US Department of Justice announced that six Mississippi police officers had pled guilty to multiple felonies related to the torture and killing of African Americans over the last four years. The federal investigation was precipitated by a lawsuit filed by Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, residents of Braxton, Mississippi, located near Jackson, the state capital.

In their lawsuit, Jenkins and Parker alleged that the police broke into the house they were staying at without a warrant. For nearly two hours, the six cops tortured, beat, assaulted, zapped with tasers, and in the case of Jenkins, put a gun into his mouth and shot him, lacerating his tongue and shattering his jaw in the process.

Former Rankin County Sheriff’s Department officers Christian Dedmon, 28, Hunter Elward, 31, Brett McAlpin, 52, Jeffrey Middleton, 46, and Daniel Opdyke, 27, and Joshua Hartfield, 31, a Richland police officer have all pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence, conspiracy to obstruct justice, conspiracy against rights, deprivation of rights under color of law and obstruction of justice.

In addition to pleading guilty for criminal actions inflicted against Jenkins and Parker, Dedmon, Elward and Opdyke also pleaded guilty to three federal felony charges related to a separate December 4, 2022 incident. In that case, prosecutors said Dedmon assaulted a white man, including with a taser, and fired his pistol near his head in order to force a confession while Elward and Opdyke looked on.

The Mississippi officers’ reign of terror against black and white men makes clear that police violence is ultimately a class phenomenon, in which the police target working class victims from every racial and ethnic background.

In a statement released Thursday, US Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote: “The defendants in this case tortured and inflicted unspeakable harm on their victims, egregiously violated the civil rights of citizens who they were supposed to protect, and shamefully betrayed the oath they swore as law enforcement officers.”

According to a federal lawsuit filed last month by Jenkins and Parker and court documents released as part of the guilty pleas, the six officers were part of a “Special Response Team,” similar to ultra-violent “Scorpion Unit” that carried out the police murder of Tyre Nichols earlier this year in Memphis, Tennessee. Like the Scorpion Unit, the Special Response Team was provided extra “training” and deployed to “high-crime” areas.

An investigation by the Associated Press has linked the Special Response Team, whose members are referred to as the “Goon Squad,” to at least four “violent encounters with black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries.”

The AP noted that in court documents the “Goon Squad” earned its nickname because of the officers’ willingness to “use excessive force and not report it.”

According to court documents on January 24, 2023 a white neighbor rang up Rankin County Deputy Brett McAplin and complained that there were two black men staying with a white woman inside the home next to him and that the men were taking advantage of the woman. After the call, McAlpin reached out to his fellow “Goon Squad” accomplices and asked them, if “‘y’all available for a mission?”

The six cops stalked the men outside the home before breaking into it without a warrant.

Once inside the residence the police handcuffed Jenkins and Parker and began assaulting and waterboarding them. The police found a sex toy which they mounted on a BB gun and forced into the mouth of Parker, while Christian Dedmon tried to sexually assault Jenkins with the toy. For nearly two hours the police used their stun guns on the men while pouring milk, liquor and syrup on the them.

After forcing the men to shower together, the police assaulted them again with tasers and a metal sword.

After some 90 minutes of torture, Elward eventually forced Jenkins on his knees and put his pistol in his mouth in a “mock execution.” After pulling the trigger once, Elward chambered a round and pulled the trigger again, this time sending a bullet through Jenkins tongue, which then shattered his jaw and exited through his neck, nearly killing him.

Seeking to cover up their criminality, the police planted drugs in the house and stole a hard drive that had surveillance footage, which they tried to dispose of. The police also agreed upon a set of lies, which they regurgitated in falsified police reports.

In a press conference at the end of June, Mary Jenkins detailed some of the horrific hardships her son has had to deal with since the shooting. She explained that sometimes her son cannot eat food and has to be fed with a syringe. Jenkins noted that as part of her son’s rehabilitation, he has to meet with a speech doctor to learn how to talk again.

In another exception that proves the rule, nearly one year after shooting and killing unarmed Donovan Lewis in his bed last August, a Columbus, Ohio, grand jury this week charged former police Officer Ricky Anderson with murder. Lewis, 20, was shot and killed by Anderson, a 30-year officer, less than one second after Anderson entered his bedroom.

In their research of Anderson, NBC4 found that the former cop had been disciplined multiple times over his career. In 2018, Anderson was “reprimanded” after he left his body camera at his home while another officer deployed their taser on a “suspect.” That same year and again in 2020, Anderson was “disciplined” for turning off his police dash cam during “vehicle pursuits.”

In a statement on Friday commenting on the charging of Anderson nearly a year after the killing of Lewis, Rex Elliott, an attorney for the Lewis family, noted the real “two-tier” justice system that exists under capitalism.

“The reality is that there is a different justice system for citizens and a different justice system for police officers,” said Elliott. “This never should have taken this long.”

Wall Street moves to profit from mass layoffs as Yellow prepares to file for bankruptcy

Alex Findijs

A Yellow Corp. truck pulls into a YRC Freight facility Friday, July 28, 2023, in Richfield, Ohio. [AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki]

After laying off 30,000 employees, national less-than-truckload company Yellow is set to be looted by Wall Street. Since its shutdown, Yellow has seen large investments from Boston-based hedge fund MFN, and a group of investors led by Apollo Global Management is reportedly preparing an investment to restructure Yellow’s debt under a bankruptcy filing.

The immediate cause of Yellow’s collapse was its inability to pay off its debt, totaling $1.6 billion with $1.2 billion due next year. Of this, $700 million is due to the United States government and over $500 million is due to Apollo, a major private equity firm with close to $600 billion in managed assets.

Apollo played a leading role in Yellow’s management over the last few years. It had kept Yellow afloat in 2019 by loaning it $500 million, and Apollo co-founder Marc Rowan used his connections with the Trump administration to secure a bailout from the CARES Act.

Despite the influx of new cash, Yellow was still unable to manage its debt, and its only way out of potential bankruptcy was to cut costs. This took the form of Yellow’s One Yellow plan, a massive consolidation program designed to sell off facilities, slash jobs and cut wages and benefits.

Phase two of One Yellow was delayed by contract negotiations with the Teamsters. With One Yellow stalled, Yellow was unable to convince Wall Street it could extract value from workers effectively. Investors made it clear that no new money would be made available until Yellow could prove that it could force workers to pay for its debts and Wall Street’s profits.

Struggling to post a profit, Yellow quickly ran out of money and shuttered its operations last Sunday.

Yellow could easily enter into bankruptcy, which it apparently has not done yet and sell off its assets to pay back its investors. But Wall Street appears to have other plans for Yellow.

The hedge fund MFN has rapidly bought up shares of Yellow, now owning more than 40 percent of the company’s shares (22 million). This seemingly peculiar move from MFN is a maneuver by the hedge fund to manage its investments in Yellow’s rival XPO. Should Yellow declare bankruptcy and go under, MFN will see profits from XPO absorbing some of Yellow’s volume. If Yellow survives bankruptcy and returns as a competitor, MFN will profit from its stake in the company. This investment sent the price of Yellow shares up by 78 percent to $3.14.

MFN’s gamble that Yellow might survive bankruptcy was accompanied by reports that Apollo and a group of other lenders are preparing to loan Yellow money as part of a debtor-in-possession (DIP) bankruptcy plan.

DIP is a form of Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that allows for the debtor, Yellow, to continue with its operations on behalf of its creditors, such as Apollo. If Yellow does file for a DIP program, its creditors would be able to form a committee to oversee the company and manage its operations. If the committee believes that the company is not operating in its best interests, it can ask a court to appoint a trustee.

Essentially, Apollo and its associate lenders would take control over the company and its operations.

However, this does not necessarily mean that Apollo plans on resuscitating Yellow as it was operating previously. Under DIP, and even currently, Apollo has the first lien on Yellow’s debt obligations. This means that it must be paid back first before anyone else, including the US government.

By loaning Yellow more money to restructure its debt under DIP, Apollo is able to guide how Yellow liquidates and take the prime pieces of Yellow’s assets for itself.

Tom Goldsby, a professor of Logistics at the University of Tennessee’s Global Supply Chain Institute, said of the potential loan that “There appear to be all kinds of financial shenanigans going on around Yellow—none of which have anything to do with bolstering its potential as a viable trucking company into the future.”

Apollo has used bankruptcy to attack workers and restructure companies before. In the case of Warrior Met Coal, Apollo and other private equity firms used the company’s bankruptcy to erase pensions for workers and enforce massive pay cuts. And Apollo has reportedly been in talks to carry out a similar DIP program with Scandinavian airline SAS, which is also considering bankruptcy as it fails to force through concessions from airline workers. Apollo could be planning something similar at Yellow.

Regardless of Apollo’s plans, it is clear that the working class has been made to pay for Wall Street’s profits.

Effectively managed by Apollo, Yellow has carried out a major offensive against the working class on the behalf of finance capital and the US government. Worker resistance to exploitation was met with the annihilation of 30,000 jobs by Wall Street, which intends to use the collapse of Yellow to extract as much wealth from the working class as possible.

With the US government owning 27 percent of Yellow through its CARES Act bailout, the Biden administration has also played a critical role in the fall of Yellow. The US is fighting a two front war against Russia abroad and the working class at home. In order to pay for the war—which is costing as much as Yellow’s debt every week—and to enforce labor peace at home the Biden administration has relied on the trade union bureaucracy to enforce sell out contracts and has intervened against workers directly where necessary.

The Teamsters are willing participants in this effort. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien met with Biden several times ahead of the Congressional intervention against railroad workers last winter and was holding meetings with the Biden administration in the days before the announcement of a sellout contract at UPS this summer.

In response to the collapse of Yellow the Teamsters have hardly lifted a finger. It had canceled a strike at the last minute over the company’s non-payment of its pension obligations, and announced a deal which supposedly gave the company an extra 30 days to pay. Instead, the company predictably ceased operations and moved towards bankruptcy within only a few days..

In announcing that the company had ceased operations O’Brien simply stated that “Today’s news is unfortunate but not surprising.” In other words, nothing will be done to protect the livelihoods of 22,000 union members at Yellow. Instead of mobilizing the hundreds of thousands of Teamsters across the country to defend jobs, O’Brien and the union bureaucracy have allowed Yellow to lay off thousands of its members at one of the few remaining unionized trucking companies in the United States.

The idea that Yellow’s demise was an inevitable and unfortunate event is a farce and is aimed at disarming the working class. Yellow is partly owned by the United States government and its investors are some of the wealthiest and most powerful financial organizations in the world. Yellow did not destroy 30,000 jobs because it had no other choice, but because Wall Street and the entire capitalist class demanded that workers pay the price for corporate profits.

It is worth noting that Yellow controlled 10 percent of the LTL market with revenues near $5 billion. Its shuttering has shifted a mass volume of freight to other companies and prices have risen as a result. Rival companies and their investors will enjoy profiting from Yellow’s fall while 30,000 workers are now out of a job.

The collapse of Yellow and the vulture circling of Wall Street is a warning to the working class as a whole, especially as 340,000 UPS workers begin voting on a sell out contract that fails to meet their demands. The capitalist class is prepared to annihilate jobs on a mass scale to bolster their profits and suppress labor unrest.

Australian Government Direct Aid Program (DAP) 2023

APPLICATION DEADLINE:

12 August 2023 11:59pm Central African Time (CAT).

TELL ME ABOUT AWARD:

The Australian Embassy’s Direct Aid Program (DAP) is a small grants program which funds projects that advance development and/or human rights objectives.

The DAP supports international and local NGOs, civil society organizations and other community-based organizations operating in these countries.

TYPE:

Grants

WHO CAN APPLY?

The DAP is available on a not-for-profit basis to international and local NGOs, civil society organisations and other community-based organisations engaging in development and human rights activities in the Embassy’s countries of accreditation: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, the Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

WHAT ACTIVITIES ARE ELIGIBLE FOR DAP SUPPORT?

DAP activities should achieve direct, practical, tangible, and immediate high-impact development outcomes for beneficiary communities. Priority thematic areas for the 2023-24 DAP year include:

• gender equality, empowerment of women and social inclusion,
• poverty alleviation and rural development,
• environmental protection and climate change,
• human rights and governance,
• healthcare,
• education, and
• water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)
  This list is not exhaustive, and applicants may apply for funding for development projects in other thematic areas.
  Applications that address multiple thematic areas in a single project, will support vulnerable and marginalised communities, clearly articulate the change that would occur during project implementation to achieve stated development outcomes, provide robust public diplomacy opportunities (including links with Australia) shall be favourably considered.
  Projects should be self-contained with finite timelines. Activities in which the recipient community themselves makes a significant contribution in terms of labour, materials or cash are particularly well received. Projects that might act as a catalyst for additional development of the community or a model for similar developments elsewhere will also be welcomed.

HOW ARE APPLICANTS SELECTED?

Proposals must be clearly defined with specific outputs. Proposals will be approved or rejected based on:

• the costs and the development benefits of the proposal
• achievable and sustainable outcomes
• soundness of the project’s objectives and design
• the practicability of the proposed implementation arrangements, and
• whether the project conforms with the objectives of the Direct Aid Program
• applicant’s consideration and approach to risk management e.g., Child Protection, Financial Management, Fraud Risks, Terrorism Risks and Environmental Protection Risks
  Funding under the DAP is limited and only a small proportion of applications received each year is funded.

WHICH COUNTRIES ARE ELIGIBLE?

Zimbabwe, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Malawi, and the Republic of the Congo (RoC).

WHERE WILL AWARD BE TAKEN?

The Australian Embassy in Zimbabwe provides DAP funding to projects in its countries of accreditation – Zimbabwe, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Malawi, and the Republic of the Congo (RoC).

HOW MANY AWARDS?

Not specified

WHAT IS THE BENEFIT OF AWARD?

• There is no minimum amount that a single DAP project can receive but the maximum is AUD60,000 (approximately USD 40,000 – amount changes according to the exchange rate) over the life of the project.
• Activities may run up to a maximum of two years.
• All applications must be accompanied by a fully costed project budget. A detailed budget is required and must be supported by two quotations for any budget line between USD700 and USD7,000 and three quotations for amounts above USD7000.
• Two referees (other than from the applying organisation or from an organisation/person that stands to gain from the proposed project) are required.
• Additional documents may be attached if necessary, however applicants are encouraged to be concise.
• Pictures are often helpful.
• The Embassy will seek further information if required.

HOW TO APPLY:

Organizations should submit their applications online:

APPLY HERE

Organizations will not be able to access or submit their online application forms before 1 August 2023 or after 15 August 2023. We are unable to accept applications sent to us by email.  

For comprehensive information on the application process and eligibility, please refer to the DAP Guidelines.

English DAP Harare Guidelines – 2023-24 

The DAP application process is highly competitive, and the Embassy is only able to fund a small portion of applications received each year.

If you have any questions about the DAP, please email  DAP.Harare@dfat.gov.au    

Important note: DAP guidelines and application requirements change from year-to-year. Please do not rely on information that does not appear on this website or that you did not receive directly from the Embassy.

The Direct Assistance Program (DAP)

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Bank of England raises interest rates, plunging millions into financial distress

Laura Tiernan

The Bank of England (BoE) has raised interest rates by 25 basis points to 5.25 percent, the 14th consecutive rise since December 2021.

The BoE’s announcement Thursday, spelling financial disaster for millions, is a class war measure. It takes interest rates to their highest level in 15 years and deepens a brutal policy by the world’s leading central banks to suppress wage demands which have fueled a wave of strikes in the US, Europe and internationally since 2021-22 in response to the biggest cost-of-living crisis in decades.

Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey attends a press conference for the Monetry Policy Report August 2023, at the Bank of England in London Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023 [AP Photo/Alastair Grant, Pool]

Britain recorded 3.7 million strike days between June 2022 and April 2023, the highest since the 1980s. Amid an historic crisis of bourgeois rule, Rishi Sunak was installed as Party prime minister last October, after financial markets intervened to crash the premiership of Liz Truss who had replaced Boris Johnson as Conservative Party prime minister just 44 days earlier. Truss was punished for failing to outline a sufficiently ruthless austerity agenda to pay for her handouts to business. Sunak, formerly Britain’s chancellor, has since backed aggressive rate hikes to cow workers from striking, using the whip of higher unemployment and extortionate mortgage repayments and rents.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted 6-3 to raise interest rates by 0.25 percent. Two members were in favour of lifting rates to 5.5 percent, while another favoured holding interest rates at 5 percent.

In the summary of their decision, the MPC reported 12-month CPI inflation had fallen between May and June, with core goods and services inflation “lower than expected”. But it found the labour market “remains tight”, despite a 4 percent rise in unemployment in the three months to May.

Above all, the MPC focused on the dangers to the ruling class from continuing wage demands. Annual private sector pay growth of 7.7 percent in the three months to May was “materially above expectations”. While earnings growth was expected to decline to around 6 percent by the end of the year, the MPC warned, “there is uncertainty around this near-term outlook.”

While private sector wage growth was well below inflation (equal to a pay cut in real terms) for the MPC it was unacceptably high, “key indicators, notably wage growth, suggest that some of the risks from more persistent inflationary pressures may have begun to crystalize”. The BoE assured markets, “If there were to be evidence of more persistent pressures, then further tightening in monetary policy would be required.”

Britain’s central bank and the Sunak government are reliant on the trade union bureaucracy to enforce wage restraint and stifle growing social anger. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) and its affiliated unions have suppressed a strike wave encompassing millions of workers this past year, isolating, dividing and betraying strikes on the railways, London Underground, Royal Mail, BT, the airlines, and action by lorry drivers, dock workers, oil and gas workers, and more than a million NHS staff, followed by school, college and university educators.

Union bureaucrats have wielded the threat of job losses and financial ruin to impose sellout pay deals, enforcing the Bank of England’s aggressive rates policy against the working class. Frances O’Grady, TUC President from 2013-22, served on the Bank’s Court of Directors since 2019, symbolising the partnership between the trade union bureaucracy and the financial oligarchy.

Engineering a recession

Ahead of the BoE’s announcement, the FTSE 100 blue chip stock index slumped by 1.4 percent Thursday morning, while the pound hit its lowest level since June.

Critics of further rate hikes are nervous over the growing signs of recession. Wilko, one of Britain’s largest retailers, has announced it was preparing to appoint administrators with 12,000 jobs threatened, the latest in a line of corporate bankruptcies. In the manufacturing sector, declines in factory output, new orders and employment all accelerated in July.

Raj Badiani, Economics Director in Europe for S&P Global, criticised the BoE’s announcement, describing its monetary policy as “too restrictive” and predicting the British economy “is likely to buckle further, with shallow recession anticipated around the start of next year.”

Julian Jessop, of free market think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, said, “The UK economy is like a frog slowly being cooked by ever higher interest rates. By raising the temperature further now, the Bank risks doing too much and, once again, only realising its mistake when it is too late.”

The pro-Tory Telegraph, which has also opposed further rate hikes, warned that Britain is facing a Wile E. Coyote moment, “where the cartoon character keeps running long after he leaves the edge of the cliff before realising there is no ground beneath him and plunging into the abyss.”

But the Bank is determined to hold the line. Inflation in Britain is still 7.9 percent, far higher than the Eurozone average of 5.5 percent, and higher than comparable economies such as Germany (6.2 percent), Italy (6.7 percent), France (4.5 percent) and the US (3 percent).

After the BoE raised interest rates to 5 percent in June, Andrew Bailey denied the Bank was “trying to precipitate a recession”, while declaring that wage rises “cannot continue”.

But Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s office this week confirmed the government is willing to see a prolonged recession to bring inflation down to 2 percent, “We support whatever action the Bank deem necessary to control inflation.”

In June, JP Morgan’s Karen Ward, a member of Hunt’s economic advisory council, accused the BoE of being “too hesitant”, and called for further sustained rises to “create a recession”.

She told the BBC, “They have to create uncertainty and frailty, because it’s only when companies feel nervous about the future that they will think ‘Well, maybe I won’t put through that price rise’, or workers, when they’re a little bit less confident about their job, think ‘Oh, I won’t push my boss for that higher pay’.”

Between September 2022 and March 2023, Britain experienced seven months of double-digit inflation, peaking at 11.1 percent last October.

The persistence of comparatively high inflation is a symptom of Britain’s extreme economic weakness. The UK is a net importer of food and drink (the world’s third largest) and is reliant on imported gas to meet electricity and heating needs. It was therefore especially vulnerable to the surge in food and energy prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and NATO’s proxy war. Brexit has left Britain doubly exposed to labour shortages and the global supply chain crisis resulting from the failure of capitalist governments to prepare for the pandemic.

Household wealth plummets

A study published last month by the Resolution Foundation think-tank, “Peaked interest? What higher interest rates mean for the size and distribution of Britain’s household wealth”, reveals the staggering decline in household wealth since the start of the pandemic, the highest fall ever recorded.

While the pandemic initially saw a surge in household savings, accompanied by substantial debt repayments—rising by £247 billion between February 2020 and May 2021—inflation and then rising interest rates saw household wealth plummet.

From early 2021 to early 2023, declining asset values (primarily pensions and property) reduced household wealth from 840 percent of GDP in early 2021, to around 650 percent. The report noted, “This is by far the biggest fall on record as a proportion of GDP, wiping out £2.1 trillion of household net worth in cash terms.”

The authors concluded, “the magnitude of the fall in wealth since 2021 has been historically unprecedented”, representing “the largest decline in household wealth as a proportion of GDP in the post-war era”.

Based on the BoE’s projections, the report warned that household wealth would continue to fall. By the end of 2026, for example, “almost all British households with a mortgage will have moved onto a higher rate, and are set to end up with annual mortgage bills £2,000 higher, on average, than in December 2021.”

Households are already digging into savings to cover food, energy and housing costs. In May 2023, (the most recent data available) “UK households drew down £4.6 billion from savings, the largest amount since monthly records began in 1997.”

Mortgage interest rates have more than doubled in the past year already, with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research warning the government that millions of households with mortgages face “insolvency”.

Responding to the Bank of England’s rate rise, Labour’s shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves stated, “This will be incredibly worrying for households across the country. Responsibility for this crisis lies with the Tories. They’ve crashed our economy leaving people worse off.” She claimed, “Labour’s plans will boost growth and get bills down.”

But Reeves and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer are preparing the most right-wing government in history. Starmer told a conference in May that Labour would go “further and deeper than New Labour’s rewriting of clause IV” and describing his own plans as “Clause IV on steroids”. He declared, “If you think our job in 1997 was to rebuild a crumbling public realm, that in 1964 it was to modernise an economy overly dependent on the kindness of strangers, in 1945 to build a new Britain, in a volatile world, out of the trauma of collective sacrifice—in 2024, it will have to be all three.”

Italy’s Meloni wages war on the poor

Peter Schwarz

The message came via a text message and consisted of a few words. On July 28, the Italian government told 169,000 households that they would lose their incomes in four days. From August 1, they would no longer receive a cent from the state’s basic income support.

The 169,000 are only the beginning. In the coming months, hundreds of thousands more households will have their support cut off. In total, about 2.5 million people will be affected by the cuts. In this way, the government wants to save several billion euros, which it will pass onto the rich in the form of tax breaks.

[Photo by governo.it / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0]

In its current form, the Citizen’s Income (Reddito di cittadinanza) had only been introduced in 2019. It was a central election promise of the Five Star Movement, which won many votes with it, especially in the poor south of the country. It provided those in need with an additional income of up to €500 per month. Spouses received an additional €200, children €100 each and a maximum of €280 for rent. Given the high level of poverty in the country, however, this was only a drop in the ocean.

In the future, only households in which minors, disabled people or senior citizens live will receive a maximum of €480. On the other hand, 18- to 59-year-olds are considered “employable” and go empty-handed. Only if they participate in further education and training courses do they receive €350 per month, limited to a maximum of one year. So far, however, there are no such courses and the Ministry of Labour has not even set up an internet platform for them.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of people in Italy are to be left without income overnight and will not know how to pay the rent and utility bill or buy food. Large cities in the south of the country, such as Naples, Bari, Palermo, and Caserta, are particularly affected. In Naples, one in six households receives Citizen’s Income, and in the northern city of Bolzano it is one in 30.

As a result, there were protests in front of the offices of the social INPS welfare agency in many places. In the Sicilian municipality of Terrasini, a man stormed the mayor’s office, poured petrol all about and threatened to set everything on fire.

The cancellation of the Citizen’s Income and the brutal way in which it is being carried out are a deliberate provocation. The government of Giorgia Meloni is now showing its true fascist face. It wants to achieve two things.

Firstly, it is giving workers the choice of accepting the lowest-paid job or face starving to death. In this way, the Meloni government is trying to lower the overall level of wages and introduce compulsory work. And secondly, it is trying to divide the middle and working classes by turning better-off layers against the unemployed and those on benefits, just as it has so far turned them against refugees.

Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia railed against the Citizen’s Income during the election campaign, denouncing it as an invitation to do nothing “on the sofa.” Those who can work should not be reliant on the state’s pockets, Meloni had repeatedly stressed. She was supported in this by business associations that complained about the lack of staff in the catering and tourism industries because those receiving aid refused to take the low-paid jobs.

With her declaration of war on the poor, Meloni stands in the tradition of Mussolini, who continues to serve as a shining example for the Fratelli d’Italia, even though Meloni has declared him a “matter of history” for tactical reasons.

Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship embodied the direct and immediate rule of finance capital. Its populist phrases served only to mobilise its supporters. Its main task was to smash the workers’ organisations. It dissolved the trade unions into corporations dominated by the state and the employers’ associations and introduced forced labour on a large scale under the guise of “job creation measures.”

Germany’s Nazi dictatorship then went even further. During the war, more than 20 million forced labourers worked for the German economy in the Reich and conquered territories. While the leading industrialists such as the Flicks, Krupps and Quandts remained owners of their companies and raked in millions in profits, an army of slaves were worked to death. This practice reached its macabre climax in the inscription “Arbeit macht frei” (Work makes you free), which was emblazoned above the entrance to many concentration camps, such as Auschwitz.

Meloni’s attack on the poorest in society has met with support in bourgeois circles throughout Europe. Typical is a commentary in German daily Die Welt.

“Without much ado, the right-wing government under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has implemented its controversial plan to completely cancel basic assistance for a large proportion of those on benefits,” cheers the paper’s “chief economist”, Dorothea Siems. “Those who are considered fit for work now mostly have to look to their own resources to see how to make ends meet.”

In Germany, too, many citizens lacked “any understanding for the fact that in many places it is not possible to place more long-term unemployed into service jobs, for example in restaurants, hotels or in construction.” It was “urgently necessary to abolish the incentives for non-work.” Those who were too hard-working, writes Siems, citing Ifo head Clemens Fuest, “not only lose their entitlement to the Citizen’s Income, but also to housing benefit and other social payments. De facto, this is tantamount to a work ban—and no welfare state can afford that in the long run.”

In France, President Macron is using brute police force to force through a pension reform that will drastically reduce retirement benefits. Governments in other European countries and the US are also recouping the trillions they spend on war and trade war, bailing out the banks and increasing the profits of the rich, by cutting wages and benefits. Resistance to this is growing; in the long run, the attacks cannot be realised by democratic methods.

This and her unconditional support for NATO in the Ukraine war explain why the red carpet is being rolled out for the fascist Meloni in Brussels, Berlin and Paris. US President Joe Biden has also received her for a two-way meeting at the White House. Meloni serves as a lever to help right-wing and fascist forces break through in other countries as well.

The close cooperation with Meloni underlines that there is no question of an alleged “firewall” against the extreme right. In Germany, too, the AfD is courted by all parties and the media. At the European level, the integration of the fascists is particularly advanced.

Meloni’s governing coalition unites the three largest right-wing and far-right groups of European parties and serves as a blueprint for a similar alliance at the European level.

Meloni herself is the leader of the European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR), which, in addition to the Spanish Vox, also includes the Polish ruling party PiS and the Czech ruling party ODS. Meloni appeared in the Spanish election campaign at major events organised by Franco supporters from Vox. Matteo Salvini’s Lega is a member of Identity and Democracy (ID), alongside Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France and Germany’s AfD. And Forza Italia, founded by Silvio Berlusconi, belongs to the European People’s Party (EPP), as do the German Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Spanish People’s Party (PP).

The German European People’s Party (EPP) group leader Manfred Weber, in particular, is busily preparing an alliance with the far right to secure another term for EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after the 2024 European elections. Spanish PP leader Alberto Feijóo has even called on Meloni to join the EPP. “It would be good for the EPP if Ms. Meloni ended up with the EPP,” he said in an interview.

The Social Democrats, Greens and Left parties and the trade unions associated with them have done nothing to oppose this. Their policies—from support for the Ukraine war, to social cuts, to fending off refugees, to arming the police—are not much different from those of the right and ultra-right.

In Italy, the leader of the Democrats (PD), Elly Schlein, rails against Meloni’s war on the poor. But the PD itself has led or supported several governments that have vigorously pushed though social cuts, paving the way for Meloni to come to power. Italy’s largest trade union, CGIL, invited Meloni to its last congress in March, giving the fascist a platform to promote her anti-working class programme.

Japan releases military white paper justifying war preparations against China

Ben McGrath

The Japanese cabinet approved the government’s annual military white paper on July 28. Produced by the Defense Ministry, the document is presented as a justification for Japan’s remilitarization and makes clear that China is the primary target of this massive buildup. It is the first white paper to come out since the formal release of Tokyo’s new military strategy last December.

Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) destroyer JDS Kongou (DDG 173) in formation with other JMSDF ships and ships assigned to the USS Kitty Hawk Carrier Strike Group in 2005. [Photo: US Navy Chief Photographer's Mate Todd Cichonowicz]

The paper presents China as Japan’s “greatest strategic challenge,” while also denouncing Russia and North Korea. Tokyo claims that Beijing is “continuing and amplifying its unilateral changes to the status quo by force” in the East and South China Seas, an accusation that appears throughout the document. This provides the pretext for Tokyo to drastically ramp up its military spending; acquire cruise missiles and drones to launch offensive attacks; and further strengthen alliances with the US and other “like-minded countries” in the region.

The white paper states that Japan’s “three defense objectives” include shaping the security environment in the region, preparing to respond to so-called forceful unilateral changes to the status quo, and plans to “disrupt and defeat” an invasion. Put more simply, Tokyo intends to possess the military capacity to threaten other countries, namely China, while preparing to launch a war in league with the US using the supposed “threat” posed by Beijing as the excuse.

The focus on China is significant. Prior to the release of the revised National Security Strategy last December, along with the National Defense Strategy and the Defense Buildup Program, Tokyo claimed North Korean “aggression” as its main justification for remilitarization. That phony rationale has been pushed aside. Now, it is Beijing’s “unilateral changes to the status quo by force” that supposedly makes war preparations necessary.

In reality, Japanese and the US are targeting China for Beijing’s refusal to acquiesce to US hegemony in the Indo-Pacific, or the so-called “international rules-based order” where the rules are written in Washington. China is being cast as the aggressor to cover up the ambitions of US and Japanese imperialism and the responsibility of Washington for inflaming tensions in the region.

Under the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” minor territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas were deliberately stoked, including between China and Japan. When the Trump administration took power, Washington inflamed tensions between mainland China and Taiwan, a policy that Biden has continued. This includes sending war ships on “freedom of navigation” operations through the Taiwan Strait; high-ranking diplomatic exchanges between US and Taiwanese officials; and major sales of weaponry to Taipei.

Tokyo has backed Washington over Taiwan. The white paper states Beijing is “increasing military pressure on Taiwan,” which Tokyo claims is also a threat to nearby Japanese islands. It hypocritically denounces China for conducting air and naval transits in the region while supporting US naval and air provocations around Taiwan and in the South China Sea. Washington and Tokyo are ultimately attempting to goad China into a conflict over Taiwan using the same tactic as in Ukraine to provoke a war with Russia.

In preparation for such a war, the Defense Ministry in last December’s Defense Buildup Program pledged to increase military spending in the 2023–2027 period to 43 trillion yen ($US300 billion), a 56.5 percent increase over the previous five-year period. The white paper reiterates the pledge to bring annual military spending up to Washington’s benchmark by fiscal year (FY) 2027. It stated Tokyo “will take the necessary measures to ensure that the budget level for both the fundamental reinforcement of defense capabilities and complementary initiatives reaches 2 percent of the GDP in FY2022,” up from the current 1 percent it currently spends.

This will be achieved through an 8.9 trillion-yen ($US62 billion) military budget in 2027 as well as additional spending on the Coast Guard, infrastructure, and technology research, raising the total to approximately 11 trillion yen ($US77 billion). Under Japan’s revised military strategy, the government will create new mechanisms for incorporating the additional spending and operations of separate sectors into its armed forces. By doing so, Tokyo further militarizes these areas, brings them in line with the war drive against China, and de facto doubles its annual military spending.

The manipulation of expenditures to reach the 2 percent benchmark is no doubt meant to deflect public opposition to war. Longstanding anti-war sentiment exists in Japan, particularly within the working class, which suffered heavily under militarist regimes in the 1930s and 1940s before Japan’s defeat in World War II.

Widespread public opposition exists to efforts to eliminate Article 9 from the country’s constitution—the so-called pacifist clause. It states that Japan “forever renounce(s) war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” while “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.”

An Asahi Shimbun survey this past May found 55 percent of respondents believe Article 9 should not be changed.

To skirt around public opposition, the Japanese ruling class instead has chipped away at and carried out numerous constitutional “reinterpretations” over the years. After signing the Japan US Security Treaty in 1951, Tokyo established the Self-Defense Forces in 1954, the formal name of Japan’s military. From 1972 to 2014, the government claimed it had the so-called right to “collective self-defense” in theory.

The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe explicitly claimed in 2014 that Japan could conduct “collective self-defense” operations alongside an ally and pushed related military legislation through parliament the following year. Now the Defense Ministry’s white paper pledges closer collaboration with “like-minded countries” such as South Korea.

Tokyo has moved closer to Seoul in recent months under pressure from Washington, which regards cooperation between its two major allies in North East Asia as critical for its war drive. Both countries are part of the anti-ballistic missile system that Washington has established in the region directed at China. Japan has also increased military exercises with the US and South Korea in the region, further provoking Beijing.

Japan’s white paper amounts to a justification for remilitarization and the intensification of the war drive against China in alliance with the US. There is nothing defensive about Tokyo’s intentions, as the Japanese ruling class seeks to do away with the fetters of its post-war constitution so as to wage war in pursuit of its imperialist interests.