CDC approves updated COVID vaccine boosters

Benjamin Mateus

The latest iteration of the mRNA COVID vaccine boosters from Pfizer and Moderna, designed to target the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant which was dominant throughout much of the world this past spring, will be available soon at major pharmacies and health centers after being greenlighted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this week.

This will be the third COVID booster jab offered to Americans considered low-risk (the fifth for high-risk groups since 2021) and the first time since the World Health Organization (WHO) and Biden administration unscientifically ended the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declarations last May. One of the factors motivating this decision was to shift the provision of the vaccines to the private market, with companies now able to charge marked-up prices.

Criminally, the list price of the vaccines, which were developed through federal programs funded by taxpayers, is now $110 to $130 per dose. While in theory most people with private and public health insurance should have these costs covered, there will undoubtedly be bureaucratic loopholes that make this difficult for millions, forcing many to pay out-of-pocket. For those without insurance, they will have to navigate community health centers, while provision through the Biden administration’s “Bridge Access Program” remains unclear.

On Tuesday, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted nearly unanimously (13-1) to recommend the jabs for all Americans six months of age or older. CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen signed off on these recommendations hours after the vote. Novavax’s protein-based COVID vaccine directed at XBB.1.5 awaits regulatory approval in the next few weeks but should receive similar CDC recommendations for eligibility.

In a statement released by the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Dr. Peter Marks said:

Vaccination remains critical to public health and continued protection against serious consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death. The public can be assured that these updated vaccines have met the agency’s rigorous scientific standard for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality. We very much encourage those who are eligible to consider getting vaccinated.

These reformulated mRNA, or protein-based vaccines, do not require new clinical trials as their safety has been previously determined. Indeed, in the almost three years they have been employed, they have proven their safety profiles with very rare cases of anaphylaxis or deaths associated with the vaccines.

According to the CDC’s “Reported Adverse Events,” with hundreds of millions of COVID vaccines administered, anaphylaxis occurred in about five cases per 1 million vaccine doses given. Multiple studies have yet to demonstrate any unusual patterns in cause of death after vaccination [See Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, and Link 4]. In fact, for those who have been vaccinated for COVID-19, all-cause mortality was lower than the expected all-cause mortality rates.

As for vaccines causing inflammation of the heart, known as myocarditis, one study found there were potentially 320 such cases out of nearly 7 million vaccine doses among persons 5-17 years old within 98 days of vaccination.

Regarding adolescent males, although the rates of myocarditis caused by the mRNA vaccines are higher than background, they are still very rare events, amounting to only 22.4 excess cases per million with Pfizer and 31.2 excess cases per million with Moderna. Most of these were reported to be transient in nature and were cleared by their physicians for all physical activity. However, the most recent data collected on the last bivalent booster among more than 110,000 vaccine doses given to those 12-17 years old found that there were zero case of myocarditis.

Data obtained in the laboratory setting also indicate that the new booster shots produce a significant immune boost protecting against the latest Omicron subvariants that are circulating, including the highly-mutated and divergent BA.2.86 (Pirola) lineage. Meanwhile, real world data with the previous iteration of the COVID boosters found that they provide better protection against hospitalization than the original COVID booster based on the wild-type strain of the coronavirus. The implication is that these new iterations will improve a person’s immune response against the latest viral strains.

The near universal recommendations by the ACIP came as some surprise by many who expected the COVID boosters might be limited to high-risk populations in the face of high levels of population immunity from previous infections and vaccinations. This more restrictive approach is being implemented in the UK, some EU countries, China and Mexico, where they will be prioritized to the elderly and most vulnerable, including immunocompromised individuals, nursing home populations and those with medical comorbidities. Germany, for instance, is not running any winter campaign efforts though they are recommending annual boosters for at-risk groups.

The basis for the universal recommendations came from the CDC’s own analysis that if provided to the entire population then 400,000 hospitalizations and more than 40,000 deaths could be averted over the next two years. These facts raise inconvenient truths about the nature of the pandemic and the health agency’s cavalier and negligent response to the latest ongoing surge of infections and hospitalizations across the US.

Important information gleaned from the presentation suggests that the CDC expected the reformulated vaccines to offer 65 percent vaccine efficacy against symptomatic infection. As usual, immunity should reach its highest point after one month and then begin to rapidly wane over the intervening four to six months. This would place most people at risk of infection or hospitalization after the winter surge has receded, presuming they are vaccinated in the weeks ahead.

Nonetheless, the CDC anticipates that weekly hospitalizations will climb over the winter and reach last year’s range of admissions. They acknowledged that persons from six months of age to 49 years without underlying medical conditions were still being admitted to the ICU or dying with COVID-19 in the period from July 2022 to June 2023.

COVID-associated deaths in the US during the first seven months of 2023 were 451 for ages 20 to 44; 2,821 for those 45 to 64 years old; and 24,776 for those over 65. Additionally, 80 infants, children and young adults died from COVID-19 during this period. In total, more than 28,000 have died from COVID in the first half of 2023, which is considered an undercount as they are based on how these deaths are coded.

Upending all the lies that COVID-19 is “like the flu” and does not impact children, in the first seven months of 2023 the flu only killed 28 people in the US between the ages of one and 19, while during the same period 54 died of COVID in the same age range. While data for flu deaths under 12 months of age was not provided, 26 COVID deaths officially took place among those less than one year old.

When the CDC reviewed risks based on the number of underlying medical conditions and the increased risk of admission to the ICU, mechanical ventilation and death, the hazard ratio jumped dramatically for one condition and then again for those with more than one condition, underscoring the considerable risk most people with poor health face in the US and the rest of the world face when infected with COVID-19.

In contrast to the Biden administration’s propaganda that “the pandemic is over,” in summarizing their findings the CDC refers to the current surge as a “pandemic” and notes that “the absolute number of hospitalizations and deaths is still high.” They found that the most vulnerable—infants and older adults—have the highest COVID-19-associated hospitalization rates, and they anticipate that this winter COVID-19 will continue to impact healthcare systems.

These findings are vital for the population, and one must ask why these have not been provided in such a cogent manner? Additionally, why are these vaccines just being offered when a surge has been underway for the last three months? Why haven’t public health measures been implemented to protect people from the ravages of the virus with the impact it causes on every organ system in their body, increasing one’s risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke which are not being counted in these metrics?

Weekly hospitalizations for COVID have risen three-fold since late June and as of the week ending September 2, 2023, stand at 18,871. Weekly deaths, a lagging indicator, have also been inching higher at 672 as of August 12, 2023, which are up 40 percent from early July. The fact that these unreliable data are a month old means that using these metrics will have little impact in protecting the population should the virus evolve into a more virulent form.

Currently, the latest Biobot Analytics data on SARS-CoV-2 wastewater levels updated on September 11, 2023, indicate that the current national surge continues, corresponding to approximately 720,000 COVID infections each day.

Recent experience with the lackluster uptake of the bivalent COVID boosters indicates that many may choose to forgo this life-saving preventative measure. This is not an individual failure but a public health disaster, the product of a bipartisan propaganda campaign of the capitalist ruling elites designed to condition people to ignore the threats posed by SARS-CoV-2.

Workers should take every measure to acquire these treatments and protect themselves and their families, even though the vaccines alone do not guarantee against COVID-19 infection or Long COVID. The vaccine-only strategy of the Biden administration is fundamentally a flawed public health approach and dangerous. Still, under the present circumstances, it is vital to protect one’s health and well-being as much as possible.

The CDC’s universal recommendation for the new booster shots is correct but does not stem from a shift in their perspective or policy to inure the population to treat COVID like another seasonal virus.

South Korean government targets democratic rights

Ben McGrath

In recent weeks, the administration of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has stepped up its anti-democratic attacks on government critics. In language reminiscent of the country’s past dictatorships, Yoon has denounced opposition to the government as the result of “communist totalitarianism” influence and “anti-state forces.”

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, centre, looks around military vehicles following South Korea-US joint military drill at Seungjin Fire Training Field in Pocheon, South Korea, on June 15, 2023. [AP Photo/Jung Yeon-je]

The Yoon administration and the ruling People Power Party (PPP) seized on a September 1 event in Tokyo attended by nominally independent South Korean lawmaker Yun Mi-hyang. It was held by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) to mark the 100th anniversary of the massacre of up to 10,000 Koreans in a pogrom following the Great Kanto earthquake. The commemoration included the participation of numerous other organizations in Japan.

Chongryon is aligned with North Korea, which was seized on by the Yoon administration to  denounce Yun, a former member of the opposition Democratic Party (DP). The president declared on September 4: “All citizens together must, without regard for political affiliation, respond firmly to anti-state activities that are attempting to shake and destroy the system of liberal democracy.” The PPP also submitted a motion for disciplinary proceedings against Yun in the National Assembly.

The scandal is entirely manufactured. Chongryon is one of the two main organizations representing Koreans in Japan, the other being the Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan), aligned with the South. It is not uncommon for Chongryon and Mindan to attend events together, as they did at other memorials on September 1.

The attack on Yun is not simply aimed at one lawmaker. Rather, it reflects far broader concerns in ruling circles about growing opposition among workers and youth over declining economic conditions, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and the US-led war drive against China.

Real wages have been declining since April 2022 amid high inflation. The average monthly real wage for the first half of the year dropped for the first time since 2011. Furthermore, the purchasing managers index for South Korean manufacturing indicates that the sector has contracted for 14 consecutive months, the longest in nearly 50 years. This has been driven by declining exports, particularly to China.

Having no progressive solution to declining living conditions, the government is seeking to blame any discontent on “outside forces” and to discredit socialism. The government is also making clear that it will use force against protests and strikes. While a lawmaker may be sanctioned in parliament, workers will face riot squads and mass arrests in the country. There is a long history of red-baiting tactics against the working class alongside the draconian National Security Act, which makes socialism illegal.

Yoon declared on September 1 at an event marking the 60th anniversary of the Korean National Diplomatic Academy: “Our freedom is now under constant threat. Communist totalitarian forces and their opportunist followers, as well as anti-state forces, are still inciting anti-Japanese sentiment and misleading the public into thinking the South Korea-US-Japan cooperation mechanisms produced at Camp David will put the Republic of Korea and the people in danger.”

The August 18 Camp David summit between the US, South Korea, and Japan marked a significant escalation in the war drive against China. It included plans for trilateral war games, expanded military intelligence sharing, and a three-way leaders’ hotline to facilitate cooperation in the event of regional “crises.”

Yoon has in effect signed up for a US-led war with China behind the backs of the South Korean population. However, his administration is worried that anti-war sentiment will derail these plans as workers are unwilling to participate in such a catastrophic conflict.

In doing so, Yoon has aligned Seoul with the right-wing government of Japan, the imperialist power that ruthlessly colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945. Successive governments, including the current Kishida administration, have downplayed or denied crimes committed against the Korean people during this period. In part, this is aimed at countering widespread anti-war sentiment in Japan.

The Democratic Party has criticized the Camp David summit from a right-wing, nationalist standpoint. On August 21, for example, Park Gwang-on, DP floor leader in the National Assembly, stated, “Many people evaluate the summit as one where the national interests of the US and Japan are visible but not those of South Korea.”

Such statements are not anti-war and only foster divisions between Korean and Japanese workers while obfuscating the danger of a catastrophic world war. Sections of the South Korean bourgeoisie have long used anti-Japanese chauvinism to distract from conditions domestically. In criticizing these statements, the Yoon administration is also working to ensure that the entire ruling class is brought into line with the US war preparations.

Yoon also used his Liberation Day speech on August 15 to denounce “communist totalitarianism” several times, declaring, “[S]till rampant are anti-state forces that blindly follow communist totalitarianism, distort public opinion, and disrupt society through manipulative propaganda.”

He added, “The forces of communist totalitarianism have always disguised themselves as democracy activists, human rights advocates or progressive activists while engaging in despicable and unethical tactics and false propaganda.” In other words, anyone voicing concerns about democratic rights or the danger of war is being branded as “anti-state” and targeted for suppression.

This is not the first time Yoon has denounced opponents in such terms. During the 16-day truckers’ strike at the end of last year, Yoon declared the truck drivers’ demands for improved conditions was “similar to the North Korean nuclear threat.” Earlier this year, he pledged to restrict the rights to free speech and assembly while accusing the DP-aligned Korean Confederation of Trade Unions of being pro-North Korean.

For all of Yoon’s claims to be defending “democracy,” his government is reviving the police state measures imposed upon the southern half of Korea beginning in 1948 with the US puppet Syngman Rhee regime, which comprised former Japanese collaborators and stooges for US imperialism.

NATO imperialism and the Libya flood catastrophe

Alex Lantier

A general view of the city of Derna as seen on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. [AP Photo/Jamal Alkomaty]

More than 6,000 people are confirmed dead in the flooding across eastern Libya caused by Storm Daniel, which burst two dams and destroyed large parts of the port city of Derna. Many thousands are still missing and the confirmed death toll is expected to at least double as the remains of victims the flood swept out to sea wash back ashore.

This horrific catastrophe is not only the product of severe weather, intensified by climate change. It flows from the war NATO waged against Libya in 2011, which shattered the country and plunged it into civil war. Those who launched the NATO war in Libya or applauded it as a “humanitarian” intervention, and who today are backing a NATO war against Russia in Ukraine on similar grounds, bear direct political and moral responsibility for the Derna catastrophe.

Last year, hydrologist Abdelwanees Ashoor wrote articles warning that Derna’s dams were in poor condition, and that a major flood would be “likely to cause one of the two dams to collapse.” Ashoor continued, “If a huge flood happens, the result will be catastrophic for the people of the wadi and the city.”

No repairs were done, however, because of the civil war that has raged between rival governments in eastern and western Libya since NATO destroyed Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in the 2011 war. International Crisis Group official Claudia Gazzini told France24: “In 10 years since the fall of the Gaddafi regime—in the following 10 years of wars, policy rivalry and isolation—both governments have completely neglected the infrastructure.”

What is systematically covered up, however, is the NATO powers’ role in instigating the civil war that created the conditions for the flood. Top NATO officials launched the 2011 war in Libya, relying on the professional liars in the major media, the academic establishment and the middle-class pseudo-left parties to sell the war as a crusade for democracy and human rights. These forces all have blood on their hands.

This includes then-US President Barack Obama, then-UK Prime Minister David Cameron and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose governments pressed the hardest for the 2011 war in Libya. Also complicit are the major media outlets such as the New York Times and CNN, which peddle CIA-dictated propaganda, as well as legions of cowardly and conformist academics like Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan and pseudo-left political operatives like Professor Gilbert Achcar of France’s New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA). They backed the war in Libya then, as they back NATO’s Ukraine war now.

NATO launched the war in Libya in February 2011, claiming that only its intervention could keep Gaddafi from killing protesters in eastern Libya, the same region now devastated by floods. To topple Gaddafi, NATO armed a collection of rival Islamist and tribal militias, led by figures such as Libyan Islamic Fighting Group leader Abdelhakim Bekhadj, CIA asset Khalifa Haftar, and leaders of the Misrata Brigades. It then provided its proxy forces with air support, bombing Libyan army forces that fought the NATO-backed insurgent militias.

The war ended after seven months of fighting that claimed an estimated 25,000 lives, as NATO bombed Tripoli and Sirte, Gaddafi’s home city. On October 20, 2011, a gang of militiamen that included French intelligence agents captured, tortured and murdered Gaddafi in the ruins of Sirte. Then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gloated on the day of Gaddafi’s death, laughing and telling reporters: “We came, we saw, he died.”

The World Socialist Web Site exposed the imperialist interests motivating the war on oil-rich Libya and exposed the lies used to justify the war. Examining the case of professor and Middle East blogger Juan Cole, David North pointed to the pro-imperialist political amnesia that afflicted a broad layer of petty-bourgeois supporters of the war. North wrote:

Those who are hailing the attack on Libya as a triumph for the cause of human rights seem to have no recollection at all of the monstrous role played by the United States in attacking and subverting countries that interfered, in one way or another, with its strategic political and economic interests. It is not only the past that is forgotten (Vietnam, the savage war of the “Contras” in Nicaragua, the fomenting of civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, the overthrow and murder of Lumumba in the Congo, the longstanding support for the apartheid regime in South Africa, the invasion of Iraq); the present is all but ignored. The pro-war “left” assigns to the United States the task of removing Gaddafi for firing on his people, even as Predator drones rain missiles down upon Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing people every day.

As the war began, Cole attacked left-wing opposition to it, declaring that the left “should avoid making ‘foreign intervention’ an absolute taboo,” and adding, “To make ‘anti-imperialism’ trump all other values in a mindless way leads to frankly absurd positions.” To underscore his enthusiastic support for the US and NATO, he said, “If NATO needs me, I’m there.”

Similarly, Achcar, a professor at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and member of the Pabloite NPA, who functions as an adviser to the British army, admitted that the war aimed to plunder Libya’s oil resources, but backed NATO anyway.

“The Western response, of course, smacks of oil,” Achcar said in 2011. However, he argued, this was not a reason to oppose the war:

Here is a case where a population is truly in danger, and where there is no plausible alternative that could protect it. The attack by Gaddafi’s forces was hours or at most days away. You can’t in the name of anti-imperialist principles oppose an action that will prevent the massacre of civilians.

And once the Gaddafi regime had been toppled, New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof traveled to Libya and boasted that the NATO war had turned him into a hero in Tripoli. In a column titled “Thank You America!”, Kristof wrote:

Americans are not often heroes in the Arab world, but as nonstop celebrations unfold here in the Libyan capital, I keep running into ordinary people who learn where I’m from and then fervently repeat variants of the same phrase: “Thank you America!”

In reality, the NATO victory in Libya resulted in a human tragedy. The country again plunged into civil war in 2012, after oil-rich eastern Libya tried to secede and cut its own deals with the major NATO oil corporations. Along with the escalation of civil war over the ensuing decade, there have been tens of thousands more deaths. Economic production has fallen by half, from $92 billion in 2012 to $46 billion last year, while gross domestic product per capita—roughly speaking, average personal income—has fallen from $15,765 to $6,716.

All the officials and professors who argued that the NATO conquest of Libya would produce peace, prosperity and democracy bear responsibility for the tens of thousands of deaths and incalculable human misery that have resulted from the war they backed and actively promoted. Cole claimed he supported the war because it created the prospect of “allowing Libyans to have a normal life.” But the war supposedly waged for democracy and normality devastated Libya and led to the reintroduction of slavery in the country.

In 2017, citing multiple reports in world media, Amnesty International concluded that in camps the European Union (EU) set up in Libya to detain refugees trying to flee to Europe, prisoners are beaten, raped, murdered and sold at auction into slavery.

Today, what do the war propagandists have to say about the catastrophe in Derna and the role their support for war has played? Cole and Achcar, on their blogs, have said nothing. They have left the disaster they helped create in Libya behind. Achcar has moved on to advocating support for the latest NATO war—this time, against Russia.

The war against Russia in Ukraine flows directly out of the spiral of military escalation launched by NATO. After the war in Libya, the NATO powers soon mobilized the Islamist networks they had used against Gaddafi as proxy forces to wage war in Syria. In September 2013, Russian warships based at Sevastopol intervened to block NATO ships from bombing Syria. Less than five months later, Washington and Berlin backed the February 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine and demanded that Russia hand over Sevastopol and the entire Crimean Peninsula to the newly installed pro-NATO regime in Kiev.

The decisive task facing workers and youth around the world is to build an international movement against imperialism to halt this spiral of military escalation, which is setting into motion an ever-greater chain of catastrophes. As the NATO imperialist powers escalate the war in Ukraine and conspire to divide up Russia and grab its natural resources, they again present themselves as defenders of “democracy” and “freedom”—this time, against Russian President Vladimir Putin. In reality, the rape of Libya and the catastrophe in Derna are imperishable warnings on the disastrous consequences of NATO victory in its wars of plunder.

Ukraine uses NATO-supplied missiles to strike Crimea

Andre Damon

Governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhaev speaks on a mobile phone as smoke and flames rise from a burning Sevastopol shipyard in Crimea. (Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev telegram channel via AP) [AP Photo]

Ukraine carried out the largest strike on the Russian port of Sevastopol on the Russian-claimed Crimean Peninsula since the start of the war Wednesday, severely damaging a warship and submarine in a combined strike using long-range missiles and remotely-piloted suicide boats.

Citing an unnamed Ukrainian official, Sky News reported that the strike used Storm Shadow long-range missiles provided by the UK. “It was Storm Shadow,” Sky News quoted one of its sources as saying. Earlier this year, the UK and France provided Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles, with a range of over 150 miles.

Coming after pledges early in the war by the US and its NATO allies that their weapons would not be used to strike Russian territory, the latest attack demonstrates the extent to which the NATO powers are abandoning many of their prior limitations on their involvement in the war.

Unlike previous strikes on military installations on Crimea, Ukrainian officials openly admitted their responsibility and boasted about the damage that had been inflicted.

“On the morning of Sept. 13 the Ukrainian armed forces conducted successful strikes on naval assets and port infrastructure of the occupiers at the docks of temporarily occupied Sevastopol,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Telegram.

Lieutenant General Mykola Oleschuk, the head of the Ukrainian Air Force, posted an image of a burning Russian warship on Telegram, adding the caption “And while the occupiers are ‘storming’ and they are still recovering from the [explosions] in Sevastopol, thank you to the pilots of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for their excellent combat work!”

“We confirm a large landing vessel and submarine were hit,” Andriy Yusov, a Ukrainian military intelligence official, told Reuters.

In a subsequent statement to Ukrainian national television, Yusov added, “Those are significant damages. We can now say that with a high probability they are not subject to restoration.”

Mikhail Razvozhaev, the governor of Sevastopol, wrote on Telegram that 24 people were injured in the strike. The destroyed vessels had been identified by military analysts as a Project 636.3 diesel submarine and a Project 775 Ropucha-class large landing ship. Both ships were in dry dock undergoing repairs at the time. It was the first known successful attack on a Russian submarine of the war so far.

Last year, Ukraine destroyed the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

In recent months, Ukrainian forces have regularly carried out attacks hundreds of miles behind Russian lines, including multiple attacks on the Russian capital city of Moscow.

The Financial Times quoted Ukrainian Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, boasting about the consistent strikes inside Russia. “It has a sobering effect,” he said. “We see some slight moves—panic moves—for example, Russian insurance companies providing insurance against civilian attacks.”

He continued, “As a result, much more money is being traded between insurance companies and airlines. These problems will mount up and affect people—we hope there will be kitchen conversations about that.”

In May, two drones exploded over the official residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin called an assassination attempt.

At the time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked whether the US would disavow attempted assassinations of Russian officials, Blinken refused to do so, declaring, “These are decisions for Ukraine to make about how it’s going to defend itself, how it’s going to get its territory back, how it’s going to restore its territorial integrity and its sovereignty.”

That same month, the Ukrainian military carried out a suicide drone attack on the Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland.

In July of this year, Ukrainian suicide drones attacked Moscow’s central business district, damaging the facades of two office buildings. 

In February, US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland gave a public green light for Ukrainian attacks on Crimea. “Those are legitimate targets,”  Nuland said, referring to Ukrainian strikes on Crimea. “Ukraine is hitting them. We are supporting that.” Last year, the US gave private authorization for strikes inside Russian territory, according to The Times of London.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that the United States is preparing to approve the sending of long-range ATACMS missiles, capable of striking hundreds of miles behind Russian lines and putting the capital city at risk of attack.

These moves follow what was widely seen as an embarrassing setback for the United States at the G20 Summit in India, which failed to adopt language demanded by the US and its allies condemning Russia for the Ukraine war.

This took place in the context of the failure of Ukraine’s “Spring offensive” which, despite the loss of tens of thousands of lives, has made no significant progress in recapturing Russian-held territory.

Under conditions in which the extent of Ukraine’s military debacle is becoming clear, the US and its NATO allies are increasingly removing whatever restrictions on Kiev’s military actions remain and more and more openly encouraging it to use long-range Western weapons to strike inside Russia.

Thousands dead and 10,000 missing in Libyan floods

Thomas Scripps

More than 5,000 people are dead and 10,000 missing in floods in the coastal region of north-east Libya. Storm Daniel, which has already deluged Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey, brought so much rain in such a short period that a usually dry riverbed—a wadi with depths of up to 400 metres—flooded and burst two catchment dams near the city of Derna.

The eastern cities of Al-Bayda, Al-Marj, Tobruk, Takenis, Al-Bayada, Battah and Benghazi—150 miles to the west of Derna—have also been affected.

A general view of the city of Derna is seen on Tuesday, Sept. 12., 2023. Mediterranean storm Daniel caused devastating floods in Libya that broke dams and swept away entire neighborhoods in multiple coastal towns, the destruction appeared greatest in Derna city. [AP Photo/Jamal Alkomaty]

Tamer Ramadan, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Libya, confirmed the figure of 10,000 people missing so far and told the media, “The death toll is huge.” The interior ministry of Libya’s eastern-based administration announced 5,000 deaths late Tuesday evening. The toll already exceeds that of the worst North African flood of the last century, in Algeria in 1927.

A Derna resident told the Al-Hurra news channel, “When the dam collapsed, the water was released like an atomic bomb, and eight bridges and residential buildings collapsed completely.” Others described the water hitting like a “tsunami”, reaching as high as 10 feet. Photos of the aftermath show scenes resembling a warzone.

Reports say one quarter of Derna, home to well over 100,000 people, has been totally swept away. Roughly 700 dead have already been taken to a local cemetery to be identified. Many will never be found. A spokesperson for the Libyan National Army which controls the area said, “The flowing water carried away entire neighbourhoods, eventually depositing them into the sea.”

Minister of Civil Aviation Hichem Chkiouat told Reuters, “Bodies are lying everywhere—in the sea, in the valleys, under the buildings.”

Survivors are caught in a humanitarian disaster. CNN reported the comments of ambulance and emergency spokesperson Osama Aly hours after the event that “hospitals in Derna are no longer operable and the morgues are full.”

A doctor at the scene told the network, “There are no first-hand emergency services. People are working at the moment to collect the rotting bodies.” An ambulance worker said similarly in an interview with Libyan TV station Al-Masar, “We have nothing to save people... no machines... we are asking for urgent help.”

Phone lines and internet access are down, and access to the city heavily obstructed by the damage and debris.

Warnings had been made that the dams were poorly maintained and needed reconstructing. Just last year, hydrologist Abdelwanees A. R. Ashoor of Libya’s Omar Al-Mukhtar University cited five floods in the region since 1949, predicting flooding on a similar scale to that seen in 1959 would be “likely to cause one of the two dams to collapse.”

He concluded, “If a huge flood happens the result will be catastrophic for the people of the wadi and the city.”

Aly told CNN, “The weather conditions were not studied well, the seawater levels and rainfall [were not studied], the wind speeds, there was no evacuation of families that could be in the path of the storm and in valleys.”

The Guardian notes “conflicting reports as to whether requests had been made to evacuate the city at the weekend, and if so why the plan was rejected.”

But primary responsibility for the disaster lies with the NATO imperialist powers whose 2011 war for resources and geostrategic position against the government of Muammar Gaddafi obliterated the country.

One of the richest and most developed countries in Africa in 2010, a third of Libya’s population now lives below the poverty line. Its GDP per capita is half what it was on the eve of the war. Critical infrastructure was left in ruins. Out of a population of 6.7 million, nearly 900,000 are now in need of humanitarian assistance.

Besides dropping over 7,000 bombs and missiles, NATO’s intervention relied on proxy Islamist forces. The social and political chaos created by their toppling of the government, and lynch murder of Gaddafi, has left Libya a fractured, dysfunctional state.

The west of the country is ruled from Tripoli by the Government of National Unity under Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, while the east is ruled from Sirte by the rival Government of National Stability under Prime Minister Osama Hammad, backed by Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army. The two power blocs, and the various factions within them, are variously courted and manipulated by foreign powers.

Practically nothing has been provided to rebuild Libya. A report by digital news organisation Middle East Eye in 2015 drew attention to the fact that Britain had spent £320 million bombing the country, versus £15 million on humanitarian aid in the four years afterwards. The European powers treat Libya as a wild west frontier, hiring vicious gangs of “coastguards” to intercept refugees and prevent their entry to “Fortress Europe”.

What money goes into the country is spent in pursuit of its vast oil and gas wealth. Last November, Libya’s National Oil Corporation granted British Petroleum and Italian firm Eni the right to drill in the west of the country and off its north-east shore, close to the flooded area—an $8 billion project.

The crimes of US imperialism and its allies have left the working class and rural poor in Libya especially exposed to the global climate change crisis.

Vast quantities of water fell over Sunday and Monday: 16 inches in 24 hours in Bayda, which receives just over 21 inches in an average year. The central driving force behind the storm was the warming of the Mediterranean Sea, fueling higher windspeeds and heavier rainfall in a storm known as a “medicane”, or Mediterranean hurricane.

“The warmer water does not only fuel those storms in terms of rainfall intensity,” said Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist and meteorologist at Leipzig University in Germany, “it also makes them more ferocious.”

Suzanne Gray from the meteorology department at Britain’s University of Reading noted, “There is consistent evidence that the frequency of medicanes decreases with climate warming, but the strongest medicanes become stronger.”

An additional factor in this case is an “omega block” pattern of pressure over Europe, with a region of high pressure and temperatures centered on the UK and north-western Europe sandwiched between two cut-off areas of low pressure over Spain and south-eastern Europe, Turkey and north-east Africa—associated with heavy rainfall. The phenomenon has been caused by the jet stream weakening and shifting a long way north, also associated with the impacts of climate change.

Libya’s floods come just days after the United Nations released its “global stock-take” report—the most extensive existing analysis of climate action undertaken by the world’s capitalist governments.

In the usual muted scientific language, the report details a runaway catastrophe. On the current trajectory, the world economy will produce roughly 22 billion tons more carbon dioxide in 2030 than is consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—equivalent to the combined output of the world’s top five polluters, China, US, India, Russia and Japan.

The many unprecedented environmental disasters of the last year have taken place in the context of 1.18 degrees Celsius of warming.

While the report’s authors insist on the need for “phasing out all unabated fossil fuels,” a record $7 trillion was spent on fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund. This is roughly 12 times the estimated amount needed to fund climate adaptation measures in Africa over the next decade.

Military junta accuses France of preparing invasion of Niger

Athiyan Silva

A month and a half after a coup toppled the French-backed regime of President Mohamed Bazoum in Niger, tensions are mounting between Paris and the junta. Amid mass protests demanding the withdrawal of French troops, the Nigerien junta is accusing France of preparing to invade Niger.

French soldiers disembark from a U.S. Air Force C130 cargo plane at Niamey, Niger base, on June 9, 2021. [AP Photo]

On Saturday, the spokesman for the military junta, Colonel-Major Amadou Abdramane, accused France of deploying troops and military equipment to the West African countries of Benin, Ivory Coast and Senegal to prepare to invade Niger. He said, “France continues to deploy its forces in several ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] countries as part of preparations for an aggression against Niger, which it is considering in collaboration with this organization.”

He added that “that two A400M type military transport aircraft and a Dornier 328 were deployed as reinforcements in Côte d'Ivoire. And two Super Puma type multirole helicopters and around forty armored vehicles were deployed in Kandi and Malanville in Benin. On September 7, 2023, a French military ship docked in Cotonou [Benin] with personnel and military assets on board. The generals in power also report around a hundred rotations of military cargo planes having made it possible to land significant quantities of war material and equipment in Senegal, Ivory Coast and Benin, to name but a few.”

The goal of the French military build-up, the spokesman said, is “to achieve a successful military intervention against our country.”

On Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron issued a belligerent statement refusing to recognize the authority of the Nigerien junta or the legitimacy of demands for a withdrawal of French troops from Niger. “We do not recognize any legitimacy in the statements of the junta in Niger,” he said during a press conference at the G20 summit in Delhi.

Macron’s remarks effectively amounted to repeating his threat to organize a French-backed intervention into Niger carried out with ECOWAS troops. He claimed that the Bazoum regime and the French military presence in Niger is legitimate, despite mass protests against French troops in Niger and across the region.

Macron said, “France, French forces were set up on Niger soil at the request of Niger. And we are here to fight against terrorism at the request of Niger and its democratically elected authorities, namely President Bazoum, his government, and his Parliament. A coup d'état since last July has held a democratically elected president hostage. France has a simple position: We condemn it. We demand the release of President Bazoum and the restoration of constitutional order.”

Macron’s attempts to dress up his neocolonial policy and plans for wars of plunder as a defense of democracy is a cynical fraud. Since the formal independence of France’s sub-Saharan African colonies in the 1960s, Paris has backed countless military coups in what the French press refers to as its “backyard.” After its bloody 2013-2022 war in Mali, that then spread across most of the Sahel, masses of workers and youth in the region legitimately want French troops out.

French troops withdrawn from Mali in 2022 were initially stationed in Chad and in Niger, which hosts 1,500 French troops.

Every day for over a week, thousands of people have been demonstrating in the capital of Niger, Niamey, outside the base where French and NATO troops are stationed, demanding their departure. Washington, which has 1,100 troops in Niger, has begun moving them from Base 101 in Niamey to Base 201 in Agadez, in central Niger. The trip to Agadez from Niamey is around 920 kilometers by road.

So far, Niger’s military junta has not demanded that US, Italian, or German troops stationed alongside their French counterparts leave the country. The junta leaders’ behind-the-scenes negotiations with Washington expose the junta’s anti-imperialist pretensions.

At a Pentagon news conference, Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh indicated that despite the decision to move US troops, Washington still hopes to work with the Niger junta. She said, “There is no threat to American troops and no threat of violence on the ground, this is simply a precautionary measure. We’re hopeful that there can be some diplomatic way to resolve what’s happening.”

Nonetheless, there is a growing danger that the imperialist powers will provoke a major escalation of the war in response to mounting opposition among African workers and youth. This is particularly the case since the conflict between France and the other imperialist powers with the juntas in the Sahel is becoming caught up in the global conflict between NATO and Russia centered in the war in Ukraine.

After the July 26 military coup in Niger, ECOWAS countries put their armies on alert along their borders, with the support of France. There has been open discussion in the ruling elites of Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Togo of possibly launching a war against Niger. Moscow has responded by making limited offers of support to the juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger that are demanding the departure of French troops.

On August 15, in a statement on its ties to the Malian junta, the Kremlin announced: “At the initiative of the Malian side, Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of the Transitional Period of the Republic of Mali Assimi Goita.” Its statement further reported that Putin and Goita had discussed the situation in Niger. The Kremlin said this was a “continuation of Russian-Mali high-level talks” held at the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg.

Putin also discussed the crisis in the Sahel while speaking that same day in a pre-recorded message to the Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS). He said: “The countries of the Sahara-Sahel region, such as the Central African Republic and Mali, were under direct attack from numerous terrorist groups after the US and its allies unleashed aggression against Libya, which led to the collapse of the Libyan state.”

On August 24, the Nigerian, Malian and Burkinabè juntas established “an agreement for matters of mutual security in matters of security and defense in case of aggression or terrorist attack,” the junta in Niger announced.

After a decade of bloody French military operations in the Sahel and over a half-century of neocolonial domination of the region since formal independence, French imperialism faces explosive opposition among African workers and youth. In this context, condemnations of Russian actions in Africa by Paris and its NATO allies are correctly dismissed in Africa as a hypocritical fraud.

Nonetheless, the perspective advanced by the juntas in the impoverished Sahel countries is not a way forward for the working class. They aim to rely on Russian protection and their own military strength to discourage France from intervening directly and to work out a deal with the NATO powers behind the scenes. But the NATO powers themselves are currently and recklessly escalating their war with Russia that now threatens to explode across Africa, as well.

Moreover, the Russian post-Soviet oligarchy led by Putin sees the Sahel mainly as a bargaining chip in dealing with the NATO imperialist powers amid the war in Ukraine. Should Moscow believe itself to be in a position to work out a deal with the major NATO powers at the expense of its allies in Africa, it would do so.

Speaker McCarthy announces House impeachment probe of President Biden

Kevin Reed

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday the opening of an official impeachment inquiry into President Biden and the corrupt business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.

Announcing the probe outside his office on Capitol Hill, McCarthy said, “These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption. They warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives. That’s why today I am directing our House (committees) to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.”

By launching the probe without a vote in the House, McCarthy accepted demands by the fascist supporters of Donald Trump in the House Freedom Caucus to unilaterally begin the impeachment of Biden or face a move to oust him as Speaker.

President Joe Biden meets with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California in Washington, May 2023. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

The members of the Freedom Caucus—such as Jim Jordan of Ohio, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Lauren Boebert of Colorado—have seized upon the corrupt practices of the Biden family to advance their extreme right-wing political agenda.

The impeachment campaign is also aimed at generating fuel for Donald Trump and his fascist campaign for the Republican Party nomination in the 2024 presidential elections.

That Hunter Biden engaged in corrupt activities and traded on the role of his father when he was US vice president, gaining lucrative business agreements worth tens of millions of dollars, is well-documented.

Hunter Biden’s corrupt foreign business dealings included his role in as a founding board member of the Chinese private equity firm Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) which purchased a cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2016 for $3.8 billion.

Additionally, the younger Biden has admitted to committing multiple federal offenses. In June, a plea deal had been worked out with federal prosecutors in which he agreed to plead guilty to “willful failure to pay federal income tax” and to enter a pretrial diversion agreement on one count of illegal possession of a weapon.

However, the plea deal was blocked unexpectedly in July by a Delaware judge, setting the stage for a resumption of the campaign of the Trump-supporting Freedom Caucus for an impeachment inquiry based on Hunter Biden’s criminal activities.

In his Tuesday announcement, McCarthy claimed that House Republicans “have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”

Essentially acknowledging that no hard evidence has been produced so far to implicate Joe Biden in his son’s activities, McCarthy said Republicans “are committed to getting the answers for the American public.”

Responding to the impeachment, White House spokesman Ian Sams said the GOP has been investigating Biden for nine months and, “they’ve turned up no evidence of wrongdoing.” Sams added, “His own GOP members have said so. He (McCarthy) vowed to hold a vote to open impeachment, now he flip-flopped because he doesn’t have support.”

Republicans who are not supporting the impeachment drive are in favor of an investigation into the Bidens without going straight to impeachment. For example, right-wing Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado said, “I still want to look at the evidence. I’m going to get a briefing later in the week on what evidence links President—at the time vice president—Joe Biden to Hunter Biden’s activities. I haven’t seen that link yet, and so I am reluctant to agree with Speaker McCarthy.”

The launching of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden deepens the crisis of the entire US political system. It intersects with the conflict in Washington D.C. over the budget and the discussions between Biden and the Republicans over a continuing resolution which must be passed by September 30 to prevent a government shutdown.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is working behind the scenes to launch incendiary measures against his Republican challengers and stoke the impeachment drive against Biden as revenge for being impeached twice as well as the numerous indictments he is facing in US and state courts prior to the 2024 presidential elections.

The impeachment crisis highlights significant conflicts building up within the capitalist ruling establishment. While the Pentagon and financial elite are demanding uninterrupted government funding for war and debt repayment, the relatively small group of Freedom Caucus Republicans are threatening to force a shutdown if a continuing resolution does not include budget cuts and anti-immigrant measures at the southern border.

Growing vulnerabilities in US Treasury market

Nick Beams

In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the $22 trillion US Treasury market, where US government debt is bought and sold, froze. It threatened to set off a global crisis potentially worse than the financial market meltdown of 2008.

Stability was only restored to the world’s most important financial market through a massive intervention by the US Federal Reserve which pumped in around $4 trillion, essentially becoming the backstop for the entire financial system.

Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file]

In the period since then, despite various reports and investigations, none of the problems that set off the crisis has been resolved and there are warnings the conditions that produced it are building up again.

Writing in the Financial Times last week, columnist Gillian Tett pointed to a report by the US Federal Reserve which indicated that conditions in the Treasury market were beginning to resemble those that preceded and helped spark the March 2020 crisis.

The immediate cause of that crisis was the movement of interest rates in such a way that hedge funds were forced to exit the highly leveraged bets they had made based on US Treasuries. The sell-off set in motion a stampede for the exits, such that at one point there were no buyers for US government debt, supposedly the safest financial asset in the world.

The hedge funds relied heavily in their operations on repurchase agreements (repos) in which bonds are exchanged for cash which is then used to finance further bets. Now those conditions are returning.

According to the Fed report, economists had noted that “hedge fund repo borrowing rose by $120 billion between October 4, 2022, and May 9 2023, and was higher as of May 9 2023 than it was at its previous peak in 2019.”

Tett continued: “Yes, you read right: positioning is apparently more extreme today than before the pandemic debacle. And this, they note, ‘presents a financial stability vulnerability because the trade is highly leveraged [dependent on borrowed funds] and is exposed to both changes in futures and changes in repo spreads.’”

That is, as Tett noted, the market is highly vulnerable to sharp shifts in interest rates.

A report by the Financial Stability Board, a global watchdog comprised of top finance ministers and regulators, prepared for the G20 Summit last weekend, also points to sources of instability.

A letter sent to the Summit by FSB chairman Klaas Knot, president of the Dutch central bank, offered reassurances that mechanisms put in place by the G20 after 2008 had largely held up.

The report itself, however, indicated a number of sources of instability, particularly the use of “synthetic leverage” where debt arrangements are based not on an actual asset but on a derivative, the value of which depends on an underlying asset.

It also indicated, as have many other reports, that there are large areas of the financial system, mostly those involving non-banking financial intermediaries (NBFIs) such as hedge funds, of which regulators and financial authorities have little or no knowledge.

The FSB report noted that some hedge funds had “very high levels of synthetic leverage” using complex financial instruments to create debt which frequently does not show up on balance sheets.

“Several recent market events,” the report said, “such as the March 2020 turmoil as well as the failure of Archegos Capital Management and strains in commodities and bond markets, underscore the need to strengthen the resilience of non-bank financial intermediation.”

However, to strengthen the resilience of the system it is necessary to know what is going on. And here there are major problems, which the report revealed.

It identified “a number of data gaps which have made it difficult to fully assess the vulnerabilities associated with NBFI leverage. Family offices [Archegos Capital was one such], for example, may be taking on leverage, but little public and regulatory data are available to measure the nature, the size and concentration of those positions.”

“Similarly,” the report continued, “pension funds’ leverage is difficult to assess without more information on their investments.”

Pension funds, which might have once been viewed as conservative institutions far removed from the kind of speculative activities associated with hedge funds, came sharply into view in Britain a year ago.

Financial investments they had made were hit by a rapid rise in interest rates. A major crisis was only averted through the intervention of the Bank of England into the bond market.

In her comment on Treasury market vulnerabilities, Tett noted one of the reasons why the FSB was sounding the alarm: “2020 demonstrated how shockwaves from NBFI trades could spread. And what is particularly unnerving right now is that the structural vulnerabilities in the Treasuries market that exacerbated the Treasuries basis shock not only remain in place—they could actually be getting worse.”

This only raises the question of why the US Treasury market, supposedly the most liquid and safe in the world and one of the central foundations of the global financial system, has increasingly come to resemble a giant gambling casino in which major losses can be incurred.

One of the reasons is the trillions of dollars pumped into the system by the Fed and other central banks have gone, under the quantitative easing program, into financial markets that have financed speculation.

Another factor is the regulatory changes introduced after the crisis of 2008 aimed to increase the stability of banks, especially those deemed “too big to fail.”

As often happens when a reform is introduced to try and maintain a rotting system, it creates problems elsewhere. In this case, in order to comply with the new requirements, the banks stepped back from the Treasury market where their role as primary dealers had a stabilising effect.

This has meant that hedge funds, often engaged in speculative ventures funded with borrowed money, have come to play a more significant role.

According to a paper by Darell Duffie, a Stanford professor, one measure of the decline in traditional sources is that “since 2007, the total size of primary dealer balance sheets per dollar of Treasuries outstanding has shrunk by a factor of nearly four and could go even lower.”

Tett described it as “one of the most startling statistics I have recently seen.”

And for good reason. Together with other data and the open admission by authorities that they have no real knowledge of the system over which they are supposed to preside leads to an obvious conclusion. Despite public assurances that the financial system is “sound and resilient,” it is on the road to another crisis.