Report exposes fraudulent antisemitism accusations at UK universities

Thomas Scripps

A report has highlighted the anti-democratic impact of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s definition of antisemitism, which maliciously equates criticisms of Israel with anti-Jewish hate.

“The Adverse Impact of the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism” was co-authored by Palestinian legal advocacy group the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRSMES). It examines 40 antisemitism investigations in universities following accusations levelled under the IHRA. Not one has resulted in the accused being found at fault: 38 individuals or organisations have been cleared and two investigations are ongoing.

“The Adverse Impact of the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism” co-authored by Palestinian legal advocacy group the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRSMES) [Photo: brismes.ac.uk]

The report concludes that critics of the Israeli state, advocates for Palestinian rights and those teaching the history and politics of the region have been “subjected to false allegations of antisemitism” and that “those falsely accused have felt their reputations to have been sullied.”

Accusations “have had an adverse effect on academic freedom and freedom of speech on campuses, leading, in some cases, to the cancellation of events”. They have created a “a chilling effect among staff and students, deterring individuals from speaking about or organising events that discuss Palestinian human rights”.

The IHRA definition has been adopted by 119 universities (75 percent) following a relentless cross-party campaign covered previously by the World Socialist Web Site. We warned in October 2020 that then Education Secretary Gavin Williamson was “preparing for the censorship of hundreds of thousands of students and higher education staff” as “the latest move in a five-year conspiracy of the Conservative government, the Labour Party and Zionist organisations aimed at criminalising vast swathes of the political left.”

The ELSC-BRSMES report covers 24 cases involving staff members, nine involving students, and seven involving student groups across 14 different universities—11 of them in the prestigious Russell Group.

Its authors note a “common feature across several cases is the occurrence of significant levels of monitoring and surveillance of any publicly expressed analysis or opinion about Israel or Palestine. This includes recording student speeches, staff lectures, and other presentations; monitoring student or staff social media posts (including the collection of social media posts several years after they were written); reviewing academic publications; and reviewing course syllabi and reading lists.”

In most cases, students or staff were made to suffer a prolonged period of official harassment and interference on the basis of false accusations. Seven students were put through disciplinary hearings lasting “several months, resulting in prolonged student stress and anxiety”.

A highlighted case saw one student investigated for two months for sharing a Human Rights Watch infographic about Israel’s apartheid system in the West Bank, which they referred to entirely fairly as “ethnic cleansing…reminiscent of South African apartheid.”

Seven student societies had pro-Palestinian events or initiatives disrupted, with accusers focusing on Israeli Apartheid Week activities. Four events were fully cancelled by the university. Others had outrageous “vetting” conditions imposed, like requiring the organisers to declare their support for the IHRA definition in advance, to change the titles of their events, record them and refuse access to the public. Staff members were sent to monitor some events for IHRA compliance.

Dr. Somdeep Sen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, felt forced to cancel a lecture on his book Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial at the University of Glasgow. The Jewish Students Society lodged a complaint claiming the topic was antisemitic, leading the university to demand Dr. Sen provide details of his talk in advance and promise not to say anything that would contravene the IHRA. He refused to comply with these discriminatory conditions.

Eighteen staff members were investigated or given formal disciplinary hearings, all of which produced findings of “no case to answer” or “exonerated of all charges”. One was forced onto leave by stress and many “cited adverse consequences for their teaching preparation and research.”

This is political repression worthy of a dictatorship, carried out to safeguard the criminal Israeli state from criticism and cow its left-wing opponents.

But the report’s publication is another indication of a growing backlash against the campaign to enforce the IHRA. It notes, for example, the opinion of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, E. Tendayi Achiume, that the definition should not be used “owing to its susceptibility to being politically instrumentalised and the harm done to human rights resulting from such instrumentalization.”

Legal experts Hugh Tomlinson KC and Geoffrey Robertson KC, and the retired lord justices of appeal Sir Stephen Sedley and Sir Anthony Hooper have also been critical, with Robertson commenting pointedly, “The definition does not cover the most insidious forms of hostility to Jewish people and the looseness of the definition is liable to chill legitimate criticisms of the State of Israel and coverage of human rights abuses against Palestinians.”

The WSWS commented on the downplaying of far-right danger by the “left antisemitism” campaign last December.

In April this year, over 100 international and Israeli civil rights groups including B’Tselem, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch wrote to the UN urging it not to adopt the IHRA, explaining: “Adoption of the definition by governments and institutions is often framed as an essential step in efforts to combat antisemitism. In practice, however, the IHRA definition has often been used to wrongly label criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and thus chill and sometimes suppress, non-violent protest, activism and speech critical of Israel and/or Zionism, including in the US and Europe.”

This response cannot be separated from events in Israel-Palestine, where the Netanyahu government’s warmongering and dictatorial aspirations, backed by his fascistic coalition partners, are laying bare the character of the Israeli state and its oppression of the Palestinians. At the same time, critics of the IHRA have doubtless been emboldened by the hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting the government and visibly tearing apart the idea that the State of Israel represents all Jews for all time, or that opposition to it is inherently antisemitic.

But the widespread criticism of the IHRA raises fundamental questions. How did it become so entrenched in the first place, and how does the antisemitism witch-hunt continue to smear so many?

The answer is the bipartisan support lent by Britain’s main capitalist parties, and the politically criminal retreat orchestrated by former leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn. Accusations of left antisemitism and the IHRA came to prominence in Britain in a slanderous attack waged by the Labour and Conservative parties and the media on Corbyn and his supporters, designed to ruin his chances of election and set a chilling example to left-wing, anti-imperialist workers and youth.

Corbyn capitulated, allowing the accusations to fester and accepting and even facilitating the expulsion from the Labour Party of some of his closest allies. In September 2018, he accepted the IHRA definition in full. An extensive account of the witch-hunt and Corbyn’s role was published by the WSWS in April 2020.

The Conservative government and the Labour Party cannot be allowed to continue dictating political opinions to students and academics. Israel’s crimes cannot be shielded by a sham definition of antisemitism which terrorises opponents of dictatorship, oppression and war. The Jewish population in Israel and around the world cannot be falsely and dangerously equated with the right-wing ruling class in charge of the Israeli state.

Study adds to growing evidence of link between COVID-19 and type 1 diabetes in children

Bill Shaw

A new study adds to the growing body of evidence that COVID-19 is responsible for the increased onset of type 1 diabetes mellitus in children. type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, which means that the immune system attacks the body’s own cells. Autoimmunity is typically mediated by the development of antibodies that erroneously recognize cellular proteins as foreign. These antibodies are called “autoantibodies” for short.

The study found that the development of antibodies to COVID-19 was associated with the concurrent or subsequent development of the autoantibodies that are characteristically seen in type 1 diabetes. These autoantibodies—collectively referred to as “islet autoantibodies”—attack insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Eventually the body cannot produce enough insulin, which results in blood glucose levels soaring to unhealthy and even dangerous levels.

The power of the study derives from the fact that it has followed children longitudinally since 2018 for the purposes of studying type 1 diabetes. It has collected blood samples from the children at least every six months from enrollment at age 4-7 months until the age of 6.5 years. More frequent collection occurred from enrollment until age 2 years. Thus, the study could pinpoint the timing at which islet autoantibodies and SARS-CoV-2 virus antibodies appeared in the children’s blood.

The study had two key additional strengths. First, it enrolled children from four countries, so its results were much less likely to be impacted by unique circumstances or populations in any one country. Second, it also looked at the development of antibodies to an influenza virus relative to the onset of islet autoantibodies. Comparing against influenza, which has not been associated with type 1 diabetes onset, served as a control to rule out potential other, undetected effects and a possible general effect of viral infections.

The children in the study who developed SARS-CoV-2 antibodies had a risk of developing multiple islet autoantibodies that was a staggering 3.5 times higher than children who did not. It is known that approximately 70 percent of children who develop multiple islet autoantibodies will progress to type 1 diabetes mellitus within 10 years. Thus, the vast majority of these children would be expected to develop type 1 diabetes.

In the influenza virus comparison, 101 children developed influenza virus antibodies. No children in the study developed islet autoantibodies concurrently with or after developing influenza antibodies. Thus, the expected lack of association with influenza virus was abundantly confirmed. The association between infection and type 1 diabetes is therefore not a general viral phenomenon but very likely specific to SARS-CoV-2.

The study also computed incidence rates of developing islet autoantibodies, SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and influenza antibodies. The longitudinal tracking of the children over a years-long time interval was the key to enabling these calculations.

The incidence rates, during various time intervals, for developing SARS-CoV-2 antibodies was consistent with the temporal course of the pandemic. For example, the incidence rate was highest—81.7 per 100 person years—during the Omicron variant surge from January to June 2022. It was zero prior to the pandemic and 4.4 per 100 person years in its first phase from July to December 2020.

The incidence rates for developing islet autoantibodies did not vary significantly over time. The incidence rate for the development of influenza antibodies was 13.4 per 100 person years prior to the pandemic, dropped dramatically to 4.0 during the first phase of the pandemic (during temporary lockdowns, mask mandates, initial school closures, etc.) and then rose again to 11.8 from January to June 2022, following the universal implementation of the criminal “let it rip” policies of the ruling class.

For children who developed SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, their subsequent incidence rate for developing islet autoantibodies was 7.8 per 100 person years. This compares to an incidence rate of 4.0 for children who were negative for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. The incidence rate ratio was therefore 2.3, which means that one would expect 2.3 times as many children per year to develop islet autoantibodies who are positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies versus children who are negative.

The attributable proportion of SARS-CoV-2 infection to the development of islet autoantibodies was 57 percent. That means that of all the children with SARS-CoV-2 antibodies who subsequently developed islet autoantibodies, approximately 57 percent of them would not have developed islet autoantibodies if they had not been infected.

The study also looked at the age at which children were infected and developed islet autoantibodies. The median age at which children developed SARS-CoV-2 antibodies was 18 months. Of the children who developed islet autoantibodies (n=60), 92 percent were positive by 24 months and 100 percent were positive by 30 months. One-third of them (n=20) have already progressed to type 1 diabetes.

The association between SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and development of islet autoantibodies was most pronounced at age 12 to 16 months. For these children, the incidence rate of developing islet autoantibodies (concurrent with or subsequent to developing SARS-CoV-2) was 36.5 per 100 person years versus 4.4 for similarly aged children who were negative for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, or an incidence rate ratio of 8.2.

One caution in interpreting the study is that the children enrolled in the original study of type 1 diabetes were selected for as already being at high risk for the disease. Thus, the study results show that in children already at high risk for developing type 1 diabetes, SARS-CoV-2 infection increased their risk even further. Whether SARS-CoV-2 infection increases risk for children not otherwise at high risk for the disease is a subject for future research.

Also, although the study included four countries, the four countries were all in Europe and thus still not representative of the full genetic variation of humanity worldwide. The four countries were the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, and Sweden.

Nevertheless, the study shows a clear temporal relationship between SARS-CoV-2 infection and development of islet autoantibodies, which was not seen with influenza virus. Also, the age of children most affected is 12 to 16 months, a vulnerable population generally.

The results add to the evidence of the criminality of the ruling class, who have unleashed a novel virus far more dangerous than seasonal influenza on the world’s population, including its most vulnerable members. Robbing children of future potential by saddling them with not only the typical Long COVID sequelae, but now also a chronic disease with severe morbidity and mortality, is a monstrous act.

US resumes drone flights amid mass protests in Niger

Athiyan Silva

Less than two months after coming to power in a coup that toppled a French-backed president, Niger’s military junta has authorized US troops stationed in their country to resume patrols by drones and fighter-bombers. At the same time, Washington, which has 1,100 of the 6,500 troops it stations in Africa in Niger, is moving troops 920 kilometers north from the capital, Niamey, to Agadez.

The Pentagon said last week that U.S. forces had moved from Air Base 101 near Niamey to Air Force Base 201 in Agadez, amid ongoing mass protests in Niamey demanding that French forces leave the country. But now, Washington has reached “an agreement with Niger’s military leaders to restart drone, crewed aircraft missions at two airbases,’’ Al Jazeera reported.

Gen. James Hecker, the top Air Force commander for Europe and Africa, boasted that US intelligence and surveillance missions had been able to resume thanks to US negotiations with the Nigerien junta.

Hecker said. “For a while we weren’t doing any missions on the bases. They pretty much closed down the airfields, Through the diplomatic process, we are now doing—I wouldn’t say 100 percent of the missions that we were doing before—but we’re doing a large amount of missions that we’re doing before.”

In early 2013, US forces were massively deployed to Niger under the pretext of supporting the French military intervention in Mali. Later, it built a military air base with a 6,800-foot runway at Agadez, in northern Niger.

Construction on the site began in 2016 at a cost of US$250 million. Currently, the base is the main US observation center in West Africa, with a yearly budget of $20 to 30 million spent to maintain it.

“The Command also operates out of 12 other posture locations throughout Africa,” said AFRICOM chief Gen. Michael Langley. Langley also claimed that “These locations have minimal permanent US presence and have low-cost facilities and limited supplies for these dedicated Americans to perform critical missions and quickly respond to emergencies.”

US imperialism operates drones, fighter jets and also giant military transport aircraft like the C-17 Globemaster from this base. Washington now reports that it has resumed drone strikes from this base against al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates Boko Haram and other “Islamist groups” that the NATO powers initially used as proxy forces in their war that devastated Libya in 2011.

By placing these forces in Agadez, Washington aims to maintain control over a critical, resource-rich area, even as mass protests in Niamey demand the removal of NATO imperialist powers’ troops from the country. Northern Niger contains a number of uranium and gold mines that play a critical role in the region’s economy and in the global energy trade.

Agadez also hosts a large UN refugee camp that the NATO powers are using to detain African refugees seeking to flee north to Europe via the Sahara desert, North Africa and the Mediterranean. The US and French military presence in the area helps to block the refugees’ flight northwards, and to anchor a network stretching across Africa of NATO detention camps that block refugees from arriving in Europe.

So far, the Nigerien junta has responded to mass protests against the French and NATO troop presence by making limited diplomatic overtures to Moscow. Amid the NATO war on Russia in Ukraine, there is broad opposition among African workers and youth to the NATO imperialist powers. On this basis, the junta in Niger and similar regimes in nearby Mali and Burkina Faso have attempted to posture as anti-imperialist by criticizing France and developing limited military ties with Moscow.

The backdoor maneuvering of the Nigerien junta with Washington exposes this posture as a cynical fraud. While developing ties to the post-Soviet capitalist regime in Moscow created by the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union, the junta is in fact seeking to maintain and develop its ties with imperialism. It hides its orientation to NATO and global financial markets, however, behind limited criticisms of France and false expressions of sympathy with Russia.

It is seeking to maximize the political advantages ruling circles in Niger and in the Nigerien military brass can obtain from playing off the major powers against each other. Relations between France and the United States have indubitably been strained by the coup in Niger.

A Nigerien military spokesman issued a statement last Saturday condemning the government of Emmanuel Macron, noting that France is preparing ECOWAS countries for war against Niger, to oust the military rulers in Niamey from power. Macron responded by insisting that Paris does not recognize the Nigerien regime in any way. “We do not recognize any legitimacy in the statements of the junta in Niger,” Macron said during a press conference.

Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron again told journalists that French Ambassador to Niger Sylvain Itté, whom the junta has demanded leave Niger, has been taken hostage. Itté is now holed up in the French embassy, refusing to leave. Macron however endorsed Itté and the deposed former French-backed Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum as legitimate authorities in Niger.

Nigerien military forces, Macron said, “are preventing food from being delivered [to Bazoum]. He eats on military rations … I will do what we agree with President Bazoum, because he is the legitimate authority, and I speak to him every day.”

Washington has taken a different position on the junta in Niamey, however.

Acting Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who played a critical role in organizing the 2014 US-backed coup in Ukraine, made an official visit on August 7 to hold talks with Niger coup leaders. After the talks, Nuland said, “I hope they will keep the door open to diplomacy. We made that proposal. We’ll see. But we gave them a number of options to keep talking and we hope they take us up on it.”

It appears that Nuland’s hopes and expectations were realized through the talks US officials held with the junta in Niamey, which is keeping US forces in a key location to control Niger’s critical natural resources.

Tensions are rising therefore not only between Russia and the NATO powers in Africa, but also among the NATO imperialist powers, as forces in Paris fear that Washington will make its gains at the expense of French imperialism in Niger.

“France fears being overtaken by its American ally after the Niger coup,” wrote the right-wing French daily Le Figaro in a recent article. It quoted a French foreign ministry official as saying of the United States: “As long as we have allies like these, we don’t need enemies.”

The escalating war between the NATO powers and Russia in Europe, and the closely linked great-power rivalries in Africa, poses enormous dangers to the working class. The danger of a broader military escalation across much of Europe and Africa that will involve fighting directly among the major nuclear powers is now posed.

Australian studies reveal record levels of wealth inequality

Aditya Syed

In the decade 2009‒2019, 93 percent of economic growth in Australia benefitted just the richest 10 percent of the population. This extraordinary statistic was reported within a study, “Inequality on Steroids: The Distribution of Economic Growth in Australia,” published by the Australia Institute think tank earlier this year.

The data point to a historic accumulation of wealth by the ultra-rich, resulting in record inequality.

The proportion of economic growth monopolised by the richest 10 percent in Australia is significantly larger than that in the United States, Britain, Canada, and the European Union over the last period. These countries and areas nevertheless saw the wealthiest 10 percent of their populations absorbing more than 50 percent of economic growth between 2009 and 2019.

The Australia Institute’s study divided the years 1950‒2019 into five periods, each spanning from the beginning of a national recession to the eve of the subsequent recession.

In the first period, 1950‒1960, just 4 percent of economic growth went to the top 10 percent of the population. In the second period, 1961‒1981, this figure was 16 percent, leaving 84 percent of the benefits of economic growth for the lower 90 percent of the population.

These decades roughly coincide with the rise and fall of post-World War II reformism—like other advanced capitalist countries, the Australian ruling elite confronted the threat of social revolution fueled by determined struggles waged by different sections of the working class. Limited wealth distribution measures were enacted, together with the expansion of public healthcare, education and other social services.

There was a major shift in the third period, 1982‒1990: 48 percent of economic growth in these years benefitted the top 10 percent. This drastic increase in the proportion of wealth funneled to the top of society was engineered by the Hawke-Keating Labor governments (1983‒1996), which worked hand in hand with the trade unions to privatise and de-industrialise the economy, drive down real wages, and boost corporate profits at the expense of the social position of the working class. This was part of a global process of pro-business “free market” restructuring in the 1980s and ’90s.

In the fourth period examined by the Australia Institute, 1991‒2008, 36 percent of economic growth benefitted the top 10 percent. This served as the prelude to the final period, 2009‒2019, when nearly all economic growth was monopolised by the most affluent 10 percent of the population. This decade was presided over almost evenly by consecutive Labor and Liberal federal governments, each of which spearheaded the process of extreme wealth accumulation by the financial elite.

There is no question that social inequality is currently accelerating even further. The Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, again with the critical assistance of the trade union apparatuses, is enforcing major real wage cuts for workers amid a cost of living crisis. Big business reaped enormous subsidies during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and continues to register record profits. At the same time, the government is funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to the war machine as it lines up with US imperialism in preparation for a war of aggression against China.

The Australia Institute made no serious attempt to politically analyse its findings on the historic distribution of economic growth in Australia. The so-called progressive think tank is itself part of the political establishment, receiving funding from wealthy patrons as well as from sections of the trade union bureaucracy.

The “Inequality on Steroids” report suggested that one cause of extreme inequality has been “the weakening of unions in the Australian labour market.” In reality, the unions are complicit in the hyper-accumulation of wealth, working with corporations against workers in imposing industrial agreements that erode real wages.

The Australia Institute concluded its study with a nervous warning to the financial elite that escalating inequality threatens social unrest. “How long can Australia sustain an economic and social setting which excludes the bulk of its people from sharing in the economic gains?” the report asked.

The devastating social consequences of extreme social inequality was underscored in another report, commissioned by the Actuaries Institute and titled, “Not A Level Playing Field—Exploring Issues of Inequality.”

This paper, issued last May, compared measures of social well-being between people in the highest wealth quintile (the top 20 percent of the population) and the lowest wealth quintile (the bottom 20 percent). Unsurprisingly, the poorest layers of the population experience significantly worse conditions in a wide range of measures, spanning physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, and many more.

For instance, the rate of home ownership in the lowest quintile is 34 percentage points lower than that of the highest quintile. The report notes that for younger people (aged 25‒34) in the lowest quintile, the rate of home ownership has more than halved since the 1980s. Those in the lowest quintile are four times more likely to have been recently unable to pay rent or mortgage costs. This situation is worsening, with housing costs rapidly rising for both renters and mortgage-payers. The report points out that since housing costs take up a greater proportion of disposable income for less wealthy households, the increases in housing costs will affect the poorer population more severely, exacerbating already severe inequality in home ownership and housing stress.

Grim outcomes of inequality are seen regarding health, both mental and physical. Those in the lowest quintile are twice as likely to commit suicide, and twice as likely to suffer psychological distress than those in the highest quintile. Australians in the lowest wealth quintile were also found to be three times more likely to die of COVID-19 infection than those in the highest quintile.

Additionally, those in the bottom quintile are about three times as likely to have been the recent victim of a violent crime, seven times as likely to experience homelessness, and thirteen times as likely to give birth as a teenager.

The Actuaries Institute report also described educational attainment as both a driver of inequality and an outcome affected by inequality. The Labor government’s education minister Jason Clare frequently asserts that public education in Australia serves as “the great equaliser in an unequal world”—but the reality is very different.

Students from poorer households are unlikely to achieve the same grades as those from wealthier backgrounds. This is due to the impact of inequality, such as housing stress, greater risk of crime and violence, and food insecurity, all of which worsen learning outcomes. High school learning outcomes strongly affect prospects for university admission, and by extension, career prospects. In this way, those from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to remain disadvantaged in life, and in turn have children who will face the same disadvantages.

This flows directly from the systematic under-staffing and under-funding of public schools, especially those in working class areas, and the lavish provision of public subsidies for private schools, including elite high-fee institutions.

The “Not A Level Playing Field” paper concluded by noting that there was “strong evidence” of “pressures that will lead to greater future inequality, unless policy action is taken.”

The only “policy action” being taken by the Australian ruling class is that which fuels inequality by eroding working class living standards while boosting corporate profits and the personal wealth of a narrow upper class layer. This polarisation of wealth will inevitably trigger enormous social and political upheavals.

Death toll rises in Greece as flooding devastates Thessaly region

John Vassilopoulos

Sixteen people have been declared dead following the flash floods which hit Greece early last week. All of the deaths occurred in the central Thessaly region.

Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey and most recently Libya have all suffered extensive flooding, with Storm Daniel the largest the Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone ever recorded. In Libya around 20,000 are feared dead.

Floodwaters and mud cover the town of Palamas, after the country's rainstorm record, in Karditsa, Thessaly region, central Greece, Sept. 8, 2023. Daniel formed as a low-pressure weather system and became blocked by a high-pressure system, dumping extreme amounts of rain on Greece and surrounding areas before inundating Libya. [AP Photo/Vaggelis Kousioras, File]

Much of Thessaly was turned into a giant lake including parts of Larissa and Volos, the region’s largest cities. Given the large number of undocumented migrant workers employed as pickers in Thessaly’s agriculture industry, the real death toll is likely much higher.

Speaking live on SKAI TV last Friday, Yiannis Hatzis, a resident of the town of Palamas, said: “In one of the houses near to mine a grandmother has drowned and is floating in the water. Dead livestock animals are floating past like they are boats and three to four houses have been demolished. There is no co-ordinated response [from the government]. Help should have been provided from the beginning.”

Mayor of Palamas Giorgos Sakellariou was devastatingly frank in an interview on OPEN TV on September 6: “They told us they were going to send boats. [These were] paddle boats that can only take one other person… I’m sure people will drown. I have requested a helicopter since yesterday. 35 people are trapped in one village. Those people will drown.”

A week after the floods seven villages in Thessaly remained cut off, with significant areas of the local road network still underwater. These included parts of the Athens-Thessaloniki motorway, which is set to remain shut for most of this week. The rail network connecting Athens and Thessaloniki was also suspended.

The floods have also affected the water supply system leaving much of the region, including Volos (population 90,000 plus), with no access to drinking water. Power supply has been sketchy, with around 4,000 households across Thessaly receiving no electricity a week later.

Scientists have raised the alarm over the public health risks posed by stagnant flood waters and the vast numbers of dead livestock. There have been 48 confirmed cases of gastroenteritis reported in Thessaly, six of which have required hospitalisation. There is also a spike in respiratory tract infections with 65 new cases reported in Thessaly since Monday (41 of which were reported on Wednesday alone).

Stagnant waters are also a breeding ground for mosquitoes, raising the risk of diseases like West Nile Virus. There were 19 new cases of the disease reported last week, bringing the total for the year to 119. Of those, 93 were severe cases with 42 percent having occurred in Thessaly alone.

In a press conference, the conservative New Democracy government’s Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias declared, “I know the word unprecedented has been used many times and it may not make an impression. But here even this word does not convey the severity of the phenomenon. We are talking about unimaginable amounts of water.”

The fact is the government knew very well how climate change was making such an event more likely. The Environment Ministry’s own maps from 2018 already flagged most of the areas affected by the recent floods as high risk.

Three years ago, Thessaly was hit by floods during Storm Ianos. In response, the government allocated €400 million supposedly to strengthen the region’s anti-flood defences. But it is clear that next to nothing has been done.

Speaking to Greek daily I Efimerida Ton Syntakton, Nikitas Milopoulos, a Professor of Hydrology at the University of Thessaly, described the works carried out as: “fragmented, small, half-finished with a focus on some local flood tunnels which are ineffective.” He noted of the misuse of the funds, “of course anything to do with construction was labelled as an ‘anti-flood project’ even the restoration of roads.”

With a fifth of all arable land on the Thessaly plain under water, the economic devastation wrought counts in the billions of euros. Speaking on state broadcaster ERT, geologist and disaster management expert Efthymios Lekkas estimated that it would take at least five years for affected lands to be fertile again.

Regarded as the “bread-basket” of Greece, the Thessaly plain makes up 12 percent of the country’s cultivated lands and a quarter of its agricultural production. This amounts to over €10 billion, roughly 5 percent of Greece’s GDP.

Roughly a quarter of Greece’s wheat and barley is produced in Thessaly. According to initial estimates huge amounts of the recently harvested cereals were destroyed.

Around 35-45 percent of the region’s livestock population have died in the flood, which will have a knock-on effect on the supply of meat and dairy products. Thessaly alone accounts for 71 percent of pork meat, 50 percent of cheese production and nearly a fifth of milk production in Greece.

The resulting shortages will send food prices higher and further stretch the budgets of struggling working families, who have already seen food prices soar by 26 percent in the last two years.

The government has announced an aid package worth around €2 billion for those affected—a drop in the ocean given the scale of destruction. General Secretary of the Panhellenic Union of Livestock Farmers Nikos Palaskas noted: “To buy 1,000 animals you need 250,000 euros. To build a livestock farm you need 250,000 euros. The 5,000 to 6,000 euros aid is not enough even for one week’s worth of animal feed.”

The response of the EU was equally dire. During a meeting in Strasbourg Tuesday between Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen, the latter claimed that Greece had access to €2.25 billion worth of EU funds to address the crisis. What she failed to mention was that these are funds already earmarked for other projects that will now have to be re-diverted. The only new money promised is a paltry €400 million under the EU Solidarity Fund and even this is subject to other member states agreeing to top up the pot.

In contrast, the government made sure to fund an increased police presence in Thessaly, under the pretext of preventing post-flood looting. Speaking to the MEGA TV channel on Tuesday, Greece’s Citizen Protection Minister boasted: “We have huge forces in the region, which have been strengthened with 100 additional people in the last three days. Everything possible is being done to deter looting.”

The real reason for boosting the police presence is to clamp down on the immense anger breaking out in broad sections of the population regarding the government’s handling of the crisis, leading to a series of protests. They follow widespread condemnation of the government’s response to weeks of wildfires that led to dozens of deaths, including 18 migrants in the Dadia national forest.

Last Saturday, relatives of those affected by the floods in Thessaly held a protest rally in Syntagma Square in Athens. A huge banner they unfurled outside the Parliament building condemned the government reading, “You drowned the plain, our anger will drown you”

On Sunday police in Larissa threw tear gas and attacked flood victims who were protesting Mitsotakis’s visit. That these attacks were entirely premeditated was confirmed by a video released by the Press Project showing a police officer giving instructions beforehand: “We’re going to go inside the crowd! They’ll break up. Even if they don’t retaliate, we will beat them up.” Two days later, on Tuesday evening, a second attack took place when riot police launched tear gas at a peaceful march through the city centre of Larissa.

Following its resounding defeat in the general elections this June, the pseudo-left Syriza has sought to benefit from the Thessaly flood fallout. But Syriza was equally negligent in dealing with floods while in government. In November 2017 the floods that hit Western Attica claimed 23 lives. It took no measures to strengthen the area’s flood defences even though a blueprint had existed when it first came to power in 2015.

UK’s Birmingham council, largest local authority in Europe, declares effective bankruptcy

Paul Bond

Labour Party-run Birmingham City Council’s effective declaration of bankruptcy last week marks a dramatic escalation in the social crisis confronting millions.

According to reports, “at least 26” more councils could be in the same position, some “within months.” Bradford, Devon, Guildford, Hastings, Kent and Southampton, with millions of people in these areas, have been identified as at risk.

Birmingham City Council House [Photo: G-Man]

Birmingham council is Europe’s largest local authority, serving 1.14 million people. It issued a section 114 (s.114) notice on September 5, saying it cannot meet its current liabilities without extraordinary financial support and cannot commit to new spending. The council has a projected deficit for 2023/24 of £87 million and faces a £760 million bill for equal pay claims that is rising by £14 million each month.

The statement warned, “The Council will tighten the spend controls already in place and put them in the hands of the Section 151 Officer to ensure there is complete grip. The notice means all new spending, with the exception of protecting vulnerable people and statutory services, must stop immediately.”

As a first step, the council has asked all 10,000 staff if they want to take redundancy. This is after the council has already slashed the workforce in half, from 20,000, since 2010.

The first full council meeting since the announcement was held September 12, at which council leader John Cotton said “an improvement board with specialist experts” was being brought in, in consultation with Conservative government Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove. The government previously utilised the same anti-democratic measures to sent unelected commissioners to oversee council operations in Labour-controlled Liverpool City Council in 2021. Birmingham council is to agree its “budget recovery plan” on September 25, with Cotton warning of “tough and robust decisions,” i.e., cuts to jobs and further brutal cuts to services.

Attention has focused on mismanagement of the equal pay situation, but this was only a contributing factor to the crisis, not its sole cause. Similarly, the three-year-delayed implementation of a cloud-based IT system and its subsequent problems which pushed the cost up from £19 million to around £100 million.

Councils cannot officially declare bankruptcy because they are legally obliged to provide certain statutory services. However, services deemed “non-essential” are likely to be axed. Birmingham ended all existing non-essential spending in July with immediate effect and has yet to announce what services will now be considered non-essential, but they may include libraries.

While council tax rises are usually capped at five percent, authorities have been given government permission to introduce sharper rises in extreme conditions. Slough Borough Council—led by the Conservatives with support from the Liberal Democrats—which issued a s.114 notice in 2021, was this year allowed to raise council tax by 10 percent. Conservative-run Thurrock council in Essex issued a s.114 notice last December. Having raised council tax 10 percent last year, Thurrock is warning of a similar rise this year as well.

The first s.114 notice was issued in 2000, but their use has steadily increased in the last five years, reflecting a worsening crisis in government funding and the enthusiastic drive towards privatisation and commercial speculation. Croydon council, with no party in overall control, has issued three notices. Birmingham’s s.114 is its second one this year. In June, Liberal Democrat-run Woking council issued a notice over “an extremely serious financial shortfall,” warning of the need to find £12 million worth of cuts.

The bankruptcy of Northamptonshire County Council in 2018 resulted in outsourcing and privatisation for the benefit of big business, with the aim of providing the bare minimum service and deferring vital support to charities and volunteers.

That the crisis is collapsing a council the size of Birmingham has forced an acknowledgement of just how much has been slashed from local authority budgets in recent years. Council leader Cotton pointed to the effect of rising inflation levels and the cost-of-living crisis on demand for services, under conditions where the council has lost around £1 billion in funding in the last decade (a cut of over £900 for each resident), a situation replicated across the country.

This was part of a savage austerity onslaught nationally in which over half a trillion pounds (£540 billion) was stripped from public spending by successive Conservative governments, with local councils of all political stripes enforcing austerity at local level, leading to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, cuts to pay and worse terms and conditions.

According to a 2017 study in the European Journal of Public Health, just between the years 2010-12, “there were over 500,000 public sector job losses”. The human cost of this was harrowing, with 330,000 excess deaths in Britain between 2012 and 2019 attributed to spending cuts to public services and welfare benefits.

To divert from this systemic crisis, attention is being focused on one specific financial demand. In 2008, Tony Blair’s Labour government introduced “single status” pay deals, supposedly to create a common and equal pay scale and harmonise conditions for all jobs. No funding was provided for this, so councils used it as a mechanism to equalise wages downwards, resulting in a wave of strikes.

In Birmingham, 5,000 mainly female council workers won a case for equal pay in 2010. The council’s appeal of the decision was rejected in 2012. Since then, the council has paid out £1.1 billion in their ongoing settlement of equal pay claims.

This provided the trigger for the s.114 notice, as external auditors expressed concern that insufficient money had been put aside for these claims in accounts for 2020/21 and 2021/22, meaning that the accounts for these years could not be legally closed.

Councils of all political colourations responded to austerity cuts by hastening their rush into commercial deals, including property speculation. Thurrock’s s.114 notice followed borrowing to invest in solar energy. Woking admitted a “historic investment strategy” of “unaffordable borrowing.”

Labour councils were among the most enthusiastic and reckless in establishing ties with big business. Croydon’s crisis was triggered by the failure of its in-house property development project Brick by Brick.

All the parties have a shared economic agenda of taking from workers and public services to pay for the capitalist crisis. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves made clear in an interview with the right-wing Sunday Telegraph this month that Labour is committed to more of the same.

Reeves dismissed any notion Labour in government might have “spending plans that require us to raise £12 billion,” necessitating tax rises on the wealthiest. Instead, in a pledge to continue austerity measures, she urged shadow ministers “to come up with reforms and identify schemes that could be scrapped so that the money can be spent elsewhere,” as “the money is simply not going to be there.”

Of the seven authorities that have issued s.114 notices, four are Labour-run (Birmingham, Croydon, Slough, Hackney) and two are Tory-led (Thurrock, Northamptonshire). Woking, under the Liberal Democrats, issued its notice in response to a staggering £1.2 billion deficit left by the previous Conservative administration. Catastrophic property speculation was involved here, too, with £750 million borrowed for the Victoria Square development, a project revealed to be worth just £200 million in reality.

While bringing councils to the point of bankruptcy, and slashing vital social services, a handful of council leaders and CEOs have reaped huge financial rewards. At Kent council, facing an £86 million deficit, former council chief David Cockburn earned £263,371 in pay and perks up to his resignation in July. His successor will be on a basic salary of £236,000. Birmingham CEO Deborah Cadman earned £244,820 in 2022/23, up from £186,003 the previous year.

Andy Street, Tory mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority—which covers Birmingham—was able to point out that Labour’s next mayoral candidate Richard Parker, had “stood by and watched council budgets get cut time and time again.”

Child poverty in the US doubled in 2022 with ending of expanded benefits

Alex Findijs

Child poverty in the United States more than doubled during 2022, according to new data from the Census Bureau. Child poverty increased from 5.1 percent of children in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022, or about 9 million children. At the same time, overall poverty increased by 4.6 percent to 12.4 percent, the first increase in the overall Supplemental Poverty Measure since 2010. 

Preschoolers eat lunch at a day care center, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021, in Mountlake Terrace, Wash. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

This sudden jump in child poverty was caused by the expiration of expanded benefits through the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which gave families up to $3,600 per child in monthly installments, as well as the elimination of expanded unemployment insurance and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments. All together, these programs, launched in response to the stay-at-home orders that were issued at the onset of the COVID pandemic, helped bring down child poverty from a rate of 12.6 percent in 2019. 

The doubling of poverty is the direct result of a deal cut between President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans last year on a federal budget which protected massive military spending while slashing the limited social program expansions implemented at the outset of the pandemic.

On top of the end of these benefits there has been a mass unwinding of Medicaid programs across the country, with millions of people kicked off of their Medicaid health insurance after the ending of the official COVID-19 Public Health Emergency by Biden earlier this year.

In March 2020 a continuous enrollment provision was created for Medicaid that prevented states from disenrolling Medicaid recipients. This provision ended on March 31, 2023, and states will continue to review the eligibility of the 94 million people that were enrolled in Medicaid coverage as of March. 

At least 6.4 million people enrolled in Medicaid have been disenrolled as of September 13 of this year, about 36 percent of all people who attempted to renew their coverage. States run by Republican-controlled legislatures lead this trend, with Texas disenrolling nearly 900,000 people and Florida disenrolling 430,000.

Only 15 states reported data with breakdowns by age, but the trends from these states alone show a massive impact on children. Of those disenrolled, children made up 42 percent across the 15 states, totaling 1,278,000. In Texas the share of children skyrocketed to 81 percent, while in Kansas, Idaho and Missouri the figure was 50 percent or greater.

For people who were able to re-enroll in Medicaid, only 55 percent were re-enrolled through an “ex parte” process by the state administration on behalf of the participant. The other 45 percent had to renew their coverage by themselves through a renewal form.

Compounding the evisceration of pandemic era benefits overseen by the Democratic Biden administration is a significant decline in household income as the cost of living continues to soar.

According to the Census, real median household income in the US fell by 2.3 percent from $76,330 to $74,580 in 2022, the largest decline since 2008. Since 2019, real median household income has fallen a total of 4.7 percent. Meanwhile, the cost of living rose by 7.8 percent between 2021 and 2022, the largest increase since 1980.

The data also showed that the percentage of women working full-time rose to 65.6 percent in 2022, the largest figure ever recorded, while the percentage of men who hold full-time jobs stood at 74.8 percent, potentially reflecting a rise in the number of families where both parents work (48.9 percent in 2022 compared to 46.8 percent in 2021).

As the cost of living continues to rise and real wages are eroded, more and more people face destitution and poverty. Among those suffering from the decline in living standards are an increasingly large number of aging Baby Boomers—the generation born between 1946 and 1964—who are facing homelessness.

Since 2019, the percentage of people aged 55 and over living in homeless shelters has risen from 16.5 percent to 19.8 percent. This rapid rise in homelessness for older people has been described as a “silver tsunami,” as more people near retirement age without enough savings to pay their expenses. A typical cause of homelessness for older people is the death of a spouse or a medical emergency.

The average Social Security payment is just $1,781.63 a month, while the average cost of rent is $2,038 a month. Many Baby Boomers do not have adequate pensions after decades of pension fund mismanagement and concessions given to employers by the pro-corporate union bureaucracies.

A common misconception is that the Baby Boomer generation is incredibly wealthy. In terms of total wealth held by people in that age group, this is technically true. More than $78 trillion, about half of all wealth in the US, is held by Baby Boomers. However, the vast majority of this money is owned by an aging cohort of capitalists and billionaires.

Research by the National Institute of Retirement Security found that the bottom half of Baby Boomers owned only 2 percent of the financial assets of their generation, while the top 5 percent owned 58 percent. The middle 40 percent of Baby Boomers, between the 30th and 70th percentile, owned just 14 percent of their generation’s financial wealth.

Fundamentally, the distribution of wealth in society is across class lines, not generational.

While the average retirement savings for those aged over 55 is above $400,000, according to the Federal Reserve, the median retirement savings for that same group is significantly less. Figures from the Federal Reserve place retirement savings for those aged 65-74 at $164,000, while figures from Vanguard are even lower, at just $70,000 for those 65 and older.

Even at the higher end, elderly people can be overwhelmed with the price of medical care and the increasing cost of living. As the economic crisis within the United States deepens, the percentage of people without homes who are over the age of 55 will continue to increase.

These rapid rises in poverty and homelessness are the product of bipartisan policies by the ruling class to force people back to work during the COVID-19 pandemic to generate profits for corporations and banks. By ending the expansion of these benefits the ruling class aims to force people back to work by cutting off essential funds that had suppressed poverty rates. Now the Biden administration is attempting to suppress wage growth by triggering a rise in unemployment through rising interest rates.

Combined, these policies will have disastrous effects for the working class. Millions of people have been kicked off of expanded benefit programs and millions more are now being denied access to Medicaid health insurance. The rapid rise in child poverty to pre-pandemic levels is only likely to continue into the coming years as parents struggle to afford even the most basic necessities.

ECB lifts interest rates again as euro economy slows

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank (ECB) has lifted its interest rate to a record high, raising it by 25 basis points at the meeting of its governing council in Frankfurt yesterday, despite data which show the euro zone is teetering on the brink of a recession.

The European Central Bank during a thunder storm in Frankfurt, Germany, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. The ECB's governing council met on Thursday. [AP Photo/Michael Probst]

In what has been characterised as a “knife edge” decision, the governing council decided by majority to raise its base rate to 3.75 percent. This was the 10th consecutive increase since it began rate hikes last year as officials revised down their estimates of growth in the euro area.

In her press conference, ECB president Christine Lagarde described the economy as slow and sluggish, with estimates by officials putting growth at only 0.7 percent for 2023, 1.0 percent in 2024, and rising to just 1.5 percent in 2025. The German economy, the largest in the euro area, is expected to contract as manufacturing continues to fall.

“The economy is likely to remain subdued in the coming months,” Lagarde said. “It broadly stagnated over the first half of the year, and recent indicators suggest it has also been weak in the third quarter. Lower demand for the euro area’s exports and the impact of tightening financing conditions are dampening growth, including through residential and business investment.”

That is, the growth slowdown is partly a product of the developing slump in the global economy but has also been engineered by the ECB in its so-called fight against inflation.

Like all central banks around the world, the ECB maintains that its rate increases are aimed at bringing down prices. But the real agenda is to ensure that under conditions of what is continually characterised as a “tight” labour market, the working class does not break out of the wages straitjacket to which it has been confined by the trade union bureaucracies.

The official level of inflation in the euro zone has halved over the past year, down from 10.6 percent to 5.3 percent. But the inflation in food prices, which has a major impact on working class households, is still at 10 percent and could go higher in coming months if there are shortages in supplies.

There have been claims by some economists and analysts that the ECB is coming to the end of its rate tightening cycle. That may be the case, at least for the present, in so far as the size of any increases is concerned. But Lagarde made clear there would be no letup in the downward pressure exerted by the central bank on the economy.

She said that on current assessments it considered that rates have reached levels that if maintained for a “sufficiently long duration” would make a substantial contribution to bringing inflation down to the target of around 2 percent.

“Our future decisions will ensure that the key ECB interest rates will be set at sufficiently restrictive levels for as long as is necessary,” she said.

Lagarde remarked that the labour market remained “resilient,” despite the slowing economy, with the unemployment rate remaining at a “historical low” of 6.4 percent in July. While not directly expressing it, she is clearly hopeful that situation will change.

Lagarde stated: “While employment grew by 0.2 percent in the second quarter, momentum is slowing. The services sector, which has been a major driver of employment growth since mid-2022, is now also creating fewer jobs.”

In an editorial on what it called the ECB’s rate rise dilemma, published on the eve of its latest meeting, the Financial Times focused on what is the key issue for the financial establishment—wages and the push by the working class to recoup cuts in living standards.

“With the labour market still tight,” it said, “annual pay growth is adding to price pressures, particularly in services.”

The editorial recalled the remarks of Lagarde at the Jackson Hole conclave of central bankers last month in which she insisted that “the fight against inflation is not yet won.”

While it was not the central focus of her remarks, Lagarde made clear that the ECB wants cuts in government spending which both directly and indirectly will hit workers’ living standards.

She said that as the “energy crisis fades” governments should continue to roll back related support measures as this was “essential to avoid driving medium-term inflationary pressures, which would otherwise call for an even stronger monetarily policy response.”

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde in Frankfurt, Germany, June 15, 2023 [AP Photo/Michael Probst]

This is an example of how the so-called “fight against inflation” is used to cover up the essential class agenda of the central banks—the attack on wages.

Rolling back subsidies means that working class families will have to spend more of their income on energy and power. Increased spending on these necessities leaves less income available for spending in other areas, thereby lowering demand and producing a slowdown in these industries and services and exerting a downward pressure on wages.

The same agenda was revealed in the call by the ECB for fiscal policies, that is government spending, to “make our economy more productive and to gradually bring down high public debt.”

The more government social services are reduced, the more working-class families must provide for themselves in these areas and the less they have to spend on other goods and services, thereby adding to the economic slowdown and increasing unemployment which the ECB and other central banks regard as their key weapon in suppressing wage demands.

The reduction in public debt is becoming a key issue for central banks and governments around the world with the International Monetary Fund publishing data this week showing that after a decline in the growth of public debt in 2022 it was on the rise again.

It said policymakers would have to be “unwavering over the next few years in their commitment of preserving debt sustainability.” They had to take “urgent steps to help reduce debt vulnerabilities and reverse long-term debt trends.”

As Lagarde alluded to, this means cuts in government services as living standards are hit by rising inflation and interest rate hikes aimed at reducing real wages by increasing unemployment.