Reserve Bank of Australia: No letup in attack on living standards

Nick Beams

Backed by the Labor government, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will deepen its assault on the living standards, particularly directed against working-class households, even as it acknowledges that major cuts in disposable income have already taken place.

Building workers walk past Reserve Bank of Australia in Sydney, Nov. 1, 2022. [AP Photo/Rick Rycroft]

In its quarterly economic outlook published on Friday, the RBA revised upward its forecast for inflation, currently at 5.4 percent, predicting that it will still be 4.5 percent at the end of 2023 and 3.5 percent at the end of 2024. That is well above the central bank’s target rate of 2–3 percent.

This means that, in the name of fighting inflation, it is a near certainty the RBA will again raise interest rates, which have been lifted 13 times since May last year—the latest increase being last week—further reducing real incomes.

In a move that has been repeated over and over in recent years, the RBA revised down its forecast for when wages growth would exceed inflation from the end of this year, saying it now expected that to happen next June. But if the RBA’s record is a guide, that forecast could well be pushed further out.

The RBA, like its counterparts around the world, targets inflation in its official statements, declaring it must be brought down because of the harm it does to the economy and the living standards of the population.

But the real target is workers’ wages, once again underlined in the quarterly report. It said while goods price inflation had continued to fall, the price of many services was rising. This identification is crucial because the RBA considers that the main factor in the rise of service costs is wages.

The quarterly review said the labour market was not as “tight” as it had been and there had been a “moderation” of wages growth in some jobs and industries. But “liaison” with firms—the RBA’s regular consultation with business organisation—showed “growth in the cost of labour is very high and is adding to firms’ overall cost pressures.”

The central objective of RBA policy, now spearheaded by Labor’s recently-appointed bank governor Michele Bullock, is to reduce these costs by slowing the economy, increasing the unemployment by about a percentage point to around 4.25 percent over the next year.

The RBA identified a number of risks on the inflation front, including the war in the Middle East and another El Nino weather event leading to very dry or even drought conditions.

It warned that if upside risks were to materialise this would add to inflationary expectations, especially if productivity growth (that is increased output per worker) remained subdued.

“This would require a prolonged period of below-trend growth, and lower employment, to reverse it,” the RBA said.

In other words, in response to what the Sydney Morning Herald characterised as possible “economic fire fronts,” the RBA would act to make the situation worse by lifting interest rates.

While this is undoubtedly perverse, it does have an underlying class logic. The response of all the economic institutions of the capitalist state, in which the RBA is front and central, is to make the working class pay for the deepening problems of the private profit system.

And the working class already has been hit, as the RBA made clear.

“Real household disposable income has been declining since mid-2002 and was 3 percent lower than a year ago in the June quarter,” it said. “High inflation, strong growth in tax payments and higher net interest payments have more than offset robust growth in labour incomes.”

The use of the term “robust” signifies that the RBA considers that even the sub-inflation pay rises that workers have received, imposed by deals struck by trade union bureaucrats with employers, are too high.

As a result of the RBA’s interest rate hikes since May 2022, the annual mortgage repayment on an average $750,000 loan has increased by around $22,000, a more than 50 percent increase. That is a cut in disposable income of around $400 per week.

Many more households are going to suffer this deliberate squeeze in coming months as their fixed-interest loans expire, having been taken out when rates were much lower.

The RBA’s own calculations show how interest rate rises are hitting lower-paid working-class families.

The central bank said that between 13 and 18 percent of the bottom 25 percent of income earners (the lowest quartile) with mortgages are experiencing “negative cash flows.” That is, their living expenses exceed their income. In the next lowest quartile, negative cash flow is being experienced by as much as 16 percent.

The sharp decline in living standards over the past 18 months has a profound political significance as it coincides with the period since the Albanese Labor government took office. As the WSWS has noted, Labor is presiding over the biggest decline in living standards in the post-World War II war period, exposing its broken promises about cost-of-living relief at the forefront of its agenda.

A poll published by the Nine Media newspapers today showed that only 8 percent thought the economy would improve over the next three months and 50 percent thought it would worsen. Some 60 percent did not think their incomes had kept up with inflation and 64 percent thought inflation would get worse.

Primary voting support for Labor had plunged to 35 percent in the first week of November, from 42 percent in May. Support for the Liberal-National Coalition also fell, pointing to deepening disaffection with the political establishment as a whole.

This discontent played a major role in the defeat of last month’s indigenous Voice referendum, which was another central plank of the Labor government. The rejection in working-class areas of the referendum to establish a new parliamentary institution was not a massive swing to racialism as claimed by the Voice promoters.

Based on data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Australian Financial Review reported last week that Australian households had suffered the biggest fall in living standards of any advanced economy over the past year.

“Inflation-adjusted disposable incomes have hit their lowest levels since June 2019 as high inflation, a rapid increase in mortgage repayments and rising income taxes ravage household budgets, newly released date from the OECD show,” it said.

According to the analysis, Australian household incomes slumped by 5.1 percent in the 12 months to June.

The OCED data also point to the critical role of the trade union apparatuses that are working in tandem with Labor governments at the federal, state and territory levels to suppress wage struggles. It found that wages in Australia were growing at a slower rate than other advanced economies, including the UK, Canada, the euro area and the US.

Bangladesh police kill four garment workers during mass protests for higher wages

Wimal Perera

Tens of thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers are continuing protests, for the third week in a row, to demand higher wages. Four workers have been killed so far in brutal attacks on by the police and the notorious Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).

Bangladeshi garment factory workers demanding better wages block traffic at Dhaka-Mirpur area in Bangladesh, Thursday, Nov.2, 2023. [AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu]

The striking workers, who are from plants in Mirpur, Narayanganj, Ashulia, Savar and Gazipur, began industrial action on October 23 after garment industry bosses only offered a 25 percent wage rise. The workers want their monthly minimum basic wage increased to 23,000 taka ($US208) or nearly three times the current 8,000-taka minimum wage imposed in 2018.

Police have brutally assaulted protesters, including with the use of teargas and sound grenades. In the first weeks of action, two workers were killed and eighty wounded in clashes with police. Workers alleged that the police were backed by thugs from Prime Minister Sheik Hasina’s Awami League.

The garment workers ended their protests last Monday under instruction from the trade unions, following a promise from the tri-partite Minimum Wage Board (MWB) that it would announce a higher wage rate. The WMB consists of representatives from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), some trade union leaders and government officials.

Garment workers, however, quickly resumed their action after the Minister for Labour and Employment Monnujan Sufian said last week the new minimum wage rate would be $113.50 or about half the amount workers want. So far, about 500 factories have been closed by the protests.

Sufian said the new salary was fixed under the direction of Prime Minister Hasina The government is determined to maintain its cheap-labour regime in order to compete with other garment producing countries such as Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and China.  

Last Tuesday, about 10,000 workers walked out of their plants in Gazipur, an industrial zone about 25 kilometres from Dhaka after the MWB’s salary offer.

Bangladeshi police advancing to attack protesting garment workers inDhaka-Mirpur area on Nov.2, 2023. [AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu]

Police attacked protests the following day, killing one female worker and wounding 10 in the Konabari area of Gazipur. Another demonstrating worker, Jalal Uddin, 42, who was shot by police, died on November 12 at the Dhaka Medical College. His brother-in-law, Rezaul Karim, told reporters he had been shot in the stomach.

The Hasina government is acutely nervous that the wage campaign will spread to all the country’s 3,500 factories which employ around 4 million, mainly female workers.

Last financial year the industry earned about $47 billion. This amounts to around 85 percent of the country’s annual exports and over 10 percent of GDP. After a brief and grossly inadequate lockdown in the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bangladeshi government ordered the reopening of all garment factories, resulting in many workers becoming victims of the deadly virus.

Prime Minister Hasina has denounced striking garment workers, claiming that they have been incited by the right-wing Bangladesh National Party (BNP). The BNP has been demanding the immediate resignation of the Hasina government and a new election held under a caretaker administration.

According to a New York Times report, Hasina told a meeting in Dhaka: “Garment workers should remember that if they damage factories, they may have to return to their villages and live without employment. We are aware of who incited these protests and acts of vandalism, and we know which individuals from the BNP are involved.” In June last year, Hasina threatened garment workers that their fight for higher wages would destroy jobs.

Siddiqur Rahman, one of the factory owners’ representative on the MWB, told dw.com that the minimum wage of Bangladeshi garment workers would be increased according to the salary “appropriate for our country.” The garment workers protests, he declared, “are more about politics than a wage hike.”

Hasina and the factory owners’ accusations are outright lies. Bangladeshi garment workers, who are simply demanding a livable wage, are the lowest paid compared to all other apparel exporting countries.

The Bangladeshi taka has been devalued by 30 percent compared to the US dollar since early last year and the current inflation rate is 10 percent, with food inflation hitting a new high of 12.56 percent last month.

While the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies estimates that workers need at least 23,000 taka per month to stay above the poverty line, the trade union bureaucracies have restricted their demands to this bare minimum.

One protesting worker, Sabina Begum, a 22-year-old seamstress, told dw.com, that she joined the protests because she was “struggling to provide bread and butter” for her family. The current monthly minimum wage did not cover basic needs, she said.

Bogu Gojdz, from the Netherlands-based Clean Clothes Campaign, told dw.com that, “Anything lower than that [a 23,000-taka monthly wage] will keep workers trapped in a cycle of poverty for another five years, therefore perpetuating malnutrition, debt, and child labor among garment worker families.'

A June 2023 report by the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, an Asian labour organisation, found that garment workers were consuming fewer calories than the current poverty-level calorie standard set by the government.

A study by the Diabetic Association of Bangladesh cited in the New Age on June 11 also revealed that one out of four garment workers suffer gastrointestinal problems, 18.5 percent musculoskeletal issues, 15 percent ear, nose and throat infections and the remainder other health complications.

In line with the government’s demands for an end to the strikes, police have arrested scores of union leaders and workers. “Many cases have been filed against protesters. Many workers have been arrested, and some of them were labeled as political activists,” Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation president Kalpona Akter told dw.com.

Notwithstanding Akter’s timid complaints, the trade union bureaucracy is deeply afraid that it will lose control of garment workers’ rising anger.

Unions such as the Stalinist Bangladesh Communist Party-led Bangladesh Garment Workers Trade Union Centre, the Bangladesh National Garments Employees League (BNGWEL) and other garment workers’ federations have been instrumental in diverting their members into harmless appeals to the governments while offering employers a reduced wage claim.

BNGWEL president Sirajul Islam Rony, who is also a member of tripartite MWB,  admitted to the Daily Star last week that he had sought 20,393 taka and even reduced this to 13,000 but the owners did not agree.

The direct intervention of Prime Minister Hasina in determining last week’s provocative “offer” is a response to the worsening position of the Bangladeshi garment industry, under the impact of the deepening global economic crisis.

According to Textile Today, Bangladeshi garment exports to the US market had decreased by 21.77 percent and to the European market by 14.5 percent in the first seven months of 2023. In September, BGMEA president Faruque Hassan said overall apparel imports into the United States and the European Union had decreased at “an alarming rate” this year. This was caused, he said, by the Russia-Ukraine war and resulting inflation, and the COVID pandemic, all of which have had “a profoundly negative impact on every sector of the global economy.”

Hasina’s determination to crush the Bangladeshi garment workers’ fight for a living wage is to defend the profit interests of Bangladeshi factory owners and in particular global giants, such as Nike, Gap, Levi’s, Adidas, H&M and PVH-Phillips Von Heusen.

Food insecurity increases in Australia amid cost-of-living crisis

Vicki Mylonas

Late last month, charity organisation Foodbank released its annual Hunger Report, showing that 3.7 million Australian households experienced moderate to severe food insecurity over the past year, a 10 percent increase over the 2022 figure. 

Foodbank Victoria is currently distributing 71 percent more food than they did during the pandemic and 116 percent more than the monthly average during the Black Summer bushfires. [Photo: Facebook/Foodbank Australia]

The report, based on a national online survey of 4,342 people, paints an alarming picture. Two and a half million households across the country—23 percent of the population—were “severely food insecure,” meaning that a lack of money had at times forced them to reduce food intake, skip meals and even go entire days without eating.

A further 13 percent were “moderately food insecure,” meaning they had been compelled to reduce the “quality, variety and desirability of their diets” and the size of some meals. Another 12 percent were “marginally food secure,” meaning they sometimes worried that food would run out before they could afford to buy more.

In total, the report concluded, “48 percent of the general population now feels anxious or struggles to consistently access adequate food,” up from 45 percent in 2022.

The survey showed that a broadening section of the population is being impacted, with 77 percent of food insecure households having experienced this for the first time within the past 12 months.

More than 60 percent of food insecure households had someone in paid employment. Thirty-six percent of households with total annual earnings of between $95,000 and $130,000 and 17 percent of households earning more than $130,000 reported moderate or severe food insecurity.

Younger people are most affected, with 53 percent of 18–24-year-olds and 48 percent of 25–44-year-olds reporting some level of food insecurity. But in 2023, severe food insecurity rose by 6 percentage points to 23 percent among those aged 45–54.

High inflation, far outstripping nominal wage rises, has intensified financial pressures on the working class. The report reveals that the biggest driver of food insecurity was the cost-of-living crisis, with 77 percent of households listing it as the main factor, up from 64 percent in 2022. Sixty-nine percent said increased food and grocery cost contributed to their food insecurity, while 56 percent cited rising energy costs.

While Treasurer Jim Chalmers has claimed that “peak inflation is behind us,” recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that consumer prices rose 5.6 percent over the 12 months ending September, up from 5.2 percent in August. Electricity prices soared 18 percent, while food and non-alcoholic beverages increased by 4.7 percent.

People are also being squeezed by rising housing costs. After 13 interest rate increases since May 2022, more than 30 percent of Australian mortgage holders are at risk of mortgage stress, the highest level since the 2008 global financial crisis, according to analysts Roy Morgan. At the same time, average rents have increased by 11 percent in the last 12 months.

Almost half of all renters and more than one third of mortgage holders suffered moderate or severe food insecurity in 2023.

The Foodbank report reveals that a growing number of Australians view having a healthy diet as an unaffordable luxury. Comments from some of the survey participants indicate the extent of the crisis: 

• “I just didn’t eat for 3 days and when I did eat I’d try to only eat small amounts to do my best to make the food last.”—Female, 25–34, metro VIC, employed full-time.

• “I went hungry which caused an insulin overdose and had to be rushed to hospital. Luckily I was able to get some food in hospital.”—Male, 25–34, metro NSW, employed full-time.

While more Australians across all demographics are finding it increasingly difficult to afford basic essential groceries, massive profits have been recorded by the two major supermarket chains in Australia, Coles ($1.1 billion) and Woolworths ($1.6 billion).

As the social crisis deepens, the Albanese Labor government is facing increasing disaffection. Its 18 months in power have been marked by deepening austerity measures, as well as the expansion of callous “let-it-rip” COVID policies resulting in mass death.

After campaigning on the slogans “a better future,” and “no one left behind,” Labor has done the opposite, slashing social spending and imposing real wage cuts. At the same time, vast sums have been poured into military expenditure, including $368 billion for the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines.

Described as a “hidden problem” in Australia, increasing food insecurity is a symptom of the inability of the capitalist system to provide even the most basic needs of the people, who have to sacrifice, while the financial elite continue to reap massive profits.

Two million US children have been removed from Medicaid health insurance since April

Kevin Reed

New research shows that at least two million US children who are eligible for government assistance have been kicked off of Medicaid health insurance since last April, when federal pandemic aid programs were halted.

According to data compiled by the Georgetown Center for Children and Families and KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation), under the title “Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker,” as of November 8 the two million children who qualified for ongoing coverage had their insurance terminated largely due to bureaucratic bungling, including missing paperwork and government errors.

Additionally, the Georgetown and KFF study says that due to lags in data reporting by states, the numbers being reported “undercount the actual number of disenrollments to date.”

Last Thursday, Joan Alker, the executive director of the Georgetown center and a research professor at the university’s McCourt School of Public Policy, told the New York Times it is likely that at least one million of these children are currently uninsured.

Alker added that the numbers of children being disenrolled nationally is accelerating, and, in the coming weeks, new data from the states “will probably show that three million children have lost coverage.” She went on to call the situation “unprecedented” and warned that the mass disenrollment of children from Medicaid “has the potential to increase the uninsured rate for children by the largest amount that we’ve seen in decades.”

This May 17, 2021 image shows Margarita Mora preparing to drop off her daughter at Cuidando Los Ninos in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The charity provides housing, child care and financial counseling for mothers, with expanded Child Tax Credit payments that have since ended. [AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan]

According to the research tracker website, it provides “the most recent data on monthly Medicaid disenrollments, renewals, overall enrollment and other key indicators reported by states during the unwinding of the Medicaid continuous enrollment provision.” The tracker gathers available data about the unwinding of Medicaid coverage from state websites and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The data shows that, overall, 10.135 million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid nationwide, even though they completed renewal applications, due to the unwinding that began in April. Another 18 million have had their coverage renewed. The study shows that there is a “wide variation in disenrollment rates across reporting states.” In Texas, for example, 1.2 million, or 65 percent, of nearly two million people statewide have been disenrolled.

The report says that states with high disenrollment numbers “are initially targeting people early in the unwinding period that they think are no longer eligible or who did not respond to renewal requests during the pandemic …”

These vicious policies have been permitted by the Biden administration, even though it has the authority to halt the unwinding process.

The impact to low-income families of having children with no health insurance is devastating. If there is no one in the family who can cover a child on his or her private health insurance plan, or the family cannot afford insurance through the misnamed Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), it faces the alternative of foregoing treatment or being bankrupted by medical expenses.

The New York Times reported, for example, that a family living in the Orlando, Florida area lost Medicaid insurance twice due to “enrollment errors,” and the 13-year-old son was unable to function in school without special medication that cost more than $1,000 per month.

The lack of health insurance among children is especially harsh in the fall and winter, when respiratory illnesses circulate widely.

Daniel Tsai, a senior official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the Times: “I go to sleep at night thinking about this. We should not have kids being uninsured without health care, with families worried about how to pay for medication or what to do if your kid needs to go to the emergency department.”

It is estimated that during the pandemic over 90 million people, more than 25 percent of the US population, were enrolled in the Medicaid program. When the pandemic-related program ended in April, the federal government claimed that a majority of the children who no longer qualified for Medicaid would be re-enrolled in the state-run and partially state-funded Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). 

CHIP is supposed to be made available to children in families with incomes that are too high for Medicaid eligibility. According to researchers, however, the 21 states with CHIP programs had only added 87,355 children to the program after 1.5 million were disenrolled from Medicaid.

The devastating impact of ending pandemic-related federal Medicaid protections was well known before the program ended in April. Studies were published more than a year ago predicting that millions would be kicked off the federal health insurance program and wind up with no coverage at all.

An extensive brief was published by the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Office of Health Policy of HHS in August 2022, warning that the unwinding of Medicaid coverage for millions would result in mass coverage loss. The report projected that 15 million people would leave the program, with 8.2 million losing eligibility and 6.8 million losing coverage “despite still being eligible.”

In particular, the HHS projection said, “Children and young adults will be impacted disproportionately, with 5.3 million children and 4.7 million adults ages 18-34 predicted to lose Medicaid/CHIP coverage. Nearly one-third of those predicted to lose coverage are Latino (4.6 million) and 15 percent (2.2 million) are Black.”

Another report from Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy Center for Children and Families warned that the rate of uninsured children in the US would rise rapidly during the “unwinding” of the pandemic Medicaid coverage mandate. In a paper published on February 1, 2023, the Georgetown center wrote:

We have estimated that as many as 6.7 million children are at risk of losing coverage during the unwinding. The vast majority of children (73.6%) losing coverage will remain eligible for Medicaid but are likely to lose coverage due to bureaucratic snafus.

This is precisely what is now happening since absolutely nothing was done by the Biden administration, or the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, to prevent such a disaster from unfolding. The priorities of the capitalist political establishment, as throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, have remained centered on ensuring corporate profits and waging war, to the detriment of public health and the preservation of life.

As the World Socialist Web Site reported previously, child poverty in the US more than doubled last year, increasing from 5.1 percent of children in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022, while overall poverty rose from 4.6 to 12.4 percent during the same period. The alarming rise in poverty is directly connected to terminating the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP).

These measures were put in place as part of limited COVID mitigation policies implemented at the outset of the pandemic. The Biden administration brought all of these initiatives to an end as part of the campaign to declare the pandemic over, even though new variants of the coronavirus continue to infect and kill people across the country.

Canada’s ruling elite witch-hunting opponents of the imperialist-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza

James Clayton

Canada’s political and media establishment is engaged in a vicious witch-hunt against the opponents of the imperialist-backed Israeli genocide of the Palestinians of Gaza. The firing of workers, blacklisting of students, and other attempts at intimidation are part of an international drive by ruling elites in all major imperialist powers to smear and suppress the growing opposition to the brutal siege and slaughter of the people of Gaza, which has found expression in protests around the globe involving millions of workers and youth.

The witch-hunt has been spearheaded by Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives and their close political ally, the Doug Ford-led Ontario Tory government, and by Toronto Sun and National Post columnists and other far-right figures within the corporate media. It has been facilitated by the Liberal government and its allies in the trade union bureaucracy and the New Democratic Party (NDP). This was graphically demonstrated by the trade union-backed NDP’s expulsion of Sarah Jama from its Ontario legislature caucus for her statements in support of the Palestinians. Jama’s expulsion paved the way for Ford’s hard-right Progressive Conservative government to push a motion of censure through the legislature, under which Jama is prevented from speaking on any issue until she retracts her statements and “apologizes.”

Section of the 40,000-strong Nov. 4 demonstration in Toronto opposing the imperialist-backed genocidal assault on the Palestinians of Gaza

Ford’s Minister of Colleges and Universities, Jill Dunlop, is demanding Ontario’s post-secondary institutions sanction student unions and clubs that have defended the Palestinian people’s right to resist occupation. She has also smeared individual students and academics who have defended Hamas’ actions as a popular uprising against Israel’s 17-year blockade of the tiny enclave as anti-Semites from the floor of the Ontario legislature.  

Protesters opposing the Israeli state’s three-quarters-of-a-century-long systematic dispossession and suppression of the Palestinians and demanding an immediate ceasefire have been vilified in the corporate media as abettors of terrorism. Popular pro-Palestinian slogans, such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” have been declared off-limits and absurdly denounced as “anti-Semitic.”

In one of the most extreme examples of this trend, police laid “disturbing the peace” charges this week against Wesam Khaled, one of the main organizers of pro-Palestinian protests in Calgary, for leading chants of the “From the river to the sea” slogan at a Nov. 5 rally. Khaled, who is barred from attending further protests at least pending a Dec. 19 court hearing, is being targeted for exemplary punishment, with police adding “a hate motivation” to their “disturbing the peace” charge.

After four workers at Moxies Restaurant on Toronto’s University Avenue came out spontaneously to cheer on a Palestinian solidarity march on October 21, B’nai Brith Canada mounted a campaign to have the workers fired. Moxies—a restaurant chain with 58 locations in Canada and the USA—dutifully complied.

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Kevin Vuong, the MP for the downtown Toronto riding of Spadina-Fort York where the largest pro-Palestinian demonstrations have occurred, is waging a campaign to dox anyone who expresses support for the Palestinian uprising on social media. He has notified the police and demanded that the individuals be charged with supporting terrorism. Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by the Canadian state.

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Long-time Liberal Party advisor and journalist Warren Kinsella has demanded the arrest and deportation of pro-Palestinian activists. The demand was endorsed by Ben Mulroney, a television talk show host and the son of former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Faced with public outrage, Kinsella later deleted his tweet, and Mulroney cynically walked back his comments, stating without a hint of irony, that “I fully support everyone's right to peacefully protest. But if that crosses the line into intimidation/making anyone feel unsafe, I expect our laws to be applied fairly. I apologize if my position was construed as anything but supportive of one’s rights to free speech/assembly.”

Commenters noted that Israeli nationalist demonstrations frequently feature chants of “Death to the Arabs” and other genocidal incitement, such as “Another Nakba is coming!” None of this elicits so much as a peep of disapproval, because the entire Canadian ruling class and its press are complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

Students have also been targeted for reprisals merely for speaking out. Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) has retained former Nova Scotia Chief Justice Michael MacDonald to “review” an Open Letter, signed by 74 TMU students expressing support for the Palestinian uprising. TMU’s Lincoln Alexander Law School condemned the letter as “anti-Semitic.” Multiple prominent law firms have declared their intent to blacklist the students.

Writing in the right-wing Financial Post, lawyer Howard Levitt noted that one of the partners in his firm declared, “The first question that we will ask any potential new hire or student from Toronto Metropolitan University is whether or not they signed the letter condoning Hamas,” the implication being that such people would never be hired. Levitt further demanded that all 74 students be expelled.

In response, more than 350 lawyers, under the umbrella “Legal Profession Against Retaliation,” have signed on to an open letter committing themselves to defend and not discriminate against those who are being slandered and blacklisted for their support for the Palestinians. The letter states: “We reject the notion that it is anti-Semitic, hateful, or illegitimate to contextualize the October 7, 2023 attack. Similarly, we reject the notion that it is anti-Semitic, hateful, or illegitimate to express support for Palestinians in the face of ongoing Israeli apartheid and genocide. This is legitimate Charter-protected political expression.”

TMU’s inquisition against its own students follows ongoing efforts by the administration at Toronto’s York University to deregister several student representative associations for signing a pro-Palestine statement. These threats prompted widespread opposition on campus, including a well-attended student rally.

At the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, administrators altered artwork created by four Palestinian artists for an exhibition on “death.” They removed the words “Palestine” and “exile” from a painting, replacing the former with “West Bank.” Only after an 18-hour sit-in by the artists and protests outside the museum, including by Jewish artists, were the works restored to their original form.

The trade union bureaucracies are complicit in Israel’s genocidal onslaught on the Palestinians because they serve as a key pillar of support for the Trudeau government. Just like the Biden administration, Trudeau has given Canada’s unconditional support to the far-right Netanyahu government as it bombs men, women, and children indiscriminately and attempts to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

Those few union officials who have defended the Palestinians in any way have come in for ruthless attacks. Fred Hahn, Ontario president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), has been the target of right-wing attacks since he posted a statement on October 7 declaring, “Resistance is fruitful and no matter what some might say, resistance brings progress.” Hahn was pilloried in the capitalist press, and slandered multiple times by Ontario Premier Ford as an “anti-Semite.” Bowing to pressure, Hahn apologized on October 21. But that was not enough. Some 25 pro-Zionist CUPE members have now launched a civil lawsuit against the union, alleging ‘discrimination and antisemitism.’ The SLAPP suit takes issue with references to matters of historical fact which have appeared in various union resolutions, such as that Israel is an apartheid state illegally occupying Palestinian lands.

The witch hunt has claimed the head of Camile Awada, who resigned on November 7 as the leader of CAPE, the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, Canada’s third largest union for federal government employees. In a 2019 Facebook post, Awada declared that “The European Zionists are the true Aryan race. They look down at the world as if we are cattle. Israel is the illegitimate Zionist terrorist apartheid state that is the root of all evil!” Awada was commenting on a news article describing how African immigrants to Israel from the Ethiopian Jewish community were involuntarily injected with Depo Provera to prevent them from having children.

In mid-October, Palestinian Canadian journalist Zahraa Al-Akhrass was fired from her position at Global News while on maternity leave. She was dismissed for her personal social media posts, which exposed Palestinian suffering and criticized the capitalist press for its creation of a narrative to excuse, cover up and politically support the Israeli state’s genocide. The WSWS spoke to Al-Akhrass on November 4 at Toronto’s massive solidarity rally.

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A winter surge of COVID-19 is underway in the US

Benjamin Mateus

With the recent resumption of Biobot Analytics wastewater analysis of levels of SARS-CoV-2 across the country, as of November 1, 2023, cases of COVID have climbed by about 12 percent from their mid-October lows. The Midwest and West have seen a sizable increase while the Northeast and South have remained plateaued.

These findings are in keeping with rates of hospitalization having stabilized 25 percent below their summer peak of over 20,000 weekly hospital admissions. With the rise in COVID cases, these are expected to climb again and be compounded by the concurrent influenza and RSV seasons.

Currently, according to modeling by Dr. Michael Hoerger, levels of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater correspond to more than 650,000 daily infections and a cumulative figure of 1.38 percent of the population infected at any one time, or one in 73 people. His four-week forecast indicates that by the first week of December daily new cases will climb to just under a million COVID infections with the trajectory of cases continuing upwards.

In essence, the long summer wave has transitioned into the latest winter wave, underscoring the nature of the “live with COVID” directive that has been forced on the world’s population. Last month, in the UK, approximately 1,400 people died of COVID. In the US, more than 4,000 lost their lives. According to Our World in Data, the cumulative US toll for 2023 will be 60,000 deaths. Since the week ending August 26, 2023, more than 1,000 weekly deaths have been registered by the CDC.

These “official” figures represent only deaths that have been reported to the public health agencies and do not account for missed diagnoses or deaths incurred as a byproduct of the post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infections.

An analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published in their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that in 2023 about 63 percent of all COVID-related hospitalizations were among the elderly and they have accounted for 90 percent of all the reported COVID deaths. Most of these had not received their bivalent COVID vaccines.

Visitors sit among white flags that are part of artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg’s “In America: Remember,” a temporary art installation to commemorate Americans who have died of COVID-19, on the National Mall in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021. [AP Photo/Patrick Semansky]

More concerning has been that hospitalizations among the elderly have turned sharply upwards, more than doubling from the beginning of the summer wave to its peak in late August. About one-sixth of these were among nursing home residents, meaning they are becoming infected by nurses, staff and families that come to visit them. Given their numerous medical comorbidities and advanced ages, they are far more likely to suffer deadly consequences.

So, what do the authors of the study recommend for them? They wrote, “Adults with increased risk of COVID-19-associated hospitalization, including all adults aged 65 or greater, should reduce their risk for severe COVID-19 by receiving recommended COVID-19 vaccinations, adopting measures to reduce their risk for contracting COVID-19, and seeking prompt outpatient antiviral treatment after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result.”

Behind such recommendations is a pronounced apathy and complete disregard for their plights. Not only are COVID-19 tests difficult to obtain and relatively expensive, both the more accurate PCR tests, and the self-administrated rapid antigen tests, the antiviral Paxlovid is notoriously difficult to come by and requires a physician to confirm a positive test before ordering it, despite the FDA lifting the requirement for this restriction. This also means the person in question having possibly to see their physician in often crowded waiting rooms where proper mask usage has become all but nonexistent.

Additionally, only 7 percent of US adults have received the latest iteration of the COVID boosters as of late October. This means that the recommendations being doled out by the discredited CDC on the use of these life-saving treatments are either being ignored, or, most likely, the commercialization of these treatments has made it much more difficult to gain access, leading many to give up on obtaining them and hoping for the best.

However, the airborne nature of these respiratory viruses and the complete abandonment of any mitigation measures mean that their ability to “reduce their risk for severe COVID-19” simply means such advice is rhetorical and meaningless unless there is a concerted effort to embrace an all-inclusive public health action to track, trace and eliminate the virus.

The EG.5 (Eris) subvariant of Omicron account for more than 54 percent of all variants found in US wastewater. Meanwhile, BA.2.86/JN.1 (Pirola) has appeared on the CDC’s variant dashboard at 0.5 percent of all detected variants. This is a highly mutated subvariant of Omicron that is rapidly displacing other variants in Europe and now the US in time for a New Year wave.

The continued rise in COVID infections and reinfections implies the continuation of the pandemic of Long COVID and the persistence of the virus with its potential for long-term health complications. However, with NIH funding all but dried up, research for understanding the nature of chronic infections and its impact on population health will be speculative and limited.

At present, there are no treatments for Long COVID and current research on Paxlovid appears to offer limited protection against the development of PASC (Long COVID). A study published from Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Healthcare System in Seattle, Washington, found that the antiviral appeared to reduce only the risk of some thromboembolic events (35 percent decrease in the relative risk) but had little impact on more than 30 other potential conditions for the chronic disease.

Unlike previous observational studies, what set their approach apart on the question of the benefits of Paxlovid in decreasing the risk of Long COVID was that the investigators conducted a “retrospective matched cohort” study that would match two populations who were infected with COVID and treated with or without Paxlovid, emulating something like a randomized control trial.

There were approximately 9,600 participants in each arm of the trial and, according to the lead author Dr. George Ioannou, 93 percent of those receiving Paxlovid were treated within a day of their positive test. The end point of the study was the manifestation of 31 different conditions that have been attributed to PASC. They found that the absolute risk reduction was 2.7 percentage points, or a decrease from 14.5 percent to 11.8 percent.

Workers and their families should heed the warnings of principled scientists and public health officials and ensure everyone obtains the COVID vaccine booster where possible and that people consistently wear N95 respirators that are well-fitted to protect themselves and those in their workplaces and communities. They should insist on maintenance of the HVAC systems at schools, offices and work to include the use of high-efficiency HEPA filters.

The abandonment of any sound public health approach to the COVID pandemic and all other infectious pathogens is simply a criminal endeavor by the capitalist ruling elite for which the population is made to suffer the acute and long-term consequences. Without a massive reinvestment in local and state public health departments to build the cadre of scientists, researchers and investigators to address these pressing issues, there will be a rapid return to semi-barbarous conditions from which modern society emerged.

Why is there an epidemic crisis of congenital syphilis in the United States?

Benjamin Mateus

Congenital syphilis (CS), a bacterial infection in pregnant women caused by the spirochete Treponema pallidum that is passed on to her fetus, has risen tenfold over the last decade, said the top US public health agency this week. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data that showed in 2022 there had been 3,761 such cases (102 cases per 100,000) reported through the public health departments across the country, up from only 335 cases back in 2012.

These figures are astounding when one stops to think that the condition had been almost eliminated two decades ago, when rates of CS had dropped to a low of around 8 for every 100,000 births. It is a clear demonstration of the complete collapse of the public health system in the country, when a preventable disease, easy to diagnose and with a well-established cure readily available, is allowed to spread unchecked.

Cases of congenital syphilis in the United States. [Photo: CDC data. Graphics by WSWS.]

What the CDC researchers noted was that in almost every case the mother had either not been tested in pregnancy or not received treatment. More than a third of the infected pregnant women had not received any prenatal care. The condition led to 231 stillbirths and 51 infant deaths. Beside these deadly consequences, the infants who don’t receive treatment can become blind, deaf or have cognitive developmental delays or even skeletal deformities.

Nearly 2,000 of these CS cases occurred in the southern states, notorious for poverty and severely under-resourced in terms of obstetric care for the population. These regions are also areas where high rates of syphilis exist among the adult population. But this is only one facet of a broader social crisis that afflicts the downtrodden and discarded in every aspect of their lives.

In response to this yet another public health crisis, the CDC issued a statement “recommending concerted action to stop the increase of newborn syphilis cases and continues to sound the alarm about the consequences of a rapidly accelerating epidemic of sexually transmitted infections in the United States.”

However, given the health agency’s politically criminal neglect in responding to the COVID pandemic, these official media releases carry little weight. The public has lost all trust in the CDC’s capacity to act as stewards of the population’s well-being.

The rise in CS coincides with the epidemic of syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases (2.53 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis recorded in 2021). These have been soaring in the last decade after 70 years of gradual declines. The gains that had been made to eliminate syphilis have all but vanished over the last 20 years, which has directly contributed to the rise in the rates of newborn syphilis.

Based on the enormous declines in infections during the postwar years, in October 1999, the CDC in collaboration with other federal agencies had initiated the National Plan to Eliminate Syphilis in the United States. In 2000, cases were down to fewer than 6,000 cases of primary and secondary syphilis in the country (not including tertiary and latent cases). In all, approximately 30,000 cases of syphilis were recorded in 2000. However, these efforts were short-lived.

The conflicts instigated by the US in the Middle East after the 9/11 attacks, including decades-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the US-NATO war against Libya, and civil wars fomented by the US in Syria and Yemen, led to skyrocketing US military spending. The 2008 global financial collapse was accompanied by massive attacks on the jobs and living standards of working people. Spending on public health was slashed, and private medicine, the vast bulk of the US health care system, became increasingly unaffordable for the most impoverished and vulnerable in society.

The defunding of the public health infrastructure in the US across this period, along with the opioid epidemic and deaths of despair, has coincided with the surge in the epidemic of syphilis. One can only surmise that the malign neglect seen during the COVID pandemic was already the modus operandi with regard to any serious public health crisis affecting the working class.

By 2021, overall cases of syphilis had risen to an astounding 176,713. One would have to look back more than 70 years to find such figures. The last time the country recorded a higher figure was in 1950, when public health officials recorded 218,000 such cases.

The difference then, however, was that the trends were in the exact opposite direction, rapidly declining. With the discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming, a great leap forward had been made in curing a disease known to ancient society.

By the beginning of World War II, the technical capacity to mass-produce the antibiotic had been developed. By 1944, more than two million doses had been made. Great strides were achieved in reducing the impact of this disease in the following decade. In the UK, there was a 95 percent reduction in new cases between 1946 and 1955. The US saw a 75 percent decline in the same period.

Syphilis cases in the United States from 1941-2020. [Photo: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]

This makes the current upsurge to what amounts to pre-antibiotic levels even more damning. This is especially so in relation to the severe drug shortage of penicillin G benzathine, exclusively made by Pfizer, the manufacturer of the mRNA COVID vaccines and boosters. Although Pfizer has said that the interruption in supplies is the “result of a complex combination of factors including significant increases in demand,” Dr. Thomas Moore, an infectious disease consultant and professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, told the Lancet, “The inability to ramp up production to meet the demand is largely due to the lack of interest in antibiotic production by pharmaceutical companies, which are pursuing drugs that have a bigger payoff.”

While spending on the US defense budget has climbed by 2.75 times since 2000 to an unprecedented high of $876.9 billion, the funding for Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) had plummeted by more than 40 percent by 2013, to $585 million, and has remained stagnant since. This is one of the main programs by which the federal government helps local areas prepare for disease outbreaks.

This has led to a dramatic drop in the budgets of local health departments that includes the loss of invaluable experience through cuts that leave them short-staffed and overburdened. Almost half of all state and local public health employees left their positions between 2017 and 2021. Almost 75 percent of these were workers under the age of 35. More recently, in the wake of the ongoing pandemic, many in leadership positions are leaving, complaining of facing significant political pressures and being harassed when trying to give sound public health advice.

Citing a March 2023 Health Affairs report, Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer for the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), noted, “If current trends continue, nearly 130,000 public health workers will leave their job by 2025. The sector already needs 80,000 more workers to be able to provide basic, necessary public health services.”