Social discontent erupts in Papua New Guinea

John Braddock

On Wednesday simmering social discontent, driven by escalating living costs, erupted into chaos, looting and arson in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) capital Port Moresby and elsewhere, after police and armed services personnel walked out and protested over persistent shortages in their pay.

Rioters outside Port Moresby shop in Papua New Guinea, January 10, 2024. [Photo: Facebook]

Prime Minister James Marape has declared a 14-day state of emergency in the National Capital District, with 1,000 defence force personnel on standby “wherever necessary to contain any situations that may arise going forward into the future.” PNG Defence Force soldiers and vehicles have been deployed on the streets of the capital.

The Post Courier, among others, said that the events marked “the darkest day” in Port Moresby’s history. At least 16 people are reported dead and dozens injured after 24 hours of mayhem in the capital and the country’s second city, Lae. Unverified videos have emerged of the bodies of men who were involved in the unrest allegedly shot dead. Women and children were wailing around them.

Buildings and shops were torched. PNG's fire chief officer said firefighters were outnumbered when trying to attend to fires. The Port Moresby General Hospital had to close overnight, eventually treating some 60 people for serious injuries. A smaller hospital at the Gerehu suburb evacuated its patients as a nearby shop was set on fire. The airport was closed with all international flights cancelled until further notice. By Thursday the unrest spread to several other provinces, including East New Britain and New Ireland.

Footage and images from the capital on social media show warehouses engulfed in flames and large crowds of people looting and rioting. The City Pharmacy Limited (CPL) group, which owns one of the biggest supermarket and pharmacy chains in Port Moresby had most of its shops raided and burned overnight. Looters also stole electronic appliances from warehouses and shops owned by the Brian Bell group of companies.

The Australian High Commission issued a general warning that Australians in Port Moresby should monitor local media and avoid “trouble spots.” It advised to pay close attention to personal security and follow heightened security measures.

An Australian citizen working in Port Moresby has sent the WSWS a list of premises burned or looted. They include: Stop n Shop (SnS) Harbour city looted into the night, Desh Besh Kone wholesale premise looted and set on fire, EFM container yard at NapaNapa Laba market junction looted, Red Sea housing base Baruni in flames with a Filipino lady trapped inside, Renbo SnS burned and Koki, Badili, Gabutu and Kilakila shops owned by Asians looted with nine looters and several others killed.

Port Moresby shop on fire in Papua New Guinea after rioting on January 10, 2024 [Photo: Facebook/Isaac A Itsima]

Police reinforcements were flown in from Lae as the unrest continued for much of the day and into the night, defying repeated calls by Police Commissioner David Manning to clear the streets and go home. Manning said security forces would not tolerate “troublemakers” and live rounds could be used. The government also issued a call out for the military to assist police.

The events began on Wednesday morning local time, after about 200 police and military personnel gathered at the Ungai Oval to protest pay deductions of between $US26-80 from their fortnightly pay—about half the take-home salary for some. A government minister who addressed them could not convince them why the deductions had been made. The tax office said the issue caused by a “glitch” in the accounting system which was being fixed.

Amid spreading rumours that the pay deduction were either deliberate or even a new tax, the protesters demanded an answer from the government, saying the “glitch” explanation was not satisfactory. They then moved from Unagi Oval to parliament house, opened the gates of parliament where Police Minister Peter Siamali unsuccessfully tried to address them.

When security personnel withdrew their services, the situation quickly escalated. Marape went into lockdown at Manasupec Haus which houses the Prime Minister’s Department and other central government agencies. The protesters burned the guard house in front of the premises.

By Thursday calls for nationwide strikes were being raised. The PNG Nurses’ Association issued a circular to its branches calling for urgent meetings to prepare for a national stop-work and sit-ins to protest what it described as an effective hike in public servants’ income tax from 32 to 42 percent. The union declared that the unjustified increase came in the face of rising inflation that had “already put pressure on the basic food stuff sold in our stores and supermarkets.”

At a press conference on Thursday, Marape claimed the riots had been “organised,” without offering any evidence. He acknowledged that economic times were “tough” while declaring citizens should not take to the streets and “do anything and everything they feel.” Ill-discipline in the police force and defence “will not be tolerated,” he said.

Manning and senior bureaucrats in the finance and treasury departments have since been suspended while the government has promised to sort out the public servants’ pay “anomaly” in the next fortnight.

Even if the claim of a “glitch” in the payroll system is true, the fact that the issue triggered such a social explosion is testimony to the extreme social tensions wracking the country. Living standards are deteriorating. Consumer price inflation, which averaged 5.1 percent in the ten years to 2022, was forecast by the Asia Development Bank (ADB) last September to continue at the same level through all of 2023 and 2024. GDP is expected to grow by only 2.6 percent in 2024.

Rich in natural resources, PNG is one of the world’s most unequal countries. According to UNICEF, of an estimated population of 10.3 million, 85.7 percent live in generalised poverty. ADB data shows that 24.4 percent of those employed exist on $US1.90 purchasing power per day.

With widespread anger over Marape’s handling of the dispute, his government, which took office in September 2022, is facing a major crisis. Six government backbench MPs have already resigned. Two, James Nomane and Kieth Iduhu made their resignations public via social media, blaming Marape for the riots and calling on him to resign.

A grace period preventing a vote of no confidence in Marape’s leadership is due to expire next month. If a vote is triggered, a new prime minster could be elected from the floor of parliament. Marape has begun warning against ongoing instability, saying: “Our development partners are watching, our international partners are watching, our investors are watching.”

The attitude of PNG’s former colonial ruler, Australia, was spelled out in a threatening editorial in the Australian yesterday. It called the episode a “tragic lapse” for PNG and “a concern for regional security more broadly.” After a passing reference to “respecting the sovereign wishes of PNG,” it demanded the Albanese government “be ready to step in should we be asked to help maintain law and order.” There is in fact a long history of Canberra interfering in the affairs of PNG, whether or not an “invitation” was issued.

The Australian further pointed to “worrying similarities” with the Solomon Islands in November 2021, when rioting spiraled into “a bigger security threat for Australia and our allies that stretched well beyond Honiara.” Those events saw China send a police contingent to the Solomons to help restore order. Any repeat of China offering “security and protection” to another Pacific government would be an “unwelcome development” for Canberra. “The growing security ambitions China has regarding PNG are of great concern to the US and Australia,” the warning concluded.

The social crisis facing the working class finds a particularly acute expression in PNG. The living conditions of the impoverished masses are driven down by the rapacious multi-national corporations, global financial institutions and their local political servants. At the same time, Australia, the US and the imperialist powers that dominate the Pacific are turning it into an arena for geo-strategic confrontation with China, further compounding the social disaster.

Awami League wins Bangladeshi elections amid mass opposition boycott

Wimal Perera

The ruling Awami League (AL) won the 12th national parliamentary elections in Bangladesh last Sunday in a “landslide win” with 222 out of 298 seats it contested amid a massive boycott by opposition parliamentary parties, including the right-wing Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina arrives to address a press conference following her election victory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Jan.8, 2024. [AP Photo/Bangladesh prime minister's office]

Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina, 76, will continue as prime minister for her fourth term, following her election victory in 2009. Opposition parties have rejected the results and are demanding fresh polls.

AL coalition allies, such as the Jatiya Party of the now deceased General Hussain Ershad, won 11 seats, with the Stalinist Workers Party of Bangladesh and the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal securing one each. Various independent candidates won 62 seats.

So far more than a dozen people have died in election-related violence, including four killed in an arson attack on a passenger train on January 5. Two were killed, dozens injured, and property damaged in post-election clashes.

On January 9, Hasina addressed visitors to her Dhaka official residence bragging that election would “be written in golden letters in the history of Bangladesh,” and claiming it was a “free and fair” ballot. The results make clear, however, that she was rejected by a majority of voters, particularly the youth. Only 41.8 percent of the 119.6 million registered eligible voters participated in the national ballot. By contrast, there was an 80.2 percent turnout in the 2018 elections.

According to the Daily Star, the Dhaka district, which contains the country’s largest concentration of workers and urban poor, saw the lowest voter turnout with only 25 percent casting a ballot. Only 13 percent of eligible voters participated in the Dhaka-15 constituency and 17 percent in the Dhaka-17 constituency.

The highest participant rates were recorded in constituencies contested by Hasina and her relatives. Hasina’s seat in Gopalganj-3 recorded the highest rate at 87 percent; with 83.20 percent voting in the Gopalganj-2 constituency, where her cousin Sheikh Selim stood. Two seats contested by relatives in the Bagerhat area had the next highest turnouts.

The Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA), the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry immediately applauded Hasina on her “victory.”

BKMEA executive president Mohammad Hatem congratulated Hasina for winning her fourth consecutive tenure “on behalf of our industry.” However, editorials in major Bangladeshi newspapers, nervous about the rising discontent of working people and rural toilers towards the political establishment, criticised her handling of the election.

The New Age on January 10 described the election as “not-participatory, non-inclusive and unrepresentative” and noted that it was no different from the 2018 and 2014 elections, which were “mired in electoral fraud.”

A Daily Star editorial on January 9 raised concern about the rising loss of confidence among youth in Bangladesh’s electoral system and the censorship measures implemented by the Hasina regime. “Repressive laws and practices by the government have constricted the space for expressing opinions freely, so much so that, according to a recent survey, around 72 percent of the country’s youth feel unsafe to freely voice their opinions on social media platforms like Facebook,” the newspaper said.

The newspaper reported that the US had described the virtually opposition-less election as “not free or fair” and that the UK said the standards of democratic elections “were not consistently met during the election period.” The European Union regretted the non-participation of all major parties in the ballot. However, China, Japan, India, Russia, Sri Lanka and some Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia congratulated Hasina.

Along with the opposition BNP, other parties boycotting included the Islamic fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami, as well as various Stalinist parties—the Communist Party of Bangladesh, the Socialist Party of Bangladesh and the Revolutionary Communist League—and other organisations.

These parties held protests calling for the resignation of Hasina and her government and for the elections to be conducted under an independent caretaker government. Hasina rejected these demands while resorting to various anti-democratic measures. This included violence attacks on opposition parties across the country by security forces, aided by ruling party thugs, in the months leading up to the election.

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk told the media that around 25,000 opposition supporters have been arrested, including key party leaders, since October 28. At least 10 of them reportedly died or were killed in custody in the last two months. He told the Daily Star that many human rights activists have fled the country or been forced into hiding, and dozens of suspected enforced disappearance cases have been reported.

The BNP says that over 20,000 of its leaders, members and activists remain in jail with at least nine facing the death sentence and 925 confronting harsh jail terms. Human Rights Watch reported that on November 3 Hasina had told her “party supporters that if they catch anyone committing arson to ‘throw [them] into the same fire.’”

Two years after coming to power in January 2009, the Hasina government changed the constitution to abolish the legal requirement to appoint an independent caretaker government to run national elections. Hasina’s anti-democratic move was upheld by the Supreme Court.

While the garment and other cheap labour factories have made massive profits under Hasina’s almost 15-year tenure, the country faces a deepening economic crisis, intensified by the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

The Business Post reported that Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves have plunged from a record high of $US40.7 billion in August 2021 to $21.7 billion on January 3. The country’s external debt climbed to $97 billion at the end of 2022, a 265 percent increase since 2010 and debt repayments, including interest, have increased a six-fold during the same period.

In January 2023, Hasina negotiated a $4.7 billion loan with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that included the implementation of draconian austerity measures.

Her government’s attempts to impose this worsening crisis on the working class and the rural masses has fueled mass anti-government discontent.

Food inflation in Bangladesh has remained at over 12 percent during the past few months. According to a recent Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 22 percent of the country’s households face moderate food insecurity and 1 percent confront severe food insecurity.

A weeks-long strike in November by tens of thousands of garment workers demanding a three-fold increase in monthly wages to 23,000 taka ($US208) to compensate for inflation and worsening living conditions was brutally suppressed by security forces. Four workers were killed and over 100 others wounded. The new Hasina government will intensify its repressive measures in an attempt to suppress all opposition by working people to its brutal IMF dictates.

While the BNP, with the assistance of the Stalinist parties and trade unions, have called for new elections, hoping to exploit the growing mass opposition, they oppose any independent mobilisation of the working class against the Hasina regime. The BNP and its allies have no progressive alternative to the government’s big-business policies or the IMF’s dictates. If elected they would impose the same austerity attacks.

Citigroup announces plans for 20,000 layoffs as corporate attack on jobs continues into 2024

Tom Hall

A Citibank office is seen in New York on Jan. 13, 2021. [AP Photo/Mark Lennihan]

American banking giant Citigroup announced plans on Friday to lay off 20,000 people across its global workforce. These are by far the largest layoffs announced so far in 2024, which has already seen substantial job cuts, as corporations use automation to eliminate whole sections of the workforce.

Another 40,000 workers will be removed from Citigroup’s payroll under its planned spinoff of Mexican bank Banamex, that country’s second-largest. Overall, Citigroup’s workforce will decline from 240,000 to 180,000 due to the cuts, which are expected to largely take place over the next two years.

The job cut announcement at Citigroup follows the announcement earlier in the week of hundreds of job cuts at Google and Amazon. Google also plans to restructure its ad services unit, which currently employs 30,000 people, as it moves towards implementing artificial technology. Videogame engine maker Unity has also announced 1,800 layoffs, about one-quarter of its workforce, and the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union has announced a new contract allowing for AI voice acting in the video games industry, threatening to eliminate significant amounts of voice work.

Less publicized, but no less significant, are major cuts underway among industrial workers. More than 3,000 auto layoffs were announced at the end of last year, as the industry continued to shift towards electric vehicles, which require far less labor than traditional gas vehicles. Hundreds of layoffs have been announced at UPS, as the logistics company moves rapidly to increase the use of automation in its warehouses. A massive restructuring at the United States Postal Service is underway, which aims to close thousands of local offices and eliminate at least 50,000 jobs.

Other recent job cuts, according to a list compiled by Business Insider, include:

• A $2 billion cost-cutting plan at Nike, which is “increasing automation and use of technology” in its business. The total number of jobs impacted has not been released, but Nike “does expect to book somewhere between $400 million and $450 million in pre-tax charges, largely in its fiscal third quarter and largely related to severance costs,” BI writes;

• More cuts at computer chip maker Intel, which carried out five rounds of layoffs in 2023, including 235 jobs on December 31;

• A 3 percent staff cut at investment bank Blackrock, equal to about 600 people. In a memo explaining the cuts, Blackrock executives wrote that “new technologies,” likely a reference to AI, would help the company “achieve significant efficiencies in how we operate,” BI reported.

A major factor in job cuts over the course of the year is the use of automation by companies to ratchet up the exploitation of their workforce. According to a survey by ResumerBuilder.com, nearly 40 percent of business leaders predict they will cut jobs this year, with similar numbers citing AI as a major reason.

The layoffs in the financial sector, while apparently not directly related to AI, come in spite of continuing record profits in the industry even amid growing signs of an economic crisis. Citigroup’s rivals in the rest of the six largest banks in the United States laid off 20,000 workers over the course of last year. Only JPMorgan Chase did not report major job cuts.

Summing up the latest quarterly financial results of the major banks, the New York Times headlined its article: “Biggest US Banks Earn Billions, Even After Insurance Bill.” This was a reference to payments levied at the end of the year for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which was heavily depleted in the aftermath of the series of bank failures last year. “Profits for the fourth quarter of 2023 reported on Friday by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo exceeded analysts’ expectations,” the newspaper wrote.

Only Citigroup reported a major loss last quarter, the Times reported, of $1.8 billion, compared to a $2.5 billion profit the same time last year. Even still, the bank made $9.2 billion in profits over the course of 2023, on total revenues of $78 billion.

Citigroup is the third-largest American bank by assets and, for now, the second-largest by total workforce, but by far the weakest of the six largest banks financially. The 20,000 job cuts are part of a massive restructuring program, ironically code-named “Project Bora Bora” after the luxury beach resort.

The money saved from the cuts will go directly into shareholders’ pockets. “A silver lining of the bank’s pivot is it will allow the firm to resume a ‘modest’ level of share buybacks this quarter,” CNBC reports. The total value of the buybacks was reported elsewhere at around $500 million.

In spite of massive overall profits in the financial sector, uncertainty over central bank policies and extreme instability in the world and US political situations could provide triggers for a major financial crisis. Inevitably, the ruling class will try to offload the cost of this crisis onto the working class, through a combination of job and benefit cuts, attacks on democratic rights and the escalation of wars across Europe and Asia.

Beginning in early 2022, the US Federal Reserve launched a policy of increasing interest rates, which had been kept at near-zero since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Rates ultimately reached a high of around 5 percent. The stated goal of this policy was to rein in minor increases in workers’ wages by increasing unemployment.

This has had its intended effect, with over 700,000 job cuts last year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, almost double the level in 2022 and the highest since the start of the pandemic in 2020.

But while this policy was enacted to defend the profits of US and world capitalism, sustaining these somewhat higher interest rates for any significant length of time holds severe dangers for finance capital, which has become totally dependent on virtually free money since the 2008 crash.

This was already demonstrated by the spate of bank failures in early 2023, including that of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic, the second and first-largest bank failures in American history. The danger of a full-scale financial crisis was indicated by the massive scale of the intervention by the government. This included the unprecedented move to guarantee deposits worth more than $250,000, the threshold for coverage under the FDIC.

For now, the Federal Reserve intends to carry out multiple rate cuts over the course of this year. But a higher-than-expected inflation report in December has already placed a question mark over this policy.

Among the major banks, Citigroup is particularly vulnerable to an economic downturn. The restructuring program is aimed at increasing the bank’s returns to 11 percent over the next several years, CNBC reports, “but revenue growth may be hard to achieve as the US economy slows, leaving expense cuts the biggest lever left to pull.”

“Not one investor I’ve spoken to thinks they’ll get to that return target in ‘25 or ‘26,” one analyst told CNBC. “If they can’t generate returns above their cost of capital, which is typically around 10 percent, they have no right to stay in business.”

The uncertainty in the financial situation was indicated in a statement by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon released alongside the bank’s quarterly earnings report. While claiming the US economy “continues to be resilient,” Dimon immediately contradicted himself by adding that the economy “is being fueled by large amounts of government deficit spending and past stimulus.” He added that “Quantitative tightening,” a reference to the higher interest rates and similar policies by the Federal Reserve and other central banks, “is draining over $900 billion of liquidity from the system annually.”

Dimon added, “And the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have the potential to disrupt energy and food markets, migration, and military and economic relationships.”

This is putting it mildly. US imperialism is barreling recklessly into World War III, attempting to use its military advantage to offset the historic economic decline of American capitalism.

The United States’ decision to conduct strikes against targets in Yemen threatens to expand the Israeli genocidal onslaught in Gaza into a region-wide war involving Iran. The US government has also committed itself to a defeat of Russia in Ukraine, which, under the worsening military situation for the Ukrainian military, can only be achieved by the involvement of US and NATO troops. Finally, plans are well advanced for a massive war against mainland China, centered on Taiwan, which would involve tens of thousands of US sailors and troops.

Beijing Government Scholarships 2024

Application Deadline: All application materials should be handed to the relevant university or college before 29th February 2024.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International  and developing countries students

To be taken in (country): Applicants may choose institutions and specialties from the Chinese institutions of higher education in the Beijing region.

Accepted Subject Areas: Courses offered at Chinese higher institutions in Beijing

About Scholarship: The Beijing Government Scholarship (BGS) was established by Beijing Municipal Government, aiming to provide tuition fees fully or partially to the international students studying or applying for studying in Beijing. Its administrative office is the International Cooperation and Exchange Office of Beijing Municipal Commission of Educations, which is in charge of project establishment, review, acceptance and daily management of the Beijing Government Scholarship Program. The international students applying for the Beijing Government Scholarships shall normally submit relevant materials to the universities in Beijing that he/she hope to apply by the end of February every year.

Eligibility

1) Applicants must be non-Chinese nationals in good health.

2) Educational background and age limit

• Applicants for undergraduate studies in Beijing must have completed senior high school with good grades and be under the age of 30. Applicants for Masters degree studies in Beijing must have Bachelor’s degree and be under the age of 35. Applicants for Doctoral degree studies in Beijing must have Master’s degree and be under the age of 40.
• Applicants for advanced studies must have an undergraduate degree or be in the second year of a university course and be under the age of 50. Applicants for long term language study must have a high school diploma and be under the age of 60.
• Visiting scholar candidates in Beijing must have a Masters or higher degree or hold academic titles of associate professor or higher, and be under the age of 50.

3) Requirement for the applicant’s language proficiency is based on the requirement of the academic programs and determined by the individual higher learning institution.

4) An applicant receives financial support from other Chinese government scholarship programs or organizations/agencies would not be eligible for the Beijing Municipal Government Scholarship for International Students

Number of Scholarships: several

Scholarship Benefit

The Beijing Municipal Government Scholarship for International Students only covers tuition fees. According to the applicants’ status, the allowance for scholarship students can be classified into 5 types:

• 40,000 RMB/year for a Doctoral degree
• 30,000 RMB/year for a Masters degree
• 20,000 RMB/year/ for a Bachelor degree
• 10,000 RMB/year for a Senior training or long term language program
• 5,000 RMB/year for Exchange students or students with outstanding contributions to international education in Beijing.

Duration of Scholarships

• Applicants for Bachelor, Masters and Doctoral Degrees in Chinese universities and colleges in Beijing region: duration of scholarship should be under 4 years.
• Applicants for Chinese language training or relevant advanced studies in Chinese universities and colleges in the Beijing region: the duration of scholarship should be under one year.
• Scholars and international students for specialized training in Chinese universities and colleges in Beijing region: the duration of scholarship should be under one year.
• Exchange students or students with outstanding contributions to international education in Beijing: the duration of scholarship should be under one year.

How to apply: For specific application means, you can consult the government departments and relevant institutions responsible for dispatching students abroad in your country, Chinese embassies or consulates; or directly apply to the universities qualified to issue such scholarship in Beijing.

Visit scholarship webpage for details

Sponsors: Beijing Municipal Government – International Cooperation and Exchange Office of Beijing Municipal Commission of Educations

Netanyahu and IDF downplay mounting Israeli deaths and severe injuries in Gaza

Jean Shaoul

The price paid by Israelis for the Netanyahu government’s genocidal assault on Gaza is being concealed to shore up public support for the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

The mounting toll of deaths and severe injuries in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) threatens public confidence in the government’s declared military objectives of eradicating Hamas, securing the return of the remaining 140 hostages and forever ending any security threat to Israel.

Israeli soldiers preparing for the ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on October 29, 2023 [Photo by IDF Spokesperson's Unit / CC BY-SA 3.0]

Public confidence in the government is already rock bottom. These is widespread anger over the exposure of claims that it received no warnings of Hamas’s October 7 attack, the fact that military forces were stood down to facilitate this and provide a justification for moving against the Palestinians, and that the IDF’s helicopter and tank assault on Hamas fighters was responsible for killing hundreds of Israeli civilians and soldiers.

As of last Monday, at least 185 Israeli soldiers had been killed since the ground invasion of Gaza began on October 27, including nine reservists, combat engineers, killed when a tank stationed nearby fired shells at a building as the soldiers were assembling explosives to demolish a tunnel. This is already nearly three times the 67 soldiers killed in the month-long assault on Gaza in 2014, but there is a growing belief that IDF deaths have been underreported, given the government’s tight censorship of information related to military casualties, with every press release regarding wounded soldiers requiring approval.

On November 18, when the military claimed that a total of 60 soldiers had died in Gaza, David Oren Baruch, the director of Israel’s military cemetery on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem, said that 50 Israeli soldiers had been buried there in the previous 48 hours, “We are now going through a period every hour there is a funeral, every hour and a half a funeral.”

Adding to suspicions of underreporting, the IDF had initially, unlike in previous wars, refused to disclose the number of wounded soldiers. Only in December, when Haaretz planned to publish its report on the number of soldier casualties based on hospital sources, did this change. Haaretz reported “a considerable and unexplained gap between the data reported by the military and that from the hospitals,” with hospital data showing the number of wounded soldiers was “twice as high as the army’s numbers.”

Yedioth Ahronoth reported that “the cumulative numbers since October 7 are astronomical: More than 2,000 soldiers, policemen and other members of the security forces have been officially recognized as disabled.”

Limor Luria, head of the rehabilitation department at the Ministry of Defense, said, “We have never been through anything even similar to this. More than 58 percent of the wounded who are taken in by us have severe injuries of arms and legs, including those that require amputations. About 12 percent are internal injuries—spleen, kidney, tearing of internal organs. There are also head and eye injuries.”

On Monday, the IDF released data showing that nearly 13,000 soldiers have required some level of medical care since the start of the war, with 2,335 transferred for treatment in hospitals, including 155 soldiers who suffered eye injuries and 298 who suffered damage to their hearing. The data revealed that about 9,000 soldiers have received psychiatric treatment since the start of the war, with nearly one quarter unable to return to combat, and 275 soldiers are receiving treatment at a rehabilitation centre for significant mental health complications.

The daily losses at the front take place amid mounting economic and social dislocation within Israel itself.

The mass call-up of reservists, amounting to nearly 10 percent of the workforce, has impacted Israel’s high-tech industries, public services and small, family-run businesses, while the displacements and knock-on effects of the war have idled up to 20 percent of the workforce.

The October 7 attack led to mass evacuations from Israel’s southern towns and villages, while the fighting in the north has displaced tens of thousands more, as Lebanon’s Hezbollah has forced Israel to move all civilians from the border area. As a result, some 175,000 people are now living in hotels and temporary accommodation. Schools were closed for weeks, leaving parents scrambling for childcare, while the opening of the new academic year at universities was postponed to January 1.

Israel’s gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea, shut down early in the war, are only now beginning to operate.

Tourism has all but collapsed, with the Old City in Jerusalem bereft of foreigners and Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem cancelled. Construction, which relies on Palestinians in the West Bank, has ground to a near-halt after Israel suspended the work permits of more than 100,000 Palestinians after October 7.

A poll by the charity group Latet found that 45 percent of Israelis admit they are worried the war will bring economic hardship. According to the Bank of Israel, there has been a 20 percent rise in late mortgage payments since the war began.

Israel’s own Palestinian citizens have been particularly badly affected: they have seen a 10-percentage point rise in unemployment from 5 percent to 15 percent.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the cost of Israel’s war on Gaza is running at $272 million a day and will cost at least $60 billion, more than 10 percent of the country’s GDP, even before a wider war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah or Iran and Syria is factored in. It said, “After tabulating every aspect of the war thus far, the price tag stands at around $60 billion. This includes the war budget itself as well as the various forms of financial aid for every civilian that saw his income dwindle because of the conflict.”

The newspaper added, “State budget is looking at a $30 billion deficit as is, which will require both budget cuts and tax hikes to the tune of over $18 billion, which will be felt keenly in terms of quality of life and reduced services for the Israeli public at large.”

This takes place as tax revenues have plummeted and Israel’s credit ratings are set to fall. The Bank of Israel has forecast lower rates of growth, falling from 3 percent in 2023 to 1 percent in 2024, with some economists predicting contraction.

The IDF’s announcement that it is to scale back its ground and air campaign in Gaza to “a more targeted phase” that will require fewer ground troops, and will be carried out by brigades of the regular army, is in part a response to this mounting crisis. Reservists serving near the border with Lebanon will also be discharged and replaced by regular units.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the return of some of the reservists “to their families and their jobs,” at least temporarily, “will allow significant relief for the economy.” With reservists notified they must serve at least another month later in the year, this is already the largest burden since the 1982 Lebanon War even as Netanyahu warns that the offensive “isn’t close to finished.” On Saturday, he said, “The war will last for many more months.”

Winter COVID and flu wave hits UK’s National Health Service

Ioan Petrescu

Britain is suffering another wave of COVID-19, fueled by the recently identified JN.1 variant, as well as the winter season. Case numbers and hospitalisations are rising rapidly and on track to match those from the Omicron outbreak of early 2022, if not surpass them.

According to the latest Office of National Statistics (ONS) data, approximately 2.5 million people were infected as of December 13, 4.3 percent of the British population—more than double the level at the start of the month. The record was set in April 2022, when 7.6 percent of the population was infected.

Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 [AP Photo/Neil Hall Pool via AP]

Since the mid-December data was published, numbers are expected to have increased considerably due to Christmas socialising, meaning the 2022 highs may have been exceeded.

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) figures show that the hospitalisation rate was 5.21 per 100,000 in week ending December 31, up from the 4.8 per 100,000 the previous week.

The JN.1 mutation of SARS-CoV-2 is a subvariant of BA.2.86 (named Pirola) and is by far the most infectious of all the variants circulating in the UK, and the world at the moment. It has evolved to be more infections while not losing the genes that made it adept at circumventing the immunity conferred by the existing vaccines.

Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist from Warwick University, told the i newspaper, “the rapid rise of infections with the JN.1 variant in the UK and across the world is yet another reminder that the pandemic is far from over. JN.1 is one of the most immune-evading variants to date and is likely to be the lineage from which new variants will evolve”.

Professor Peter Openshaw, a virus expert at Imperial College London told The Sun, “We're going to see quite a major surge in infections over the coming weeks—the wave could be bigger than anything we've seen before. To help stop the spread, those who haven't had the COVID booster should consider wearing face masks in public places, like on trains, when shopping and at large events.”

If the rate of patients developing Long COVID following infection remains the same (around one in 10), then hundreds of thousands will be left debilitated for months or even years following this winter surge.

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and director of the clinical epidemiology center at the VA St. Louis Health Care System, who studies Long COVID, recently told Time magazine, “Reinfection remains consequential.”

He published a paper in Nature Medicine in 2022 which found that those infected twice by COVID suffered higher rates of short- and long-term health effects than those infected once.

Time summarised, “People who had multiple infections were three times more likely to be hospitalized for their infection up to six months later than those who only got COVID-19 once, and were also more likely to have problems with clotting, gastrointestinal disorders, kidney, and mental-health symptoms. The risks appeared to increase the more infections people experienced.”

“I wish we lived in a world where getting repeat infections doesn’t matter,” Al-Aly told the magazine, “but the reality is that’s not the case.”

The impact of COVID is compounded by the increased circulation of flu and other viruses. The admission rate for patients with flu stood at 6.8 per 100,000 people in the week to December 31, up from 5.1 the previous week and the sixth weekly rise in a row. This is currently below the record numbers seen last year, when the rate stood at 12.8 per 100,000 but is still a significant burden on the National Health Service (NHS).

Norovirus has seen a resurgence this winter, with 49 percent more cases reported in the two-week period ending on December 24 than the past five-year average for the same two-week period. Around 450 beds were occupied by norovirus patients in the second of those weeks, about two-thirds higher than the levels seen last winter.

UKHSA data also shows that more people were hospitalised with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in the final week of the year compared to the same period in any other year since the pandemic began. There were 2.2 admissions per 100,000 in the week to December 31, a 10 percent increase over the previous year.

The surge is part of an international trend, with the United States and Europe seeing sharp increases in these cases of these viruses. Nearly half of all flu test came back positive in Spain in the last week of December, RSV has caused a rise in hospitalisations of children under one and hospitalisations for COVID are increasing among the elderly.

In Italy, two million people came down with flu, COVID and RSV in the final two weeks of the year, overfilling some hospitals.

Mary Ramsay, director of public health programmes at the UKHSA, warned in comments to the Financial Times that, in the UK, “The winter peak for flu is still to come and may coincide with high levels of COVID-19.”

With hospitals struggling even during “normal” times due to decades of underfunding and a chronic lack of staff, the present surge in illness and hospitalisations has left several trusts unable to cope with the influx of patients. The Nottingham and Nottinghamshire NHS Trust declared a “critical incident” in the first days of January after all A&E services were reportedly full and “under pressure.”

Portsmouth Hospitals University did the same, citing “a combination of delays across our system and an increase in demand for services.”

The Conservative government, agreed with by the Labour Party, refuses to take even the most elementary public health measures such as mandating masks in healthcare settings, as was the case from June 2020 until June 2022.

Some hospitals have taken matters into their own hands, with United Lincolnshire Hospitals Foundation Trust, Sherwood Forest Hospitals, Barnsley Hospital and Chesterfield Royal Hospital among a rising number to reintroduce mask requirements. Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust already did so last October, as did Royal Stoke University Hospital, Stafford’s County Hospital and the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton.

The ruling class’s only concern is keeping profits flowing to the banks and corporations, unimpeded by any public health measures. To that end, the Sunak government is responding to increase in infections with a “nationwide marketing campaign” aimed at convincing parents to ensure their children go to school, even if they are sick. The government advice reads, “It is usually appropriate for parents and carers to send their children to school with mild respiratory illnesses.”

While this is cynically justified with phrases like, “There is wide agreement among health professionals and educational professionals that school attendance is vital to the life chances of children and young people”, the true motivation is to ensure workers are not preoccupied with childcare duties so they can get on with generating profits for the super-rich.

The Labour Party has jumped on board, with Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson urging parents on Sunday not to take children out of school in an interview with the Telegraph.

The evolution and rapid global spread of JN.1 is a product of the ruling class’s refusal to address the pandemic.

Google, Amazon start off new year with job cuts, as corporations plan to use AI to slash workforces

Tom Hall

Google and Amazon announced new rounds of layoffs Wednesday, continuing the jobs bloodbath last year that included tens of thousands at these tech giants and hundreds of thousands across the United States.

The Google logo displayed at their offices in Granary Square, in London [Credit: AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

Google announced it was laying off hundreds of workers in its Augmented Reality division, which produces hardware such as the Google Pixel phone and Fitbit smart watches. It also announced layoffs in its personal assistant division. Amazon announced it would lay off 35 percent of the workforce at streaming platform Twitch, as well as “several hundred” employees at Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios.

Amazon, Google and other tech giants led the way in massive job cuts last year, which included over 262,000 in the tech sector alone, according to layoffs.fyi. According to the same website, 27 tech companies have laid off over 4,500 employees in the first 11 days of 2024.

Other major tech layoffs so far this year include around 1,800 at videogame engine Unity, 200 at short term rental provider Frontdesk and 170 at Discord. Language learning app Duolingo has also “offboarded” 10 percent of its translation contractor workforce, replacing them with AI-driven translation sofware.

On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also released unemployment figures for November 2023, which found that unemployment rose that month in 214 out of 389 metropolitan areas across the United States.

Over the course of 2024, major corporations are seeking to use the latest advances in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies to eliminate vast sections of the workforce. This includes substantial sections of white collar workers previously considered middle class. A recent report by outplacement firm Randstad RiseSmart found 90 percent of employers are planning job cuts this year.

According to another survey conducted by ResumeBuilder.com, 38 percent of business leaders believe that layoffs are likely at their companies this year, with 39 percent citing replacing workers with AI as a major reason. About half also cited anticipation of a new recession as another reason.

A Newsweek article reporting the survey last month carried the stark headline: “Massive Layoffs are Coming in 2024.”

In fact, these layoffs are already starting. Google is reportedly planning a massive restructuring of its advertising sales unit as it incorporates AI into this side of its business. The ad sales unit currently employs 30,000 people, or around one-sixth of the company’s total workforce.

SAG-AFTRA, the US actors’ union, announced a contract Tuesday with an AI firm, which will pave the way for the use of artificial intelligence in video game voice acting. Replacing actors and writers with AI was a major factor in the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes last year, before both unions crammed through sellout deals to end the strikes providing no protections against this. The new contract shows the union bureaucracy is openly assisting companies in replacing workers.

Emerging technologies are also being used to wipe out large sections of industrial jobs over the course of this year. In December, UPS announced hundreds of job cuts as it moved to eliminate daytime sort shifts in multiple facilities around the country. These jobs, currently performed by highly exploited part-timers who make up most of the company’s workforce, are being replaced by new automated facilities. One new facility, the Velocity Hub in Louisville, Kentucky, can handle 350,000 packages a day with a workforce of only 200 people working alongside 3,000 robots. The company hopes to triple its use of robotics over the course of the next year.

Thousands of layoffs were also announced at the end of last year in the auto industry, where the shift to electric vehicles, which companies say require 40 percent fewer workers to produce, will be used to wipe out tens of thousands of jobs. The layoffs in each of these industries came only weeks after the United Auto Workers rammed through what union officials claimed were “historic” contracts. In reality, the deals allow for unlimited use of automation and other technologies to wipe out jobs.

Tens of thousands of jobs are also on the chopping block at the US Postal Service, under the “Delivering for America” restructuring program. Local post offices will be closed down while new centralized hub facilities continue to come online over the course of this year.

The consolidation is having a knock-on effect across the whole logistics industry. FedEx is anticipating a 50 percent reduction in its air contracts with USPS this year, placing the jobs of hundreds of freight pilots at risk, according to a report in FreightWaves.

These cuts are not being “caused” by automation. This is technology that, in a rational society unburdened by the profit motive, could be used to rapidly improve the quality of life, including by reducing the length of the working day with no loss in pay. They could also be used to efficiently move supplies to anywhere in the world where they are needed most, including to fight the pandemic or provide life-saving food and medical supplies to the besieged population of Gaza.

But under capitalism, these technologies, which are the product of the collective intellectual and physical labor of mankind, are privately owned and monopolized by corporate and financial oligarchs solely concerned with boosting their profits. Therefore, technological advances are used not to improve the conditions of society, but to destroy jobs and increase the exploitation of the working class.

This year’s layoffs are a continuation of a sustained attack on jobs which unfolded over the last year. According to a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, US companies planned 721,677 jobs cuts during 2023, a 98 percent increase over 2022 and the highest since 2020, when many corporations laid off their workforces during the limited lockdowns enacted in the opening phase of the pandemic. At the same time, hiring plans declined by nearly half last year.

The largest number of cuts took place in the technology and retail industries, but over 21,000 jobs in media were also cut, a 467 percent increase.

This was the product of deliberate policy, not impersonal market forces. It was spearheaded by the decision of the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, with the stated aim to use unemployment to combat the modest increases in wages caused by labor shortages during the ongoing pandemic.

This is a class war policy, aimed at beating back the rising growth of working class opposition, registered in the major growth of strikes during the pandemic, while freeing up resources to pay for the trillions in corporate bailouts and world war from Ukraine to the Middle East and China.

A critical role in blocking the resistance of the working class is being played by the union bureaucracy. More than half a million US workers struck last year, part of a growing wave of class struggle around the world. But these struggles were betrayed by the pro-corporate bureaucracy, which forced through sellout agreements that paved the way for an accleration of job cutting. The result has been that wage increases for private industry unionized workers (3.8 percent) were even lower than nonunion workers (4.4 percent) betweeen September 2022 and September 2023.

The union bureaucracy is playing the role of enforcer of “labor peace” on the homefront as Washington gears up for war. This is the meaning of the claim by President Biden, who infamously moved to ban a railworkers strike last year, to be the most “pro-labor president in American history.” But the recent meeting between Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and would-be fascist dictator Donald Trump shows the union bureaucracy is not particular about with whom it maintains these corporatist relationships.

The combined impact of anti-worker monetary policy, sellouts by the union bureaucracy and direct repression by the government has had a significant effect on workers, who are suffering under huge levels of financial distress. The St. Louis Federal Reserve recently found that household debt delinquency rose significantly in 2023. This was particularly evident in credit card debt, where levels of debt distress reached their highest levels since the 2008-2009 recession.

More big economic shocks are likely over the course of 2024. At the close of last year, the Federal Reserve indicated that it was planning multiple interest rate cuts in 2024, in a sign that it considers its rate hikes to have led to sufficient levels of job losses, while also indicating concern that prolonged elevated interest rates could threaten the entire financial system, which is totally reliant on free money.

But higher than expected inflation figures in December—a report Thursday found the consumer price index increased by 0.3 percent last month—threatens the viability of that policy. The growing danger of a financial crisis will also interact explosively with the growth of war and the extreme political crisis in the United States.