Typhoon Goni devastates the Philippines

Robert Campion

Typhoon Goni (“Rolly”), the most powerful storm in the world this year, tore through the heavily populated centre of the Philippines over the weekend. Government reports show that at least 20 have been killed, though this number is likely to rise as communications are slowly restored between its island provinces.

The storm made landfall as a super typhoon on the eastern island province of Catanduanes at 4:50 am on Sunday with sustained maximum wind speeds of 310kph (195mph) recorded in the turbulent eyewall of the storm, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre. As measured by one-minute average winds, it is the strongest typhoon to make landfall ever recorded in the world.

At least six people died in Catanduanes, and the island is without electricity, water or a cellular network. Provincial governor Joseph Cua told a news conference: “While there’s no more typhoon, we have no air and sea transportation.” The hashtag #NasaanAngCatanduanes or “Where is Catanduanes” has been trending on twitter to encourage recommunication with the area.

Residents try to salvage belongings after their homes were toppled from Typhoon Goni in San Andres, Catanduanes province, eastern Philippines on Monday Nov. 2, 2020. (Image Credit: Philippine Red Cross via AP)

An emergency telecommunications team was deployed Monday, along with initial deliveries of food packs.

Cua reported that more than 13,000 homes on the island were damaged with some withstanding a five-metre storm surge. According to a “visual” assessment of the damage from ground level, the Red Cross has suggested that “80 to 90 per cent” of the easternmost town of Virac—home to 70,000 people—had been damaged by the storm.

The storm weakened as it travelled west over the Bicol region—the southern part of the main island of Luzon and the most populous area of the Philippines. Bringing floodwaters, toppling trees and triggering mudslides, it barreled through the provinces of Albay through to Batangas, just south of the capital Manila, before heading towards the South China Sea.

The storm displaced 382,381 people and left 53,863 homes without electricity, according to government figures. The municipalities of Camarines Sur and Cavite were declared in a state of calamity following the storm. As of yesterday, 165 cities in Calabarzon, Mimaropa, Bicol Region and Eastern Visayas are still experiencing power outages.

Over 50 sections of road are affected by flooding, landslides and uprooted trees throughout the island of Luzon, with 37 still impassable.

Summing up the cost estimates of rebuilding the worst affected areas of Camarines Sur, Metropolitan Manila, Quezon, Cavite and Camarines Norte, the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported $136 billion in damages, making it among the costliest storms in history.

The storm is a product of unusually warm waters as a result of the La Nina weather event, a phase of the vast oceanic and atmospheric cycle in the Pacific that drives warm surface waters to East Asia, with a resultant upwelling of colder water along the western coast of South America. Sea temperatures in the region where Goni formed are 30 to 31 degrees Celsius, which can lead to very powerful and unpredictable weather events.

Additionally, there is a trend of increasing major natural disasters due to climate change. A 2018 paper by Bhatia et al., “Projected Response of Tropical Cyclone Intensity and Intensification in a Global Climate Model” predicts a multiplication of destructive category 5 tropical cyclones towards the end of the century. From one Super Typhoon similar to Goni every eight years on a global scale, the occurrence is predicted to increase to one every year between 2081 to 2100.

The tropical archipelago of the Philippines is particularly vulnerable to this process, which routinely experiences around 20 storms and typhoons each year. The last storm, Typhoon Molave, passed through the same region last week killing 22 people.

The country is now on alert for Storm Siony (“Atsani”) likely to become a typhoon and make landfall on Thursday, though this time in the far north of Luzon island. The state weather agency forecasts two to three more typhoons to enter the Philippines in November and another one to two in December.

The UN reported around 68.6 million, or roughly 65 percent of the population are affected by Typhoon Goni, with 24.3 million living in the worst affected areas. Of that number, 2.3 million, including 724,000 children, are classed as “vulnerable”. Those most affected are at increased risk of contracting COVID-19 and other diseases in crowded evacuation centres, or face delayed and inadequate rescue efforts due to the lack of resources.

As of November 2, 385,400 COVID-19 infections have been recorded in the Philippines, with 7,269 deaths, the second-highest in south-east Asia. In order to establish Covid-secure emergency shelters, schools, gyms and government-run evacuation centres were requisitioned, with individual tents provided inside for families.

The mayor of Infanta town in Quezon province, Filipino Grace America, told DZBB radio that “because of the Covid-19 pandemic, our funds for calamity concerns and expenses are insufficient.”

President Rodrigo Duterte flew to Guinobatan municipality in Albay Province on Monday, where more than 300 houses are buried under volcanic debris. Residents blamed the mudslide on quarrying operations on the slopes of Mt. Mayon, which had contributed to similar avalanches in previous weather events.

According to the Philippine Inquirer, Duterte initially dismissed the residents’ concerns saying Bicol would always be in harm’s way, “as long as it is facing the Pacific Ocean and a volcano is here.”

Senator Christopher “Bong” Go, accompanying Duterte asked, “Who owns the quarry sites?”

To which a resident shot back, “Politicians!”

Later, bowing to public pressure, 12 groups operating in the area had their permits suspended. It was discovered that operators had left stockpiles on rivers which contributed to debris damage in flooding.

Highest one-week increase in US child cases since onset of COVID-19 pandemic

Genevieve Leigh

Last week, 61,000 children in the US were diagnosed with COVID-19. This figure is higher than in any other week since the onset of the pandemic, according to data reported Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association.

In total, 853,635 children have been diagnosed with the virus this year, representing 11.1 percent of all US cases. The percentage of pediatric cases has risen dramatically since mid-April, when children accounted for just 2 percent of COVID-19 cases in the country.

Even more concerning, the AAP said it believes the true number of children with COVID-19 is even higher than the reports indicate because the illness tends to be mild in children, making them less likely to be tested.

In a statement released in tandem with the new report, AAP President Sally Goza, an MD, sounded the alarm: “This is a stark reminder of the impact this pandemic is having on everyone, including our children and adolescents. This virus is highly contagious, and as we see spikes in many communities, children are more likely to be infected, too.”

A teacher reaches her hand out to Pedro Garcia, 4, as he arrives for the first day of school at the Mosaic Pre-K Center in Queens, Monday, Sept. 21, 2020 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Dr. Goza continued: “On every measure—new infections, hospitalizations and deaths—the US is headed in the wrong direction. We urge policymakers to listen to doctors and public health experts rather than level baseless accusations against them. Physicians, nurses and other health care professionals have put their lives on the line to protect our communities.”

The AAP report found that the biggest increases in pediatric COVID-19 case numbers in October occurred in western states: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Utah. These states saw increases of 25 percent or more. The Dakotas, Kentucky, Michigan and Wisconsin also reported higher rises among children.

Dr. Greg Demuri, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at UW (University of Wisconsin) Health in Madison, Wisconsin, told NBC News that the situation in Wisconsin was extremely serious. “It just keeps going from horrible to even worse,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be any end in sight.”

Demuri said UW Health is now seeing new pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations on a daily basis. According to data compiled by NBC News, the total number of cases in the state has risen 88 percent in the past two weeks alone.

There is no doubt that the dramatic spike in cases among children is directly linked to the reckless reopening of K-12 schools for in-person learning. Before the school year began, numerous scientific studies warned that reopening the schools would lead to a significant spike in infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

As of Tuesday, Election Day, 60 percent of K-12 public school students were attending schools that offer in-person learning, a dramatic rise from 38 percent after Labor Day, two months ago, according to an ongoing audit conducted by Burbio.com.

The report states that 35.7 percent of students are presently in schools that offer some face-to-face learning on a daily basis; 26.5 percent have the option of hybrid schedules with two to three in-person days each week; and 37.8 percent attend schools that provide only virtual learning.

The spike in cases among youth should be taken as a sharp warning. The early figures that showed low numbers of infections among youth were used by Democrats and Republicans alike to justify their drive to reopen the schools while the pandemic remained uncontrolled.

This bipartisan campaign has been a central element of a broader policy of “herd immunity“—i.e., allowing the virus to spread without restraint. This policy, opposed by all reputable scientists and medical professionals, has been spearheaded by the Trump administration. However, it has had the full support of the Democratic Party, which has done everything in its power to reopen the schools in districts around the country.

The devastating consequences are now playing out on a daily basis. Not only are children falling ill themselves, they are spreading the disease at home and among friends, infecting many others who may be more vulnerable. Hundreds of educators have fallen ill with the virus since the start of the school year, and many have lost their lives.

The toll on children is also growing. Just this weekend, a healthy 13-year-old eighth grader, Peyton Baumgarth from Missouri, died of COVID-19 just two weeks after catching the virus. He had no preexisting conditions.

Since the start of the fall semester, dozens of previously healthy young people have succumbed to the virus, including 19-year-old Chad Dorrill from North Carolina, 17-year-old Elvia “Rose” Ramirez from North Dakota, 20-year-old Jamain Stevens Jr. of Pennsylvania, 17-year-old Michael Lang, a freshman at the University of Dayton in Ohio, and Jezreel Lowie B. Juan of Hawaii, to name only a few.

New reports emerging almost weekly indicate that there are still many unknowns when it comes to the impact of the virus on children. One recent JAMA Cardiology study suggested that the effects of COVID-19 on the heart can possibly last a lifetime, even in younger and healthier individuals.

Because there were so few cases initially, experts struggled early on to identify long-term symptoms. The recent AAP statement notes an urgent need to collect more data on longer-term impacts on children, including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects.

Dr. Andrew Pavia with Primary Children’s Hospital explained to Deseret News that “the problem with the view that by and large [children] are not impacted, so there is no reason to take precautions, is like saying there is no reason to wear a seat belt because most of the time you’re driving your car, you don’t have a crash.”

He continued, “Children have much lower rates of serious complications, but that doesn’t help the child that does.”

The unprecedented catastrophe of the pandemic is fundamentally a social and political, not simply a medical, question. There is no reason that in the year 2020, with the immense resources, science and technology available to mankind, that children, teachers and parents should be risking their lives attending unsafe schools amid a raging global pandemic.

The motivations for this homicidal policy, carried out by Democratic and Republican politicians at every level, are determined by the need to protect the profits of the financial oligarchy.

Educators, along with workers, students and their families and loved ones, are being sacrificed in the interests of Wall Street. For this bloodbath to be stopped, the working class must intervene with its own organizations of struggle and its own program.

Trump administration detained over 500,000 immigrant children in three years

Norissa Santa Cruz

Data recently obtained from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) by the Marshall Project shows that the Trump administration has detained of over half a million immigrant children since 2017, peaking with 300,000 children detained during 2019 alone.

The figures show that in at least 40 percent of all cases, the US government violated the 72-hour limit in which children can be held in the custody of Customs and Border Protection. A 1997 settlement, known as Flores, set the 3-day parameters. Yet these have long been circumvented as the mandate can be extended with an influx of minors—defined as over 130 detained.

Since Trump took office, detention times have significantly lengthened as the number of children held at the border have soared. University of San Francisco law professor and immigration lawyer, Dr. Bill O. Hing, after visiting detention centers in 2019, reported witnessing minors held for increasingly long stints in unsafe facilities which were not designed to hold children and infants.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing children after they have crossed the border from Mexico into the United States.

New revelations also show that within the last eight months, at least 200 children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have been deported to Mexico where they have no family or connections.

New York Times reporter Caitlin Dickerson gained access to an internal email written by an assistant chief of the US Border Patrol. In the leaked email the official stated that there were several suspected instances of Central American children being deported to Mexico, stating that it is a serious problem that needs to end because it puts in jeopardy Washington’s agreement with the Mexican government during the pandemic.

Dickerson noted that Border Patrol “still haven't given us an explanation for whether these expulsions to Mexico were an accident, whether they're being done systematically from one port of entry and not another.” The careless or potentially purposeful actions have put these children in grave danger of being preyed upon by gangs and cartels in Mexico, and leave their families and relatives in the US and in Central America fraught with worry for the whereabouts of their missing children.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of children have been rapidly deported to their home countries after crossing the US border. The pandemic has created the legal justification for Trump’s invocation since March of the 1944 Public Health Service Act, authorizing the president broad powers to block foreigners from entering the country in order to prevent the “serious threat” of a dangerous disease and turn away asylum seekers and children on public health grounds.

The invocation of the 1944 act had been held in waiting by fascistic architects of Trump’s immigration policy, and primarily among them Stephen Miller.

According to White House officials, Miller and his team have long viewed the special protections offered to minors as a major hurdle to carrying out full immigration bans and a block on mass deportations. Miller attempted to invoke the act in 2019, during a mumps outbreak, and he tried again that same year when an aggressive flu season impacted Border Patrol stations. As a result, the pandemic has presented a ‘silver lining’ for Trump and his fascistic advisors, allowing them to deport thousands of children and families since March and denying their right to asylum.

While Washington has been at the forefront of the brutality against immigrants, including revelations of torture in America’s migrant detention centers of African asylum seekers from Cameroon, forced to sign their own deportation agreements, and the barbaric forced sterilizations of female immigrants, a global economic depression and the threat of COVID-19 have worsened conditions for migrants and refugees around the world, increasing in their desperation to seek asylum.

Multiple tragic drownings have occurred in the last week alone, claiming approximately 150 lives. At least 140 drowned when a boat carrying some 200 refugees sank off the coast of Senegal as it headed towards Europe. A spokesman for charity Save the Children said, “The English Channel must not become a graveyard for children,” in response to last week’s drowning of seven asylum seekers, including an entire family—mother, father and their three children including an infant—when their boat capsized as they tried to cross the English Channel.

Since the pandemic broke out, more than 7,029 detainees have tested positive for COVID-19 while in ICE custody, and there are eight confirmed deaths, with at least 24 detention centers reporting over 100 cases with major outbreaks in many areas including 448 cases in Phoenix at Arizona’s La Palma Correctional Facility, 373 cases in Atlanta’s Stewart Detention Center, and 339 cases in Virginia’s Immigration Centers of America-Farmville location.

The assaults on immigrant children are only the latest abuses toward this vulnerable population, which go hand in hand with the Trump administration’s efforts to whip up right wing xenophobia and fascistic appeals as the president has pledged to stay in office regardless of Tuesday’s vote. The Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies are part of its open adoption of authoritarianism and fascism.

The Democratic Party has been complicit in the assault on immigrants. Both parties fundamentally and actively support the inhumane immigration policies of the United States and are directly responsible for the present crisis.

At the October 22 second presidential debate between Trump and Biden, when the latter had attempted to assign the full guilt of the attack on immigrants to Trump, Trump threw back at him the question of “Who built the cages?” and cited a 2014 photo of separated children sleeping in cramped quarters in cages, circulated by Democrats in 2018 as proof to the viciousness of Trump's child separation policy. Biden deflected the question and went on to promise, less than two weeks before the election, that his administration would lay a path toward citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country.

This is a rotten and entirely cynical move by Biden and the Democrats, who under Obama built the cages used by Trump, deported over 3 million immigrants, separated children from families and caregivers, and implemented the Detention Bed Quota, a congressionally mandated quota that required ICE to maintain 34,000 detention beds at any given time, a blatant handout to the for-profit prison corporations. Just as Obama introduced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) within two months of the 2012 election as a direct appeal to Latino voters, Biden has done the same, turning the plight of the desperate masses of immigrants and their families into a pawn to be played when necessary for votes.

Australian troops accused of Abu Ghraib, My Lai-style war crimes in Afghanistan

Oscar Grenfell

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald last week, citing a confidential military investigation, has indicated that the scale of war crimes perpetrated by Australian Special Forces units in Afghanistan is far greater than previously acknowledged.

The study, commissioned by then army chief Angus Houston in 2016, was part of a protracted campaign of damage control and cover-up that continues to this day. It is motivated by fears within the political establishment and the military command that revelations of illegal killings, torture and other violations of international law could create a political crisis, inflame anti-war sentiment and obstruct Australian imperialism’s predatory operations throughout the Asia-Pacific region and internationally.

The 2016 review was conducted by Dr Samantha Crompvoets, an academic who works as a consultant for the defence force. The article indicates high-level complicity. It notes that her findings, based on interviews with soldiers, have been among “the most tightly held documents in Canberra.”

The details in the article are relatively scanty. What is there, however, undercuts official claims that the war crimes between 2011 and 2015 were carried out by a few “bad apples” and “rogue elements,” and that the military command was unaware of the atrocities.

An Australian platoon on foot patrol in the town of Tarin Kowt, Aug. 16, 2008.(Image Credit: John Collins/Wikipedia/Public Domain)

Instead, the revelations further demonstrate that extra-judicial murders and other abuses were widespread practices, taking on the character of unofficial policy. This was in line with the character of the Afghan war—a neo-colonial occupation aimed at the subjugation of an entire population.

One excerpt from the report cited an account of troops going to Afghan villages, where they “would take the men and boys to these guest houses and interrogate them, meaning tie them up and torture them.” After the soldiers left, “the men and boys would be found dead, shot in the head, sometimes blindfolded and throats slit. These are corroborated accounts.” The phrasing strongly indicates multiple incidents along the same lines.

Another account stated that two “14-year-old boys suspected of being Taliban sympathisers had their throats slit … the bodies were bagged and thrown into a nearby river.”

Sections of the report noted a “large number of illegal killings often gloated about,” widespread “bloodlust” and a “pressure to conform” to the “culture” of violent attacks on Afghan civilians.

Other testimony recounted multiple instances in which people were shot solely because they ran away from troops. Those who fled were described as “squirters” and were frequently shot from behind with the catch-all justification that they were “running for a weapons cache.”

A chilling citation from the report said “comparisons were made to My Lai and Abu Ghraib.”

The My Lai massacre, perpetrated by US troops in 1968, involved the murder of as many as 504 Vietnamese civilians, who were mown down by an artillery and a helicopter gunship barrage. Abu Ghraib was a US military prison in Iraq, where hundreds of detainees were tortured in the years following the illegal American invasion of 2003.

Because the report’s contents were never meant to be made public, there can be no suggestion that the historical comparisons are exaggerations aimed at drawing media attention.

Previous media revelations have documented multiple instances in which Special Forces troops murdered detainees, including by shooting unarmed civilians at point-blank range and kicking them off mountains.

In the latest previous exposure, an article published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) earlier this month, noted that many Special Forces regiments were involved in a supposed “war on drugs.” This targeted alleged poppy cultivators and traffickers who had fallen foul of the occupying forces and the Afghan government, under conditions in which opium production soared during the US occupation. In one incident, soldiers had no room for a prisoner on their helicopter, so they shot him dead.

The ABC story cited US soldiers who said the Australians had a reputation for war crimes and illegal acts, including among their American and British “coalition partners.”

The 2016 report further exposes the fraudulent claims that military commanders and successive governments were blindsided by the killings.

One section of the report bluntly stated, about soldiers and their commanders: “If they didn’t do it, they saw it. And if they didn’t see it, they knew about it. If they knew about it, they probably were involved in covering it up…” It is unclear from the newspaper article whether this was a soldier’s testimony or Crompvoets’ assessment.

Other excerpts noted that the army’s rules of engagement were interpreted in such a way that any atrocity could be justified. Intimidation of potential whistle blowers was widespread. One soldier stated: “It’s like your typical whistle blower, we all know what happens to them. I became a chameleon. I knew what I needed to do to survive.”

Cover-ups were the norm. An Afghan interpreter working with the units “kept reporting that Australian SF [Special Forces] were executing farmers, but no one ever followed anything up.” Allegations of illegal acts “were apparently muted by SF leadership in Afghanistan.”

Crompvoets was told of “concerns about the … diaspora of SOF [special operations forces] alumni who are powerful, have a great deal to lose, and will no doubt fight to protect their personal reputation as well as the SF brand should they be implicated in any of the above. I was told repeatedly everyone knows who the culprits are.”

Pointing to the motives of the protracted damage control operation, the 2016 report stated:

As stories trickle out, and inevitably they will, the legacy of SOF will perhaps no longer be the fine capability held in such high regard politically and internationally.” This would “stain the organisation for a long time to come.”

The report concluded that a high-level cover-up was likely. “Is it a Pandora’s box too complex and with too much organisational risk to prise open? I don’t know the answers. My hunch, though, is that reputational risk does not stop at SOF and is far greater than even army.”

The reference to “far greater than even army” is a clear reference to governments. Significantly, heinous war crimes occurred around 2012. This was in the immediate aftermath of a “surge” in Afghanistan, overseen by the US administration of President Barack Obama, and supported by the Greens-backed Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Afghanistan was flooded with thousands more soldiers, who were instructed to “root out” insurgents, under conditions of mass opposition to the occupation. This program was inevitably going to involve war crimes and attempts to terrorise the Afghan population.

The details of the 2016 report have been published in the lead up to the scheduled completion of an official inquiry into the allegations by Paul Brereton, a judge and army reserve Major General. The Australian government has said the long-delayed Brereton report, like its 2016 predecessor, will not be made public. Instead, selected “excerpts” may be released, as the cover up continues.

New Zealand to legalise euthanasia following referendum

John Braddock

New Zealand will become the seventh country in the world to legalise euthanasia after voters in a referendum backed the right of terminally ill people to choose to die. While an estimated 480,000 special votes are still being counted, the margin of support, 65.2 percent to 33.8 percent against, means the outcome is decided.

The vote was one of two referenda conducted alongside the October 17 general election. The second, on whether to legalise recreational cannabis use, failed with 46.1 percent in favour and 53.1 against. It is possible, but unlikely, that this result could change when additional special votes (including people who registered late) are announced on November 6.

Following the election, a Labour-Green Party government has been installed with a substantial parliamentary majority. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed she had voted “yes” on both referendum questions and that her government will progress the euthanasia legislation “in line with the will of the people.”

Attempts to legislate for euthanasia in 1995 and 2003 failed to get through parliament. Last year, the End of Life Choice Act was passed with 70 votes in favour and 50 against, with MPs voting on a “conscience” basis rather than on party lines. The referendum to ratify it was insisted upon by then Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, leader of the right-wing NZ First Party in the Labour-led coalition government, which also included the Greens.

The Act outlines criteria for those who can apply to end their life, including they be aged 18 or over, are New Zealand citizens and are suffering from a terminal illness that will end their life within six months. They must “have a significant and ongoing decline in physical capability,” be “enduring unbearable suffering that cannot be eased” and be able to make an “informed decision” about their death.

People suffering mental illness or decline would not be eligible, nor would those applying solely on the basis of “advanced age” or a disability. Two doctors would have to sign off on the decision, with a psychiatrist called in if either doctor had any doubts.

While the result of the euthanasia referendum is binding, the cannabis vote was not, meaning the government would still have had to pass policy through parliament. The cannabis referendum was part of the Greens’ coalition arrangement with Labour following the 2017 election. The Green Party largely led the pro-legalisation campaign.

Both measures were falsely presented by their supporters as “progressive” initiatives. The referenda, like the general election, were conducted under conditions of an unprecedented global capitalist crisis in which the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating a brutal attack on the jobs, living standards and social conditions of working people everywhere.

The move to legalise cannabis was partly an attempt by the Greens and their supporters to distract the unfolding social and economic crisis, as well as a means of increasing the vote among layers of the middle class. If passed, the legislation would create lucrative opportunities for “entrepreneurs” to profit from a healthcare crisis exacerbated by the widespread use of cannabis. The creation of a legal drugs market would not, as its proponents claimed, lessen deepening authoritarian state measures, including Labour’s build-up of the police and the victimisation of working class youth.

ACT leader David Seymour [Credit: Mathmo, WikiMedia Commons]

ACT party leader David Seymour, who sponsored the euthanasia bill, declared New Zealand had fallen “decades” behind the most “progressive” countries in the world. “I think it’s time New Zealand moved towards being a more compassionate and tolerant society,” Seymour told the Guardian. He promoted the euthanasia bill as a matter of “freedom of choice.”

The legalisation of euthanasia is being advanced precisely as ruling elites are using the COVID-19 crisis to advance the conception that the elderly and vulnerable should be sacrificed, including through the criminal policy of “herd immunity.” They are deemed to be no longer useful for generating profits for big business and are accused of cornering an unfair proportion of health funding.

Against a background of widespread poverty among the elderly, the increasing erosion and privatisation of healthcare and deepening austerity measures, including talk of slashing aged pensions, many people feel under pressure to take their lives because they lack financial and psychological resources or social support. In response to the social crisis, New Zealand's number of suicides in the first six months of 2019 was 685, the highest since records began.

Despite its success at the referendum, which prompted a high-profile celebratory event at parliament, the euthanasia bill was opposed by many doctors. Chris Ford, from the Disabled Persons Assembly, told Radio NZ that the consequences of the vote were “feared.” A disproportionate number of disabled people and those with non-terminal health conditions could opt for voluntary euthanasia in response to not getting the support they need to live fulfilling lives.

As elsewhere, the pandemic is sharply exposing the systemic under-funding of New Zealand’s public health system, which has left it unprepared for any major outbreak. The country’s 20 District Health Boards are all millions of dollars in the red and struggling to provide basic services. Medical specialists warned this week that there is “little sign” a recent one-off financial boost to fight COVID-19 will fix underfunded public health units.

The profit-driven private aged care system has proved to be a death trap for elderly residents. The Rosewood rest home in Christchurch, which became New Zealand’s deadliest COVID-19 cluster with 12 deaths, was found to have breached its obligations, including cleaning services and emergency provision of personal supplies. St Margaret's residential aged-care home in Auckland was similarly overwhelmed by a coronavirus outbreak that saw three people die and many staff infected.

Seymour’s role in championing the euthanasia legislation has seen his political stocks sharply rise. Prominent right-wing radio host Mike Hosking declared him “politician of the year” for 2019. From being ACT’s sole MP after assuming the leadership in 2014, he will head a team of 10 MPs in the new parliament, boosted by votes won from NZ First and the National Party. ACT also gained support from the gun lobby after opposing the Labour government’s gun control legislation following the 2019 Christchurch terrorist massacre.

ACT is deeply reviled in the working class. Established in 1993 by former Labour Party finance minister Roger Douglas, it sought to extend the 1984–90 Labour government’s “unfinished” pro-business restructuring agenda. For many years, ACT only held one parliamentary seat due to a deal with the National Party which directed its supporters in the wealthy Epsom electorate to vote for the ACT candidate. It received a total of just 0.5 percent in the 2017 election, but this time reached 7.9 percent.

With the demise of NZ First—on just 2.7 percent of the vote it will not return to parliament—and a collapse in votes for the conservative National Party, ACT is being championed by some as a new right-wing “opposition.” The policies it advocates attack the bare minimal social conditions of the working class. They include massive tax cuts for the wealthy, slashing government expenditure, extending privatisation in health and education and a 3-year freeze on increases to the minimum wage.

The legalisation of assisted suicide is testimony to the mounting social crisis in country after country. ACT’s history and program prove that it has played a central role in creating the very conditions that force people to consider it a viable solution. The embrace of euthanasia by Labour and the Greens is a signal that the entire ruling elite is turning towards this reactionary agenda.

The fraud of IMF-World Bank “debt relief” for poor countries

Nick Beams

As the economic effects of the COVID pandemic spread across the world in March and April, the air was filled with promises that poorer countries would be assisted with aid and debt relief to deal with a crisis that threatened to plunge millions, above all children, into the most abject poverty.

In April, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva announced immediate relief on IMF debt owed by 25 countries. She said the move would help “our poorest and most vulnerable members” to channel scarce resource toward emergency medical and related measures.

In March, the United Nations had issued a call for the G20 to organise a $2.5 trillion relief package to deal with the pandemic.

Six months later, these pronouncements read like a cruel joke. A series of reports makes clear that, while trillions of dollars have been provided to major corporations and the financial system, assistance to the world’s most vulnerable people amounts to virtually nothing.

Composite created by WSWS

A report authored by London-based journalist Peter Goodman, and published in the New York Times on November 1, noted that in April the IMF and World Bank “vowed to spare poor countries from desperation.” Their economists warned that “immense relief was required to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and profound damage to global prosperity.”

Poorer countries have been hit by the fall in remittances sent home by migrant workers, the virtual halt to international tourism, the decline in world trade, and, in some cases, the falling price of oil.

The Times article concluded that the IMF and the World Bank “failed to translate their concern into meaningful support,” even with the World Bank estimating that by next year the pandemic could push 150 million people into extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 per day, the first increase in more than two decades.

According to the bank, between 9.1 percent and 9.4 percent of the world’s people live in extreme poverty conditions. Close to 25 percent of the world’s population receive below $3.20 per day, and 40 percent, almost 3.3 billion people, receive less than $5.50 per day.

The Times article said what it called a “relatively anaemic response by the IMF and the World Bank” was due in part to the “predilections” of their largest shareholder, the United States. It cited remarks by US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to the semi-annual virtual meeting of the two organisations last month.

“It is critical that the World Bank manage financial resources judiciously so as not to burden shareholders with premature calls for new financing,” he said.

IMF chief Georgieva told the meeting the fund would not hesitate to draw upon its $1 trillion lending capacity. “This is, in my lifetime, humanity’s darkest hour,” she said.

However, the IMF has lent out only $280 billion. Of this, $31 billion is in loans to 76 member states, with under $11 billion going to low-income countries.

Some 46 countries, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa, have obtained $5.3 billion worth of debt relief. This is not cancellation, but merely deferral, and the debt still has to be paid. According to data from the European Network on Debt and Development, cited in the Times article, the debt deferrals amount to just 1.7 percent of total international debt payments due from all developing countries this year.

Even where money is provided by the IMF, in many cases it is not being used to finance health and other necessary measures to deal with the pandemic, but to pay off private-sector lenders.

According to a report issued in July by the anti-poverty organisation Jubilee Debt Campaign, the IMF is in breach of its own rules, as 28 countries with a high risk of debt default used $11.3 billion to pay private-sector debt holders.

The head of policy at the organisation, Tim Jones, said IMF funding “was effectively bailing out private lenders by enabling poor countries to maintain payments.”

Jones noted that the level of government spending on debt payments in poorer countries last year had risen to more than 14 percent of government revenue, the highest level since 2003, an increase of 110 percent since 2010. In Kenya and Ethiopia, debt servicing reached up to 50 percent of government revenues last year.

Seeking to justify the use of IMF funds for private profit rather than necessary health and social services, while maintaining that “our overriding objective right now is to save lives and livelihoods,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said the issue was complicated.

“It sometimes involves dealing with private-sector obligations and without having the country fall into default, which would incur a host of other problems,” he said.

The stranglehold that banks and hedge funds based in London, New York and Frankfurt have on less developed countries, many of them in Africa, is illustrated by data collected by the Institute for International Finance, a financial industry lobby group. It found that by the third quarter of last year, foreign debt levels in the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa had risen on average to more than 60 percent of gross domestic product from 38 percent a decade before.

No country in sub-Saharan Africa has been able to obtain any funding from international capital markets since February this year.

In the years following the 2008 global financial crisis, money poured into these countries, as investment houses in the major economies sought higher rates of return. The sub-Saharan governments took on the debt on the basis that higher commodity prices, boosted by rising demand in China, would enable them to repay the loans.

The fall in commodity prices, already in decline even before the pandemic struck, has led to a financial disaster. Lower oil prices mean that the revenues of the Angolan government are now less than what it needs for debt repayments.

As the pandemic struck, the G20 issued a call for private investors to halt debt repayments from poor countries at least until the end of this year. No relief has been provided.

Zambia is another example of the devastation. It raised billions of dollars in loans on the back of rising prices for copper, its main export, with bankers and hedge funds eager to pile in because they were able to earn higher rates of return than elsewhere.

A slowdown in the Chinese economy from around 2015 halved the price of copper. Now the deep recession induced by the pandemic has resulted in a 5 percent contraction in its economy. As a consequence, at least one-third of government revenue is needed just to service debts, a proportion that is expected to rise in coming years.

The collapse in its currency, the kwacha, from five to the dollar in 2012 to around 18 today, means that Zambia has to pay back three times more in local currency than when the loans were taken out.

The social consequences are expressed in figures released by the World Food Programme, which show that at least 6.9 million of the country’s population of 17.4 million do not have sufficient food.

The attitude of the World Bank and the IMF was accurately summed up in comments from Lidy Nacpil, the coordinator of the Manila-based Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, cited at the conclusion of the Times article.

“International financial institutions are going to leave countries in much worse shape than they were before the pandemic,” she said. “Their interest is not primarily about getting these countries back on their feet, but to get these countries back into the business of borrowing.”

Australian central bank joins “quantitative easing” as global crash deepens

Mike Head

The Reserve Bank of Australia yesterday entered uncharted waters. It announced unprecedented steps to slash official interest rates to near zero and to formally join other central banks internationally in pumping billions of dollars into the financial markets via “quantitative easing.”

The RBA issued a revealing warning of a “downside risk to the outlook” because of the worsening COVID-19 pandemic, “particularly in Europe.” This statement undercut its own anxious efforts, and those of the federal government, to talk up prospects of an early recovery in Australia from the most serious economic breakdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg declared that the RBA had “confirmed that Australia’s economic recovery is well under way.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe in 2017 [Credit: Crawford Forum, WikiMedia Commons]

In fact, RBA governor Philip Lowe said the bank board did not expect it would raise interest rates for “at least three years” and might not do so for the next five years. Giving a rare media conference, Lowe said: “We’ve been hit by the biggest economic shock in 100 years. We need to recognise that the pandemic has inflicted significant damage on our economy.”

These remarks are another telling indicator of the depth and long-term nature of the pandemic’s social and economic impact internationally, and therefore in Australia.

Never before, not even in the 1930s, have interest rates been reduced to such low levels—down from an already record low of 0.25 percent to 0.1 percent, and zero for interbank transactions. This is a feverish effort to supply the corporate elite with mountains of more cheap money, on top of the billions already supplied in federal and state “stimulus packages.”

Nor has the RBA ever resorted to such large-scale government bond purchases, saying it will purchase $100 billion worth of five- to ten-year federal and state government bonds over the next six months. This rapid injection of cash is in addition to the more than $63 billion the bank has spent since March on buying three-year government bonds.

Yesterday’s measures are also on top of the RBA’s “Term Funding Facility” to supply big business, via the banks, with low-cost credit. Lowe reported: “To date, authorised deposit-taking institutions have drawn $83 billion under this facility and have access to a further $104 billion.”

A major element in the decision to resort to quantitative easing (QE), as Lowe acknowledged, is to try to drive down the value of the Australian dollar. That requires matching the escalating measures by the US, Japanese and other central banks to lower the values of their currencies.

As market commentators noted, by turning to QE, after months of denying it would go down that path, the RBA has “crossed the Rubicon” and joined the decade-long worldwide “currency wars.” In response to the global crisis, each national-based capitalist elite is seeking to beat down its rivals.

The Australian dollar has fallen in recent weeks in anticipation of the RBA’s moves and was hovering around US70 cents on Monday. A weaker currency should, in theory, prop up export and import-competing industries as local goods and services become relatively cheaper. But the currency wars will only intensify.

Domestically, the RBA is, in effect, printing money to temporarily finance huge deficits incurred by the federal and state governments through their pro-business spending. That is, until these governments can claw back the cost of their corporate handouts from the working class via cuts to jobs, wages and social services. Lowe denied that the bank was directly underwriting government expenditure. Instead, it was “lowering the cost of government finance.”

Regardless of RBA, government and media claims that the lower interest rates will help home buyers, yesterday’s measures will be of little or no benefit to the millions of working class households paying off mortgages. Even if the rate cut were passed on in full by the commercial banks, which is highly unlikely, a household with a $300,000 mortgage would save only about $23 a month.

An even greater fraud is Lowe’s claim that the RBA is “addressing the high rate of unemployment as a national priority.”

In reality, yesterday’s announcement will do nothing to ease the plight of the nearly five million workers who are officially unemployed or underemployed, or trying to survive on meagre JobKeeper wage subsidy payments or JobSeeker welfare benefits. Rather, the funds will be poured into corporate pockets, financing higher profit dividends, share buy-backs and stock market speculation.

The RBA cut its forecast peak for the (vastly understated) official unemployment rate to “a little below 8 percent,” from the 10 percent it previously expected, and predicted a return to growth in the December quarter. But Lowe said the economy was “not out of recession.”

Given the resurging global pandemic and intensifying currency and trade wars, none of the bank’s revised forecasts are any more reliable than the previous ones.

In an effort to revive business and consumer confidence, the RBA said: “Encouragingly, the recent economic data have been a bit better than expected and the near-term outlook is better than it was three months ago.” However, it added: “Even so, the recovery is still expected to be bumpy and drawn out and the outlook remains dependent on successful containment of the virus.”

Long before the pandemic, the RBA had already slashed interest rates to record lows, far below the “emergency” level of 3 percent it set during the global financial crisis of 2008-09. These moves failed to lift the economy out of a deepening slump. Once the pandemic broke out in March, the bank cut its rates from 0.5 percent to 0.25 percent.

Lowe said it was “extraordinarily unlikely” the RBA would follow Switzerland, Denmark, Japan and others down the path of “negative official interest rates,” but that could change too. As recently as last November, Lowe said “I don’t expect” the “threshold” for QE to be reached in the “near future.”

Now, by the middle of next year, the RBA’s holding of federal and state government bonds will have doubled to about 15 percent. Lowe said that was still below the 20 percent of government bonds held by the US Federal Reserve and 30 percent held by the European Central Bank.

Yet, the latest measures are expected to triple the RBA’s holdings of government bonds from about $180 billion before COVID-19 to $550 billion, or 27.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Westpac Bank economist Bill Evans described the increase as “stunning.”

Evans said the RBA was “rapidly closing in on” the US Federal Reserve, which had increased its balance sheet since COVID-19 by 85 percent, from $3.8 trillion to $7.05 trillion, and is now on about 33 percent of GDP.

There is some alarm inside the financial elite about the uncertain fallout from such measures. Ultra-low interest rates push investors away from productive ventures into riskier territory, creating asset price bubbles and accelerating the “search for yield” in murky financial products.

Today’s Australian Financial Review (AFR) editorial asked: “[H]ow does the Reserve Bank ever get out of the whacky world of fixing a near-zero price on money?” It concluded: “Regrettably, this is unlikely to play out smoothly.”

The editorial demanded faster moves to restructure workplace relations, cut jobs, wages and conditions, and reduce social spending to impose the burden of the breakdown on the working class.

At the same time, there is concern in ruling class circles that the RBA’s billions will not be enough to avert a financial crisis. The economy was already sliding into recession before the pandemic. Then it recorded a 0.3 percent contraction in the March quarter and a record 7 percent fall in the June quarter.

An earlier AFR article warned: “There are about 4 million people either on the JobKeeper wage subsidy or JobSeeker unemployment benefit, and a wave of business bankruptcies is about to hit as government supports and insolvency shields phase out.”

In a speech last week, RBA assistant governor Michele Bullock said banks could face losses due to inevitable business failures and mortgage defaults. “There is going to be further pressure on banks’ profits and capital over the coming year,” she warned.

“Business failures are currently much lower than usual because of income support, loan repayment deferrals and temporary insolvency relief. But this can’t last and we expect to see failures rise.”

What this means, in real terms, is that millions of people, including workers and small business operators, are expected to be thrown into financial ruin and poverty, even as the RBA pumps more billions into the hands of the wealthiest layers of society.

According to recent modelling at the Australian National University, the number of people in poverty, after housing costs are included, is set to rise to 5.8 million, or about a quarter of the population, by March.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald resigns from the Intercept in protest against censorship

Andre Damon

Glenn Greenwald, the most prominent collaborator of whistleblower Edward Snowden and a world-renowned critic of the US media and intelligence agencies, has resigned from the Intercept, the publication he founded in 2013, in protest against its attempts to stifle his reporting critical of the Democratic Party.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald attends a press conference before the start of a protest in his support in July 2018 [Credit: AP Photo/Ricardo Borges]

According to Greenwald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the Intercept “in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.”

He continued:

The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.

The Intercept refused to publish an article by Greenwald that discussed the contents of the hard drive allegedly dropped off at a computer repair store in Delaware and abandoned by Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son.

The files document Hunter Biden’s business affairs, which often reference his father, directly or indirectly. The files also include compromising personal photos and video of Hunter Biden. The files’ authenticity has not been denied by the Biden campaign.

Commenting on the resignation, journalist Matt Taibbi wrote: “The key fact of the Greenwald episode: the Intercept uncritically took dictation from John Brennan, Jim Clapper, and Michael Hayden, and killed a piece by their Pulitzer-winning founder because it was critical of the probable next president.”

Greenwald co-founded the Intercept in 2013 to help disseminate information suppressed by the mainstream press. But, according to Greenwald’s account, the newspaper has since shifted its position to become part of the political establishment in the orbit of the Democratic Party.

Greenwald wrote in his resignation letter:

When I left the Guardian at the height of the Snowden reporting in 2013 in order to create a new media outlet, I did not do so, needless to say, in order to impose upon myself more constraints and restrictions on my journalistic independence. The exact opposite was true: the intended core innovation of the Intercept, above all else, was to create a new media outlet where all talented, responsible journalists would enjoy the same right of editorial freedom I had always insisted upon for myself. As I told former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller in a 2013 exchange we had in the New York Times about my critiques of mainstream journalism and the idea behind the Intercept: “editors should be there to empower and enable strong, highly factual, aggressive adversarial journalism, not to serve as roadblocks to neuter or suppress the journalism.”

He added a scathing indictment of his former employer:

The current iteration of the Intercept is completely unrecognizable when compared to that original vision. Rather than offering a venue for airing dissent, marginalized voices and unheard perspectives, it is rapidly becoming just another media outlet with mandated ideological and partisan loyalties, a rigid and narrow range of permitted viewpoints (ranging from establishment liberalism to soft leftism, but always anchored in ultimate support for the Democratic Party), a deep fear of offending hegemonic cultural liberalism and center-left Twitter luminaries, and an overarching need to secure the approval and admiration of the very mainstream media outlets we created the Intercept to oppose, critique and subvert.

Indeed, the Intercept in recent years served as a clearinghouse for the Democrats’ false claims that Russia “meddled” in the 2016 presidential election, which was used to claim that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange entered into a conspiracy with the Russian government. In 2018, the Intercept smeared Assange, claiming he spoke “in a sexist manner” and expressed, according to the headline of an article, a “preference for GOP over Clinton.”

Greenwald says he intends to continue publishing on Substack, used by reporter Matt Taibbi and other publishers.

The response by Intercept Editor-in-Chief Betsy Reed was duplicitous and vindictive, claiming the veteran journalist was “a grown person throwing a tantrum.”

She wrote:

Glenn demands the absolute right to determine what he will publish. He believes that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt, and anyone who presumes to edit his words is a censor. Thus, the preposterous charge that the Intercept ’s editors and reporters, with the lone, noble exception of Glenn Greenwald, have betrayed our mission to engage in fearless investigative journalism.

By failing to contradict Greenwald’s statement that the Intercept was contractually obligated not to censor his articles, the Intercept is implicitly admitting that it is true.

Greenwald is one of the most respected journalists in the world. His reporting has become a target of Brazil’s autocratic President Jair Bolsonaro. In January, Brazil’s attorney general brought criminal conspiracy charges against Greenwald for exposing government wrongdoings.

Greenwald’s 2013 articles, based on documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, won a Pulitzer Prize. He played a key role in initiating Snowden’s exposures of wholesale and unconstitutional spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on the US and world public. The NSA whistleblower has been charged under the Espionage Act, potentially facing the death penalty, for exposing the government’s criminal acts. He has been living in forced exile in Russia for over six years.

While Trump has repeatedly sought to use Hunter Biden’s business dealings to his own political advantage, the Democrats have claimed that any critical evaluation of the issue is impermissible, claiming that the story is “Russian propaganda.”

“We know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff. “That’s been clear for well over a year now that they’ve been pushing this false narrative about this vice president and his son.”

Last month, Twitter and Facebook blocked the distribution of a New York Post story reporting on the contents of the laptop. Users attempting to tweet the link were served a notice that said, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.”

Anyone who attempted to view or retweet already existing shares of the link were given a warning that said, “link may be unsafe.”