CDC deepens COVID-19 cover-up, switches to weekly reporting of cases and deaths

Evan Blake

On Wednesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly updated its national COVID-19 data surveillance protocols to switch from daily to weekly reporting of COVID-19 infections and deaths starting on October 20. Coming just before what is widely expected to be another devastating surge of the pandemic across the US this fall and winter, and three weeks before the US midterm elections on November 8, the move marks a major escalation of the Biden administration’s homicidal “forever COVID” policy and is tailored to match Biden’s lie that “the pandemic is over.”

There is no scientific basis whatsoever to the CDC’s change in policy, which undoubtedly had the direct approval of Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. On a FAQ page where the announcement was made, the agency claims that the switch will “allow for additional reporting flexibility, reduce the reporting burden on states and jurisdictions, and maximize surveillance resources.” In reality, there is no “reporting burden” on states and “surveillance resources” are now all but nonexistent.

Since the emergence of the Omicron variant nearly one year ago, the vast majority of US states have systematically dismantled their COVID-19 data reporting and surveillance systems. According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, a staggering 32 states have already switched to weekly reporting of COVID-19 cases, while 29 states only report deaths weekly. North Dakota, Nebraska, and the District of Columbia have stopped reporting deaths from COVID-19 entirely. As a result of the CDC’s new policy, in the coming weeks every state will likely switch to weekly reporting.

The CDC, the White House and state governments run by both the Democrats and Republicans have curtailed testing and contact tracing, and scrapped quarantine and isolation guidelines. Due to the closure of government-funded testing sites and the switch to unreported at-home testing, the official seven-day average of daily new cases is down to 41,248. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) estimates that the true number of infections now stands at roughly 530,000 per day, over 12 times higher than the official figure. In August, the CDC officially recommended against quarantining exposed individuals, as well as contact tracing and surveillance testing in most settings.

The CDC’s latest COVID cover-up takes place as an average of over 400 Americans are officially dying of COVID-19 every day, or roughly the equivalent of the death toll from the September 11 terrorist attacks each week. The curtailment of data reporting is central to the broader normalization of the pandemic, a global process which has been imposed in nearly every country except China over the past year.

As accomplices in this vast social crime, the corporate media has dutifully remained silent and thereby facilitated the deepening COVID cover-up. The latest CDC policy change has not been reported on by the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico and other leading print outlets which collectively have thousands of staff writers, while the broadcast media has entirely ignored the issue.

Also this week, the CDC quietly removed COVID-19 travel notices for foreign countries from its website, and on Friday eliminated an automated “self-checker” chatbot designed to assist COVID-19 patients in finding testing centers and medical care. Both of these developments have also gone almost entirely unreported.

Throughout the past year, the World Socialist Web Site has been the only outlet to raise the alarm and continuously expose the efforts of the Biden administration and other world governments to scrap all mitigation measures, manipulate data and cover-up the pandemic.

In January, the WSWS broke the news that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was ending its collection of reports on daily deaths and other critical data from US hospitals. In March, only the WSWS seriously reported on the CDC’s sudden elimination of over 72,000 COVID-19 deaths from its Data Tracker system. At every turn, the WSWS has given voice to the opposition to the ending of each new mitigation measure.

As news broke Thursday that the CDC is switching to weekly reporting, numerous scientists, doctors and anti-COVID activists denounced this latest unscientific policy. In one widely-shared tweet, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist and professor of medicine and surgery at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences, wrote, “With the onset of colder weather & an anticipated rise in cases it’s hard to ignore the obvious political explanation for this change. There’s no scientific reason.”

The latest stage in the deepening COVID cover-up takes place as evidence continues to mount proving the horrific consequences of these policies. On Wednesday, the same day the CDC announced its switch to weekly COVID-19 reporting, the US Census Bureau released the latest figures from its Household Pulse Survey on Long COVID.

The survey found that 15 million adults in the US currently have Long COVID, of whom 81.4 percent are experiencing some level of difficulty in carrying out their daily activities. In total, roughly 3.8 million US adults report Long COVID symptoms that reduce their ability to carry out day-to-day activities “a lot,” while another 8.5 million report Long COVID symptoms that reduce their ability “a little.”

These figures correspond closely with a recent Brookings Institution report, which found that up to 4 million American adults have left the workforce due to being disabled by Long COVID.

Numerous scientific studies underscore that the “forever COVID” policy of perpetual waves of infection will result in the ongoing mass disabling of a significant share of the population, further lowering life expectancy and straining the health care system to the breaking point.

Among the most comprehensive studies on Long COVID is that being led by Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the chief of research and education service at Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System. His team’s most recent peer-reviewed study, published in late September, found that COVID-19 increases one’s risk of a neurological disorder by 42 percent, and that seven out of every 100 people with COVID-19 develop some form of neurological disorder, including strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, seizures, Parkinson’s-like symptoms, anxiety and depression and others. Other studies have found that COVID-19 causes elevated risk of numerous cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, kidney disease and more.

In a preprint study published on June 17, which is currently undergoing peer review, Dr. Al-Aly and his team found that people with two or more COVID-19 infections were twice as likely to die of any cause and three times as likely to be hospitalized in the six months after being reinfected, compared with people who had been infected once. In addition, people with reinfections had far higher rates of heart disease, kidney disorders and other ailments than those with just one infection. These results held for both people who were unvaccinated and for those who had received at least one dose of vaccine before their reinfection.

The results of this study and the immense body of research into Long COVID make clear that for the working class and society as a whole, there is no such thing as “living with the virus” and in no way is the pandemic “over.” In order to prevent perpetual mass death and the progressive disabling of ever-larger sections of the population, the only viable strategy is that of global elimination, in which all human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is brought to an end. This requires the global deployment of every public health measure to stop viral transmission, including mass testing, rigorous contact tracing, temporary paid lockdowns, the safe isolation of infected patients and more.

The maintenance of this Zero-COVID elimination strategy in China, the most populous country on Earth with over 1.4 billion people, proves that this strategy is viable and must be expanded to every other country.

Class tensions mount in wake of rejection of Chile’s draft constitution

Mauricio Saavedra

Early last month, Chileans voted overwhelmingly against a newly drafted constitution touted by sections of the international corporate media as the “most progressive” charter ever written. Amid the skyrocketing cost of living and rising poverty, the rejection represents a popular rebuke to the pseudo-left coalition government headed by President Gabriel Boric and its acquiescence to every demand of international finance capital six months after taking office.

On September 4, more than 13 million people, or 85 percent of the eligible electorate, turned out to vote in the referendum, which asked whether they approved or rejected a draft constitution to replace the one drawn up by the military dictatorship in 1980. The unusually high turnout was due to voting being made mandatory for the first time since 2012.

In what has been described as a stunning defeat for the Apruebo Dignidad (I Support Dignity) ruling coalition, only 38.1 percent of the electorate backed the draft, while more than 61 percent rejected it. So sweeping was the defeat that the Reject option won in all 16 regions of Chile.

Chile's Carabinero police marching against protesters in Santiago (Credit: Rjcastillo/Wikimedia Commons)

The narrowest result between Reject and Approve votes took place in the capital Santiago, which has the highest concentration of people. Yet only five of its 52 municipalities approved the draft constitution. The only other municipality in the whole country to approve the proposed draft was the port city of San Antonio in the Valparaíso region, and there only by the slightest of margins.

The gap between Reject and Approve votes widened the further away from the capital. In the mining regions to the north—Tarapacá, Antofagasta, Atacama and Coquimbo—not one municipality approved the new constitution, while to the rural south the margins were even more pronounced. In Araucania, where the impoverished indigenous Mapuche communities are concentrated, the draft charter was rejected by 73 percent of voters.

Almost from the beginning of the process, major national and international newspapers gave voice to the right and ultra-right opposition to the constitutional convention. Their main concern was the expectations raised in the population by a plethora of pseudo-left elements who claimed they would end the military dictatorship’s free market charter that imposed the super-exploitation of labor and super-profiteering in all areas of the economy.

It came as no surprise that the mouthpieces for imperialist interests reveled in the result.

“Chile’s decision in a referendum on Sunday to reject decisively an impossibly utopian constitution stands out as a remarkable example of civic maturity,” the Financial Times declared the day after the vote. “What is likely to come next is a fresh attempt to rewrite the constitution. This will correct past mistakes by ensuring that delegates to a new constituent assembly are more representative of a country that is broadly divided between left and right.”

Time magazine stated that “Some Chileans argue that the delegates were not representative of Chilean society—the majority came from left-wing political blocs or independents with a similar political bend” and “the draft document—comprising 388 articles—went too far, enshrining a long list of unworkable rights and equalities in law that would scare off investors and lead to chaos.”

The Wall Street Journal commented, “Chileans…rejected a new constitution that would have empowered the left to restrict property rights and individual liberty… If (Gabriel Boric) hopes to salvage his Presidency, he will have to respond to the public’s needs by moving to the center and recognizing interests beyond his base of left-wing urban elites.”

The referendum to replace the military dictatorship-era charter and draft a new constitution was borne out of a desperate attempt to dissipate a revolutionary situation.

Popular opposition to Chile’s obscene levels of social inequality and against an increasingly despised civilian political caste surfaced initially in 2006 and again in 2011 with massive student protests demanding an end to the market-based education system. Progressively, teachers, port workers, miners, health professionals and pensioners entered the fray demanding sweeping changes in bitter protests that emerged between the second administration of Socialist Party President Michele Bachelet (2014-2018) and the second administration of right-wing billionaire President Sebastian Piñera (2018-2022).

A turning point was reached in late 2019, when, after years of bubbling tensions, opposition to capitalism and its servants erupted en masse. The largest demonstrations in the country’s history were held over several months with millions coming onto the streets despite the imposition of a state of emergency, with the Armed Forces and Carabineros special forces killing 36 people, mutilating hundreds and detaining thousands in the ensuing mass sweeps.

A real crisis of bourgeois rule opened up. Piñera’s beleaguered government convoked “national unity” discussions to bring an end to the massive anti-capitalist demonstrations at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. He had a problem though: the center-left parties, having governed for 24 of the 30 years since the return to civilian rule in 1990, were a spent force.

Resuscitated in the 1980s with the funding and assistance of US and European imperialism, the Chilean Socialist Party, Party for Democracy, Christian Democrats and Radical Party formed a center-left ruling coalition that reformed only some of the more authoritarian aspects of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s constitution, and only after the dictator was issued an arrest warrant by a Spanish magistrate in 1998.

However, they intensified the dictatorship’s extreme capitalist free market policies, leading to obscene levels of social inequality, the sprouting of shantytowns, dilapidated schools and hospitals, rising household and student debt and, ultimately ,to the social explosion.

The bourgeoisie responded to an existential threat from below as it has during other critical moments, relying upon the corporatist trade unions and the Chilean pseudo-left— in this case the Stalinist Communist Party and the Frente Amplio [Broad Front]—to disorient and divert anti-capitalist sentiment behind appeals to change the authoritarian constitution. They were aided by a plethora of Pabloite organizations whose chief function historically has been to prevent workers and youth from turning towards revolutionary socialism by subordinating them to the bankrupt national reformist politics of the trade unions and Stalinism or to equally reactionary petty-bourgeois guerrillaism.

How was this achieved this time? Firstly, the pseudo-left parties claimed to oppose Piñera’s national unity pact. Gabriel Boric was the only representative of the Frente Amplio coalition to enter into unity talks. But through their control of the unions, these parties called off strike action following the agreement to isolate the demonstrators from broader sectors of the working class that had previously been involved in the anti-capitalist protests.

At the same time, the Communist Party and Frente Amplio parliamentarians rubber stamped a series of police state laws. These laws enhanced the powers of the intelligence agencies and beefed up the police and military apparatus while other laws criminalized all social protests. Now, the pseudo-left Boric administration is using all of this against student protests and striking workers.

Secondly, with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, these same forces embraced a militarized response to the health crisis by voting in favor of declaring a State of Catastrophe that placed national defense chiefs in charge of the 16 regions of the country. The overriding concern was to put an end to social protest. Days before the State of Catastrophe decree, between one and two million people marched on International Women’s Day, putting paid to claims that the infamous national unity discussions had popular support.

Also, as the pseudo-left parliamentarians voted to furlough hundreds of thousands of workers, forcing them to eat into their own savings just to survive, the Stalinist-dominated Central Workers Union, the CUT, corralled workers back into unsafe workplaces in the export-oriented industries that had been classified as “essential.” While mining giants registered record profits in 2021, workers in the northern mining regions continue to suffer to this day high levels of COVID-19 infections and deaths.

The virus rapidly spread in densely populated working class neighborhoods and shantytowns, especially among informal workers who lacked any savings and were forced to continue working in order to eke out an existence. When hunger riots erupted in impoverished neighborhoods, Piñera cracked down with the anti-demonstration laws approved by the pseudo-left.

By October 2020, the pseudo-left, through the unions and the protest and community organizations they control, had successfully dissipated a revolutionary situation and channeled left-wing sentiment into parliamentary channels. That month, an overwhelming 78 percent of the electorate voted in favor of drafting a new constitution to replace Pinochet’s hated charter.

For the next seven months, their focus was almost exclusively on the election of delegates to the constitutional convention, even as bodies piled up due to the criminally negligent official response to the pandemic. During that period, the country registered 1.5 million COVID-19 cases and 35,000 deaths, while the richest families doubled their wealth from $21 billion to $42.7 billion.

The May 2021 elections for the 155 seats in the constitutional convention saw a crushing defeat for the right-wing and old center-left parties. While only 40 percent of the eligible electorate voted, those who did overwhelmingly sought candidates who promised to inscribe in the nation’s new charter guarantees to public health, public education, a decent pension, an end to social inequality, the redistribution of wealth, environmental protections, as well as indigenous and other democratic rights.

As the World Socialist Web Site explained at the time, no capitalist constitution could guarantee such demands because such documents fundamentally exist to protect a system based on the accumulation of private profit, the source of social inequality and exploitation. Any illusions in reactionary reformist myths are even more dangerous today as governments, both in the powerful imperialist nations as and the semi-colonial countries, respond to all social, health and environmental crisis by “letting it rip.”

It was at this stage that the Pabloites fulfilled their traditional role. Maria Rivera of the International Workers Movement (MIT), the Chilean section of the Morenoite International Workers League-Fourth International (LIT-CI), was elected to the constitutional convention along with a gamut of academics, professionals and “activists” linked in one way or another with the Stalinists and the pseudo-left.

Over the ensuing year, these political charlatans postured as revolutionaries, making calls for the nationalization of mining and the abolition of privatized education and health care, even as this entire exercise was given the imprimatur by imperialist mouthpieces like the Economist magazine and the US think tank Council of Foreign Relations. That the Economist later shifted its tune had to do with concerns about expectations that were being created by the draft constitution’s “fiscally irresponsible left-wing wish list.”

While the anti-communist scaremongering and disinformation campaign by the mainstream media and on social media definitely played a role in shaping opinion, especially among the more politically backward layers in the population, what secured the constitution’s defeat in the working class was the actions of the Boric administration since coming into office.

Identity politics was a centerpiece of the pseudo-left’s campaign from the beginning of both the constitutional convention and the presidential election at the end of last year. Touted as the most “progressive” constitution by swathes of the pseudo-left internationally and sections of the professional middle class and academia, its central thrust was to increase the size of the state, creating a new indigenous bureaucracy and guaranteeing gender parity in the civil service and the state.

After winning the runoff against José Antonio Kast of the fascistic Republican Party, Boric highly touted his selection of 14 women for his cabinet of 24 ministers.

Since coming to office, the pseudo-left government has turned to the same police state methods of previous governments. Over the last seven months, it has sent the riot police against protesting students and jailed striking workers. Indigenous communities to the south are under a State of Emergency with the military deployed to control the highways and thoroughfares. It has increased both the funding and size of the Carabineros police, infamous for its human rights violations, and purchased military-grade armored vehicles for their use.

The pseudo-left administration has also complied with finance capital’s demands by further integrating the old center-left political caste into his government and by implementing a fiscally tight monetary policy, ending stimulus programs to aid working and middle class families as inflation reaches levels not seen since 1992.

On Boric’s watch, the Central Bank has progressively increased its interest rate to 10.75 percent. Meanwhile, real incomes dropped 3 percent, while the cost of essential household items rose 15 percent annually up to August, pushing more than half of all working families into poverty.

The political role played by the Stalinists, Broad Front, and Pabloite outfits has only emboldened the most right-wing and fascistic forces, who feel they have the upper hand. While Boric makes feeble calls for dialogue, the right is pushing for more police state measures, including more police and soldiers on the streets and an expansion of the use of states of exception.

Far from being resolved, the crisis of bourgeois rule has only deepened. Amid a global resurgence of strikes and mass protests against inflation and inequality, the class struggle will burst to the surface sooner rather than later in Chile because all the same social and political issues remain.

Former police officer massacres 38 people, including 24 children, in Thailand

Oscar Grenfell

A horrific attack at a childcare centre in Thailand’s northeastern province of Nong Bua Lamphu has claimed at least 38 lives. Some 24 of the victims were young children, in what has been described as the country’s worst mass killing in decades. An unknown number of survivors have been hospitalised with injuries.

The official fatality count has changed several times over the past 36 hours, each time being revised upwards.

Relatives of the victims of a mass killing attack by former police officer gather for Buddhist ceremony in the rural town of Uthai Sawan, north eastern Thailand, Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. [AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

Panya Kamrab, a 34-year-old former police officer, has been identified by Thai authorities as the perpetrator. He reportedly arrived at the childcare facility, in the rural town of Uthai Sawan, in the early afternoon of Thursday, before indiscriminately opening fire.

Most of the children who were killed were between the ages of 2 and 5, according to officials. Only one child who was on site reportedly survived. Staff members were also murdered, including a 25-year-old teacher who was eight months pregnant. According to witness reports and press accounts of the autopsies, many of the victims were butchered with a large blade, similar to a machete, used by farmers to cut sugar cane. Their injuries are said to have been horrific.

Kamrab allegedly returned to his nearby home after the massacre, killing his own children and his wife before turning the gun on himself.

Local officials have told the international press that Kamrab had gone to the childcare centre, and was agitated when he found that his own child or children were not there.

In comments to Reuters, Jidapa Boonsom, a district official, said that Kamrab had first shot four or five staff members, before entering the facility. The children were asleep or resting during naptime when he entered. People nearby had initially thought that fireworks were being let off, before becoming aware of the developing tragedy.

In the days since the massacre, dozens of family members have made harrowing visits to the childcare centre, to the morgue and to other points of congregation, where a collective mourning has unfolded.

Their comments have pointed to the magnitude of the horror that has taken place. Relatives have spoken of the interests and hobbies of the young children, the hopes they had for their future and the unbearable grief of losing them.

The Wall Street Journal reported: “Four-year-old Thawatchai’s grandmother, Aoy Yodkao, had hoped the boy would take care of her as she grew older. He would call her ‘Yai Aoy, Yai Aoy,’ meaning Granny Aoy, and loved to play with her phone, she said…

“Now, she says, she can’t sleep or eat. She worries about the health of her pregnant daughter, the boy’s mother. ‘I have no idea what to do next,’ she said. ‘I can’t think of anything right now.’”

The attack, targeting defenseless children and those who care for them, has shocked masses of people in Thailand and around the world.

Many of the details remain sketchy, and undoubtedly more information will emerge.

Already, however, the mass killing has raised a host of questions about the culture of the military and police, whose personnel have been involved in most attacks of this nature; a growing epidemic of drug use, and the malignant growth of social tensions, which, whatever the psychological and individual characteristics of perpetrator, have to be present in such a horrific social event.

The few details that are publicly known about Kamrab paint him as a forlorn figure whose life was falling apart. The 34-year-old had lost his job as a police lieutenant colonel last year after being caught with methamphetamines. It is unclear if he had been in work since. Kamrab was embroiled in ongoing drugs proceedings, which had been the subject of a court hearing the morning of the attack.

Other reports speak of the inevitable money problems stemming from such a predicament and the possibility that Kamrab’s marriage was on the cusp of a separation.

Initially, police said that Kamrab was likely under the influence of methamphetamines when he carried out the attack, having taken the drug after his court hearing.

The country has a growing drug problem, with some reports placing the number of adults who have tried methamphetamine, often sold as “ya ba” pills at almost 15 million people out of a population of 69 million. Record seizures have occurred during the pandemic, and some 80 percent of all prison inmates are incarcerated for drug offenses, mostly related to meth.

Government officials seized on these reports, ascribing the attack to the substance, which can be associated with violent behavior, and seeking to damp down discussion of the broader issues raised by the attack by declaring that it was purely the outcome of a drug addiction.

These assertions have been complicated by reports that Kamrab’s autopsy found no traces of narcotics in his system, indicating that he had not taken any illicit substance over the 72 hours prior to his death.

Several witnesses described seeing Kamrab walk out of the childcare centre, having carried out his unspeakable crimes, in a calm state, as though nothing had happened, and seemingly disconnected from what was taking place around him. The descriptions, connected with the apparent absence of drugs as an immediate factor, raise the possibility of a major psychological break or other mental health episode.

Angry comments on social media have highlighted Kamrab’s former position in the state apparatus, as a police officer. Previous attacks of this nature have also been perpetrated by police and military figures.

The second-deadliest attack, after last Thursday’s, took place in February 2020, when a soldier went on a two-day, live streamed rampage, murdering 29 people and injuring 58. That rampage took place in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima, also known as Korat, which, like the scene of Thursday’s mass killing, is in the impoverished northeast of the country.

In June 2021, a former soldier fired on a COVID clinic, killing one. Last month a soldier suddenly began shooting his colleagues at a Bangkok military base, killing two and wounding another.

Thailand’s military and its police are notoriously corrupt. For decades, they have played the role of political kingmakers, sometimes more openly, sometimes behind the scenes. They are thus a focal point of power intrigues, hierarchy and often criminal money-making operations. Current Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is a former army officer who took power in a military coup in 2014.

As is the case throughout Southeast Asia, the political prominence of the military and the police is bound up with the immense social tensions and the fears in the ruling elite of social opposition from below. Prayut has overseen repeated, brutal crackdowns on protesters demanding democratic rights, including in 2020 and 2021. Being on the frontlines of such state suppression cannot but toughen and brutalise those involved, including lower-level police and soldiers.

Like all civil servants, they are entitled to own personal firearms, the purchase of which is subsidised by the state. That appears to have been how Kamrab legally acquired the gun that he later turned on the children. Thailand has the highest rate of gun ownership in the region.

Widely shared comments on social media have asked, “Who will watch the watchers?” and “Who do you call when the police are doing the shooting?” One Tweet, cited by Time magazine, stated: “Shooting in Korat caused by stress. Shooting at Nong Bua Lamphu caused by drugs and stress. Shouldn’t we look at the system? With security organisations like this, no one will dare trust them.”

In a bid to shut down this discussion, the national government has pledged compensation for victims and their families. Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn yesterday visited some of the victims’ families, a rare act by the figure who sits at the apex of the Thai state and is protected from criticism by some of the harshest lèse-majesté laws in the world. He is the latest in a string of state officials to have made an appearance.

Some of the visits have backfired, serving only to underscore the social chasm between the governing representatives of the ruling elite, and the impoverished victims’ families. A red carpet laid outside the childcare centre for visiting government officials was the subject of derision and anger online. So were reports that victims’ relatives were told to hold up signs, thanking the government for compensation.

As is the case throughout Southeast Asia, Thailand is a society of gross social inequality. The divide has only been intensified by the pandemic, which has wrought a devastating toll, and by inflation, which is pushing millions to the brink.

Like the phenomenon of mass shootings in the US, the Thai massacre has pointed to a deeply diseased society, riven by social tensions.

European Political Community summit pledges to escalate war on Russia

Alex Lantier & Johannes Stern

On Thursday and Friday, heads of state from 44 European countries met in the Czech capital, Prague, for the inaugural summit of the European Political Community (EPC). Proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron in May, it brought together European Union (EU) countries, Britain, and a dozen countries along Russia’s western border.

The Prague summit was a politically sinister event. It called to arm Ukraine against Russia, even after reports emerged that US President Joe Biden had told top financial donors that the NATO war on Russia threatened to lead to nuclear Armageddon. Even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has just proposed to launch pre-emptive strikes on Russia, the summit heard and applauded a bellicose video address from Zelensky.

After the summit, Macron held a joint press conference with Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and Moldovan President Maia Sandu. They stressed that they are committed to military escalation against Russia, even though it threatens to cut off energy supplies to Europe and, by the admission of the US president, to unleash the destruction of human civilization itself.

[AP Photo/Petr David Josek]

Macron hailed the presence of Zelensky and insisted that the summit had put to rest any doubts as to whether the EU powers supported an aggressive military posture against Russia. He said, “We have made clear the unity of 44 European countries who, all 44 of them, clearly condemned Russian aggression and gave their support to Ukraine. This has great value, because previously certain doubts had existed.”

Macron alluded briefly to the many conflicts involving states represented at the Prague summit, which underscore the unviability of the EPC itself. Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars in the last two years, unresolved border conflicts continue between Serbia and Kosovo, and Greece and Turkey are on the verge of war over gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Sandu similarly endorsed the US-European arming of Ukraine to retake Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine now annexed by Russia—a move that threatens to provoke nuclear war.

“Peace starts with helping Ukraine restore its territorial integrity within its internationally-recognized borders. We are united in condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine and the illegal annexation of its territories,” she said, adding, “Energy security was the other major topic we discussed. We should not allow the energy crisis to undermine our democracy.”

Indeed, the rising danger of NATO military operations against Russia leading to all-out nuclear war goes hand-in-hand with the rising economic impact of NATO’s cut-off of Russian energy. Food and energy prices are already surging in Europe, with inflation running at over 10 percent, and energy shortages will devastate Europe’s economy and society this winter. Over 400,000 job losses are expected in Germany and a half million in Italy alone as electricity cut-offs shutter industry.

Europe’s leading imperialist powers are responding by stepping up the offensive against Russia. In a press statement, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed the EPC summit, declaring, “Clearly, this is now a meeting that cannot be thought of in isolation from the Russian attack on Ukraine. But it is also good to see that we are all supporting Ukraine in very different ways: financially, with humanitarian aid, and many are also supplying weapons, as Germany is doing.”

Scholz boasted to the German daily Die Welt, “These [arms] include decidedly efficient weapons, such as the self-propelled howitzer 2000, multiple rocket launchers and the Gepard anti-aircraft tank. It is these weapons that proved particularly effective during the counteroffensive by the Ukrainian armed forces.” Germany and Brussels “will continue to support Ukraine for as long as necessary,” he added.

Scholz said Germany will also make an “important contribution” to the planned EU training mission for the Ukrainian armed forces. On Friday, after an informal EU summit in Prague, he said the mission would be “large in scope” and that he expected decisions to be announced as early as next week. Currently, the EU would provide training programs outside Ukraine for some 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers, 2,800 of whom could be special forces.

The EU is massively escalating military aid for Ukraine against Russia. In Prague, EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola urged EU countries to deliver modern tanks to Ukraine. Ideal would be “Leopard 2 tanks, for example,” she told AFP, referring to Germany’s main battle tank. France is considering supplying more Caesar howitzers to Ukraine, according to Macron. Under discussion, according to AFP, are six to 12 more Caesars, which were originally intended for Denmark.

To defeat Russia and subjugate this resource-rich country, European powers are ready to risk World War III, brushing aside the threat of nuclear Armageddon. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed that they take Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats seriously, but will not be blackmailed by his words.

Media warmongers aggressively spread the lie that “fear” of the threat of nuclear war is worse than nuclear war itself. “U.S. President Biden warns of Armageddon in the face of Russian threats of nuclear weapons. The concern is justified, of course,” writes the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “But: more dangerous than nuclear blackmail is only the surrender to it.”

The EPC summit and the response by the European powers and bourgeois media starkly poses critical political issues to workers entering into struggle against inflation and war in Europe and internationally. There is no way to oppose the escalating NATO imperialist war with Russia within the official framework of capitalist politics.

Indeed, the EU powers have, over the recent years, carried out a remarkable shift in their public position towards US-led war against Russia. After Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as president, Berlin and Paris both called for an independent EU military policy. As part of this policy, they at times criticized Washington’s most aggressive measures against Russia. Macron raised this in an interview in The Economist in November 2019, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

NATO, Macron declared in 2019, is “brain-dead.” He said that its policy of stoking a war in Syria between Russia and Turkey, a NATO member state, was “an enormous problem for NATO.” US policy towards Russia, he added, was completely unhinged. “When the United States is very harsh with Russia,” Macron declared, “it is a form of governmental, political, and historical hysteria.”

Calling to “reconsider our position towards Russia,” Macron told The Economist that France can “talk to everyone and so build relations to prevent the world from going up in a conflagration.”

Today, Scholz, Macron and others are pressing recklessly ahead with a war on Russia, even though they and Biden all know the world could go up in a conflagration.

It is apparent that, to use Macron’s terms, a form of governmental, political and historical hysteria has seized the imperialist ruling classes. Amid the economic crisis caused by their disastrous official handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and bank bailouts to the rich, they are intensifying their drive for plunder. Having encountered no opposition in the political establishment to policies of mass infection in the COVID-19 pandemic, they are heading for nuclear World War III.

The divisions among the heads of state attending the EPC summit do not make a conflagration less likely, but more so. Beyond the Azeri-Armenian, Serbian-Kosovar, and Greco-Turkish conflicts, a row has broken out between France, on the one side, and Germany and Spain on the other over whether to build a gas pipeline linking Spain to Germany via France. Anger erupted also over Germany’s massive €‎200 billion energy package. All these geopolitical conflicts and conflicts over control of the energy markets tear European capitalism apart, making it even less capable of avoiding a Third World War.

Interest rate hikes leading to recession, UN says

Nick Beams

The United Nations has added its voice to the growing list of international organisations, including the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, warning that interest rate hikes imposed by the US Federal Reserve are creating the conditions for a financial crisis and global recession.

In its annual report issued earlier this week, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said that after a “recovery” in 2021 “the world economy is in the midst of cascading and multiplying crises.”

It said that with incomes still below 2019 levels in many major economies “growth is slowing everywhere.”

The rise in interest rates and highly volatile bond markets meant that “debt-distressed countries, including over half of low-income countries and about a third of middle-income countries, are edging ever closer to default.”

With one eye clearly focused on the class struggle, it said economic hardship, arising from a cost-of-living crisis in advanced and developing countries, compounded by the threat of new outbreaks of COVID-19, the effects of climate change, and cuts in government spending, “is already triggering social unrest that can quickly escalate into political instability and conflict.”

Pointing to the effects of interest rates on the economy, the report said every percentage point rise in the Fed’s key interest rate lowered economic output in rich countries by 0.5 percent and by 0.8 percent in poor countries over the next three years; and more drastic rises of 2 and 3 percentage points (such rises are already being implemented) would further depress the “already stalling economic recovery” in emerging economies.

UNCTAD Secretary General Rebeca Grynspan (CC Attrib 1.0) [Photo / CC BY 1.0]

Speaking on the report, UNCTAD secretary-general Rebeca Grynspan said: “There’s still time to step back from the edge of recession.” But the current course of action was hurting the most vulnerable, especially in developing countries and “risks tipping the world into a global recession.”

The rate hikes, spearheaded by the Fed and carried out by central banks around the world, have been initiated in the name of fighting inflation. But they will do nothing to bring down prices which are the result of supply-side constrictions, speculation and profit-gouging by major corporations, details of which are contained in the report.

In an interview on the report, Richard Kozul-Wright, head of the UNCTAD team which prepared it, said: “Do you try to solve a supply-side problem with a demand-side solution? We think that’s a very dangerous approach.”

This is a misplaced analysis. The aim of central bank policy is not the reduction of inflation per se.

It is directed to inducing a major slowdown, a recession, if necessary, to suppress workers’ wage demands as they seek to claw back the cuts in living standards they have already suffered—and the further cuts to come—arising from the largest price increases in four decades.

In other words, the policies being directed by the Fed are not the product of a misdiagnosis of the economic situation. Rather, they flow from a consciously worked-out class-war agenda resulting from the policies implemented by governments and central banks, at least since the global financial crisis of 2008.

The report gave short shrift to the claim that the price surge is simply the product of the war in Ukraine, noting that while this has “added to economic anxieties” the “most critical problems faced by the global economy predate the war.”

The evidence suggested the inflation surge did not come from the loosening of fiscal policy or wages pressure “but instead derives largely from cost increases, particularly for energy, and sluggish supply response due to a prolong history of weak investment growth.”

This is a direct result of the quantitative easing policies of the Fed and other central banks after the 2008 crisis, accelerated after the March 2020 meltdown of financial markets, which meant speculation and financial parasitism was on steroids due the provision of trillions of dollars of ultra-cheap money.

In what it called a “high profit environment, financial engineering became an instrument of rent-seeking behaviour, particularly among larger international corporations. Thanks to their market power they have often generated income from the manufacture of scarcity rather than the production of goods or delivery of services.”

This has been combined with profit gouging. By mid-2022, the ratio of corporate profits to US GDP was 7 percent as opposed to 6.25 percent before the pandemic. With US GDP somewhere north of $20 trillion, this means that at least an additional $350 billion is flowing into the coffers of the corporations.

According to the report, between 2020 and 2022 “an estimated 54 percent of the average price increase in the United States non-financial sector was attributable to higher profit margins, compared to only 11 percent in the previous 40 years.”

Another key factor in pushing up prices, particularly energy and food, has been the increase in speculation, financed by low interest rates. “The quantitative easing of 2020 and 2021 led to more speculation and inflation in asset markets, from crypto currencies to oil, food and minerals.”

Because of their volatile nature, hedging has long been part of the commercial operation of commodity markets. But this has been completely overshadowed by speculation which is “one important factor in driving up energy, food and commodity prices.”

Before 2002, non-commercial speculators comprised 20 percent of US oil futures markets. By 2009 this had risen to 50 percent with more recent estimates putting it as between 70 and 80 percent.

The report noted that since the financial crisis of 2008 financial entanglements have become increasingly global, with the result that “complex shocks, including outbreaks of financial panic or extreme price volatility, or a combination of external triggers, are a present danger.”

It was prepared before the UK financial crisis, but there is no question that had it not been staved off, at least temporarily through the £65 billion pound intervention by the Bank of England into the bond market, it would have ripped through the global financial system, confirming this analysis.

“Monetary tightening,” it continued, “poses additional risk to the real economy and the financial sector: given the high leverage of non-financial businesses, rising borrowing costs could cause a steep increase in non-performing loans and trigger a cascade of bankruptcies.”

If regulations were considered politically unacceptable [that is, by the financial markets] and monetary authorities proved unable to stabilise inflation quickly, government authorities “might resort to additional fiscal tightening” which would “only help precipitate a sharper global recession.”

The financial situation has been made more unstable by what UNCTAD calls the “universe of non-bank financial institutions and credit providers,” known as the shadow banking system, largely unregulated, which, despite some efforts to contain it has “expanded in size, geography and diversity.”

The share of global financial assets held at shadow banking institutions has risen from 42 percent in 2008 to close to 50 percent at the end of 2019. In the US, shadow banking organisations originate more than two-third of mortgages and the share of loans to businesses is almost equal to that held by banks. In 2021, shadow banks controlled $226.6 trillion of assets out of a total of $468.7 trillion.

The report correctly noted that: “The world is facing a systemic crisis and only systemic action can solve it.”

But the limited reforms UNCTAD proposes, based on greater regulation and control, fall far short of that. Furthermore, recent history shows, and as set out in the report itself, even these measures will not be undertaken.

Reviewing that history, the report stated: “In the decade following the GFC [global financial crisis], an opportunity was missed to put the world on a more sustainable and inclusive growth path.” But once the panic was over, it continued, central banks pumped in more money, non-bank financial institutions greatly expanded their portfolios, governments cut their spending, wages stagnated, and wealth and income inequality grew.

The “missed opportunity” was not due to lack of knowledge. Reports, for example by the US Senate in 2011, pointed to the enormous dangers in the operations of the financial system and its often-outright criminality.

Nor was there a political problem in the electorate. Following the GFC, which devastated the lives of millions of people in the US and around the world, there would have been massive public support for taking the entire financial system into public ownership. But even where blatant criminal activity was revealed, no charges were laid. The banks were declared too big to fail and the criminals too powerful to jail.

Coronavirus deaths in Germany reach 150,000

Tamino Dreisam

Last weekend, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) officially reported the 150,000th coronavirus death in Germany. This shocking milestone is the result of the profits-before-lives policy that all federal and state governments, and governments throughout the world, have pursued since the beginning of the pandemic.

This catastrophic loss of life is unprecedented in peacetime. In two and a half years, as many people have died as there are residents of a medium-sized city. Life expectancy for girls fell by 0.4 years and for boys by as much as 0.6 years compared to 2019.

Refrigerated container for coronavirus dead at the main cemetery in Hanau, Germany, in December 2020 (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Behind the figure of 150,000 dead are millions of people who have lost friends, relatives, children, or parents. Millions more are suffering from the long-term effects of infection with the virus.

The actual extent of the deaths is much higher than the official figures indicate. A WHO study examining excess mortality because of the pandemic came to the conclusion that 195,000 people had already died in 2020 and 2021 in Germany--that is 42 percent more than the officially recorded deaths in the same period. Extrapolated from the 150,000 deaths now officially reached, that would be 213,000 actual deaths.

One would think that these shocking numbers should give cause to remember the dead and to seriously discuss the political decisions that led to this disaster. However, this is not even remotely the case. On the contrary, the establishment politicians react mainly with silence. Dying from the virus is to be accepted as something natural and inevitable.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democrats, SPD) made no official statement marking the tragedy. And German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) merely penned a tweet, “Now there are 150,000 corona dead. Too many, but without the solidarity and common sense of the population, there would be many more. Keeping the death toll low must remain one of our goals.”

This is as cynical as it is mendacious. The figure of 150,000 is anything but “low”; it is roughly equivalent to the population of Regensburg. And in fact, it was never the goal of the federal government—neither the previous grand coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and SPD, nor of the current “traffic light” coalition of the SPD, Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens—to “keep the death toll low.” From the beginning, it placed protecting profits above saving lives. The 150,000 deaths are the direct result of this policy.

Shortly after the pandemic began in March 2020, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) declared she and her government assumed that 60 to 70 percent of the population would become infected with the virus. It was only because of protests and wildcat strikes by the working class, which spread through Italy and other southern European countries to the US and North America within a few days, that the government was forced to impose a limited lockdown.

The ruling class used this lockdown to transfer billions into the bank accounts of the large corporations and the rich in the form of so-called “rescue packages.” All parties in the Bundestag (federal parliament), from the Left Party to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), worked closely together on this. When Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) declared at the end of April 2020 that the right to life was not “absolutely” protected by the constitution, all parties took this as a signal to lift the limited lockdowns and other protections.

The following winter of 2020/2021 was to be the deadliest winter of the pandemic so far, with nearly 900 people dying daily at its peak. At the same time, stock prices skyrocketed, and a fabulous orgy of enrichment took place at the top. According to the US business magazine Forbes, the number of German billionaires rose by 29 to 136 in the first year of the pandemic alone. Since then, this class policy has been steadily intensified.

When the traffic light coalition took over the government after the September 2021 federal election, it took the policy of allowing the virus to run wild to the extreme, in order to protect capitalist profit interests. On November 25, even before the traffic light government was officially in office, coalition officials ended the designation of an “epidemic emergency,” taking away the legal basis for lockdowns, school and business closures, and other life-saving measures.

As a result of the traffic light coalition’s criminal policies, Omicron emerged as the dominant variant in Germany, like the rest of the world, and infection rates soared to record levels. At the peak of the wave, hundreds of thousands were infected daily. The government responded by completely dropping the pretense it was trying to contain the pandemic.

In January 2022, the government shortened the quarantine period to seven days. In March, it passed a so-called “Protection Against Infection Act” that reduced the coronavirus measures to “basic protection.” In April, it rejected a policy of mandatory vaccination. In May, it shortened the quarantine period to five days, and in June, eliminated free testing.

Under the new Infection Protection Act that took effect October 1, the traffic light government is also eliminating the last protective measures, laying the groundwork for more mass fatalities this autumn and winter. Already, more than 500 people are dying from the virus each week, and new immune-resistant subvariants such as the Omicron BA 2.75.2 are spreading.

At the same time, the government is subordinating all areas of society to its war policy. While it is pouring 100 billion euros into the military via a “special fund for the Bundeswehr” (Armed Forces) and tens of billions more into arms deliveries for Ukraine, the health budget is being cut by dozens of billions of euros.

Lauterbach himself summed up the priority of the ruling class when he tweeted on Saturday: “We are at war with Putin, and not his psychotherapists. We must continue to consistently pursue victory in the form of the liberation of Ukraine.” That is unequivocal. After more than 150,000 deaths in the pandemic, the ruling class is ready to sacrifice even greater masses of people in the war against Russia.