Ahead of winter surge, CDC covers up COVID-19 variant data

Benjamin Mateus

On Friday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its variant monitoring graphs to show that the highly contagious and immune-evasive descendants of the Omicron BA.5 subvariant, known as BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, now account for a combined 11.4 percent of all sequenced variants.

However, the “update” came one day after epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding tweeted these same data, which he noted were leaked to him from a “CDC-insider source” which informed him that the CDC had been sitting on this crucial information regarding the state of the variants in the US. After Feigl-Ding’s tweet went viral, garnering over 10,000 likes and over 5,000 retweets within hours, the CDC was forced to release the data publicly.

This is among the most significant cover-ups by the foremost health agency in the US since the start of the pandemic. It is clear that the CDC deliberately concealed this vital information from the public for weeks, as part of the relentless propaganda campaign by the Biden administration and the corporate media to falsely claim that “the pandemic is over.”

It remains unclear what exactly transpired within the CDC to account for their about-face. However, the timing of the CDC release one day after the anonymous leak suggests that the upper ranks within the CDC, including Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, are attempting to control the nature of these revelations and cover up the fact that the status of these new variants had been known.

The screenshot below from the CDC’s variant monitoring graph, dated October 13, 2022, shows no BQ variants listed.

Screenshot of CDC Variant Monitoring Graph taken on October 13, 2022 (Source: Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding)

On October 14, 2022, the updated graph notes the presence of these newer variants as far back as mid-August, with BQ.1 exceeding one percent of all sequenced variants on September 24 and BQ.1.1. reaching that threshold by the week of October 1. By the CDC’s rules, they have to break out these newer strains from all the ones being tracked and list their frequency.

Screenshot of CDC Variant Monitoring Graph taken on October 14, 2022 (Source: Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding)

This is no simple oversight or an issue of incompetency on the part of the CDC, which has decades of experience in surveillance and monitoring. The BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 subvariants are being closely tracked in Europe and are contributing to the current fall-winter surge across the continent, with scientists throughout the world warning of the dangers of these and numerous other Omicron subvariants. The World Health Organization (WHO) has listed BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 as dangerous, closely followed subvariants.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser who was in all likelihood privy to the CDC’s cover-up, appeared on CBS News on Friday to explain that these latest versions of Omicron worry health officials and scientists because they are more effective at evading medications currently being used to manage infections. Specifically, the monoclonal antibody drugs Evusheld and Bebtelovimab do not work on these latest variants, threatening tens of millions of immunocompromised individuals in the US and internationally.

Dr. Fauci said we need to “keep our eye out” for emerging variants despite reportedly low cases and hospitalizations. He added, “When you get variants like that, you look at what their rate of increase is as a relative proportion of the variants, and this has a pretty troublesome doubling time. That’s the reason why people are concerned about BQ.1.1, for the double reason of its doubling time and the fact that it seems to elude important monoclonal antibodies.”

Given the willful omission of the actual state of variants in the US, it brings into stark relief the CDC’s announcement last week that they are shifting from daily to weekly reporting of COVID-19 infections and deaths. Additionally, the CDC is slated to reassume responsibility for reporting COVID-related hospitalizations, which will have immense implications given their duplicitous and anti-scientific behavior.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC has accommodated guidance and response to the diktats of policymakers who receive their orders from the corporations and financial oligarchy. This was true with Robert Redfield under former President Trump as much as it is with Rochelle Walensky under President Biden, who is now overseeing a homicidal “forever COVID” policy.

The suppression of data on the dangerous BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 variants took place in the weeks leading up to the US midterm elections and under conditions in which the bivalent booster campaign drive has been woefully anemic, with experts warning of a harsh winter of COVID-19 and flu waves. Pediatric hospitals across the country are already overwhelmed by the early appearance of RSV and other respiratory and gastrointestinal viruses that are sickening children en masse.

The corporate media has remained dutifully silent on the cover-up of the variant data. Not one outlet has taken the CDC to task to address their discrepancies and obligation to report, and this news report is the first to even acknowledge the fact that the data were leaked by Dr. Feigl-Ding the day before being publicly released by the CDC.

Only principled scientists and health experts using their social media platforms have courageously kept the public abreast of these developments, often with the threat of censorship and backlash from right-wing sources. The World Socialist Web Site encourages scientists, health experts, and rank-and-file workers at the CDC and other public health agencies to contact us and share vital information necessary for the public’s safety. Your anonymity will be protected.

The data emerging about infection rates with the BQ.1.1 variant in particular indicates it is highly transmissible and immune evasive, as it appears to outmaneuver every other subvariant. In the United Kingdom, BQ.1.1 is doubling every week, spreading twice as fast as its relative, BA.2.75.2. Based on epidemiological projections, the next wave of infections driven by these variants is expected to reach peak acceleration by the Thanksgiving holidays, when millions of Americans will be traveling to visit friends and relatives.

In this regard, the current developments with the pandemic in Europe have immediate significance.

Europe has once more assumed the dubious distinction as the epicenter of the post-BA.5 wave of COVID infections, in what experts have termed a “variant soup.” For the first time in the pandemic, it not a question of which Omicron subvariant will become the next dominant strain, but rather how many subvariants will be in circulation at any one time and how this will contribute to predicting the beginning and end of one surge before the next one arrives.

The BQ.1 strain has also reached 10 percent of all sequenced infections in Bavaria, Germany, where COVID-19 cases are accelerating rapidly following the massive Oktoberfest festival. Confronting a mounting health crisis, Germany’s health minister Karl Lauterbach has called for reinstituting mask mandates and “stepping-up measures” to mitigate against the current surge that is overwhelming health centers, with COVID-19 hospitalizations at pandemic highs. On October 11, more than 15,000 people were admitted to German hospitals, while ICU admissions have exceeded the BA.5 peaks, reaching levels last seen during the BA.1 and BA.2 waves last winter.

Further fueling the crisis are high staff shortages that lead to delays in care and treatment. Hospitals will once more have to postpone lifesaving procedures and surgeries to accommodate the infected. The scientific head of the intensive care register of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI) told Redaktions Netzwerk Deutschland, “In some regions of Bavaria, Hesse, and in several cities in NRW, we already have hotspots where there are hardly any free intensive care beds anymore because the staff is often symptomatic [with infection]… We will have to adapt to this in many other parts of Germany in the coming weeks.”

CEO Gerald Gab told a local German media outlet, “We are approaching extremely difficult weeks nationwide and not only in Southern Germany.” He noted a “devastating triad of staff shortages, economic pressure due to inflation and bureaucracy. All this together will lead to hospitals having to postpone services and temporarily deregister departments.”

The new XBB subvariant is also worrisome in Asia, where is has taken hold in Singapore just a few weeks after the end of the BA.5 surge. The meteoric rise in new infections in Singapore is comparable to the rate of infections in Europe, in particular Germany and France, where the projections in new daily cases are expected to exceed the peaks reached with BA.5 in July, less than three months ago, despite high population immunity with prior vaccinations/boosting and previous infections.

Health officials in the city-state have lifted the last remaining mitigation measures as they have started administering the new Moderna bivalent boosters. Approximately 15 percent of the country’s new cases are reinfections. Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said, “If you start to see 50 percent getting it a second time, you’re going to have a wave.” Hospitalization rates have been climbing in line with case rates.

Despite these developments, nearly every country outside China has remained staunchly resistant to addressing the latest wave of COVID-19, refusing to systematically track and trace the growing number of infections. Though there were more than three million official COVID-19 infections documented across the globe last week, as the WHO noted at their press conference, these are considered vast undercounts due to the systematic dismantling of all COVID-19 testing and tracking.

Given these developments, nephrologist and internist Dr. Satoshi Akima of Australia recently tweeted, “From the ranks of rapidly emergent novel variants will emerge a catastrophic new wave of mass death on a large scale. It’s not a matter of if but when. Act now to save lives. Else start writing more ‘we could never have predicted this,’ speeches today.”

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO technical lead for COVID-19, recently stated that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is still transmitting at an “intense rate”, noting that more than 300 Omicron subvariants are now being tracked. However, with sequencing data on new strains down by more than 90 percent in recent months, she compared it to chasing shadows. It would be more appropriate to describe it as a collage of dangerous shadows evolving simultaneously that have evolved to become ever more infective and developing more immune escape capabilities.   

SARS-CoV-2 convergent lineages. Source tableau public by Raj Rajnarayanan.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) estimates that current projections of the real number of daily new infections globally are up 14 percent from two weeks ago and approaching 20 million infections per day, with peaks of 45 million daily infections expected by the end of December. The unhindered spread of the virus, the result of deliberate policy decisions made by nearly every capitalist government, are giving the “variant soup” billions of hosts in which the virus will continue to evolve.

In short, the world is entering the next COVID-19 winter storm blindfolded and poised for even greater disaster.

New Zealand local elections highlight growing opposition to Labour government

Tom Peters

New Zealand’s local council elections, held throughout the country from mid-September to October 8, resulted in defeat for mayoral candidates aligned with the Labour Party-Greens government.

Numerous media pundits described the outcome as a shift to the right, but the vast majority of people saw no compelling reason to vote for anyone. Nationwide, turnout was just 36 percent, a record low, down from 42 percent in the 2019 elections.

Auckland's defeated mayoral candidate Efeso Collins alongside Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, October 4, 2022. (Source: Jacinda Ardern Facebook page)

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern sought to downplay the results, telling Radio NZ she does not see the results as a “simple straight reflection” of opposition towards her government. Speaking to TVNZ, she expressed concern about the low turnout, suggesting lamely that postal voting might be a “barrier” to participation, because fewer people are accustomed to using the postal service.

In fact, the defeat of prominent Labour-backed candidates obviously reflects mounting hostility towards the Ardern government, which is presiding over soaring social inequality, record levels of homelessness and a homicidal policy of mass COVID infection. In the absence of any genuinely left-wing alternative, conservative candidates were the main beneficiaries, for now.

At the national level, polls show support for the Labour Party has slumped to around 35 percent, about the same as the opposition National Party. The government, like others throughout the world, seized on the pandemic to hand over tens of billions of dollars to big business and the banks, fueling rampant inflation and social inequality.

Meanwhile, COVID has been allowed to spread everywhere after the government scrapped its previous zero COVID policy in late 2021 and dismantled almost all public health measures. The virus has killed more than 2,000 people.

In the most significant mayoral contest, in Auckland, Efeso Collins lost by about 50,000 votes to National Party-aligned Wayne Brown, who became the front-runner after far-right businessman Leo Molloy and other candidates dropped out of the race. Collins had been endorsed by Ardern and Labour, the Greens and the trade unions. In the capital, Wellington, the Greens’ Tory Whanau was elected mayor, but Labour’s candidate, Paul Eagle, suffered a resounding defeat, finishing in fourth place.

Dunedin’s incumbent mayor Aaron Hawkins, from the Green Party, lost to rival independent councillor, Jules Radich, who received more than twice as many votes. Christchurch, Nelson, Invercargill and Rotorua all elected self-styled conservative mayors.

Rotorua, which normally votes Labour, has been at the centre of a major scandal centred on the government’s failure to address homelessness. The state has crammed thousands of impoverished families into the city’s motels, which have been converted into “emergency housing,” which is typically unsafe and overcrowded.

In Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city with nearly a third of the country’s population, only 31 percent of eligible people voted for the council. In the Manukau ward, an area with 180,000 residents, covering much of working class South Auckland, turnout was even lower at just over 21 percent.

Collins, previously a councillor representing Manukau, was promoted as a champion for this community, with a campaign largely based on highlighting his Samoan and Tokelauan background. A Labour Party statement in February said: “The party sees a Collins mayoralty as historic, and would represent the first Pacific mayor of the city.” Collins told the Spinoff around the same time that former US President Barack Obama “really resonated with me and I guess him being an African American president, a leader of colour, I can relate to that.”

The failure to generate support on the basis of racial identity politics will be viewed with concern by the Ardern government, which boasted after the 2020 election that it had 10 MPs from Pacific Island backgrounds, Labour’s biggest-ever Pacific caucus. Labour has for decades highlighted increasing racial and gender diversity at the top of society as a means of diverting attention from the widening gulf between rich and poor that cuts across all national and ethnic groups.

Oxfam this month ranked New Zealand 136th least equal in terms of wealth distribution, out of 161 countries. Food prices have soared by 8.3 percent in the past year, the biggest increase since 2009, and charities throughout the country have reported an explosion in demand.

While a small number of Maori and Pacific Islanders have been elevated into parliament, council chambers, academia and corporate boardrooms, the vast majority remain among the most impoverished sections of the working class. The Equal Opportunities Commissioner’s Pacific Pay Gap report, released on October 12, found that on average Pacific men are paid 19 percent less than Europeans and Pacific women are paid 25 percent less.

South Auckland, which has the city’s largest concentration of Pacific Islanders, has been one of the areas worst-affected by the pandemic and the social crisis. The local Middlemore Hospital is perhaps the most overcrowded and rundown in the country. The government estimated last year there were more than 7,800 homeless people in South Auckland alone.

Collins’ campaign did not offer anything to meaningfully address this crisis. His main pledge was for free public transport, but he made clear that this would be funded by diverting hundreds of millions of dollars from other areas of spending.

Collins repeatedly emphasised his willingness to work collaboratively with big business and right-wing councillors. He touted his record of working alongside outgoing Labour Party mayor Phil Goff, who responded to the pandemic by slashing more than 600 council jobs and raising rates. In June 2020, Collins declared: “Unfortunately, there’s going to be cuts to our services, possibly cuts to jobs, and a whole range of things.”

Collins was incapable of presenting a convincing alternative to his main rival, incoming mayor Wayne Brown, a property developer and former director on several corporate boards, including energy companies Transpower and Vector and state broadcasters TVNZ and Maori TV. A feature of the various mayoral debates was Collins and Brown declaring their friendship.

Brown foreshadowed deeper cuts to spending and policies to encourage business owners and developers like himself. During one New Zealand Herald-hosted debate, Brown boasted about his record of slashing $100 million in operating costs from Auckland Hospital when he was chairman of the District Health Board in the early 2000s.

The pro-government Daily Blog reacted with rage to Brown’s victory, which editor Martyn Bradbury blamed not on Labour’s right-wing policies but on “the boomer generation [seeking] to hold onto their privilege and power.” In an effort to whip up racism, he also asserted that the “Chinese-Auckland electorate of 200,000” was “quietly instrumental” in the election outcome. Bradbury supports Labour’s military spending and integration of New Zealand into the US war drive against Russia and China.

In fact, to the extent that Brown received any support beyond the richest Auckland residents, he did so by exploiting anger with the Ardern government. During one televised debate, he declared: “I think we’ve got to boot the government out of Auckland. Their job is to send us the money, not tell us how we live in our city.”

Brown, however, won with just over 180,000 votes in a city of 1.65 million people, reflecting widespread opposition to the whole political establishment. As political columnist Bryce Edwards noted, “most elected local politicians… have a legitimacy problem, supported by very few voters.”

US rehearses dropping nuclear bombs in Europe

Andre Damon

On Monday, the NATO military alliance will hold a training exercise, known as Steadfast Noon, in which US B-52 bombers and F-16 fighters will simulate dropping atomic bombs over Europe amid a deepening nuclear standoff with Russia.

The training exercise comes just ten days after US President Joe Biden warned of a nuclear “apocalypse,” saying the risk of nuclear war is the greatest since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

“This is the exercise that practices NATO’s nuclear strike mission with dual-capable aircraft and the B61 tactical nuclear bombs the US deploys in Europe,” wrote Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists.

The aircraft will rehearse dropping B61 “tactical” thermonuclear bombs, each of which is up to 20 times more powerful than the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima in World War II, killing as many as 126,000 civilians.

A B-52 bomber releases a bomb during a training operation.

While nuclear training exercises are usually presented as routine, nonthreatening, and not targeting any specific country, this year NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made clear that the exercise is intended as a threat to Russia.

In a speech that mentioned Russia five times, Stoltenberg announced, “Next week, NATO will hold its long-planned deterrence exercise, Steadfast Noon.” He added, “Russia knows that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

As of 2019, the United States had 150 “tactical” nuclear warheads stationed throughout Europe as part of the NATO nuclear arsenal, including in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.

On Sunday, one day ahead of the scheduled nuclear drill, China told its citizens living in Ukraine to evacuate the country, citing the “grave security situation.”

In June, the NATO alliance published a document pledging to “deliver the full range of forces” needed “for high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitors.”

In announcing the Steadfast Noon exercise, NATO said the training flights include  “14 countries and up to 60 aircraft of various types, including fourth and fifth generation fighter jets, as well as surveillance and tanker aircraft.” It added that “US B-52 long-range bombers” will “fly from Minot Air Base in North Dakota” to take part in the exercise.

The flights will take place “over Belgium, which is hosting the exercise, as well as over the North Sea and the United Kingdom.”

NATO added, “No live weapons are used,” which is a relief because the weapons involved in the drill would irradiate several hundred square miles and disperse fallout in multiple countries.

On October 7, President Joe Biden said the world is at risk of nuclear “Armageddon,” implying that the rapid escalation of the war in Ukraine could lead to nuclear war between the United States and Russia.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Biden said.

Biden added that he did not think “there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

In February, he warned that sending offensive weaponry to Ukraine would trigger “World War III.” Since that time, the US has sent hundreds of armored vehicles, advanced long-range missile systems, and other high-end weapons to Ukraine.

In an article published last week in Politico, former CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote that the US intelligence agencies believe the odds of the war in Ukraine spiraling into a nuclear war are as high as one in four.

“Some intelligence analysts now believe that the probability of the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine has risen from 1-5 percent at the start of the war to 20-25 percent today,” Panetta wrote.

On Friday, the Guardian reported that governments are making plans to prevent “panic” should the war in Ukraine escalate into a nuclear conflict. “West makes plans to avoid panic if Russia uses nuclear bomb in Ukraine” was the headline of its report, which cited an unnamed official as saying that governments are carrying out “prudent planning for a range of possible scenarios.”

The NATO nuclear exercise is set to occur at virtually the same time that Russia carries out its “grom” nuclear exercise. While NATO has been loudly announcing its nuclear bombing exercises, no similar announcement has come from Russia.

That has not, however, prevented NATO officials from vocally denouncing the as yet unannounced Russian exercise as a provocative escalation.

An unnamed US official told Reuters, “Brandishing nuclear weapons to coerce the United States and its allies is irresponsible.”

He added, “We think nuclear saber rattling is reckless and irresponsible. Russia may choose to play that game – but we won't.” The US official said this just days before Washington planned to fly bombers to Europe to practice dropping nuclear bombs.

Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign policy chief, last week threatened to “annihilate” the Russian military if nuclear weapons were used in Ukraine, saying, “Any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer, not a nuclear answer, but such a powerful answer from the military side that the Russian Army will be annihilated.”

On October 7, the same day as Biden’s comment about nuclear Armageddon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, at a meeting of an Australian think tank, called for NATO to carry out preemptive strikes on Russia to prevent the “possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons.”

“What should NATO do? Eliminate the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons,” Zelensky said. “We need preventive strikes, so they know what will happen to them if they use nukes, and not the other way around.”

In this super-heated atmosphere, the US-led nuclear training exercise raises the prospect of a major miscalculation. It is a well-known fact that the annual NATO Able Archer exercise during the Cold War almost led to a full-scale nuclear war in 1983, when the leadership of the Soviet Union became convinced that the United States was actually going to launch a nuclear attack.

The night the world almost ended - BBC REEL

The Washington Post noted that Soviet bomber crews “were ordered to load nuclear bombs on one squadron of aircraft in each regiment, and aircraft were placed at ‘readiness 3,’ meaning a 30-minute alert.”

In February 2021, the Historian's Office of the US State Department declassified a letter by S. Lieutenant General Leonard H. Perroots that made clear Soviet forces had responded to the US buildup by loading nuclear warheads onto their bombers, and that if the United States had responded in kind, it could have triggered a nuclear war.

After being publicly released, the Perroots memo was taken offline by the State Department and a judge ruled that it should be reclassified as secret.

Chinese Communist Party congress convenes amid slowing economy and war threats

The 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opened yesterday in Beijing with a speech from President Xi Jinping. The congress is likely to conclude with the installation of Xi as CCP general secretary for a third term—a break from the two-term norm established after the death of Mao Zedong.

Chinese President Xi Jinping waves as he leaves the opening ceremony of the 20th National Congress of China's ruling Communist Party, Sunday, Oct. 16, 2022. [AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein]

The congress takes places amid a rapidly escalating US-led military build-up and aggressive confrontation with China, as well as an economic slowdown and mounting domestic social tensions. The gathering is being closely watched by the ruling elites in the US and internationally for any signs of internal divisions that can be exploited.

Xi spoke in the most general terms of the party’s need to navigate “abrupt changes” in the international situation and to be ready to weather “high winds and dangerous storms.” He made no direct reference to the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine or indeed to the US, which just imposed potentially crippling bans on the export of advanced computer chips and chip-making equipment to China.

In a pointed indirect reference, however, Xi declared: “China ... resolutely opposes all forms of hegemony and power politics, opposes the Cold War mentality, opposes interfering in other countries’ domestic politics, opposes double standards.” The comments reflect a recognition in the CCP leadership that the US is determined to use all means, including military, to prevent China from challenging American global domination.

Just as the US goaded Russia into invading Ukraine, so Washington is seeking to provoke China into using military force to integrate Taiwan with the Chinese mainland. The Biden administration, following Trump, has increasingly undermined the One China policy under which the US de facto recognised Beijing as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan.

By strengthening US political and military ties with Taipei, Biden is threatening to bring the island, which is strategically and economically vital for China, within Washington’s sphere of influence. The US calculates that a war with Taiwan can be exploited to weaken and destabilise China, as Washington has done with Russia in Ukraine, as part of its broader ambition to dominate the Eurasian landmass.

Xi said China was seeking “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan, but would “not exclude the use of force as a last resort.” In a barely-veiled criticism of the US, he added: “Resolving the Taiwan question is a matter for the Chinese, it is a matter that must be resolved by the Chinese.” While the US media cast the comments as “aggressive,” the remarks were a rather bland restatement of China’s longstanding position in the face of ongoing US threats and provocations over Taiwan.

On domestic issues, Xi defended China’s record on suppressing the COVID-19 pandemic. Beijing is under considerable pressure from the US and other major countries to end its public health restrictions and adopt the murderous “let it rip” policy of other governments. To do so in China would result in millions of deaths and many more cases of debilitating long-COVID.

Xi hailed the success of the “all-out people’s war on the virus,” which had “protected the people’s health and safety to the greatest extent possible.” He gave no indication that the government intends to relax its “zero-COVID” policy that has come under fire in social media commentary reflecting the frustrations of sections of business and middle-class layers hostile to the restrictions.

Last week, in a rare public protest, two large banners were hung from a bridge in Beijing opposing the zero-COVID policy and calling for the removal of “dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping.” One of the banners declared: “Say no to Covid test, yes to food. No to lockdown, yes to freedom.”

However, China’s COVID policy, based on widespread testing and contact-tracing, vaccination, targeted lockdowns and the isolation of those infected, has been widely supported in China despite inconveniences and bureaucratic excesses. It has demonstrated that the virus could be eliminated if such measures were implemented internationally.

Significantly, Xi made no criticism of the criminal character of the herd immunity policy implemented by governments in the US and elsewhere. As it manoeuvres on the international stage, the CCP has no intention of campaigning for an international strategy of elimination. Rather, even as the US imperialism intensifies its aggressive confrontation, Beijing is still seeking an accommodation with Washington.

After presiding over four decades of capitalist restoration, the CCP continues to attempt to dress up its pro-market program under the fraudulent banner of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” It does so to claim the heritage of the 1949 Chinese revolution, which is still broadly viewed as a huge progressive step forward for working people. Having abandoned socialism in all but name, the CCP has rested on the claim to be looking after the people’s welfare and cannot afford to be seen to be allowing millions to perish from COVID-19.

Sustained high economic growth over decades has lifted most Chinese out of absolute poverty but has also opened up a huge social divide between rich and poor. China’s growth has now plunged amid a mounting international crisis of capitalism compounded by the COVID pandemic and the US-NATO war against Russia. The Chinese economy also has been hit by US trade tariffs and economic sanctions, imposed under Trump and maintained and widened under Biden.

The latest World Bank forecast for China’s growth in 2022 is just 2.8 percent—the lowest in decades and well below the 8 percent level that the CCP regards as essential for low unemployment and social stability. In July, the official unemployment rate, which only covers urban areas, was 5.4 percent, but the youth jobless rate hit a record of 19.9 percent. The mounting economic problems and social crisis are leading to growing social tensions that will inevitably erupt in the not-too-distant future.

Behind the façade of party unity, the social tensions also will be expressed in factional in-fighting within the CCP. The elevation of Xi as the indispensable “core” of the party and government and the endless promotion of “Xi Jinping thought” enshrined in the party constitution at the last congress is a sign of weakness, not strength. The regime is relying on a political strongman in a bid to hold the party together in the face of mounting threats, both of war abroad and economic and social crisis at home.

For his part, Xi has sought to consolidate his position through a sweeping anti-corruption campaign that has investigated millions of officials and removed or sidelined key rivals and threats. Over the past decade, Xi has strengthened his grip on government through the appointment of powerful leading small groups to oversee all areas of government policy. He is also chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission. As a result, few surprises are likely. After the CCP’s week-long congress, held largely behind closed doors, Xi is likely to be re-elected as party general secretary and will retain the post of Chinese president at the National People’s Congress next March.

Australian teacher staffing shortage exacerbates schools’ crisis

Patrick O’Connor

Numerous reports have recently detailed the impact of Australia’s national shortage of school teachers. Thousands of positions remain unfilled across the school system, creating enormous workload pressures within the schools and exacerbating the crisis of the public education system.

Striking NSW teachers marching towards parliament on June 30, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

A detailed survey of the teaching workforce was issued by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) on September 20. Its Australian Teacher Workforce Data project involved the regular surveying of tens of thousands of teachers—the latest edition polled nearly 32,000 school workers, which AITSL characterised as “by far the largest ever sample of teachers for research purposes.”

The survey showed a growing divergence between rapid growth in the student population and slowing enrolment and graduation from teaching degrees.

The existing workforce is ageing, with AITSL reporting that more than one-third of all registered teachers, 38 percent, are older than 50 years. The report underscored one of the main reasons for younger teachers quitting the profession, crushing workloads and expectations of delivering unpaid overtime every day. AITSL’s survey found that full time teachers typically worked 55 hours a week, 45 percent more hours than they are paid for.

The situation in the schools is undoubtedly even worse than indicated in the Australian Teacher Workforce Data, given that the published survey results date from 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in that year has since wreaked havoc in Australian schools, especially in late 2021 and this year. State and federal governments, both Labor and Liberal, have worked closely with the teacher unions to keep schools open amid record rates of infection, with even minimal precautions such as mandatory mask wearing jettisoned.

Numerous, though as yet not properly quantified, reports have emerged of teachers quitting the profession over fears of being repeatedly infected with the dangerous virus.

Federal government projections anticipate a shortfall of around 4,000 secondary teachers by 2025. This is likely to be a gross underestimate. In each state in Australia, there are already hundreds and sometimes thousands of advertised teaching positions that are being unfilled.

In Victoria, an Australian Education Union survey of public school principals was released last August. It found that every secondary school principal has had to readvertise teaching vacancies due to no appointments being made when positions were first listed. Across both secondary and primary schools, more than 80 percent of principals reported that it had become “much harder '' to fill staffing vacancies in the last twelve months. Finally, the survey reported that the top two reasons teachers gave for leaving the profession were stress/burnout and workload.

A research report conducted by several academics at Monash University and published in the Australian Journal of Education last August found that of nearly 2,500 surveyed teachers, 59 percent planned on quitting the profession. The survey was conducted on the eve of the pandemic, so, again, the real situation is likely even worse than reported.

The majority of those surveyed reported the impact of excess workload, especially non-teaching requirements including administrative duties and data entry demands. This impact includes mental and physical health problems. 

One teacher explained: “I am an extremely hardworking person, but excessive workload, constant emotional and mental fatigue plus a young family at home have all brought me crashing down this year. Even today I am on sick leave because I just can’t be f***ed. I can’t get out of bed and put on my teacher face and be responsible for 200 students every day. […] We are being knocked down one brick at a time and it’s taking its toll on me.”

A steady influx of young graduate teachers has long propped up the Australian school system. Their passion for teaching and for the wellbeing of children is cynically exploited, with schools happy to employ graduates, typically on insecure 12 month contracts, with the expectation that they will run themselves into the ground for a few years before burning out and then getting replaced by a new young person desperate for their first position. The staffing crisis is partly due to that influx of graduates drying up.

Recent federal government statistics have outlined that annual completions in initial teacher education declined by nearly 20 percent percent between 2017 and 2020. Whereas 17 percent of students across undergraduate courses drop out before graduating, an extraordinary 50 percent of students in teaching degrees do so. This is because courses involve trainee rounds—after young would-be teachers see what conditions are actually like in the schools, half of them quit.

The impact of the staffing crisis falls most heavily on working class communities. Within the Australian school system, among the most privatised and unequal in the world, wealthy private schools can draw on their enormous cash reserves, bolstered every year by vast injections of federal government public funding, to pay higher salaries as required to attract staff.

Public schools in outer working class and rural and regional areas find it most difficult to attract and retain teachers. The impact of family poverty and financial distress generated by the profit system is expressed within classrooms through childhood trauma, undiagnosed disability, and related behavioural issues that make teachers’ work even more challenging and stressful.

One teacher at a working-class primary school in Melbourne’s northern suburbs told the World Socialist Web Site: “We have had numerous teaching positions go unfilled this year. Some didn’t get even a single applicant, which was unheard of until recently. Because of the shortage, there is now one less Year 4 classroom than was initially planned, with those children spread across other classrooms, increasing class sizes. 

“Also, the school frequently can’t hire enough relief teachers, so when teachers are ill or absent their students are split across other classrooms. I frequently have up to six additional students placed in my room when this happens; some days feel like a circus. This adds to my workload and stress levels. I have needed to call in sick because I just can’t make it through the week. This is a tough choice as I know it impacts my colleagues who are feeling the same.”

The political establishment and the education trade unions are responsible for the staffing crisis. The situation within the schools has not emerged accidentally—this is a consciously engineered crisis. What has emerged are the entirely predictable consequences of bipartisan Labor and Liberal party policy, of underfunding public schools while pouring billions of public funds into the private system, continually increasing teachers’ responsibilities and workloads while failing to provide the necessary support services, and tying every level of education to standardised test scores including the regressive NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) tests.

At the same time as all this, the teacher unions have collaborated with state governments in undermining teachers’ salaries. Most recently in Victoria earlier this year, the Australian Education Union bureaucracy rammed through a three-year industrial agreement that increased nominal base wages by less than 2 percent a year, far lower than the inflation rate.

The ruling class is now proceeding in line with the old political adage of never letting a good crisis go to waste. Under the guise of addressing teacher shortages, new measures are being prepared to undermine the public education system and tailor it ever more directly to the needs of the corporations.

State and federal education ministers met last August for a “round table” discussion on the staffing crisis. Amid warm bipartisan agreement between the Labor and Liberal politicians, they resolved to issue a National Teacher Workforce Action Plan by December. Already flagged measures include watering down initial teacher training and education requirements and allowing university students to work as “interns”, measures serving to undermine the teaching profession. The New South Wales state government has also announced plans to introduce a new “performance pay” regime, potentially tying teachers’ salaries to standardised test results.

Dominican Republic militarizes border with Haiti, cracks down on migrants

Dominic Gustavo

Dominican President Luis Abinader announced the deployment of troops to the Haitian border on October 9 to stop the flow of refugees fleeing poverty and violence in crisis-stricken Haiti.

Speaking at a press conference in Dajabón, on the northwest frontier with Haiti, Abinader echoed his Haitian counterparts in calling for a foreign military intervention to quell the popular uprising against the US-installed regime of Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

Dominican President Luis Abinader with troops being deployed on Haitian border (Credit: Mide.gov.do)

Abinader, speaking for the venal ruling elite of the Dominican Republic—itself a deeply unequal and poverty-stricken nation—no doubt views the mass movement of the Haitian working class with extreme nervousness. He praised the Haitian government’s plea for foreign troops as “wise, reasonable and patriotic.”

He went on to declare that, in the event of an intervention, his government would seal the border and accept no refugees: “We understand that this international force will have the methods to prevent a massive migration of Haitian citizens to our country, because we, in that case, would block the border. … It’s very dangerous for the integrity of the Dominican Republic to receive asylum seekers in the country.” Abinader promised even harsher controls on migrations, while boasting that “the Migration Directorate has deported the largest number of Haitian people that has been documented in recent years.”

The president added that the government would purchase six helicopters, 10 aircraft, 21 armored vehicles and four anti-riot trucks, the nation’s biggest military procurement since 1961. Troops and tanks were deployed in Dajabón, with Abinader announcing the construction of 400 residences as well as pay raises for the soldiers.

The wealthiest public official in the Dominican Republic—with an official net worth of some $70 million—Abinader was elected in 2020 on a platform of “law and order” and cracking down on migration from Haiti. During the election, he cultivated close ties with the likes of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and then-Secretary of State and former CIA director Mike Pompeo, signaling his desire to faithfully serve the interests of US imperialism. In 2021, he was named in the Pandora Papers leak, which revealed the hidden wealth that he and other world leaders had stashed away in tax havens.

In February 2021, aiming to cultivate support among far-right chauvinist elements, Abinader announced plans for a Trump-inspired border wall to cover nearly half of the 244-mile (392 km) border with Haiti. Construction began last February. No expenses will be spared in equipping the wall with advanced facial recognition cameras, thermal and motion sensors, and military-grade drones to patrol its length.

Emboldened by the tacit support of the government, outright fascist organizations such as the Antigua Orden Dominicana (AOD) have carried out violent provocations against the Haitian immigrant community and their defenders in the Dominican working class. On October 12, an “Anti-Colonial Day” demonstration in Columbus Park in Santo Domingo was violently dispersed by a mob of fascists chanting anti-Haitian slogans, while police looked on from the sidelines.

Fourteen social and human rights organizations petitioned the Office of the Attorney General of the Dominican Republic for “firm action” to end “the impunity that covers” racist hate crimes and human rights abuses committed against the Haitian migrant community.

The letter reads, “We have seen the proliferation of racist speeches and criminal actions against the Haitian immigrant community in the country continue in the face of the authorities’ passive gaze, when it is not under their direct incitement.”

The letter recounts one of these crimes, carried out in Rancho Manuel, in Puerto Plata province. Earlier this month, the local Haitian community was subjected to a brutal lynch mob assault after a rancher and two of his employees were found murdered. Videos posted on social media show the migrants’ makeshift dwellings being ransacked and torched, while the perpetrators shouted racist and xenophobic curses.

A 2017 census recorded some 500,000 Haitians living in the Dominican Republic, though the true number may be twice that. Haitian immigrants make up the majority of the workforce in agriculture and in the burgeoning construction industry.

With no legal protections, they are subject to the most brutal exploitation. On the sugar cane plantations, the laborers are subject to slave-like conditions, including 12-hour days, arbitrary wages and in some cases even physical abuse. Forbidden from striking or organizing, they are at the mercy of their employers, who can dismiss them at will and even call the authorities to round them up, sometimes before wages are paid.

The Dominican constitution had guaranteed birthright citizenship until 2010, when an amendment was made that denied citizenship to the children of undocumented migrants. In 2013, the Constitutional Tribunal, stacked with right-wing nationalists, handed down a draconian ruling that retroactively denied citizenship to anyone born to non-Dominican parents since 1929.

Hundreds of thousands were rendered stateless overnight and subject to deportation. Many of them were children of Haitian parents, who were born in the Dominican Republic, speak Spanish and have never set foot in Haiti. Tens of thousands were deported over the following years, while others “self-deported” to Haiti out of fear. Many settled in makeshift camps on the border, living in abject squalor amid disease and starvation.

As the flow of refugees has increased due to growing deprivation and political instability in Haiti, the Dominican government has stepped up its attacks on migrants, deporting more people in the first half of 2022 than in all of 2021.

In cultivating anti-Haitian chauvinism and xenophobia, Abinader and the rotten comprador bourgeoisie that he represents are following a well-worn path. Historically, the Dominican elite—while profiting enormously from the cheap labor of Haitian workers—have stirred up the most backward and disoriented elements of the population by scapegoating Haitian migrants for depressed wages and unemployment.

The 1937 Parsley Massacre, also known as El Corte (The Cutting), provides the most notorious example. The US-backed dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo was then faced with an economic crisis and growing social opposition, triggered by a precipitous fall in the price of sugar, the country’s primary export.

Haitian laborers living in the borderlands provided a convenient scapegoat, and in October of that year, seizing upon a few murky allegations of crimes, Trujillo ordered the extermination of Haitians living on the Dominican side of the border.

Some 20,000-30,000 Haitians and dark-skinned Dominicans were slain, many of them butchered with machetes in order to make it appear a spontaneous action by the campesinos. Cynically, Haitians working on American-owned plantations were left untouched.

No Dominican official was ever charged or prosecuted, and the crime was never officially acknowledged until after Trujillo’s assassination in 1961. In December 1962, the first free-elections in 30 years saw the accession of nationalist reformer Juan Bosch to the presidency. His limited reforms provoked the ire of the possessing classes and their imperialist sponsors, and nine months later he was overthrown in a coup and replaced with a military junta.

In April 1965, workers rose up against the military dictatorship. Arms in hand, they took over Santo Domingo and beat back the efforts of the junta to dislodge them. US President Lyndon Johnson ordered the invasion and occupation of the country to “restore order.” Four thousand died in pitched street battles fought in the slums of Santo Domingo, with poorly armed workers giving battle to US Marines and junta troops equipped with tanks and heavy artillery.

After the carnage, “free” elections were held and Joaquin Balaguer, a former henchman of Trujillo, was installed as president. He would rule for the next 12 years through a combination of fraud and police terror, facilitating the exploitation of the nation’s natural resources and cheap labor by American capital.

With this bloody history in mind, Abinader’s call for a military intervention in Haiti has sinister implications. The Dominican bourgeoisie would also not hesitate to call upon their imperialist sponsors for military assistance in the event their “own” working class threatened their grip on power.

Indigenous women account for almost half of Canada’s female federal inmate population

E.P. Milligan

Recently released figures from the Office of the Correctional Investigator show that indigenous women comprise almost 50 percent of Canada’s female inmate population in federally run prisons. Indigenous men are also grossly overrepresented among Canada’s prison inmates, albeit not to the same degree. Overall, indigenous people account for 37 percent of the federal prison population despite comprising just 5 percent of the Canadian population.

The report notes that the indigenous inmate population has risen by some 18 percent over the past decade, even as the number of non-indigenous inmates dropped by 28 percent during the same period as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rates of indigenous incarceration are even higher than the average in Ontario and Canada’s western provinces. In the period from 2011 to 2012, for example, indigenous inmates comprised 78 percent of the total prison population in Saskatchewan, while the indigenous population comprises only 12 percent of the province’s inhabitants.

Female prisoner being held in segregation cell. (Annual Report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator 2016-2017)

These tragic figures underscore the savage mistreatment of indigenous peoples by the Canadian capitalist state for over a century and a half, beginning with the forcible dispossession of the native people and the destruction of their communal forms of property. Historically, Canada’s ruling class ruthlessly cleared the native populations from their land to make way for capitalist economic development and suppressed native culture in an effort to transform them into a docile workforce. The most notorious method employed was the state-created, church-run residential school system, which forcibly separated indigenous children from their families for long periods of time and sought to erase their cultural and linguistic heritage. The inhumane conditions within the residential schools led to the deaths of as many as 6,000 indigenous children, while tens of thousands of others were physically and sexually brutalized. The last of such institutions closed as recently as the late 1990s.

The intolerable social conditions which Canadian capitalism has meted out to the indigenous peoples have created generations of mentally distressed individuals living in extreme poverty. Figures from a Statistics Canada study based on 2016 data found that as many as 44 percent of residents on native reserves live in low-income households, standing in stark comparison to the 14 percent of Canada’s total population living in poverty. The reserves themselves often lack basic social infrastructure, including things as fundamental as access to clean drinking water. Today, 32 long-term boil water advisories remain in effect across Canada’s indigenous reserves, including the Neskatanga First Nation in Ontario, which has been without clean water for over 25 years.

The deepening of Canada’s social crisis has pushed more vulnerable sections of society into the desperate conditions that increase incarceration rates. Many indigenous women relocate to cities to escape the poverty rampant on the reserves, leaving their families and communities behind. Once in an urban environment, they often face problems in securing housing and employment, which are exacerbated by the lack of social supports and isolation from their culture and family. The rampant opioid epidemic, expressed above all in the deadly wave of fentanyl overdoses, has also devastated many urban indigenous communities. Both on- and off-reserve, the lives of many indigenous people, have been scarred by the residential school system—either having lived through the traumatic experience themselves, or having been raised by parents and family members who did. These conditions of social deprivation also make indigenous people even more likely targets for discriminatory practices by law enforcement and the Canadian judicial system.

A 2004 Correctional Service Canada (CSC) Research Branch report titled “A Needs Assessment of Federal Aboriginal Women Offenders,” assessing indigenous women during incarceration and post-release, found that over two-thirds (69 percent) were rated at a “high needs” level for programming, whereas 29 percent were rated at moderate and only 2 percent at low-level needs. Noted among the most pressing needs were personal and emotional orientation, substance abuse treatment and securing employment. Figures from 2009-2010 showed abysmally long wait times for gaining access to such rehabilitative programming. For Métis women, indigenous peoples with mixed native and French ancestry inhabiting Canada’s western provinces, the average wait time took 264 days. For a First Nations woman the wait time was 238 days, and no Inuit women were receiving program support at all.

The 2004 CSC report noted that the vast majority of indigenous women have become entangled in Canada’s criminal justice system for “more serious offences.” Between 2009 and 2010, the average sentence length for incarcerated indigenous women was 3.52 years, and the majority (68.08 percent) were serving sentences ranging between two to five years. Indigenous women inmates generally had low levels of education and employment. Many had a previous criminal history, often involving youth convictions that led to their being ensnared in the penal system at an early and especially vulnerable age. In a further reflection of the social misery imposed upon Canada’s indigenous reservations, most women endured some form of childhood dysfunction and difficulties within their family or community.

As among all sections of the working class, the growing social crisis resulting from increased economic insecurity and the evisceration of public and social services has been particularly hard on native young people. On average, incarcerated indigenous women were younger than the average Canadian inmate. As of 2010, roughly 50.9 percent of new admissions were under the age of 30 (as compared to 37.8 percent of non-indigenous incarcerated individuals) and the average age of all female indigenous inmates was 34 years old. By 2016-17, indigenous youth aged 12-17 accounted for 46 percent of youth admissions to correctional services in 10 jurisdictions while comprising on average only 8 percent of the general young population within the same jurisdictions.

The conditions of incarceration for indigenous women are also typically worse than that of their non-indigenous counterparts. They are segregated more frequently and for longer periods of time than non-indigenous women. One woman was reported in 2003 to have been held in segregation for 567 days, for example. In 2006, another report showed an indigenous woman actually spent the majority of her sentence in isolation—for a period of over 1,500 days. Isolation or solitary confinement is known to have serious deleterious effects on psychological well-being, especially for individuals with prior mental health issues. The United Nations considers more than 15 consecutive days of 22 hours or more of confinement “without meaningful human contact' to be torture.

Outdoor segregation yard at a women’s prison. (Annual Report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator 2016-2017)

Reports note that due to a lack of resources, the CSC often responds to mental health issues (including acts of self-harm) by segregating inmates rather than providing them with treatment.

Indigenous prisoners are less likely to be granted either day or full parole. In the period of 2009-10, over 75 percent of all indigenous inmates remained incarcerated until their release date—a number over 10 percent higher than their non-indigenous counterparts. Indigenous individuals also comprise 33.42 percent of total overall detentions past their statutory release date, a number disproportionate to their population size. Overall, only 1.2 percent of indigenous inmates were granted full parole during the 2009-10 period compared with 3.8 percent of non-indigenous ones.

The massive over-representation of indigenous people in Canada’s prisons is yet another example of the fraudulent character of the Trudeau Liberal government and ruling elite’s policy of “nation to nation” “reconciliation” with Canada’s native people. This policy is not aimed at addressing the urgent social and economic needs of the native population, but at advancing the predatory interests of Canadian capitalism. Through the cultivation of a tiny petty-bourgeois native elite and its incorporation into the structures of bourgeois politics, Canadian capitalism seeks to gain a fig-leaf of legitimacy for socially and environmentally destructive resource development projects on historic native lands, and to suppress opposition among the native population and segregate it from the rest of the working class    

“Native reconciliation” is enabling a privileged minority to become business owners, government officials and judges, as exemplified in the person of Governor General Mary Simon, the King’s representative in Canada, while the vast majority of indigenous people live in abject misery akin to social conditions in the lesser developed, historically oppressed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—now approaching the end of his seventh year as prime minister and the most conspicuous proponent of “reconciliation”—proposed a palliative measure to the imprisoning of large numbers of native people in the form of a bill to do away with mandatory minimum sentences. Even were Bill C-5 to be adopted by parliament, it would only repeal “certain” minimum penalties and is difficult to enforce by design. Critics of the bill have made clear that the bill will do nothing to reduce the number of indigenous women housed within federal penitentiaries.