Federal appeals court blocks Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan indefinitely

Chase Lawrence

On Monday, an appeals court ruled that a temporary stay blocking Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which would cancel up to $20,000 in student debt per borrower, will be turned into an injunction, shelving the plan indefinitely. The ruling was made by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in response to a lawsuit by six Republican-led state governments—Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina, which claimed that forgiving the debt would impact them economically.

President Joe Biden with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona [AP Photo/Susan Walsh]

The Republican plaintiffs deliberately filed their suit in the territory covered by the Eighth Circuit so that any appeal of the lower court ruling by either side would go before one of the most right-wing appeals courts in the country. All but one of the 11 active judges on the Eighth Circuit were appointed by Republicans, including four appointed by Donald Trump. The three-judge panel that issued Monday’s ruling was composed of two Trump appointees and one George W. Bush appointee.

Biden announced the student debt forgiveness program in August, issuing an executive order based on a 2003 federal law that allows the secretary of education to modify financial assistance programs for students “in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency.” That law was first cited by the Trump administration to suspend student loan debt payments during the COVID-19 pandemic. The debt suspension is due to end at the beginning of 2023.

Monday’s appeals court ruling followed the striking down of Biden’s student loan plan by a Trump-appointed Texas federal judge last Thursday. Judge Mark Pittman, ruling on a separate suit from the one filed by the Republican-led states, claimed Biden’s executive action creating the program unlawfully encroached on Congress’s power. This is a completely hypocritical statement coming from the same far-right that argues for the authoritarian “unitary executive theory,” which radically attacks the constitutional principle of separation of powers and claims the president has unilateral power to wage war and imprison and even kill alleged terrorists and “illegal enemy combatants,” including US citizens.

Pittman’s ruling halted the acceptance of new applications and processing of pending ones. Some 16 million applications were already approved at the time of the ruling, with 26 million people having already applied.

Monday’s appeals court ruling focused on the impact the Biden plan would have on the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA), a private company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri created by the state in 1981 along the lines of Freddie Mac. It is one of the largest holders and servicers of student loans in the country, providing student loans to 2.7 million recipients.

The ruling said: “It is alleged MOHELA obtains revenue from the accounts it services, and the total revenue MOHELA recovers will decrease if a substantial portion of its accounts are no longer active under the Secretary's plan. This unanticipated financial downturn will prevent or delay Missouri from funding higher education at its public colleges and universities.”

It continues: “Due to MOHELA’s financial obligations to the State treasury, the challenged student loan debt cancellation presents a threatened financial harm to the State of Missouri.”

Nothing is said about the “financial harm” that the $1.7 trillion in student debt imposes on 43 million borrowers (of which Biden’s plan addresses less than a quarter).

President Joe Biden with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona [AP Photo/Susan Walsh]

This very argument was previously dismissed by a district judge, who stated, “Missouri has not met its burden to show that it can rely on harms allegedly suffered by MOHELA. MOHELA, not the State, is legally liable for judgments against it.”

MOHELA itself stated it wasn’t involved in the case, saying on November 2, “MOHELA's executives were not involved with the decision of the Missouri Attorney General's Office to file for the preliminary injunction in federal court on September 29, 2022.”

What the argument essentially boils down to is the protection of the sacred right of loan service companies to maximize profits made off the backs of student debtors. It doesn’t have anything to do with protecting the public, whom the states claim to represent.

The ruling shows that even the most modest social reform is not possible under the capitalist two-party system, which, on the contrary, is moving toward cuts in core programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Biden did not bring his student loan plan before Congress because he knew it would fail, due not only to blanket opposition from the Republicans, but also because a section of the Democratic Party opposed it. During the midterm election campaign, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet declared his opposition, as did Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio, who failed in his race for the Senate against Trump-backed J. D. Vance.

While the political establishment will not permit even a modest reduction in student debt, Biden is asking for another $37.7 billion to fund the imperialist proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. The US had already committed $66 billion in military aid to Ukraine just this year.

The ruling class has endless money for the war, which is threatening to go nuclear, but supposedly no money to moderate the crushing debt burden on student youth. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Biden’s plan would cost $400 billion over 30 years, which works out to $13.3 billion annually, a third of the additional money that Biden is asking for the war, and a sixth of that which has already been committed this year.

Elon Musk issues ultimatum to Twitter employees: Submit to “extremely hardcore” culture, or face termination

Dominic Gustavo

Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition March 9, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, issued an ultimatum to the employees of Twitter Wednesday, demanding that they accept an “extremely hardcore” culture or face termination.

In an email titled “A fork in the road,” Musk decreed that Twitter staffers would now be subject to the most severe work environment in the interests of competition. According to the Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the email, Musk wrote, “This will mean working long hours at high intensity,” adding, “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

Employees were given the option to either respond to the email by Thursday indicating their agreement or be fired with three months severance pay.

The email comes less than a month after Musk finalized his $44 billion private takeover of Twitter, a mass social media platform with nearly 400 million active monthly users.

In a rational society, this service that is utilized by hundreds of millions of human beings for news and information would be publicly owned, but under capitalism it has become the plaything of a single billionaire oligarch, and a fascistic buffoon to boot.

While Musk initially claimed that his purchase was motivated by his desire “to try and help humanity, whom I love,” this nonsense was quickly exposed.

Just a few days after his purchase, Musk immediately fired the firm’s board of directors, declaring himself its sole executive. Aiming to transform Twitter into a profitable enterprise, he stated bluntly that mass layoffs would be necessary, while beginning the rollout of a subscription charge to obtain a “blue check” on the platform.

Musk proceeded to order the termination of over half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, a process that is now being extended to the contract staff. Among those culled were the staff responsible for content moderation as well as the entire human rights department, Musk’s love for humanity notwithstanding.

The mass layoffs at Twitter are part of a wider jobs massacre in the tech industry, a prelude to an all-out assault on the jobs and living conditions of the entire working class.

The “extremely hardcore” Musk is a political criminal. In May 2020, while the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading throughout the globe, Musk defied the lockdown orders issued by local health authorities and reopened his Bay Area Tesla plant in Fremont, California. Following the reopening, over 400 workers were sickened and several died.

Musk railed against lockdowns and other public health measures, referring to them as “fascist,” while saying that the initial worry over the pandemic was “dumb,” predicting that “there will be close to zero new cases.” For this, he earned the support of Trump and the far-right elements around him who were then engaged in a fascist coup plot, aimed at the elimination of all restrictions on the spread of the pandemic.

Musk was also a vocal supporter of the far-right “freedom convoy”—made up of small business owners, far-right activists and other human dust, some of them veterans of the January 6, 2021 insurrection—that occupied the center of Ottawa, Canada, earlier this year, demanding that vaccine mandates and other public health measures be scrapped.

With this history in mind, Musk’s acquisition of Twitter carries an additional sinister element. Trump, who utilized Twitter as a platform in the attempted overthrow of the elected government of the United States, may have his account reinstated. And there can be no doubt that the most backward, anti-science conceptions, including outright denial of the pandemic and climate change, will now be promoted, including by Musk himself.

Musk was one of a whole layer of billionaires who saw their wealth skyrocket to unfathomable heights during the course of the pandemic. During 2020, he added over $100 billion to his fortune; in 2021, another $127 billion, surpassing Jeff Bezos as the richest man.

Between March 2020 and May 2022—when the COVID death toll surpassed one million in the US—727 individuals saw their wealth balloon by a total of $1.71 trillion, fueled by an explosion in stock prices after the multi-trillion-dollar Wall Street bailouts of 2020.

While the working class has been subjected to mass infection and death due to the pandemic, along with soaring inflation and a steady erosion in living conditions, exacerbated now by the US-NATO war against Russia, the members of the financial oligarchy have quite literally never had it so good.

Musk, who has risen to the top of this trash heap, is the cream of the crop. In October 2019, in response to the coup in Bolivia that deposed the democratically elected government of Evo Morales, Musk tweeted, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

In his crude arrogance, Musk epitomizes a ruling elite whose fabulous wealth is only matched by the depths of its intellectual and cultural backwardness, combined with a ruthless determination to defend its wealth and privileges.

US, Japan and South Korea pledge to improve intelligence sharing

Ben McGrath

Leaders from the United States, Japan and South Korea met on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit last Sunday in Cambodia to further develop US war preparations, ultimately aimed at China.  

The trilateral meeting between US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol lasted only about 15 minutes, but a joint statement released afterward said the three had agreed to expand intelligence sharing, while also making thinly-veiled denunciations of Beijing.

The improvement of intelligence sharing between Tokyo and Seoul has long been a goal of the US, seen as critical to its anti-ballistic missile system in the region and other war plans. Falsely couched as a defensive response to the supposed “threat” from North Korea, the three countries on Sunday pledged “to share DPRK (North Korea) missile warning data in real time to improve each country’s ability to detect and assess the threat posed by incoming missiles, a major step for deterrence, peace and stability.”

US President Joe Biden, center, meets with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, left, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, Nov. 13, 2022. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

Mixed in with these claims of protecting “peace and stability” was a threat to destroy North Korea. Biden reiterated “that the US commitment to defend Japan and the ROK (South Korea) is ironclad and backed by the full range of capabilities, including nuclear.” (Emphasis added.)

In the past several months, Washington has goaded North Korea into conducting a series of missile tests by scrapping a de facto agreement between the previous Trump administration and Pyongyang.

Under Trump, the US agreed to scale down joint military exercises with South Korea in exchange for the North’s moratorium on long-range ballistic missile and nuclear tests, which was in place until this year. Pyongyang hoped to receive economic relief in return, but Washington instead continued brutal US-led sanctions that have created an economic crisis.

Washington and Seoul also have agreed to the de facto permanent stationing of nuclear-capable strategic assets in South Korea for the first time since 1991. Nuclear-capable B-52 bombers are being stationed in northern Australia as well.

Washington does not need nuclear weapons to destroy North Korea, an impoverished country of 26 million people. The US has plenty of experience at decimating poor and defenseless countries. The true target of Washington’s nuclear threats and increased intelligence sharing is China.

Washington has major bases in both Japan and South Korea, with approximately 50,000 and 28,500 troops stationed in each country respectively, as well as air bases that could be used to attack China. This places the people of both countries on the front lines of any conflict.

The US anti-ballistic missile system is designed to protect its bases from counterattack in a war instigated against Beijing.

The US missile system includes a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea and a AN/TPY-2 X-band radar. Dispelling notions that THAAD has anything to do with defense, at its current location THAAD does not have the range to cover Seoul, home to ten million people. An additional THAAD battery is located on Guam in the western Pacific.

Two US X-band radars are stationed in Japan, one in the north in Aomori Prefecture and another further south in Kyoto Prefecture, while Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force, the formal name for the navy, operates eight Aegis destroyers, with two more being constructed.

The Aegis system is similarly portrayed as a defensive weapon against incoming ballistic missiles. The US wants to ensure intelligence gathered between these systems is shared as quickly as possible to further its war effort.  

In the past, the Japanese and South Korean militaries have shared real-time intelligence from these Aegis destroyers during military exercises, but the latest agreement would allow this to take place at any time when intelligence is requested. It is also considered a step up from the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), which was signed in 2016, but does not allow real-time intelligence sharing.

The GSOMIA deal was nearly scrapped in November 2019 during the administration of previous South Korean President Moon Jae-in from the Democratic Party of Korea, as a result of trade disputes between Tokyo and Seoul and other issues stemming from Japan’s colonisation of Korea from 1910 to 1945.

Since right-wing President Yoon came to office in South Korea in May, Seoul has made a concerted effort to repair relations with Tokyo. That also included a bilateral meeting with Kishida on Sunday after the joint discussions between the two and Biden. It was the first official meeting between leaders from South Korea and Japan in nearly three years, with the two reportedly agreeing to quickly resolve their bilateral disputes.

Furthermore, Kishida and Yoon voiced support in Sunday’s joint statement for the war drive against China, while calling for “maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.” Kishida in particular has been a prominent anti-China hawk, regularly claiming that “Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow” and promoting the US accusation that Beijing is planning an unprovoked invasion of Taiwan.  

While Sunday’s statement did not specifically name China, it included obvious denunciations of Beijing, saying the three leaders “strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in waters of Indo-Pacific, including through unlawful maritime claims, militarization of reclaimed features, and coercive activities.”

However, it is the US, backed by Tokyo and Seoul, that has deliberately inflamed tensions by increasingly questioning the “One China” policy, which states that there is only one China, including Taiwan. Since 1979, Washington has had no formal diplomatic relations with Taipei, a de facto recognition of Beijing as the legitimate government of all of China.

Under both the Trump and Biden administrations, Washington has carried out numerous provocations toward Beijing, providing Taipei billions of dollars’ worth of arms while US politicians make visits to the island, including that by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August, which triggered a sharp escalation in tensions and pushed the region closer to war. The latest agreement between Washington, Tokyo and Seoul will only inflame this dangerous situation.

Sri Lankan apparel workers hit by major jobs and wages cuts

Wimal Perera

Sri Lankan apparel manufacturers have responded to falling export orders, higher interest rates and energy costs by slashing wages, incentive bonuses and other payments and eliminating tens of thousands of jobs. The reduction in orders is a result of the disastrous impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine on global supply chains and energy costs.

Koggala Free Trade Zone workers protest on 28 April 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

Making clear that these attacks would deepen, past president of the Apparel Exporter Association Felix Fernando told the Sunday Times last month: “Our gut feeling is that in the next four to six months orders will be down by 20–25 per cent.”

This was echoed by Sri Lanka Chamber of Garment Exporters General Secretary Hemantha Perera, who told the Business Times that apparel orders had already dropped by over 50 percent. He said 35 of the 85 companies registered with the association were “in trouble” and almost 10,000 workers could lose their jobs.

Sri Lanka has about 300 apparel manufacturers, employing approximately 350,000 workers with an estimated 700,000 dependents. These companies produce for dozens of international corporations based in the US and Europe, such as Victoria’s Secret, Marks & Spencer, GAP, Tommy Hilfiger, H&M and Zara.

Sri Lankan apparel factory owners have not just slashed jobs and salaries but closed down entire facilities without even paying the government-recommended compensation pittance. The basic monthly income of many workers, who are struggling to deal with hyperinflation, has fallen to around 25,000 rupees ($US69).

These attacks come as the Wickremesinghe government has started imposing International Monetary Fund-dictated austerity measures. This includes driving up the price of essentials, higher taxes on workers, slashing social expenditure and privatising the state-sector.

Trend Setters and Aura Garments closed their Sri Lankan factories early this year, destroying about 6,000 jobs. Smart Shirts, Star Garments, Next Manufacturing, MAS Holdings, Brandix and many other companies have begun cutting wages and jobs.

Esquel closed down its two plants at Koggala Free Trade Zone (KFTZ) in the south, as well as at Ekala on the outskirts of Colombo and one in Kegalle, 85 kilometres from Colombo. The Free Trade Zone and General Workers Union compelled workers to sign a voluntary retirement agreement with only meagre compensation.

About 1,500 jobs were eliminated when Trend Setters shut down its factories at KFTZ and the Samanalawewa Industrial Zone. Aura closed its KFTZ factory in June, rendering 200 jobless. Neither company has paid salary arrears or redundancy compensation.

The Esquel group, once the world’s largest woven-shirt maker with around 35,000 employees internationally, supplies textiles to Chinese companies as well as retailers in the US and Europe. With almost 30 percent of its sales revenue coming from China in 2020, the company has now been hit by US sanctions imposed in 2021. 

Aura Garments started production at the KFTZ in February 2019. It manufactured woven and knitted garments, including shirts, blouses, trousers and lingerie, for GEMO, MK-Michael Korbs, New Look, M&S and VanHeusen in the US and Europe. Trend Setters began manufacturing and exporting clothes for men, women and children in April 2015 at the KFTZ and the Samanalawewa Industrial Zone.

Other major apparel companies in Sri Lanka include MAS with 35,800 workers and Hirdaramani Apparel, which employs a total of 54,400 people globally.

In July, the Daily Financial Times reported increased revenue growth in Sri Lanka’s apparel sector. The industry, it declared “has not only reverted to pre-COVID resilience but bettered it, with the first half [year] figure of $2.8 billion above the $2.62 billion achieved in the first half of 2019.” These results, however, have been achieved through ruthless exploitation.

According to an International Labour Organisation (ILO) report released in October 2020, hundreds of thousands of garment and textile workers’ jobs were destroyed in Asia. In Indonesia, 812,254 or approximately 30 percent of the workforce were gone by July 2020; in Myanmar approximately 22,000 lost their jobs; and in Cambodia over 150,000. Another survey by statists.com, from March 2020 and March 2021, calculated that 712,000 jobs had been eliminated in India, 438,000 in Bangladesh and 100,000 in Sri Lanka. Although a so-called recovery has occurred since these reports were released many companies failed to re-hire all those they had retrenched.

When COVID-19 began impacting Sri Lanka in 2020, the apparel manufacturing industry and other sectors demanded employees keep working, despite their objections to grossly inadequate safety measures. In October 2020, over 1,000 workers tested positive with COVID-19 at Brandix’s Minuwangoda plant in the Western Province.

These criminal policies, which led to thousands of entirely preventable infections and deaths, were ruthlessly encouraged and endorsed by the former government of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and the rest of the ruling elite.

At the same time during the first waves of COVID-19, factory owners moved to increase productivity while cutting workforces to maintain profits. In June 2020, for example, MAS Holdings, reduced its workforce by 4 percent through a voluntary retirement scheme.

The global fashion retailers that buy garments from Sri Lanka and other Asian countries are also cutting jobs in the US and Europe. Victoria’s Secret, which employs 97,000 internationally, has just eliminated 160 management positions, as a part of a $40 million cost reduction program. GAP plans to cut about roughly 500 jobs, having slashed its workforce by 20,000 in 2021, with UK retailer Mark & Spencer planning to cut a similar number of jobs in 2022. 

While apparel workers’ wages in Sri Lanka and other Asian countries are far lower than those employed by the giant garment retailers in the US and Europe, the deepening global crisis is revealing that they all face the common problems of inflation, job and wage cuts and increasing workloads.

Like their counterparts internationally, the Sri Lankan trade unions are tied to the capitalist system and function as an industrial police force ruthlessly implementing government and business demands that the burden of the crisis be imposed on the working class.

CyberGirls Fellowship 2023

Application Deadline:

4th December 2022

What is the Award?

CyberGirls Fellowship is a free 1-year program that equips girls and women aged 18 – 28 years old with globally sought-after cybersecurity skills, positioning them to start a career in cybersecurity and helping them to seize work opportunities within Africa and across the world.

During the one-year duration of this fellowship, you will be given hands-on cybersecurity training, and mentorship, become certification-ready, and possibly get paid internship/job shadowing opportunities.

Which Countries are Eligible?

African countries

Where will Award Take Place?

Online

What Type of Award is This?

Internship

Who is Eligible?

Girls and women aged 18 – 28 years old interested in cyber-security skills.

How are Applicants Selected?

The CyberGirls Fellowship application process is deliberately tailored to consider each applicant as a unique and whole person. This enables us to carefully seek out individuals who are passionate and dedicated to breaking barriers and equipping themselves with the required skills to begin their careers in cybersecurity, improve their local communities and seize work opportunities in Africa and across the world.

What is the Benefit of Award?

During the one-year duration of this fellowship, you will be given hands-on cybersecurity training, and mentorship, become certification-ready, and possibly get paid internship/job shadowing opportunities.

How to Apply:

Apply Now 

Visit Award Webpage for Details

UK and France sign new repressive anti-immigration deal

Robert Stevens

The war against refugees and asylum seekers escalated this week with the revised agreement between the UK and France intended to stop thousands of desperate people crossing the English Channel.

On Monday, after months of negotiations, UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman met with French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin to sign off on an increase in payments from £55 million to £63 million a year to keep refugees out of Britain. It was completed after final talks between UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, and his French counterpart Catherine Colonna. Since London began to pay Paris in 2018 for preventing migrants reaching UK shores, total costs to the UK have reached €200 million.

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman and French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin sign the new anti-immigration deal. [Photo by UK Home Office / CC BY 2.0]

The deal finances a 40 percent increase in the number of officers patrolling French beaches (from 200 to 300) and further use of high-tech equipment such as drones and night-vision cameras. The Home Office said it would fund further investment “in cutting edge surveillance technology, drones, detection dog teams, CCTV and helicopters to help detect and prevent crossings.”

Its statement boasted, “The arrangement means, for the first time, specialist UK officers will also be embedded [in French control rooms] with their French counterparts, which will increase information sharing, improve understanding of the threat, and ensure UK expertise is at the heart of efforts to disrupt crossings and clamp down on people smugglers. This more integrated approach will also include strengthened operational co-operation, including joint UK-France analysis teams supporting the co-ordination and exchange of information by French-command HQ.”

Britain would support, “reception and removal centres in France for migrants whose journeys to the UK are prevented, to further deter crossing attempts.”

The new funding and measures aimed at tearing up the democratic rights of asylum seekers are in place despite the existing repressive apparatus already preventing, as the UK Home Office boasted, “over 30,000 illegal crossing attempts since the start of the year – more than 50% more than at the same stage last year.”

The repression to come is aimed at stopping entirely the remaining tens of thousands who make the hazardous crossings. The numbers reaching Britain are just 40,000 so far this year, compared to the millions of refugees seeking to flee their homelands destroyed in imperialist wars and proxy wars.

To even reach the French shoreline to attempt the crossing, refugees have to undertake an arduous trip, passing through numerous borders. Many who arrive in the UK come from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. But NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine has created millions more refugees.

As with the growing tally of refugee deaths in the Mediterranean/Aegean, many do not survive the attempt to get to Britain. November 24 will mark the first anniversary of the horrific deaths of 27 refugees when their inflatable dinghy capsized in the English Channel. Just two others survived and were rescued, and another is still missing, presumed dead.

Despite the crisis of the British bourgeoise necessitating an unprecedented five prime ministers since 2016 (three in 2022 alone) and six home secretaries, the whipping up of anti-immigrant sentiment is an ever more ferocious constant.

The arrival of a few thousand migrants annually in Britain is often referred to as an “invasion”, giving succour to a xenophobic media demanding harsher crackdowns and creating an environment in which fascists organise attacks on asylum seekers. Last month, a fascist attacked the Western Jet Foil migrant processing centre in Dover with three firebombs before killing himself.

The signing of the latest deal was trailed by French police putting on a brutal display as to what asylum seekers can expect. On Saturday morning, two days before it was finalised, riot police attacked refugees with CS spray at a beach in Gravelines. This was after police slashed and deflated several rubber dinghies that were being prepared for crossing.

On the deal being signed, there were immediate complaints in British and French ruling circles and right-wing media that it was still too lax and would not prevent refugees from getting to the UK.

Darmanin, speaking to the Voix du Nord newspaper, insisted that the UK’s employment laws be further tightened: “[The Britons] need to first of all change their labour market rules as you can work without papers in the UK… They need a normalised relationship with the European Union, a treaty to determine the entry rules for immigrants.”

Last year, Darmanin, a sympathizer of the far-right Action française movement, championed an “anti-separatist” law imposing draconian restrictions on Muslim organizations in France. This month, he announced plans for a major new law next year restricting the right to asylum. While allowing immigrants to stay in France if they work in “tense industries” where there are not enough workers, it would primarily allow for rapid expulsions of asylum seekers and drastically limit their right to appeal expulsion orders.

The Financial Times noted the concerns of “British unions, politicians and migration experts” because “there is no provision in the agreement for the UK to return migrants who reach Britain, or for the processing of those travelling to the French coast in the hope of crossing.”

Tory Dover MP Natalie Elphicke denounced the deal, saying: “What’s needed is a step-change in approach with joint border patrols and a Channel-wide joint security zone. It’s only when migrants and people smugglers alike know that they can’t succeed in crossing the Channel in a small boat that this crisis will come to an end.”

The opposition to the deal from the trade unions was equally right-wing in character, with Kevin Mills, a Public and Commercial Service union representative for Border Force staff in Kent complaining, “This deal is not enough and the lack of detail is telling. If you stop thousands today and let most of them go, how many are just going to try again tomorrow?”

The Labour Party is in agreement with sealing off Britain’s borders to “illegal immigration”, with leader Sir Keir Starmer stating that the deal was a “step in the right direction”. Shadow Immigration Minister Stephen Kinnock, son of former party leader Neil Kinnock, called for the UK to introduce ID cards to “reassure the public we are in control of our borders”.

The British government remains intent on sending refugees who make it across the Channel to Rwanda, 4,000 miles away in Africa. The first attempt was made in June but was halted after legal challenges were made on behalf of the asylum seekers on board a plane ready to take off. The Home Office statement on the deal signed with France included a reference to “our world leading partnership with Rwanda which will see migrants who make these unnecessary journeys relocated there”.

According to the rabidly right-wing Daily Express, the government is looking to seal similar partnerships, including with Paraguay, thousands of miles away in South America.

The brutal treatment of asylum seekers who are detained in appalling conditions as they await the outcome of their case is to be worsened. In the Sunday Telegraph, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick outlined a “Ten-point migration plan to end ‘Hotel Britain’.” He denounced the “unacceptable” cost of asylum seekers being accommodated in hotels totaling £5.6 million a day. This was fueling “asylum-shopping” economic migrants who saw Britain as a “destination of choice”. Jenrick declared, “‘Hotel Britain’ must end, and be replaced with simple, functional accommodation that does not create an additional pull factor.”

The newspaper reported, “Ministers are understood to be looking at larger and less luxurious sites including disused student accommodation, defunct or underperforming holiday parks and, possibly, budget cruise ships, as used by the Scottish Government for Ukrainian refugees.”

Chinese Communist Party begins lifting Zero-COVID policy

Benjamin Mateus & Evan Blake

Over the past week, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has begun a clear shift away from its longstanding “dynamic zero” policy, also known as Zero-COVID, which has successfully prevented the mass transmission of SARS-CoV-2 for over two and a half years.

In the last three weeks, the seven-day average of daily new cases has risen tenfold, jumping from 950 on October 23, at the conclusion of the 20th Congress of the CCP, to nearly 11,000 on November 14, according to the website Our World in Data. Placing this in context, during the spring surge of the Omicron BA.2 subvariant, the seven-day average peaked at 26,469 on April 14, a figure that will likely be reached in the coming days.

[Photo by Our World In Data / CC BY 4.0]

The response by Chinese authorities to the present surge has been entirely contrary to previous efforts to contain infections through mass public health initiatives, most recently deployed in Shanghai to eliminate the Omicron BA.2 subvariant. While a lockdown has been in place in hard-hit Guangzhou since November 5, numerous other cities experiencing growing outbreaks have refused to implement this most effective measure proven to stop viral transmission.

Last Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping led his new Politburo Standing Committee in a meeting on COVID-19. This was followed by the announcement by the Chinese National Health Commission (NHC) of 20 measures which either curtail various aspects of the Zero-COVID policy or indicate preparations for a surge of the virus.

The 20 measures include the shortening of quarantine times for inbound travelers and close contacts of people infected in mainland China, a loosening of travel restrictions to and within China, the ending of tracking and tracing of secondary contacts, and other reductions of mitigations. Also included are measures clearly anticipating a coming surge of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, including accelerating vaccination programs for the elderly, building healthcare infrastructure and stockpiling medicines.

Reuters notes that several Chinese cities have begun ending routine community testing, primarily due to the mounting fiscal burden that the federal government is no longer covering. In many locations, residences must now pay a small fee for testing.

The announcement of the 20 measures took place days before the opening of the G20 summit on Tuesday, at which Xi met with US President Joe Biden. Since 2020, the US has exerted enormous economic and political pressure upon China to lift its Zero-COVID policy in order to facilitate the movement of supply chains and the flow of profits to global finance capital.

Chinese and Hong Kong stock indices surged on the news of easing restrictions. Taylor Loeb, a China analyst at Trivium consulting firm, told The New York Times, “This is no doubt an important rhetorical shift and may lay the groundwork for a move toward sustained gradual easing, but the market—as it does—is acting like ‘Zero-COVID’ is over. That’s just wrong. You don’t unwind a nearly three-year top-level national policy overnight.”

Despite these reassurances, it is clear that in response to a major surge of COVID-19 across the country, the CCP regime has lessened its aggressive approach towards containing the virus. There is no scientific justification for this move, which is based solely on political and economic considerations.

In the coming days and weeks, the situation could quickly spiral out of control, particularly in places with lower vaccination rates. In Shanghai, only 71 percent of elderly people above 60 years old have been vaccinated, portending a monumental crisis in China’s most populous city.

In May, a study published in Nature found that if Omicron were allowed to spread freely in China, in six months’ time the country could expect 112 million symptomatic cases, 5.1 million hospital admissions, 2.7 million ICU admissions and 1.6 million deaths, as well as the catastrophic collapse of its health system. The dynamics of viral transmission are difficult to predict, and given the numerous densely-populated cities throughout China, the real world catastrophe of lifting Zero-COVID could be far worse than the outcome modeled by this study.

The Chinese working class must make every effort to prevent this tragedy from unfolding and maintain the Zero-COVID policy which has saved millions of lives. The past three years have shown the enormous destruction that COVID-19 can wreak upon societies, including economically.

Since the start of the pandemic, the US has recorded nearly 100 million official COVID-19 infections and the cumulative death toll is approaching 1.1 million. An estimated 20 million Americans are now suffering from Long COVID, including up to 4 million so profoundly disabled that they are no longer able to work. Worldwide, an estimated over 20 million people have died directly or indirectly from COVID-19, according to the excess deaths tracker by The Economist.

On the other hand, the Zero-COVID policy in China has limited the toll of the pandemic in the country to 1.12 million infections and 5,226 deaths thus far. The last death occurred on May 26, shortly after the virus was eliminated in Shanghai through stringent lockdowns, mass testing, contact tracing, and other public health measures.

The lastest modifications to China’s Zero-COVID policy come on the heels of the installation of Xi Jinping for a third term as party general secretary amid growing tensions with the US and economic difficulties throughout China.

During his opening speech, Xi made repeated empty platitudes about “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” a nationalistic conception rooted in Stalin’s theory of “socialism in one country” and buoyed by the productive capacity of Chinese capitalism. As much as the CCP aims to ideologically separate itself from the global economy, in the final analysis its economic aspirations are irrevocably intertwined with global capitalism and its underlying contradictions.

Similarly, China’s success in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic is shaped by the international situation. Zero-COVID with Chinese characteristics is ultimately subordinated to the challenges imposed on it by global capitalism. The repeated attacks by imperialist countries on China’s efforts to contain the virus through massive lockdowns and herculean testing and tracing appear to be giving way to accommodating public life to the virus.

Last month’s COVID-19 outbreak at Foxconn’s iPhone assembly plant in Zhengzhou (the world’s largest iPhone factory) appears to have left an indelible impression on Chinese health authorities and played a role in the recent shift in policy.

Over 200,000 workers were placed in lockdown inside the sprawling campus under a “closed loop” management that attempted to ensure the outbreak was contained while production remained undisturbed during peak season, creating horrendous conditions. In late October, workers staged a mass exodus with more than 60,000 workers fleeing on foot as COVID-19 continued to spread on the campus, food and medical supplies neared exhaustion and the lack of systematic cleaning and disinfection in dormitories led workers to sleep on factory floors near the assembly lines.

According to the Financial Times, in 2019, the Foxconn plant shipped $32 billion worth of electronics abroad and was China’s third-largest exporter. Now, the company is attempting to woo back workers in Zhengzhou with monthly $70 bonuses if they sign up for at least nine months, along with a quadrupling of the daily bonus to workers who stayed to around $60 per day. Business insiders are expecting output of iPhones to drop by 30 percent this month.

Prior to the developments of the past week, many of the world’s largest corporations were looking to diversify their supply bases away from China in order to avoid future uncertainties. During the Shanghai lockdown, Starbucks sales plummeted by 40 percent in that quarter. In the second quarter of 2022, Tesla delivered 17.9 percent fewer electric vehicles due to the disruptions. The NYT reported Apple lost $4 billion in sales of iPads and Macs during the second and third quarters.

Although limited by infrastructure and talent, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is courting global technology companies to move their production bases into the country with a large labor force and enormous market size.

Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities, said that the incident in Zhengzhou would accelerate the expansion of iPhone production capacity in India. In a November 4 tweet, he wrote, “As a result, iPhones made by Foxconn in India will grow by at least 150 percent year-on-year in 2023, and the medium/long-term goal is to ship 40-45 percent of iPhones from India versus the current 2-4 percent, meaning Foxconn’s iPhone production capacity in India will increase in the next few years.”

These developments come in the face of the World Bank’s prediction in late September of a sharp decline in China’s GDP growth from 8.1 percent in 2021 to 2.8 percent in 2022. In the first nine months, the fiscal deficit has grown to nearly $1 trillion, three times higher than last year. Meanwhile, public health costs have risen by almost 11 percent in the same time frame.

The World Bank wrote, “Widespread Omicron outbreaks and extreme weather have weakened economic growth. The external environment has also significantly worsened in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with global growth slowing, inflation soaring, and financial conditions tightening.”

NATO to convene under Article 4 after Poland says Russian missiles struck its territory

Andre Damon

Representatives of the NATO military alliance will meet Wednesday on the basis of NATO’s Article 4 following an explosion in Poland near the border with Ukraine that killed two Polish citizens.

Poland’s foreign ministry claimed the explosion was caused by a “Russian-made missile,” noting that Poland had “summoned the ambassador of the Russian Federation.”

Polish officials said the attack took place amid “another massive shelling of the entire territory of Ukraine and its critical infrastructure, conducted by the armed forces of the Russian Federation.”

The site of the explosion in Poland. Photograph: Wolski o Wojnie/Facebook

In response to the explosion, Poland moved to invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which allows NATO members to carry out consultative discussions about whether to invoke NATO Article 5, the alliance’s collective defense agreement, Reuters reported.

Poland reportedly scrambled fighter aircraft and placed its military and police forces on heightened alert. The country’s foreign ministry also said that it would expand the number of troops stationed at its border with Ukraine.

Russia’s foreign ministry denied Poland’s allegations, declaring, “No strikes on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish state border were made by Russian means of destruction,” adding that the explosion “has nothing to do with Russian weapons.”

US officials said it was too early to tell who launched the missile and their motivations. However, in a conversation with Polish President Andrzej Duda, “Biden reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to NATO,” according to the official White House readout of their discussion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was categorical  that Russia was responsible for the attack, calling the move a “very significant Russian escalation” and an “attack on collective security.”

Zelensky added, “Today, Russian missiles hit Poland, the territory of our friendly country. People died… It’s only a matter of time before Russian terror goes further… We must act.”

In a tweet, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called for the United States to respond by sending advanced fighter aircraft to Ukraine and establishing a no-fly zone.

Kuleba called on NATO countries to arm “Ukraine with modern aircraft such as F-15 and F-16, as well as air defense systems, so that we can intercept any Russian missiles. Today, protecting Ukraine’s skies means protecting NATO.”

The missile strikes came the same day as Russia launched one of its largest attacks on Ukrainian power infrastructure since the start of the war, and the first large-scale missile attack since Russia’s withdrawal from the city of Kherson.

The same day as the still unexplained explosion in Poland, the White House called on Congress to pass yet another massive military spending package for the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

The White House requested $47.7 billion in funding for the war, including $21 billion for weapons. This figure would more than double the total amount spent on US weapons shipments to Ukraine, which have up to this point amounted to $18.2 billion.

In addition to the weapons purchases, the bill would approve another $14 billion in direct budget subsidies to Ukraine.

Speaking at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, Biden said that after the US election the US would further escalate its foreign policy goals of “competition” with Russia and China.

“The election held in the United States,” Biden said, “has sent a very strong message around the world that the United States is ready to play.”

“In the area of foreign policy, I hope we’ll continue this bipartisan approach of confronting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine,” Biden said earlier this week.

Even as the United Sates continues to flood Ukraine with weapons, press reports have made clear the extent of direct US involvement in the war.

Contradicting previous Ukrainian denials, the New York Times published an article Tuesday confirming that Ukraine was responsible for last month’s attack on Russian warships in the Black Sea.

The article reported, “Ukraine and its allies have been testing remote-controlled boats packed with explosives in the Black Sea, culminating in a bold attack in October against Russia’s fleet off the coast of Sevastopol.”

The article noted that US military planners are treating the Ukraine war as a “Beta Test” for trying out advanced US military hardware.

In July, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov openly declared that the country should be viewed as a “testing ground” for US defense contractors. “We are inviting arms manufacturers to test new products here,” he said.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon confirmed that active-duty US military personnel were operating inside Ukraine, including Marines guarding the US embassy and Pentagon officials directing the distribution of US arms shipments to Ukraine.

In October, veteran journalist James Risen reported that the Biden administration had authorized the clandestine deployment of US Special Forces in Ukraine. “Clandestine American operations inside Ukraine are now far more extensive than they were early in the war,” wrote Risen.

In July, the New York Times reported that dozens of US ex-military personnel are operating on the ground in Ukraine and that retired senior US officers are directing portions of the Ukrainian war effort from within the country.