Soaring maternal mortality figures expose deplorable state of women’s health care in America

Kate Randall

New international data show that the maternal mortality rate (MMR) in the US continues to far exceed the rate in other high-income countries. This national scandal in maternal health exposes, perhaps more than any other measure of the health of the US population, the appalling state of the health care system in America, which is subordinated to private profit.

A doctor uses a hand-held Doppler probe on a pregnant woman to measure the heartbeat of the fetus on Dec. 17, 2021 [AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File]

Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—analyzed by the Commonwealth Fund—show both a worsening of maternal death rates around the world in recent years and a widening gap between the US and other leading industrialized nations.

Maternal mortality is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of childbirth. In 2020, the latest year data are available from the CDC, the US maternal mortality rate was 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. By contrast, in the Netherlands that figure was only 1.2.

For black women in the US, maternal mortality in 2020 stood at an even more appalling rate: 55.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, exposing severe racial disparities in maternal health care in the US. For white women the rate was 19.1, while for Hispanic women it stood at 18.2, figures still more than double that in Canada, the US neighbor to the north.

American Indian and Alaska Native women are more than two times as likely as white women to experience maternal deaths.

Data: Data for all countries except US from OECD Health Statistics 2022. Data for US from Donna L. Hoyert, Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2020 (National Center for Health Statistics, Feb. 2022). Source: Munira Z. Gunja, Evan D. Gumas, and Reginald D. Williams II, “The U.S. Maternal Mortality Crisis Continues to Worsen: An International Comparison,” To the Point (blog), Commonwealth Fund, Dec. 1, 2022. https://doi.org/10.26099/8vem-fc65 [Photo: Commonwealth Fund]

US maternal mortality has been on the rise since 2000 and has spiked in recent years. The maternal death rate increased in six of the nine countries studied with figures available from 2020: Canada, Germany, Korea, Norway, Sweden and the US. Maternal mortality fell in 2020 in Australia, Japan and the Netherlands. (Figures were from 2015 in France, 2017 in the UK, 2018 in New Zealand and 2019 for Switzerland.)

In global ranking, the US stands at only 55th in maternal mortality rates, just behind Russia and ahead of Ukraine, according to the WHO.

In December 2020, the US Department of Health and Human Services declared maternal deaths a public health crisis. In October 2022, the CDC released new data gathered between 2017 and 2019 that showed a 27 percent increase from the agency’s previous report covering years 2008 to 2017.

Of the deaths in 2020, 22 percent occurred during pregnancy, 13 percent during childbirth and 65 percent during the year following childbirth. (This one-year period differs from the 42 days after childbirth used by the WHO.)

CDC data show a steady increase in maternal deaths from 2018 through 2021: 658 deaths in 2018, 754 deaths in 2019, 861 deaths in 2020 and 1,178 deaths in 2021. This last year’s data is provisional.

The CDC concluded that 84 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. 

In the agency’s latest report, mental health conditions are cited as the most frequent cause of pregnancy-related deaths, and approximately 23 percent of deaths are attributed to suicide, substance use disorder or other mental health conditions. Almost all deaths involving drug overdoses during pregnancy and the postpartum period involved opioids. 

A woman in the US seeking care for substance abuse during pregnancy faces the possibility of criminal or civil penalties, including imprisonment and the prospect of having her child taken away by Child Protective Services. Currently, 24 states consider substance use during pregnancy to be child abuse, while health care providers in 25 states are required to report suspected prenatal drug use to the authorities.

Rachel Diamond, clinical training director and assistant professor at Adler University, writes in The Conversation: “Research has long shown that 1 in 5 women suffer from mental health conditions during pregnancy and the postpartum period, and that this is also a time of increased risk for suicide. Yet, mental illness—namely, depression—is the most underdiagnosed obstetric complication in America.” Diamond says that maternal suicide has tripled in the last decade. 

Following mental health, the next two leading causes of maternal death are hemorrhage and cardiac conditions, which account for about 14 and 13 percent, respectively.

The 2020 figures analyzed by the Commonwealth Fund are from the first year of the pandemic. A US Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis of CDC data shows that COVID-19 was a contributing factor in one-quarter of all maternal deaths in 2020 and 2021. 

CDC provisional data from 2021 show that of 1,178 maternal deaths reported, 401, or more than a third, were COVID-related. It can be anticipated that the overall rising trend in maternal mortality will continue as COVID-19 continues to surge across the globe.

A JAMA Network Open research letter published in June found an 18.4 percent increase in maternal mortality between 2019 and 2020. The CDC reports 658 deaths in 2018, 754 in 2019 and 861 in 2020. This is under conditions where the number of live births fell from 3,791,712 in 2018 to 3,613,647 in 2020.

In the Netherlands, which has the lowest MMR of the 14 countries studied, there was an increase in home births and vaginal deliveries and a decrease in cesarean sections (both planned and emergency), seeming to indicate these types of births were safer for women during the pandemic. 

The US is the only country included in the Commonwealth Fund analysis that does not provide universal health care, leaving nearly 8 million women of reproductive age without medical coverage. Although the Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid, the government health care plan for the poor, hundreds of thousands of women live in 11 states that have not expanded Medicaid under the ACA.

While Medicaid covers around four in 10 births, benefits under the program cover care only up to 60 days postpartum. Only about 40 percent of new mothers attend their postpartum visits. A March of Dimes report earlier this year found that one in four Native American women and one in five black women did not receive adequate prenatal care in 2020. The rate for white women was one in 10.

The March of Dimes found that nearly 7 million women of childbearing age and 500,000 babies live in counties that are “maternity care deserts,” i.e., they have no obstetric hospitals or birth centers and no obstetric providers. Over 2.8 million women of childbearing age and nearly 160,000 are impacted by reduced access to maternity care. 

Following the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, at least 15 states now have total or near-total abortion bans. A research letter from December 2021 published in Duke University Press projected that a total ban on all wanted abortions in the US would lead to a 7 percent increase in pregnancy-related deaths in the first year and a 21 percent increase in subsequent years. For black women, these subsequent years of a total abortion ban would lead to a 33 percent increase in maternal deaths, according to these projections.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, health care spending in the US grew to $4.3 trillion in 2021. Hospital-related services accounted for more than 31 percent, or $1.3 trillion, of 2021 health care spending.

Private ownership of the giant health care chains, the pharmaceutical industry and insurance companies dominates health care services in the US. The delivery of medical care is not organized to serve the needs of the population but to fill the pockets of hospital CEOs and the shareholders of health-related corporations.

The same politicians of both big business parties who have allowed well over a million people, by the official count, to die so far in the COVID-19 pandemic are equally guilty in allowing the woeful state and worsening of women’s health care. 

Doctors, nurses and other health care workers who have chosen a livelihood dedicated to caring for and treating pregnant women are hamstrung in their efforts by private control of the health care industry—which leads to the closure of hospitals and the slashing of jobs and services.

Pregnancy and childbirth should be a joyous and fulfilling time for women and their families. But by the CDC’s own estimates, 990 of the 1,178 maternal deaths in 2021 were preventable. Millions more pregnant women are denied prenatal and postpartum care due to poverty and lack of services in the counties where they live.

Interest rate hikes start to make their impact

Nick Beams

Nine months after the US Federal Reserve began lifting interest rates, forcing other central banks to do the same, the rise in the price of money is starting to surge through the global economy and financial system.

The rate rises, being carried in the name of “fighting inflation,” have been instituted to try to suppress the growing upsurge of the world working class in response to soaring prices by inducing a major economic slowdown or even a recession.

As the Federal Reserve announces a rate change, traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, June 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

At present much of the media coverage focuses on the collapse of FTX. The main conclusion being drawn is that the demise of the $32 billion crypto exchange was the product of fraud committed by its founder Sam Bankman-Fried who operated what was essentially a Ponzi scheme.

But there are deeper forces at work. The spectacular rise of FTX, which was promoted as one of the safest outfits in the crypto world, was very much the outcome of the massive inflow of cheap money provided by the Fed after the market freeze of March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.

The fallout from the demise of FTX has called into question the future of the entire crypto system.

The publicly listed company, Coinbase, which operates a crypto exchange, only had a limited exposure to FTX, just $15 million, it said. But as the Financial Times reported last week its stock and bonds have been knocked, sparking “renewed concerns about the outlook” for the company.

At the start of the year, the company’s bonds were discounted at 93 cents on the dollar, now they are at 59 cents. The fall in its share price has been even more pronounced. Last November, when the Fed was still pouring money into the financial system, its shares were $369. They have lost 81 percent of their value so far this year.

In a report issued last week, Moody’s Investor Services said the collapse of FTX was a “credit negative” for Coinbase and warned that its “implosion” would “radically transform the cryptoecosystem” and raise doubts about the ongoing prospects of the entire industry.

The company has said it is a “strong position” and it has no meaningful exposure to the FTX demise. But such assurances will likely be taken with larger grains of salt given that FTX was also regarded as a safe operation.

The impact of rising rates and the end of cheap money goes far beyond the crypto world. It should be recalled that one of its first affects was the crisis in the British financial system in September-October when the supposedly safe strategies pursued by pension funds were called into question. This required an emergency intervention by the Bank of England after a collapse of the British pound and a massive selloff in UK bond markets.

Another area of concern is the commercial real estate market. It has also been boosted by low interest rates in the period since the 2008 financial crisis, but is now being squeezed by declining demand for office space as a result of COVID and higher interest rates.

In New York, the largest office space market in the world, there is now the prospect of “zombie” companies, according to a report in the FT last week. It cited comments by a major real estate company executive Doug Harmon.

During the prolonged bull market boom, “fueled by historically low interest rates and nearly free money,” Harmon and his firm presided over record-breaking sales. Harmon now says he is carrying out “triage.”

He told the newspaper that rising interest rates were like petrol igniting an office firestorm. “Everywhere I go, anywhere around the world now, anyone who owns an office says: ‘I’d like to lighten my load.’”

In a sign of growing problems, the giant private equity firm Blackstone said last week it would limit the redemptions investors could make in a $125 billion commercial real estate fund it operates.

The developments at Blackstone are part of a broader trend. In an article yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported: “Big and small investors are queuing up to pull money out of real-estate funds, the latest sign that the surge in interest rates is threatening to upend the commercial property sector.”

The interest hikes are not only hitting individual firms and key sectors of the economy but whole countries, particularly poorer ones with high levels of debt.

A New York Times article published at the weekend warned: “Developing nations are facing a catastrophic debt crisis in the coming months as rapid inflation, slowing growth, rising interest rates and a strengthening dollar coalesce into a perfect storm that could set off a wave of messy defaults and inflict economic pain on the world’s most vulnerable people.”

Earlier this year, it noted, the World Bank said as many as a dozen countries could face default next year and the IMF estimated that 60 percent of low-income countries were either in debt distress or faced a high risk of it and since then the situation had worsened.

The Council on Foreign Relations has said that 12 countries now had its highest default rating, up from three 18 months ago.

Global financial institutions recognise the mounting crisis, but nothing is being done. As the Times article reported, at the G20 meeting last month there were expressions of concern about the “deteriorating debt situation” but offered “few concrete solutions.”

The G20 statement simply reaffirmed “the importance of all actors, including private creditors, to continue working toward enhancing debt transparency.”

In the major economies the forecast is for a recession. Both the UK and the eurozone are predicted to move into recession next year with the US economy expected to grow by only 0.2 percent next year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It reported that a survey of economists and investors by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia showed expectations were that GDP would fall in the next three or four quarters, the highest since the survey started in 1968.

The engineering of recession is now the central objective of the Fed. As the head of Blackrock’s Investment Institute, Alex Brazier, told the Journal, if the Fed wants to get core inflation down to its 2 percent target “it needs a recession.”

The Economist magazine in an editorial earlier said the term “permacrisis,” designated by the Collins English dictionary as their word for 2022, “accurately encapsulates today’s world as 2023 dawns. It cited the war in Ukraine, the serious risk of nuclear escalation and the highest levels of inflation since the 1980s.

It said much of the world would be in recession in 2023 and “in several places economic weakness could exacerbate geopolitical risks.” With many European economies on the edge of recession, higher interest rates “will further sap consumer spending and increase unemployment.”

Britain would undertake the biggest fiscal tightening of the G7 group of major economies while suffering the deepest recession, with Italy “also a worry.”

While the US economy was in better shape than Europe’s or China’s, America’s relative economic strength could prove a problem for the rest of the world. As it continued to aggressively raise interest rates, lifting the value of the dollar, it would oblige “other central banks to keep up.”

In other words, the effects of interest rate hikes over the past nine months, on both the financial system and real economy, are going to rapidly intensify in the coming period.

Manhattan jury finds Trump family companies guilty on all charges

Jacob Crosse

After a six-week trial, a Manhattan jury needed only one day to find two Trump family businesses guilty on all 17 criminal counts leveled against the organizations. Charges against the Trump Organization and the Trump Payroll Corporation included criminal tax fraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records.

To find the organizations guilty, the New York jury had to find that the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, or his subordinate, senior vice president and controller Jeffrey McConney, as high agents of the company, acted on behalf of the company to their benefit.

Former president Donald Trump, left, his chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, center, and his son Donald Trump Jr., right, attend a news conference at Trump Tower in New York on January 11, 2017. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

Jurors found that the executives at Trump’s companies orchestrated a long-running tax dodge scheme that allowed them access to high-rise apartments, luxury cars and bountiful holiday bonuses, all off the books and tax-free. Weisselberg admitted on the stand and in a previous guilty plea to falsifying business records and keeping a separate set of accounting books in order to hide the expenditures, in the process reducing the tax burden on the companies and on himself.

The well-known practice, which is illegal, lasted for decades within the Trump family businesses and is, in fact, pervasive throughout the corporate-financial elite and the capitalist economy as a whole. Major exposures of the financial secrets of the world’s elite have shown that tax evasion and money laundering among the financial oligarchy are not just routine, but ubiquitous.

Despite being found guilty on all counts, the Trump Organization was fined only $1.62 million, a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars the business reports in yearly revenues and a rounding error compared to Trump’s estimated $3.2 billion net worth as of September 2022, according to Forbes.

The verdict is politically significant as it implicates the former president. The Trump Organization was founded by Trump’s fascist father, Fred Trump, and is now, along with the Trump Payroll Corporation, legally a felonious enterprise.

The convictions could also be used as evidence in a future criminal trial against Trump. They further jeopardize Trump’s third run for president, which he announced three weeks ago.

While Trump himself was not on trial, he was named several times during the proceedings by prosecutors. Following the guilty verdict, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the criminal investigation into Trump, which appeared to be winding down earlier this year, remains “active and ongoing.”

The verdict is the culmination of a long-running investigation that began with a criminal inquiry by then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. into the Trump Organization in 2018. Vance’s handpicked successor, Bragg, took up the investigation after he was elected in 2021.

Within a month of being sworn in, Bragg informed the two leading prosecutors in the investigation that he did not feel they had enough evidence to bring charges against Trump himself, as they had yet to turn Weisselberg against his lifelong employer. The two prosecutors promptly resigned and a previously impaneled grand jury was allowed to expire.

While he refused to turn against his boss, Weisselberg still served as the prosecution’s chief witness in the trial against the Trump family businesses. As part of a plea deal agreed to earlier this year, Weisselberg admitted that he and McConney engaged in a conspiracy to “defraud federal, New York state, and New York City tax authorities.”

In order to secure a 100-day sentence, despite being found guilty of 15 felonies, Weisselberg had to testify against the companies he oversaw for decades as Trump’s so-called “money man.”

On the stand during the trial, Weisselberg, who is still an employee of the Trump Organization, accepted all of the blame for the criminal practices in which the company engaged, supposedly free from any influence or direction from Trump or his family members. Defense lawyers for the Trump companies likewise argued that Weisselberg went “rogue” when he decided to manipulate the company books for his and his family’s personal benefit.

In rendering the guilty verdicts, the jury indicated that it found the defense arguments unpersuasive.

On the morning prior to the guilty verdict, Trump re-posted an earlier statement on his personal media platform, Truth Social, accusing the District Attorney’s Office of engaging in a “political Witch Hunt” over “Fringe Benefits, something that in the history of our Country, has never been so tried in Court before.”

In a statement to the New York Times following the verdict, Trump said he was “disappointed with the verdict” and planned to appeal. Alan Futerfas, a defense lawyer for the Trump Organization, confirmed that the company would appeal.

Trump, seeking to distance himself from the verdict, said the case was about Weisselberg “committing tax fraud on his personal tax returns.” The Trump Organization similarly released a statement after the verdict stating that the “notion that a company could be held responsible for an employee’s actions, to benefit themselves, on their own personal tax returns is simply preposterous.”

Weisselberg’s lawyer, Nicholas Gravante Jr., issued a statement after the verdict was reached asserting that his client fulfilled his “only obligation relating to the trial... [to] testify truthfully, and clearly he did.”

DA Bragg said following the verdict, “The former president’s companies now stand convicted of crimes. That is consequential. It underscores that in Manhattan we have one standard of justice for all.”

Bragg’s comments are betrayed by reality. Aside from the token fine levied against the companies, which will in no way prevent them from continuing their criminal operations, the fact that Trump himself has yet to charged with a crime related to the numerous illegal activities in which his businesses were engaged underscores the two-tier class justice system that exists in America.

The most damming example of “class justice” in America is the fact that Trump remains free 23 months after attempting to overthrow the government.

Drone attacks on Russian airbases: A major escalation in the war authored in Washington

Chris Marsden

Yesterday’s drone attack on an airfield in Kursk marks a major escalation in NATO’s war against Russia. It comes just one day after Russia accused Kiev of launching drone attacks on two military airfields deep inside its territory.

There were no casualties from the attack, 62 miles from the Ukrainian border. But a major fire erupted after oil tankers thought to have been hit burned for 10 hours and covered almost 5,500 square feet.

In this handout photo released by the administration of the Kursk region of Russia on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022, smoke rises from the area of Kursk airport outside Kursk, Russia. A fire that broke out at an airport in Russia’s southern Kursk region that borders Ukraine was the result of a drone attack, the Kursk regional governor said Tuesday, a day after Moscow blamed Kyiv for drone strikes on two air bases deep inside Russia and launched a new wave of missile strikes on Ukrainian territory. [AP Photo/Administration of the Kursk region of Russia via AP]

The location of the attacks and their implementation points once again to the direct involvement of the United States.

Russian officials had already blamed Kiev for Monday’s attacks on two airbases at Ryazan and Saratov in south-central Russia, believed to have involved modified Soviet-era Russian Strizh drones launched by Ukraine. Three service men were killed and four were wounded, with two aircraft damaged. The bombers hit at the Engels-2 airfield and Dyagilevo airbase were both nuclear-capable. Images from Dyagilevo show a nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 bomber with a damaged tail with a Kh-22 missile suspended under its wing.

Russia’s defence ministry said that Monday’s attacks were acts of terrorism and launched a bombardment of Ukraine’s key infrastructure in response.

Suspected Ukrainian drones also attacked the Belbek military airport in Sevastopol, but were downed by air defences, while drones also unsuccessfully targeted a fuel store in Bryansk region according to Russian sources.

Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod, which immediately border Ukraine, have all been hit multiple times. But the latest attacks and the targets chosen clearly involved extensive intelligence gathering and high-level collusion.

Ukrainian military analyst Serhiy Zgurets noted on the website of Espreso TV that the air force bases hit were the only facilities in Russia that could fully service bombers used to launch attacks on Ukraine. Ukraine’s government declined to publicly acknowledge the strikes, but a senior Ukrainian official confirmed to the New York Times that at least one of the drones was launched from Ukraine and that one of the strikes was made with the help of special forces close to the Russian base.

These targets are the furthest in Russia ever hit during the entire conflict. One of the airbases, Ryazan, is just 115 miles southwest of Moscow, while Saratov is around 400 miles from the Ukrainian border. Russian military commentators stressed that if Ukraine could strike that far inside Russia, it may also be capable of hitting Moscow. Sky News Moscow correspondent Diana Magnay said there “are a lot of questions now about how exactly Ukraine managed it,” before suggesting a “counter-intelligence failure within Russia that allowed a drone from within Russia, perhaps with the help of Ukrainian collaborators.”

The channel reported off-the-record comments by senior Western officials boasting that such attacks inside Russia will have struck a powerful psychological blow that “does show” Ukrainian forces “can operate in Russia at will.” Britain’s Ministry of Defence said Russia was likely to consider the attacks to be “some of the most strategically significant failures of force protection since its invasion of Ukraine.”

The New York Times gloated that the attacks “add to signs that Kyiv is willing to bring the war closer to Moscow and to President Vladimir V. Putin,” had “altered the geography of the war, shown failures in Moscow’s air defense systems and signaled Kyiv’s determination that Russia pay a heavier price for its unrelenting assault on Ukraine’s infrastructure.”

The ability of Ukraine to carry out such attacks is only a mystery if Kiev were not able to rely on Washington’s spy network and its extensive contact within Russia built up over decades. This would place the latest attacks among a growing number of Ukrainian “successes” and more covert provocations collectively designed to both prolong and escalate the war.

These include:

• The bombing of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, ending the transit of Russian natural gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany.
• The explosions in Sevastopol’s naval harbour on October 29, also apparently involving drones that partially destroyed a strategic bridge.
• The November 15 explosions in a Polish farming village that killed two civilians.

Every one of these actions reeks of covert US and NATO involvement, each more reckless and potentially dangerous than the last.

The Nord Stream bombings denied Russia vital revenues and confirmed its isolation from European markets after months of denunciations of Germany by the White House. The implications of Ukraine’s efforts to blame Russia for its own rocket attack on Poland, involving demands by Kiev to NATO to invoke Article 5 committing member states to mutual defence, were so grave that US President Joe Biden intervened to oppose what would have meant an immediate move to direct war with Russia for which the US was not yet prepared.

The latest attacks deep inside Russian territory could have been orchestrated by sections of the US military, intelligence and political elite pushing for such an outcome—no matter how potentially disastrous the outcome of such brinksmanship might be.

Commenting on the attacks, The New York Times wrote that there is “little room for Russia to escalate” in response. It quoted Mick Ryan, a retired Australian Army officer, who said of Ukraine’s attacks, “It is not, as some are sure to claim, an escalation. But it is a necessary political and military measure for Ukraine to limit the humanitarian harm of Russia’s brutal drone and missile attacks.”

This statement is absurd. Ukraine’s attacks, coordinated with the United States, are a major escalation of the war. The United States, having instigated and provoked a war that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians, has crossed not only Russia’s “red lines,” but its own.

Every time the United States has claimed it would not do something in Ukraine, it has then gone ahead and done it. 

In May, Biden published an op-ed in The New York Times entitled “What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine,” in which he stated that “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders.” But Washington has done precisely that, giving targeting information, weapons, and logistics support that have allowed Ukraine to attack deep inside Russian territory.

A pattern is emerging—one in which the US and NATO keep pushing against Russia in order to test how far they can go without provoking a response from the Putin regime.

There is clearly a calculation that putting ever greater economic, military and political pressure on Russia will exacerbate divisions among the oligarchs and open up the possibility of internal regime change through some form of palace coup. The assassination of Russian fascist ideologue Daria Dugina was a clear warning to Russia’s oligarchs that the penalty for supporting Putin potentially goes beyond sanctions and seizure of assets. The intelligence used by Ukraine in its latest offensive could ultimately have originated from highly-placed Russian supporters, with already existing connections to Washington, who are pushing for a settlement of the conflict at any price.

At the same time, there are forces within Russia’s oligarchy that are pushing for a far more aggressive response by the Russian military.

The relentless and reckless escalation of the war by the United States carries with it the risk that the Russian government responds with a major escalation of its own, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

“The interaction of NATO’s imperialist militarism, recklessly pursuing its global geopolitical agenda whatever the consequences, and the increasing desperation of Russia’s oligarchic capitalist regime threatens to escalate into a nuclear conflagration.

Many UK schools structurally unsound, posing danger to life

Margot Miller

Schools and other public buildings in the UK could be in danger of collapse because they have not been subject to regular safety inspections or properly maintained.

This “risk to life” emerges in the context of a devastating funding crisis in education, threatening staff redundancies, larger class sizes, restrictions to the curriculum and the elimination of support services.

Governments have ignored warnings about the risks to schools since at least 2018. Neither have the education unions acted to ensure the safety of their members and children in their care.

The Office of Government Property (OGP), responsible for public buildings, issued a “Safety Briefing Notice” in September regarding the potential dangers of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC). It made the stark warning that “RAAC is now life-expired and liable to collapse”.

Aerated autoclaved concrete, close-up view [Photo by Marco Bernardini, own work / CC BY-SA 3.0]

RAAC is a foam concrete material used in internal and external construction. Invented in Sweden in the mid-1920, it has been used globally for 70 years—increasingly so since 1980 due to its many ostensible advantages. These include thermal efficiency, fire resistance, and the fact that it is lightweight making for speedier construction and cost efficiency.

The roof of Singlewell Primary school in Gravesend partially collapsed in 2018—luckily at the weekend with no casualties. Most concerning, the roof only showed signs of stress 24 hours before the incident. The Standing Committee on Structural Safety responded to this potential tragedy with a safety alert on the “failure of RAAC planks,” recommending that those installed before 1980 should be replaced.

This committee, an independent body established in 1976, is supported by the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Structural Engineers, and the government’s Health and Safety Executive to review building and civil engineering matters regarding the safety of structures.

After the collapse at the Gravesend school, the local Kent Council informed other local authorities, advising them to check for RAAC in their schools. The Local Government Association contacted councils in relation to RAAC in schools—including its use in the structure of flat school roofs—and myriad public buildings including hospitals and high-rise structures.

Four years on, inspections and remedial work to ensure school buildings are safe from collapse have only just begun. This is despite other serious incidents, including:

• In February 2017, when a wall collapsed at Oxgangs Primary School, Edinburgh.
• On May 10, 2018, a teacher and three pupils, aged between six and seven, suffered minor injuries after part of the ceiling fell in a Year 2 classroom at Nechells Primary School, Birmingham.
• In October 2019, part of the roof and brickwork collapsed at St Anne’s Catholic Primary School in Sutton, St Helens.
• Sandhurst secondary school in Berkshire suffered a partial roof collapse over a walkway on November 15, 2020.
• In September 2021, Ford Primary School run by the Horizon Multi Academy Trust in Plymouth suffered a partial collapse of the school hall roof.
• A ceiling collapsed at a second floor Year 3 classroom at Rosemead Preparatory School & Nursery in Dulwich on November 15, 2021. No one sustained serious injury, but one child was detained in hospital under observation.

According to digital newspaper SchoolsWeek, the government pledged to replace RAAC in hospitals, but the Department for Education (DfE) is downplaying the potential dangers informing schools applying for building improvement funding grants next year that “not all RAAC is dangerous.”

Hodge Hill primary school in Birmingham needs part of its roof decking removed, but the government’s surveyor questioned the presence of RAAC.

As there seems to be no official record of the materials used to build schools, the DfE sent out a survey to state-funded schools in March year asking if RAAC exists in their buildings. The survey was recirculated in October with an instruction to respond urgently. Schools may be unaware they have RAAC as it is often concealed from view. The OGP advised: “RAAC planks may look the same as pre-cast concrete and may be hidden above false ceilings.”

President of the British Association of Construction Heads, Graham Hasting-Evans, estimated that up to half of four million non-residential UK buildings could be affected by RAAC.

He concluded that RAAC is being ignored because “nobody wants to face up to” a “ticking time bomb… People are worried about Grenfell—there are companies thinking ‘I’m going to go bust because I’ll get sued’”. He added, “it’s not just about cladding, it’s about the structural integrity of the building itself—if it was built with a reinforced concrete frame and that concrete isn’t strong enough, the building starts to fall apart.”

The use by contractors of Aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding—a known fire hazard—was responsible for the inferno that engulfed Grenfell Tower in London in June 2017 killing 72.

Ian Harrington, partner at Eddisons chartered surveyors, said that for some schools the RAAC problem is “so bad you’d have to remove the whole structure.”

This year the government allocated only £498 million for its condition improvement grant to address safety issues in academies, sixth-form colleges and voluntary aided schools. Urgent work concerning RAAC is outstanding at Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe, The London Oratory School, Sandbach School in Cheshire and Chesterton Primary School in Wandsworth due to RAAC.

Maintained schools, which are local authority run, must apply to cash-strapped councils for such repairs. Schools Week reported, in a piece by investigations and features reporter Jessica Hill, that Norfolk County Council investigated 58 schools built from 1955 to 1980 and did the necessary RAAC remedial work. Sheffield City Council has earmarked £520,000 to make good the roof of an extension at Abbey Lane Primary School because of the “risk of collapse”. Sale Grammar School in Greater Manchester had an RAAC roof removed costing £400,000.

This level of dilapidation is only the tip of the iceberg. DfE data indicates a third of schools were built from 1960-1980, when RAAC was universally used. The government’s own figures suggest £11.4 billion is needed to get school buildings to an adequate standard including for safety.

Basic maintenance and repair work not related to RAAC costs councils millions of pounds. Last year Salford City Council was hit with a bill of more than £500,000 for roof repair works at just two schools. The council said that “serious leaks” could have occurred resulting in closure of the schools without the repairs. The Manchester Evening News reported that one of the schools, Hilton Lane Primary School, had timber cladding and windows which had deteriorated, and ground works were also required “to improve drainage which has caused flooding at the site.”

During the summer, emails leaked to the Observer sent by senior officials at the DfE to Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s premiership warned many school buildings posed a “risk to life”. This year, however, less than half of the 1,100 schools which applied for the government’s 10-year rebuilding programme were successful.

Since 2010 in the aftermath of the banking crash and bailout, capital spending on schools declined 25 percent, or 29 percent when adjusted for inflation. In 2019, the Guardian reported one in six schools in England were in urgent need of repairs, to rectify such problems as fire hazards, asbestos, faulty wiring and plumbing and damp.

While endless sums are squandered bolstering company profits during the pandemic and the energy cost crisis, and for the war in the Ukraine, this is being paid for via savage budget cuts. Joint National Education Secretary Mary Bousted said that the latest round of austerity will mean “more children coming to school hungry and cold and unable to learn”, and schools “having less funding than in 2015”.

But from the beginning of the pandemic the education unions lined up with the Conservative government and Labour opposition to put profit before lives, ensuring lockdowns were prematurely lifted and schools reopened. Today, staff and children are herded into unsafe classrooms, many of which are also proven structurally unsound.

Chinese Communist Party moves towards “herd immunity” policy

John Malvar

Under the guise of recalibrating China’s dynamic Zero-COVID policy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Xi Jinping, is moving rapidly to adopt a policy of “herd immunity,” another term for the mass infection of the population. Confronting economic crisis at home and under the conjoined pressures of international finance capital and the military provocations of US imperialism, the Xi government is scrapping China’s Zero-COVID policy that has saved millions of lives.

The lifting of Zero-COVID measures in China will inflict death on a massive scale upon the country’s population. There is no uncertainty as to the outcome of “living with the virus” in China. The past three years have demonstrated the enormity of suffering and death such a policy inevitably entails: overflowing hospitals, freezers for the storage of corpses, mass burials, and a surviving population wracked by grief and Long COVID. Over 1.1 million dead Americans, over 20 million excess deaths worldwide—these figures reveal what opening a nation of 1.4 billion people to the ravages of the pandemic portends.

A report in Reuters over the weekend, “How many people might die if China loosens COVID restrictions,” offered three scientific estimates in answer to the question posed by its chilling headline. The estimated death toll ranged from somewhere between 1.3 to 2.1 million people.

For over two years, international finance capital has demanded that China lift Zero-COVID, seeking to resume the full-scale exploitation of the Chinese working class and restore access to the vast consumer markets of China. A day after the article warning of a death toll in the millions, Reuters published a financial piece, “Investors bet China’s rally on easing COVID-19 curbs will be furious but fleeting.”

Vast sums of money are flooding into speculative investments in China’s consumer markets, anticipating “furious” growth with the lifting of Zero-COVID. Such growth, however, will not last. The medical chaos and death toll from the mass infection policy will produce a sharp economic contraction. After the initial consumer bonanza, investors would do wisely, the Reuters piece noted, to shift their money to firms producing antigen tests. Capitalism finds nothing quite so lucrative as human misery.

In its justification for lifting Zero-COVID, the CCP follows the playbook of the Western powers and in particular of the United States. The Chinese government repeats the lying claim, trumpeted in the western media, that Omicron is a “mild” variant. It presents pseudoscience as science, promoting traditional Chinese medicine as a cure, in place of Ivermectin and bleach. Driven by economic imperatives, without any regard for public health, they press for a full return to regular work and commerce.

The moves by the CPP bureaucracy toward lifting Zero-COVID predate the recent protests, which have been universally hailed in the Western media. The protests were small, with rallies numbering in the hundreds, drawn almost exclusively from upper middle-class student layers at the country’s elite universities. Their blank-paper signs and slogans—demanding an end to mass testing, presenting public health measures as antithetical to “freedom”—reflect more than mere confusion. They express the interests and frustrations of privileged social layers that find themselves unable to enjoy their affluent lifestyles.

This social stratum is a key constituency of the CCP bureaucracy. Many are members, or aspire to be members, of the party, which is a critical path for their social advancement, but they view Zero-COVID measures as an intolerable infringement.

In their social content and development thus far, the blank-paper protests in China resemble the right-wing anti-mask, anti-vaccine protests staged in the United States, Europe, and Canada in 2020 and 2021. The CCP is responding in a similar fashion, using them as a pretext for further moves toward a policy of mass infection.

Looking to reintegrate China with the world capitalist economy, the Xi government first undermined popular support for Zero-COVID policy and then adopted measures to lift it. In May 2022, the government cut national insurance funding for mass COVID testing, shunting the financial burden, in the billions of dollars, onto heavily impacted municipalities of the country’s border regions. Many of these cities and regions in turn made the expense of testing the responsibility of the individuals tested.

With political power fully consolidated in the hands of Xi Jinping at the 20th Party Congress in October, the CCP set about to implement a set of measures for the removal of Zero-COVID restrictions on the country’s economic life.

On November 11, the party launched its “Twenty Articles,” which eased every component of Zero-COVID and included stockpiling medicines to brace the country for the mass infection that would ensue. These steps were taken immediately before the G20 summit, at which Xi symbolically participated without wearing a mask. The CCP signaled to world capitalism that China was reopening for business.

The CCP is now scrapping Zero-COVID with alarming rapidity. Every few days sees a new announcement—reduced quarantines, an end to mass testing, discouraging people from testing—that signals that even basic mitigation measures are being abandoned.

Regular mass testing is the bedrock of Zero-COVID. Without a scientific assessment of infection rates and community transmission, it is no longer possible to be confident in the numbers coming out of China. Both infections and deaths are now doubtless significantly underreported.

The ongoing policy shift in Beijing was demanded by the imperialist powers and world financial centers for over two years. Using the language of war, they spoke of China’s public health measures as mass atrocities, human rights violations, and totalitarianism. The New York Times ran a piece in January of this year comparing China’s white uniformed health workers to Nazis. In a manner that bears startling resemblance to the Opium Wars of the 19th century, in which the imperialist powers opened China at gunpoint to the sale of drugs, US imperialism insisted China open itself to dollars and disease.

The western media has latched onto the anti-Zero-COVID protests with alacrity, celebrating them as a vindication of “freedom.” The Times published an editorial statement on Sunday speaking of their “moral obligation” to support the protests, but it made no mention of the death toll that will ensue as the protesters’ demands were acted upon. China is teetering on the brink of catastrophe and a festival atmosphere fills the pages of the western media. They are the cheerleaders of apocalypse.

For the forces in the Pentagon and the White House, the lifting of Zero-COVID means more than just a restoration of supply chains and a much needed source of profit. They see in the unrestrained spread of the pandemic in China, and the millions that it will kill, a means of fomenting intense social crisis and destabilizing the CCP regime. Washington’s insistence, dressed in the language of human rights, that COVID cannot—must not—be contained constitutes a form of biological warfare, a preparation for open military conflict that is every bit as important as the new B-21 bomber.

The experience of China’s Zero-COVID policy over the past three years is irrefutable proof of two principles. First, it is possible through coordinated social planning to eliminate the coronavirus and prevent mass death. Second, it is impossible to carry out such a policy on a national basis.

The CCP bureaucracy is, to its core, nationalist. It was the nationalism of Stalinism that drove every one of the CCP’s betrayals of the working class in the 20th century. It is impossible to either build socialism or end a pandemic in the confines of a single country. The CCP apparatus has no way forward and is looking to protect its power and privileges as it capitulates to world capitalism. Just as it opened the country’s economy to global capitalist exploitation in 1980s and 90s, today it is opening China to disease and mass death.

The “herd immunity” policy being adopted by the CCP will result in the deaths of millions. The spread of the virus in China, moreover, will propel the evolution of new variants that will redound on the entire world. This catastrophe, however, is not inevitable.

There are growing protests among the Chinese working class, particularly in the southern manufacturing cities, which are of an entirely different character from the blank-paper protests of the upper middle class. Tens of thousands of workers at the Foxconn iPhone factory and in the garment industry in Guangzhou have come into open conflict with the state. They are fighting against exploitative working conditions, withheld pay, and the fact that they are not adequately protected in the factories from the spread of COVID-19.

German government steps up armaments drive and sends more tanks to Ukraine

Johannes Stern

Following last week’s meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Bucharest, the German government is stepping up its arms deliveries to Kiev. According to media reports, Berlin is sending another seven Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to the Ukrainian army. News magazine Der Spiegel reports that the tanks are “currently being refurbished by the Munich-based armaments company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW).”

A “Gepard 1A2” anti-aircraft gun tank fires during a combat exercise [AP Photo/Joerg Sarbach]

Germany is playing an increasingly aggressive role in the massive rearmament of the Ukrainian army against Russia. According to the government, the total value of licences issued for arms deliveries until 28 November 2022 now amounts to 1.93 billion euros. The government’s official list of “military support for Ukraine” includes the following deliveries for last week alone:

• 3 BIBER armoured bridge laying vehicles
• 10 surface drones (previously: 2)
• 65 border guard vehicles (previously: 53)
• 14,000 sleeping bags (previously: 10,000)
• Mi-24 spare parts
• 30 ambulances

And according to the same list, the following items, among others, are “in preparation/implementation”:

• 14 remote-controlled tracked vehicles for support tasks
• 42 mine-clearing tanks
• 435 border protection vehicles
• 6,100 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition
• 186,000 rounds of 40mm grenade launcher ammunition
• 5 Dachs armoured engineer vehicles
• 16 Zuzana 2 self-propelled howitzers (joint project with Denmark and Norway)
• 3 IRIS-T SLM air defence systems
• 20 70mm rocket launchers on pick-up trucks with 2,000 rockets
• 5 armoured recovery vehicles
• 5,032 anti-tank hand-held weapons
• 13 BIBER armoured bridge layers

The deliveries are part of NATO’s escalation of the war against Russia, which is increasingly directly evoking the danger of a third world war. In Bucharest, NATO foreign ministers agreed on the expansion of the war in Ukraine and the stationing of additional troops on the Russian border.

Representatives of the NATO states spoke out in favour of allowing Ukraine to attack targets in Russia itself. “We should allow the Ukrainians to use weapons to attack missile sites or airfields from which these operations are launched,” said Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs. Allies should “not fear” an escalation, he added provocatively.

According to a report by the Reuters news agency, the US is indeed already considering delivering GLSDB (Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb) munitions to Ukraine. The precision-guided surface-to-surface projectiles have a range of about 150 kilometres, which is twice as far as the artillery systems currently available to Kiev. With these projectiles, it would be possible for the Ukrainian army to attack targets in the northern part of Crimea, for example.

The escalation is supported by the German government. At the Berlin Security Conference, which took place immediately after the NATO meeting, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) reiterated the goal of defeating Russia in Ukraine. “Russia cannot and will no longer win this war on the battlefield,” he declared. We will “continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes: economically, financially, humanitarianly, through the reconstruction of destroyed energy infrastructure now—and also with weapons.”

In addition, the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) is training thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in Germany and massing its troops in Eastern Europe against Russia.

In order to defend the territory of the Alliance, Germany would “maintain 17,000 soldiers for the NATO Response Force over the next two years,” the Chancellor announced. In 2023, Germany will “once again take over the leadership of NATO’s rapid reaction force” and was already “present in Slovakia with forces of the Army and the Air Force.” The air force was “securing the airspace over Estonia and our navy has increased its presence in the Baltic Sea. And we have permanently strengthened our battle group in Lithuania.”

In his speech, Scholz made clear that Germany’s war aims go far beyond Eastern Europe. He praised the “implementation of the special assets [funding] for the Bundeswehr of 100 billion euros” and boasted: “We are talking here about the largest investment in our armed forces since their existence.” However, the “turn of the times” he had proclaimed was about “much more than just quite a lot of money.” What was needed was “more decisiveness, more willingness to take risks and more efficient structures… from procurement to equipment, from strategy to operations.”

From the beginning, the German ruling class has seen the war in Ukraine provoked by NATO as an opportunity to reassert itself as a leading military power following its historic crimes in two world wars. Now, plans that have long been drawn up to massively rearm and organise Europe militarily under German leadership are being put into practice.

Scholz stressed the need for “a European defence industry that meets the demands of modern armed forces.” In addition, he said, they were working on “improving the military capabilities of the European Union.” This included the “European missile defence shield” he proposed. In the meantime, “14 partners have joined this initiative.”

The German government, a coalition of the SPD, Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens, is also pushing ahead with nuclear armament. “As long as states like Russia possess nuclear weapons as part of their threat potential, NATO naturally needs a credible deterrent potential,” Scholz said menacingly. For this reason, the German government “has decided to procure F-35 fighter jets in the coming years and thus continue to make a German contribution to the Alliance’s nuclear sharing in the future.”

Since the historic increase in military spending and the passing of a war budget on 25 November, the tempo has increased. Almost daily, the German government announces new far-reaching armament projects. In addition to the F-35 fighter jets, Scholz announced the retrofitting of the Puma infantry fighting vehicles and the procurement of snow vehicles. On the same day, the budget committee of the Bundestag (federal parliament) initiated the procurement of more than 600,000 rounds of automatic cannon ammunition for the Puma infantry fighting vehicle.

The return of German militarism is being accompanied by a systematic ideological offensive. At the NATO meeting in Bucharest, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) called Russia’s actions in Ukraine a “breach of civilisation,” a term used in Germany for Hitler’s war of extermination and the Holocaust.

The use of this term for the war in Ukraine is an incredible trivialisation of the historic crimes of German imperialism. Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is reactionary, but it has nowhere near reached the scale of the crimes of the Nazis. If anyone is following in this tradition, it is Baerbock and the German ruling class.

This was also shown by the adoption of the so-called “Holodomor“ resolution last Wednesday. By declaring the famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s to be a “genocide,” the Bundestag (federal parliament) accepted a historical falsification that originated in far-right circles.

Significantly, the Left Party also did not vote against the resolution, thus backing the war propaganda. This does not come as a surprise. Its leading representatives—such as Thuringia state Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow or Berlin mayoral candidate Klaus Lederer—bang the drum for arms deliveries to the Ukrainian army, which is riddled with right-wing extremist forces, and even call for the reintroduction of conscription.