Food insecurity increases in Australia amid cost-of-living crisis

Vicki Mylonas

Late last month, charity organisation Foodbank released its annual Hunger Report, showing that 3.7 million Australian households experienced moderate to severe food insecurity over the past year, a 10 percent increase over the 2022 figure. 

Foodbank Victoria is currently distributing 71 percent more food than they did during the pandemic and 116 percent more than the monthly average during the Black Summer bushfires. [Photo: Facebook/Foodbank Australia]

The report, based on a national online survey of 4,342 people, paints an alarming picture. Two and a half million households across the country—23 percent of the population—were “severely food insecure,” meaning that a lack of money had at times forced them to reduce food intake, skip meals and even go entire days without eating.

A further 13 percent were “moderately food insecure,” meaning they had been compelled to reduce the “quality, variety and desirability of their diets” and the size of some meals. Another 12 percent were “marginally food secure,” meaning they sometimes worried that food would run out before they could afford to buy more.

In total, the report concluded, “48 percent of the general population now feels anxious or struggles to consistently access adequate food,” up from 45 percent in 2022.

The survey showed that a broadening section of the population is being impacted, with 77 percent of food insecure households having experienced this for the first time within the past 12 months.

More than 60 percent of food insecure households had someone in paid employment. Thirty-six percent of households with total annual earnings of between $95,000 and $130,000 and 17 percent of households earning more than $130,000 reported moderate or severe food insecurity.

Younger people are most affected, with 53 percent of 18–24-year-olds and 48 percent of 25–44-year-olds reporting some level of food insecurity. But in 2023, severe food insecurity rose by 6 percentage points to 23 percent among those aged 45–54.

High inflation, far outstripping nominal wage rises, has intensified financial pressures on the working class. The report reveals that the biggest driver of food insecurity was the cost-of-living crisis, with 77 percent of households listing it as the main factor, up from 64 percent in 2022. Sixty-nine percent said increased food and grocery cost contributed to their food insecurity, while 56 percent cited rising energy costs.

While Treasurer Jim Chalmers has claimed that “peak inflation is behind us,” recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that consumer prices rose 5.6 percent over the 12 months ending September, up from 5.2 percent in August. Electricity prices soared 18 percent, while food and non-alcoholic beverages increased by 4.7 percent.

People are also being squeezed by rising housing costs. After 13 interest rate increases since May 2022, more than 30 percent of Australian mortgage holders are at risk of mortgage stress, the highest level since the 2008 global financial crisis, according to analysts Roy Morgan. At the same time, average rents have increased by 11 percent in the last 12 months.

Almost half of all renters and more than one third of mortgage holders suffered moderate or severe food insecurity in 2023.

The Foodbank report reveals that a growing number of Australians view having a healthy diet as an unaffordable luxury. Comments from some of the survey participants indicate the extent of the crisis: 

• “I just didn’t eat for 3 days and when I did eat I’d try to only eat small amounts to do my best to make the food last.”—Female, 25–34, metro VIC, employed full-time.

• “I went hungry which caused an insulin overdose and had to be rushed to hospital. Luckily I was able to get some food in hospital.”—Male, 25–34, metro NSW, employed full-time.

While more Australians across all demographics are finding it increasingly difficult to afford basic essential groceries, massive profits have been recorded by the two major supermarket chains in Australia, Coles ($1.1 billion) and Woolworths ($1.6 billion).

As the social crisis deepens, the Albanese Labor government is facing increasing disaffection. Its 18 months in power have been marked by deepening austerity measures, as well as the expansion of callous “let-it-rip” COVID policies resulting in mass death.

After campaigning on the slogans “a better future,” and “no one left behind,” Labor has done the opposite, slashing social spending and imposing real wage cuts. At the same time, vast sums have been poured into military expenditure, including $368 billion for the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines.

Described as a “hidden problem” in Australia, increasing food insecurity is a symptom of the inability of the capitalist system to provide even the most basic needs of the people, who have to sacrifice, while the financial elite continue to reap massive profits.

Two million US children have been removed from Medicaid health insurance since April

Kevin Reed

New research shows that at least two million US children who are eligible for government assistance have been kicked off of Medicaid health insurance since last April, when federal pandemic aid programs were halted.

According to data compiled by the Georgetown Center for Children and Families and KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation), under the title “Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker,” as of November 8 the two million children who qualified for ongoing coverage had their insurance terminated largely due to bureaucratic bungling, including missing paperwork and government errors.

Additionally, the Georgetown and KFF study says that due to lags in data reporting by states, the numbers being reported “undercount the actual number of disenrollments to date.”

Last Thursday, Joan Alker, the executive director of the Georgetown center and a research professor at the university’s McCourt School of Public Policy, told the New York Times it is likely that at least one million of these children are currently uninsured.

Alker added that the numbers of children being disenrolled nationally is accelerating, and, in the coming weeks, new data from the states “will probably show that three million children have lost coverage.” She went on to call the situation “unprecedented” and warned that the mass disenrollment of children from Medicaid “has the potential to increase the uninsured rate for children by the largest amount that we’ve seen in decades.”

This May 17, 2021 image shows Margarita Mora preparing to drop off her daughter at Cuidando Los Ninos in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The charity provides housing, child care and financial counseling for mothers, with expanded Child Tax Credit payments that have since ended. [AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan]

According to the research tracker website, it provides “the most recent data on monthly Medicaid disenrollments, renewals, overall enrollment and other key indicators reported by states during the unwinding of the Medicaid continuous enrollment provision.” The tracker gathers available data about the unwinding of Medicaid coverage from state websites and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The data shows that, overall, 10.135 million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid nationwide, even though they completed renewal applications, due to the unwinding that began in April. Another 18 million have had their coverage renewed. The study shows that there is a “wide variation in disenrollment rates across reporting states.” In Texas, for example, 1.2 million, or 65 percent, of nearly two million people statewide have been disenrolled.

The report says that states with high disenrollment numbers “are initially targeting people early in the unwinding period that they think are no longer eligible or who did not respond to renewal requests during the pandemic …”

These vicious policies have been permitted by the Biden administration, even though it has the authority to halt the unwinding process.

The impact to low-income families of having children with no health insurance is devastating. If there is no one in the family who can cover a child on his or her private health insurance plan, or the family cannot afford insurance through the misnamed Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), it faces the alternative of foregoing treatment or being bankrupted by medical expenses.

The New York Times reported, for example, that a family living in the Orlando, Florida area lost Medicaid insurance twice due to “enrollment errors,” and the 13-year-old son was unable to function in school without special medication that cost more than $1,000 per month.

The lack of health insurance among children is especially harsh in the fall and winter, when respiratory illnesses circulate widely.

Daniel Tsai, a senior official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the Times: “I go to sleep at night thinking about this. We should not have kids being uninsured without health care, with families worried about how to pay for medication or what to do if your kid needs to go to the emergency department.”

It is estimated that during the pandemic over 90 million people, more than 25 percent of the US population, were enrolled in the Medicaid program. When the pandemic-related program ended in April, the federal government claimed that a majority of the children who no longer qualified for Medicaid would be re-enrolled in the state-run and partially state-funded Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). 

CHIP is supposed to be made available to children in families with incomes that are too high for Medicaid eligibility. According to researchers, however, the 21 states with CHIP programs had only added 87,355 children to the program after 1.5 million were disenrolled from Medicaid.

The devastating impact of ending pandemic-related federal Medicaid protections was well known before the program ended in April. Studies were published more than a year ago predicting that millions would be kicked off the federal health insurance program and wind up with no coverage at all.

An extensive brief was published by the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Office of Health Policy of HHS in August 2022, warning that the unwinding of Medicaid coverage for millions would result in mass coverage loss. The report projected that 15 million people would leave the program, with 8.2 million losing eligibility and 6.8 million losing coverage “despite still being eligible.”

In particular, the HHS projection said, “Children and young adults will be impacted disproportionately, with 5.3 million children and 4.7 million adults ages 18-34 predicted to lose Medicaid/CHIP coverage. Nearly one-third of those predicted to lose coverage are Latino (4.6 million) and 15 percent (2.2 million) are Black.”

Another report from Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy Center for Children and Families warned that the rate of uninsured children in the US would rise rapidly during the “unwinding” of the pandemic Medicaid coverage mandate. In a paper published on February 1, 2023, the Georgetown center wrote:

We have estimated that as many as 6.7 million children are at risk of losing coverage during the unwinding. The vast majority of children (73.6%) losing coverage will remain eligible for Medicaid but are likely to lose coverage due to bureaucratic snafus.

This is precisely what is now happening since absolutely nothing was done by the Biden administration, or the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, to prevent such a disaster from unfolding. The priorities of the capitalist political establishment, as throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, have remained centered on ensuring corporate profits and waging war, to the detriment of public health and the preservation of life.

As the World Socialist Web Site reported previously, child poverty in the US more than doubled last year, increasing from 5.1 percent of children in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022, while overall poverty rose from 4.6 to 12.4 percent during the same period. The alarming rise in poverty is directly connected to terminating the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP).

These measures were put in place as part of limited COVID mitigation policies implemented at the outset of the pandemic. The Biden administration brought all of these initiatives to an end as part of the campaign to declare the pandemic over, even though new variants of the coronavirus continue to infect and kill people across the country.

Canada’s ruling elite witch-hunting opponents of the imperialist-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza

James Clayton

Canada’s political and media establishment is engaged in a vicious witch-hunt against the opponents of the imperialist-backed Israeli genocide of the Palestinians of Gaza. The firing of workers, blacklisting of students, and other attempts at intimidation are part of an international drive by ruling elites in all major imperialist powers to smear and suppress the growing opposition to the brutal siege and slaughter of the people of Gaza, which has found expression in protests around the globe involving millions of workers and youth.

The witch-hunt has been spearheaded by Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives and their close political ally, the Doug Ford-led Ontario Tory government, and by Toronto Sun and National Post columnists and other far-right figures within the corporate media. It has been facilitated by the Liberal government and its allies in the trade union bureaucracy and the New Democratic Party (NDP). This was graphically demonstrated by the trade union-backed NDP’s expulsion of Sarah Jama from its Ontario legislature caucus for her statements in support of the Palestinians. Jama’s expulsion paved the way for Ford’s hard-right Progressive Conservative government to push a motion of censure through the legislature, under which Jama is prevented from speaking on any issue until she retracts her statements and “apologizes.”

Section of the 40,000-strong Nov. 4 demonstration in Toronto opposing the imperialist-backed genocidal assault on the Palestinians of Gaza

Ford’s Minister of Colleges and Universities, Jill Dunlop, is demanding Ontario’s post-secondary institutions sanction student unions and clubs that have defended the Palestinian people’s right to resist occupation. She has also smeared individual students and academics who have defended Hamas’ actions as a popular uprising against Israel’s 17-year blockade of the tiny enclave as anti-Semites from the floor of the Ontario legislature.  

Protesters opposing the Israeli state’s three-quarters-of-a-century-long systematic dispossession and suppression of the Palestinians and demanding an immediate ceasefire have been vilified in the corporate media as abettors of terrorism. Popular pro-Palestinian slogans, such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” have been declared off-limits and absurdly denounced as “anti-Semitic.”

In one of the most extreme examples of this trend, police laid “disturbing the peace” charges this week against Wesam Khaled, one of the main organizers of pro-Palestinian protests in Calgary, for leading chants of the “From the river to the sea” slogan at a Nov. 5 rally. Khaled, who is barred from attending further protests at least pending a Dec. 19 court hearing, is being targeted for exemplary punishment, with police adding “a hate motivation” to their “disturbing the peace” charge.

After four workers at Moxies Restaurant on Toronto’s University Avenue came out spontaneously to cheer on a Palestinian solidarity march on October 21, B’nai Brith Canada mounted a campaign to have the workers fired. Moxies—a restaurant chain with 58 locations in Canada and the USA—dutifully complied.

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Kevin Vuong, the MP for the downtown Toronto riding of Spadina-Fort York where the largest pro-Palestinian demonstrations have occurred, is waging a campaign to dox anyone who expresses support for the Palestinian uprising on social media. He has notified the police and demanded that the individuals be charged with supporting terrorism. Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by the Canadian state.

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Long-time Liberal Party advisor and journalist Warren Kinsella has demanded the arrest and deportation of pro-Palestinian activists. The demand was endorsed by Ben Mulroney, a television talk show host and the son of former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Faced with public outrage, Kinsella later deleted his tweet, and Mulroney cynically walked back his comments, stating without a hint of irony, that “I fully support everyone's right to peacefully protest. But if that crosses the line into intimidation/making anyone feel unsafe, I expect our laws to be applied fairly. I apologize if my position was construed as anything but supportive of one’s rights to free speech/assembly.”

Commenters noted that Israeli nationalist demonstrations frequently feature chants of “Death to the Arabs” and other genocidal incitement, such as “Another Nakba is coming!” None of this elicits so much as a peep of disapproval, because the entire Canadian ruling class and its press are complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

Students have also been targeted for reprisals merely for speaking out. Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) has retained former Nova Scotia Chief Justice Michael MacDonald to “review” an Open Letter, signed by 74 TMU students expressing support for the Palestinian uprising. TMU’s Lincoln Alexander Law School condemned the letter as “anti-Semitic.” Multiple prominent law firms have declared their intent to blacklist the students.

Writing in the right-wing Financial Post, lawyer Howard Levitt noted that one of the partners in his firm declared, “The first question that we will ask any potential new hire or student from Toronto Metropolitan University is whether or not they signed the letter condoning Hamas,” the implication being that such people would never be hired. Levitt further demanded that all 74 students be expelled.

In response, more than 350 lawyers, under the umbrella “Legal Profession Against Retaliation,” have signed on to an open letter committing themselves to defend and not discriminate against those who are being slandered and blacklisted for their support for the Palestinians. The letter states: “We reject the notion that it is anti-Semitic, hateful, or illegitimate to contextualize the October 7, 2023 attack. Similarly, we reject the notion that it is anti-Semitic, hateful, or illegitimate to express support for Palestinians in the face of ongoing Israeli apartheid and genocide. This is legitimate Charter-protected political expression.”

TMU’s inquisition against its own students follows ongoing efforts by the administration at Toronto’s York University to deregister several student representative associations for signing a pro-Palestine statement. These threats prompted widespread opposition on campus, including a well-attended student rally.

At the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, administrators altered artwork created by four Palestinian artists for an exhibition on “death.” They removed the words “Palestine” and “exile” from a painting, replacing the former with “West Bank.” Only after an 18-hour sit-in by the artists and protests outside the museum, including by Jewish artists, were the works restored to their original form.

The trade union bureaucracies are complicit in Israel’s genocidal onslaught on the Palestinians because they serve as a key pillar of support for the Trudeau government. Just like the Biden administration, Trudeau has given Canada’s unconditional support to the far-right Netanyahu government as it bombs men, women, and children indiscriminately and attempts to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

Those few union officials who have defended the Palestinians in any way have come in for ruthless attacks. Fred Hahn, Ontario president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), has been the target of right-wing attacks since he posted a statement on October 7 declaring, “Resistance is fruitful and no matter what some might say, resistance brings progress.” Hahn was pilloried in the capitalist press, and slandered multiple times by Ontario Premier Ford as an “anti-Semite.” Bowing to pressure, Hahn apologized on October 21. But that was not enough. Some 25 pro-Zionist CUPE members have now launched a civil lawsuit against the union, alleging ‘discrimination and antisemitism.’ The SLAPP suit takes issue with references to matters of historical fact which have appeared in various union resolutions, such as that Israel is an apartheid state illegally occupying Palestinian lands.

The witch hunt has claimed the head of Camile Awada, who resigned on November 7 as the leader of CAPE, the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, Canada’s third largest union for federal government employees. In a 2019 Facebook post, Awada declared that “The European Zionists are the true Aryan race. They look down at the world as if we are cattle. Israel is the illegitimate Zionist terrorist apartheid state that is the root of all evil!” Awada was commenting on a news article describing how African immigrants to Israel from the Ethiopian Jewish community were involuntarily injected with Depo Provera to prevent them from having children.

In mid-October, Palestinian Canadian journalist Zahraa Al-Akhrass was fired from her position at Global News while on maternity leave. She was dismissed for her personal social media posts, which exposed Palestinian suffering and criticized the capitalist press for its creation of a narrative to excuse, cover up and politically support the Israeli state’s genocide. The WSWS spoke to Al-Akhrass on November 4 at Toronto’s massive solidarity rally.

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A winter surge of COVID-19 is underway in the US

Benjamin Mateus

With the recent resumption of Biobot Analytics wastewater analysis of levels of SARS-CoV-2 across the country, as of November 1, 2023, cases of COVID have climbed by about 12 percent from their mid-October lows. The Midwest and West have seen a sizable increase while the Northeast and South have remained plateaued.

These findings are in keeping with rates of hospitalization having stabilized 25 percent below their summer peak of over 20,000 weekly hospital admissions. With the rise in COVID cases, these are expected to climb again and be compounded by the concurrent influenza and RSV seasons.

Currently, according to modeling by Dr. Michael Hoerger, levels of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater correspond to more than 650,000 daily infections and a cumulative figure of 1.38 percent of the population infected at any one time, or one in 73 people. His four-week forecast indicates that by the first week of December daily new cases will climb to just under a million COVID infections with the trajectory of cases continuing upwards.

In essence, the long summer wave has transitioned into the latest winter wave, underscoring the nature of the “live with COVID” directive that has been forced on the world’s population. Last month, in the UK, approximately 1,400 people died of COVID. In the US, more than 4,000 lost their lives. According to Our World in Data, the cumulative US toll for 2023 will be 60,000 deaths. Since the week ending August 26, 2023, more than 1,000 weekly deaths have been registered by the CDC.

These “official” figures represent only deaths that have been reported to the public health agencies and do not account for missed diagnoses or deaths incurred as a byproduct of the post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infections.

An analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published in their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that in 2023 about 63 percent of all COVID-related hospitalizations were among the elderly and they have accounted for 90 percent of all the reported COVID deaths. Most of these had not received their bivalent COVID vaccines.

Visitors sit among white flags that are part of artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg’s “In America: Remember,” a temporary art installation to commemorate Americans who have died of COVID-19, on the National Mall in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021. [AP Photo/Patrick Semansky]

More concerning has been that hospitalizations among the elderly have turned sharply upwards, more than doubling from the beginning of the summer wave to its peak in late August. About one-sixth of these were among nursing home residents, meaning they are becoming infected by nurses, staff and families that come to visit them. Given their numerous medical comorbidities and advanced ages, they are far more likely to suffer deadly consequences.

So, what do the authors of the study recommend for them? They wrote, “Adults with increased risk of COVID-19-associated hospitalization, including all adults aged 65 or greater, should reduce their risk for severe COVID-19 by receiving recommended COVID-19 vaccinations, adopting measures to reduce their risk for contracting COVID-19, and seeking prompt outpatient antiviral treatment after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result.”

Behind such recommendations is a pronounced apathy and complete disregard for their plights. Not only are COVID-19 tests difficult to obtain and relatively expensive, both the more accurate PCR tests, and the self-administrated rapid antigen tests, the antiviral Paxlovid is notoriously difficult to come by and requires a physician to confirm a positive test before ordering it, despite the FDA lifting the requirement for this restriction. This also means the person in question having possibly to see their physician in often crowded waiting rooms where proper mask usage has become all but nonexistent.

Additionally, only 7 percent of US adults have received the latest iteration of the COVID boosters as of late October. This means that the recommendations being doled out by the discredited CDC on the use of these life-saving treatments are either being ignored, or, most likely, the commercialization of these treatments has made it much more difficult to gain access, leading many to give up on obtaining them and hoping for the best.

However, the airborne nature of these respiratory viruses and the complete abandonment of any mitigation measures mean that their ability to “reduce their risk for severe COVID-19” simply means such advice is rhetorical and meaningless unless there is a concerted effort to embrace an all-inclusive public health action to track, trace and eliminate the virus.

The EG.5 (Eris) subvariant of Omicron account for more than 54 percent of all variants found in US wastewater. Meanwhile, BA.2.86/JN.1 (Pirola) has appeared on the CDC’s variant dashboard at 0.5 percent of all detected variants. This is a highly mutated subvariant of Omicron that is rapidly displacing other variants in Europe and now the US in time for a New Year wave.

The continued rise in COVID infections and reinfections implies the continuation of the pandemic of Long COVID and the persistence of the virus with its potential for long-term health complications. However, with NIH funding all but dried up, research for understanding the nature of chronic infections and its impact on population health will be speculative and limited.

At present, there are no treatments for Long COVID and current research on Paxlovid appears to offer limited protection against the development of PASC (Long COVID). A study published from Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Healthcare System in Seattle, Washington, found that the antiviral appeared to reduce only the risk of some thromboembolic events (35 percent decrease in the relative risk) but had little impact on more than 30 other potential conditions for the chronic disease.

Unlike previous observational studies, what set their approach apart on the question of the benefits of Paxlovid in decreasing the risk of Long COVID was that the investigators conducted a “retrospective matched cohort” study that would match two populations who were infected with COVID and treated with or without Paxlovid, emulating something like a randomized control trial.

There were approximately 9,600 participants in each arm of the trial and, according to the lead author Dr. George Ioannou, 93 percent of those receiving Paxlovid were treated within a day of their positive test. The end point of the study was the manifestation of 31 different conditions that have been attributed to PASC. They found that the absolute risk reduction was 2.7 percentage points, or a decrease from 14.5 percent to 11.8 percent.

Workers and their families should heed the warnings of principled scientists and public health officials and ensure everyone obtains the COVID vaccine booster where possible and that people consistently wear N95 respirators that are well-fitted to protect themselves and those in their workplaces and communities. They should insist on maintenance of the HVAC systems at schools, offices and work to include the use of high-efficiency HEPA filters.

The abandonment of any sound public health approach to the COVID pandemic and all other infectious pathogens is simply a criminal endeavor by the capitalist ruling elite for which the population is made to suffer the acute and long-term consequences. Without a massive reinvestment in local and state public health departments to build the cadre of scientists, researchers and investigators to address these pressing issues, there will be a rapid return to semi-barbarous conditions from which modern society emerged.

Why is there an epidemic crisis of congenital syphilis in the United States?

Benjamin Mateus

Congenital syphilis (CS), a bacterial infection in pregnant women caused by the spirochete Treponema pallidum that is passed on to her fetus, has risen tenfold over the last decade, said the top US public health agency this week. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data that showed in 2022 there had been 3,761 such cases (102 cases per 100,000) reported through the public health departments across the country, up from only 335 cases back in 2012.

These figures are astounding when one stops to think that the condition had been almost eliminated two decades ago, when rates of CS had dropped to a low of around 8 for every 100,000 births. It is a clear demonstration of the complete collapse of the public health system in the country, when a preventable disease, easy to diagnose and with a well-established cure readily available, is allowed to spread unchecked.

Cases of congenital syphilis in the United States. [Photo: CDC data. Graphics by WSWS.]

What the CDC researchers noted was that in almost every case the mother had either not been tested in pregnancy or not received treatment. More than a third of the infected pregnant women had not received any prenatal care. The condition led to 231 stillbirths and 51 infant deaths. Beside these deadly consequences, the infants who don’t receive treatment can become blind, deaf or have cognitive developmental delays or even skeletal deformities.

Nearly 2,000 of these CS cases occurred in the southern states, notorious for poverty and severely under-resourced in terms of obstetric care for the population. These regions are also areas where high rates of syphilis exist among the adult population. But this is only one facet of a broader social crisis that afflicts the downtrodden and discarded in every aspect of their lives.

In response to this yet another public health crisis, the CDC issued a statement “recommending concerted action to stop the increase of newborn syphilis cases and continues to sound the alarm about the consequences of a rapidly accelerating epidemic of sexually transmitted infections in the United States.”

However, given the health agency’s politically criminal neglect in responding to the COVID pandemic, these official media releases carry little weight. The public has lost all trust in the CDC’s capacity to act as stewards of the population’s well-being.

The rise in CS coincides with the epidemic of syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases (2.53 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis recorded in 2021). These have been soaring in the last decade after 70 years of gradual declines. The gains that had been made to eliminate syphilis have all but vanished over the last 20 years, which has directly contributed to the rise in the rates of newborn syphilis.

Based on the enormous declines in infections during the postwar years, in October 1999, the CDC in collaboration with other federal agencies had initiated the National Plan to Eliminate Syphilis in the United States. In 2000, cases were down to fewer than 6,000 cases of primary and secondary syphilis in the country (not including tertiary and latent cases). In all, approximately 30,000 cases of syphilis were recorded in 2000. However, these efforts were short-lived.

The conflicts instigated by the US in the Middle East after the 9/11 attacks, including decades-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the US-NATO war against Libya, and civil wars fomented by the US in Syria and Yemen, led to skyrocketing US military spending. The 2008 global financial collapse was accompanied by massive attacks on the jobs and living standards of working people. Spending on public health was slashed, and private medicine, the vast bulk of the US health care system, became increasingly unaffordable for the most impoverished and vulnerable in society.

The defunding of the public health infrastructure in the US across this period, along with the opioid epidemic and deaths of despair, has coincided with the surge in the epidemic of syphilis. One can only surmise that the malign neglect seen during the COVID pandemic was already the modus operandi with regard to any serious public health crisis affecting the working class.

By 2021, overall cases of syphilis had risen to an astounding 176,713. One would have to look back more than 70 years to find such figures. The last time the country recorded a higher figure was in 1950, when public health officials recorded 218,000 such cases.

The difference then, however, was that the trends were in the exact opposite direction, rapidly declining. With the discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming, a great leap forward had been made in curing a disease known to ancient society.

By the beginning of World War II, the technical capacity to mass-produce the antibiotic had been developed. By 1944, more than two million doses had been made. Great strides were achieved in reducing the impact of this disease in the following decade. In the UK, there was a 95 percent reduction in new cases between 1946 and 1955. The US saw a 75 percent decline in the same period.

Syphilis cases in the United States from 1941-2020. [Photo: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]

This makes the current upsurge to what amounts to pre-antibiotic levels even more damning. This is especially so in relation to the severe drug shortage of penicillin G benzathine, exclusively made by Pfizer, the manufacturer of the mRNA COVID vaccines and boosters. Although Pfizer has said that the interruption in supplies is the “result of a complex combination of factors including significant increases in demand,” Dr. Thomas Moore, an infectious disease consultant and professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, told the Lancet, “The inability to ramp up production to meet the demand is largely due to the lack of interest in antibiotic production by pharmaceutical companies, which are pursuing drugs that have a bigger payoff.”

While spending on the US defense budget has climbed by 2.75 times since 2000 to an unprecedented high of $876.9 billion, the funding for Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) had plummeted by more than 40 percent by 2013, to $585 million, and has remained stagnant since. This is one of the main programs by which the federal government helps local areas prepare for disease outbreaks.

This has led to a dramatic drop in the budgets of local health departments that includes the loss of invaluable experience through cuts that leave them short-staffed and overburdened. Almost half of all state and local public health employees left their positions between 2017 and 2021. Almost 75 percent of these were workers under the age of 35. More recently, in the wake of the ongoing pandemic, many in leadership positions are leaving, complaining of facing significant political pressures and being harassed when trying to give sound public health advice.

Citing a March 2023 Health Affairs report, Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer for the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), noted, “If current trends continue, nearly 130,000 public health workers will leave their job by 2025. The sector already needs 80,000 more workers to be able to provide basic, necessary public health services.”

German government increases arms deliveries to Israel tenfold

Johannes Stern

Germany’s complicity with Israel in the genocide against the Palestinians is not limited to expressions of solidarity with the right-wing Netanyahu government. The German government is playing a central role in arming and equipping the Israeli war machine, which has destroyed large parts of the Gaza Strip in the past four weeks and killed more than 10,000 people—including thousands of women and children. Now it is expanding the bloodbath and receiving more and more German weapons in return.

Israeli warship of the Sa’ar 6 class, built by ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems at the German Naval Yards Kiel [Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit]

According to a report by the German Press Agency (dpa) on Wednesday, which refers to information from the Ministry of Economics, the German government has massively expanded its licences for arms exports to Israel. By November 2, it had approved exports amounting to almost €303 million—almost 10 times the amount of the entire year 2022, with around €32 million.

The majority, 185 of the 218 individual licences issued so far this year, have been issued and finalised since the start of the Israeli massacre in Gaza. Dpa quotes a representative of the ministry led by Robert Habeck (Greens) as saying, “Due to the current situation,” the German government is “prioritising applications for the export of military equipment to Israel.”

The specific deliveries are secret, but what is known makes it clear that they involve lethal war equipment. On October 12, the Defence Ministry announced that the government had approved a corresponding Israeli “support request” for combat drones. The drones in question are Israeli-made Heron TP drones, which Germany had leased from Israel to develop its own combat drone programme. According to Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (Social Democratic Party—SPD), Israel also asked for ammunition for warships, protective waistcoats, components for air defence and communications equipment, among other things.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) also reports that Germany has supplied more than 1,000 tank engines to Israel in recent years. The basis for this is an export licence from the year 2000, and the engines were probably installed in the Israeli Merkava-4 main battle tank and Namer armoured personnel carriers. Diesel engines were also supplied for the Israeli Eitan wheeled armoured personnel carrier.

In addition, nuclear-capable Dolphin-class submarines and Sa’ar-class corvettes were delivered for the Israeli navy. According to SIPRI, there is close military-industrial cooperation between German defence giants such as Rheinmetall, MBDA Deutschland and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Israel—including in the development of missiles and other ammunition.

Israeli submarine Rahav conducting sea trials in the ports of Wilhelmshaven. [Photo by Ein Dahmer / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Speaking to the European television channel Euronews, SIPRI researcher Zain Hussain suggested that German war equipment is playing a central role in the current massacre in Gaza. “According to our estimates, some of these engines are probably ready for use in Gaza,” said Hussain. “Some of the German ships have also been put into operation” and are “probably being used to fire at targets in the Gaza Strip.”

There is no doubt that the German government is directly participating in genocide with the arms deliveries and is complicit in the most serious war crimes.

In his resignation letter of October 28, the head of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber, described the horrific events in the Gaza Strip as “textbook genocide.” As a human rights defender with more than three decades of experience, he is well aware that the term genocide has often been misused politically. He said:

But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate.

In the Gaza Strip, “civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred,” Mokhiber continued. And in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, houses are being “seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms (are being) accompanied by Israeli military units.” Apartheid reigns throughout the country, he wrote.

Mokhiber also did not mince words with regard to the complicity of the imperialist powers in the “expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine.” The governments of “the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe” are “wholly complicit in the horrific assault,” he added.

They refused to honour their treaty obligations, he wrote, such as compliance with the Geneva Convention. But it goes even further:

But they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities. In concert with this, western corporate media, increasingly captured and state-adjacent, are in open breach of Article 20 of the ICCPR, continuously dehumanizing Palestinians to facilitate the genocide, and broadcasting propaganda for war and advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence.

This smear campaign is particularly aggressive in Germany. Eight decades after the Nazi reign of terror and the worst crimes in human history, establishment politicians and the media are once again fuelling a pogrom-like atmosphere in order to boost armaments, justify genocidal violence and suppress the growing resistance to it. The height of criminality is that this essentially fascist policy is being pursued in the name of the fight against antisemitism.

In fact, the ruling class—which is once again building a fascist party in the form of the Alternative for Germany (AfD)—is not concerned with protecting Jewish life. In the Middle East, Berlin is pursuing geostrategic and economic interests by supporting Israel as an imperialist bridgehead in the region. And in Germany itself, the accusation of antisemitism serves to establish an authoritarian regime. All those who oppose Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians are denounced as “antisemites” and “terrorists”—even if they are Jewish themselves.

Significantly, the far-right Netanyahu government, for its part, supports the return of German militarism, which waged a war of extermination during the Second World War and committed the Holocaust against 6 million Jews. Shortly before the Israeli massacre in Gaza, Pistorius and his Israeli colleague Gallant signed an agreement to sell the Israeli missile defence system “Arrow 3” to Germany. With a value of over 4 billion euros, this is the largest defence deal in Israeli history.

Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile. [Photo: United States Missile Defense Agency]

For German imperialism, “Arrow 3” is a central component in establishing Germany as the strongest military power in Europe, making it again “fit for war” (Pistorius) and preparing it for a full-scale NATO war against the nuclear power Russia. When the Israeli armed forces successfully deployed Arrow 3 for the first time in the course of the genocide in Gaza, the German media cynically celebrated this as “good news” and a successful “endurance test.”

Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the resurgence of imperalist barbarism

Andre Damon

A Palestinian man mourns over the body of his relative who was killed in an Israeli airstrike, in the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled)

In the face of mass protests involving millions of people throughout the world, the Israeli government is escalating its genocidal assault on Gaza.

Throughout the day Friday, Israel bombed and burned hospitals in Gaza City, which is being invaded by Israeli forces. Israel attacked six hospitals, including two children’s hospitals, in the span of 24 hours.

The head of Al-Shifa Hospital, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, told Al Jazeera, “This day was a day of war on hospitals.” This included the direct strike on the front gate of Al-Shifa hospital, where thousands of refugees are sheltering. Videos shared online show the use of white phosphorus against the hospital, a blatant violation of international law.

The actions of the Netanyahu regime have the active support and are being coordinated with the US-NATO powers, and in particular the Biden administration, which repeatedly and insistently rejects a ceasefire and any limits or conditions on Netanyahu’s actions.

This past week, US President Joe Biden declared that there is “no prospect” of a ceasefire. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby reiterated that there were no “red lines” regarding the killing of civilians by Israel. “That is still the case,” Kirby said. “It’s also true that the airstrikes continue, and it’s also true that civilians are dying in those airstrikes.”

Calls for a ceasefire have been rejected by the entire political establishment, including and not surprisingly the despicable political fraudster, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The events of the past month are radicalizing millions of people throughout the world, which has found expression in the mass demonstrations against Israel’s genocide. The development of this movement requires an understanding of the underlying causes of the imperialist atrocity.

The universal support by US and NATO for the homicidal actions of the Israeli regime is an extension and deepening of 30 years of unending war, spearheaded by the United States. US imperialism and the NATO alliance saw the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990-91 as an opportunity to utilize its unrivaled military force to reimpose shackles on the former colonial world.

In 1991, in response to the Gulf War, the International Committee of the Fourth International organized the Berlin Conference of Workers against Imperialist War and Colonialism. The statement calling for the conference, “Oppose Imperialist War and Colonialism!,” explained the imperialist gang-up against Iraq.

All the great historical and political tasks that confronted the working class and the oppressed masses at the beginning of the 20th century are now posed in their starkest form. The savage bombing of Iraq and the virtual destruction of its industrial infrastructure marks the beginning of a new eruption of imperialist barbarism. Capitalism cannot survive without enslaving and destroying millions….

This ongoing and de facto partition of Iraq signals the start of a new division of the world by the imperialists. The colonies of yesterday are again to be subjugated. The conquests and annexations which, according to the opportunist apologists of imperialism, belonged to a bygone era are once again on the order of the day.

Emphasizing this point, in a report to the Special National Congress of the Workers League in 1991, convened to discuss the Gulf War, David North, then national secretary of the Workers League (predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States), concluded:

[The Gulf War] marks the beginning of a new imperialist redivision of the world. The end of the postwar era means the end of the postcolonial era as well. As it proclaims the “failure of socialism,” the imperialist bourgeoisie is, in deeds if not yet in words, proclaiming the “failure of independence” as well.

The first war against Iraq was followed by an eruption of imperialist violence. Throughout the 1990s, the imperialist powers engineered the carve-up of Yugoslavia, culminating in the 1998 bombing campaign against Serbia. The United States then used the September 11, 2001 attacks as a pretext to launch the “war on terror,” including the invasion of Afghanistan and the second war against Iraq, which led to the deaths of more than one million people.

The United States launched an unremitting campaign of assassination, torture and kidnapping throughout the Middle East, the most horrible expression of which was the torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. This was followed, under the Obama administration, with the war against Libya and the CIA-backed civil war in Syria.

In justifying its own crimes against the population of Gaza, Israeli officials have pointed to the precedent set by the United States under the “war on terror.” The war crimes of the past are being used to justify the war crimes of the present.

At the same time, the open support for genocidal actions is intended to set the precedent for the future. In the context of the US-NATO war against Russia over Ukraine and the preparations for war against Iran and China, the imperialist powers are making clear that there are no “red lines” that they will not cross.

War abroad is at the same time a war against the working class at home.

In his 1916 work Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Lenin defined imperialism as “reaction all down the line.” In both war and domestic policy, he explained, “finance capital strives for domination, not freedom. ... The difference between the democratic-republican and the reactionary-monarchist imperialist bourgeoisie is obliterated precisely because they are both rotting alive.”

Israel’s genocide in Gaza is accompanied by an open turn to state repression and censorship. Last month, Congress overwhelmingly passed a resolution accusing students opposing Israel’s actions of “antisemitism” and “solidarity with the terrorists.” In Florida, Palestinian student groups have been banned, and Columbia University announced Friday that both Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace would be disbanded as student groups and prevented from holding events on campus.

Germany, France and the UK have all attempted to ban demonstrations and carried out mass arrests. German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck threatened Muslim immigrants who make statements opposing Israel’s genocide with arrest and deportation.

These measures are directed not only at protests over Israel’s crimes but all opposition to the policies of the ruling elite. Confronted by a growing strike movement, the ruling classes of the imperialist powers are turning to war and domestic repression.