Dublin riots highlight far-right threat in Europe amid deep social crisis

Thomas Scripps

Riots in Dublin Thursday night highlighted the growing threat of the far-right in Ireland and internationally.

These forces are gaining confidence under conditions in which the ruling class is increasingly using migrants as a scapegoat for their own savaging of workers’ living standards.

Roughly 500 people were involved, setting fire to a tram and two buses, and looting 13 shops, leading to the largest deployment of riot police in the country’s history. Eleven police vehicles were damaged, close to 50 officers injured and 48 people arrested.

The violence was whipped up by far-right agitators over the stabbing of a woman and three children earlier that day, reportedly by a foreign national. Sources have told the BBC the man under suspicion is an Irish citizen in his late 40s who has lived in the country for 20 years. There are indications he was suffering a psychotic episode after being recently diagnosed with a brain tumour. A Brazilian delivery driver, Caio Benicio, helped to disarm him.

At 5.22 p.m., a voice message was sent by user “Kill All Immigrants” to the Telegram channel Enough is Enough urging, “Bally [balaclava] up, tool up. And any … fucking foreigner… just kill them. Just fucking kill them. Let’s get this on the news.”

The same day, Irish mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor had tweeted to his 10 million followers, in response to the stabbing, “We are not backing down, we are only warming up. There will be no backing down until real change is implemented for the safety of our nation. We are not losing any more of our woman [sic] and children to sick and twisted people who should not even be in Ireland in the first place.”

He had tweeted the day before after a series of posts denouncing Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar for encouraging migrants to register to vote, “Ireland, we are at war.”

British fascist leaders Paul Golding, head of Britain First, and Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the English Defence League, were quick to congratulate McGregor. Robinson posted that he was “so happy Conor is standing up for the people of Ireland.” Golding called on him to organise “a ‘Freedom March’ in Dublin.”

Events like this in Ireland, where the far-right has had a negligible political presence in recent decades, underscore the global scope of the far-right movement being incubated and actively promoted by the bourgeoisie. They follow a period of rising, low-level agitation, intimidation and violence by far-right organisations, most prominently the Irish National Party and Irish Freedom Party.

Groups of extreme nationalists, white supremacists, religious fundamentalists, anti-vaccine campaigners and COVID denialists come together around opposition to immigration and to a “weak” and “woke” establishment—in fact only magnifying the anti-migrant rhetoric of that same establishment. Over 300 anti-immigration protests were held in Ireland in 2022, and another 169 in the first six months of 2023.

The picture of migration to Ireland has changed substantially in the last 20 years, from a minor phenomenon to the point where 20 percent of the current population was born abroad. The number of asylum seekers has climbed from 7,500 in 2021 to 74,000 this year—most of them Ukrainians.

As the social crisis has worsened, far-right forces have taken advantage by scapegoating migrants, with the government legitimising many of its claims.

On the Sunday before the riot, Varadkar told the RTÉ’s The Week in Politics that although “migration is a good thing for Ireland,” the country “needs to slow the flow” and be “realistic” about the support offered.

“When it comes to irregular migration, that’s people coming from Ukraine or people seeking international protection, I think one of the things we have to do when we have to be honest with each other about this, is to make sure that what we offer—in terms of accommodation, in terms of work, in terms of money—is similar to what’s offered in other EU countries.”

The social crisis for which migrants are blamed, including those seeking asylum due to the predatory wars provoked the imperialist powers, grows more severe by the day, courtesy of a ruling class concerned only with its own enrichment.

Speaking about the popular discontent being exploited by the far-right, CEO of the Immigrant Council Brian Killoran referred to “several crises gripping Ireland, including a housing emergency and crumbling health services, traced back to the 2008 recession and the period of austerity that followed,” reported Euronews.

This January, the Irish Medical Association warned, “Our public health services are in an endless cycle of crisis. Too few doctors, too few beds and too few healthcare professionals. We are simply not investing enough in recruiting staff and increasing capacity to meet the needs of patients. This is leading to dangerous waiting times for treatment and unprecedented levels of burnout amongst doctors.”

In August, figures were reported by the Irish Examiner showing over 127,000 hospital procedures had been cancelled or postponed in the first six months of the year, 24,000 of them in relation to child patients.

In March, Varadkar admitted a housing deficit of 250,000 homes. There are 12,000 people homeless—among them 1,400 asylum seekers made homeless since January, says the Irish Refugee Council.

According to the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI), average rents increased 82 percent in the 12 years 2010-2022, versus a European Union average of 18 percent; house prices increased 55 percent. The BPFI’s report notes that, in the same period, Ireland’s population increased by over half a million people while housing output grew by just 130,000 units.

Ann-Marie O’Reilly, representing tenants’ aid organization Threshold, told Le Monde this July how “successive governments abandoned backing for social housing..

With asylum seekers disproportionately housed in the most deprived and under-service areas—frequently in hotels, old office blocks and sports halls—the far-right twists and manipulates legitimate social grievances.

While they remain a fringe force in Irish politics, examples from Europe—where parties like the Alternative for Germany, Brothers of Italy, the French National Rally, the Dutch Party for Freedom and the Sweden Democrats have built a steady constituency of 10-20 percent of voters and exercise an outsized influence on national politics—is a warning.

Thousands strike once again in Germany against assault on educational and social programmes

Gregor Link

Around 10,000 public sector employees took strike action once again Wednesday in Berlin for better working conditions and higher wages. These included teachers and educators from daycare centres and schools, as well as employees of the Senate and district administrations, firefighters and university employees.

The trade unions Verdi, GEW, IG Bau and GdP (police) called for a strike demonstration in front of the Brandenburg Gate. A further 6,000 people from all areas of the public service run by Germany’s states took part in a rally in Hamburg on the same day. Even after two rounds of negotiations, there is still no offer from the employer.

The trade unions are calling for a 10.5 percent wage increase or at least 500 euros per month for a term of twelve months, as well as a “city-state allowance” of 300 euros for employees in Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen, to counteract the particularly high rents and cost of living.

In fact, from the point of view of the trade union bureaucracy, the strikes are mainly aimed at keeping the mass opposition under control, which is developing against years of austerity across public institutions. While trade union officials are imposing real wage cuts for employees—as they recently did for the railways, postal service, and municipalities—tens of billions of euros are being made available for corporations and the military.

This cooperation against the employees finds its clearest expression in “Concerted Action,” a corporatist framework involving trade union leaders, government and employers’ associations to agree on cuts and social attacks behind closed doors. These are then enforced with the help of the trade union bureaucracy.

In order to break through this policy, the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) advocates the establishment of independent rank-and-file committees that unite internationally and lead a real struggle. The demonstration in Berlin also made it clear that countless employees are no longer prepared to accept the incessant attacks. 

Strike demonstration by public workers in Berlin

Maria has been a teacher at a Berlin support centre for four-and-a-half years. She said, “Even if we get 500 euros more, it does not compensate for the working conditions. We are in a class with too many students and have constantly growing workloads. There are fewer and fewer new colleagues and an increasing number who are untrained, which we then try to offset through mentoring and other measures. That’s the main reason why we’re striking. But nothing is shifting.

“We will have an increase to 16 students. These are our students who either have a high potential for violence, who are refugees, are traumatised, who have major personal difficulties and whose parents often do not speak the language. We do not have our own interpreters, which of course leads to problems in communication. The students no longer have any childcare facilities. In Berlin’s all-day schools, students should be allowed to try out sports and music, but that does not happen. They are only kept in custody, and even that is done badly.

“The shortage of staff and the workload are compounded by sick leave, also due to the coronavirus pandemic. The duty of supervision can no longer be guaranteed. This also leads to repeated incidents of violence. We have the police with us all the time. Under these conditions, we will no longer live up to our educational mandate.

“We see pupils leaving school without being able to read and therefore having few future prospects. The fact that this country does not invest in the future of children, but rather spends even more money on tanks, is simply pathetic and sad.”

Maria supports the demand to invest the Bundeswehr (German army) Special Fund in education and social work. 

“What our students have experienced and are telling us are things that are hard to imagine,” she said. “Many come from Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey and other countries in the region. Some have already attended five schools by their seventh or eighth school year. Some children have been in the home for seven years—since they have been here—and have no prospect of an apartment. They do not have a sense of self-sufficiency and are not provided with therapeutic care.

“We also cover these things because no one else does it and no one feels responsible. No money is set aside for inclusion and integration. Instead, it’s always about letting the refugees work earlier.”

Maria said of the massacre in Gaza, “It’s not just about two nations. America is currently deploying the largest ship to the Mediterranean and Germany is also deploying troops to the Mediterranean. One wonders what is currently being done here. You want to make a statement but feel intimidated. But people all over the world are looking for networking.”

“We need a lot more money, and above all more staff,” said Paula, who runs a daycare centre and came to the demonstration with her employees Samira and Laura. “Calculating sick days is completely unrealistic. We are never staffed to meet the expected ratio. Actually, there is always a need for manpower.

“Some of the staff are already on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The educators are constantly understaffed but do everything in their power to somehow save everything. People are the sufferers of this situation. The exploitation of the proletarians increases.”

Many students and university employees also took part in the demonstration. A student worker commented, “Wages must be increased by significantly more than 10.5 percent. Dependencies are created in the departments, which make it impossible for us to criticise. Many of us work overtime that is not remunerated. These power structures must be dismantled.”

She continued, “All over the world, rents and food prices need to change. The healthcare system needs to be strengthened. The Bundeswehr should not get so much money. It’s a social struggle, it’s all connected.”

Felix confirmed this, stating, “Administration and teaching cannot be thought of independently of each other. We need more wages and better-equipped administration at universities. The vacancies that exist will not be filled because there are currently no applications due to the low salary level. Participation in academic activities therefore becomes a luxury.”

“We need more money, better expert advice and more recognition. The state of education is symbolic of the fact that reproductive work is not valid under capitalism,” said Sarah. “We need to think of all these struggles together. We have to stop the machines, strike and stop work.”

Regina, who has been working in parenting and family counselling in Tempelhof-Schöneberg since 2017, noted, “Employers say there is no money, but that’s not true. On the one hand, people are opposed to taxing millionaires and, on the other hand, hundreds of billions of euros are spent on armaments. We are now to become ‘war-ready’ again, say the politicians! We need money for social welfare and work, not for weapons and war.

“Then they claim that too much money is being spent on the refugees. This is a disgrace and an impudence. In doing so, they divide us and create scapegoats—and that plays into the hands of the AfD (Alternative for Germany). There is enough money, it just needs to be distributed differently. We must not allow ourselves to be divided. Together we are more and stronger.

“My colleague who is a single parent has now accepted another job because her salary is not enough to support her two children. It can’t be right to work full-time and then be at risk of poverty. Politicians say: If you earn too little, apply for housing allowance. It’s inhuman. We have already swallowed far too much, and the end of the story is that a few have used the consequences for themselves and make huge profits.

“My friend works in England, there is currently also a broad strike movement in the hospitals, because there are also cuts taking place there. We can learn from this, stop working and make it clear that nothing works without us. This is the tradition of the workers’ movement. Even colleagues in the industrial sector have no interest in spending money on weapons.”

Regina sharply criticised the German government’s rearmament and war policy, saying, “The ‘new epoch’ is an absolute disaster. We have fought against rearmament and militarisation for decades. Now 100 billion euros are approved for weapons overnight and the peoples are to be turned against each other again. Germany is to be made fit again by the government in order to enforce its economic interests worldwide.

“My solidarity is with the Palestinian people. What is happening in Gaza is a disaster. The conflict did not only take place on October 7. For many decades previously, there had been arrests, destruction, and displacement of the Palestinian population. Illegal settlement construction must stop immediately, and the occupied territories must be evacuated. That’s very important.”

China suspends publishing youth unemployment data

Jack Wang & Lily Zhou

Unemployment, ever increasing difficulties in job search and economic downturn in China have occupied the minds of hundreds of millions of young people and the broader working population. The announcement this summer that official youth unemployment data will no longer be published only added fuel to the already very sharp social tensions built up over the past few decades.

At a press conference on August 15, spokesperson of the National Bureau of Statistics, Fu Linghui, announced that the publication of the urban unemployment rate for youths (between the age of 16 and 24) will be paused, without specifying a resumption date. Justifying this decision, Fu explained that the authority would need time to adjust and improve its metrics because increasing numbers of young people in this age range are enrolled in schools and are not out there on the job market.

Hardly anyone believes that this suspension came out of technical considerations. The Beijing regime is terrified that the rapidly growing youth unemployment figure will foster social opposition and undermine its rule.

The rate of youth unemployment has remained at a high level for more than a year. As early as July 15, 2022, the figure had soared to a record 19.9 percent. There might have been illusions that the criminal lifting of Zero COVID policy last December—which led to the deaths of more than a million people—would halt the rise in the jobless rate. Those have been quickly shattered. As of July this year, the last data point released by the government stood at 21.3 percent.

By this May, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that among 96 million young people in China, 33 million of them had entered the labour market, and more than 6 million were unemployed. But even this is a gross underestimation.

Contrary to bogus justification provided by Fu Linghui, this figure never included any students in school or young people from the countryside. Under the current metric, the large number of people who did not actively register for unemployment would not be counted. And for gig economy workers like delivery drivers—whose incomes are far below what is needed for subsistence—they are not part of this statistic either.

Among college students, their job prospects are bleak. At the same press conference, Fu commented that “most new graduates have secured a job offer.” This is another fabrication. College students complain on social media that they are compelled to sign documents upon graduation declaring that they have found a job.

Facing an ever tightening job market, college graduates flocked to graduate schools, attempting to delay their entry into the workforce and hoping that a higher degree might boost their job prospects. In 2021, 3.77 million students participated in the entrance exams for graduate schools. This number went up to 4.57 million in 2022 and 4.74 million, or more than a third of college graduates, in 2023.

A career path that all of a sudden has become very popular recently is the civil service, which is viewed by many as a far more secure and stable job option amid recent waves of layoffs. This year, 2.6 million people registered for the recruitment exam, an increase of a million when compared to five years ago. A significant number of young people spend sometimes years to study for the exam full time, hoping to secure a position that can have hundreds, even thousands, of applicants.

One college graduate commented on social media, “[I’m] 23 years old and graduated with a degree in engineering more than a year ago. I was not able to get into grad school. I was not able to pass the civil servant exam. I could not find a teaching position at public school. I could not find a job. My life seems to be suspended the moment I graduated… On the job market, I feel like a rotten cabbage that no one wants. I’m cheap and never look good.”

The youth unemployment rate does not include millions of young people in the countryside, who have an even bleaker chance of finding a job. Incomes from farming are minimal and they are compelled to become “peasant workers” who migrate to work in the cities. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, there are more than 295 million internal migrant workers in China, most of whom cannot benefit from basic social services in the cities. And if they cannot find a job, the young migrant workers are not included in the urban unemployment statistics.

Wang, an unemployed young worker from the countryside, described his experience in an interview. He attempted to find work in Guangzhou after finishing school, but the salary was lower than promised and was never paid to him. He had to go back home to make a living.

Income from farming his family’s half-an-acre of land was just 2,600 RMB a year ($US364). If he rented the land out, he would only get 900 RMB a year. These amounts are barely above starvation levels. If he wants anything more, he has to find a job. Most available jobs require him to work for more than ten hours a day for a monthly salary of around 2,000 RMB.

The Chinese government has no solution to the climbing unemployment rate and is simply trying to cover it up by not publishing the figures. This cynical manoeuvre cannot conceal the serious economic crisis of Chinese capitalism. Over the past few years, tens of millions of people went bankrupt and more than 700 million people are in debt.

The unemployment crisis is just one consequence of the economic stagnation more broadly throughout China since 2019, which is radicalizing layers of workers and young people at the same time and is creating a huge political crisis for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime.

The CCP justified the restoration of capitalism and the dismantling of the social gains of the 1949 Chinese Revolution on the basis of the economic growth produced by China’s integration into global capitalism as a cheap labour platform. The resultant social ills, the regime claimed, were just the price or “birth pangs” necessary for the overall improvement in the material conditions of large sections of the population. This illusion is now being shattered.

This year, China has already witnessed a sharp increase in working class protests and strike actions across all industries and around the country, mostly over wage arrears, low pay and denied compensation. Significantly, the government no longer publishes any statistics related to social unrest. China Labour Bulletin’s strike map gives a small indication of what is taking place: 1,494 cases of industrial action have been documented so far in 2023, almost double the figure for 2022 and one-and-a-half times more than in 2021.

Thanksgiving in America: End of pandemic social programs fuels rising hunger

Trévon Austin

Across the United States, every metric used to measure inequality has registered a sharp rise in the last few years, a consequence of the ruling class’s drive to make the working class pay for the mounting crisis of American imperialism.

Food insecurity rates across the country are higher than they were during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Families are living day to day without sufficient sustenance at a higher rate than over the previous three years. Food insecurity rates in rural areas have risen faster than in metropolitan regions.

While the capitalist press readily reported President Biden’s arrival at a billionaire’s Nantucket estate for his Thanksgiving holiday, the conditions of want among growing sections of the American population have been largely ignored.

People wait in line while volunteers with the Allegheny West Foundation distribute Thanksgiving meals at the Panati Recreation Center in Philadelphia, Thursday, November 18, 2021. [AP Photo/Matt Rourke]

The primary cause of the rise in food insecurity and hunger is soaring food prices, exacerbated by cuts in federal social programs that had been expanded as part of the COVID-19 pandemic state of emergency, which Biden ended last spring with the support of both capitalist parties.

Preliminary data for 2023 indicate that one of the drivers in the rise of poverty is the end of expanded pandemic emergency benefits, including child tax credits, food stamp allotments and free school meals. Now that such benefits have been cut back, while food inflation remains painfully high, food banks across the US are reporting a sharp rise in the public demand for assistance.

In a front-page article headlined “Demand Surges at Food Banks,” the Detroit News on Saturday quoted Kristin Sokul at Gleaners Community Food Bank (serving Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston and Monroe counties in Michigan) as saying that Gleaners had seen a 30 percent increase in requests for support for the past year. A 2022 report by Michigan’s Food Security Council estimated that 1 million state residents (out of a population of 10.1 million) faced food insecurity.

Increases in federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, food stamp) benefits during the pandemic emergency ended last March. More than 1.3 million Michigan residents lost SNAP benefits that month, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In Texas, program director at the Brazos Valley Food Bank, Shannon Avila, told local television station KBTX3 that traffic had risen across all of the organization’s branches. “So, 2021-2022, our pantries saw about a 20 percent increase in overall visitors,” Avila said. “From 2022-2023, as projected to be by the end of the year, we’re seeing a 17 percent increase, and from 2021-2023 that’s a 41 percent increase in visitors to our food pantries that they’re seeing every month, every day, every week.”

Beth Burrell, communications director of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that her organization distributed 6 percent more food over the past three months than it did during the same time last year and served more meals than it did during the peak of the pandemic.

“Everything that we’ve been seeing in southwestern Pennsylvania has indicated exactly what, unfortunately, the report is showing,” she said. “In [fiscal year] 2020, we distributed 40 million meals and in [fiscal year] 2023, we ended up distributing 42 million. It just goes to show that the need really isn’t decreasing or even returning back to what it was.”

The number of people living in food insecure households has seen the largest one-year increase since 2008. A report by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that an additional 10 million people were living without consistent access to food in 2022 compared to the previous year. This represents a 31 percent jump for the entire population and 44 percent for children alone.

The USDA’s analysis paints a sobering picture of the extent and severity of food insecurity. The survey asked households about experiences and behaviors that indicate food insecurity, such as being unable to afford balanced meals, cutting the size of meals, or being hungry because of too little money for food.

An estimated 17 million American households reported difficulty finding food last year, according to the USDA report released in October. That was up from 13.5 million in 2021. Just 17 of 50 states have food insecurity rates lower than the national average of 11.2 percent.

As a whole, the working class has seen its grocery bills inflate, with food prices rising 11 percent over the past two years. Many working class and poor families also face food shortages, including those who live in so-called “food deserts,” where the absence of proper supermarkets makes it difficult to obtain fresh produce.

The cessation of several core aspects of the expanded pandemic emergency safety net, from extra food assistance to automatic re-enrollment in Medicaid, has inevitably produced hardship and confusion among workers. The Census Bureau reported last year that COVID-19 relief efforts had significantly reduced childhood poverty, but now these programs are gone.

A number of programs gave Americans a lifeline during the height of the pandemic: The child tax credit was increased; unemployment benefits and food assistance were expanded; and a federal moratorium on evictions kept families sheltered even if they were unable to afford rent.

During the pandemic, all SNAP recipients had their benefits boosted through an Emergency Allotment program. According to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the average family started receiving about $90 less per month in food stamps in March after the emergency program ended, although some households saw a monthly drop of as much as $250.

Prior to the pandemic, people would regularly be cut from Medicaid if they started making too much money to qualify for the program, gained healthcare coverage through their employer or moved to a new state. However, the federal government prohibited states from kicking people off Medicaid during the pandemic, even if they were no longer eligible.

Since March, dozens of states have launched extensive reviews of their Medicaid recipients, removing those deemed ineligible. The process could take up to a year to complete, although some states are moving faster than others. Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma and West Virginia are among the states aiming to begin removing ineligible Medicaid recipients as early as May.

Childcare has also been impacted by the end of pandemic programs. During the pandemic emergency, federal subsidies kept many childcare providers afloat. According to a report from First Focus on Children, an advocacy group, federal spending on children fell 16 percent between fiscal years 2022 and 2023.

The Century Foundation estimates that roughly 70,000 childcare programs will likely close after losing federal pandemic aid, which could cost families around $9 billion a year in lost income as a result of parents reducing their working hours or leaving their jobs altogether.

New surge of COVID-19 in Australia

Clare Bruderlin

Amid an upsurge of transmission internationally, a new wave of COVID-19 is occurring in Australia.

By the limited data available, COVID-19 community transmission is now considered “moderate to high,” in New South Wales (NSW), the country’s largest state, following a 20.6 percent increase in COVID notifications over the past fortnight. In Victoria, quantitative wastewater levels indicate “high COVID-19 viral loads.” In Western Australia (WA), wastewater concentrations have reached levels not seen since January this year.

This undated, colorized electron microscope image made available by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in February 2020 shows the Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, indicated in yellow, emerging from the surface of cells, indicated in blue/pink, cultured in a laboratory. [AP Photo/NIAID-RML]

The immune-evasive EG.5, “Eris,” subvariant of Omicron and one of its sublineages, is reported to be responsible for the current surge in cases. The Omicron BA.2.86 subvariant (nicknamed “Pirola”) has also been detected in Victorian wastewater “at low levels.” In WA, the Pirola variant appeared with a wastewater frequency of 12.43 percent.

The upsurge of the virus takes place amid the waning vaccine immunity of the population. 89 percent of Australians have not received a COVID-19 vaccine in the past six months. New “monovalent” boosters, which have shown a significant antibody response against the Eris subvariant, are already available in the United States and were approved in Australia last month. They will, however, not be made available until December 11.

Professor Brendan Crabb told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) last week that it was, “likely a few hundred thousand people in Australia have [a COVID-19] infection now.” Crabb warned that “if we don’t do anything by the time this wave is over there will be 3, 4 or 5 million Australians who will get COVID in the next few months. There will be thousands of Australians who die early in the next few months as a result, there will be 50,000 to 100,000 cases of Long-COVID, there will be business disrupted and aged care facilities shut down…”

As Crabb indicates, this wave is occurring under conditions where the federal and state governments, now all Labor with the exception of Tasmania, have made clear that there will be no change to public health measures to stop the spread of the pandemic and protect health and lives.

The Albanese Labor government’s systematic dismantling of even the most basic measures to stop the spread of the virus, including mask mandates, vaccine mandates, testing and reporting requirements, means that the population faces this new wave of COVID-19 infections totally unprepared.

Mass testing clinics have been shut down and state authorities are blocking individuals from reporting positive Rapid Antigen Tests, as self-reporting portals were closed in the country’s largest states, NSW, Queensland and Victoria.

What has been established in place of a coordinated public health response is a policy of mass infection and death, as the continued circulation of a deadly virus is treated as a non-event.

Following the dismantling of COVID-19 public health measures over the past two years, on October 20, Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Paul Kelly, announced that COVID-19 was no longer considered a communicable disease of national significance. Like the formal ending of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency response by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in May, this decision had no scientific basis.

Kelly later admitted that the ending of the “national significance” designation was made, even as he and other health officials were aware that a new wave was beginning. Rather than seek to minimise the damage, the health authorities are acting like arsonists, doing everything to ensure maximum carnage.

The criminality of the official response was summed up by remarks NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant made in an interview with the ABC last month. Chant declared:

We are not recommending everyone needs to know exactly what virus they’ve got, so if you're young, fit and your doctor wouldn’t recommend antivirals or any change in management, please stay at home be aware of what are the signs of deterioration and you can always call our health service health direct if you can't discuss it with your GP. Generally, we're not recommending any testing in that group... We are recommending stay at home and don't share your germs around.

That is a statement with staggering implications. In the first instance, people are being instructed that they are essentially on their own even if they are infected with a potentially-deadly virus. The “signs of deterioration” presumably include increasing difficulty breathing, which can be a prelude to a major medical episode, including rapid death.

More generally, Chant’s statement repudiates public health as it has been understood for decades if not centuries. The instruction for young people to essentially “tough it out,” and not bother finding out what they are infected with would be more appropriate to the Dark Ages, than to modern medicine. The absolute prerequisite for advanced healthcare is accurate information, but Chant is declaring that the relevant authorities are simply not interested.

They have rejected calls for the reintroduction of mask mandates in any of the states or territories. Queensland’s chief health officer, John Gerrard, said that a basic measure such as that would be “disproportionate.”

The dismantling of testing has rendered official case numbers meaningless, but figures of hospitalisations and deaths provide a hint of the growing transmission of the virus and its impact, though both are lagging indicators.

Nationally, hospitalisations have increased from recent lows of 910 at the beginning of September, to around 1,400.

The death toll is rising. There have been over 300 COVID-19 deaths since September. In Victoria, 145 deaths were reported in the most recent 28-day reporting period. More than 5,900 deaths from the virus have been recorded in Australia since the end of 2022.

In line with the true character of the “let it rip” policy as a program of mass murder, particularly targeting the elderly and vulnerable, widespread fatalities are continuing in aged care facilities, with little or no comment.

Earlier this month, the grim milestone was passed of 6,000 total COVID-19 deaths in such facilities. The virus is killing at least six people every day in aged care homes. There are over 2,400 active COVID-19 cases in aged care, with 1,707 cases among residents and 718 among staff, across 334 aged care facilities. Over 1,200 deaths from COVID-19 have been recorded in residential aged care this year alone, more than in the first two years of the pandemic combined.

The latest Department of Health and Aged Care report for November revealed that just 39 percent of aged care residents have received a COVID-19 booster in the past 6 months, meaning that residents face the present wave of cases with waning vaccine immunity and under conditions of the spread of new and more vaccine-evasive variants.

The responsibility for ensuring vaccines are provided has been left in the hands of aged care providers, rather than any coordinated response by the government. Thousands of aged care residents as well as staff are left vulnerable to the risk of serious health complications and death through infection. 

Even in the hospitals, mask mandates have largely been withdrawn, and in many, specific COVID wards have been abolished. That means the circulation of the virus among the most vulnerable, those in hospital for other medical conditions.

The corporatised trade unions have collaborated with the Labor governments in creating these conditions.

In August, the Health Services Union (HSU) lauded the NSW Labor government’s ending of mask mandates in public hospitals, declaring in an email to members on the day of the changes that the decision was “a milestone in health.” In fact it was a milestone in death. The HSU leadership, were it consistent, may consider renaming the organisation to the anti-health services union.

The policies directed against public health are being dictated by capitalist profit interests. The measures needed to end the pandemic, including indoor masking with N-95s and respirators, air filtration and mass testing and contact-tracing, are well known. The issue is they would impinge on the “economy,” by which is meant the fortunes of the corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

New board of directors restores Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI

Kevin Reed

Sam Altman, left, CEO of OpenAI, appears onstage with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at OpenAI DevDay, OpenAI's first developer conference, on Monday, Nov. 6, 2023 in San Francisco. [AP Photo/Barbara Ortutay]

Late Tuesday, Sam Altman was reinstated as CEO of the artificial intelligence technology company OpenAI, the firm behind the massively popular chatbot called ChatGPT.

As part of the arrangements to bring Altman back, OpenAI agreed to replace three of four members of the board of directors. These measures took place following the demand made by more than 90 percent of the OpenAI staff in an open letter signed on Monday that they would quit and go to work for Microsoft unless Altman was brought back as CEO and the entire board resigned.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI wrote, “We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.”

OpenAI’s President Greg Brockman also agreed to return after having previously resigned in solidarity with Altman. Brockman is no longer on the board and another member, Ilya Sutskever, who is the chief research scientist at OpenAI and was involved in the initial removal of Altman, has also left the board.

In his own post on X, Altman wrote, “I love openai, and everything i’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together,” adding that he was looking forward to returning to the company and “building on our strong partnership” with Microsoft, its biggest investor.

For its part, Microsoft also endorsed the OpenAI leadership moves. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella statement on X said, “We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board. We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance.”

Nadella added that Microsoft, which has a $2.8 trillion Wall Street market value, is likewise looking forward “to building on our strong partnership and delivering the value of this next generation of AI to our customers and partners.”

In a press statement, Thrive Capital, a venture capital firm and major shareholder that recently estimated the value of the artificial intelligence company at $90 billion, said of the restoration Altman and Brockman, “OpenAI has the potential to be one of the most consequential companies in the history of computing. Sam and Greg (Brockman) possess a profound commitment to the company’s integrity, and an unmatched ability to inspire and lead. … We believe this is the best outcome for the company, its employees, those who build on their technologies, and the world at large.”

The leadership crisis at OpenAI erupted one week ago when the company announced that Altman “would depart as CEO and leave the board of directors” because he had not been “consistently candid in his communications with the board.” An official company statement did not provide details about the reasons for the decision other than to say that the board “no longer had confidence” that Altman could lead OpenAI.

The new appointments to the board—Taylor, a former Google, Facebook, Twitter and Salesforce.com executive and Summers, the former Treasury secretary under Barack Obama and president of Harvard University (2001-2006)—along with the retention of D’Angelo, the current CEO of the question and answer site Quora, were part of the negotiations to bring Altman back as CEO of OpenAI.

According to a report in the New York Times based on comments from two unnamed people who were “in touch with the board,” D’Angelo led the arrangements which were “in place by late Sunday.” The Times said, “Determining the composition of the board slowed down the decision to bring Mr. Altman back,” and “OpenAI called the new board its ‘initial’ board, indicating it could expand.”

The Times also reported that “a person close to the board’s deliberations on Tuesday” said that D’Angelo and two other former board members, Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner, had pressed for unspecified concessions from Altman that included “an independent investigation into his leadership of OpenAI.” In the end, however, McCauley and Toner were forced to step down while D’Angelo was retained, and Altman and Brockman were also blocked from returning to the board.

Clearly, the appointment of Summers to the OpenAI board with the backing of Microsoft indicates that the ruling establishment is inserting a trusted representative of US financial, political and national security interests into the leadership turmoil at the world’s most influential AI company.

The release of the preview edition of the OpenAI text-based human conversation simulator called ChatGPT almost exactly one year ago led to the fastest mass adoption of a new technology in the history of the computer and information age. Within a few months more than 100 million people signed up for free online access to ChatGPT, which can automate the process of scientific research, create various forms of technical, legal and journalism writing, software development, language translation and solve complicated math problems, just to name a few uses.

Following the popular response to ChatGPT, numerous other consumer and business tools have been released that create images, photos, drawings or paintings based on a text description (Dall-E 2), create royalty-free music based on various inputs such as genre, instruments, mood and length of time (Soundraw), and generate new video content based on text and video input (Gen-1).

While many of these AI tools have been made available to individual users, Wall Street corporate and financial interests anticipate the greatest impact of artificial intelligence to be derived from increases in accuracy and productivity that will drive significant cost reductions across industry.

The automation of intellectual labor represented by artificial intelligence has the potential to eliminate much workplace drudgery and reduce necessary working time significantly, freeing people to engage many other forms of activity. But under capitalism, such developments in the productive forces are used to intensify exploitation, drive down the conditions of life for workers and amass even greater profits for the capitalist class.

The impact of AI on the healthcare, finance, transportation, manufacturing, entertainment and retail industries is expected to drive up capitalist profits by streamlining processes, automating decision-making, and, above all, eliminating jobs through automation derived from accessing vast stores of information and data.

According to a study published by Goldman Sachs Research in April, as the latest wave of generative AI technologies “work their way into businesses and society,” they could “drive a 7% (or almost $7 trillion) increase in global GDP and lift productivity growth by 1.5 percentage points over a 10-year period.”

Furthermore, the authors of the Goldman Sachs report, economists Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, wrote, “Despite significant uncertainty around the potential for generative AI, its ability to generate content that is indistinguishable from human-created output and to break down communication barriers between humans and machines reflects a major advancement with potentially large macroeconomic effects.”

Goldman Sachs, a multinational investment bank and financial services company with $2.55 trillion in global assets under management, says that the impact of AI on labor productivity depends on the specific application and speed of adoption. In general, however, Briggs and Kodnani project that “Shifts in workflows triggered by these advances could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation.”

Meanwhile, the US military deployment of autonomous weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is moving ahead rapidly to integrate artificial intelligence tools into its present proxy war operations in Ukraine against Russia and in the preparations for war with China.

A report by Associated Press in January said that the use of drones in Ukraine has accelerated the trend toward deploying “the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare.”

The Pentagon is on a quest to develop drones that can “identify, select and attack targets without help from humans,” and this would “mark a revolution in military technology as profound as the introduction of the machine gun,” first introduced in 1884 and used widely in the imperialist slaughter of World War I.

The race to be the first to develop, in the next few years, lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) is a top priority of the US military. In a program called Replicator, the AP report says the Pentagon “is intent on fielding multiple thousands of relatively inexpensive, expendable AI-enabled autonomous vehicles by 2026 to keep pace with China.”

AP also quoted the statements of Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks last August that the Replicator initiative seeks to “galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of U.S. military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap, and many.”

This is the corporate and military context within which the leadership crisis at OpenAI has erupted and no matter what political, philosophical or business differences led to Sam Altman’s firing and subsequent rehiring, the turmoil was the result of a ferocious struggle within the ruling class over who will be in control of these revolutionary technologies and what they will be used for.

Study finds that SARS-CoV-2 can shut down mitochondria, the cellular “power plants”

Bill Shaw

A recent study published by the journal Science Translational Medicine found that SARS-CoV-2 infection inhibits the ability of mitochondria to produce energy in the body’s cells. This is the latest of thousands of studies published on the myriad negative impacts of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, underscoring the reckless and criminal character of the “herd immunity” mass infection policy now in place globally amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The mitochondrion is often referred to as the “powerplant of the cell” because of its key role in making a compound called adenosine triphosphate or ATP. ATP is ubiquitous in cells, playing a crucial role in a vast array of cellular processes by providing the energy needed to make them happen.

The mitochondrion has five major enzyme complexes involving 160 polypeptides that carry out the process of ATP production. These polypeptides are encoded by the DNA in both the mitochondrion itself and the cell’s nucleus.

Mitochondrial observation in epidermal layer of cassia occidentalis, stained with Janus Green B, a basic dye and vital stain used in histology. [Photo by Krishna satya 333 / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The study, produced by a multi-institutional group of researchers led by a team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the COVID-19 International Research Team (COV-IRT), found that SARS-CoV-2 can shut down cellular manufacture of key polypeptides in the five enzyme complexes. The mechanism by which it does so is to prevent transcription of the genes that encode the polypeptides into messenger RNA or mRNA.

The cell uses mRNA to build polypeptides in the process of translation. When transcription is suppressed, there are fewer mRNAs available to translate, and thus fewer polypeptides translated from them, in turn reducing the number of enzyme complexes in the mitochondrion for making ATP.

This phenomenon occurred in multiple tissues, including the mucosa of the nasopharynx, the heart, lungs, kidneys, and lymph nodes. In some cases, once the immune system cleared the SARS-CoV-2 virus, cells were able to resume production of the complexes. But in human autopsy specimens, the researchers found that production of these complexes in many tissues remained suppressed beyond viral clearance.

The researchers hypothesized that sustained suppression of mitochondrial energy production in the heart and kidneys resulted in the death of the patients they studied at autopsy. They also conjecture that ongoing inhibition of the mitochondria after infection in survivors might also play a role in the symptoms of Long COVID, especially general fatigue and malaise, two of the most common and often debilitating symptoms suffered by Long COVID patients.

Notably, at autopsy there was a tissue differential in whether genes encoding the peptides making up the enzyme complexes remained suppressed after viral clearance. In particular, lung tissue uniformly rebounded, with upregulation of the genes in order to make up for the deficit incurred during viral infection. In the heart, the sustained post-infection suppression was total, whereas it was only partial in the kidneys and lymph nodes.

The study found that not all polypeptides that compose the five enzyme complexes were suppressed. Indeed, the cell attempted to upregulate manufacture of the enzyme complexes in response to the deficit of ATP. Those genes not suppressed by the virus were upregulated, with increasing transcription and thus increasing translation and abundance of the associated polypeptides. However, without the missing polypeptides that were suppressed, assembly of additional enzyme complexes was blocked.

The researchers found other effects of SARS-CoV-2 on the mitochondrion. First, it induces the transcription of other mitochondrial genes that activate the immune system’s inflammatory response. Second, it suppresses the transcription of genes involved in a host of other mitochondrial functions. Third, it promotes the process of glycolysis—which converts glucose to pyruvate. This latter effect is important to viral replication because pyruvate is a substrate used to create lipids and nucleic acids, which are important in the process of creating new virions in the cell.

The finding that SARS-CoV-2 shuts down ATP production in mitochondria of cells is surprising. A review from 2022 of viral effects on mitochondria makes no mention of anything similar. It also suggests mechanisms for the higher fatality rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection relative to other viruses such as influenza, as well as for some of the symptomatology of Long COVID. These subjects—as well as the mechanism by which mitochondrial energy production remains suppressed after viral clearance—require further study.

This study illustrates once again why novel pandemic viruses must be taken seriously and confronted with the full force of modern public health approaches to limit viral spread. The indifference of the ruling class and its dismissal of SARS-CoV-2 as being merely “a cold” or “the flu” fly in the face of numerous studies showing that SARS-CoV-2 is a virus like none other that humanity has yet confronted. It is far more consequential than its predecessors, and thus the total repudiation of a proper public health response amounts to an unprecedented social crime.