Spotify lays off 17 percent of workforce ahead of holidays in third round of layoffs this year

Steve Parker & James Martin

A Spotify banner adorns the facade of the New York Stock Exchange. [AP Photo/Richard Drew]

Spotify, the popular music streaming service, announced last Monday their plan to proceed with their third round of layoffs this year. After letting go of 6 percent of their workforce in January, and another 2 percent in June, the CEO announced a massive new layoff round of 17 percent of their workforce, or some 1,500 workers, who will find themselves without jobs ahead of the holiday season.

Daniel Ek, the billionaire CEO of Spotify, justified the company layoffs, citing “challenges ahead” in a letter Spotify posted on its website, by stating, “Economic growth has slowed dramatically and capital has become more expensive. Spotify is not an exception to these realities.” Earlier in the year, Ek sold over $100 million in shares in June following the previous round of layoffs. Spotify’s stock rose over 9 percent in response to the job cuts announcement. 

Those affected by the latest round of layoffs at Spotify included a wide range of employees in a number of departments, including software engineers, product managers, product designers, user experience researchers and data scientists, among others. Spotify’s podcasts division has been particularly affected this year, with over 200 people laid off in June.

“It’s scary to have your livelihood stripped away”

A number of Spotify tech workers reacted with shock to the announcement on social media platforms such as LinkedIn. One product designer wrote, “I was one of 17 percent impacted by the layoffs at Spotify.” She added, “My partner and I picked up our lives and moved to London for my job as a Staff Product Designer at Spotify UK.”

A design manager on the podcast team wrote, “This is my first time experiencing a layoff and having it happen while on maternity leave was well … weird and jarring. After the call with HR [human resources], I put my baby down for a nap, leaving me with only 30 minutes to process the news before my computer shut off. With that, I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to many of the colleagues I worked closely with.”

“It’s scary to have your livelihood stripped away,” a senior user experience researcher wrote, “especially if you’re relying on a financial safety net you’ve built from scratch.” A UX writer at Spotify was shocked, asserting that “I’m absolutely devastated by the news of another layoff at Spotify today.”

The same day that Spotify announced its job destruction, Twilio, a company primarily focused on SMS marketing and phone service capabilities, announced it was letting go roughly 5 percent of its workforce. Just a week earlier, VMWare, the virtualization software company, also announced a round of layoffs in which 2,837 workers lost their jobs.

All in all, it has been an extremely painful quarter for tech workers. Many companies, large and small, have proceeded with significant job cuts. Nokia, the cellphone manufacturer acquired by Microsoft in 2014, announced in October a massive swath of 14,000 layoffs, roughly 16 percent of their workforce. In the same month, LinkedIn, the professional social network also owned by Microsoft, announced it was letting go of 668 workers. Meanwhile, Amazon revealed plans to eliminate 180 workers from its gaming division, and Qualcomm, the semiconductor company, announced the slashing of 1,258 jobs.

So far in 2023, there have been over 417,568 workers laid off at tech companies globally according to one layoffs tracker, significantly eclipsing the 243,318 laid off in 2022. Considering the difficulties encountered by tech workers in finding new jobs (many affected by the 2022-2023 Meta and Google layoffs are still looking for work), the latest round of holiday layoffs foreshadows hard times for tech workers heading into 2024.

“Investors want profitability”

Tech company workers reacted to the industry layoffs with anger and unease. One tech worker posted, “Why don’t we question why they’re laying off 1,500 people before the holidays, like Spotify? Third quarter revenue was up 11 percent to [$]3.6 billion. They mismanaged resources and now employees are affected.”

Another wrote, “Never forget that CEOs are beholden to investors first and foremost. And right now, investors want profitability—expect CEOs to act accordingly. We got a prime example of this yesterday when Spotify announced that it’s laying off 1,500 employees. CEO, Daniel Ek, cited the need to ‘rightsize’ in response to an economic downturn and high interest rates. 

“But what’s really weird about this move is that Spotify’s stock is up 130 percent over the last 12 months. Why would a company with stock returns like that layoff 17 percent of its workforce? Simply put, it’s what investors want. They believe that Spotify (and many other tech companies) are still bloated, in spite of cuts earlier in the year. Put another way, investors continue to value profitability over growth.”

The tech industry is not the only one affected by this wave of layoffs. The auto industry, following the recent “standup” strike and the United Auto Workers (UAW) sellout contract, is preparing a jobs bloodbath of its own. This week, Stellantis announced it is already planning 3,680 layoffs at Jeep plants in Detroit and Toledo for the beginning of 2024. 

Workers in the public sector are also under the gun. The United States Postal Service recently made public a “restructuring” plan at its Knoxville, Tennessee facility; 14 percent of the workers will be forced either to relocate to another USPS facility or find a new job. Postmaster General Louis Dejoy’s plans to cut 50,000 jobs, for all intents and purposes, is unopposed by the postal workers union bureaucracy, which has not lifted a finger to stop the destruction of jobs.

Broadcom CEO to tech workers: Get your butt back to the office

These layoffs across multiple sectors need to be viewed within the broader geopolitical crisis of imperialism and world capitalism, including the ongoing US-backed genocide in Gaza by Israel and the proxy US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. The US ruling class is waging a two-front war, against workers at home and internationally, in an effort, with deadly consequences, to offset its economic decline on the world stage.

There is a notable and growing disgust and anger among workers, including in the tech industry, at the genocide in Gaza and, in general, against all the imperialist wars undertaken overseas by the US-NATO allies. A number of workers have been fired for expressing their solidarity with the people of Palestine, or have had their job offers rescinded, and some have been put on “no hire” lists.

The American ruling class has sought to dramatically tip the balance of power in its favor, especially following the Great Resignation of 2021, and escalate its policies of class warfare. Gone are the days of nearly bottomless funding of tech startups fueled by Federal Reserve policies of low interest rates. With the rising rates of the last two years, Wall Street and the ruling class are now demanding greater profitability in all sectors, and workers everywhere are being made to pay the price while CEOs and shareholders continue to cash out millions.

Hock Tan, the CEO of Broadcom (which acquired VMWare), bluntly told VMware employees following the recent mass layoffs, “If you live within 50 miles of an office, you get your butt in here.” Tech companies have pursued aggressive return-to-office (RTO) policies over the last two years, putting many unnecessarily at risk of exposure to the many waves of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Such RTO policies and the removal of many perks tech workers once enjoyed are efforts both to discipline the workforce and stave off a giant corporate real estate bubble (and collapse). Office space occupancy rates still hover far below what they were one the eve of the pandemic, creating conditions for the corporate real estate market to implode, with a decline of commercial real estate values of as much as 40 percent. Financial experts have been warning of the dangers of a crisis that could develop into a financial disaster greater than the 2008-2009 crisis.

Corporate debt crisis and financial storms ahead

The recent wave of tech layoffs comes in the midst of extreme uncertainty about the health of the global financial system. Analysts have expressed increasing concern about the potential for a recession in 2024, and the growth of corporate debt and bankruptcies. Spotify’s Ek alluded to the dangers of a growing corporate debt bubble crisis, including at his own firm, which borrowed over $1.3 billion in 2020 and must pay that up by 2026. Over 560 US companies have filed for bankruptcy in 2023 so far, according to a report by the S&P. At least 127 companies have failed to pay their debts, raising the specter of more widespread corporate defaults in 2024 and beyond. 

After injecting more than $4 trillion into the financial system to backstop the market and shore up massive amounts of debt in response to the pandemic in early 2020, the Federal Reserve increased interest rates sharply in 2022, primarily to contain the growth of the class struggle and workers’ demands for higher wages. But such measures are also triggering turbulence and volatility in the financial sector at large, including the unstable conditions now emerging in the US Treasuries and bond market.

China deflation worsens as economic problems mount

Nick Beams

The announcement over the weekend that China is experiencing significant deflation highlights the growing problems confronting the government as it seeks ways to boost the economy.

Consumer prices fell by 0.5 percent year on year in November, the steepest decline in three years. Producer prices, which measure the cost of goods at the factory gate, dropped by 3 percent continuing a trend which has been evident over the past year.

A worker assembles electronic devices at an Alco Electronics factory in Houjie Town, Dongguan City, in the Guangdong province of China. [AP Photo/Ng Han Guan]

In another indication of the expectations of a worsening economy, the rating agency Moody’s last week cut its outlook for Chinese sovereign debt to negative.

It cited the risk of lower growth in the medium term and the likely need for the government to provide support for economically weaker regions of the country.

It said there was a risk of persistently lower growth amid the effects of the ongoing crisis in the real estate sector which has been the mainstay of Chinese growth over the past decade. The need to provide support for weaker regions posed “broad downside risks to China’s fiscal and institutional strength.”

Moody’s downgrade sparked an immediate and sharp reaction from the finance ministry which said it was “disappointed about the decision.”

“China’s macroeconomy continues to recover and high-quality development is steadily advancing,” it said. “It is unnecessary for Moody’s to worry about China’s economic growth prospects and fiscal sustainability.”

The impact of the problems in the property sector on local and central government was “controllable,” it said. That may be the case, at least for the present. But the situation is not showing signs of improvement and the response by the ministry indicates the sensitivity of authorities to economic issues.

Economists and economic institutions have been warned not to make adverse comments on the state of the economy. Also the publication of youth unemployment data was halted earlier this year after it consistently showed the jobless rate for young people aged between 16 and 24 in urban areas above 20 percent.

Data released at the end of November showed that manufacturing activity had fallen for the second month in a row. The official purchasing managers index (PMI) came in at 49.4, below the level of 50 that marks the border between expansion and contraction.

The non-manufacturing PMI was 50.2. While positive, this was the lowest reading since the COVID surge in December last year after the government abandoned public health measures.

On Friday, on the eve of the release of the deflation figures, the Politburo, comprising the 24 top officials of the ruling Communist party, met under the chairmanship of president Xi Jinping to consider the economic outlook in preparation for issuing the official growth target for 2024.

It did not announce any specific measures but said that fiscal policy would be stepped up “appropriately,” according to a report in the official Xinhua News Agency.

The Politburo unveiled a new slogan—“use progress to promote stability”—another indication of sensitivity of the Xi regime to economic slowdown given its political legitimacy is largely derived from the claim that it promotes Chinese advancement.

The new slogan has been interpreted as meaning that the growth target for 2024 will be 5 percent, the same as this year. But that will be harder to achieve because growth in 2023 was coming off a lower base because of the COVID restrictions in force in 2022.

The situation facing the government is also being compounded by the general slowdown in the world economy and the effects of the intensifying economic warfare measures being employed against China by the US, particularly in the areas of high-tech, which have led to a contraction of investment.

On monetary policy, the Politburo declared that it should be flexible, appropriate, targeted and effective. But the word “forceful” was dropped from the statement. This is an indication that while there may be some easing of credit at the margins there is not going to be a general expansion as has occurred in the past.

According to an assessment by Citigroup economists, reported by Bloomberg, the language of the Politburo suggested a shift of focus “more toward economic progress” and that there would be a target of “around” 5 percent for next year. But there is “no indication for mega stimulus from the meeting.”

The call from the meeting for the government to “act within its capabilities” also suggested there were not going to be moves to transfer incomes to households.

One indication of the worsening economic position of households was provided in a Financial Times (FT) report published yesterday.

“China’s state health system,” it said, “has lost tens of millions of subscribers, as higher costs have put one of the world’s largest healthcare schemes out of reach for many people struggling in a post-pandemic downturn.”

It said membership in the scheme, which is state subsidised and covers more than a billion policyholders, fell by “an unprecedented 19 million people” in 2002, according to official data, with warnings that the decline could have continued this year.

The cancellations, following years of growth, have been attributed to a decline in incomes, putting the cost of insurance beyond the reach of large sections of the population, particularly farmers and migrant workers.

The minimum premium for the main health insurance policy has more than doubled since 2018 while the wages of migrant workers have increased by only 24 percent in the same period.

Moreover, like their counterparts in many countries, workers are being hit with onerous co-payments even if they are insured.

The income decline has a significant impact on the government’s economic recovery plan, as explained by Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank in comments to the FT.

“A lack of social safety net, led by strong health insurance coverage, has forced Chinese people to save a significant portion in their income to prepare for external shocks like serious diseases. That has undermined government effects to boost consumption, which holds the key to China’s recovery from the post-COVID economic downturn,” he said.

Xi has stepped forward to play a somewhat more public role on the economy, delivering a speech to a political gathering earlier this month. As reported by Xinhua, he said “our country’s economic recovery is still at a critical stage “and the “development situation” it faces was “complex.”

No doubt the reporting of the remarks was intended to give reassurance to the population that the top leadership was concerned with the issues and intervening. But that tactic is very much a two-edged sword because the more the president associates himself directly with economic policy, the more he will be blamed for any failure to turn the situation around.

Australian government denounces High Court for upholding Constitution

Mike Head

The Albanese Labor government has openly lashed out at Australia’s supreme court, essentially accusing it of deliberately putting criminal “perpetrators” on the streets as a result of its ruling that their previous indefinite detention was unconstitutional.

In an interview on Sunday with the Herald Sun, a witch-hunting Murdoch tabloid, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil condemned the High Court for ordering the release of nearly 150 immigration detainees who had been incarcerated illegally for years.

Australian Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil [Photo: Clare O’Neil MP]

“I had them all in detention, and the High Court forced us to release them, and we had no choice but to follow that,” O’Neil declared. “I really need people to understand that the High Court decided to put these people on the street.”

In effect, O’Neil, speaking on behalf of the government, denounced the seven judges for unanimously upholding even the limited protection of basic democratic rights in the country’s 1901 Constitution.

Reflecting its colonial origins, that constitution has no bill of rights. But it does contain a formal separation of executive and judicial powers, which bars governments from arbitrarily imprisoning or otherwise punishing people without a judicial process, except during wartime.

O’Neil’s attack on the judges has serious political and historical implications. It represents another lurch toward authoritarian forms of rule under conditions of mounting social and political disaffection in the working class.

The separation of powers is a fundamental principle designed to protect the population from despotic and dictatorial rule. A precept of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions, it was forged from centuries of struggle against feudal and absolutist monarchies from the 1215 Magna Carta onward.

Those struggles led to the English Civil War of the 1640s that overthrew the absolute monarchy and its Star Chamber of imprisonment, torture and executions, and the American Revolution of 1776, which overturned British colonial repression.

While the fervently right-wing Liberal-National Coalition, led by Peter Dutton, has played a vicious part in whipping up this atmosphere, the Labor government has sought to outdo it. O’Neil previously reiterated Labor’s opposition to the release of any of the detainees, slandering them as “disgusting.”

Now, she has gone even further to attack the High Court itself for its November 8 order that keeping the detainees incarcerated was unconstitutional and amounted to illegal imprisonment.

O’Neil also accused six released detainees of committing “crimes” for which they have been arrested and locked away, but not convicted. By doing so, one of the Labor government’s most senior cabinet ministers trashed another basic democratic principle, that of innocent until guilty, as well as blatantly prejudicing the detainees’ chances of anything like a fair trial.

“I’m certainly sorry that crimes have been committed by perpetrators who belong to this cohort of people and anyone else in the community,” O’Neil said. “You can’t read a newspaper and hear about crimes being committed like this and not feel anything.”

No evidence against any of the detainees has been produced in court, let alone tested. But O’Neil pronounced them guilty, based on newspaper reports. Those reports are part of a rabid demonisation of the detainees, many of them refugees, all of whom have been literally branded as murderers and rapists.

The Australian, a Murdoch flagship, reported that O’Neil’s “apology” occurred because: “Six of the 148 released detainees have been arrested after committing offences including indecent assault, drug possession, theft, trespass, breaching curfew, parole and reporting conditions.”

In this barrage of vague charges, the word “alleged” appears nowhere! The police accusations are presented as facts, insinuating the guilt of all six detainees of serious offences, overturning the notion of placing evidence before a court.

From what little has been reported in the corporate media about the six defendants, they include highly vulnerable members of society, brutalised and traumatised by years in unlawful indefinite detention, often after fleeing brutal wars, starvation or persecution.

They are being vilified by the Labor government, acting in concert with the Liberal-National opposition and the complicit media. The aim is to justify the imposition of police-state measures that essentially place the detainees in new forms of indefinite detention, flouting the High Court’s order and setting precedents for broader use.

These measures have been rammed through both houses of federal parliament in record time by bipartisan agreement over the past two weeks without even a semblance of debate. They include shackling released detainees in electronic ankle bracelets, potentially for life, and a “preventative detention” system to re-detain people based on what offences the police assert they might commit in the future.

O’Neil’s tirade against the court is all the more serious because at least three legal challenges have been launched already against the shackling legislation, and more are expected, including against the preventative detention laws. Those challenges are based on expert legal opinion that the legislation is no less unconstitutional than the previous form of indefinite detention.

In that context, O’Neil’s attack on the judges prejudices the hearing of those constitutional cases. Moreover, it can be seen as a warning to the court not to strike down the government’s laws or any other repressive legislation, such as the citizenship-stripping bill that the government and the Coalition also pushed through parliament last week.

Both bills are blatant efforts to defy High Court rulings that it is unconstitutional to punish people by executive decree without a court order, whether it be to detain them or cancel their citizenship, thus depriving them of fundamental civil and social rights.

Under the preventative detention bill, all that is required is for an immigration detainee to have been previously convicted, in either a foreign or domestic court, of what is classified as a “serious violent or sexual offence” and for the immigration minister and a court to decide that there is just “a high degree of probability” that “the offender poses an unacceptable risk of seriously harming the community by committing” such an offence.

This amounts to punishment for a thought crime, based on an accusation of what the person might do in the future, not on what they have actually done. On this basis, people can be re-detained for three years at a time, possibly for the rest of their lives.

On both the detention and citizenship-stripping laws, successive Coalition and Labor governments fought vehemently, all the way to the High Court, to defend their arbitrary powers. Before parliament shut down last week for the summer, the two ruling parties teamed up to restore such powers, flying in the face of legal opinion.

Last week, constitutional law expert Professor George Williams warned that the new preventative detention laws would likely be challenged in the High Court on three counts. First, they applied to people convicted in foreign courts. Second, they applied to people “who may have finished serving their sentence years ago and already are in the community.” Third, they only applied to a “specific cohort of people—those people who cannot be deported from Australia.”

It must be said, however, that no faith can be placed in the High Court to protect the rights of the detainees or anyone else. For three decades, the court sanctioned the shameful practice of indefinite incarceration of asylum seekers and other non-citizens denied visas.

That regime resulted from the cruel system of mandatory detention of all asylum seekers arriving by boat, which was pioneered by the Keating Labor government in 1992. It set a global precedent for anti-refugee measures internationally.

In its November 28 judgment, setting out the reasons for its November 8 ruling, the High Court maintained the underlying 1992 regime of mandatory refugee detention. Under that system, nearly 1,000 people are still in indefinite detention, despite domestic protests and condemnations by UN human rights bodies.

The judges also said their ruling did not prevent the re-detention of people if it became “practicable in the reasonably foreseeable future” to remove them from Australia. And the court advised that detention could be re-imposed via a preventive detention law, opening the way for the Labor-Coalition bill.

Similar detention laws could be introduced against anyone accused of conduct or views deemed an unacceptable threat to “community safety” or “national security.” Governments internationally are seeking to outlaw protests against the Gaza genocide, falsely accusing participants of antisemitism, “hate speech,” or aiding terrorism.

These events point to a foul political atmosphere, full of unproven allegations, being incited by the ruling parties and the media. All the politicians involved are also backing Israel’s US-backed murderous assault on the Palestinian people, bombing hospitals, schools, universities and homes in barefaced defiance of international law.

The COVID-19 winter surge and the failed policies of the ruling elites

Benjamin Mateus

Biobot Analytics updated its SARS-CoV-2 wastewater levels yesterday for the week ending December 6, 2023. Although the acceleration seen around the Thanksgiving holiday has subsided, it continues to rise in accordance with the beginning of the winter peak that is underway. The same trend was seen a year ago, followed by a second surge just before the Christmas holidays, which commenced when people began to gather once more with family and friends.

Based on the mass testing that was being done from the summer of 2020 until February 2022, when the BA.1/BA.2 (original Omicron variant) passed across the globe, researchers have observed a strong correlation between wastewater levels and clinical cases that provide them with strong confidence in these estimates. 

Modelers will soon update their estimates given the new information, but already, based on the November 29, 2023 wastewater levels, they have estimated a very high rate of transmission, with 850,000 to 1.2 million daily infections taking place in the US. Other limited objective tools that support these findings include Walgreens Respiratory Index, based on less than 20,000 weekly COVID-19 tests, that indicates the national positivity rate is close to 30 percent and has been climbing since mid-October.

This data also has a direct corollary with the rise in weekly hospitalizations for COVID-19. Currently, for the week ending December 2, 2023, the figure stands at over 22,500, up 50 percent from just six weeks ago. The CDC is expected to update these figures on December 12. Weekly deaths have remained above 1,000 since the latter half of August, for at least 12 straight weeks.

Contributing to the latest phase of the four-year-long pandemic that shows no sign of abating is the JN.1 subvariant, the progeny of XBB.2.86 (Pirola) which harbors more than 30-plus mutations on its spike protein and has the SLip mutation known as L455S that is contributing to its significant growth. It is expected to become the dominant strain globally over the next several weeks. It has already been detected across close to 50 countries, including Brazil, and among travelers to and from India and Singapore.

Not surprising are the findings on this highly mutated progeny of the BA.2.86 lineage, according to a recent report from Japan by Dr. Kei Sato and colleagues at Sato Lab. 

They wrote, “[With regards to its] transmission power (effective reproduction number): It was revealed that the relative effective reproduction (Re) number of JN.1 is higher than that of the parent strain BA.2.86 and the currently mainstream HG.5.1 and HK.3. This means that JN.1 has the potential to become the next mainstream strain, and this can be attributed to the L455S mutation.”

Although it has a lower “RBD ACE2 binding test,” meaning a relative lower infectivity than its parent, Pirola, nonetheless, JN.1 is showing significant resistance to the sera of those who have received the monovalent XBB.1.5 COVID-19 boosters, raising once more the failure of the vaccine-only strategy. As the authors noted, “Taken together, these results suggest that JN.1 is one of the most immune-evading variants to date. Our results suggest that L455S contributes to increased immune evasion, which partly explains the increased Re of JN.1.”

Given this predicted turn of events, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should, based on the vaccine-only strategy, call for the manufacturing of the next iteration of the COVID-19 boosters. Additionally, it should supersede the current anemic campaign that started in September to inoculate the population with the XBB.1.5 monovalent COVID-19 vaccine and call for the population to get ready for another round of jabs. Conceivably, instead of annual COVID-19 vaccines, as had been suggested by the White House, the population could require new COVID-19 boosters on a quarterly basis.

Clearly, the logic of this perspective is approaching the absurdity of more and more frequent injections of a vaccine that ceases to be effective more and more rapidly. This prospect goes a long way to explain the repeated attempts by the CDC to evade or conceal the real characteristics of these variants that are rapidly mutating. 

Rather than acknowledge the bankruptcy of the vaccine-only strategy and undertake a new international strategy of elimination and eradication that would protect life and well-being and assure a very real end to the pandemic, the CDC and other medical authorities are purposefully trying to ignore it at all costs.

One must then assume that CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen’s recent visit to Michigan and acknowledgement of JN.1’s rapid dominance are simply damage control after the fact. On December 7, during a press conference, she admitted that “COVID is still causing the most number of hospitalizations.” She went on to add, “As we get deeper into December and the holiday season, we know that we are going to see more viruses and more bacteria circulating, particularly as we gather for holiday parties, travel for Christmas, we know we are going to see more of that.”

She then concluded with the oft repeated phrase, “We want to make sure that we are using all the tools that we know work to protect each other this holiday season.” One could begin by asking for real-time information, ensure that the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee adopts real evidence-based recommendations and prioritize public health over the demands of the financial markets.

Simply stated, the necessity to rely on a handful of principled data scientists, like Ryan Hisner, Jay Weiland and Dr. Mike Hoerger, for reliable and as-accurate-as-possible information on the state of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic speaks volumes to CDC’s dereliction of responsibility to the population of the United States and the world. 

Dr. Hoerger recently wrote on his social media, “Zooming out to the full pandemic shows the harm of the eight COVID wave: More daily infections than 89 percent of the pandemic, more than 25 times than the actual reported cases, more than 60,000 Long COVID cases each day eventually resulting from these infections, and a winter peak like last year.” Indeed, if the virus doesn’t kill you, even with mild disease, it stakes a claim on the quantity and quality of your life.

To appreciate this, it bears mentioning the recent talk given by Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a nephrologist and scientist at Washington University, St. Louis, who has conducted extensive research on the clinical implications of COVID-19 infections in Australia at the Global Biosecurity at Kirby Institute hosted by Dr. Raina MacIntyre.

He said, “Even when people had mild disease that did not necessitate hospitalization, they were experiencing an EGFR decline in kidney function in the year that followed the infection that measures about two to four milliliter per minute per year. You should be asking, ‘What does that really mean?’ … What that really means is that their kidneys have aged in one year [what they should] have aged in about four years. … You can start thinking about it that the initial hit with SARS-CoV-2 is tantamount to accelerated aging. Instead of growing only one year older, if you’re 50, instead of becoming 51, all of a sudden biologically you are 54 …”

It is no wonder that those with immune suppression, the elderly, those who are deconditioned by obesity, inactivity, pregnancy, smoking and substance abuse, or chronic conditions, are more predisposed to developing more clinically severe disease because they have less reserves against the perpetual onslaught of the virus. And given the complete disregard by the government of all beleaguered countries, it is simply a one-sided war on the working class.

Given the comprehensive work conducted by Dr. Al-Aly, the recent publication in Statistics Canada on the experiences of Canadians with long-term symptoms following COVID-19 is a remarkable (in the negative sense) validation of his group’s findings. 

With a population of 38.3 million, the report noted that about two-thirds of Canadian adults had said they had experienced at least one confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infection, and many had multiple infections since the beginning of the pandemic. Of these, 3.5 million (one in nine) had experienced long-term symptoms, with 2.1 million still experiencing them as of June 2023. Half said they had not seen improvements in their symptomology.

Dr. Claire Taylor, a specialist in Long COVID and ME/CFS, commenting on the study, said, “If you input the Statistics Canada data into David Steadson’s graph, you get 14.6 percent first infection get Long COVID and 38 percent by third infection. The modelling curves were correct. This is literally insane.”

She added, “It’s time we admitted defeat for ‘Let It Rip’ and do something proactive. It’s ordinary people just going to work or school who will be impacted by this. The cavalry will not come. Heed the warnings of someone who has seen the outcome over and over. Long COVID breaks people.” 

It is simple math to extrapolate this data to the rest of the world.

9 in 10 Gazans report lack of food

Andre Damon

Palestinians crowded together as they wait for food distribution in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023. Since the start of the its attack on Gaza, Israel has limited the amount of food and water allowed to enter the territory, causing widespread hunger across the strip (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

As Israel continues its bombing, starvation and ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza, hunger has reached epidemic proportions. Nine in 10 people in Gaza reported going to bed hungry, the United Nations’ World Food Program reported.

More than half of the population—over 63 percent—reported going for days without food. “Hunger stalks everyone,” UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine), the United Nations body responsible for Palestinian refugees, wrote in a statement on Twitter. “Too many people haven’t eaten now for two, three days in the Gaza Strip.”

UN Special Rapporteur on Food Michael Fakhri told Al Jazeera Arabic, “Every single Palestinian in Gaza is going hungry,” in an interview, in which he identified the mass murder of the population of Gaza as “genocide.”

These reports follow a veto Friday by the United States of a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire. This week, a non-binding ceasefire resolution is expected to pass the United Nations General Assembly. The United States, meanwhile, doubled down on calling for a “military” solution to the crisis, in an open endorsement of the genocide.

“We think there can be a military solution to taking out the leadership of Hamas that planned and carried out the attacks of October 7, in taking out the militants who crossed into Israel and carried out those attacks,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a briefing.

This followed the statement Sunday by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “When it comes to a ceasefire in this moment, with Hamas still alive, still intact, and again, with the stated intent of repeating October 7th again and again and again, that would simply perpetuate the problem.”

On Monday, the Washington Post reported that Israel used US-supplied white phosphorus munitions to carry out attacks on Lebanon, in violation of international laws prohibiting the use of the incendiary weapon in densely populated areas. For weeks, videos have shown Israel raining down white phosphorus on populated areas. The report follows the announcement Friday by the White House that it would bypass congressional authorization to send Israel $100 million worth of tank ammunition.

On Monday, the death toll from the bombardment of the Gaza Strip surged to 18,205, with roughly another 7,000 still missing and likely buried under the rubble. The Palestinian Health Ministry warned that it is following 325,000 cases of infectious diseases, meaning that one in six people in Gaza are ill with such a disease, amid the dismantling of all infrastructure to support life.

Nicholas Papachrysostomou, the emergency coordinator in Gaza for Doctors Without Borders, told Al Jazeera, “every other patient in Rafah has a respiratory infection, amid rainy and cold conditions. In some shelters, 600 people share a single toilet. We are already seeing many cases of diarrhea. Often children are the worst affected,” he said.

The United Nations reported, “on 11 December, the maternity department at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza, was hit. As a result, two mothers were reportedly killed, and several people were injured.”

The World Health Organization Executive Board issued a statement warning of a total breakdown of Gaza’s healthcare system. “Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing, with the risk expected to worsen with the deteriorating situation and approaching winter conditions,” said the WHO’s director-general.

“As more and more people move to a smaller and smaller area, overcrowding, combined with the lack of adequate food, water, shelter and sanitation, are creating the ideal conditions for disease to spread,” he added.

The UN reported: “in the north and Gaza City, Israeli forces reportedly detained hundreds of men and boys staying in public spaces, schools serving as shelters for internally displaced persons (IDPs) as well as private homes. Reportedly, detainees were stripped to their underwear, handcuffed, and were ordered to sit on their knees in open areas, subjected to beatings, harassment, harsh weather, and denial of basic necessities.”

In a statement, Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, condemned this flagrant war crime. “The Israeli army’s publication of shocking photos of detained Palestinian men in Gaza stripped & blindfolded constitutes ‘outrages upon personal dignity’—a form of inhumane treatment that amounts to a war crime,” Shakir wrote on Monday. “Perpetrators should be held to account.”

To date, 81 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since October 7, and 296 medical workers have been killed. On Monday, Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was targeted in a bombing of his home in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, which killed his father. Al Jazeera said the murder came “after a series of threats received by [al-Sharif] last November in an attempt to deter him from carrying out his duty.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists responded to the attack by declaring it was “deeply alarmed by the pattern of journalists in Gaza reporting receiving threats, and subsequently, their family members being killed.” It added, “The killing of the family members of journalists in Gaza is making it almost impossible for the journalists to continue reporting, as the risk now extends beyond them also to include their beloved ones.”

Israel’s mass murder is accompanied by mass displacement. After ordering the entire population to evacuate from northern Gaza, a further 30 percent of southern Gaza has been marked for compulsory evacuation by the Israeli military. Hundreds of thousands of people are being crammed further and further south, huddled in squalid refugee camps near the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, through which Israeli politicians have called for Gazans to be displaced.

Why the World’s Most Popular Herbicide is a Public Health Hazard

Caroline Cox

Photograph Source: Pl77 – CC BY-SA 3.0

Glyphosate, known by its famous brand name, Roundup, is a widely used herbicide (a pesticide designed to kill plants). It is a broad-spectrum herbicide that kills or damages all plant types: grasses, perennials, vines, shrubs, and trees. Glyphosate has been sold as an herbicide since 1974. Its use dramatically increased in the 21st century as its patents expired and genetically modified crop varieties that tolerated exposure to glyphosate became popular.

Experts now believe it is the “most heavily” used herbicide globally. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.

Glyphosate: Widespread Use and Exposure

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated glyphosate usage in 2019—based on data collected between 2012 and 2016—and concluded that almost 300 million acres of farmland were treated with about 280 million pounds of glyphosate yearly. Another 24 million pounds of the herbicide is used every year in home yards, roadways, forestry, and turf, according to a 2020 analysis by the agency.

Given this enormous use of glyphosate in the United States, it is perhaps unsurprising that exposure to it is widespread. A unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did the largest and most comprehensive study to determine glyphosate exposure using urine collected from a sample of Americans selected between 2013 and 2014 to accurately represent the entire population. Researchers found that more than 80 percent of participants, who were six years and older, had been exposed to glyphosate. In discussing the results, the CDC suggested that food was an important source of exposure to the chemical. “Participants who had not eaten for eight or more hours had lower levels of glyphosate in their urine.”

The Salinas Study: Liver Diseases and Diabetes

A growing number of studies link exposure to glyphosate with various human health problems other than the cancer hazard that IARC evaluated. Typically classified as epidemiology, this research does not formally determine cause and effect but is more realistic and often more compelling than research done using laboratory animals or cell cultures.

One example of an epidemiology study comes from the agricultural town of Salinas, California. Starting in 1999, the University of California, Berkeley, scientists recruited pregnant mothers and then their children as volunteer participants in a study called the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS), which was conducted over a period of more than 20 years. These “480 mother-child duos” mostly belonged to farmworker families in the Salinas area. The mothers provided their blood and urine samples and other health information during pregnancy, while the samples from children were collected when they were 5, 14, and then 18 years old. All of this data was used to answer essential questions about glyphosate exposure.

The CHAMACOS study compared teens with higher-than-average exposure to glyphosate as children to those with lower exposure. Teens with higher exposure to glyphosate and its primary breakdown product, aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), were more likely to show signs of liver inflammation, meaning they had a higher risk of developing liver disease. They were also more likely to have metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, high blood sugar, low levels of “good” cholesterol, and several other health problems), which could make them more susceptible to serious health concerns such as liver cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, later in life.

The study had several other interesting results. In the early years of the study (2000-2002), glyphosate exposures in children were infrequent and low. Most participants did not have glyphosate in their bodies. This changed dramatically as time went on. Glyphosate and AMPA were found in 80 to 90 percent of the 14-year-old participants. The researchers note that this mirrors the national and global increase in glyphosate use.

In addition, the Salinas study showed that glyphosate exposures in this agricultural farmworker community were similar to exposures across the country in people who were not farmworkers. According to the researchers, this suggests that the primary source of glyphosate exposure was food, concluding that “diet was a major source of glyphosate and AMPA exposure among… study participants… as indicated by higher urinary glyphosate or AMPA concentrations among those who ate more cereal, fruits, vegetables, bread, and in general, carbohydrates.”

American Women: Pregnancy Problems

Another example of epidemiology showing glyphosate hazards comes from a study of pregnant women living in California, Minnesota, New York, and Washington. This study found that more than 90 percent of these women were exposed to glyphosate and that higher exposures to glyphosate and AMPA during the second trimester were linked to shorter-than-normal pregnancies. The study participants represented all American pregnant women in terms of race, ethnicity, economic status, and urban versus suburban families. The report concluded that exposure to glyphosate “may impact reproductive health by shortening length of gestation.”

Canadian Study: Glyphosate in Food

A detailed evaluation of glyphosate exposure comes from a study of about 2,000 pregnant women in 10 cities across Canada between 2008 and 2011. Based on urine analysis and questionnaires, the researchers concluded that food was a more likely source of glyphosate exposure than household pesticide use or pesticide drift. The foods linked to higher glyphosate exposures were spinach, whole grain bread, soy and rice beverages, and pasta. The strongest link was “between consumption of whole grain bread and higher urinary glyphosate concentrations.”

Government Testing

Government agencies in North America have tested foods for glyphosate contamination. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration started testing food for glyphosate in 2016-2017. In more recent testing of more than 2,000 samples from 2020, the FDA found relatively high levels of glyphosate in lentils (up to 20 parts per million, or “ppm”), garbanzo beans (up to 12 ppm), and black beans (up to 1 ppm). The U.S. Department of Agriculture tested corn (unprocessed grain) for glyphosate in 2021. Glyphosate was found in about 35 percent of the samples tested. The highest contamination level was relatively low at 0.14 ppm.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) tested a much wider variety of foods (almost 8,000 samples) between 2015 and 2017. More than 40 percent were contaminated with glyphosate. Consistent with the FDA data, CFIA found relatively high levels of glyphosate in beans (up to 8 ppm), chickpeas (up to 3 ppm), and lentils (up to 3 ppm).

The researchers found other commonly eaten foods with relatively high glyphosate levels, including couscous (up to 1 ppm), pasta (up to 1 ppm), pearl barley (up to 2 ppm), oatmeal (up to 1 ppm), infant oatmeal (up to 2 ppm), and rye flour/flakes (up to 6 ppm). Two foods with somewhat lower concentrations, but important because they are eaten often, were flour (77 percent of the samples were contaminated; with levels up to 0.8 ppm) and pizza (90 percent of samples contaminated; with levels up to 0.5 ppm). The research by CFIA found that “The highest glyphosate levels were observed in pulses and wheat products.”

Consumer Advocacy Group Testing

Several nonprofit organizations have also conducted testing of popular foods for glyphosate contamination. This testing is beneficial because the results identify brands contaminated with the herbicide, which would typically not be part of the government agency testing. Some 2022 results from the Detox Project, a research platform, provide details about glyphosate residue levels for brands such as Village Hearth’s 100% whole wheat bread (1 ppm), 365 Whole Foods Market’s whole wheat bread (1 ppm), and Quaker Oats (0.5 ppm).

In some good news, the Environmental Working Group reported in 2023 that glyphosate contamination of oat cereals and other oat-based products has decreased, with the highest levels found in Quaker Oatmeal Squares (less than 0.5 ppm).

Organic Farming

Certified organic farmers do not use glyphosate or most other synthetic pesticides. Buying and eating organic food is an excellent way to reduce glyphosate exposure. For example, a 2020 peer-reviewed study found that glyphosate exposure in four U.S. families was reduced by 70 percent within six days after they switched to an organic diet. In the CFIA study of glyphosate contamination of Canadian foods, testing of more than 1,000 organic items found that 75 percent were free of glyphosate, and most of the remaining organic products had only small amounts of the chemical. Organic products can be contaminated by drift, contaminated water, or contaminated equipment, but these levels are typically low.

The amount of organic farmland in the U.S. was almost five million acres in 2021, and organic food sales topped $60 billion for the first time in 2022, according to a 2023 survey by the Organic Trade Association.

“Organic has proven it can withstand short-term economic storms. Despite the fluctuation of any given moment, Americans are still investing in their personal health, and, with increasing interest, in the environment,” said Organic Trade Association CEO Tom Chapman, according to a May 2023 press release.

If organic farming continues to expand and is made accessible to consumers across the U.S., a future with glyphosate-free food seems within reach.