Jewish Supremacist Ben-Gvir stages provocation at al-Aqsa mosque compound

Jean Shaoul

The fascistic and far right forces within Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s new coalition government have lost no time in demonstrating who now determines the trajectory of Israel’s politics.

On Tuesday morning, National Security Minister and Jewish Power leader Itamar Ben-Gvir staged a provocation, visiting the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City under heavy security protection. Islam’s third-holiest site and the location of the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago, the compound has long been a major flashpoint in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Israeli police secure the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem, January 3, 2023. Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist Israeli Cabinet minister, visited the flashpoint Jerusalem holy site Tuesday for the first time since taking office in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new far-right government last week. The visit is seen by Palestinians as a provocation. [AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo]

It was a move guaranteed to further inflame tensions, under conditions where 2022 saw more than 167 Palestinians, including 48 children, killed by Israeli security forces and settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, illegally occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab Israeli war, the highest number since 2005.

With the Palestinian Authority (PA), established under the Oslo Accords, widely despised amid bitter factional conflicts over who should succeed the ailing 87-year-old President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel is intent on provoking a military conflict with the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and Gaza as well as with Palestinian citizens in Israel.

It was Ariel Sharon’s visit to the al-Aqsa mosque compound under a massive military escort in September 2000 that precipitated the second intifada, the five-year-long Palestinian uprising. In May 2021, the fascists’ Flag March coinciding with Ramadan was one of the factors ratcheting up tensions prior to another of Israel’s murderous assaults on Gaza, as well as violent clashes between Arab and Jewish Israelis within Israel.

The Arab states, particularly Jordan, which has custodianship of the compound under an international agreement, have warned Israel against taking any steps that would undermine the arrangements whereby Jews are allowed to visit the site but not worship there. The last years have seen far-right politicians and religious zealots calling for an end to such “discrimination” and Israeli security forces turning a blind eye to settlers, nationalist and religious activists praying at the site.

Ben-Gvir’s incendiary stunt took place less than a week after Netanyahu’s coalition government took office. His key partner is the Religious Zionist alliance, of which Ben-Gvir is a member, committed to Jewish supremacy and apartheid rule, the annexation of large swathes of the West Bank, the expansion of illegal settlements and Jewish prayer at al-Aqsa Mosque.

A convicted racist and supporter of the virulent anti-Arab Kahanist organization, once designated a terrorist organization in Israel and the US, who threatened to expel Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, Ben-Gvir heads the newly created Ministry of National Security. His brief includes the Border Police, the paramilitary force responsible for suppressing the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Security forces that have long allowed the settlers to attack the property and lives of Palestinians with impunity, often under the protection of the military, will now actively encourage pogroms to drive them from their homes and land.

While he had early on declared his intention of visiting the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, after a meeting with Netanyahu on Monday he had apparently promised to delay his visit. Netanyahu refused to veto his visit, knowing it risked precipitating violent clashes with the Palestinians, rocket attacks from Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls Gaza, and an angry response from the Arab states, claiming that “capitulating in the face of threats would be a reward for terror and legitimize actions against Israel.”

In the event, Ben-Gvir went ahead with his visit, albeit a brief one early in the morning. It was not his first visit to the compound, but his first as security minister. In May last year, Ben-Gvir posted pictures of himself and his family at the site and called for its destruction to “establish a synagogue on the mountain.”

After five elections in less than four years in which no government has had a convincing majority, Netanyahu’s majority of four in the 120-seat Knesset is entirely dependent on Religious Zionism’s 14 seats that make it the third-largest parliamentary party. He brokered the electoral alliance of its several factions to ensure they jointly met the threshold for parliamentary representation under Israel’s complex system of proportional representation, an alliance that immediately split after the election into its three constituent parts: Religious Zionism, Jewish Power and Noam.

Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu (left) far-right Israeli lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich (right) and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (centre) and leaders of all Israel's political parties pose for a group photo after the swearing-in ceremony for lawmakers at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem, Tuesday, November 15, 2022. [AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov]

Netanyahu, largely supportive of their policies, is currently in court on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases and particularly welcomed their offer to introduce legislation banning the indictment of a sitting prime minister. He is now utterly beholden to these forces.

These fascists have promised to legalise scores of settler outposts and demolish Palestinian homes and buildings in Area C of the occupied West Bank that is under direct military control. The new government is set to carry out one of the largest expulsions of Palestinians since 1967 if the residents of 12 communities in the Masafer Yatta area refuse to leave their homes to make way for the repurposing of the land for Israeli military use. The demolitions of their homes would be a flagrant breach of the Geneva conventions banning the expropriation of occupied land or the forcible transfer of the local population. It would set a precedent for further expulsions in the West Bank.

Speaking during his Tuesday morning visit, Ben-Gvir said, “There won’t be racial discrimination in a government in which I am a member. Jews will ascend to the Temple Mount.” He threatened those opposing this with reprisals, saying they “must be dealt with an iron fist.”

The Palestinian Authority denounced Ben-Gvir’s action as a “blatant and shameless provocation.” While Hamas also condemned his visit, it refrained from threatening to respond with rocket fire on Israel. Zvika Fogel, a legislator from Jewish Power, hit out at Hamas, telling Channel 12 that Israel’s policy of going to war with Palestinians “every two or three years” was not enough and that it should “subdue them once and for all.”

Netanyahu, in a bid to forestall an international backlash, declared that the government was adhering strictly to the “status quo” position in relation to the al-Aqsa Mosque. Nevertheless, he has been forced to postpone his visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), scheduled for next week, after Abu Dhabi, along with Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other countries, condemned the visit. The UAE and China have called for a UN Security Council meeting to discuss it.

The White House, deeply concerned that this would cut across its efforts to forge an alliance between Israel and the Arab states against Iran, whom it accuses of arming Russia in the US/NATO led war in Ukraine, issued a statement declaring, “The United States stands firmly, and we have been very clear, for preservation of the status quo with respect to the holy sites in Jerusalem. Any unilateral action that jeopardises the status quo is unacceptable, and we will continue to be steadfast on it and be very clear on that.”

Israel’s new foreign minister Eli Cohen has further dismayed Washington with his call for Israel to speak out less in public about the war in Ukraine and to avoid denouncing Russia publicly over its invasion. His remarks drew criticism from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a keen supporter of the US war drive against Russia and one of Israel’s closest supporters in Congress, who called Cohen’s comments “unnerving.”

Israel has launched hundreds if not thousands of aerial strikes on facilities linked to Iran and its allies in Syria, with the evident agreement of President Vladimir Putin to stand down Russia aerial defence systems put in place to defend the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Last weekend, Israel carried out yet another attack on Damascus’ international airport that briefly put it out of action.

COVID-19 infections surge in China

Benjamin Mateus

The speed and scale of the spread of COVID infections as a result of China’s new “let it rip” policy are unprecedented.

China’s abandonment of Zero-COVID has also meant abandoning any meaningful tracking of real figures in terms of case counts and deaths. Estimates by various scientists and epidemiologists, however, provide a horrific account of the public health crisis sweeping across the country.

Many provinces and local CDCs have sought to track infection rates through weekly surveys. These estimates have shown a dramatic surge in infections, with major cities exceeding the 50 percent of the population mark. According to the Asia Times, “More than 80 percent of the 22 million people in Beijing and 70 percent of the 25 million people in Shanghai have been infected by the coronavirus so far.”

A patient is assisted onto a bed at the emergency ward of a hospital in Beijing, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022. [AP Photo/Ng Han Guan]

The epidemiologist and former chief scientist and doctoral supervisor at the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Zeng Guang, told the Times that “as most Chinese cities reported that 50 percent of their people had tested positive, it was reasonable to estimate about 40 percent of the country’s population on average could have been infected.”

The implication of the statement is staggering. That means that since the abandonment of Zero-COVID, possibly 600 million people in China may have been infected with SARS-CoV-2. The Times report also indicated that the cumulative case count could well reach 1.1 billion in the next several weeks.

China is likely seeing more than one million infections daily and the number of deaths at over 5,000 to 9,000 per day, according to British health data firm Airfinity. They are expecting deaths to climb to as high as 25,000 per day in late January.

While the present wave of infections is expected to peak sometime in January, reaching to 3.7 million daily cases, another surge in March will be forthcoming as the outbreak spreads into rural regions after the Lunar New Year holidays. Estimates for the total number of excess deaths due to COVID are upwards of over one million from various institutes which are tracking these figures.

Because the Chinese Communist Party, through its National Health Commission (NHC), has changed the way it has counted COVID cases and deaths, a precise tally has become impossible. Researchers and epidemiologists have resorted to mathematical modeling and indirect estimates such as scenes of crowded hospital wards and bodies overflowing funeral homes and crematoriums to get a glimmer of the scope of the public health crisis.

To place this distinction into stark contrast, China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on Tuesday, January 3, reported the country had only experienced 4,804 new COVID cases and three deaths. That is 25 deaths in all since December 1, 2022. These are based on the very narrow definitions that severely undercount cases and deaths.

According to the NHC, a case is defined as someone with a positive test who is symptomatic, and a COVID death is a death caused by COVID-related respiratory failure or pneumonia. If a person dies with a heart attack and is positive for COVID, these will not be counted. If the exact cause of death is unknown despite the individual having contracted the virus, this too will remain off their ledger.

Meanwhile, reports from various health systems like Wuhan Union Hospital state that they have received 16,358 COVID patients since December 7, of which 5,414 (33 percent) are in serious condition. Yin Shuaijun, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, attempting to determine the number of severe cases across the country, found that 0.51 percent of Wuhan’s population of 13.6 million, or 70,000, had severe COVID.

In the northeastern city of Qingdao, with 10.1 million people, 0.48 percent, or 48,500, were reported to have severe COVID.  Based on his calculations, there may well be more than five million severe cases of COVID, which implies that the death toll from COVID is far higher than the NHC is reporting.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been asking Chinese authorities for the “regular sharing of specific and real-time data on the epidemiological situation, including more genetic sequencing data, data on disease impact including hospitalizations, intensive care unit (ICU) admission and deaths – and data on vaccinations delivered and vaccination status, especially in vulnerable people and those over 60 years old.”

The issue was escalated yesterday when Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies program, openly rebuked Beijing’s handling of the pandemic. He told reporters, “We believe the current numbers being published from China underrepresent the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, in terms of ICU admissions, particularly in terms of deaths.”

In response to the WHO’s criticism, echoing Xi Jinping’s New Year’s Eve “victory” over the virus address, China’s embassy in London released a response that said, “the country had always put the people and their lives above all else” and “always shared its information and data responsibly with the international community.”

Meanwhile, reports of families keeping the decomposing corpses of their loved ones at home waiting for a hearse to arrive to take the body to a crematorium are making their way into the front pages of the mainstream press. The sudden surge in deaths has left funeral homes and crematoriums filled and unable to handle the number of deceased, which is running at five times the volume they typically handle.

As Bloomberg noted, “After hours of waiting, each family was given five to 10 minutes to mourn in a no-frills ceremony, fighting for space in a cramped room with bodies lying on stretchers, zipped up in yellow body bags.” Such was the scene at Shanghai’s Longhua Funeral Home.

Presently, the BF.7 and BA.5.2 subvariants of Omicron are dominant in Beijing and Guangzhou and BQ.1 and XBB in Shanghai, mainly due to travelers into the country. According to predictions made by researchers at Ruijin Hospital and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the peak of infections across major urban areas like Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Guangzhou has already passed.

But as Dr. Peng Jie, infectious disease specialist at Nanfang Hospital in Guangzhou, told the local news, he expected the surge in hospitalization to arrive later as the course of infection drives people, in particular the elderly and those with underlying illnesses, to seek medical attention.

Additionally, researchers are attempting to uncover the effect the Lunar New Year will have on transporting the coronavirus into rural provinces of China. Specifically, they are turning to suburbs of Chongqing, home to millions of working immigrants who will soon travel to see their families across distant regions. Epidemiologists estimate that by mid-to-late January, interior provinces like Gansu, Qinghai and Shaanxi will be inundated with infections.

Chen Saijuan, the lead author of an epidemiological study of the current surge of Omicron infections, underscored the need to divert resources to the rural regions and small to medium-sized cities, where the number of elderly with underlying health comorbidities is higher, making them more vulnerable to infections. The weak medical infrastructure bodes poorly for the population in these areas.

In unison and collectively, countries such as the US, France, Spain, Italy, Israel, Australia, Canada, Japan, India, South Korea, and most recently, Morocco, have implemented travel bans on China, demanding travelers have a COVID-negative test and even quarantine on arrival. As South Korea’s Health and Welfare Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said on Wednesday, “We must keep vigilant to prevent China’s spread of coronavirus from affecting Korea.”

Such bans are known to be completely ineffective and politically motivated. Japan is currently facing the highest death toll from COVID in the entire pandemic. The US is seeing a surge of new infections with the highly infective and pathogenic XBB.1.5 subvariant that is pushing hospitalizations in the Northeast among the elderly to pandemic highs. There is no basis for the new travel bans but to use the pandemic as a political weapon against China.

The abandonment of Zero-COVID was a social crime on the part of the Chinese Communist Party perpetrated against the Chinese working class. But they have only joined the ranks of the capitalist rulers of US and Europe in their complete disregard for the human tragedy and suffering they have caused and continue to cause.

Central bank gold purchases highest in more than half a century

Nick Beams

It has not attracted much attention in the financial press but the World Gold Council (WGC), a think tank and lobby group for the industry, has reported that purchases of the precious metal, once the basis of the international monetary system, were the highest in 2022 for 55 years.

The buying surge has been led by Russia and China with a number of smaller countries also increasing their holdings. It appears to be a response to two developments—the freezing of the Russian central bank’s dollar holdings after the invasion in Ukraine and growing uncertainty over the stability of US financial markets and its political system.

A police officer goes through the gate of Russia's Central Bank building in Moscow, Russia. [AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin]

Reporting on the gold buying moves, the Financial Times (FT) cited the remarks of Adrian Ash, head of research at BullionVault, a gold trading firm.

He said the move to gold “would suggest the geopolitical backdrop is one of mistrust, distrust and uncertainty” in the wake of the freezing of Russia’s dollar assets.

Nicky Shiels, a strategist at MKS PAMP, a precious metals trading company, underscored the same issue in comments to the FT.

She said the sanctions, which froze $300 billion of Russia’s assets, had prompted nations outside the West to ask: “Should we have exposure to so many dollars when the US and Western governments can confiscate that at any time.”

The WGC estimated that in 2022 world official financial institutions bought 673 tonnes of gold. Some 400 tonnes were purchased in the third quarter alone, the largest amount in a three-month period since quarterly records began in 2000.

Russia has ceased issuing monthly data on its purchases, but it is widely believed to be active in the market. The Central Bank of Russia has said previously that it would be desirable for gold to comprise up to 25 percent of its reserves.

The People’s Bank of China reported that in November it made its first increase in gold holdings since 2019, buying 32 tonnes worth around $1.8 billion. Major buyers in the third quarter were Turkey, Uzbekistan and Qatar.

In its report on the surge in gold buying, the FT noted: “The last time this level of buying was seen marked a historical turning point for the global monetary system. In 1967, European central banks bought massive volumes of gold from the US, leading to a run on the price and the collapse of the London Gold Pool of reserves. This hastened the eventual demise of the Bretton Woods System that tied the value of the US dollar to the precious metal.”

Under the Bretton Woods System, established in 1944 in order to stabilise the global financial system after its virtual collapse in the 1930s, the dollar essentially became the global currency. But it had a material foundation in that the dollar was redeemable by the US for gold at the rate of $35 per ounce.

Problems began to emerge in the system in the 1960s due to a contradiction at its very centre. World trade and finance depended on the continued outflow of dollars from the US. But the more offshore dollar holdings increased, the greater the discrepancy between these amounts and their gold backing held in the US.

This contradiction was covered over in the 1950s when the US, because of its vast industrial power, enjoyed a positive balance of trade. But the rise of other major powers, after they had recovered from the devastation of the war, meant that the global trade position of the US was weakened and when the balance of trade turned negative US president Nixon removed the gold backing from the dollar. The gold window was closed.

For the first time in history, world trade and finance rested entirely on a fiat currency, that is, one without a backing in gold or any other material asset.

The result was a surge of inflation igniting a major upsurge of the working class during the 1970s.

One of the major geopolitical consequences, evident most clearly in the recent period as the US has increasingly turned to military means to achieve its strategic objectives, has been the “weaponisation” of the dollar.

Under Bretton Woods, the US was always constrained by the fact that its rivals could exert pressure on Washington by turning their dollar holdings into gold, as French President de Gaulle did in the 1960s.

But in today’s financial system that option does not exist. Countries or corporations which engage in trade or investment deemed to be contrary to US interests can be cut out of the financial system through the imposition of sanctions by Washington, crippling their global operations.

This method has been used to pressure European countries and businesses which want to trade with Iran in defiance of US sanctions. They have been forced to comply under the threat they will be excluded from financial operations based on the dollar.

The threat of exclusion also hangs over those who might seek to defy the high-tech sanctions imposed by the US against China.

Weaponisation made a qualitative leap with the freezing of Russia’s assets. It signified that the unimpeded flow of finance and trade—the nostrum of the “free market”—was a fiction.

There is another factor at work. The dollar functions as the global currency and is regarded as a store of value and a means of facilitating international transactions. This is true not only in trade but above all in finance.

However, the dollar is not grounded on a material foundation. It is sought after because it is regarded as a store of value and is considered to be a store of value because it is eagerly sought after.

In other words, its global role rests on confidence in its stability. But that confidence has been severely shaken in the past 15 years, beginning with the global financial crisis in 2008, which was sparked by the rot and decay at the very heart of the American banking system, produced by speculation and in some cases outright criminal activity.

It was shaken again in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, when the $24 trillion US Treasury market, the basis of the global financial system, froze. A full-scale collapse was only prevented by the pouring in of trillions of dollars by the US Federal Reserve.

Consequently, there has been a small, but nonetheless significant, shift away from the dollar as the key reserve currency. In a blog post last June, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) noted that while the dollar still dominated trade, bond issuance and international lending and borrowing, “central banks aren’t holding the greenback in their reserves to the extent that they once did.”

According to the IMF, the dollar’s share of global currency reserves “fell below 59 percent in the final quarter of last year [2021], extending a two-decade decline.”

Political factors are also no doubt playing a role. The dollar’s preeminent global role depends on confidence not only in its economic foundations but in the stability of its political system. That confidence has been undermined by the coming to power of Donald Trump, his near successful coup attempt of January 6, 2021, and the ongoing political crisis since then.

The buying of gold at the highest levels in more than five decades does not, at least to this point, signify a collapse of the dollar-based financial system and the mountain of debt built on it. But it does point to underlying shifts in the financial tectonic plates that could have major consequences in the future.

Another indication of the shift away from the dollar is the move by China to buy oil and natural gas from Iran, Venezuela, Russia and parts of Africa in its own currency, the yuan (renminbi).

According to Credit Suisse analyst Zoltan Pozsar, whose recent note to clients was reported in the FT, the meeting between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Saudi and Gulf Co-operation leaders in December marked “the birth of the petroyuan.”

China’s objective, he said, was to “rewrite the rules of the energy market” to de-dollarise sections of the world after the freezing of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves.

A letter to the newspaper, which it chose to feature, pointed to a move by Ghana to make payments for oil in gold rather than dollars.

The writer said one should not infer too much from one small country “getting creative with money.” However, if Ghana’s problems were “reflective of the wider issue of global dollar reliance,” it suggested that “gold is being used for its money-like qualities in a way that has seemed unfashionable for much of the past 50 years.”

He concluded with the observation that the surge in gold purchases in the third quarter of last year made one wonder “if this portends moves afoot in the world, if not to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency, at least to chip away at its dominance at the fringes, with all the geopolitical implications that come with this.”

Australian report shows growing homelessness

John Harris

The Australian Homelessness Monitor 2022 report, released last month by the Launch Housing group, revealed that the rate of homelessness is increasing faster than Australia’s overall population growth. It found that the monthly average of people using homelessness services rose by eight percent from 2017–18 to 2021–22, nearly double the increase in Australia’s population over that same period.

The report used statistics provided by specialist homelessness services (SHS) through the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). Nationally, it found that the average monthly number of people seeking support from the SHS increased from 84,800 people in 2017–18, to 91,300 people in the 2021–22 fiscal year.

Homeless woman in Chatswood Mall, Sydney, June 2019 [Photo by Sardaka / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The report stated that based on a population-wide survey “evidence suggests that two-thirds of people experiencing homelessness do not in fact seek support.” This indicates that real levels of homelessness could potentially be as high as 270,000 people.

The report pointed to an increase in “unassisted demand.” A homeless support worker from the Salvation Army said that homelessness services have been overwhelmed, explaining: “[O]ur family and domestic violence service in Karratha has reported having to turn away individuals on 600 occasions in the last 12 months, while the family accommodation program is currently turning away five to ten families a week and has closed the waitlist as they do not want to give families a false hope.”

In an indication of the intensifying cost of living crisis, up to 67 percent of service providers in regional areas observed notable changes in the profiles of those seeking out homelessness services. In particular, there was “an increase in the representation of low to moderate wage earners experiencing homelessness for the first time.”

An online survey respondent wrote: “We are getting more families and low to middle wage earners… The price brackets for rental stress [have] reached families receiving government payments and low to middle income wage earners… we are seeing people seeking assistance who have not accessed homelessness services previously, people who were working and maintaining housing but have lost jobs or been forced out of the private rental market.”

The report provides the reasons people gave for accessing homelessness services. Some 26,121 said it was because of “housing affordability,” up from 20,545 in 2017–2018, a 27 percent increase. 30,315 said they had experienced “financial difficulties;” 30,595 said they had gone through a “housing crisis,” such as eviction, and 13,703 reported that it was because previous accommodation had ended.

These figures are limited, as respondents could identify two or more factors that led to their homelessness. Regardless, the overwhelming cause of the rise in homelessness has been the dramatic increase in rents across the country, skyrocketing inflation and housing shortages.

In November, SQM research reported that rents in Sydney had increased by 28 percent over the previous year to an average of $709 per week. Similar rent rises were recorded in capital cities throughout the country, with a 24 percent rise to $574 per week in Brisbane.

In an indication of the rental affordability crisis, among the 46,000 private rental properties advertised in March 2022, only 1.4 percent would have been affordable for a couple on the aged pension. Similarly, for a single person on the minimum wage, just 1.6 percent of all houses were affordable.

For a single adult with a child over the age of 8 on the Centrelink JobSeeker payment, no houses were affordable last year. That is in part a result of the decision of the previous Labor government to force hundreds of thousands of single parents off family benefits and onto the poverty-level unemployment payment.

Figures from the state of Victoria underscore the trend. In the five years to June 2022, the number of available homes deemed affordable for low-income families decreased from 17 percent to 11 percent.

The report noted the decline in affordable housing across regional areas in the state, dropping from 58 percent in 2017 to just 24 percent this year.

This has been compounded by an overall collapse in rental vacancies. The report noted that in regional areas across the country, private rental vacancies were at historic lows of 0.6–0.7 percent and vacancy rates in the capital cities sat at 1.1 percent in June this year.

According to recent data compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics from 2019–20, even before the pandemic and the inflation crisis, approximately 58 percent of all low-income renters spent more than 30 percent of their household income on rent. Approximately a fifth of low-income private renters, or some 185,000 households, “were paying rents equating to more than half of their household income.”

Another indication of the growing social tensions and the economic pressures is the number of those who identified domestic violence as a trigger for homelessness. This accounted for 31,732 of those who applied for the SHS, up 8.8 percent over the past four years.

Aboriginals, the most impoverished and exploited section of the working class, saw the fastest growth in accessing SHS services over the four-year period, increasing by 23 percent. Moreover, indigenous people account for 27 percent of all those who had approached the SHS. This was followed by a cohort of people suffering from mental health issues which had increased by 20 percent.

A correspondent wrote that “many real estates will not even answer/return our call (as they have 80-100 applicants for every property). The waitlists for social housing have increased, availability of housing is reduced (due to the rental crisis).”

The report pointed to the continued dwindling of Australia’s social housing stock. From 1991 to 2021, leases available from social housing providers had decreased from 52,000 to 30,000, a decline of 42 percent. Proportionate to the population increase over the same period, this equates to a fall of over 61 percent in social housing stock.

According to figures cited in the report from the Productivity Commission, social housing stock increased from 420,000 to 431,006 between 2016 and 2021, an increase of only 2.6 percent.

The architects of the gutting of public housing were the Hawke and Keating federal Labor governments. Beginning in 1983 they imposed a market-driven model, providing cash subsides to those on welfare benefits if they were not able to secure public housing. The purpose of this was to channel low-income households into the private rental market away from public housing. Public housing was subsequently bought up by private firms through joint venture partnerships, torn down and replaced with private dwellings.

Between 1990–91 and 2000–01, real funding for public housing construction was slashed by 25 percent. By 2008, public housing properties constituted only 4.9 percent nationally of all properties. By 2018, it was just 4.6 percent.

The report promotes illusions in the new Labor government’s pathetic promises to provide $350 million to build up 10,000 new homes, with state and territory governments expected to pitch in to build an additional 10,000 homes. The Labor government claims the new National Housing Accord will construct 40,000 new “affordable homes” over five years beginning in mid-2024.

This “commitment” will do nothing to resolve the social housing crisis. Maiy Azize, a spokesperson for Everybody’s Home, told the Guardian earlier this month that there was an “enormous social housing shortfall of 500,000 homes.”

No trust can be placed in Labor to resolve the housing and homelessness crisis, it is a loyal servant to the needs of big business. The budget unveiled in October indicated that it would cut funds going to the “National Housing and Homelessness Agreement,” which provides public housing and accommodation for people with special needs, by 14.6 percent. In 2021–22 approximately $4.1 billion was allocated to these housing programs, a figure that is expected to fall to $3.28 billion by 2025–26.

The growth of homelessness and the broader housing crisis is one expression of the incompatibility of capitalist society, which subordinates everything to the private profit interests of the ruling elite, with the most basic needs of ordinary people.

The CDC cover-up of Omicron XBB.1.5 and the growing winter COVID surge

Evan Blake

Last week, it was revealed that over the past month the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concealed the fact that a dangerous new variant of the coronavirus, known as the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant, has rapidly become dominant across the United States.

On December 29, epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding leaked CDC data showing that XBB.1.5 was already dominant in the US. After this Twitter thread went viral, on the following day the CDC updated its COVID-19 variant dashboard with the exact data that Dr. Feigl-Ding had leaked. This same process unfolded between October 13-14, 2022, at which time Dr. Feigl-Ding leaked CDC data showing that the Omicron BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 subvariants were becoming dominant, which was then confirmed by the CDC the following day under growing public pressure.

After both leaks, the CDC has issued no public statement and the corporate media has dutifully omitted the very fact that there was a cover-up, with the World Socialist Web Site the only outlet that has made this clear.

The new XBB.1.5 variant, which now accounts for 40.5 percent of all sequenced COVID-19 infections in the US, rose to dominance more quickly than any other variant since Omicron first spread globally in November 2021. The XBB.1.5 variant is believed to have evolved in New York in October and is fueling a wave of infections and hospitalizations throughout the Northeast region, with hospitalization rates among people aged 70 and older approaching pandemic highs in some states. This age group already accounts for over 90 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in the US.

Due to the dismantling of PCR testing and the promotion of at-home rapid tests, which are not tallied by the government, official figures on infections in the US are now totally inaccurate. Wastewater data, however, show that the US is presently mired in the second-worst surge of infections of the entire pandemic, which is being driven by XBB.1.5 in the Northeast region.

Multiple scientists raised alarm bells about XBB.1.5 throughout December and earlier, with the variant earning the nickname “Kraken.” A recent blog post by scientist Dr. Eric Topol describes the biological characteristics of XBB.15 and the research that scientists have done so far.

In short, XBB.1.5 is believed to be the most immune-evasive variant to date, meaning that vaccinations and prior infection offer virtually no protection against breakthrough infection or reinfection. It has also been shown to bind more tightly to the hACE2 receptor, which scientists believe will make it more infectious than any previous variant.

Expressing her concern over XBB.1.5, Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, one of the world’s top immunologists who has led pioneering research on Long COVID, tweeted on Monday, “Please protect yourselves and others by wearing N95 masks. I am truly concerned about the #longCOVID wave that follows this infection.”

In a follow-up tweet, Dr. Iwasaki elaborated that the features of XBB.1.5 “will increase tropism and possibly persistence in cell types that are long lived,” meaning that the likelihood of developing Long COVID after infection with XBB.1.5 could be higher than previous variants.

One scientist, whose models on the spread of XBB.1.5 were correct throughout December, created the visualization below to show the likely timeline of the coming wave. They estimate that by the end of January, XBB.1.5 will account for over 75 percent of all infections throughout the US, at which point the nationwide surge will be in full swing.

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Furthermore, the US-grown XBB.1.5 variant is being exported globally, as shown in the visualization below. It has been detected across Europe, as well as in India, Australia, Colombia, China and other countries, with scientists predicting that it could become dominant globally

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Given what scientists have learned about the dangers of COVID-19 reinfections, as well as breakthrough infections, this potential global surge would have immense societal repercussions. Masses of people could be infected or reinfected with COVID-19, causing spikes in hospitalizations and deaths, and compounding damage to the overall health of the population.

Under these conditions, the deliberate withholding of data on XBB.1.5 from the public ranks among the most significant cover-ups in the history of the CDC or any other global public health agency. There is no innocent explanation for the CDC cover-ups in December or October, which were clearly deliberate and intended to prevent any public alarm that might disrupt the holiday shopping and travel season.

Three years into the worst pandemic in a century, the CDC stands totally discredited as a public health agency. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been increasingly politicized, tailoring science to match all the lies of both the Trump and Biden administrations, in order to suit the needs of Wall Street and corporate America.

Over the course of 2022, the CDC deepened its antiscientific policies, publishing guidelines that discouraged the safe isolation of infected patients, masking and other critical mitigation measures, while manipulating data to match Biden’s lie that “the pandemic is over.”

Throughout December, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and White House COVID Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha remained silent on the clear dangers of the XBB.1.5 variant and the pandemic more generally.

On December 30, Walensky broke her silence with a tweet stating, “We can’t stop the spread of #COVID19.” She praised the CDC’s new policy requiring that all travelers from China must test negative for COVID-19 within two days of flying to the US. The same policy stipulates that the agency will conduct more genomic sequencing from China and other countries, ostensibly to “decrease the chance for entry of a novel variant of concern.”

Walensky’s tweet, released the day after Dr. Feigl-Ding’s leak of the CDC data on XBB.1.5, was roundly denounced for its hypocrisy and implicit xenophobia against China. Some have speculated that the new CDC policy itself, released a day before the data on XBB.1.5 was leaked, could have been in preparations for a crude attempt to foist blame onto China for the emergence of XBB.1.5.

Walensky’s claim that “We can’t stop the spread of COVID-19” also provoked a flood of hostile comments, indicating the continued opposition that exists to the “herd immunity” policy now in place internationally.

In order to maintain the status quo and prevent the growth of an organized movement of workers and scientists to stop the pandemic, the powers that be rely on a layer of affluent official scientists in the government and media to promote misinformation and cultivate a sense of apathy in the population, in order to implement their criminal pandemic policies. In the US, Drs. Walensky, Jha, Anthony Fauci and others lead this work. In Germany, virologist Dr. Christian Drosten stated in December that the pandemic is “over,” prompting politicians from numerous parties to call for the ending of all mitigation measures in the new year. The same coordinated lies and deception have been pushed internationally.

The relentless propaganda campaign in the West itself had an impact within China, where sections of the middle class and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bureaucracy became increasingly convinced that Omicron is “mild” and Zero-COVID must be scrapped. The encirclement of China with a global “forever COVID” policy, combined with relentless economic and geopolitical pressures, prompted the CCP to lift Zero-COVID, unleashing a tidal wave of infections and deaths throughout the country.

In the World Socialist Web Site’s 2023 New Year statement, Joseph Kishore and David North warned:

The lifting of Zero-COVID in China and the adoption of a “forever COVID” policy marks a new and potentially even more dangerous stage in the pandemic. Scientists have warned that mass infection increases the likelihood that new variants will evolve. The world’s capitalist ruling elites are playing Russian roulette with society, raising the danger that a more infectious, immune-resistant and deadly variant could unleash an even more lethal global wave of infections.

At this point, the XBB.1.5 variant does not appear to be more lethal than prior variants, but only time will tell. The warnings that it could be more likely to cause Long COVID are ominous, as there are already hundreds of millions of people globally suffering from this affliction.

Germany’s president and chancellor beat the drum for Ukraine war and invoke national unity

Peter Schwarz

The continuation of the Ukraine war and the invocation of the unity of the nation were the focus of the traditional Christmas and New Year speeches of the German president and chancellor.

New Year’s address by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Christmas address by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, both Social Democrats, advocated continuing the Ukraine war until Russia’s complete defeat, even if this entailed enormous social and economic costs and the risk of nuclear war. Both invoked the “cohesion” and “togetherness” of society in seeking to pass on the disastrous consequences of the war to the mass of the population.

Steinmeier, who delivered the Christmas address, sanctimoniously declared, “This year, our most ardent wish is probably that peace will reign again.” Only to immediately add, “But this peace is not yet tangible.” It had to be “a just peace” that did not reward land grabbing, he said. Until then, “it is an imperative of humanity that we ... stand by those who are attacked,” he said.

In plain language, this means that Germany and NATO will continue to escalate the war with billions in arms deliveries and military support until Russia capitulates. According to experts, this could take two to three years and claim hundreds of thousands more victims. The risk of the war spreading to the whole of Europe and involving the use of nuclear weapons is being deliberately accepted.

Scholz was even more explicit in his New Year’s address. Several times, he repeated the phrase “the turn of the times,” which he had employed in the spring to justify increasing the arms budget by €100 billion and vowed, “We will continue to support Ukraine.” He claimed that thanks to the “cohesion and strength” of our “dear fellow citizens,” Germany “has not bowed to Russia,” and praised the unity of the European Union and NATO.

Steinmeier also praised his “dear compatriots,” going on to say, “You are feeling the consequences of this war, especially the economic consequences. But you bear the burdens because you are not indifferent to the fate of Ukrainians; because you care about their struggle for freedom; because you express solidarity and compassion.”

Ukraine was “standing its ground with great courage. Europe is standing together. And our country is once again rising above itself in the challenge,” Steinmeier continued. This year, he said, had shown that “together we can get through this period.” His Christmas wish was “that we strengthen everything that unites us.” These are outright lies.

Firstly, NATO is no more concerned with freedom and democracy in Ukraine than it was in its previous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, where it devastated entire countries, killing millions and driving countless more to flee. NATO deliberately provoked the Ukraine war by systematically advancing eastward, supporting the 2014 coup in Kiev, and arming the Ukrainian military since then, and is now using this to bring Russia to its knees.

Ukraine itself is also a valuable prey. Not only is it rich in coal and gas reserves, but it has critical raw materials—lithium, cobalt, titanium, beryllium and rare earths—worth an estimated €6.7 trillion, according to the Brussels-based Carnegie Endowment think tank.

This does not at all justify the Putin regime’s military attack. It is playing into NATO’s hands and strengthening the most reactionary forces—in both Ukraine and Russia. But the main initiative for the war came from NATO, which does not want it to end until it achieves its goal.

The aggression with which the ruling class is proceeding, echoing Hitler’s plans for conquest, is shown in an interview with Stefan Meister, the Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), published by newsweekly Der Spiegel in its latest issue.

Meister accuses previous German governments of having adopted the “convenient but false interpretation of history” that “there could be change through rapprochement, in the style of Willy Brandt.” At least 80 percent of the German elites had “collectively lied to themselves” and expanded their dependency on Russia.

What was needed, he said, was “a genuine long-term Russia policy” that was “ultimately about regime change in Moscow.” This required leadership, Meister said, rather than a “system of systematic irresponsibility” in which political elites were afraid of “electoral risks,” i.e., facing the will of the voters.

Secondly, the German population is not, as Steinmeier and Scholz claim, united behind the war. Large sections of it are sceptical or opposed to it. Conversely, the war and the incessant war propaganda in the media serve to intimidate and suppress the growing opposition to war and social inequality.

For decades, a tiny minority has shamelessly enriched itself at the expense of the majority. According to the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the richest 10 percent in Germany own more than two-thirds of all wealth, while the entire poorer half owns only 1.3 percent. The real incomes of the poorest 10 percent have risen by only 5 percent since 1995, while those of the richest 10 percent have increased by 40 percent.

The Ukraine war is accelerating this divergence of income and wealth. The trade unions, which support the government’s war policy, have signed collective bargaining agreements cementing wage “increases” far below the rate of inflation, which was 10 percent in 2022 and will average 7.2 percent in 2023, according to Bundesbank estimates. Added to this are skyrocketing energy costs and unaffordable rents. For the younger generation, in particular, the future looks bleak, even if they have studied for years.

Steinmeier and Scholz invoke the “cohesion” of society primarily because they fear open class struggles. Scholz spent much of his New Year’s speech enumerating the support programs the government has put together to dampen the rise in prices somewhat. But they are nothing more than a drop in the ocean and, in any case, largely benefit the wealthy and the corporations, which are making record profits despite the pandemic and the war.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung also fears a rebellion against war and social inequality. “There is still a majority in this country for financial support for Ukraine, for sanctions against Russia, for arms deliveries,” comments its former editor-in-chief Kurt Kister. “But if acclimatisation, loss of trust and personal disadvantages grow in the second year of the war, things may look different in December 2023.”

In the existing political system, this growing opposition to social inequality and war finds no expression. All parties in the Bundestag (federal parliament), from the Left Party to the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens to the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), support the war course.