US Secretary of State Blinken in China with a bagful of demands and threats

Peter Symonds

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has landed in China for a three-day visit armed with a slew of demands and threats as part of the Biden administration’s aggressive confrontation and military build-up against Beijing. Chief among those demands is that China halt the export of so-called dual-use items to Russia, which the US claims are helping Moscow prosecute the war against the US-NATO backed regime in Ukraine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns walk through the Yu Gardens in Shanghai, China, April 24, 2024 [AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool]

Having goaded Russia into invading Ukraine, the US and its European allies are desperate to reverse the deteriorating position of the Ukrainian military amid its loss of territory to Russian forces. While funneling ever-more quantities of sophisticated arms to Ukraine, Washington is now demanding that China assist in crippling Russia’s industrial capacity and thus the Russian military.

“When it comes to Russia’s defence industrial base, the primary contributor in this moment to that is China,” Blinken told reporters last week after a G7 meeting in Italy. “If China purports on the one hand to want good relations with Europe and other countries, it can’t on the other hand be fueling what is the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” he said.

The US is not only demanding that China halt the sale of so-called dual-use items, including computer chips and machine tools. It is also threatening to cut Chinese banks facilitating such trade from the global financial system based on the US dollar. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned during her visit to China earlier this month: “Any banks that facilitate significant transactions that channel military or dual-use goods to Russia’s defence industrial base expose themselves to the risk of US sanctions.”

Washington’s demand is completely hypocritical. The Biden administration acknowledges China has not sold weapons to Moscow, yet it is pushing through Congress a huge $95 billion-package of military funding of which $61 billion is to go to Ukraine and the US-NATO war against Russia. Now the US is insisting that the sale of dual-use items—a broad, undefined category to which almost anything could be added—be stopped.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ): “China’s right to conduct normal trade and economic exchanges with Russia and other countries in the world on the basis of equality and mutual benefit should not be interfered with or disrupted. The United States should immediately stop imposing unilateral sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals.”

Blinken’s remarks about the Ukraine war were also aimed at driving a wedge between China and Europe and pressuring the European powers to impose tougher sanctions on Beijing. The WSJ noted: “Washington’s European allies have shown even more reticence to apply punitive measures against a major trade partner and financier, sanctioning only a fraction of the scores of [Chinese] firms put on US rosters… Germany and some other key European allies had been satisfied with that no-arms policy as enough.”

A former senior US national security official told the newspaper: “Now there’s an effort to adjust that in part because of the scale of Chinese support. The hope is that we get the Europeans to read China the riot act.”

The funding package that passed the US House of Representatives last Saturday was aimed not only at shoring up the Ukrainian military. It will also provide $26 billion to Israel for its genocidal war in Gaza and escalating conflict with Iran, which the US has accused of providing arms to Russia. Significantly, from Beijing’s standpoint, the legislation includes $8 billion in military funding for Taiwan. Biden has pledged to sign the bill into law as soon as it hits his table.

Far from being separate conflicts, the legislation passed with bi-partisan support makes clear that the US regards its confrontation with China as a prelude to it becoming the third front in a war to maintain American imperialism’s global hegemony. In a similar fashion to its provocative inclusion of Eastern European countries in NATO, Washington is goading China to take military action over Taiwan. Biden has ramped up ties with Taiwan and boosted arms sales to Taipei effectively undermining the One China policy under which the US de facto acknowledges that Beijing is the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan.

Asked about US military aid to Taiwan at press conference on Wednesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin warned that closer military ties between the US and Taiwan would “not bring about security for Taiwan” and would “only escalate tensions across the Taiwan Strait.” Beijing has long warned that it would take military measures in the event that Taipei declared formal independence from China, yet US actions are actively encouraging the Taiwanese government to move in that direction.

While deliberately provoking tensions with China over Taiwan, Blinken is also slated to raise the issue of “aggressive manoeuvres” by Chinese ships in the South China Sea. Over the past decade, the US has deliberately inflamed longstanding territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China and neighbouring countries as a means of isolating Beijing and strengthening military ties in South East Asia. Biden this month hosted a summit with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines that pledged closer military collaboration directed against China.

Chinese trade with Russia is not Blinken’s only target. The US is also threatening trade penalties over what it alleges to be China’s “dumping” of cheap goods on the American markets, particularly electric vehicles and solar panels. Since Yellen’s visit, the Biden administration is also considering increased tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminium and is carrying out an investigation into alleged Chinese subsidies in shipbuilding and other industries.

The Biden administration not only maintained the heavy trade penalties imposed on China by the Trump administration but has ramped up efforts to hobble Chinese hi-tech industries by banning the export of the most advanced computer chips and chip-making equipment to Beijing and has prevailed on allies to do the same.

At a briefing on Tuesday, a Chinese foreign ministry official hit back at US claims of Chinese overcapacity and dumping as “outright economic coercion and bullying,” adding: “Behind it is the evil intention of curbing and suppressing China’s industrial development, aiming to seek a more favourable competitive position and market advantage for the country.”

In an utterly cynical move, Blinken is also preparing to trot out the litany of “human rights” allegations against China, including the outright lie that Beijing is engaged in “genocide” against Muslim Uyghurs in western Xinjiang province. He does so even as the US arms, bankrolls and politically defends the fascistic Israeli regime as it wages a genocidal war in Gaza that has already claimed more than 34,000 Palestinian lives, a majority women and children, and has plunged the entire population into hunger and destitution.

Against this backdrop, suggestions by the Biden administration and the American media that Blinken is going to China to improve relations are absurd. He has gone to bully Beijing into making further concessions even as US imperialism builds up its military forces and strengthen its military alliances in the Indo-Pacific in preparation for war.

Ukrainian government cancels consular services for military-age men

Jason Melanovski

The government of President Volodymyr Zelensky has canceled all consular services for military-age men in a desperate bid to force some of the reported 4.5 million Ukrainian men living abroad back home to fight in the over two-year-long NATO proxy war against Russia. 

Honor guards carry the coffin of a Ukrainian serviceman during his funeral service on Independence square in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, December 15, 2023. [AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka]

On Monday Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter/X that he had “ordered measures to restore fair attitudes toward men of conscription age in Ukraine and abroad”. At the same time, Ukrainian consulates across Europe began canceling services for military age men, according to the Ukrainian news outlet Suspilne.

In announcing the move, Kuleba criticized Ukrainians who fled rather than be sent to the frontlines. “How it looks like now: a man of conscription age went abroad, showed his state that he does not care about its survival, and then comes and wants to receive services from this state,” Kuleba said.

“It does not work this way. Our country is at war. Staying abroad does not relieve a citizen of his or her duties to the Homeland.”

Fighting-age Ukrainian men abroad will now be forced to return to Ukraine in order to  renew their passports where they will then be subject to forced conscription and mobilization. Those that do not return to the country will be penalized with the loss of their passports and driver’s license, essentially becoming stateless citizens living abroad illegally.

The announcement follows the passage last week of a mobilization bill that was originally introduced in February and amended over 4,000 times.

The 2024 mobilization drive was first proposed in Zelensky’s end of year address in December when he announced that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were hoping to mobilize 500,000 new soldiers at a cost of $13.3 billion. Following widespread opposition, an initial mobilization bill was withdrawn and then reintroduced in February ultimately leading to the bill’s passage.

With the bill’s passage, all men aged 18 to 60 will be required to update their personal information within the next 60 days with the authorities responsible for conscription. This requirement will also go for Ukrainian men living abroad. The new law will make it easier for Ukrainian authorities to issue draft notices, including through an electronic system. It also obliges local governments and the police to aid the military in the conscription drive.  

The final version of the bill passed does not include a provision for the demobilization of men after three years of service and was removed at the last minute by request of newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Oleksandr Syrsky. Since the fall, the wives and families of soldiers who in many cases have been fighting on the front for over two years have been protesting in major Ukrainian cities to demand that their husbands, fathers and brothers be allowed to return home.

Facing a severe manpower and ammunition shortage and steadily losing ground at the front, the bill’s passage and inclusion of punitive measures against draft dodgers is a tacit admission by the right-wing Zelensky government that despite constant nationalist propaganda, Ukrainian men are less than eager to volunteer for the NATO proxy war than ever.

BBC Ukraine reported in November that 650,000 Ukrainian men aged 18-60 have left Ukraine for Europe since the start of the war, while Zelensky’s former adviser Alexey Arestovich recently claimed that 4.5 million Ukrainian men, nearly half of the Ukrainian male population, had fled abroad to avoid military service, and that 30 to 70 percent of military units consist of “refuseniks,” who have gone absent without official leave (AWOL). 

Following the announcement of the proposal, Ukrainians across Europe were seen waiting in line at consular offices to renew their passports before the mobilization changes take effect. In Valencia, Spain, 550 people reportedly waited in line for hours to renew their passports and ensure their legal status for the upcoming year in Spain.

Earlier this week, Andriy Demchenko, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian State Border Service, reported that ten men per day of military age attempt to leave the country using fake documents. Demchenko also reported that bribe attempts of border guards are a regular occurrence and that border guards are now stationed across Ukraine’s borders to stop draft dodgers.

Despite its own support of the slaughter in Ukraine, the New York Times recently reported in an article titled “In Ukraine’s West, Draft Dodgers Run, and Swim, to Avoid the War” on the desperate situation facing Ukrainian men. Providing a glimpse of the huge numbers fleeing Ukraine on a regular basis, the article reported that Romanian authorities alone had detained 6,000 men swimming across the Tysa River since the full-scale war began in February 2022.

This past December, Zelensky and his then commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny declared that another 500,000 new soldiers were needed to continue the war. That number was subsequently lowered by Syrsky, who claimed an internal audit conducted by the Defense Ministry had been “significantly reduced.” Syrsky did not clarify the exact number but instead claimed “we expect we will have enough people capable of defending.” 

The war has already resulted in a reported 500,000 casualties for the Ukrainian side, according to Russian numbers reported this week. Meanwhile, the Zelensky government continues to absurdly claim it has lost just 31,000 troops in over two years of war even as it cannot account for 700,000 soldiers apparently missing from its forces. Ukraine had a pre-war population of under 40 million.

Whatever the true numbers, it is clear that due to mass casualties and large numbers of Ukrainians fleeing the war that the US-backed Kiev government will continue to be at a disadvantage against the numerically superior Russian army. According to a recent speech in parliament cited by the New York Times, “the commander of Ukrainian forces in the east, Gen. Yurii Sodol, said Russians in certain sections of the front outnumber Ukrainians by more than seven to one.”

Despite the expected passage of a $61 billion aid bill currently making its way through Congress, weapons still need soldiers to use them, which no amount of aid can magically conjure up.

As Ukraine's Ground Forces Commander Oleksandr Pavliuk  recently admitted on Facebook in an attempt to recruit more Ukrainians to join the Armed Forces, “No matter how much help we get, how many weapons we have–we lack people.”

UK Tory government passes fascistic Bill on deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda

Robert Stevens

The Conservative government has finally passed the legislation required to deport immigrants and asylum seekers to Rwanda. After two years of blocking by the House of Lords, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill was passed just after midnight Monday.

The Bill, first introduced by then-prime minister Boris Johnson in April 2022, was expected to be passed last week. However, this was delayed once again by amendments to the legislation by peers in the House of Lords.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak holds a press conference on the Rwanda Bill in Downing Street, April 22, 2024 [Photo by Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that MPs and peers would have to stay up all night if necessary to get the Bill through. It passed after a majority vote of 75 (312 to 237) to throw out the last remaining Lords amendment—on setting-up a monitoring process on whether Rwanda is a safe country, as the government claims.

One of the main objections in the Lords to the Bill was that there was no specific exemption from deportation for Afghans and others who had served with UK forces. An amendment demanding this from former Labour Defence Minister Des Browne was defeated by 305 votes to 234. Browne accepted a verbal commitment that such Afghans “will not be sent to Rwanda” and all those from Afghanistan whose claims had been rejected under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy scheme will be reassessed.

Sunak issued a statement declaring, “The passing of this landmark legislation is not just a step forward but a fundamental change in the global equation on migration.” It was now “very clear that if you come here illegally, you will not be able to stay. Our focus is to now get flights off the ground, and I am clear that nothing will stand in our way of doing that and saving lives”.

Just hours after the legislation passed, another five people—a seven-year-old girl, a woman and three men—lost their lives trying to reach Britain. They were trying to cross the Channel in a small boat and were found near the French town of Wimereux, south of Calais. The latest victims of the UK’s vicious clampdown were among 112 people on board the overcrowded boat: 47 people had to be rescued with four taken to hospital.

The government can now theoretically deport around 52,000 people to Rwanda with at least £370 million, and an estimated up to £500 million, to be paid to the Rwandan government to accommodate them. In a breach of international law, the Bill creates a new power to ignore any “interim measures” (injunctions) the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) may make ordering a flight set for Rwanda to stay on the runway in Britain.

Sunak pledged that the first flights to Rwanda will set off “in 10 to 12 weeks”, with some of those to be deported already selected and others to be rounded up.

Speaking in Downing Street hours before the measures passed Sunak could not contain his glee. He said, “Starting from the moment that the Bill passes we will begin the process of removing those identified for the first flight. We have prepared for this moment. To detain people while we prepare to remove them, we’ve increased detention spaces to 2,200.” 

Among the other measures in place to enforce this brutal policy are: 200 case workers hired; 25 courtrooms and 150 judges to hear asylum cases, offering 5,000 days in court; a pre-booked airfield with slots for commercial charter flights to Rwanda booked; 500 escorts for the flights, with 300 more in training.

Minister for Illegal Migration, Michael Tomlinson, stated that following the Bill being given Royal Assent imminently by King Charles and the signing of a final treaty with Rwanda, “We need to get the flights off the ground, and that’s when we will see the deterrent effect kick in”.

In a warning to civil servants who have threatened to strike rather than break international law Sunak warned, “We’ve put beyond all doubt that Ministers can disregard these injunction with clear guidance that if they decide to do so, civil servants must deliver that instruction.”

The legislation was denounced by human rights groups, Freedom from Torture, Amnesty International UK and Liberty who described Parliament as “a crime scene.”  A spokesperson said, “We all deserve the chance to live a safe life, and to seek protection when we need it most. This shameful Bill trashes the constitution and international law whilst putting torture survivors and other refugees at risk of an unsafe future in Rwanda.”

Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees said the law was “further step away from the UK's long tradition of providing refuge to those in need, in breach of the Refugee Convention… This arrangement seeks to shift responsibility for refugee protection, undermining international cooperation and setting a worrying global precedent.”

In fact the fascistic policies being rolled out by London are being implemented everywhere by the capitalist class, as they whip up a foul anti-immigration atmosphere the better to pursue policies of austerity and war.

These policies have led to 30,000 dead in the Mediterranean over the last decade as “Fortress Europe” is enforced. This month, the European Parliament adopted the Common European Asylum System, effectively suspending the right to asylum and turned the immigration policies of the extreme right into law. As the WSWS noted, “The measures adopted provide for Europe’s external borders to be hermetically sealed off. This means that refugees will have to undergo their asylum procedure outside the EU in closed, militarily guarded detention centres.”

Fascist Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has struck a deal allowing the deportation of 1,500 refugees and asylum-seekers to Libya over the next three years. On top of this, those intercepted or rescued by Italy in the Mediterranean Sea and deemed “illegal” will be sent to Albania for identification, asylum processing, and repatriation, and held in two detention centres able to hold 3,000 people. Last November, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged to “examine” whether asylum applications could be processed abroad, with Austria considering the same policy.

That the Tory government is prepared to squander half a billion pounds—with the expected cost of sending the first few hundred asylum seekers to Rwanda working out at £1.8 million per person—indicates how critical the whipping up of putrid anti-immigrant sentiment is for the ruling class. Sunak’s leadership contains a pronounced fascist layer that also reflects the party’s reactionary, ageing, middle class constituency, whipped up by a ferociously xenophobic tabloid media.

The Labour Party has pledged to repeal the Rwanda Bill on coming to office, but not on any principled basis. Its pitch to the ruling class is that it can use all the existing repressive legislation to ensure asylum seekers are kicked out and borders tightened—enforced at a fraction of the cost.

As is now usual for Sir Keir Starmer’s right-wing party, Labour reasserted its alternative to the Rwanda policy in the pages of a pro-Tory paper, this time the Telegraph. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper penned an op-ed, “Labour will stop the small boats.” She opened with “Dangerous small boat crossings undermine our border security” and “add to the chaos in our asylum system…” What was needed was “urgent action” to stop the gangs organizing the boats “and to strengthen Britain’s borders”.

The problem with the Rwanda scheme was that it was “extortionately expensive” and “only covers 1% of those arriving in the UK”. Copper complained, “there is no plan for the other 99% who will now join a permanent costly backlog, with the taxpayer footing the bill.”

Labour would “put the Rwanda money into strengthening our border security instead. That means new counter-terror style powers, new international intelligence sharing agreements and new cross-border police working with European partners…”

She pledged to “clear the asylum backlog with a new fast track system for safe countries, end asylum hotel use, and set up a major new Returns and Enforcement Unit to swiftly return those with no right to be in the UK. Returns have dropped by nearly 50% since the Conservatives took office, undermining the credibility of the entire system. We have to restore order to the border.”

Financial report shows Teamsters bureaucracy pays 160 people more than $200,000 a year

Alex Findijs

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh at a meeting of the Teamsters General Executive Board on Wednesday, December 14, 2022. From left to right: Teamsters president Sean O'Brien, Walsh, Teamsters general secterary-treasurer Fred Zuckerman. [Photo: Teamsters Facebook page]

Since coming into office in 2022, the new Teamsters administration of Sean O’Brien has been hailed as a great union reform movement by various pseudo-left groups. Labor Notes called the Teamsters a “reformer-led union” and claimed that “some union leaders are finally on the members’ side.” Along with the Democratic Socialists of America, Labor Notes praised the UPS contract, promoting it as a great victory for workers and proof that the union had reformed itself into a militant workers organization.

In reality, the UPS contract has paved the way for dozens of shift closures and over 12,000 layoffs. Management has announced it plans to close 200 locations as the company embraces automation. Tens of thousands of jobs are at risk after the supposed “historic” contract.

Workers are finding that they confront not just attacks from management, but from a corrupt union apparatus which functions as a labor police force. This is not due to bad policies or bad apples at the top. Rather, the union bureaucracy has entirely different, and hostile, social interests than the rank-and-file membership.

This is evident in the latest federal financial reports filed by the Teamsters. A list of the top paid officials in the Teamsters recently published by T-Union Link message board shows that 160 officers in the Teamsters International make over $200,000 a year in total compensation.

Among them is O’Brien, with total compensation of $419,222 a year, who is only second in pay to Randy Korgan, the head of the alleged Teamsters unionization drive among Amazon workers.

Notable among the “$200k Club” are a number of leading members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union who have secured for themselves high positions within the Teamsters bureaucracy for their support for Sean O’Brien. TDU members Matt Taibbi and Willie Ford make $252,065 and $247,924 a year in total compensation respectively. Notable leaders with connections to TDU include Fred Zuckerman ($377,537) who has been endorsed by the Teamsters United coalition that TDU is a part of, and other high-ranking career officials such as Vinnie Perrone ($249,754) out of Local 804 in New York City and Juan Campos ($284,154) from Chicago.

Significantly, TDU itself used to publish this list of high earners in the Teamsters bureaucracy each year. It has quietly abandoned the list after securing membership to the $200k Club.

This is the inevitable result of TDU’s program. Rather than mobilizing rank-and-file workers in a fight to smash the bureaucracy and replace it with new, democratic structures, TDU has claimed since its foundation decades ago that it was possible to revive union “democracy” through a change in the composition of the bureaucracy itself. This has led them into a series of unprincipled alliances with other factions of the bureaucracy who use TDU to advance their own careers, while creating new layers of bureaucrats out of TDU itself.

By contrast, the UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee (UPSWRFC) was founded last summer to fight against both management and the union bureaucracy. While TDU was central to the pretend “strike ready campaign” which the bureaucracy used to sell a contract worked out in secret with UPS as the result of a “credible strike threat,” the UPSWRFC warned from the start that a sellout was being prepared.

“The only response must be to organize ourselves,” its founding statement concluded, “not to ‘support’ the bargaining committee and to cheerlead for them, but to enforce our democratic will, and position ourselves to countermand the inevitable sellout.”

But the huge salaries of the top officials are only the tip of the iceberg. The bureaucracy controls hundreds of millions in assets financed out of workers’ dues money.

At the international level alone, fewer than 30 International officers consume a combined $3.3 million a year plus an additional $49 million for employees of the International.

From an income of $242 million the International spends a combined $119.6 million on:

• Nearly $58 million on “representational activities” (i.e., the salaries of union functionaries)

• $6.1 million in “contributions, gifts and grants”

• $8.4 million in “political activities” (schmoozing with both President Biden and Donald Trump and other right-wing Republicans)

• $27.2 million in “general overhead” (more salaries)

• $19.8 million in “union administration” (even more salaries)

These swallow up nearly half of the union’s annual income.

By comparison, the Teamsters spent $8.2 million on strike pay in a year when they claimed to be leading a national strike movement at UPS. This is less than what it spent on political activities and lobbying.

This spending is tied to the vast financial assets that the bureaucracy has converted member dues into. The Teamsters International holds a total of $566 million in assets, $419 million of which is held in financial investments. From these investments, the bureaucracy makes $15 million a year in dividends.

For Sean O’Brien and his ilk the hundreds of millions of dollars in union income and assets are a massive piggy bank from which to withdraw funds for themselves. Any action that would pull funds away from the bureaucracy, such as providing adequate strike pay to workers, is seen as a threat to the increasingly financialized assets of the union. The Teamsters added to this financialization by using members’ dues to purchase another $41 million in investments and assets this past year.

And this does not even include the millions of dollars held by local unions with their own bureaucracies, assets and aspiring members of the $200k Club.

This is the real social foundation of the union bureaucracy. It is a parasitic social layer that exists to negotiate the price of labor with management, not to defend workers’ interests.

Out of these interests arises the bureaucracy’s general social outlook. It accepts the wage system and the “right” of management to profit, and because its own interests have become tied to the success and profitability of the capitalist system. For this reason the Teamsters were more than happy to allow UPS to mass layoff workers, if it meant its own cash reserves could be preserved and its financial assets protected. It plays the role of a labor contractor, policing the working class and managing the price of labor for their friends in management.

Expressing the deep contempt, as well as fear, the bureaucracy has for the membership, when Sean O’Brien was recently asked about the UPS contract by a worker at last weekend’s Labor Notes conference, he literally ran away, claiming he had a flight to catch.

Poll shows deepening crisis of Australian Labor government amid social distress

Oscar Grenfell

A poll conducted by Resolve and reported by the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday underscored the increasingly dire predicament of the federal Labor government and the entire official political set-up. The figures confirm the immense gulf between ordinary people and the major parties, which has also been starkly expressed in recent by-elections and in the Tasmanian state election.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. [Photo: Twitter/@AlboMP]

The polling indicated that Labor’s primary vote has fallen from 32 to 30 percent over the past month. That is a decline, even compared with Labor’s 2022 federal election result, when it received just under a third of all first-preference votes, its lowest result since the 1930s. Labor was only able to scrape into office because of the implosion of the Liberal Party, which also received one of its worst vote shares in history and lost a number of seats.

The further fall in Labor’s vote has not been accompanied by any substantial boost to the opposition Liberal-National Coalition, with its primary vote only increasing from 35 to 36 percent. The Coalition is led by Peter Dutton, a widely reviled right-wing figure, who remains behind Labor’s Anthony Albanese in the two-party preferred prime minister figures.

According to Resolve, with preferences factored in, Labor and the Coalition’s vote is neck and neck. If the numbers held in a federal election, due to be held by May 2025, that would result in a hung parliament, raising the spectre of a minority government dependent on support from crossbenchers to remain in office.

That is a scenario that big business commentators have been warning against for months. Such an unstable government, constantly facing the threat of losing a parliamentary majority, could obstruct the agenda being demanded by the ruling elite, for an intensification of austerity measures and an ever greater diversion of resources to the military, amid advanced preparations for Australia to participate in a US-led war against China.

Declining support for the government is not a one-off, but has been recorded in eight of the past ten Resolve polls. There are undoubtedly a number of factors, but this poll particularly highlights the impact of the deepening social crisis, centred on the cost-of-living.

Fifty-five percent of all respondents said they would struggle to pay with an unexpected major expense, even if it were only a few thousand dollars. That figure was greatest, at 65 percent, among low-income workers earning less than $50,000 a year. It was 57 percent among all renters.

Asked to identify two issues of greatest concern, 55 percent of respondents named grocery prices and 37 percent utility prices, making them the top preoccupations.

Similar sentiments were expressed in response to a question asking participants to name a single measure they wished to be included in the May budget. Some 24 percent called for policies to place downward pressure on inflation and interest rates, 20 percent said they wanted energy bill relief and 20 percent advocated investment in housing supply.

In 2022, Labor scraped into office on the basis of phony pledges to deliver a “better future,” including vague gestures towards reversing social hardship. As soon as it formed government, however, Labor insisted on the need for ordinary people to make “sacrifices” and pledged to the financial elite to enforce “budgetary restraint.”

As part of soaring prices globally, annual inflation reached a peak of 7 percent in March 2023. For the past two years, electricity bills have increased by an average of 20 percent or more each year, with sharp rises among other utilities. Increases to the prices of basic groceries have consistently outpaced inflation.

Labor, together with the entire political establishment, backed 13 interest rate rises by the Reserve Bank of Australia. Mortgage repayments have climbed, in an assault against working people aimed at slowing the economy to boost unemployment and prevent any wages’ push.

Over the three years to December, wages have fallen by an average of 5.1 percent compared to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and 6.1 percent in the public sector.

Average weekly mortgage repayments have increased by $400 since May 2022, more than eight times the average increase in wages. As a result, the number of Australians “at risk” of mortgage stress has doubled in less than two years. Almost one third of owner-occupied mortgage holders are now in this category, the highest level since the global financial crisis.

In the year to June 2023, average rents for apartments soared by 26 percent in the capital cities, and by 12.7 percent in the year since. The Anglicare Australia Rental Affordability Snapshot, released today, found that there is not a single listed property that is affordable for someone on the government’s youth allowance payment and just three out of around 50,000 affordable for someone on Newstart unemployment benefits.

Along with rejecting any meaningful increase to those sub-poverty-level payments, Labor has stared down calls for broader cost-of-living relief. At the same time, it has imposed significant cuts in funding to public hospitals and schools, which are already suffering their worst crisis in history.

That has gone hand-in-hand with the dismantling of the last COVID safety measures, in partnership with Labor administrations in the states and territories. The last wave, over the summer period, claimed more than a thousand lives as a direct consequence of this profit-driven “let it rip” agenda.

The Resolve polling does not appear to have examined the impact of Labor’s support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza. But there is no question that Labor’s backing of the continuous mass murder has produced substantial shock and opposition, registered in weekly mass demonstrations that have spanned more than six months.

Last month, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation published an article by Patricia Karvelas, which reported concerns in Labor circles that its alignment with the genocide could contribute to the loss of “safe” seats in the working-class suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. Karvelas wrote: “[T]he idea that the electoral territory is all stitched up is deluded according to some of the hard heads in the party. Some fear the threat of a community independent is real.”

Some of the sharpest swings against Labor in the 2022 and 2019 federal elections were in working-class seats. That trend was continued in two state Queensland by-elections in March, with Labor’s vote falling by around 30 percentage points to less than 35 percent in the impoverished Brisbane seat of Inala and by about 15 percentage points, also to around 35 percent in Ipswich West.

In last month’s Tasmanian state election, the primary vote for the governing Liberal Party plummeted by a quarter, but Labor gained only 1 percentage point, taking its primary vote to about 29 percent from a near-record low of 28 percent in 2021. That resulted in the reinstallation of a minority Liberal government.

The Resolve polling underscores the fact that these recent results are not localised phenomena, but are replicated at the federal level.

Labor continues to signal that it will impose the dictates of the financial elite, with the lead-up to its May budget dominated by warnings of a downgrading of growth forecasts necessitating further cuts to social spending. At the same time, Labor last week unveiled a $50 billion increase to military spending over the decade, on top of record expenditure already above 2 percent of annual GDP. That is to deepen Australia’s transformation into a frontline state in the US-led war drive against China, which includes the commitment to develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines at a staggering cost of $368 billion.

The Labor government is on a confrontation course with the working class, amid the deepening social anger, while the political instability is set to continue and deepen.

New Zealand survey finds 65 percent agree the economy is “rigged to advantage the rich and powerful”

Tom Peters

A survey of 1,001 people in New Zealand has found widespread anger over social inequality, distrust of the political establishment, and opposition to the running down of public services and increased military spending.

Composite image of National Party leader Christopher Luxon and Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins. [Photo: Christopher Luxon Facebook September 21/Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins Facebook September 7]

The “Populism Survey” by global market research company Ipsos has been conducted since 2016, with 28 countries surveyed during November-December 2023 (including Britain, the US, Japan, Germany, Australia, South Africa, and other countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America). New Zealand was surveyed for the first time in February 2024.

The Ipsos findings point to growing anti-capitalist sentiments in the working class across the world. This is the result of years of soaring living costs, the never-ending COVID-19 pandemic, crumbling social infrastructure, the vast concentration of wealth in the hands of a small number of billionaires, and the diversion of more and more resources towards imperialist war, including the Gaza genocide and the war in Ukraine.

In the case of New Zealand, the results confirm that there is no popular support for the vicious austerity program being imposed by the National Party-led government, which is backed in all fundamental respects by the opposition Labour Party.

Nearly two thirds of respondents, 65 percent, agreed that “New Zealand’s economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful” (similar to the 67 percent average result for the other 28 countries). Only 17 percent disagreed with the statement.

Last year, the Inland Revenue Department reported that the country’s 311 richest individuals pay less than half the rate of tax paid by workers. This layer has profited from soaring property prices, stock market speculation, and tax breaks and bailouts under successive Labour and National governments. Meanwhile one in five children lives in poverty and more than one in ten people depend on food banks.

More than half of respondents, 55 percent, agreed that “traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like me” (only 18 percent disagreed) and 63 percent agreed that “the political and economic elite don’t care about hard-working people.”

In another indication of distrust for politicians, 57 percent endorsed the statement: “The most important political issues in New Zealand should be decided directly by the people through referendums, not by the elected officials.” The figure was higher for people aged under 35 (62 percent), the unemployed (63 percent) and Māori (70 percent).

The October 2023 election showed that all the major parties are deeply unpopular. Amid widespread abstention the Labour Party-led government suffered a landslide defeat, following six years in which it oversaw rising homelessness, soaring living costs and increased poverty. The National Party only received 38 percent and had to form an unstable coalition government with the far-right ACT and NZ First parties.

Significantly, 60 percent of those surveyed agreed that “the main divide in [New Zealand] society is between ordinary citizens and the political and economic elite.” Among “low income” respondents, 69 percent agreed, and among indigenous Māori, who are predominantly in the poorest layer of the working class, 78 percent agreed.

These results come despite strenuous efforts by the government, as well as the opposition Labour Party and its allies the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, to stoke divisions based on race in order to divert attention from the gulf between rich and poor. Working people correctly identify the “main divide” not as race, gender, nationality, religion or any other identity category, but the class divide between workers and the super-rich.

The survey indicates that efforts by NZ First, Labour and other parties, along with sections of the media, to scapegoat immigrants for the social crisis, have had a limited effect. Some 29 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: “Immigrants take jobs away from real New Zealanders,” and 23 percent agreed that the country “would be stronger if we stopped immigration.”

While these figures are not insignificant, anti-immigrant sentiment is lower in New Zealand than in most of the other countries surveyed. Approximately one in four people living in New Zealand were born overseas and roughly one in six citizens lives outside the country; the global mobility of the working class has undermined the ruling elite’s promotion of nationalist prejudices.

Ipsos also asked where people thought the government should spend more money.

Most significantly, 68 percent of New Zealand respondents opposed greater spending on the armed forces, while only 28 percent said it should increase—the lowest figure out of all countries surveyed.

This finding will undoubtedly cause concern in ruling circles. The major parties, backed by the corporate media, are pushing to double New Zealand’s military budget, as the country is integrated into US-led wars against Russia, in the Middle East, and preparations for conflict with China.

Deep-seated opposition to war has erupted to the surface, with thousands of workers and young people regularly joining protests against the genocide in Gaza, in which New Zealand is complicit as an ally of US imperialism.

While opposing military spending, 65 percent said the government should spend more on “reducing inequality and poverty,” 55 percent wanted more spent on “creating jobs,” 71 percent backed increased funding for schools and universities, and 83 percent supported more public money for healthcare.

The government, however, is committed to brutal austerity in all these areas. Public services are being gutted, in order to fund the military build-up and cut taxes for the rich. Thousands of jobs are being eliminated from government ministries, including education, child welfare and conservation. Social welfare payments and the minimum wage are being reduced, along with the food in schools program.

Human-to-human transmission with a novel Mpox virus identified in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Benjamin Mateus

This week an international group of researchers from Africa, Europe and North America,  the Mpox Research Consortium, published in preprint form a study describing an epidemiologic investigation into a recent epidemic of new Mpox (previously known as Monkeypox) infections with the clade I lineage, a more dangerous form of the disease.

The Mpox virus is an enveloped double-stranded DNA virus from the poxviridae family that includes smallpox and cowpox. There are two known clades of the Mpox virus known to be endemic in Africa. The more common infections used to occur with clade I, previously known as the Congo Basin clade. It is characterized by severe clinical symptoms and a mortality rate of up to 10 percent. Only 5 percent of all Mpox infections in humans used to be with clade II, previously known as the West African clade. These infections, which came to worldwide notice in last year’s global monkeypox outbreak, portend a milder course and a much lower fatality rate. 

The new clade I virus was detected in the mining town of Kamituga, estimated population 242,000, located in South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The outbreak that erupted in October 2023 was the first time that Mpox cases were detected in the Kamituga Health Zone. 

A map showing the location of Kamituga, the epicenter of the latest Mpox outbreak. [Photo: www.openstreetmap.org]

This report comes amid a rising tide of Mpox infections across the DRC. From the beginning of 2023 until March 29, 2024, there have been a total of 18,922 suspected Mpox cases and 1,007 fatalities. In the first three months of 2024, there were a total of 4,488 cases with 279 deaths, for a somewhat higher case fatality ratio of 6.7 percent, indicating rising lethality. Twenty-three of DRC’s 26 provinces have reported cases. However, the cases described in the investigation are qualitatively new, in that the evidence supports, for the first time, human-to-human transmission with the clade I lineage of the Mpox virus. 

The study notes there had been 241 suspected cases recorded by South Kivu’s provincial surveillance between September 29, 2023, and February 29, 2024. Ninety-one percent were hospitalized. Samples from 119 individuals were obtained for genomic analysis. Among these 108 (91 percent) were confirmed positive for Mpox infection. Professional sex workers accounted for 30 percent of all confirmed and suspected cases.

All confirmed cases had the characteristic rash. Most had fevers and approximately 40 percent had swollen lymph nodes. One hundred and fourteen presented with genital lesions. Two patients died accounting for 1.4 percent of confirmed cases.

Genomic sequencing from 22 patients were obtained confirming the clade I infections, suggesting the event started as a zoonotic spillover. However, five sequences showed a mutation mechanism known as Apolipoprotein B Editing Complex (APOBEC3) mediated cytosine deanimation, which is indicative of human-to-human transmission. According to a recent report published in the journal Virus Evolution, reviewing the APOBEC3-induced mutations in the evolution of Mpox viruses, these human enzymes of the innate immune system have the ability to inhibit certain types of viruses. However, they also confer a signature for their evolution within humans. 

The impact of APOBEC3 modifications to the sequenced clade IIB Mpox viruses were also seen during the 2022-2023 global Mpox outbreak. As the report in Virus Evolution notes in their conclusions, “When we applied our analysis to monkeypox virus (MPXV), we find that there are two distinct groups of MPXV genomes, those collected before 2016 and those after … We conclude that the most likely scenario is that pre-2016, MPXV genomes evolved in the animal host. The post-2016 group of MPXV genomes has undergone persistent and continuous human APOBEC3 editing after zoonotic transmission circa late 2016/early 2017.”

Applying similar genomic techniques learned from the human clade IIB outbreak, the authors of the Kamituga investigation estimated that the recent Mpox clade emerged in mid-September, consistent with the earliest reported case. The authors of the epidemiological investigation wrote, “This report describes a novel clade I Mpox lineage associated with sustained human-to-human transmission in an ongoing outbreak in eastern DRC. Identification of APOBEC3-related mutations—the hallmark of efficient Mpox spread via human-to-human transmission—bolsters this assertion.” 

Historically, Mpox infections had been characterized as an endemic zoonotic disease, meaning the virus living in rodent reservoirs [rope and sun squirrels, giant-pouched rats, and African dormice] spills over into humans that inhabit the same locale. Although the infected individual can infect others through close contact, these remained limited, and the outbreak would soon extinguish itself. The few cases identified outside of Africa usually were imported by travelers from endemic regions. Between 1970 and 2022, there have been approximately 38,000 Mpox cases recorded in West and Central Africa.

Then, in May 2022, with the lifting of the COVID restrictions, the global Mpox outbreak saw a sustained human-to-human transmission of the virus that rapidly spread across 113 countries infecting over 94,000 people between January 2022 and March 5, 2024. Thus far, 174 deaths have been tallied for a case fatality rate of almost 0.2 percent. The World Health Organization (WHO) designated this lineage as clade IIb, distinguishing it from clade IIA and I which, until now were still considered zoonotic. 

Prior to 2018, very few cases of Mpox were reported outside of Africa. However, the large epidemic in Nigeria in 2017 that was driven by a sustained human-to-human transmission meant the epidemiological landscape for Mpox had undergone a radical shift and should have alerted public health agencies across the globe to take notice. These were, for the most part, dismissed by health authorities until a related lineage of the same clade from Nigeria spawned the global outbreak in 2022 amid the ongoing COVID pandemic garnered the world’s attention.

Now, in light of the recent failure by the World Health Organization to reach an agreement on how to move forward on a global approach to preparing and preventing future pandemics, the developments in the eastern DRC with the clade IB of the Mpox virus in the context of the Mpox global outbreak just two years ago should raise alarms and call to action. Public health agencies worldwide seem to have learned nothing from the deaths of nearly 30 million people from COVID-19.

Complacency and reaction have been the hallmark to such epidemics, and with the COVID pandemics, public health has been enchained to the demands of the state and corporate entities. In this regard, the European CDC’s threat assessment from April 5, 2024, is quite revealing. Despite having access to the latest information on monkeypox, they crassly concluded, “[The] increase in cases, the overall risk from this outbreak in the DRC for the general population in the EU/EEA and for MSM with multiple sexual partners in the EU/EEA remains low.” 

As the authors of the eastern DRC outbreak study warned, “The sustained spread of clade I MPXV in Kamituga, a densely populated, poor mining region, raises significant concerns. Local healthcare infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle a large-scale epidemic, compounded by limited access to external aid. The 241 reported cases are likely an underestimate of the true prevalence of Mpox cases occurring in the area.”

Weekly suspected and PCR tested Mpox cases in Kamituga. [Photo: Pre-print report by mpox Research Consortium.]

They added, “Frequent travel occurs between Kamituga and the nearby city of Bukavu, with subsequent movement to neighboring countries such as Rwanda and Burundi. Moreover, a considerable number of sex workers operating in Kamituga are foreigners and frequently return to their countries of origin, although at present, there is no evidence of wider dissemination of the outbreak. The highly mobile nature of this mining population poses a substantial risk of outbreak escalation beyond the current area and across borders.”

This only further raises the specter of yet another public health threat among the various other pathogens that are simultaneously and rapidly evolving to adapt themselves among human populations.