Hysterical smear campaign against refugees arriving from Belarus

Peter Schwarz

German and European politicians are reacting with a hysterical witch-hunt to the influx of several thousand refugees from Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other war zones who are entering the Schengen area via Belarus.

The mistreatment of the refugees, in violation of international law, is being accompanied by press censorship, the construction of metres-high border walls, fierce threats against Belarus and Russia, and the establishment of a police state within Europe. The scale and intensity of the campaign is reminiscent of former US President Donald Trump’s smear campaign against refugees and the construction of a wall on the Mexican border to mobilize fascist forces against the working class.

Since Belarus lifted visa-free travel for several Middle Eastern and African countries in the summer, more refugees have flown from there to Minsk, then travelled overland to the Baltic states or Poland, and from there to Germany.

Polish soldiers erect a fence on the Belarusian border (Photo: Attila Husjenow/Instagram)

Their numbers are manageable. According to the Federal Police, just under 7,000 refugees have arrived in Germany via this route since the beginning of the year. That is only a small fraction of the 890,000 asylum seekers registered at the peak of the mass flight movement in 2015. Although the number has risen significantly in October, it has since stabilized at around 120 a day.

Nevertheless, the propaganda from Warsaw, Berlin and Brussels sounds as if these are not traumatized people in need of protection and urgent help but a horde of barbarians invading Europe.

The Polish government is reacting with merciless brutality. It has stationed 6,000 soldiers at the border who hunt down refugees, mistreat them and send them back to Belarus without allowing them to apply for asylum, even though such pushbacks are strictly forbidden under international law.

The rejected refugees, including families and pregnant women, are forced to languish in the boggy forest area in the damp and freezing cold without food, shelter, clean water and medical assistance. At least seven deaths have now been documented.

To further impede their escape, Poland is building a 2.5-metre-high barbed wire fence along a border more than 400 kilometres long, at an estimated cost of €350 million.

Lithuania has also begun construction of a 508-kilometre fence on its border with Belarus, which in its final stage will be four metres high and be reinforced with barbed wire. The cost is estimated at €152 million. Latvia plans to erect a fence by 2024.

To hide its crimes from the public, the Polish government has imposed a state of emergency along the border. Journalists and refugee workers are strictly forbidden from approaching the border and reporting on the human catastrophe.

Despite the government’s censorship and agitation, there is much support and solidarity with the refugees among the Polish population. Last Saturday in Michalowo near the border, mothers, in particular, demonstrated against the mistreatment with chants of “Shame” and “No one is illegal.” “We cannot stand idly by while children are forced to endure weeks in the cold, wet, dark forests on Polish territory,” the organizers declared on Facebook.

In contrast, the Polish government received support for its criminal policy from Germany. Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (Christian Social Union, CSU) supports the construction of a wall on the border with Belarus. “It is legitimate that we protect the external border [of the EU] in such a way that undetected border crossings are prevented at the green border,” he told Bild am Sonntag.

Demonstration in defence of refugees in Michalowo (Image: Kultura Rownosci/Instagram)

Seehofer also wants to tighten controls on the German-Polish border, which is normally open. He has already sent squads totalling 800 police officers to “closely control the border area and the green border with Poland,” he told BamS.

Saxony’s state Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) also defended the wall’s construction. “We need fences, and we probably need walls,” he said after talks with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels. The point now, he said, was “for the European Union to prove its defensibility.” After decades in which the CDU exploited the existence of the Berlin Wall, which the Stalinist regime in East Germany had built, for propaganda purposes, this latest turn has caused irritation even in its own ranks.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (Social Democratic Party, SPD) used the fate of the refugees to launch fierce attacks on Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko, publicly accusing him of being the “head of a state smuggling ring” and of using “refugees as an instrument” to “exert pressure on European states.” Maas advocated that the EU impose sanctions on airlines transporting refugees to Belarus.

Brandenburg’s state Interior Minister Michael Stübgen (CDU) went even further. He accused the Russian government of being behind the refugee movement. “I assume that the whole thing was not worked out in Minsk alone, but together with the Kremlin,” he told the FAZ. “It’s a strategy that can be described as a new part of a hybrid warfare that Moscow is pursuing with the aim of destabilizing the European Union.”

Green Party leader Robert Habeck, who is expected to be vice chancellor of the next German government, also spoke of “hybrid warfare,” accusing Lukashenko of using people to do so. The EU must not give in to this “blackmail,” Habeck told the FAZ.

Many media commentaries expressed similar sentiments. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which has massively increased its presence in Germany, raved about “Fortress Europe” in the manner of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). As long as it was not possible to control immigration in any other way, “a fortress is still better than the alternative: Islamist subcultures, growing violent crime among perspective-less foreigners ...”

The FAZ called for support for the “affected states on Europe’s eastern flank” in securing their borders. “A border fence cannot only separate but also protect.”

The weekly magazine Cicero published an article by former Bundeswehr (army) general and long-time Merkel adviser Erich Vad, who linked support for the brutal Polish border regime with calls for massive external and internal rearmament.

In a thinly veiled threat of war against Belarus, Vad compared the country to Libya. “We have learned that it is not enough to chase out dictators on human rights grounds—as in the case of Libya—but at the same time to shy away from using military means as well to ensure the establishment of a new order and the containment of a mass migration from there.

“Now it is Belarus, tomorrow it will again be the Balkans and North African countries,” Vad continued. “We need to learn anew and understand that the North African coastline and also the Middle East are important regions of our own security and not just allow their foreign and security development to run wild.” After the “massive reduction of the US presence in Europe,” he said, “Europeans must not allow a strategic vacuum to develop.”

To “protect the Schengen area,” Vad wants to establish a European Border Guard Force “to be deployed on land, sea and air.” He cites as models the French Gendarmerie and the Italian Carabinieri—both of which are paramilitary police units notorious for their brutal crackdowns on workers and opposition movements.

Vad’s contribution makes clear the real purpose of the smear campaign against the refugees: to stir up reactionary sentiments and mobilize right-wing forces to suppress growing opposition to social inequality, mass layoffs, policies of deliberate mass infection and preparation for future wars. The cruel and illegal methods used to seal off Fortress Europe, including in the Mediterranean, against refugees show the brutality the ruling class is capable of in the process. The parties of the current German government and any future coalition agree on these issues.

The new AY.4.2 sub-lineage of Delta: The implications of the evolution of coronavirus

Benjamin Mateus

The world is fast approaching the end of the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Already nearly one-quarter of a billion people have been infected by the coronavirus, a vast undercounting by a unanimous consensus among scientists and researchers. There have also been almost five million deaths, though the global excess deaths are estimated to be over 16 million.

What has distinguished the second year has been the introduction of life-saving vaccines that have without doubt saved numerous lives. Just over half the world’s population, an astounding 3.86 billion people worldwide, has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

However, as inequity in vaccine distribution continues to plague the globe, regions in the Middle East, the African continent, and many Latin American countries have fallen woefully behind high-income nations in Europe and North America. Africa has, on average, only administered a single dose to 8.3 percent of its population, a critical indictment of the ruling factions’ opportunistic approach to the crisis.

And yet, despite these achievements, albeit favoring the wealthier nations, the second year has been far more calamitous and deadly than the first, as almost every country across the globe has adopted a “we will learn to live with the virus” approach in their response to the pandemic. If we set the announcement of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization on January 30, 2020, as a fixed point in the beginning of the pandemic, exactly one year later, there were 103 million reported infections and 2.35 million deaths globally.

But with three months left in this second period, already 143 million more people have contracted the virus. A small but significant number have contracted COVID-19 twice or even three times. Another 2.64 million people have died. This means that despite the existence of vaccines that can dramatically cut the rate of severe disease and death, more have lost their lives in nine months than in the preceding 12.

It is important to consider these statistics, because the policy of living with the coronavirus has enabled SARS-CoV-2 to mutate and develop more virulent forms to ensure its “survival.” The ruling class has carried out policies to satisfy the incessant need by financial institutions to see their quarterly earnings climb, which have had the effect of allowing the virus to become endemic. There is an intimate correspondence between the financial earnings of the stock exchanges and the death toll from COVID-19.

The emergence of the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) in the second year is the counterpoint to this criminal policy of malign neglect. Hyper-transmissible, more virulent, and deadly and possessing more robust immune-evading properties, in just a few short months after debuting in India in a catastrophic surge of infections, it quickly dominated every other variant globally wreaking havoc across communities in every region of the world. As of August 24, 2021,163 countries have reported the Delta variant has been sequenced within their borders.

As countries prepare to face the third year of the pandemic, there are signs that new mutations are emerging that have aroused researchers’ concerns. Delta’s daughters are beginning to dominate, supplanting their parent. They have been designated by the PANGO (Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global Outbreak Lineages) lineage AY. The designation highlights the branches of the evolutionary tree that characterize their relationship. As the website notes, “The Pango dynamic nomenclature is a system for identifying SARS-CoV-2 genetic lineages of epidemiologic relevance.” The network is overseen by a team of researchers from the universities of Edinburgh and Oxford.

There have been 75 such lineages identified thus far, each possessing a unique mutation. AY.4 has been rising in the UK over several months, accounting for 68.2 percent of sequenced SARS-CoV-2 coronaviruses in the last 28 days. The sub lineage AY.4.2, also commonly being referred to as the new “Delta Plus,” has been growing slowly, accounting for 8.5 percent in the same period.

The origin of AY.4.2 was traced back to April in the UK’s Northumbria by COG-UK, a British consortium that has sequenced more than 1.2 million whole genomes of the coronavirus. The two samples related to recent travel to India. In explaining this new designation, Scroll.in said, “Once a lineage’s labelling gets five levels deep, a new letter combination is started to avoid the name getting too long. So, the AY forms of the virus are not vastly different from what’s come before, even though their labelling is different. They are all sub-lineages of the Delta.”

Some of the scientists studying AY.4.2 have estimated that it is between 10 to 15 percent more transmissible than Delta. Such an advantage, they assert, most likely won’t lead to a significant rise in infections. Others have attributed AY.4.2’s rise to a phenomenon called a founder effect. This means that all the people in a group isolated from a larger population became infected with this sub-lineage. It is a randomness that accompanies the selection of these small groups from the larger population and does not represent the larger population, nor should it be construed as a dominant variant. However, many have noted that it is still too early to be confident about this supposition.

There are two specific genetic mutations that define AY.4.2—Y145H and A222V—that affect the spike protein of the virus. The A222V was first seen in the B.1.177 lineage last year in Spain, spread by holiday travelers. However, it is the Y145H mutation that appears to have increased the transmissibility of the virus.

This section of the spike protein is frequently targeted by antibodies. Delta has mutations in this region that appear to enhance its greater ability to escape immunity. This means that antibodies have a harder time targeting the virus, thus allowing it to escape and more likely to infect an individual previously infected or vaccinated. However, scientists are studying these mutations and their findings have not yet been reviewed.

More recently, the number of sequenced AY.4.2 infections has been climbing in all regions of England, and Scotland and Wales.

Cornelius Roemer, a computational biologist at the Biozentrum, Basel, Switzerland, noted that the AY.4.2 in Scotland has an extra spike mutation S:1264L and in “less than 10 weeks going from first occurrence to 2,000 sequences. It’s now more than 50 percent of all AY.4.2 in Scotland. … Interestingly [it] was found also in AY.23, the lineage [that] emerged in Singapore and [is] prevalent in Southeastern Asia. … It’s also appearing in AY.26 in the US. At least three times convergent evolution with significant shares.” The last statement implies that these three different versions of the coronavirus have found the same mutation to exploit for their survival.

According to a recent article in The World, more than four million genomic sequences of SARS-Cov-2 have been analyzed. Sequencing these viruses can provide critical information for public health officials. By understanding the implication of these changing codes, specifically in known regions that increase a pathogen’s virulence, scientists can determine early warning signs that would make it possible to bring together public health resources to intervene before the particular variant is allowed a wide berth and can escape to other geographic regions.

Though this approach will be critical in studying and identifying future pathogens, that the virus can evolve through convergent evolutionary biological pathways to escape natural pressures placed in its way through population immunity highlights the critical need to eliminate COVID-19 from the face of the earth. The coronavirus, under the current pressures, is driven to develop the ability to escape immunity. Such a characteristic in a respiratory virus would be extremely catastrophic.

Caravan challenges Mexico’s complicity in US assault on immigrants

Bill Van Auken

Mexican officials scrambled Thursday to deal with a statement by the American ambassador that the Biden administration and the government of President Andrés López Obrador (AMLO) have an agreement to deport back to their countries Central American and other immigrants blocked from crossing the US southern border.

A caravan of migrants, mostly from Central America, head north along a coastal highway just outside of Huehuetan, Chiapas State, Mexico, on Sunday, Oct. 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

The controversy erupted as some 4,000 immigrants, many of them women and children, are marching in a “caravan” through the southern Mexican state of Chiapas en route to Mexico City to demand their rights, which have been trampled by the AMLO government.

Ambassador Ken Salazar, a former right-wing Democratic Senator from Colorado, made his remarks while touring border cities and praising the US Border Patrol. “Everybody should understand that the US-Mexico border is closed to unlawful entry,” Salazar said. “Persons attempting to enter the United States unlawfully will be detained. The United States and Mexico are committed to returning migrants who unlawfully enter to their country of origin.”

Senior Mexican Foreign Ministry officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to the daily La Jornada, claimed that Salazar’s statement was “ambiguous” and that there was no “bilateral” agreement on deportations.

Whatever agreements between Biden and AMLO have been put in writing, in practice, the Mexican government is collaborating fully in a brutal system in which refugees and migrants reaching the Mexican border are summarily expelled. Both the Trump and the Biden administrations have invoked Title 42, an obscure part of the US health code, to cloak their violations of the right to asylum and due process under the phony mantle of combatting COVID-19. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that migrants crossing the US southern border are a significant vector for transmission of the virus.

Under Biden, who sanctimoniously promised to pursue a more humane immigration policy, these Title 42 expulsions have reached roughly 100,000 a month, a 50 percent increase over those carried out during the last three months of the Trump administration.

Immigrants kicked out in this manner have been forced onto airplanes, without being told where they are going, and flown to the southern Mexico cities of ‪Villahermosa and Tapachula. There they are loaded into convoys of buses controlled by Mexico’s National Guard and immigration agency, INM, and driven to the Guatemalan border to be dumped in the middle of the night into what are among the most dangerous areas of Central America’s Northern Triangle.‬‬

Thousands of others have remained trapped, without means of obtaining any livelihood, in Mexico’s southern border cities of Tapachula and Ceibo, which are ringed by National Guard checkpoints.

It was in Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala, where the latest caravan began last week. Migrants have described the town as a “prison,” while even legislators of AMLO’s Morena party have called it a “concentration camp.” Many migrants have languished there for a year or more waiting for Mexican authorities to either grant them asylum or regularize their immigration status.

Chanting “We are not criminals, we are workers, we are immigrants” and “Libertad, Libertad,” at least 2,000 migrants marched out of Tapachula on October 23. Confronting a checkpoint north of the town, the marchers forced their way through columns of helmeted, shield-bearing members of AMLO’s National Guard. At least one three-year-old boy suffered injuries to his head in the failed attempt to turn back the marchers. Two previous caravans from Tapachula earlier this year were violently broken up.

The caravan has progressed relatively slowly, marching with temperatures reaching over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and under heavy downpours, forced in some cases to sleep on the side of the road. The Mexican government has forbidden the marchers from using any type of vehicles.

Leaders of the caravan have reported that a census showed that 1,200 of those on the march are children, and 70 percent of them are under the age of seven. Many workers are pushing baby carriages down the highway or walking with children on their shoulders. There are also reportedly 68 pregnant women on the march, as well as a number of disabled adults and children.

Some estimates have put the size of the caravan at 4,000 or 5,000, considerably smaller than those of 2018 and 2019, but the largest since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Republican Party and its media outlets, such as Fox News, have attempted to portray the caravan as an existential threat to the United States. Donald Trump fulminated: “I hope everyone is watching the MASSIVE Caravan pouring through Mexico and headed to our Country. This must be stopped before they reach our Border.”

It is apparently the number of marchers and the presence of so many women and children which has led to the Mexican government to adopt what Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard described as a policy of “prudence” toward the latest caravan, i.e., refraining, at least for now, from unleashing the National Guard to violently disperse it.

The caravan, launched in the name of “dignity, freedom and peace,” is a march against the illegal policies of both the Biden and AMLO governments in abrogating the right to asylum and the right of immigrants to protection and due process.

Luis Rey Villagrán, a Mexican immigrant rights advocates and one of the organizers of the caravan said that upon reaching Mexico City, the marchers would demand “permanent residence cards on humanitarian grounds for each and every one of those who is walking on this march.”

A coalition of civil liberties and pro-immigrant organizations from Mexico and Central America joined under the slogan #ProtecciónNoContención (Protection Not Containment) appeared on October 26 before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) to present charges of “grave violations of human rights against immigrants” on the part of the López Obrador government in Mexico. These include its collaboration in the Title 42 expulsions by the United States and the summary deportations from Mexico itself without providing migrants the right to appeal for asylum. The indictment also included the charge that the AMLO government has “militarized” Mexican immigration policy, treating migrants as criminals.

Since June 2019, when the Trump administration threatened Mexico with trade sanctions if it failed to contain the flow of immigrants to the US border, the AMLO government has adopted a policy of “containment” in league with Washington. With US logistical aid, it has deployed 28,000 members of the National Guard to Mexico’s southern and northern borders, a force larger than the entire US Border Patrol.

In March 2020, the López Obrador government agreed to accept Central Americans summarily expelled from the US on the Title 42 pretext, and in August 2021, it agreed to their airborne expulsions to southern Mexico. Meanwhile, within Mexico the National Guard has brutalized and killed migrants, while federal and local authorities have engaged in systematic repression.

In the latest incident, police in Tijuana Thursday surrounded an encampment of migrants expelled from the US, destroyed tents and confiscated belongings of those who were not present and then encircled the entire camp with a six-foot chain-link fence. A local official claimed that the raid was for the migrants’ “protection.”

The overwhelming majority of those marching in the latest caravan are from Central America, fleeing conditions of endemic poverty, violence and political repression which all have their roots in the horrific crimes committed by US imperialism to secure the profit interests of American banks and corporations across the region for over a century. This has included support for bloody dictatorships like that of the Somozas in Nicaragua, CIA-orchestrated coups as in Guatemala in 1954 and the genocidal counterinsurgency wars in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in the 1980s.

The refusal of those marching to accept the conditions created by imperialism and its corrupt servants in the national bourgeois governments of Central America and their defiance of anti-immigrant repression is part of a worldwide resurgence of the class struggle. Like workers everywhere, they are refusing to accept the conditions create by a failed economic system—capitalism—that threatens workers’ jobs, living standards and very lives, under conditions of a global pandemic.

As infections skyrocket, German government declares pandemic over

Johannes Stern

Despite exploding case numbers in Germany and across Europe, the German government is effectively declaring the pandemic over. Earlier this week, Health Minister Jens Spahn (Christian-Democratic Union, CDU) repeated his call for the currently declared “epidemic situation of national scope” to expire on November 25. This would eliminate most remaining protective measures.

Medical staff, in light blue, and funeral house employees close a coffin with a COVID-19 victim from the University Hospital in Bucharest, Romania, Friday, Oct. 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexandru Dobre)

Since the first wave of the pandemic in March 2020, the Bundestag had regularly extended this “epidemic situation.” Under the terms of the Infection Protection Act, this forms the legal basis for nationwide regulations, such as mask requirements or distance and contact restrictions.

Spahn’s calls, which essentially follow the line of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, is supported by all the parties in the Bundestag (German parliament). Representatives of the Left Party welcomed it just as much as the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens, who are currently forming the next federal government. A paper these three parties published on Wednesday on “ending the epidemic situation” makes clear that they plan to continue the “profits before lives” policy unabated, when they take office.

“The epidemic situation of national scope … ends at the end of November 24, 2021. It will not be extended. Because its preconditions no longer exist,” it says, adding, “The intervention-intensive catalog of measures … will no longer be applicable after the epidemic situation in the federal territory has ended. We will also remove the possibility, currently still provided for in the law … of state parliaments declaring this catalog applicable at the state level in accordance with the epidemic situation in individual states.”

That is black on white. Although the pandemic is once again rampant, the SPD, FDP and Greens have agreed in their coalition talks, which are taking place in secret, that there will be virtually no measures to contain the virus in future. In doing so, they are provoking a situation like that of last winter, when the health care system almost collapsed due to rapidly rising case numbers, and tens of thousands died under terrible conditions in Germany alone.

Already, the situation is catastrophic. The nationwide seven-day incidence of new COVID-19 infections is rising steeply every day. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), this figure increased on Friday to 139.2 per 100,000 inhabitants. The previous day it had been at 130.2, a week ago at 95.1. The death toll is also shooting up again. In the past four days, 489 people have died. That brought the official COVID-19 death toll in Germany to 95,606.

Hospitals are on the verge of overload. “We are in a critical pandemic situation,” the chief executive of the German Hospital Association, Gerald Gaß, told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland. He said the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 infections has risen sharply within a week. “If this trend continues, we will have 3,000 patients in intensive care again in just two weeks,” he warned. Currently, more than 1,800 people are in intensive care, and nearly 4,300 COVID-19 patients are in normal care, according to the DIVI intensive care registry.

The official justification given for ending the measures is the vaccination rate. In fact, only about two-thirds of the German population are fully vaccinated. Almost 30 million people, including all children under the age of 12, are completely defenceless against the virus. In addition, there is the danger of coronavirus infections breaking through the vaccine. From February until the end of last week, the RKI registered 117,763 probable vaccination breakthroughs. Nevertheless, according to the RKI, only 1.9 million people have received a third booster vaccination in Germany.

Despite vaccinations, the situation in Europe is worse than it was the same time last year as a result of the reckless reopening policy. Last week, 1.4 million COVID-19 cases were registered across Europe, 18 percent more than the previous week. Over the same period, 20,503 deaths were recorded, a 17 percent increase. This means that almost 1.3 million people have officially died from COVID-19 in Europe. And as in the US or India, the actual death toll is almost certainly far higher.

The situation is currently most dramatic in Eastern Europe. Russia and Ukraine are setting new record levels of infection and death almost daily. In Russia, 1,163 people died of COVID-19 on Friday, and 648 in Ukraine. The three Baltic states are among the countries with the highest incidences worldwide. In Latvia, the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in a week stood at 934.5 yesterday (Friday), in Estonia at 847.8 and in Lithuania at 747.

The situation is also out of control in Romania and Bulgaria, with incidences of around 500. In Romania, which has a population of around 19 million, more than 15,000 new infections were recorded on Saturday. Some 30 patients had to be transferred to neighbouring Hungary because of the overload on the health care system. The situation is so dramatic that the government in Bucharest has had to take some limited measures. As of Monday, masks will be compulsory throughout Romania, and larger events such as weddings and conferences will be banned in November.

The fact that the SPD-FDP-Green coalition is preparing to end all COVID-19 protections in such a situation exposes the class character of the incoming federal government. It is moving to implement the “profits before lives” policy even more aggressively than the SPD-CDU grand coalition before. Already in their exploratory paper, the SPD, FDP and Greens pledged to respect the constitutional balanced-budget amendment and to increase the “competitiveness of Germany as a business location.”

The message is clear: The new government sees it as its job to squeeze the gigantic sums that flowed to the big banks and corporations under last spring’s COVID-19 emergency bailouts out of the working class. Scientifically necessary measures to contain the pandemic—first and foremost, the closure of schools and nonessential businesses—are incompatible with this agenda.

Behind this ruthless policy of mass infection stand the geostrategic and economic interests of German imperialism, which is positioning itself against its international rivals and massively rearming. The exploratory paper states that the aim is to “ensure that Europe emerges economically strong from the pandemic on the basis of sound and sustainable public finances.” To this end, “increased cooperation between the national European armies” is declared essential, as is improving the German army’s equipment.

Ethiopia: Assailed by Terrorists and Betrayed by the West

Graham Peebles

As the new government led by Prime-Minister Ahmed Abiy takes office for their second term, the West’s relentless propaganda campaign against Ethiopia continues. Since the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) attacked the Ethiopian State on 4 November 2020 (the day after President Biden was elected coincidentally), the US and allies, factions within UN agencies and human rights organizations have worked to undermine and discredit the democratically elected government.

Aided by mainstream western media – The Economist, BBC, The Guardian, New York Times, Al Jazeera, Facebook (who, according to former employer now whistleblower, Frances Haugen, is “fanning ethnic violence in Ethiopia”) and others – they have spread misinformation and lies about the situation inside Ethiopia. False accusations that Abiy’s government is deliberately “starving its own people”, “blocking humanitarian aid” from reaching displaced groups and carrying out atrocities in the region are widespread on such platforms.

They receive their information not from Ethiopian journalists working on the ground, or well-informed local people, but, it seems, from statements issued by the US administration, UN agencies, external organizations and TPLF spokespeople. The same material is published or broadcast by each media outlet, more or less. It is consistently untrue and serves to undermine the Ethiopian government, create confusion and strengthen the TPLF’s campaign. What western governments don’t mention, and consistently fail to condemn, are the atrocities perpetrated by the TPLF.

The terrorist group refused to adhere to a government initiated ceasefire in July, advanced into neighboring regions of Afar (from where they have since been ejected by federal forces) and Amhara, massacring civilians, raping, destroying property and crops, killing livestock. Mass graves have been discovered in a number of locations in the Amhara region, where local people relate harrowing accounts of TPLF brutality. And yet the US, UK, EU etc, remain silent.

TPLF’s terrorist subversion

This TPLF force, which includes children and teenagers in its ranks, is not a righteous group tussling with an evil government, or a band of “local guerrilla fighters” as the New York Times described them. The TPLF are the evil force; a vicious terrorist gang, that is trying to overthrow the legitimate government of Ethiopia and with the support of external powers (most notably the US, which many suspect may even be arming them) seize power.

These same countries (US, UK, EU) stood behind the TPLF when it was in office (1991-2018), turning a blind eye as it threw a blanket of fear over the country. They trampled on human rights, divided communities along ethnic lines; siphoned off aid money, embezzled federal funds, buying properties in London and elsewhere. After 27 years in power it is well resourced and well connected, has an organized propaganda machine with certain individuals within certain foreign governments and UN agencies sympathetic to their violent cause.

According to two UN staff members working in Addis Ababa, one of the most influential pro-TPLF voices within the UN is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Ethiopian Director-General of the WHO. A senior member of the TPLF junta (Minister of Health, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, where he was responsible for abducting UK citizen and opposition leader, Andargachew Tsige at Sanaa airport in Yemen), his appointment at the WHO was widely opposed by Ethiopians, who regard him as a criminal.

The whistleblowers make clear that certain elements within the UN, including Dr. Tedros, want to remove the head of the UN in Ethiopia (the Resident Coordinator), Dr. Catherine Sozi, and replace her with “someone who will dance to their tune.” Their “tune” is to subvert the government through an international misinformation campaign that supports the TPLF, and presumably helps facilitate their ascension back into power. Something that, no matter the subterfuge, will never happen.

“When the humanitarian aid effort in Tigray was ramped up many [UN] agencies brought in additional support to be posted in Tigray,” they explained. In an unprecedented step, Emergency Coordinators in the region were instructed to report directly to UN headquarters, cutting out UN staff in Addis, because they “are more sympathetic to and are working with the Ethiopian government”. Dr. Catherine Sozi is reported as saying she has “never seen anything like this”, i.e., local UN reps being sidelined and a direct line of communication being established between Tigray and New York/Geneva. In the interview, the whistleblowers make clear that the “TPLF……. have networks within UN system.”

The Ethiopian government had been aware that the UN inside Ethiopia had been compromised for some time and on 27 September they expelled seven senior UN officials from various agencies. Ethiopia’s permanent representative to the UN, Taye Atske Selassie said his country had found a “multitude of transgressions” by the expelled officials alleging that, “they openly conducted activism for the TPLF.”

In a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ethiopian government accused the expelled UN staff of “Dissemination of misinformation and politicization of humanitarian assistance; Diversion of humanitarian assistance to the TPLF; Violating agreed-upon security arrangements; Transferring communication equipment to be used by the TPLF [and] continued reticence in demanding the return of more than 400 trucks commandeered by the TPLF for military mobilization and for the transportation of its forces since July 2021.” The missive makes clear that such concerns were “brought to the attention of the relevant UN high officials and other international partners on multiple occasions, but to no avail.”

This is a staggering list of offences, a shocking breach of trust that gives an indication of what the Ethiopian government is up against. They are not only fighting the TPLF, which the federal forces are more than capable of dealing with, but are also battling an array of external forces; former allies and friends turned enemies.

Cohesion and pride

Following the expulsion of UN staff, and consistent with their anti-Ethiopia stance since the conflict began, instead of requesting an independent investigation into Ethiopia’s concerns, the US condemned the government’s actions. Secretary of State Blinken issued a press statement in which the US threatened to apply targeted sanctions (authorized by Biden earlier in the month), and called on the international community “to employ all appropriate tools to apply pressure on the Government of Ethiopia and any other actors impeding humanitarian access.”

The “actors impeding humanitarian access” are the TPLF forces, not the government as repeatedly alleged by the US, UN etc. and western media; all pressure should be applied to the terrorists and all support from the “international community”, given to the democratically elected government, as it should have been from the beginning of the conflict. However, far from standing by Ethiopia, as could rightly have been expected, the government and the Ethiopian people have been betrayed by the “international community” – meaning the US and its mates.

The government has repeatedly been “instructed” by Washington and New York to negotiate with the TPLF, which is not acceptable to the government or the people. Even when the government took the positive step of declaring a ceasefire and withdrew its forces, they were criticized.

One reason – probably the main one – for this shameful reaction is the Ethiopian government’s refusal to toe the imperialist line and do what they are told. This outrageous act of defiance by a poor black nation (can we ignore the racist element?), together with the successful construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam – the biggest in Africa, the nation’s proud history of independence (Ethiopia was never colonized) and its importance within the Horn of Africa, which is set to grow, all have infuriated their Western benefactors. Add to this list the influence of the TPLF in Washington, London, Brussels and New York (UN), plus the malignity of international mainstream media, and a cocktail of destabilizing anti-Ethiopia forces emerge.

The collective response to The West’s sustained attack, a betrayal that has shocked and angered many Ethiopians, has been to unite the people and strengthen their resolve against their common enemy, the TPLF. This sense of national cohesion and pride was vibrantly expressed at PM Abiy’s inauguration ceremony on 4 October. Many African leaders were present at the joyful occasion held in the capital, Addis Ababa, under the banner of “A New Beginning”. They saluted PM Abiy’s overwhelming electoral victory (something western governments failed to do) and expressed solidarity with their African neighbor and friend.

The days of imperial rule in Africa are long gone, and, as Ethiopia is demonstrating, and the US is discovering, the time when global powers can tell African nations what to do is also becoming a thing of the past.

Western voices that are supporting the TPLF terrorists, and distorting the situation inside Ethiopia, are complicit in the ongoing violence; the deaths and destruction, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people and the nationwide pain and uncertainty that this appalling conflict is causing.

Mass deaths hit Eastern Europe as COVID-19 surges across the continent

Samuel Tissot

This past week, 1.4 million COVID-19 cases were recorded across Europe, up 18 percent from the previous week. Also 20,503 deaths were recorded in the same time period, up 17 percent. Cases are rapidly spreading across the entire continent: Only four of Europe’s 47 countries have seen cases fall in the last week.

Medical workers tend a patient suffering from COVID-19 in the Nouvel Hopital Civil of Strasbourg, eastern France, Thursday, Oct.22, 2020.(AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)

All indicators suggest that the number of deaths and infections will continue to rise as colder weather creates optimal conditions for the virus to spread. Without the immediate imposition of stringent scientific measures to eliminate the virus, the coming winter in Europe threatens to be the deadliest so far in the pandemic.

The center of the surge is Eastern Europe. In Russia, 7,454 people died over the last week. In Ukraine, 3,785 people died, a 63 percent week-on-week increase. In Russia and Ukraine, mass infections of children have led to appalling conditions in overflowing pediatric wards.

In Bulgaria and Romania, 127 and 154 people per million inhabitants died last week, respectively, the two highest rates of any state in the world. The virus is ripping through a largely unprotected population; only 30 percent of Romanian citizens have received both vaccine shots. In Bulgaria, just 20 percent of the population have received two doses.

With Romania’s 2,000 critical care beds already full, COVID-19 patients are waiting in hospital corridors for treatment. Last week, 50 patients were evacuated to beds in Poland and Hungary to try to free up space. Dorel Sandesc, head of intensive care at Timisoara hospital in western Romania, told the BBC, “I feel like the whole country has become a resuscitation department.”

Governments are trying to contain and defuse public anger over their policy of mass death by implementing a few insufficient health measures. A one-week partial lockdown has just gone into effect in Russia. Elsewhere, most workplaces remain open, however, and families are not receiving the financial support necessary to allow them to remain at home. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said, “We don’t want to introduce lockdowns because our economy is gaining momentum, and lockdowns would have a negative impact on economic development.”

A similar catastrophe is unfolding in the Baltic countries, though their populations are over 50 percent vaccinated. Last week, Lithuania (population 2.6 million) recorded 19,792 cases and 216 deaths. Latvia (1.8 million) recorded 17,462 infections and 165 deaths, a 53 percent increase over the previous week. Estonia (1.3 million) recorded 10,746 cases and 45 deaths—both increases of more than 30 percent from the week before. As a proportion of the population, these case rates are twice the levels recorded in Britain, the pandemic epicenter in Western Europe.

The conditions prevailing in these countries are a warning for workers across Europe and internationally. As vaccine efficacy wanes over time, new variants develop, and winter weather causes a spike in infections, hospitals throughout Europe will soon be overflowing. Already, conditions in Western and Central Europe are rapidly aligning with those in the East.

Every Scandinavian country has witnessed a near-doubling of infections over the last week. Denmark’s cases rose 77 percent to 9,663. In Finland, infections rose 22 percent to 4,187. In Norway, cases rose 78 percent to 5,573. The Faroe Islands, an autonomous territory of Denmark in the North Sea with a population of just 49,000, is facing an acute outbreak with 428 cases recorded in the last week.

In Germany, weekly cases increased by 32 percent to 98,101. The 31,402 daily cases recorded on October 26 were the highest daily figure recorded in Germany since January 4. Nonetheless, the incoming SPD-Green-FDP coalition government plans to let the state of emergency expire on November 25. Weekly cases also increased in Austria by 44 percent to 25,090.

In France and Italy cases and deaths are rising following weeks of decline. In France, cases increased by 16 percent to 38,215 last week. Following the end of free tests in France, the week of October 18-24 saw 675,200 fewer tests compared to the week before.

Britain is one of the only countries to record a fall in cases in the previous week. However, the 305,882 recorded was only a 4 percent decline and still left the country leading Europe for the number of recorded infections and only behind the United States in the rest of the world. The 1,010 recorded deaths in the country represented a 6 percent increase on the week before.

Other seasonal diseases also threaten to worsen the crisis. Scientists in many countries have warned that influenza will have a greater effect than previous years due to a lack of natural immunity built up by lower amounts of social interaction during the pandemic. In France, bronchitis infections in children are overwhelming pediatric wards.

Even in European countries with the highest vaccination rates, millions remain unprotected, including school children and many of the elderly. Waning effectiveness of vaccines month by month and new variants also threaten a surge in cases and deaths. Although the ratio of cases to deaths is less than in previous waves due to vaccination, the vast increase in infections due to the increased contagiousness of the Delta variant means that once again hospitals throughout Europe face inundation in the near future.

The number of deaths this winter may well exceed the levels seen in December, January and February a year ago. However, capitalist governments across Europe are preparing for this wave of mass infection and death by again placing profits above lives.

Throughout the pandemic, the guiding principle of the ruling class has been to maximize the number of hours, weeks and days that profit can be extracted from the working class. They are entirely indifferent to the 1.3 million confirmed COVID-19 deaths across Europe so far in the pandemic, and the millions suffering from Long COVID or serious organ damage. This was most crassly summed up in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s wish to “let the bodies pile high in their thousands,” but it is held in government offices across Europe.

Meanwhile, the EU has pumped billions into its military budgets and gifted hundreds of billions of euros to corporate bailouts. Spanish courts have ruled that lockdowns are unconstitutional. In France, unions and pseudo-left groups have supported far right-led anti-vaccination protests. These policies all seek to impose a policy of “living with the virus” on a working population that opposes mass death and the continued spread of the virus.

This conscious policy of social murder can and must be opposed. Without a scientific policy to eliminate the virus, the cycle of mass death and social dislocation will continue for years.

German Defence Minister Kramp-Karrenbauer threatens Russia with nuclear weapons

Johannes Stern

In the midst of negotiations to form a new governing coalition in Berlin, Germany’s federal government is threatening Russia with the use of nuclear weapons. In an interview with Deutschlandfunk last Thursday, incumbent Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democrats, CDU) said, “We have to make it very clear to Russia that in the end—and that is also the deterrent doctrine—we are ready to use such means [nuclear weapons] so that it has a deterrent effect beforehand and nobody gets the idea, for example, to attack NATO partners in the areas over the Baltic states or in the Black Sea. That is the core idea of NATO, this alliance, and it will be adapted to the current behaviour of Russia.”

Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr Eberhard Zorn (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

The fact that Kramp-Karrenbauer speaks of the use of nuclear weapons against Russia without blinking an eye gives harrowing insight into the state of mind at the highest levels of the German state. Eighty years after the attack by the Nazi Wehrmacht on the Soviet Union and the war of annihilation in the East, scenarios are being discussed behind the backs of the population that directly endanger hundreds of millions of lives. These discussions take place amid the raging pandemic, which has seen the ruling elite sacrifice thousands of people to protect corporate profits.

The Defence Ministry’s official website said the minister had chosen her “clear words on the occasion of the meeting of the nuclear planning group” at the meeting of NATO defence ministers at the end of last week. Kramp-Karrenbauer has made it clear that “Germany is and will remain firmly integrated into the alliance’s nuclear planning. Germany stands by its obligations in the alliance.”

A report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (F.A.Z.) on the NATO meeting explains what this means in concrete terms. “That could mean, for example, that German tornadoes equipped with atomic bombs are relocated to the eastern flank when a certain conflict threshold is reached. This is not discussed in public, but it is part of the strategic considerations when the so-called nuclear planning group, to which all member states except France belong, provides advice,” the newspaper noted.

In other words: German warplanes armed with US atomic bombs stored in Germany would be relocated to the Russian border in the event of a conflict and they would possibly also drop them—with unforeseeable consequences. A nuclear war between NATO and Russia would not only turn the whole of Europe into a nuclear desert; it would call into question the survival of all humanity.

The F.A.Z article, headlined “Defence Planning of NATO: The Art of Flexible Deterrence,” shows in detail how aggressively NATO is advancing war preparations against Russia and the central role Germany plays in this.

The new concept “Defence and deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic area” (DDA), which was adopted in June, is currently being implemented. The first step in this direction is the “Saceur’s AOR Strategic Plan,” which restructures the area of responsibility (AOR) of the Commander-in-Chief for Europe (Saceur),” the F.A.Z. explained. The alliance is going “back to an organizational structure that already existed during the Cold War.” Each corps gets “a precisely allocated area of operations.” On the other hand, “it is about other threats and the ability to react flexibly to them,” according to the F.A.Z.

The plans read like a modern form of total war. An operation plan stipulates to act “early and effectively.” To this end, the alliance wants to “include all of its headquarters in the defence” in the future, which of course also applies to the rapid mobilization and relocation of combat units. Ultimately, “it is about regaining the dominance of escalation.” The “trickiest part” of it is “the nuclear strategy.”

The incoming federal government will have the task of implementing these war plans. “The planning cycle” is, “as usual, designed for four years, which is important for the new federal government,” writes the F.A.Z. This would “define the future priorities and investments, including defence spending.” It is about providing the necessary “military capabilities that make it possible to actually deploy troops: reconnaissance, strategic air transport, digital operations management, missile defence.”

The plans for the implementation of these massive war and armament projects have already been finalised. In May, the Ministry of Defence adopted the “cornerstones for the future of the Bundeswehr (German army),” which are intended to effectively prepare the German military for the conduct of major military conflicts, including nuclear war.

The Bundeswehr must “be able to conduct military operations against an equal opponent in combined arms combat, and in the future also in combined dimensions—across the spectrum up to and including high-intensity combat,” it says. For this, “military capabilities for deterrence across the board, including nuclear participation, are necessary.”

In addition, the German armed forces would have to “be able to provide the political leadership with flexible military options and to provide forces and capabilities that are able to act in all dimensions, adapted to the situation.” They would have to “act quickly and seamlessly across dimensions and be able to function in the entire spectrum of dimensions at the same time.” The “guiding principle” must be: “Organize yourself as you fight.”

There is no doubt that the current coalition negotiations between the Social Democrats (SPD), Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens are discussing the implementation of this aggressive foreign and defence policy agenda. As with the formation of the government four years ago, the talks are taking place in strict secrecy. The ruling class knows that its agenda is deeply hated by the population and faces tremendous opposition.

SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich reacted nervously to Kramp-Karrenbauer’s open threats against Russia. He told the DPA that she should not burden the work of a future federal government. Her “recent mind games ... on the use of nuclear weapons in a conflict with Russia” are “irresponsible.” She “unfortunately does not differ from the equally unfounded threats from the Russian side.”

Mützenich’s statements are false in two respects. On the one hand, he knows very well that it is not Russia, but NATO, that is the aggressor. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, the military alliance has been systematically advancing towards the Russian border. The SPD plays a central role in this. The incumbent Social Democratic Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, as foreign minister supported the right-wing coup in Ukraine in 2014 in order to install an anti-Russian regime in Kiev and weaken Moscow. The subsequent dispatch of German combat troops to Eastern Europe also took place with the explicit support of the SPD, which has headed the Foreign Ministry without interruption for eight years.

On Monday, government spokesman Steffen Seibert defended Kramp-Karrenbauer’s nuclear threats as a logical implementation of the policy of the grand coalition. As long as nuclear weapons are understood by some states as a means of military conflict, “there is a need to maintain a nuclear deterrent within the framework of NATO,” he said cynically. That is “also the case in the coalition agreement.”

Significantly, the annual nuclear weapons exercise “Steadfast Noon” took place in Italy last week. Belgian, Dutch, Italian and German combat bombers were involved in practicing nuclear participation; that is, to train them to use atomic bombs.

The Putin regime has nothing to offer when it comes to opposing the Western preparations for war. It represents the interests of a corrupt oligarchy that has enriched itself through the restoration of capitalism and fears the growing social and political opposition of the working class as much as the imperialist powers. Moscow is responding to threats from Washington, Brussels and Berlin with a mixture of diplomatic and military manoeuvres that further increase the risk of war.

According to the Russian Defence Ministry, the defence attaché of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Russia was summoned on October 25. The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said in an official statement that it is hoped that “there are level-headed people in the German leadership who can prevent their defence minister from recklessly wanting to test our armed forces.”