COVID-19 pandemic exposes a rapidly developing global health crisis

Benjamin Mateus

The World Health Organization (WHO) press briefing on Monday focused their report, not on the break in their relationship with the United States or the protests that are seeing the tattered social threads unravel quickly. Instead, they emphasized their concerns over the state of global health that has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Muzammil, 37, is comforted by his stepmother while waiting outside a pharmacy for the pharmacist to arrive. (Photo: Tomas Munita)

The globe continues to see daily cases of COVID-19 exceed 100,000 per day, with close to 6.4 million cumulative cases. Total deaths are approaching 380,000 as the pandemic is settling in the Americas for the present moment. In response to a question as to whether the virulence of the virus seems to be waning, both Drs. Michael Ryan and Maria Van Kerkhove rejected such claims. The genetic studies do not support such a mutational shift. Instead, they attribute the change in the numbers to public health measures that have thus far been employed.

However, with lockdowns and travel restrictions making the delivery of critical medical supplies to the much-needed developing world difficult, the WHO warned that if these disruptions are not soon overcome, communities across the globe could be facing health consequences on a massive scale. Last month they noted that the world could expect 500,000 more deaths from AIDS in the coming year. They also estimated that 1.4 million people could succumb to tuberculosis if access to vital medications is not available.

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs)

Based on these concerns, WHO conducted a survey in May—a rapid assessment of service delivery for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases—with 155 countries submitting. These NCD illnesses, which kill more than 41 million people each year (equivalent to 71 percent of all deaths globally), make these populations more vulnerable to becoming severely ill and at risk for succumbing to infection with SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus).

According to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “Many people who need treatment for diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes have not been receiving the health services and medicines they need since the COVID-19 pandemic began.”

Low-income countries have been most severely impacted in services for NCDs. More than half the reporting countries have reported that such services have been partially or entirely disrupted, while at least two-thirds said rehabilitation services had been affected. Almost unanimously, every country stated that health workers had been reassigned, wholly or partially, to support COVID-19 response. Screening for breast and cervical cancer has been postponed in more than half of the countries. Of note, in 2018, 627,000 women died from breast cancer and 300,000 from cervical cancer.

Service disruptions (from the WHO):

• 53 percent have partially or completely disrupted services for hypertension treatment;
  
• 49 percent for treatment for diabetes or diabetes-related complications;
  
• 42 percent for cancer treatments;
  
• 31 percent for cardiovascular emergencies;
  
• 15 million people between the ages of 30 and 69 die from NCDs—85 percent of these “premature” deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.

Director of the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), Dr. Carissa Etienne, said, “One of the most concerning aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is the disproportionate impact of the virus on people suffering from NCDs. We have never seen such a destructive relationship between infectious disease and NCDs. Some of the data is truly alarming, especially for our region where NCDs are pervasive.”

Antimicrobial resistance

Worldwide, more than 700,000 people die each year due to drug-resistant infections, according to the WHO. Although the viral pandemic has taken priority, according to Muhammad Hamid Zaman, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor at Boston University, “We have to think of antimicrobial resistance not as detached but as something that’s going on simultaneously with this pandemic.”

According to a senior science adviser to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Since the emergence of COVID-19, collected data have shown an increase in antibiotic use, even though most of the initial illnesses being treated have been from COVID-19 viral infection. The resulting increased exposure to health care settings and invasive procedures, along with expanded antibiotic use, amplifies the opportunity for resistant pathogens to emerge and spread.” The use of antibiotics does little to treat the viral infection, but the over-prescription of antibiotics can lead to multi-drug resistant bacteria.

The use of antimicrobial treatment for COVID-19 patients has been commonplace, with many taking hydroxychloroquine and macrolides in the population as preventative measures against the infection. The dangerous hype by President Trump or celebrity politicians by promoting untested therapies not only led to drug shortages but potentially promoting the development of multi-drug resistant “superbugs.”

In a recent meta-analysis published in the Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases looking at coinfection in patients with coronavirus infections found that 8 percent of patients with COVID-19 also experienced a bacterial or fungal infection. However, the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, despite a lack of evidence for bacterial infection, was reported in 1,450 out of 2010 patients (72 percent).

The WHO has discouraged the use of antibiotics in mild cases of COVID-19, although recommending its use for severe cases where the risk of a bacterial infection and death is high.

Before the pandemic, approximately 65 percent of adults in the US received antibiotic prescriptions for bronchitis even though the overwhelming cause of the condition is due to viral infections. Given the lack of COVID-19 testing, and clinical confusion caused by overlapping symptoms, the inappropriate use of antibiotics will only worsen. Dr. Priya Nori, the medical director of the antimicrobial stewardship program and outpatient parental antibiotic therapy program at Montefiore Health System in the Bronx, said in the British Medical Journal, “hospital’s data also show a slow and steady increase in multi-drug resistance among gram-negative bacteria that can be potentially deadly coinfections with COVID-19.”

The WHO director-general said at Monday’s press briefing, “I’m glad to say a record number of countries are now monitoring and reporting on antibiotic resistance … but the data they provide reveals that a worrying number of bacterial infections are increasingly resistant to the medicines we have traditionally treated them with, as we gather more evidence, it’s clear that the world is losing its ability to use critically important antimicrobial medicines all over the world.”

While decrying developed nations’ overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals, undeveloped nations continue to be out of reach for those that need them, which adds further to the already heavy burden of unnecessary morbidity and mortality. Presently, no studies are investigating the association between COVID-19 and the development of superinfections or multi-drug resistance.

Pre-pandemic data from the CDC last reviewed in 2017 notes a remarkable health crisis in development: In the European Union, antibiotic resistance causes 25,000 deaths per year and 2.5 million extra hospital days. In the US, there are over 23,000 antibiotic-resistant deaths and over 2 million illnesses. In India, over 58,000 infants died in one year as a result of infection with resistant bacteria passed from mothers. In Thailand, over 38,000 deaths were attributed to antibiotic resistance. In the chaos created by the pandemic, vulnerable nations may lack the ability to track these emerging opportunistic infections as a byproduct of the disruption in health delivery and monitoring.

According to World Health Statistics, although low-income countries had reported the most significant gains in life expectancy, rising by 11 percent from 2000 to 2016, globally, 55 percent of the world’s population lacks access to safely managed sanitation, 29 percent lack safely managed drinking water, and close to 40 percent of all households do not have necessary hand washing facilities.

Maternal and child mortality

UNICEF reported two weeks ago that an additional 6,000 children might perish from preventable causes over the next six months as the pandemic interrupts and degrades fragile health systems in low- and middle-income countries. Estimating their projections based on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study, in a worst-case scenario of 118 countries, “an additional 1.2 million under-five deaths could occur.” Tragically, 15,000 children die every day. In 2017, 5.4 million children died from causes such as pneumonia, preterm births, and diarrhea.

They also noted that 56,700 more maternal deaths could occur in this six-month projection. This is on top of the 144,000 deaths that already take place.

Additional concerns UNICEF raised include:

• Nearly 1.3 billion students—over 72 percent—are out of school as a result of nationwide school closures in 177 countries.
  
• Nearly 370 million children across 143 countries who regularly rely on school meals for a reliable source of daily nutrition must now look to other sources as schools are shuttered.
  
• As of 14 April, over 117 million children in 37 countries may miss out on their measles vaccination as the pandemic causes immunization campaigns to stop to reduce the risk of spreading the virus.

Universal health is a global concern, and it requires an international perspective to address the enormous inequity that exists. That so many languish and face life-long health insecurities can no longer be tolerable.

Protests across New Zealand over US police murder of George Floyd

Tom Peters

Tens of thousands of people joined protests and vigils in New Zealand yesterday in solidarity with the mass movement that has erupted in the United States following the brutal murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.

Media reported that at least 4,000 people gathered in Auckland's Aotea Square and marched to the US consulate. Photographs and videos shared on social media appear to show far larger crowds, with some estimating the number to be in the tens of thousands.

In Wellington, at least 2,000 people held a vigil outside parliament and hundreds marched to the US embassy. About 500 joined a protest in Christchurch and hundreds more in Dunedin.

Protesters at the Auckland rally (Photo: Facebook)

The rallies were part of a powerful wave of international protests. About 2,000 people gathered in Perth, and rallies are scheduled for other Australian cities over the coming days. Protests have been held across Europe, Canada and in Japan, among other places.

The international movement reflects the intense opposition that has built up in the working class, over decades, not only against police brutality but also never-ending war and unprecedented levels of social inequality. The failure of governments to stop hundreds of thousands of deaths from COVID-19, and the destruction of tens of millions of jobs, has further fuelled the outrage.

The New Zealand crowds were largely made up of young workers and students, of all ethnicities including white people, Maori, Pacific Islanders and immigrants from many nationalities. Marchers chanted “Black lives matter” and “I can’t breathe”—the last words of George Floyd as he was choked to death by police officer Derek Chauvin.

One of the organisers in Wellington, Nicole Inskeep, who moved to New Zealand from Charlottesville, Virginia—the scene of a white supremacist rampage that killed one person in 2017—read from a list of names of black men and women killed by police in the US.

In Auckland, Nigerian-born mixed martial artist Israel Adesanya was among those who addressed the crowd. He thanked people “of all different races for being here, ‘cause we need you to speak up” against racism.

Also attending the Auckland protest was Randy Pollard, who migrated from Minneapolis where he was friends with George Floyd. He told the New Zealand Herald: “He was genuine, kind-hearted… just a wonderful guy. He was very approachable and easy-going. I had a lot of respect for him.”

Pollard said there would be no peace until all the officers involved in the killing were brought to justice. He added: “At the same time, the president is saying, if people resist, shoot. That’s ridiculous. How can you have peace if that is coming from the president?”

Many protesters also denounced the further militarisation of the New Zealand Police by the Labour Party-NZ First-Greens coalition government.

There is widespread public opposition to Police Armed Response Teams (ARTs), with thousands of people tweeting the hashtag #ArmsDownNZ in recent days. Many tweets said they did not want New Zealand to become like the US.

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of killings by NZ Police, with the victims disproportionately working class, Maori, and mentally ill people.

The police, backed by the Ardern government, used the Christchurch massacre of 51 Muslims by a fascist gunman last year as a pretext to test the ARTs in three working class areas: Christchurch, Waikato and South Auckland. The armed units could soon be made permanent and expanded.

While Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern claims that she does not want police to be routinely armed, the ARTs have been deployed hundreds of times for routine policing throughout the six-month trial period.

Responding to yesterday’s protests, Ardern told TVNZ this morning, “I understand the strength of feeling,” stating she was “horrified” by the killing of Floyd. At the same time, however, she said the protests were “a clear breach” of COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings. Asked whether police should have intervened to stop the rallies, Ardern said “those decisions are for the police.”

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who leads the right-wing nationalist New Zealand First Party, went even further, asking on Newstalk ZB: “Why aren’t we prosecuting those people who organised those protests?”

Seconds later, Peters called for the immediate lifting of the country’s social distancing restrictions—something demanded by big business but opposed by leading health experts, who warned that this would risk a resurgence of the coronavirus. Ardern has indicated that remaining restrictions could be lifted as early as next week.

Far-right ACT Party leader David Seymour—who fraudulently poses as a defender of free speech, similarly denounced the protests as a “slap in the face for every business that has restricted its operations.”

Yesterday, Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson declared that her party stood “in solidarity” with Floyd’s family and other victims of US police killings, and against the “culture of systemic racism and violence… built on centuries of injustices and social inequities.”

The party’s justice spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman also stated that they oppose the Police ARTs in New Zealand and would push “to demilitarise our police force from within government.”

These statements are thoroughly hypocritical. The Greens are a crucial part of the government, which was formed with a platform of further militarising the police. The 2017 coalition agreement between Labour and NZ First promised to recruit an extra 1,800 front-line police officers, an increase of about 20 percent. The number of police training programs in schools has also been expanded.

The government has used the COVID-19 pandemic to give the police much greater powers to make arrests and carry out warrantless searches. Emergency laws also allow the military to be deployed to assist police.

As New Zealand enters into the worst economic and social crisis since the 1930s, the police will inevitably be deployed more and more openly against the working class, to suppress opposition to inequality and militarism.

Ardern, who is hailed in the media internationally for her supposed “kindness” and leadership, has not denounced Trump’s threat to deploy the military against protesters. Labour, NZ First and the Greens, along with the opposition parties, are all committed to the alliance with US imperialism, along with a vast increase in military spending, to integrate New Zealand into US war plans.

Democracies can’t breathe without responding to Race and Caste discrimination

Vidya Bhushan Rawat

Two of the biggest democracies in the world now face the biggest challenges in their political history. Yes, I am speaking about United States and India. One has failed to accommodate the huge Black population victim of the racism in that country while the other has failed to include the Dalits in the decision making as caste hatred and caste related violence and discrimination is on the rise in India. In fact, Indians take their caste identities along with them when they travel to US as well as other countries such as UK, and Canada.

First let us speak about, United States, which claimed to be the ‘greatest’ democracies of the world actually getting exposed with the growing anxiety among its African American or Black people who remained excluded in the large part of the American life. The brutal murder of a black man George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25th, 2020 sparked an unprecedented outrage in the entire United States and it look as if the level of tolerance and patience shown by the huge black population was now over. Over the years, we have seen American police killing youth of the African American origins at will and the discrimination and exclusion was growing. With President Donald Trump openly siding with white supremacists, it was clear that unless the huge black population does not rise in revolt things wont change.

The way George Floyd was murdered shows the deep rooted prejudices against the African American. Today, a situation has arisen when black youth does not know whether he will return home safe or not. Just a few days ago, there was a video of a white woman calling police in a park where a black youth has just asked her to put her dog on a leash as was required when you bring a pet in the park. Just on this, the woman named Amy Cooper, who worked with Franklin Templeton, called the police that this man whose name is Christian Cooper and hailing from African American origin, is threatening her. Now, can you imagine what happens in the united states when a black man or woman face the police?

George Floyd begged the police officer that he has health issues, he cant breath.. if you watch the video, he is in pain, begging to the police officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee over his neck for nearly 8 minutes resulting in painful death. Other police officers too were holding him in such a way that there was no way. George Floyd was arrested for giving fake USD 20 currency in a Deli i.e. Grocery Store combined with a restaurant. Police accused him of not cooperating though the video which was shot by some one shows Floyd begging that he has problem in breathing, dont push your knee on his neck but then the American police has does it that way.

Anyone who saw the video was actually pained. Good thing is that people across community lines including media, the Hollywood as well as big corporations have now started speaking against racism which is a good sign but this is not going to get resolved without the fair representation and participation of the African American in the American power structure. A huge country like America can not have two white dominated corporate funded political parties. The American system has this problem and now the issue of race relations has put the biggest challenge before them. An incompetent leadership which is encouraging white supremacists in the name of ‘America First’ has created such a deep divide that it will need a lot of perseverance and nation building exercise again. You need statesman. Often, the political leadership quote Martin Luther King Jr whenever such crisis comes but African American at the moment seem to tilt more towards the assertive Malcolm X.

India and Indians are not in a good position to preach the United States about ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’. If the police stations, FIRs and killing in the custody is concern, the caste pattern of our forces come out in open. Prejudices are high and in the last one decade situation has worsened. Corona has created more fears among the marginalised while anti CAA protests and subsequent cases being framed against activists belonging to minorities as well as marginalised sections clearly reflect the pattern that powers here too are working on an agenda to strengthen the Savarna monopoly over our administration, judiciary, media and polity. Democracy is not merely voting in five years but in real sense democracy is accepting diversity and divergent views but in today’s India it is difficult to have a dissenting view because you fear the repercussion. You write anything and somebody feel ‘hurt’ in jhumaritalllaiyaa and file a case against you. You dont know the place and dont have the resources but the police can come knocking your door any time and behave the same way as the American do, perhaps worst than them as policing is a colonial system in this country.

But in terms of participation in political structure is concern, thank to Baba Saheb Ambedkar the spaces for the Dalits and other sections is far better than America as Congress there does not have enough Black representative. More over, it is difficult to have political parties in the US without corporate support and there are lobbies. The African American population is not fairly represented. There are no welfare programmes unlike India where we have not only political reservation but also job reservation. But what makes United States better and greater is that it provided opportunities to all. It learnt its lessons from every mistake. The African American people fought and got their dues though not enough but society is individuals and you dont find khap panchayats or a religious rights group threatening to kill you. You can eat what you like, whether Jhatka or Halal, pork or beef and go anywhere, meet any one and enjoy your life. We have so many moral guardians here that life has become more difficult.

So, in the US they have better system and a better social order and that is why even corporate houses like NIke condemn it and Frenklin Templton actually dismissed the woman who called police to falsely implicate the black man in the park. In India such things are rare. In fact, the companies are completely brahmanical dominated by Banias and Jains. All these companies lack diversity at their managerial level. They would not even like to have diversity in their offices. Our news offices are dominated by a few savarna communities and so is the social life where prejudices run deep.

Things were turning better but then we have the onslaught of the right wing supremacists who felt that it is time to deepen their hegemony. The two great democracies are now facing the biggest challenge but it will continue unless they become inclusive embrace dialogue and respect divergent views. If political protest are considered anti nationals and sought to be handled through ‘administrative’ methods where minorities, Dalits, Adivasis, Blacks, African American are considered as criminal or terrorists then situation will turn explosive. Political leadership has to speak up and put a healing touch as the scars are deep. Mature democracies believe in dialogues and resolution through discussions, debate and inclusion. It is time our political leadership show maturity and initiate a dialogue and protect our democracies.

Thousands of Canadian medical workers infected with COVID-19 due to lack of PPE

Omar Ali

The neglect of health care in Canada by a ruling elite that is indifferent to the lives of working people can be seen most acutely during the present pandemic in the failure to provide even frontline medical staff with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). This has resulted in mass infections among health care professionals, with more than 4,000 just in Ontario testing positive for COVID-19. Total numbers of deaths among medical workers are hard to come by, but at least five personal care workers have died in Ontario alone.

In British Columbia, a coronavirus outbreak has erupted among nurses in a hospital intensive care unit. According to BC Nurses’ Union President Christine Sorensen, four nurses working at a hospital in the Fraser Valley city of Abbotsford that has been dedicated to treating coronavirus patients have tested positive for COVID-19. The union has said it previously complained about unsafe working conditions at the Abbotsford facility, including overcrowding. Nurses posted there have complained about a scarcity of PPE that has forced them to ration supplies. Nurses report having to go an entire shift without switching equipment.

Conditions are similar in other parts of the province and indeed across the country. The BC union says it has received more than 2,000 complaints from its members. Nurses have reported shortages in all the basic equipment they need to safely attend to their duties, including gloves, gowns, respiratory masks and face shields. Sorensen complained bitterly that hospitals lack the plexiglass barriers that are now widely available at the larger supermarket chains. Nurses are being instructed to leave masks somewhere safe when they leave for break so that they can reuse the same one upon their return.

The response of the New Democratic Party provincial government’s ministry of health to the outbreak and dearth of PPE was to simply reiterate its claim of being committed to the safety of frontline health care workers.

In Ontario, the latest update from the Ontario Health Coalition reported that infections among medical staff and patients of health care institutions doubled from 3,783 to 7,894 between April 21 and May 5. As of May 5, 16.1 percent of all COVID-19 infections in Ontario were among health care workers.

Long-term care facilities have been hit especially hard by the virus, with more than 250 out of Ontario’s 626 elder care homes suffering a COVID-19 outbreak. As documented in graphic detail by a report from the Canadian military, which has had to deploy staff at five for-profit Ontario care homes ravaged by the coronavirus, many outbreaks were the result of inadequate supplies of PPE and the inappropriate use of medical equipment.

Similarly dangerous conditions exist for doctors. While polls of physicians indicate an improvement in their situation, there remains a concern particularly among community-based physicians about the supply of PPE. Health care workers have been forced to organize donation drives and rely on private stockpiles donated by companies. Canadian Medical Association President Dr. Sandy Buchman criticized the situation doctors and health care workers have been put in. “If we had planned properly and monitored these provincial and federal supplies of the equipment,” said Dr. Buchman, “we wouldn’t be scrambling.”

The reason why authorities are “scrambling” is because the federal government failed miserably to prepare for the pandemic. Although it was known by mid-January that the virus was highly contagious and could spread rapidly around the world, the Trudeau Liberal government waited until March 10 to write to the provinces to determine their supplies of PPE and other critical medical equipment. The government, with the support of all opposition parties and the trade unions, spent much more time crafting a multi-billion dollar bailout for the big banks and corporations, which was designed above all to prop up the stock market and guarantee the wealth of the super-rich. Workers and the health system have been left with rations.

The lack of adequate PPE supplies has led the federal and provincial governments to improvise by allowing the usage of expired and substandard materials. Ottawa revised their standards for masks in March allowing for more porous masks to be used during the pandemic, going against recommendations by the World Health Organization..

The blame for the lack of this critical equipment lies squarely with the Canadian ruling class, which has callously pruned and slashed health care spending for decades, leaving the country highly vulnerable to a pandemic that was both foreseeable and long predicted. After failing to replenish its stockpile, the federal government sent 2 million expired masks to a landfill last year. Sally Thornton, a vice president of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), the agency responsible for the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile (NESS), claimed that the stockpile is “doing well” even as she argued that provinces and territories are responsible for their own supplies and Ottawa serves only to assist in providing surge capacity.

Tacitly acknowledging the government’s failure to prepare adequately, Patty Hajdu, the federal health minister, admitted that the government does not have enough PPE for the duration of the crisis. Health Canada has ordered 1.8 billion units of PPE mostly from China, which supplies much of the world PPE stock. However, Chinese suppliers are taking orders from around the world as demand has skyrocketed. The consequence has been a mad dash to secure dwindling supplies and Canadian government-chartered aircraft returning from China empty after being outbid. Some companies have taken advantage of the situation to sell counterfeit, substandard N95 masks at exorbitant prices.

The response of the corporate media and the government has been to stoke anti-Chinese sentiment to deflect criticism away from those responsible. Global News ran an article accusing China of suppressing information on the virus in January in order to secure for itself the global supply of PPE without triggering a bidding war. It went further to claim that China used its connections in the diaspora to secure this equipment. The reliably reactionary head of the opposition federal Conservative Party, Andrew Scheer, has been criticizing the government for not being sufficiently hostile to Beijing.

One Toronto nurse speaking with the WSWS explained that PPE was crucial for health care workers especially as there is a shortage of nursing staff and keeping them virus free is essential to keeping them on the job. Personal protective equipment inside the hospital is used at all times even during meetings between coworkers. She pointed out that some nurses are already tempted to work while infected, eager not to leave potential overtime earnings on the table when their incomes have been depressed in recent years.

The anger among health care workers over the lack of PPE has led to the eruption of protests. In Quebec, the main nurses’ union, FIQ, felt compelled to call demonstrations in Montreal to protest the failure of the right-wing Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government to supply PPE. The protests were also motivated by a brutal regime of forced overtime, routine staff shortages, and the government’s cancellation of all vacations.

Quebec Premier François Legault responded arrogantly, declaring that “this is not the time” for protest. FIQ, like its union counterparts across the country, is itself deeply complicit in the catastrophic conditions that have been imposed on health care workers in recent decades through austerity budgets and round after round of contract concessions.

Nurses and other health care professionals can only secure access to adequate PPE and other basic necessities to ensure a safe working environment by forming rank-and-file safety committees in opposition to the political establishment and its trade union backers. Their fate is only one of the most extreme expressions of the contempt shown towards workers’ lives by the capitalist class. Sections of workers from every part of the economy, from meat packers to grocery store workers and autoworkers, are being forced to labour under unsafe conditions with inadequate protective gear. Medical professionals must unify their struggles with these workers and the entire working class in opposition to the subordination of working people’s health and lives to capitalist profit—that is, in the struggle for workers’ control of production and the socialist reorganization of society.

Major League Baseball plans to open season in midst of pandemic

Alan Gilman

On March 12, Major League Baseball (MLB), in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, suspended spring training and postponed the start of the 2020 regular season.

Initially, the opening of the season was to be delayed for just two weeks, but this was pushed back in response to updated recommendations issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which urged restrictions on events of more than 50 people for eight weeks.

On March 27, MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) finalized an agreement that established a potential framework for the 2020 season. Players would receive pro-rated salaries for the number of games played. Players and owners were willing to stretch the postseason well into November in order to maximize the number of games played.

In the ensuing weeks, various scenarios were proposed as to when and where to start the season. In early May, based on the expectation that the COVID-19 spread would be contained, MLB announced an 82-game season that would begin by the first week of July, with spring training resuming by June 10. Teams believe most pitchers need about four weeks to get ready, and position players need about three.

MLB's plan, which calls for “frequent” but not daily testing, quarantines only individuals who test positive and contravenes federal guidelines that advise individuals who come in contact with a confirmed infection to quarantine for at least two weeks.

The Harvard Global Health Institute recommends states conduct at least 152 tests per day for every 100,000 people. But only four out of the 17 states with MLB teams currently meet that standard. How MLB avoids competing for desperately needed resources has gone unanswered.

With MLB losing roughly $75 million a day, according to estimates by Patrick Rishe, director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis, officials are contemplating a half-season plus expanded playoffs—well over 1,200 games across the nation. Baseball contends it can counteract the virus by disinfecting baseballs, deep-cleaning clubhouses, and, at least initially, banning paying customers from the ballpark.

MLB will need help from state and local health officials to address ongoing concerns in most major league cities. In recent weeks, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has lobbied governors and other officials in many of the places baseball is played.

Manfred’s attempts to win over governors underscores the power they have over MLB’s plans. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican who played college baseball at Yale, has been at the forefront of Wall Street’s reopening campaign. On May 13, DeSantis announced at a news conference, “All professional sports are welcome here for practicing and for playing. What I would tell commissioners of leagues is, if you have a team in an area where they just won’t let them operate, we’ll find a place for you here in the state of Florida.”

Manfred also has a close relationship with President Trump. He golfed with the president in October during the World Series, and visited him at Trump Tower before the 2017 inauguration.

The president of the New York Yankees, Randy Levine, is a former deputy mayor of New York City under Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer. Levine was considered a candidate to be Trump’s chief of staff. Giuliani’s son, Andrew, is now the official White House sports liaison and a frequent Trump golf partner.

Currently, many Major League cities still restrict gatherings to a limited number of people. In Los Angeles, a hotspot of COVID-19 and the home of the Dodgers, Mayor Eric Garcetti said restrictions will remain in place for three more months. But Democratic governors Gavin Newsom of California and Andrew Cuomo of New York, and Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, signaled their support in May for pro sports to return soon in those states.

Most recognize that MLB’s attempt to play baseball this summer is a high-risk venture threatening the health of many people, even if it is played before no fans.

“If we get the plan going and everyone does what it takes to get this to work, and then it just infects the system, it might induce a panic throughout the country,” said pitcher Brent Suter, the Milwaukee Brewers’ player representative. “Like, ‘Oh my gosh, they couldn’t even do it with all of these precautions.’ That’s a fear of mine, for sure.”

Baseball played through the 1918 outbreak of the Spanish flu, which killed roughly 675,000 Americans and 50 million people worldwide.

Babe Ruth fell ill in the spring of 1918 with what likely was the same strain of the flu, and another Hall of Famer, White Sox pitcher Red Faber, missed the 1919 World Series because of lasting effects of the illness. One player, outfielder Larry Chappell, died, along with several prominent sportswriters, umpires and others surrounding the sport.

“What’s at stake here is a human life,” said Andy Dolich, a Bay Area consultant who has worked as a senior executive for teams in every major sport, including the Oakland A’s. “That might sound overdramatic, but it doesn't sound overdramatic to me. All the people involved, that’s a person, with a name, who has a family.”

Many players, despite their economic concerns over not playing, have expressed fears that playing will put their health and that of their families at risk.

Los Angeles Angels second baseman Tommy La Stella said he wants to make sure baseball “is smart about it and not pushing to get back on the field to make money at the expense of our safety… It’s not the corporate heads who are in compromised positions, it’s going to be the producers.”

The Angels’ Mike Trout, the highest-paid player in baseball, is expecting his first child with his wife, Jessica, in early August. “My wife is my biggest concern,” he told ESPN. “With the season and stuff, we’ll just play it by ear. Obviously, you don’t know what it entails yet, but we’ll go down that road when that happens. But it’s a scary, scary time for my wife. I don’t see us playing without testing every day.”

Professional athletes, because of their youth and conditioning, are generally at low risk of dying from the virus, but “are the demographic most likely to be asymptomatic” carriers, said Will Humble, the former health director for the state of Arizona.

Many others, however, who will be in close contact with players are in the high risk category, including eight umpires and seven managers who are over 60. Moreover, there are players with serious pre-existing medical conditions. Carl Carrasco of the Cleveland Indians was diagnosed with leukemia last year. At least three players, Dodger Scott Alexander, the Atlanta Braves’ Adam Duvalland, and St Louis Cardinal Jordon Hicks have Type 1 diabetes, and others, such as Dodger Kenley Jansen, have heart issues.

Beyond their families, teammates, managers and other baseball personnel, players also will be exposed to a broad range of people from hotel staff to security personnel, and from bus drivers to flight attendants. MLB’s plan does not say anything about testing for these workers.

Financial issues between the owners and the players have again arisen to further complicate any proposed opening. Last week, MLB dropped the 50-50 revenue sharing split concept and proposed a sliding salary scale, in which the highest paid players would take the largest pay cuts and the lowest paid players would be made close to whole. The players’ union had rejected this demand. It has accused the owners of attempting to divide the players and claims that the pay proposal is a union-busting attempt.

Scott Boras, baseball’s best known agent, who represents 71 players, said, “Remember, games cannot be played without you. Players should not agree to further pay cuts to bail out the owners. Let owners take some of their record revenues and profits from the past several years and pay you the prorated salaries you agreed to accept, or let them borrow against the asset values they created from the use of those profits players generated.”

As baseball attempts to finalize its reopening plan, the monetary interests of the owners continue to supersede the health and welfare of the players, their families and their communities.

US telecoms see opportunity to cut jobs, boost profits in pandemic

Mark Witkowski

After an initial confused response to the COVID-19 crisis, the two largest telecom providers in the US directed much of their workforce to work from home (WFH) rather than report to a central location. By mid-March, Verizon had some 115,000 out of a workforce of 135,000 working from home. AT&T reported similar figures. Both firms already had a number of contract and full-time employees working from home.

Under state-mandated social distancing rules relating to the pandemic, the number ordered to work from home increased to unprecedented levels and expanded to include job titles previously excluded from WFH policies.

The giant telecoms no doubt see an opportunity to use the pandemic as a means to cut cost, eliminate jobs and restructure the workplace, shifting many costs onto the shoulders of employees.

Neil Anderson of World Wide Technology speaking to Fierce Telecom noted “we don’t expect that there’s going to be a return of 100 percent going back to central working locations and office locations,” He continued, “It depends on the industry. You can’t be a surgeon [and] work from home. But for knowledge working at carpeted office spaces, we think that there’s actually going to be a significant reduction somewhere on the order of 30 percent to 40 percent of the employees continuing to work from home.” He went on to say: “Some of that may be out of a company led initiative where they say ‘Hey, this worked pretty well. Let’s take advantage of that and save some money on real estate costs.’”

A policy shifting employees to WFH status opens up the possibility of more rapidly shifting work to where labor costs are lowest. This is something they are no strangers to. For decades, the telecoms have moved jobs around the globe, seeking the most exploited workers. Even within the US salaries vary greatly between high cost cities like New York, San Francisco and Boston and other comparatively low cost areas outside major metropolitan centers.

WFH allows the telecoms to isolate workers, undermining their ability to connect in order to exercise their collective strength. Further, it allows the possibility that companies can close entire buildings and layoff support personal. These include watch engineers, cleaning staff, security, fire safety, clerical staff, and others.

In addition, real estate tax, heating, air conditioning and electrical cost are all reduced or eliminated through WFH, with the cost shifted to employees.

Then there is the question of liability. Workers injured in a company location are entitled to workers compensation, with workers working at home full time it calls into question existing compensation laws. The courts in this regard tend to rule on behalf of business owners.

Verizon has long been in the real estate business. In recent years it as has sold off many of its properties in the Northeastern US to be converted to ultra-high rent luxury condominiums particularly in New York City.

In New York City, where Verizon has tried to get out from under its franchise agreement to make its FiOS service available to more city residents, the company has directed its field technicians not to enter customer premises for obvious safety reasons. Technicians are instructed to walk customers through repairs over the phone. Due dates for new installs have been pushed out until November. No doubt Verizon is auditing the numbers in an effort eliminate even more technician jobs, adding to those it has been cutting for decades.

For its part, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union has been quick to sign off on this. While the union and its pseudo-left accomplices hailed bonus pay and other short-term benefits to workers as a win, the union itself did little if anything to secure these. The company recognized the tremendous anger in the work force and understood that the union might be unable to prevent workers from walking off the job en masse faced with unsafe conditions. To avoid this the company offered the bonus and some other minor temporary concessions to workers.

Field managers in Verizon’s wireline division were directed to work from home. Field employees who cannot work from home were directed to “home garage,” meaning they would bring company vehicles and tools home and report directly to their work assignment in the field without first meeting at a garage or central office. One field technician in New York who spoke on the condition of anonymity reported that a number of technicians in one group were exposed to the virus by a local manager who ignored the work at home rules and dropped in on them at work to discuss their metrics, in other words enforce productivity requirements.

Verizon had previously invested heavily in GPS and other technology providing tracking measures allowing managers to closely monitor location and key productivity metrics for these workers in order to extract more productivity from the workforce. This intense monitoring has also had the effect of creating a highly stressful work environment for frontline workers.

The same is true for call center employees and other inside workers who were directed to work from home. Intense and pervasive monitoring used to extract productivity from workers often takes a psychological toll as well. Calls are recorded as is every keystroke entry onto a computer. In fact, everything these workers access and the speed at which they do it is monitored and recorded in the interest of extracting more labor from them.

Verizon and ATT have in the past had experience with management employees who work in office environments, such as engineering, IT, billing systems and human resources who work from home during work stoppages by unionized employees. This enabled them to conduct business without having to send non-striking workers across picket lines.

Cynically, management touts WFH as a perk for employees. While it may in fact save the employee on commuting cost and childcare, the ultimate aim is to save money for the company.

Many of the management workers on WFH are on call 24 hours a day and expected to conduct business with little notice at all hours.

Verizon and ATT are among the biggest sources of dividend payments to Wall Street, which is driving companies to extract greater profits from workers in order to shovel more money to the financial oligarchy. The interests of both workers and the broader public require that the telecom industry be taken out of the hands of investors and private equity firms and operated to meet social need rather than the demands of the financial oligarchy. This requires the development of an independent, socialist, political movement of the working in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans, the parties of the banks and big business.

Explosion at Indian thermal power plant kills four workers

Arun Kumar

A massive explosion at a Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC)-owned thermal power plant in southern India on May 7 has taken the lives of four workers. Two permanent workers—Sharfuddin, 54, and Pavadai—and two contract workers—Shanmugam, 26, and Balamurugan, 36—have succumbed to severe burns in hospital.

Four other contract workers—Anburaj, Jayshankar, Manikandan, Ranjitha Kumar—were injured by the blast. They were initially admitted to a NLC-run hospital in Neyveli, then later shifted to Kauveri private hospital in Trichi city due to the seriousness of their injuries.

The tragic deaths are a result of the management’s hasty moves to resume work, in line with the Modi government’s instructions to reopen the economy, despite the worsening COVID-19 pandemic.

The NLC management resumed operations at the plant on April 8 without carrying out mandatory maintenance procedures and ensuring safety measures. Its failure to renew outdated boilers led to the explosion.

This was an act of callous disregard for the basic safety of workers, in addition to pushing them back to work amid the rapid spread of the coronavirus in Tamil Nadu and across India, which also placed their lives in grave danger.

Tamil Nadu has become the second most pandemic-affected Indian state, after Maharashtra. As of Sunday, Tamil Nadu’s recorded infection cases rose to 22,333, while the figure for the whole country reached 190,162.

Trade unions linked to almost all the main political parties operate at the NLC, including the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), affiliated to the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM. They are complicit in this tragedy because they refused to demand mandatory safety measures at the plant.

The NLC is a highly profitable, central government-owned corporation, based in Neyveli, 200 kilometres southwest of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu. The company mines lignite and generates electricity. It has four open cut mines with an annual capacity of about 30 million tonnes in Neyveli and one open cut mine at Barsingsar in the state of Rajasthan. It operates four thermal electric power stations in Neyveli and one at Barsingsar.

The workers’ deaths triggered protests by their families and fellow workers. They demanded financial compensation of 10 million rupees and a permanent job for a member of each victim’s family. The NLC rejected the demand and offered to pay only 1.5 million rupees.

After angry workers and family members refused to accept that offer, the management agreed only to increase the compensation to 2.5 million rupees per dead worker, with a permanent job for a member of each victim’s family. The trade unions held several hours of talks with the management, and accepted the meagre compensation, one quarter of the workers’ demand.

The NLC has a record of ignoring basic safety measures. A report published by downtoearth.org referred to two major accidents and a minor accident in the past five years that exposed serious issues in maintenance and safety systems in the old units running at the company’s thermal power stations.

The efficient and safe operating life of a thermal power plant is considered to be around 25 years but there has been a protracted delay in commissioning new units at NLC. Its plants have been running with units that were scheduled to retire between 2011 and 2015. A large number of its units are 25-57 years old.

Over the years, the report added, the Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment has pushed for the NLC to expedite the retirement of old units. But the management failed to do so, endangering workers’ lives.

Despite the public sector company continuing to make huge profits, it has refused to install new units to ensure safety. This is a clear example of how workers’ lives are sacrificed for profits under the capitalist system.

According to Business Standard: “On a consolidated basis, the company reported a 15.03 percent rise in net profit to Rs 398.75 crore [3,987.5 million rupees] … in Q3 [3rd quarter] December 2019 over Q3 December 2018.”

Contract workers make up at least half the Neyveli workforce. They are subject to arbitrary and brutal working conditions, and many are paid as little as 10 percent of the wages of regular workers.

The NLC management has long ignored their demands to be hired as permanent workers, even though many have worked for the company for decades. This is another example about how contract labour, once considered rare, is widely used in India, in both the private and public sectors, to extract lucrative profits.

Contract workers are denied even the meagre benefits, like medical insurance, pensions or provident funds, won by permanent workers through generations of struggle. The exploitation of contract employees is one of the main weapons used by the ruling elite to drive down the wages and conditions of all workers.

The NLC unions maintain a strict segregation between the contract and permanent workers inside their own organisations, thereby reinforcing the inferior status of the contract workers. The unions oppose any unified struggle with the contract workers, even when forced to call industrial action because of the growing opposition of permanent workers to the conditions they face.

Germany’s right-wing Bild tabloid agitates against leading virologist Christian Drosten

Marianne Arens

In a targeted campaign of gutter journalism, Germany’s right-wing Bild tabloid is seeking to discredit the world-renowned virologist Christian Drosten. Despite knowing better, Bild denounced his academic work so as to justify the political race to lift lockdown measures and create the greatest possible confusion among the population.

On May 25, Bild published the following headline online, “Dubious methods. Drosten study about infectious children totally wrong. How long did the star virologist know about this?” This was the introduction to a video that allegedly presented the criticisms of various academics before stating, “In his most important study, Drosten got it wrong.”

The Bild sought specifically to ridicule a study in which Drosten found that children may be just as infectious when they have coronavirus as adults. Drosten’s study is backed up by further international research and confirms what has been tragically visible in Wuhan and other parts of the world: children carry large quantities of virus. As a result, they can easily transmit the virus and become severely ill themselves. But according to Bild, “the Charité researcher worked dishonestly.” The study was “erroneous” and reached “false conclusions.”

Christian Drosten (Image Credit: Twitter C_drosten)

In addition, Bild reporter Philipp Piatov points out that Drosten is a “well respected virologist who is listened to closely by politicians, including the chancellor herself, i.e., he has considerable political influence.” Politicians must now “answer the question of if and to what degree they listened to this study from the Charité, if they have investigated the doubts ... and if the school’s policy over recent months needs to be revised.”

In an attempt to hold the proverbial gun to Drosten’s head, Piatov sent him an email at 3 p.m. on Monday in which he confronted him with four citations from various academics torn out of context. The virologist should state his position on the citations and defend his study within an hour, “by 4 p.m.,” the email stated.

Entirely appropriately, Drosten refused to assume the role crafted for him in this disgraceful spectacle. He published the email from Bild ’s politics desk on Twitter with the remark, “Interesting: the #Bild is planning a tendentious report on our pre-print on virus loads and is using chunks of citations torn out of context. I’m supposed to state my position within an hour. I have better things to do.”

The academics upon which the Bild based its report were the statistics professors Dominik Liebl (University of Bonn) and Christoph Rothe (University of Mannheim), Professor Leonhard Held (Institute of Epidemiology, Zurich), and Jörg Stoye, an economics professor from Cornell University in New York.

Within a short period of time on Monday evening, all four academics distanced themselves from the Bild report. Christoph Rothe wrote, “Nobody from #Bild spoke to me, and I explicitly reject this type of reportage.”

Jörg Stoye added, “I don’t want to be part of an anti-Drosten campaign. I did not and do not have any contact with Bild. I of course have great respect for Christian Drosten. Germany can count itself lucky to have him and his team.”

Dominik Liebl tweeted, “I knew nothing about the request from Bild and reject putting people under pressure in this way in the strongest terms. We can consider ourselves much more fortunate to have Christian Drosten and his research team in the German scientific community. They saved lives!”

These objections did not stop the Bild newspaper from emblazoning its Tuesday edition with the bold headline, “Schools and kindergartens closed due to false coronavirus study.” This alone shows that what is involved is a deliberate campaign of defamation. The Bild tabloid has no interest in clarifying right from wrong, but pursues a definite political agenda.

By attacking Drosten, the newspaper wants to intimidate anyone who tries to oppose the ever more far-reaching lifting of restrictions with scientific facts and reason. The enrichment of the super-rich is not to be interrupted with warnings about mass fatalities and the risk of death.

Bild is the newspaper with the largest circulation in Germany and is owned by Axel Springer Publishing, which has close ties to the top echelons of the corporate and political elites. The Deutsche Bank holds a large portion of Springer’s shares, and the publishing house’s heiress, Friede Springer, is close friends with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Axel Springer Publishing regularly brings together the creme de la creme from the government, political parties, big business, show business, and sport at its gatherings.

Springer has used the Bild tabloid as a useful propaganda tool with a multi-million readership to popularise the politics of the far-right Alternative for Germany, Pegida and others. Even in the post-war era, Bild slandered engaged democratic intellectuals as “the left-wing mob,” an “abscess,” “academic layabouts,” “rabble” and “neurotics.” Its aggressive agitation against the student movement led to an assassination attempt on German student activist Rudi Dutschke in 1968.

More recent examples of how the tabloid constantly seeks to promote backwardness and poison the political climate in the interests of the ruling elite include propaganda about a “sex mob” on New Year’s Eve in Cologne in 2017 and agitation for war against Syria. Under editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt, this despicable approach has become even more pronounced. He recently led the anti-China campaign with the Bild newspaper, as the WSWS reported.

With its targeted campaign against Drosten, the tabloid is contributing to agitation against science in general and mobilising a dangerous mob against one of its most well-known representatives.

On Tuesday, Drosten wrote on Twitter that he and the Social Democrats’ health expert, Karl Lauterbach, received packages with bottles labelled “CoV-positive” and containing the anonymous message, “Drink this and you’ll be immune.” Already in April, Drosten said in a Guardian interview that he has received death threats due to his role in the coronavirus crisis.

By contrast, he enjoys broad support on social media. Typical comments read, “Bild is beyond the pale,” and “that’s not journalism, but just a squad of character assassins.” Polls show that most people oppose the premature lifting of the lockdown measures.

Drosten and other academics are increasingly valued and respected by the population. They have provided the public since the beginning of the pandemic with scientifically grounded information. Under conditions where big business and the political establishment are prepared to walk over corpses, this is increasingly viewed as a necessity of life.

As the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei and the World Socialist Web Site note in their latest statement on the pandemic, “The maintenance of a safe working environment is an immensely complex task that can only be achieved through a scientific and rational plan, in active consultation with health care experts in every workplace.” It added, “The costs necessary to ensure safe working conditions, as well as to provide health care and full income for all workers, must be borne by the corporations and the capitalist ruling elite.”

For his part, Drosten explained once again on Tuesday in the podcast Coronavirus Update that teachers and childcare workers must be tested regularly and all measures to combat the pandemic must be followed.

The virologist remarked on the main point of his study that Bild criticised, “The statement is quite clear: children have high loads of virus. That is all that we wanted to say. In principle, it could have been published without any statistical analysis.” From his entire research, the “very clear” conclusion is that “children have the same concentration of virus as other age groups.” There is “nothing to criticise about that.”

It is precisely this clarity that is a thorn in the side of the ruling elite. The capitalist economy must soon boom again, regardless of what it costs. To enforce the interests of the super-rich, banks, and big business, lockdown measures are being lifted so that autoworkers, teachers, childcare workers, retail workers, meatpackers, and others have to return to unsafe workplaces with inadequate personal protection.

Accelerating this process still further is the goal pursued by the Bild tabloid’s latest campaign against Christian Drosten.

Sharp rise in right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic violence in Germany

Peter Schwarz

The number of right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic acts of violence in Germany rose sharply in 2019. This is revealed in the statistics and figures on political crime presented May 27 by federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (Christian Social Union, CSU).

The number of anti-Semitic crimes rose by 13 percent over the previous year to 2,032 cases. The number of attacks on people of the Jewish faith reached its highest level since statistics began being compiled twenty years ago. On average, five to six anti-Semitic crimes were committed each day last year. According to the police, 93 percent of these crimes came from the right. The terrorist attack on the synagogue in Halle was only the tip of the iceberg.

In total, the police registered 41,177 politically motivated crimes last year, an increase of 14 percent. 22,342 of these were assigned to the right-wing camp, 9,849 to the left-wing camp. However, these figures have only limited significance, as they are so-called initial statistics. Incidents are recorded when an initial suspicion is raised, regardless of whether criminal proceedings are held or a court sentence subsequently passed.

In addition, the crimes involved are highly diverse—from mere propaganda offences (40 percent of all cases) to resistance to the police at demonstrations, to cold-blooded murder.

The definition of what is “right” and “left” is also left to the police, whose ranks include many sympathizers of the far right. When neo-Nazis march, the police often take brutal action against left-wing counter-demonstrators, with the result that it is these, and not the neo-Nazis, who appear in the violence statistics.

All in all, however, the figures leave no doubt that right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism are on the rise in Germany. Even Interior Minister Seehofer, who otherwise notoriously trivializes right-wing extremism, could no longer deny this.

“The greatest threat in our country comes from the right,” he said at the presentation of the report and spoke of a “long blood trail” of right-wing extremism, ranging from the actions of the terrorist neo-Nazi National Socialist Union (NSU) to the attacks in Munich, Halle and Hanau, to the murder of Kassel’s District President Walter Lübcke by a right-wing extremist.

Georg Meier (Social Democratic Party, SPD), chairman of the Conference of Interior Ministers, said that structures had emerged in the right-wing extremist sector that had not been seen or fought against for too long. The Thuringian state interior minister reported on right-wing concerts in his state with thousands of participants who had given the Hitler salute (Sieg Heil).

Given the hostility to the right-wing extremists felt by the vast majority of the population, Seehofer and Meier are trying to cover their tracks. The neo-Nazis and anti-Semites feel strong above all because they have the state apparatus and the parties of the ruling class behind them. Even the hypocritical assertions by officials that they now want to take action against the right-wing threat do not change this.

In his book Why Are They B ack?, the deputy chairman of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) Christoph Vandreier has shown in detail how the conditions for the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and its fascist periphery were created at the universities, in the media, in politics and in the state apparatus.

Global capitalism has “solved none of the problems that led to catastrophe in the 1930s,” the book’s foreword says. “All of the social, economic, and political contradictions are erupting once again with full force.” The German bourgeoisie is thus confronted again with the same problems it tried to solve through war and fascism and is now returning to the same methods.

This began with the trivialisation of the crimes of German imperialism and the Nazi regime by professors such as Herfried Münkler and Jörg Baberowski, and their vehement defence by the media and official politics against student criticism. It continued with the hype surrounding the racist inflammatory writings of leading SPD figure Thilo Sarrazin and the anti-refugee Pegida protests, which were played down as a demonstration by “concerned citizens” who had to be “taken seriously.”

The campaign against refugees, which was more or less openly supported by all the establishment parties and media, was accompanied by the assertion that the danger of anti-Semitism did not come from the right, but from refugees of the Muslim faith and the left.

While the Israeli Prime Minister feted notorious right-wing extremists such as Matteo Salvini, Viktor Orbán and Rodrigo Duterte at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, left-wing intellectuals, artists and activists were denounced as anti-Semites. Only recently, the Cameroonian historian and philosopher Achille Mbembe has become the subject of such a campaign. The statistics fully confirm that anti-Semitism comes from the fascist right.

The AfD has also been courted by politicians and the media and has been entrusted with the chairmanship of important committees in the Bundestag (parliament). Hans-Georg Maassen, when head of the secret service, advised the ultra-right party and openly sympathises with its positions. Only recently, the Thuringia state premier Minister Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) personally helped the AfD obtain a vice-president post in state parliament with his vote.

Above all, the state apparatus has played a major role in building up right-wing extremist structures. The fascist network, from which the NSU terrorists and the murderer of Kassel district president Walter Lübcke emerged, is riddled with dozens of Confidential Informants from the secret service and the Criminal Investigation Departments, who financed and built it up. Not one of them has been brought to justice, and the relevant files remain under lock and key to this day.

Numerous articles and television documentaries have also been produced about the so-called “Hannibal” network, consisting of elite KSK soldiers, special police officers, judges, lawyers and secret service officials, which keeps death lists, hoards weapons and conducts military exercises, without any of those with political responsibility having reacted. Almost all of the network’s protagonists are at large.

Two weeks ago, when another large weapons cache and Nazi memorabilia were found belonging to a KSK soldier, KSK Commander Markus Kreitmayr wrote a letter to his soldiers, wondering why, “in the midst of our community, there are obviously still individuals” who “belong to the so-called right-wing spectrum.” Extremists would be removed, he threatened and then asked them to please leave the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) of their own accord.

Kreitmayr knows better. The soldier, who was arrested in early May, had served in the KSK for 20 years and had also been there when a company commander celebrated his departure two years ago with a right-wing rock concert, Hitler salute, and prostitutes.

The existence of right-wing extremist networks in the Bundeswehr has not been a secret since at least February 2017, since the unmasking of Franco A., who had acquired a false identity as a refugee. But the defence ministry, the Bundeswehr leadership and the Military Counter-Intelligence Service systematically shielded them and will continue to do so.

The rise in right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic crimes is a warning. In the face of the deepest international economic crisis since the 1930s, the ruling class is once again preparing for dictatorship and war.