Turkey gambles in bid to rival China as a key supply chain node

James M. Dorsey

A projected sharp reduction in trade between the United States and China in the next two years coupled with moves to diversify supply chains potentially position Turkey alongside Vietnam, Mexico, Taiwan and Poland as competitors in efforts to reduce dependency on the People’s Republic, according to a just published study.

The study, conducted by the Boston Consulting Group on behalf of the Turkey-US Business Council (TAIK), suggests that Turkey, located on a fault line that separates Europe from Asia, has prerequisites to emerge as a winner provided it invests in its digital, electronics and equipment sectors.

TAIK is an affiliate of the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey (DEIK), the country’s oldest and largest business association.

The study identifies Africa as one region where the US and Turkish firms bring complimentary assets to the table. Turkey has in recent years significantly expanded its diplomatic, political, military, and economic footprint in Africa.

Africa is also a continent where China has made major inroads and could emerge as the dominant player, particularly in countries like Egypt that risk economic collapse.

Issued weeks before US President-elect Joe Biden is scheduled to take office, the study appears intended to underline Turkey’s strategic importance at a time that the country’s relations with the US and the European Union are strained.

The US recently slapped Turkey with sanctions for acquiring Russia’s S-400 anti-missile defense system while the EU imposed penalties in response to controversial Turkish gas drillings in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Increasing Turkey’s relevance to global trade flows would serve various Turkish objectives: boosting the country’s economy imperiled by the pandemic, the global economic downturn, and structural problems as well as capitalizing on recent geopolitical victories garnered through its military intervention in Libya, its support for Azerbaijan in this fall’s Caucasus war against Armenia, and the demonstrated capabilities of its homemade hardware, particularly drones.

To improve its chances of becoming a key alternate supply chain node, Turkey has sought to polish its tarnished image as a disruptive force by attempting to improve strained relations with two other key regional players, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and pressuring Iran – moves that would please Europe as well as Mr. Biden.

Finally, becoming a major alternative to Chinese-controlled supply chains furthers Turkey’s ambition to exploit something of a power void because of diminished US regional engagement to carve out its own place in a world in which power is being rebalanced as a result of big power rivalry.

“The growing rift between the United States and China creates significant opportunity for geopolitical cooperation. Turkey and the United States would both benefit economically,” said a Turkish businessman.

Predicting that US-China trade would drop by up to US$200 billion in the next two years, the study suggested that Turkey could significantly enhance its relevance to the global economy by leveraging its industrial base to exploit underutilized potential in data and software services and technology start-ups; and invest in cutting edge electronics and equipment manufacturing in areas such as smart cities, the Internet of Things, and automation.

The study warned that countries like Vietnam, Taiwan and Mexico have so far proven more adept than Turkey at exploiting emerging opportunities. It said the three countries this year boosted their electronics, automotive, and/or agricultural sectors by up to 11 percent.

TAIK’s lobbying agent, Mercury Public Affairs, distributed the study to US policy and opinionmakers, in an effort to change Washington perceptions of Turkey and its assertive president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

DEIK, the Turkish business association, together with TAIK, last week organized a webinar to highlight contributions of frontline personnel in the fight against COVID-19 who have either Turkish roots or links to Turkey’s allies.

Participants included Sine Akten, vice president of the Turkish American Medical Association; Esam Omeish, a Virginia surgeon and president of the Libyan American Alliance who is believed to be a supporter of the Turkish-backed Government of National Accor in Libya; and Samia Piracha, the Washington DC Chapter President of the Association of Physicians of Pakistani-descent in North America

TAIK, backed by Mr. Erdogan, kicked off its campaign to reposition Turkey with a webinar in June, entitled ‘A Time for Allies to be Allies: Turkish American Global Supply Chain,’ that was addressed by influential US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of outgoing President Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Graham acknowledged Turkey’s importance, noting that going forward Turkey’s relationship with the United States was likely to be grounded in economic integration through a free trade agreement.

He predicted that Africa would be “the prize of the 21st century” and said that he hoped that the United States and its allies rather than China would be the continent’s infrastructure and technology provider.

Mr. Graham cautioned, however, that Turkey’s S-400 acquisition, the resulting US cancellation of the sale to Turkey of advanced F-35 fighter jets, and Turkey’s military intervention in northern Syria were the greatest impediments to Turkey achieving its goal of becoming a key node in reconfigured US supply chains.

“The potential of this relationship is unlimited, but we’ve got to get over the friction points. It’s not going to reach its full potential until we get a resolution to the S-400/F-35 problem. Its not going to reach its full potential until we can come up with a more sustainable solution to Syria. The sooner we can get these two issues behind us, the more likely everything becomes a reality. Confidence building measures, that’s what I’m looking for,” Mr. Graham said.

Mr. Erdogan may see his geopolitical successes and attempts at rapprochement with Saudi Arabia and Israel as confidence-inspiring but that is unlikely how either side of the Washington divide will perceive them.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s supply chain competitors appear to be gaining a head start even if the United States recently branded Vietnam a currency manipulator.

Mr. Erdogan has so far given little indication that he is willing to budge on Syria or risk his already complex relationship with Russia by backtracking on the S-400.

Describing differences with the US and the EU as “artificial agendas,” Mr. Erdogan this week told his Justice and Development Party’s members of parliament that “Turkey is facing double standards both over the eastern Mediterranean and the S-400s. We want to turn a new page with the EU and United States in the new year.”

The Turkish president appears to be gambling on the Biden administration prioritizing the reduction of dependency on China by adopting policies that are, in the words of international affairs scholar Aaron L. Friedberg, “at least partially insulated from day-to-day political pressures.” That could prove to be a risky bet.

Is Iran Closer To Avenging The Murder Of Its Two Prominent Leaders?

Askiah Adam

Brigadier General Mohsen Fakhrizadeh of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Command (IRGC) and Iran’s most important nuclear scientist was assassinated not too far from Tehran recently. Iran immediately accused Israel , an allegation confirmed by a senior Washington official soon after. Meanwhile Tel Aviv has remained silent. Given its many earlier assasinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists and Netanyahu’s specific mention of Fakhrizadeh in 2018 the assumption is a safe one.

This year saw the murder of two prominent Iranian leaders. Very early in the year President Trump of the USA ordered the murder of Qasem Solaimani, a Major General of the IRGC and commander of the Quds Force, one agreed by all as formidable. He was on a diplomatic mission. In both instances Tehran vowed revenge but as time has shown prudence has been the watchword. The reported early warning bombing of the US Iraqi base, Ayn Al-Asad was intended to avoid deaths of US servicemen and women. Clearly the intention was to avoid a counter attack and prevent the outbreak of war.

The loss of Fakhrizadeh while great is not expected to paralyse Iran’s nuclear programme. It is only natural that the personnel pool in the area has grown over the years to meet the needs of Iran’s nuclear energy industry. Iran has denied that there was ever any effort to build a nuclear weapons programme, a stand very much part of its Islamic tenets. But Israel uses the nuclear weapons argument as a convenient strategy of undermining the Iranian effort to build its strength: economic and defence. Israel is fighting to maintain the uneven playing field of West Asia (Middle East) where it is the sole nuclear power but undeclared.

If then the Fakhrizadeh murder will not hamper Iran’s ability to build its nuclear energy industry, which for its own convenience Israel assumes will be flipped and weaponised, then why commit the crime? Observers argue that the intention is to tie President-elect Biden’s hands in the event he tries to resurrect US participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) or the Iran Deal making war the necessary option. The assumption is that the murders would inhibit Iran’s ability to return to the Iran Nuclear Deal. While plausible, this fails to recognise the pragmatism that has informed Tehran’s decisions thus far.

Indeed, most are convinced that vengeance will not bring about the declaration of war by Tehran. And yet, the failure to secure Fakhrizadeh’s safety is an embarrassment for Tehran.

The realization of justice is a much cherished principle of Shia Islam: “Everyday is Ashura. Every land is Karbala”, the former the day of Imam Hussain’s (Prophet Mohammad’s grandson) martyrdom, the latter where he was martyred in his fight for justice. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at the receiving end of much injustice for defending its sovereignty and resisting the hegemonic proclivities of the USA. The 8 year Iran – Iraq war was nothing but a war where Iraq played proxy for the USA. The on-going debilitating American sanctions, including its refusal to lift those on medical supplies despite the Covid-19 pandemic have caused civilian casualties and deaths, intentionally targeted to trigger an uprising among the Iranian people against the government.

The pursuit of justice is the core of Shi’ite belief. When this informs the dynamics that drives awareness of the Iranian people then the country’s enemy is obvious: external forces. Obviously, too, the government is very mindful of Islamic tenets as is seen in their attitude towards nuclear weapons. Was this the rationale for not killing US troops when Iran’s missile attacked US bases in Iraq? Was this why they shot down the unmanned drone (UAV) and spared the manned US spy plane. If the answer is yes then revenge for the murders of Fakhrizadeh and Soleimani will not be a conventional hot war.

In a time when wars are fought by the weaponising of any means that can destroy society and economies, what can Iran weaponise to undermine Israel? In the case of Soleimani the shape of that justice can be surmised from Trump’s admission of murder. But the Fakhrizadeh murder?

The glean of a possible answer could be at hand. On December 17th, 2020 a news story in the  Haaretz begins with “Israel is in the midst of a massive cyber attack by an Iranian group…”

“.…Iranian -linked hackers have targeted at least 80 Israeli firms in what experts say is a form of ideologically driven cybercrime.” Apparently, this attack by the group Pay2Key, is the latest “in a string of cyber campaigns against Israel.” Israeli experts suggest this is a war against their economy. What leads the experts to this belief is that, unlike the average sophisticated cybercriminals, the ransom demanded is comparatively small — although a report in The Times of Israel said “no ransom” was demanded — probably because the objective is political rather than commercial.

According to the headline of the report ”The Iranians Are Waiting for the Israeli Response…”

If the report is accurate and a cyber war ensues, given the assumptions of the experts that the ‘hacktivists’ have been in place for a considerable time it is then safe to assume that a planned attack has long been in place. If war it is then it is safe to assume that the objective is economic paralysis hitting all of the economy as what Russia did to Ukraine in 2015. There cannot be half measures on the Iranian part if they are to avenge themselves effectively. Data stolen can be engineered to cause substantial paralysis of whatever the future target maybe, possibly Israel’s supply chain given the nature of the targets.

Cyber warfare fits well into the Islamic principles of the Iranian state. Tehran has taken every opportunity to demonstrate its scientific and technological skills but unwilling to exploit any of it needlessly. It is not a Third World country struggling to develop. It is a major military power of West Asia. It builds missiles, a prowess the US is trying to end. The late Fakhrizadeh has the distinction of being compared to Oppenheimer the father of the nuclear bomb. It is a civilisation of some five thousand years. Iran is feared for its potential, especially by the Arab states of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies.

Britain descends into chaos as coronavirus crisis mounts

Robert Stevens

The COVID-19 death toll in Britain continues to rise inexorably, with predictions that National Health Service hospitals will be treating more coronavirus patients on Christmas Day than at any point in the pandemic.

On Tuesday, 691 more people were announced dead from the virus. Yesterday this was topped with 744 deaths reported, the highest total since April 29. The 39,237 new coronavirus cases announced yesterday was the highest yet recorded in Britain.

This carnage takes place under conditions in which the entire country is descending into chaos. Supermarkets such as Tesco are limiting purchases of toilet roll, eggs, rice and other staples, amid warning of fruit and vegetable shortages amid scenes of panic buying.

Yesterday, at the port of Dover and across large parts of the county of Kent, thousands of truck drivers were still unable to return to their home countries on the European continent, despite an agreement with France to let COVID-tested drivers cross to Calais.

Vehicles wait at the entrance to the Port of Dover, that is blocked by police, as they queue to be allowed to leave, in Dover, England, Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2020 (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

As early as December 18, a 20-mile queue began forming on the M20 motorway and on the A20 leading into Dover. Much of the extra traffic was due to retailers seeking to get goods into the UK in time for Christmas amid problems at already full container ports and uncertainty over the outcome of Brexit talks between London and the European Union.

Around 5,000 lorries are queued up in three separate locations in Kent. Many of the hauliers have spent days sleeping in their cabs with no access to basic supplies.

Truck drivers scuffled with police officers at Dover yesterday. Drivers stood in pouring rain and strong winds chanting, “We want to go home.” One told the BBC, “We are very tired. We're staying in cars, we don't have a lot of food, no money. Police three days ago told us that testing will start soon, but they don't know when and that's why people are protesting”.

Earlier, truckers clashed with police at the disused Manston airfield 18 miles from Dover. Around 3,800 lorries are parked up like sardines at Manston waiting to return home. They blockaded the A299 motorway in Kent yesterday morning in a mass protest.

The UK must test every truck driver leaving the UK for France, after a highly infectious strain of COVID-19 was acknowledged by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week. On Tuesday evening, Johnson and President Emmanuel Macron reached agreement on a deal to reverse the unilateral 48-hour French ban on freight lorries travelling between Dover and Calais, as well as travel through the Channel Tunnel. Until January 6, only lorry drivers and French and EU citizens or residents who have an essential reason to travel and who show a negative test result less than 72 hours old will be allowed into France.

UK Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick warned after the deal was struck that it still may take a “few days” to clear the backlog of lorries demanding to cross the Channel. This is a massive understatement. Until yesterday, when a few mobile testing units arrived, there weren’t even any permanent testing areas in Dover. The government is having to draft in military personnel to assist.

Tensions flared after many hauliers refused to leave Dover to be tested at Manston, as this would mean an 18-mile trip and a return to the back of the queue.

The chaos at Dover is only the most visible expression of the mounting disaster throughout the country. Literally nothing is functioning properly despite the government having years to prepare for a pandemic.

The test and trace system, to the extent it was ever really in operation, has collapsed. Testing never exceeded 430,000 a day and daily testing briefings by ministers were abandoned months ago. Under the government’s Dover plan, hauliers are to be given a “lateral flow test” with results available in 20-30 minutes sent by text message. However, such tests are highly unreliable and can give a false reassurance to those testing negative. After directors of public health questioned their accuracy, the government was forced to shelve a plan to open other lateral flow test centres it planned to operate over Christmas. The Guardian reported Tuesday, “Government figures from the mass testing programme in Liverpool revealed earlier this month that the tests missed 30% of cases with a high viral load and half of positive cases that were detected by standard coronavirus tests.”

The rollout of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the UK is also beset with problems and is proceeding at a snail’s pace. The first patient was given a dose of the vaccination on December 8, but as of yesterday only 500,000 people out of a population of 66 million had received even their first dose of the virus. Two doses, around 21 days apart, must be administered to each person to ensure immunity.

So slow is the rollout that it is being proposed by Professor David Salisbury—who was responsible for immunisation at the Department of Health until 2013—that people just be given an initial dose, in order to vaccinate more people. This was despite’s Pfizer’s insistence that testing showed that two doses were required "to provide the maximum protection". Salisbury’s proposal was backed yesterday by Tony Blair, the multi-millionaire war criminal, who knows as much about science and viruses as he does about his self-proclaimed “humanitarianism.”

The crisis at Dover has been seized on by Macron and leaders of other European government to denounce Britain as “plague island”, as if they were not themselves responsible for a catastrophic situation within their own borders.

Due to the criminally reckless “herd immunity” policies operated by government of all stripes throughout the EU, the virus is on the increase everywhere. Respected epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson told a parliamentary committee yesterday, “It would suggest, almost certainly in my view, that this [mutation of the] virus has been introduced to the great majority, if not all, of European countries at the current time.”

Yesterday Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that six million more people in the east and south east of England were being placed under the highest Tier four restrictions from December 26. “Across the country, cases have risen 57 percent in the last week. The average daily COVID hospital admissions are 1,909 a day--that’s the highest figure since mid-April. There are 18,943 people in hospital right now, that’s almost as many as at the peak,” he said.

Even these horrific numbers could be dwarfed by an even greater scale of infection in the coming weeks. Hancock announced that, with the assistance of South Africa scientists, two cases of another new variant of coronavirus had been detected in Britain. “Both are contacts of cases who have travelled from South Africa over the past few weeks.” Both had been instructed to go into quarantine, with Hancock stating, “This new variant is highly concerning, because it is yet more transmissible and it appeared to have mutated further than the new variant that has been discovered here.” The South African strain was being analysed at the UK’s Porton Down military laboratory.

Leaked 2021 draft budget set to pauperise Iraqi workers and their families

Jean Shaoul

The leaking of Iraq’s federal budget has provoked widespread anger. The budget will devalue the Iraqi dinar and cut public sector salaries, amid an escalating healthcare, economic and political crisis.

Thousands took to the streets, blocking the main roads leading to oil installations and bridges in oil-rich Basra city, and the port of Umm Qasr in the south of the country, demanding unpaid wages. There were protests in several areas of Basra province by day-rate employees of the government, including in the energy sector, demanding payment of salaries they have not received in months.

This follows similar protests earlier this month demanding unpaid wages in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which employs three out of four workers. Protesters in Sulimaniya burned down the regional government buildings and the offices of the two main Kurdish political parties. Protests have continued, on a smaller scale, after the KRG’s security forces cracked down viciously, leading to 10 deaths–eight protestors and two members of the security forces--scores injured, hundreds detained and journalists threatened with violence.

Iraqi cabinet (Source: Government of Iraq)

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s government faces a catastrophic financial crisis following the collapse in oil revenues which provide more than 90 percent of its income. It has borrowed from the Central Bank to pay the public sector wage and pension bill of $5 billion a month, as income fell to $3.5 billion, depleting the country’s dollar reserves.

According to the leaked draft 2021 budget, al-Kadhimi has agreed to devalue the dinar as a means of raising government income. With oil prices denominated in dollars and the dinar pegged to the dollar, this will give the government more money to spend. The draft budget assumes a devaluation of around 23 percent, is based on an exchange rate of 1,450 dinars per dollar, compared to the current 1,182 dinars per dollar. The value of the dinar has already fallen on the street, ahead of the official devaluation, as exchange houses in Baghdad sell the dollar for 1,300 Iraqi dinars.

The International Monetary Fund estimated that Iraq’s economy will shrink by 11 percent in 2020. It had proposed an exchange rate of 1,600 dinars to the dollar as part of a package of economic and financial conditions for granting a loan to Iraq’s desperate government. That loan will only be forthcoming if Baghdad falls in line with Washington’s political and economic requirements—curbing the power of Iranian-backed militias and politicians and implementing economic “reforms,” including the restructuring of Iraq’s large state-owned banks, privatisations, and above all the slashing of public sector wages and benefits.

The devaluation means a huge cut in workers’ living standards as their purchasing power falls, pushing ever more into poverty, and raising fears that the dinar's value will continue to slide. As a doctor at a Covid-19 ward in Baghdad told AFP, “Our salaries will be worthless.” Day labourers and those without work face immediate destitution.

Even after the devaluation, there will be a record $40 billion budget deficit. The budget envisages expenditure of $103 billion, with just $63 billion in revenue. The government’s White Paper had sought to halve the public sector wage bill, slashing it from 25 percent of GDP to 12 percent, threatening not only workers’ jobs and wages but also the patronage system from which most of the political parties draw their funding and power. The draft budget appears to have retreated a little from this target figure, but has cut salary benefits, including danger pay, higher education degrees and expenses for high-level officials.

Nevertheless, the slashing of benefits, which can in some cases serve to double workers’ paltry wages, combined with the devaluation is a massive assault on the working class. As Ali Kadhim, 50, a teacher told Al Jazeera, “The majority of Iraq’s work force are government employees. We are the middle class, but (the government’s latest) decisions are going to make us the poorest class.” He added, “I am paying off two loans that take up a third of my salary. After these decisions I don’t know how much I am going to earn.”

In October, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) warned that the slump in demand and plummeting oil prices, along with the limited restrictions put in place to deal with the pandemic—Iraq has confirmed more than 585,000 cases and 12,700 deaths—would deepen inequality. At least 13 percent of Iraqis and 36 percent of young people are officially unemployed. According to ReliefWeb, around 8 percent of households (3 million people) were not getting enough to eat in September, while the World Bank’s November report estimated that up to 5.5 million of Iraq’s 39 million population were at risk of falling into poverty, meaning that more than 40 percent of Iraq’s predominantly young population—the median age is 20 years--would be living in poverty.

Iraqi children have been some of the worst affected by the trauma of war, poverty and the disastrous state of the country’s education system, once one of the best in the Arab world. Some 3.2 million school-aged children are out of school. In conflict-affected areas, almost all school-aged children are missing out on an education, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, early marriage, child labour, and recruitment by Iraq’s numerous militias.

With one in every two schools damaged, many have up to 60 children in a class and operate a shift system. The number of qualified teachers has fallen at all educational levels as spending on education has declined and Iraq’s educated and professional class fled abroad following the wave of assassinations of colleagues since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003. The closure of schools earlier this year due to the pandemic affected more than 10 million children, causing a further educational decline for those who have already lost years of schooling.

The budget is likely to exacerbate tensions with Kurdistan, which is dependent upon the federal government in Baghdad for cash to pay its employees. The budget requires the KRG to contribute 250,000 barrels of oil per day in return for its budget allocation of $8.6 billion, while containing provisions for reducing or eliminating its transfers to the KRG.

Kadhimi, a former intelligence officer with close ties to Washington, became prime minister earlier this year after the previous government was brought down by mass protests that started in October 2019, against inequality, poverty, corruption and the sectarian political system. While he promised an investigation into the more than 600 protesters who were killed by the security forces during the crackdown, those responsible have not been identified or brought before the courts. He pledged to hold elections next June based on new legislation that would overturn Iraq’s sectarian political system but has been unable to secure the necessary political agreement in parliament.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Farhad Alaaldin and Kenneth Pollack warn that Iraq’s economic collapse could lead to a civil war drawing in its neighbours. If Iraq’s government continues to lose credibility, “armed groups and tribes, including the armed militias backed by Iran, would try to fill the vacuum and usurp the role of the primary security forces in Iraq.... These same groups would also fight for territory to control. They might try to take control of revenue-generating resources such as oil fields, ports, border crossings, large businesses, agricultural land, and private properties.”

Iraq, which has strong trading and commercial links with Iran, has become a key political battleground in US imperialism’s militaristic confrontation with Tehran. The Trump administration has insisted that Baghdad rein in the Iran-backed Shi’ite militias that have repeatedly fired rockets into the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area that houses the US Embassy, military forces and contractors.

In September, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened to close the embassy in Baghdad as a prelude to US military attacks aimed at “liquidating” Shia militia elements charged with responsibility for attacks on US facilities. Earlier this month, the US withdrew some of its staff from the embassy in the run up to the first anniversary of the January 3 US air strike that killed Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a prominent member of the Iraqi government and deputy commander of Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi, an Iran-backed umbrella militia group, in Baghdad.

Deadliest week since COVID-19 pandemic began in Germany

Gregor Link

Last week was by far the worst in the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, with officially 175,314 infections and over 4,300 deaths (against 3,050 the previous week). Across Europe, the death toll exceeded the catastrophic half-million mark on Tuesday. After reports of deadly mass outbreaks in old people’s homes dominating the headlines in recent weeks, the “profits before lives” policy of recent months is now revealing its murderous consequences more and more clearly in hospitals.

Central train station in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

According to the Pforzheimer Zeitung, a hospital in Tettnang on Lake Constance halted admissions on December 10 because the virus had been detected in 34 people. Three infected patients had to be taken to Friedrichshafen, 13 kilometres away, due to severe symptoms. In the meantime, 84 staff and 26 patients have been infected—only five of the remaining patients tested negative.

At the hospital in Wangen im Allgäu, which is currently treating 18 COVID-19 patients, 28 staff members—including eight doctors—are infected and in quarantine. In addition to COVID-19 cases, the clinic only treats emergencies and performs deliveries—although the virus is also particularly deadly for pregnant women. The hospital in Pfullendorf reports three infected staff members and has also imposed an admission ban.

Meanwhile, in Saxony, the shortage of intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients is “significantly larger than officially reported,” broadcaster MDR reports. While the DIVI intensive care register shows 50 free intensive care beds for the districts of Bautzen, Dresden, Sächsische Schweiz Osterzgebirge, Görlitz and Meißen, according to the hospital control centre’s bed lists there are only about 20 available—less than half. One reason for this, according to the Görlitz hospital, was “staff who are ill or in quarantine, which means that free beds cannot be occupied.”

According to a report by dpa press agency, the high death toll means corpses must now be stored temporarily in Zittau in eastern Saxony. The dead are being warehoused “in the flood support base” and will only be brought to the crematorium “when they are released for cremation,” the city of Zittau reported on Tuesday evening. In Hanau, Hesse, a refrigerated container for coronavirus corpses had already been put into operation last week at the city’s main cemetery to store bodies from the completely overloaded hospitals.

In addition to the virus hotspots in Saxony, which have been overwhelmed by the pandemic, there are now districts in Bavaria, Thuringia and Brandenburg with 7-day incidences of between 500 and 680 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. In Bavaria, all intensive care beds are occupied in eight cities and districts.

Since the devastating lack of staff there is exacerbating the situation, in a “cry for help” to the population, the counties in the metropolitan region of Nuremberg/Fürth/Erlangen are now looking for helpers to relieve the staff in hospitals. As reported by the Münchner Merkur, the “excess mortality due to coronavirus” in Bavaria was so great that “the population is shrinking for the first time in a long time.” Depending on the region, the death figures are on average between 6 and 18 percent higher than 2016 to 2019, the paper said.

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a federal state with a low population density, which has not been at the centre of the pandemic so far, is also expecting the health system to collapse soon. As broadcaster NDR reports, five rehabilitation clinics there are currently being converted into relief facilities where patients with waning COVID-19 symptoms and other illnesses will be cared for.

At the weekend, the death of a 38-year-old teacher at a comprehensive school in Berlin’s working-class Kreuzberg district triggered a wave of anger and bewilderment. Soydan A., who according to Tagesspiegel had previously been in perfect health, fought the fatal disease over 32 days, before he finally succumbed. He was one of the thousands of educators infected with the virus because of forced unsafe face-to-face teaching.

According to the official figures of the Berlin Ministry of Education, 370 staff members in general education schools in the capital are coronavirus-positive, as well as 988 pupils. Statistics from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) show that three educators infected with COVID-19 died last week.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, calculations have shown that the seven-day incidence rate among teachers compared to the total population exploded in October and November: from 183 in calendar week 44 (NRW-wide average: 162) to 280 in week 45 (average: 175), to 368 in week 46 (average: 171) and finally 361 in week 47 (average: 159). According to these official figures from the state school authorities, teachers were more than twice as at-risk of infection in November than the general population.

Nevertheless, the full reopening of schools after the end of the Christmas holidays and the official “lockdown” on January 10 is already being intensively prepared behind the backs of the population. “Within the Conference of State Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs,” there is “agreement” that “there is no substitute for personal contact between teacher and pupil,” newsweekly Der Spiegel quotes Brandenburg’s Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs Britta Ernst, who is to take over the chair of the conference from January. In particular, “the SPD-led states,” according to the news magazine, want to “reopen their schools or have not closed them at all” from January 10.

This murderous policy meets with overwhelming rejection among the population. For example, a survey by broadcaster ARD’s Deutschland-Trends has again shown that 85 percent of eligible voters consider the current containment measures “adequate” or “not extensive enough.” Although one in two parents complain of “heavy burdens,” two-thirds of those surveyed support the closure of schools or the suspension of compulsory attendance.

In face of this massive opposition, education ministers and state governments are increasingly openly resorting to pseudo-scientific propaganda and lies in their efforts to justify the return to compulsory attendance as soon as possible. For example, at the end of November, Hamburg’s schools’ senator (state minister), Ties Rabe, announced, “together with the Standing Conference of the State Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK), a new study” on the incidence of infections in schools, which was to be carried out “based on Hamburg’s school data.”

As the ARD magazine programme Panorama reported on Thursday, “the Hamburg school authority” should also “take care of the preparation” for the study. To this end, Rabe said, “all our Hamburg data has been processed”—but without any involvement of epidemiological or virological experts.

SPD politician Ties Rabe is known as a hardliner on the issue of school reopenings, whose authorities have systematically covered up coronavirus infections in schools since the very beginning. Based on his authority’s fudged figures, Rabe had recently presented the results of an internal “numerical analysis,” according to which 80 percent of infected pupils had “probably not been infected at school at all.”

“The fall from grace of German education policy in the pandemic began at the moment when scientific findings were denied, ignored or reinterpreted,” says education journalist Andrej Priboschek, editor of the online magazine News4Teachers, in an interview with the World Socialist Web Site. “The talk of non-infectious children is always fuelled by education ministers.”

Priboschek wrote an open letter to the state premiers a few weeks ago, in which he harshly condemned the policy of operating unsafe schools. “I also wrote this letter because, as a self-employed journalist and family man, I am directly affected by this policy myself. If I were to contract COVID-19 and become ill for a fortnight or even months, the consequences would be devastating.”

“Amid the pandemic, if educational equity is suddenly brought into the discussion,” Priboschek said, this was “gross hypocrisy—no one has cared about that in past decades. The fact that socially disadvantaged families are much more threatened by coronavirus because they live in cramped conditions and depend on using public transport is simply ignored. In effect, you’re sending these people into the fire—this is especially true of SPD-led state governments.”

“It must also be said that not much information is published on deaths in schools and day-care centres,” the News4Teachers editor said. What was also necessary in this context, was a “criticism of my colleagues in the media.” Apart from “us and you [WSWS], there is not a single media outlet that criticises the schools’ policy or even tries to systematically present the facts.”

In November, the Münster district administration distributed a “handout” to all schools, encouraging school administrators to cover up information about any outbreaks and to gloss over the risk of infection in schools. The letter states, among other things, “If possible, do not provide identifying information about suspected or infectious cases at all!” The public, according to the district authority, “doesn’t want to hear that you have doubts—but that your school is a safe place!”

Back in September, the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs commissioned a “handout for all schools” from the Federal Environment Agency. It concluded that “regular ventilation” in winter had “an important influence on the reduction of the virus load” and that the “use of mobile air purification devices in school rooms” was, therefore “basically not necessary.” The then-KMK chairwoman Stefanie Hubig (SPD) subsequently used this so-called expert opinion to justify in-person teaching and to reject the installation of air filters in the face of protesting parents.

On Friday, leading scientists published a joint appeal in the medical journal The Lancet for “a pan-European commitment for rapid and sustained reduction in SARS-CoV-2 infections.” The authors include Viola Priesemann, Melanie Brinkmann, Sandra Ciesek and 17 other researchers from across Europe.

The paper, published in 12 languages, calls for “a target of no more than ten new COVID-19 cases per million people per day” for the entire continent. This corresponds to a seven-day incidence of seven cases per 100,000 inhabitants, or a maximum of 830 new infections per day in Germany. This was the only way to contain the spread of the virus in a sustained manner, the authors explain.

“The virus does not respect borders,” initiator Priesemann (Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation Göttingen) justified the demand in a press release. “Not least to avoid a ping-pong effect [of case numbers],” “all European countries must reduce case numbers simultaneously and as quickly as possible.” This would require “radical interventions such as lockdowns.” It was not a matter of “discussing individual measures such as school closures or restrictions in the work environment, in the private sphere or public transport, but of implementing all measures,” says Priesemann.

More than 300 other scientists have signed the paper. The German signatories include Max Planck President Martin Stratmann, RKI President Lothar Wieler, virologists Sandra Ciesek and Christian Drosten, Michael Meyer-Hermann of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, as well as Gerald Haug, president of the German National Academy, and the presidents of several research organisations.

The implementation of these measures requires the independent intervention of the working class based on an international socialist programme. The European governments have already sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives in the interests of German and European capitalism and are willing to continue this course in the New Year. This must be prevented at all costs.

Germany: Coronavirus outbreaks turn Berlin elderly care homes into death traps

Katerina Selin

In the German capital, which is governed by a coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Left Party, more and more nursing homes are becoming death traps for the elderly and people in need of care. Numerous coronavirus outbreaks in Berlin care homes only came to light because relatives and journalists made them known. The nursing homes’ management, as well as the senate and district administrations cover up the cases and give only reluctantly or no information at all.

According to the newspaper Tagesspiegel, which cites information from the Berlin Senate, at least 295 nursing homes have been affected by outbreaks since the start of the pandemic. Already from mid-November to early December, the number of infected nursing home residents in Berlin had doubled to 2,050. Now, at least 1,400 more have been added since the beginning of December. Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, more than 3,400 residents and more than 1,600 caregivers in Berlin homes have been infected with COVID-19. The WSWS reported on multiple outbreaks in the spring.

Nurse Jean-Claude Feda, right, and trainee Lyson Rousseau, center, both wearing face masks, to protect against the spread of coronavirus, measure the blood pressure of resident Odette Defraigne-Schmit at CHC Liege Mativa home for elderly people in Liege, Belgium, Thursday, July 9, 2020. While no coronavirus, COVID-19 patients, have been reported at this particular home, Belgium has been hard hit by the deadly virus. Elderly people living in retirement homes have accounted for nearly half of the total deaths in this small country with 11 million inhabitants. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

On December 15, Berlin reported a record 53 new COVID-19 deaths within one day. Yesterday, 39 people died, and 1,593 new infections were registered in Berlin. More than every second death takes place in a nursing home, according to the Tagesspiegel. Almost 500 care home residents have died from the virus so far. The total number of COVID-19 victims in Berlin has now reached 1,105 deaths.

On Tuesday alone, three deadly outbreaks in care homes came to light. In a care home in Mariendorf, southern Berlin, eight residents died of COVID-19 and 64 out of 79 elderly people and 22 out of 72 workers in the facility have been infected. In a care home in Wilmersdorf nine residents have died and more than 30 people are infected. Seven residents died after an outbreak in a care home in Biesdorf in the Eastern district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, where the Left Party is responsible for the district health council and holds the position of district mayor since 2016.

In the private Goldenherz care home in the middle of Berlin’s working-class district Wedding, the largest outbreak in the capital so far was reported on December 14, with more than 150 infections. Twenty-two residents and one 48-year-old employee had died from COVID-19. In fact, the outbreak had already been registered by authorities in November but had not been made public. The Tagesspiegel reports that it only learned about it in the middle of December via an “insider” and that the home’s management did not want to provide any information.

In the meantime, a nurse had contacted the Tagesspiegel to expose the disaster at the facility. She said, “No hygiene measures were enforced before the outbreak until November 20, and no other measures such as mandatory masks were consistently monitored by management. Employees worked without protective clothing or gloves and went on duty despite having a cold, by order of the home’s management.”

A nursing home in the northern Berlin district of Reinickendorf has also become a hotspot of the virus. At the Domicil retirement home on Techowpromenade, 80 residents and 30 staff members tested positive in the middle of December; 14 people succumbed to the virus.

COVID-19 has been spreading there since November 20, but the case has only now become public because a relative of a victim informed the Tagesspiegel. His previously healthy father-in-law had died of an infection in only ten days.

Conditions at the Domicil facility have facilitated a rapid spread of the virus. The home was understaffed, and workers had to move back and forth between floors. Residents in double rooms who tested positive were not separated from their room neighbors, which the home’s management justified by referring to lack of space.

Showering had been stopped “because the water vapors including the viruses can penetrate the FFP2 masks,” the Tagesspiegel quotes. The food was apparently reduced to ready meals with disposable dishes. Many dementia patients refused to eat and were completely emaciated.

The relative told the Tagesspiegel, “We are shocked that such conditions can exist in a country like Germany.” The man, in tears, denounced the silence of the authorities. He said he was sure that the “number of unreported cases is much higher in the city.”

A similar case occurred at the Rosenhof housing complex for elderly people in the southwestern district of Zehlendorf. Eleven people died of coronavirus there in October, which only became public after a reader contacted the Tagesspiegel.

The district councilor for health, Carolina Böhm (SPD), justified the authorities’ cover-up policy. It was about “protecting the facility” from press calls and distorted reporting, she claimed. Böhm did not give precise details about the current situation of nursing homes in her district, but admitted that there are cases every day, which is now part of the “sad everyday life.”

The same argument was repeated by the health councilor in the district of Friedrichshain, Knut Mildner-Spindler from the Left Party. There, in the Haus an der Spree nursing home, more than 80 residents and employees are now infected. Coma patients already had to be transferred to the hospital because they had not enough staff to care for them. Nevertheless, Mildner-Spindler downplayed the situation as “not that dramatic.” It was “all clear and under control,” the Left Party politician told the Tagesspiegel newspaper two weeks ago. He also waved away the seriousness of the situation by declaring that the outbreaks were now part of everyday life.

What Berlin politicians refer to as “sad everyday life” is the result of their deliberate policies. The mantra of recent months that one must “learn to live with the virus” is now showing its cruel logic. The federal government and all state governments, whether under Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), SPD, Greens, Left Party or the Liberals (FDP), have prevented a containment of the pandemic and thus dramatically accelerated the spread of the virus into vulnerable population groups. In Berlin, the SPD and the Left Party in particular have implemented social cuts for decades and pushed the drive for profits in the care homes.

Media reports about seniors who perish in care homes are unwanted because they throw a spotlight on the “new reality” enforced by the German ruling elite in the interests of profit: the premature death of grandparents and parents and the selection and “triage” of people who, from the point of view of the capitalist profit economy, no longer have any value and are a burden for the health care system.

For cost reasons, testing and hygiene measures are enforced only hesitantly or not at all. According to the Berliner Zeitung, the Berlin health administration justified the lack of a testing strategy by pointing out that the tests were “basically only a snapshot” and therefore “only conditionally suitable for protecting facilities against the entry of the virus by visitors.”

According to official figures, around 62,600 tests were carried out in Berlin in the week December 7–13. This was about 16,000 fewer than six weeks before. The reason is said to be fluctuating laboratory capacities, although the Senate, referring to the “business secrets” of the private laboratories, does not reveal why this is the case. The fact is that in Berlin, in many suspected COVID-19 cases, no tests are carried out or those tested had to wait several days for their results.

At the same time, Berlin’s hospitals are increasingly overstrained. The head of Charité, one of Europe’s largest university hospitals, sounded the alarm in the beginning of December. Speaking in the news Tagesthemen, he said, “We will very soon be at the limit of what we can do.”

Capacity in intensive care units is running short. According to the DIVI Intensive Care Register, which documents intensive care treatment capacities in Germany on a daily basis, Berlin has the lowest proportion of vacant intensive care beds in a nationwide comparison. On Wednesday, only 140 of a total of 1,134 ICU beds for adults were vacant.

As anger among the working class about the devastating crisis is growing, the political parties are trying to wash their hands of the matter and divert attention from their responsibility. SPD politician Ephraim Gothe, city health councilor in Berlin-Mitte, claimed to the Tagesspiegel that there was no capacity to reconstruct the individual cases in nursing homes and discuss them publicly. “This is not the time to ask the question of guilt,” Gothe said.

In fact, the “question of guilt” is already posed and answered. The SPD-Left Party-Green Senate is responsible for this disaster and now continuing on the same course. The Berlin Senate’s new pandemic ordinance of December 14 reveals that the supposedly “tough” nationwide lockdown, in place only until January 10, is woefully inadequate and, because of exceptions and loopholes, not even remotely aimed at bringing the pandemic under control.

Events with up to 100 people outdoors and up to 50 people indoors are still allowed. The alleged closure of kindergartens is lifted through the back door because parents can still put their children in “emergency care” if they have no other solution. Since there is no closure of the factories or relief for the parents, the daycare centers are automatically filled. “In these cases, the [Berlin] Senate Department for Youth trusts in the solution and action competence of facilities and parents,” it said in a press release. In other words, the Senate shifts responsibility to the working class, which continues to be forced to choose between their health and their jobs.

Other educational institutions also allow face-to-face teaching formats despite “lockdown.” At Berlin universities, “practical formats that cannot be carried out digitally as well as exams” may take place in person; the number of students “shall” not exceed 25. Tests and exams at schools will not be postponed in view of the health catastrophe but may be conducted in person; teachers and school staff must be on duty. Berlin’s Education Senator Sandra Scheeres (SPD) has announced that there will be emergency care for younger children even during the Christmas vacations. From January 11, schools should then reopen completely and resume in-person teaching.

Canada’s health care system buckling as governments reject measures to contain COVID-19

Roger Jordan

As COVID-19 infections continue to rise across Canada, dire warnings about the health care system’s inability to cope are growing. The number of intensive care patients in Ontario’s hospitals surpassed the peak of the first wave of the pandemic Monday and is fast approaching the level at which Doug Ford’s provincial government has acknowledged that it will be impossible to maintain adequate health care for those suffering from other illnesses or injuries.

There were 285 COVID-19 patients in Ontario intensive care units as of December 21, more than the 283 recorded at the high point during the spring. When COVID-19 intensive care patients surpass 300, which is set to occur within the next 10 days, health authorities say that they will no longer be able to guarantee regular levels of care for other patients.

The crisis is particularly stark in Peel Region, where approximately half of all intensive care patients at two hospitals in Brampton and Mississauga have COVID-19.

Although the province claims 400 intensive care beds remain available for patients, health care professionals point out that not all of these can be used due to staff shortages. “Only 15 per cent of the work that we do is elective. 85 per cent of the stuff that comes to our door we can’t alter. That is traumas, cardiac surgery, cancer surgery, transplants and we can’t cancel those,” explained Dr. Michael Warner, the medical director of critical care at Michael Garron Hospital. “So our ability to flex up is limited primarily by the number of highly trained nurses we have and those nurses are in critically short supply right now. We have to get this thing under control.”

The situation is equally serious in Alberta, where the United Conservative Party government announced earlier this month plans to establish field hospitals capable of treating up to 750 patients. In Edmonton, the intensive care unit at the Stollery Children’s Hospital has been transformed into a unit caring for adult patients with COVID-19, with the children moved to a cardiac intensive care unit. Alberta Health Services also reported that four COVID-19 outbreaks are ongoing at hospitals in the Calgary zone, and that Fort Saskatchewan Community Hospital will close its labour and delivery unit to free up bed space. Pregnant patients will have to travel over 30 kilometres to the nearest health care facility.

In Quebec, Health Minister Christian Dubé announced that beds are being added in “non-traditional” settings, including hotels, to cope with an increase in demand that has seen coronavirus patients rise by 50 percent over the past three weeks. With the number of COVID-19 patients receiving hospital care now exceeding 1,000, ten of the province’s hospitals are on the verge of overflowing, Dubé said.

In British Columbia, the government is sending three “alternative care units” to the Vancouver Island, Northern Health, and Fraser Health regions to cope with the crushing demand for hospital beds. The units are shipping containers comprised of 40 beds that can be used to establish basic emergency care centres in gymnasiums, community centres, and other buildings. Last week, the province registered a new high of 361 patients in hospital, 93 of whom were in intensive care, another tragic record.

As horrendous as the health care crisis is, estimates suggest that the situation will deteriorate drastically in coming weeks. New modelling from Ontario shows that by January 24, Ontario will have 5,000 daily COVID-19 infections per day, more than double the current 7-day average of 2,100, if infections continue to increase by on average 1 percent per day. A 5 percent increase, which epidemiologists are warning is highly possible absent urgent action, would result in a staggering 14,000 new daily infections by late January.

Given that a delay of several weeks is usually observed between infection and hospitalization, the demands on already overstretched hospitals are all but certain to increase.

These developments are not inevitable. Rather, they are the direct product of the criminal policies that the entire political establishment are pursuing. From Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal government on down, the main concern of Canada’s ruling elite has been to protect the profits of big business and the wealth of the super-rich, while forcing workers to remain on the job amid a raging pandemic.

After the Liberals engineered vast bailouts for the banks and financial oligarchy in the spring totaling more than $650 billion, Trudeau worked closely with big business lobby groups and his allies in the trade unions to enforce the reckless reopening of the economy. He was supported in this homicidal endeavour by the hard-right provincial governments of François Legault in Quebec, Ford in Ontario, and Jason Kenney in Alberta, as well as the New Democratic Party-led government of John Horgan in BC. A critical part of reopening the economy was ensuring that schools were opened for in-person classes so they could function as child minding services for parents, who were forced back into dangerous workplaces.

Provincial governments are continuing this policy of placing profits before human lives even as the terrible consequences, expressed above all in the mounting death toll and threatened collapse of the health care system, become ever clearer. On Monday, the Ford government announced what it termed a “lockdown” for the whole of Ontario, as of December 26. Yet the lockdown order contained so many loopholes and exceptions that Globe and Mail health correspondent André Picard aptly characterized it as a “mockdown.” The exemptions will above all impact large worksites, which have been one of the main vectors for transmission of the virus.

Many workplaces that have experienced major outbreaks, including food processing plants and warehouses, will remain open. Businesses allowed to continue operating include “all construction activities and services,” “supply chains, including businesses that work in processing, packaging, warehousing, distribution, delivery, and maintenance,” “manufacturing,” “courier, postal, shipping, moving and delivery services,” “staffing services including providing temporary help,” and “hotels, cottages, resorts and motels.” Large retail stores like Costco and Walmart will also be allowed to remain open because they stock groceries or pharmacy products.

The “lockdown” order fixes January 11 as the date when elementary schools will reopen. Secondary schools will follow two weeks later. An earlier version of the order which included the restricting of childcare services to essential workers was scrapped so as to ensure childcare remains accessible to all. Given that virtually all businesses outside of the retail sector remain open, the vast majority of parents will continue to send their children to daycare in order to continue going to work.

Health experts have attacked the Ford government’s decision to delay the imposition of the lockdown until December 26. This means that family gatherings over Christmas can take place before the restriction on social gatherings to members of the same household comes into force. Anthony Dale, president of the Ontario Health Association, said that hospital directors and health care leaders were “shocked” that the restrictions have been delayed until after Christmas.

A similar process is under way in neighbouring Quebec. In mid-November, Legault announced with great fanfare that family gatherings of up to three households and 10 people would be permitted for a four-day period around Christmas. As the devastating consequences of the province’s back-to-work and back-to-school policies became clear, however, the government was forced to perform an about-face and abandon the planned relaxation of social distancing measures.

At a joint press conference with opposition leaders Tuesday, the same day as the province announced a record daily high of 2,183 new infections, Legault sought to blame the population at large for the catastrophe produced by his government’s policies. “It’s time to be responsible,” he lectured Quebec residents, insisting that they should limit gatherings to members of their own household. Manon Massé, co-leader of the pseudo-left Quebec Solidaire, declared at the joint press conference that she was putting aside her “political differences” with Legault to ensure that Quebecers “work together.”

While the restrictions on social gatherings are necessary, the Legault government’s determination to reopen schools on January 11 will contribute to a further escalation of infections. The entire manufacturing sector will also be allowed to operate normally between December 25 and January 10.

The disastrous conditions produced by the ruling elite’s criminal mishandling of the pandemic underscore the urgency of the working class intervening with its own solution to the crisis. If thousands of lives are to be saved and the collapse of the health care system averted, workers must mount a political struggle for the complete shutdown of all nonessential production with full pay for all workers affected, the closure of in-person learning at all schools until the pandemic is brought under control, and the provision of tens of billions of dollars for health care and social services. These measures are all the more necessary given that the successful development of a vaccine means that the vast majority of the population could be immunized in a matter of a few months.

To fund the measures needed to halt the spread of COVID-19 and save lives, the ruling elite’s vast wealth must be impounded and the hundreds of billions in bailout money the federal government and Bank of Canada funneled into the banks and financial markets redirected into protecting workers’ incomes and providing quality health care to all. This can only be realized as part of the mass mobilization of the working class in the struggle for a workers’ government committed to the socialist reorganization of socio-economic life.