Europe passes three quarters of a million COVID-19 deaths

Robert Stevens

Europe passed on Wednesday the horrific milestone of three quarters of a million dead to COVID-19.

With the 5,091 fatalities recorded yesterday, the death toll of the continent, including Russia and the Ukraine, reached 751,432 according to figures published by Worldometer. The grim tally was reached just a year short of the first recorded death on the continent—a Chinese tourist who was reported dead in a French hospital on February 15 last year.

Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 [Credit: Neil Hall Pool via AP]

Thousands of deaths are being reported daily on every continent, with global fatalities reaching 2,362,515 Wednesday evening.

COVID-19 deaths as measured by governments are around 20 percent lower than the real figure, according to a study of excess deaths by Nature magazine, meaning that Europe is in reality closer to a million deaths.

Over 31 million coronavirus infections have ravaged Europe’s population over the last year. In the first three days of this week more than 370,000 new cases were reported, with many of these mutations of the original strain.

The capitalist class is at war with society. Last week, the prestigious British Medical Journal accused the world’s governments of “ social murder ” in their collective response to the pandemic.

The scale of death being witnessed in Europe and across the globe is unprecedented outside of wartime. There were on average about 6,060 deaths a day in World War 1. Over a year after the pandemic started there were 13,000 deaths globally from COVID-19 Tuesday. In the course of 48 hours, Tuesday and Wednesday, 10,300 more deaths were recorded in Europe.

The battles of the Somme and Verdun fought in Europe during World War 1 were among the most terrible events in history, with an estimated 600,000 lives lost as soldiers were wiped out by machine guns and shells for months on end. Today even more lives have been lost to a deadly virus across the continent, with workers still being sent into unsafe factories, offices and schools as the pandemic rages.

This policy has been overseen by governments no matter what their political stripe. All have the same agenda of herd immunity dictated by the oligarchs and major corporations. All are indifferent to threat to the lives and health of millions, especially when this impacts of the working class.

The policy of “herd immunity”, of letting the virus rip through the population without serious measures of containment, should more properly be called a policy of death. This was most brutally summed up, at the outset of the pandemic, by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings, as “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad.”

The pandemic has taken over 120,000 lives in Britain.

With thousands still dying every day, under conditions in which the virus has mutated into even more deadly and contagious strains, and with only a fraction of the population vaccinated, the ruling elite is insisting that even limited lockdowns are ended as rapidly as possible and schools and workplaces are fully reopened.

The terrible consequences can be seen most graphically in Portugal, which, after lifting many restrictions, recently suffered the worst death rate in the world, as the highly contagious British variant rapidly spread throughout the population.

 In Britain, a “roadmap” to end what is termed the “last lockdown” begins February 22, with the devolved Scottish National Party government already planning to open schools from that date.

 In France, schools remain open under its partial lockdown. Last week French universities began to partially reopen to students. In a recent National Security Council meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron said, in a comment leaked to the media, "I have had enough of those scientists who only respond to my questions about the variants with one single scenario: that of a new lockdown... Everything must be done to avoid a new lockdown."

 Germany’s lockdown is due for review on February 14. On Tuesday Rainer Dulger, President of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations, told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland news station, “From the employers' point of view, it would be incomprehensible to continue the restrictive measures without finally identifying a clear and rule-based opening scenario that is also supported by a broad majority.”

The message of the ruling class was aired in Britain’s pro-Tory Daily Telegraph on Wednesday. Philip Johnston, the newspaper’s assistant editor, declared in an op-ed piece, “The Government ought to be honest that our only realistic strategy now is to treat the virus like flu”.

He added, “The Government needs to be upfront with people about the realities. We will be living with Covid for decades, people will catch it every year and thousands will die. That is what has happened with past contagions and, while we are now in a better position to mitigate, treat and vaccinate, that is what will happen with this one.”

In a summing up the universal insistence that profits are all that matters for the ruling class, Johnston wrote of the virus, “We can’t eliminate it. Well, we can, but the cost would be colossal.”

The working class can only oppose the mass slaughter taking place by intervening independently with its own socialist programme.

Rank and file committees must be established in every workplace and ensure that all non-essential production is halted until it is safe to return to work.

Schools and other education settings, which are proven vectors of virus transmission, must be closed and all the resources required for distance learning made available.

Wages and jobs must be safeguarded by seizing the assets and wealth of the pandemic profiteers—the major transnational corporations and the financial oligarchy.

Workers and young people internationally are opposed to working in unsafe conditions. Strikes by pupils have broken out in Germany and have won the backing of teachers and other education staff. But as every experience shows, including the recent struggle by teachers in Chicago in the US, the working class cannot entrust its fate to the rotten pro-capitalist trade unions, which work in alliance with governments of all political denominations to police the homicidal back to work/back to school policies.

Polish court convicts leading Holocaust historians

Clara Weiss

On Tuesday, a Polish court found Professors Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, two of the most renowned historians of the Holocaust in Poland, guilty of defamation and spreading “inaccurate information.” The two historians had been sued by the niece of Edward Malinowski, the mayor of a Polish town during World War II, for a passage that appears in their 1,700 page Night W ithout End about the genocide of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. In the 2018 volume, testimonies are quoted which suggest that Malinowski was implicated in the local massacre of Jews by German soldiers. Engelking and Grabowski were ordered to write an apology to the niece for allegedly defaming her uncle and “providing inaccurate information.”

Holocaust historians Professors Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski (Source: Wikipedia, Facebook)

The trial represents a new milestone in the assaults on historical truth and democratic rights by the Polish state and the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS). In addition to the trial against Engelking and Grabowski, a journalist, Katarzyna Markusz, is threatened with a three-year prison sentence for “defaming the Polish nation,” because of a passage she wrote on Polish complicity in the Holocaust.

These actions are part of a state-orchestrated campaign, aimed at promoting anti-Semitism and far-right forces. In 2018, the Polish government passed a law criminalizing any mention of Polish collaboration in the Holocaust. Since then, historians have faced increasing pressure, including threats of lawsuits, along with hate mail and death threats from far-right forces which feel so emboldened that they often do not even hide their names anymore. While the lawsuit against Engelking and Grabowski was brought by Filomena Leszczyńska, it was heavily backed and driven by the Polish League against Defamation, a far-right outfit that is directly funded by the state. For many years, the League has been harassing Holocaust historians with threats of lawsuits.

Engelking and Grabowski have correctly denounced the trial as an attack on historical research and free speech and will appeal the verdict. The “guilty” verdict was meant to not just discredit their historical work. By legally ordering them to apologize to the niece of Malinowski, the court also tried to force these historians to lend legitimacy to the campaign by the Polish state that is trying to whitewash Polish anti-Semites from any involvement in the Holocaust.

Both Engelking and Grabowski have authored some of the important studies in Holocaust research that have appeared in recent decades. Engelking is renowned as one of the world’s top experts in the history of the Warsaw Ghetto and is the chair of the International Auschwitz Council.

The two-volume Night Without End (2018), which they edited together and which formed the basis of the trial, provides an extensive analysis of the life and fate of 140,000 Polish Jews in the countryside in the Nazi-occupied General Government of Poland. The work highlights, in particular, the role played by the Polish police (“Blue police”), a force that the Polish right has long sought to whitewash.

Professor Dariusz Stola, who was forced out as a director of the POLIN museum of the history of Polish Jews, denounced the trial: “No book is without mistakes, but academic discussion, not a court trial, is the right place to deal with them. This book is a result of solid, meticulous research. If one can sue its authors, one can sue half of the historians who deal with the 20th century.”

Eva Schlotheuber, representative of the German associations of historians, warned, “It has enormous potential to intimidate others,” especially younger historians, if “scientifically founded research results are debated not in scientific or public discourse, but in front of a court.”

In an interview with Krytyka Polityczna from 2020, Grabowski, who is a professed admirer of the socialist Zionist historian Emanuel Ringelblum, said: “The goal of our opponents is that we stop publishing books. I would very much like to see some kind of social solidarity awaken against this background. ... An attack on history is an attack on all of us.”

He also called out the de facto complicity of Poland’s liberal opposition party, Civic Platform (PO), in enabling the right to dominate the field of history. “History in Poland—and this pains me—has been largely appropriated by the Polish right and extreme right. ... I have a great deal of resentment towards the so-called democratic and liberal elites who, by neglecting history, have handed over this very important—as it turned out—area in the hands of mythomaniacs and myth-makers. This disregard for history as an important battlefield was visible at the beginning of this century, when the left was in power. Nothing changed in this matter during the rule of the centrists from PO.”

The political trial of two of the most renowned Holocaust historians internationally has vast implications and must be opposed by all politically conscious workers, intellectuals and youth. The PiS government is at the forefront of the assault on historical truth and democratic rights, and the state build-up of the far-right that is underway internationally. In neighboring Germany, the German ruling class has bolstered neo-Nazi terror networks and the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD), while the government is backing figures like Jörg Baberowski, a professor at Humboldt University, who has declared that “Hitler wasn’t vicious.” In the US, former president Donald Trump, acting with the backing of much of the Republican Party, instigated a fascist coup on January 6, whose most critical aspects are now being covered up by the Democratic Party.

At stake in the fight to defend historical truth is the political arming of the working class for its struggle today against fascism and its root cause, capitalism.

During the war, Poland was the main site of the Nazi-led genocide of European Jews. All the major death camps, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bełżec and Sobibor, were located in Nazi-occupied Poland. 90 percent of Poland’s pre-war Jewish population of 3-3.5 million were murdered, making up roughly half of the total of 6 million murdered European Jews. Among those murdered were many outstanding socialist intellectuals and working class leaders, including Abraham Leon, a leading figure in the Belgian Trotskyist movement; Solomon Ehrlich, leader of the Polish Left Opposition; as well as the socialist Zionists Emanuel Ringelblum and Abraham Lewin, to name but a few.

Research into the Holocaust in Poland is intrinsically bound up with research into the history of the workers movement. For instance, a major volume of documents by the Polish Trotskyist movement appeared in 2018 as part of the publication of the complete archives that Emanuel Ringelblum had compiled in the Warsaw Ghetto.

While the genocide was led and organized by the Nazis, they could rely upon the collaboration of local nationalist and anti-Semitic forces throughout Eastern Europe, especially in Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states. Historically, modern anti-Semitism emerged as a central ideological weapon of the bourgeoisie against the revolutionary working class movement. In Poland, a multi-ethnic country before the war, the highly combative workers movement was based largely in the Polish and Jewish working class. Hence, anti-Semitism acquired a particular intensity in the country’s ruling class and far right.

In the early and mid-1930s, the Polish government, “inspired” by the anti-Semitic legislation in Nazi Germany, implemented far-reaching anti-Jewish measures, while allowing fascist bands to terrorize Jews on the streets and in the universities. The Polish PiS government is basing itself politically on the traditions of these forces, and is systematically promoting and collaborating with their modern-day equivalents. In trying to preempt any serious historical research into the history of Polish anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, the Polish state seeks to both historically whitewash the crimes of the far right, and preempt the long overdue reckoning with the powerful but tragic history of the working class movement in Poland.

UK trade hit hard as Brexit crisis deepens

Thomas Scripps

The economic dislocation caused by Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU) is making itself felt, threatening serious political consequences for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government and the Brexit agreement.

At the centre of the crisis is Northern Ireland. According to the Northern Ireland Protocol agreed between the UK and the EU, Northern Ireland remains within the EU’s single market for goods, meaning import and export checks must be carried out on goods travelling between Britain and Northern Ireland. This effectively placed a customs border down the Irish Sea, rather than between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland—an EU member state—which would have compromised the Good Friday Agreement ending the armed conflict in the northern six counties.

Vehicles at the port of Larne, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021. Authorities in Northern Ireland have suspended post-Brexit border checks on animal products and withdrawn workers after threats against border staff. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

The EU implemented import checks immediately after the deal came into effect on January 1, a few days after it had been ratified by the UK Parliament. This created serious hold-ups for goods travelling from Britain into Northern Ireland, leading to shortages of products in major supermarkets.

While the initial shortages have been largely overcome, warnings are being sounded about what will happen when additional checks are imposed in April—Northern Ireland is currently in a “grace period” exempting it from certain EU import rules.

In January, the chief executives of the UK’s major supermarkets—Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Iceland, Co-Op and Marks & Spencer—wrote to Gove to request an “urgent intervention” by the government ahead of the April “cliff edge”. They said in a joint letter that Northern Ireland could face “significant disruption to food supplies” because “the current proposals, increased bureaucracy and certification in such a short time scale are unworkable.” This appeal was echoed yesterday by several Northern Ireland business leaders, speaking to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

The seriousness of the situation is indicated by Cabinet Secretary Michael Gove’s meeting with European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič today, where he will seek an extension of the “grace period” to 2023. Gove has attempted to leverage the fallout from the EU’s aborted attempt to override the Northern Ireland protocol late last month (using Article 16 of the Brexit agreement) in connection with ongoing vaccine trade wars. He accused the EU on Monday of putting its “integrationist theology ahead of the interests of the people of Northern Ireland”.

Multiple Whitehall and EU officials have confirmed that the EU is only likely to agree to an extension of three to six months. Johnson has told MPs that the UK government is prepared to invoke Article 16 to ensure there is no “barrier of any kind in the Irish Sea”.

The inter-imperialist conflicts left unsolved by the Brexit deal are inflaming sectarian and national conflicts left unsolved by the Good Friday Agreement. The pro-British and Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Arlene Foster wrote in the Telegraph last week to insist, “the Northern Ireland Protocol has not worked, cannot work and needs to be replaced.” She concluded by raising the spectre of “greater division” in Northern Ireland and threatening that the UK government should remember, “not a single unionist party in Northern Ireland supports this flawed Protocol.”

Speaking in the UK parliament, DUP MP Ian Paisley demanded that Johnson “Be the unionist we need you to be” and use “all of the instruments at his disposal… to remove the impediments to trade in Northern Ireland.” The protocol “has betrayed us and made us feel like foreigners in our own country.”

On February 1, customs inspections were suspended at Belfast and Larne ports, and inspectors, local council and EU officials sent home amid reported threats from loyalists. Threatening graffiti referring to border staff as “targets” was found, and the chief of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) called on the region “to step back from the brink in terms of community tension.” The PSNI later said they had no evidence of “credible threats”.

Sinn Féin member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) John O’Dowd said port staff were being used as pawns in a “very cruel game” of “half-truths and manipulation”, arguing that the DUP were talking up threats to advance their agenda of scrapping the Northern Ireland protocol. Mary Lou MacDonald, president of Sinn Féin, has said, “Brexiteers… should not be surprised at the fact that Brexit is disruptive” and called for “a sensible informed conversation between the British government and the European Commission… to iron out and mitigate those initial problems.”

The scope of the Brexit crisis is not limited to Northern Ireland. Shortages across the Irish Sea are an initial warning of the situation facing the rest of the UK. The Johnson government chose not to immediately begin import checks on goods entering from the EU, in large part because it did not have anywhere close to the required infrastructure in place to carry out the necessary procedures. They are due to come into force in several phases, the first two this April and July.

Adam Shuter, joint managing director of transport company Exact Logistics, told the Guardian the situation “has got disaster written all over it. I don’t think the systems are robust enough to be able to process the information quickly enough.” Accounting firm KPMG has said that business’s “biggest headaches” are to come.

Tim Morris, chief executive of the UK Major Ports Group, and Richard Ballantyne, chief executive of the British Ports Association, warned at the end of January that lack of funding from the government meant ports were falling behind on infrastructure plans to make themselves ready for the new regime. Morris stated, “We need urgent action from the government to show flexibility either on the July 1 deadline or what is required on that date. The alternative is to accept potentially serious implications for traffic flows through the ports this summer.”

There has already been serious disruption of UK exports. The Road Haulage Association (RHA) reported February 1 that the volume of exports going through British ports to the EU fell by 68 percent this January compared to last. The government fiercely disputed this claim, citing traffic figures, but the RHA counters that 65-75 percent of vehicles are returning to the EU empty due to hold-ups in the UK, or because their UK contractors have stopped exporting.

According to a survey of supply chain managers by the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply, more than half of UK companies trading with the EU suffered delays in January, with more than a third reporting delays of multiple days. Nearly a quarter believed they would run low on stock in weeks if the situation does not improve.

Some businesses, especially small and medium sized, are being threatened with ruin by the increased bureaucracy costs of exporting to the EU and the extra charges applied to their products as they enter the union.

These initial losses are likely to be dwarfed by the ultimate impact on Britain’s services sector, 80 percent of the UK’s economic output, which was left out of the Brexit deal. As an indication, the Centre for Economics and Business Research reported yesterday that London, accounting for 40 percent the UK’s export earnings from services, stood to lose £9.5 billion a year—and more if no deal on services is ever reached.

The government’s response to this expanding crisis will be to proceed more viciously with its plans to slash workers’ conditions and hand out massive corporate tax breaks through the establishment of free ports. This will be coupled with nationalist outbursts against its imperialist rivals in the EU and repression of social anger at home. Supply disruptions and shortages were part of the disaster scenario outlined in the government’s “ Operation Yellowhammer ”, drawn up as part of a series of plans for massive police and military deployments against the unrest flowing from a no deal or hard Brexit.

The working class in Britain must oppose this reactionary agenda with its own political programme of unified class struggle with the European and international working class.

Germany: Commerzbank employees confront phalanx of government, company and unions

Gustav Kemper

The Supervisory Board of Commerzbank approved the CEO’s “ Strategy 2024 ” on Wednesday. Starting in 2024, costs are to be reduced by €1.4 billion a year and return on equity increased to 7 percent. To do this, the bank will cut 10,000 full-time positions and close 340 of its 790 branches.

Headquarters of the Commerzbank (right) in Frankfurt

The works council and the Verdi trade union are represented on the Supervisory Board, which has equal representation. As the Supervisory Board has no formal decision-making authority on strategy, there was no vote. After the special meeting of the Supervisory Board, the Bank merely announced that the majority of the Supervisory Board had approved the CEO’s plans.

It is obvious, however, that in addition to the shareholders, the supposed employee representatives also support the slash-and-burn proposal. At the end of January, when Commerzbank CEO Manfred Knof announced “very painful cuts,” Verdi representative Stefan Wittmann told the dpa news agency that the union could largely support the content of the strategy, objecting only that the timeline for staff reductions was too short.

On Wednesday, the Management Board and the Central Works Council agreed on a “regulation agreement,” which is only concerned with making the job cutting go as smoothly as possible. According to this agreement, “by the time of the Annual General Meeting on May 5, 2021, the necessary regulations frameworks—a framework reconciliation of interests and a framework social plan—are to be concluded with the Central Works Council.” In other words, the Management Board and the Works Council will jointly agree on how the 10,000 jobs will be eliminated.

Bank employees are facing a tight phalanx of the Group’s Board of Management, the Verdi union, the Works Council, the shareholders and the German government. During the financial crisis of 2008, the German government took a stake in Commerzbank, paying more than €5 billion for a 25 percent share. Even then, the concern of the government was not for jobs, but for the economic interests of the large corporations. According to its own figures, Commerzbank handles about 30 percent of Germany’s foreign trade, by financing and securing import and export transactions.

Currently, the German government still holds 15.6 percent of Commerzbank shares and is fully behind the bank’s rationalization plans. When Verdi official Wittmann complained about the early announcement of the job cuts, Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz made it perfectly clear that “Everyone knows something has to be done, even something very drastic.” Scholz warned that the job cuts should be carried out in accordance with the “tradition of social partnership” and that “a closing of ranks” should be established between the Works Council, the union and the company.

It was two years ago that German Economics Minister Peter Altmeier called for the formation of “large and strong players” that would be “on a par with competitors from the USA or China.” Thus, two years ago the government had advocated a merger of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank. Since those plans failed, it has advocated Commerzbank’s restructuring.

According to the new strategy, the bank is to streamline its international presence, focus on customers “with a clear connection to Germany” and expand its business with high-net-worth customers and corporate clients in “private banking and wealth management.” Customer traffic is to be greatly reduced through digitization. Employees appear in the strategic plan only as cost factors.

In order to achieve annual cost savings of €1.4 billion by 2024, the bank is prepared to spend €1.8 billion on restructuring. Fifteen international locations will be closed, 350 branches in Germany will be eliminated, and the 200 branches already shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic will not be reopened. Internationally, one in four jobs will be cut; in Germany, one in three. Specific figures are to be presented at the bank’s annual press conference on February 11.

Countless workers in recent years have learned the meaning of the “social partnership tradition” invoked by Finance Minister Scholz. Tens of thousands have been manoeuvred out of their jobs in this way—with low severance payments, partial retirement, transfers to transitional companies, and from there into unemployment. Those affected are often urged by the works councils to accept these “offers,” with the warning that otherwise they risk a less advantageous firing.

Commerzbank employees are shocked and deeply concerned about their professional futures. In an internal survey conducted by the bank, 80 percent of respondents were not optimistic about the bank’s future. For shareholders and the board, on the other hand, the new strategy is a goldmine. Class antagonisms between labour and capital is on full display.

In 2019, when they were drawing up plans for branch closures, Commerzbank board members received a 39 percent increase in their pay compared to the previous year, according to the annual report, which amounts to more than €12 million.

Now, the prominent weekly paper Welt am Sonntag reports that “the bank’s top managers are discussing a program for the second half of the planning period” that will “make shareholders happy.” The newspaper states that the bank wants to use the money saved and equity released from the reduction of unprofitable business relationships to spend several billion euro on a dividend program and share buybacks. Share buybacks are a common business model that increases the value of shares and thus the wealth of shareholders. The German government, as the main shareholder, will also welcome this programme.

Commerzbank CEO Knof’s post about the bank’s strategy on his LinkedIn page was answered by a branch manager with a clear comment: “It’s a pity that so many people lose their jobs for this, so that the heads up there can once again push through their strategy.” The little people in the branches were working hard “so that the trough up there can get even bigger.”

Doctors predict global mental health crisis to persist post-pandemic

Ben Oliver

The mishandling of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 by ruling elites around the world has resulted in a pandemic of mass suffering, death and dislocation. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model predicts that 630,000 Americans will die from the coronavirus by the end of May. The greatest burden has fallen on the most vulnerable. Effective control measures have been eschewed for policies that keep profits flowing for the rich. The nightmare this has created is having a lasting negative impact on the mental health of untold numbers of Americans and people internationally.

(Source: Pixabay)

According to a recent survey of doctors worldwide, most believe that widespread adverse effects on mental health will persist when the pandemic subsides. The survey, conducted by Sermo, an international social media platform for doctors, found that 86 percent of 3,334 doctors from 24 countries believe that the most significant non-virus-related public health issue will be mental health and depression.

The declining mental health caused by the pandemic has been clearly demonstrated by scientific data. Forty-two percent of respondents to a December 2020 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey reported depression or anxiety. That number increased from 11 percent in 2019. A recent Gallup poll shows that mental health in America is at its lowest point in two decades, a period of time which includes the assaults on democracy of the stolen election of 2000, the Patriot Act, and the social havoc wreaked by the 2008 Great Recession.

The mental health impacts of the pandemic are significant and widespread, but it is the working class, health care workers and youth who are most affected. In the UK, it has been shown that members of the working class are the most likely to die from the virus. Investigators point to decades of social austerity for the high rates of mortality and economic depression in England compared to the rest of the European Union.

As the virus is allowed to spread rampantly, health care workers assume a great psychological burden. While they confront a dangerous novel pathogen, and the media lauds them as “heroes,” they are vastly under-resourced and overworked. Although this will come as no surprise to health care workers, the risk factors most closely associated with their poor mental health are increased workloads, insufficient PPE and fear of close contact with the disease. Wherever transmission occurs, these three factors are ever-present for this section of workers.

For young people, the pandemic came at a time when economic recession and climate change presented a bleak future. Increasing uncertainty, financial instability and the loss of social connections have led to a staggering decline in mental health. In the UK, a 2020 follow-up to a 2017 study of 3,500 young people ages 5–16 showed an increase in self-reported depression and anxiety, from one in nine, to one in six, a 50 percent increase. Among patients recently screened by psychologists, 40 percent are in need of psychiatric intervention, as determined by an increase in self-harm and suicidality. This represents a threefold increase. Before the pandemic, only 10 percent needed psychiatric intervention.

If and when people can safely return to work, school and social engagement, many will be “coming up for air.” Speaking to the New York Times, clinical psychologist Luana Marques, of the Harvard Medical School, expressed what the majority of doctors surveyed by Sermo might say, that the increased numbers of those suffering from depression and anxiety will not “go back to baseline anytime soon.” She cited a study of New York residents and first responders grappling with psychological turmoil 14 years after the attacks of 9/11. Out of 36,000 respondents, 14 percent reported post-traumatic stress disorder, and 15 percent reported depression, double and triple the rates in comparable populations.

Just as the capitalist health system was not prepared for the medical disaster of the virus, it is not prepared for the coming mental health disaster. Chief medical officer of the National Alliance on Mental health, Ken Duckworth, told the Times that while it only takes months for mental health services demand to “skyrocket,” it takes years to train new providers. To make matters worse, community health centers, which typically provide behavioral care for the uninsured, of which a disproportionate number are working class and minorities, are struggling to remain financially solvent due to decreasing revenue.

A majority of the doctors surveyed by Sermo believe that the most significant public health issue directly related to the pandemic will be its long-term side effects. In addition to the known impacts of the virus on the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, there is growing evidence that the virus has neurological and psychiatric impacts as well.

Patients referred to as “long-haulers” suffer from a host of complications, which include fatigue, brain fog, depression and insomnia. Anecdotes include patients who couldn’t remember their partner’s name or how to dress. Of the 3,800 members of Body Politic, an online community for long-term COVID-19 survivors, 85 percent experience some kind of cognitive dysfunction, and 81 percent report neurological symptoms.

Even more chilling is the link between COVID-19 and psychosis. In a UK study of 153 patients who presented with cerebrovascular or neuropsychiatric symptoms, 10 experienced new-onset psychosis. This study confirms the experience of doctors who have encountered this phenomenon well after patients recovered from relatively mild bouts of COVID-19 that included neurological symptoms. There was the Long Island mother, who, months after recovering from relatively mild symptoms, started hearing a voice that told her to kill her children and herself; a construction worker in New York City who attempted to strangle his cousin in his sleep because he believed his cousin was going to murder him; and a British woman who started seeing monkeys and lions and believed one of her family members to be an imposter.

Researchers theorize that the body’s immune response to the virus may be the cause of neurological and psychiatric symptoms, as some immune substances can cross the blood-brain barrier and act as neurotoxins. This response may be unable to shut down in some patients as the body tries to rid itself of lingering amounts of the virus.

Cases of psychosis are a small proportion of people who have had COVID-19. However, like Dr. Anthony Fauci said about “long-haulers,” given the widespread infection rates, even a small proportion of cases will translate into a significant public health issue. Possibly hundreds of thousands of people will be affected, according to one Johns Hopkins expert.

The impacts on mental health of the pandemic, both directly and indirectly related to the virus, are a result of the “herd immunity” policy of the working class. The decision to let the virus run rampant in order to maintain profits for Wall Street is the immediate cause of widespread transmission and social havoc.

A study by Columbia University found that spring lockdowns, including school closures, in New York City decreased transmission by 70 percent. Public health measures limiting the spread of the virus would in turn limit disease, death and its attendant mental health issues. A UK study demonstrated that high levels of anxiety and depression at the outset of the pandemic were lessened by the nationwide lockdown. Contrary to what has been reported by the media, lockdowns, including the cessation of in-person classes for schoolchildren, are not only highly effective, they alleviate mental health suffering. School and government authorities have seized on the mental health crisis among children caused by the pandemic in an effort to herd them back into unsafe schools, subjecting students, teachers and their families to increased transmission of the virus, disease and misery.

The mental health catastrophe predicted by doctors in the Sermo survey speaks to the stark contrast between the capitalist program and the socialist program in a public health disaster. The socialist program places a priority on social good and therefore calls for all measures to stop the spread of the virus, whereas the capitalist program is recklessly pushing for the economy to be completely reopened, which will only exacerbate the pandemic. The capitalist program follows the logic of profit, whereas the socialist program follows the advice of science. A rational approach that prioritizes the preservation of life, including lockdowns to stop transmission and financial support for all affected, would serve to significantly limit the mental health impact of the coronavirus.

PSOE-Podemos facilitates fascist attacks on migrants in Canary Islands

Alice Summers

Recent weeks have seen a series of violent attacks by far-right thugs against migrants stranded on the Spanish Canary Islands. Various WhatsApp chats and videos have also been leaked to the press in which far-right individuals discussed plans to kill and maim migrant workers.

The fascist Vox bears direct responsibility for these incitements to violence, but the groundwork for the attacks has been laid by Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government which has lobbied for European Union funds to support Moroccan police operations to terrorise migrants.

Migrants who manage to arrive on makeshift boats in the Canary Islands are placed into concentration camps, their children separated from mothers, prevented from flying to the peninsula and then deported as fast as possible.

Spain Halts Moroccan Immigrants’ Protests in Canary Islands

This policy is based on the fascistic notion of the “call effect,” i.e., that treating migrants humanely will provoke new waves of migrants. Therefore, the policy of the entire political establishment in Spain, backed by the European Union, is to brutalise migrants. Physical assaults by fascist thugs or the police at the borders are therefore, unofficially at least, a part of the policy.

In an audio message on a WhatsApp chat leaked to news site La Marea, one man says: “This is a government of shit, bro, but it’s gonna end. From tomorrow, we’re gonna go out hunting. A group of four or five Moors together: beating time.” In another chat, an image of two pistols was shared, accompanied by the ominous caption: “These two are coming to Maspalomas [a town on the island of Gran Canaria, where a number of migrants are currently accommodated].”

Participants in another chat can be seen to discuss plans for this “hunt,” with one threateningly declaring: “Tomorrow we’re gonna go down there and we’re going to bust them [the migrants] up. At least 15 guys are ready. They’re gonna go crazy. We’re armed up to here. The Moors are gonna die, I’m telling you this straight.”

This is not the first reported incident of far-right threats or violence against migrant workers on the Canary Islands. In December, dozens of fascistic individuals from the town of Mogán, Gran Canaria, gathered outside hotels housing migrants to scream insults and threats at them. Police were called to the scene but no arrests were made.

The Red Cross, which helps to run many of the migrant reception facilities on the Canary Islands, was forced to advise migrants not to leave their accommodations for the next 48 hours.

The most recent far-right rants on WhatsApp are not empty threats. Numerous injuries to migrant workers have already been reported in the Spanish press, and multiple formal complaints have been lodged with the police.

One migrant worker, Hassan, told elDiario.es that a group of men fired a pellet gun at him from inside a car, with one man making threatening gestures with a “machete,” miming slitting his throat. A man was arrested as part of an investigation into the alleged “machete” threats but was subsequently released. In a video of the incident leaked to La Marea, the assailant can be heard exclaiming: “I’m going to teach a lesson to the first little Moor [I see].”

Nineteen-year-old Ahmad also told elDiario.es that he had been beaten by “eight boys” while out on a walk with three friends, with one of them hitting him with a metal baton. “They dragged me across the floor and hit me in various parts of the body,” he said.

Another Moroccan youth, Oussman, described to the same news site how he had been hit on the back while out for a walk with a friend. After beginning to run away from their attackers, Oussman tripped and fell and was then surrounded by “four or five men” who kicked and hit him. He received injuries to his jaw and leg. “I couldn’t sleep for three nights. I had a lot of pain in my mouth. I couldn’t eat,” he said .

Público also reported that at least three migrants at a reception facility run by the White Cross Foundation had received injuries to their heads after rocks were thrown at them outside their accommodations. Other young migrants report being hit on the head, kicked or beaten when going out to take a walk, having to run for their lives to escape the attacks.

The most recent attacks on migrants came in the wake of a far-right campaign of hoax videos on WhatsApp and social media, falsely purporting to show migrants in the Canary Islands robbing shops, churches or restaurants.

The videos of ethnic minority youth—none of whom were in fact migrants or in the Canary Islands—were circulated across these online platforms, accompanied by captions such as, “When you introduce thousands of illegal [migrants] with no jobs into your country” and “Look what the ‘grateful’ immigrants who we have housed, looked after and fed in the Canary Islands are doing.”

These efforts to depict migrants as criminals were enthusiastically promoted by the far-right Vox party, which launched a xenophobic “Stop Islamicisation!” campaign on Twitter. “They [migrants] make up approximately 0.2 percent [of the population] and are responsible for 93% of complaints,” Vox declared, with no evidence on its official Twitter account. “The majority are from the Maghreb,” it continued, echoing the threats against “Moors.”

Twitter temporarily suspended Vox’s account for “inciting hate” over these tweets, prompting Vox leader Santiago Abascal to launch into another anti-immigrant tirade, writing: “Of course, the tweet which provoked the censorship provided data about the violence which Spaniards are suffering. …. The tech millionaires don’t want us to know the consequences of the migrant invasion which they are promoting along with some governments.”

Vox’s anti-migrant agitation has been supported by the PSOE-Podemos government. While it cynically declared that “we’re not going to accept hoaxes, images from other places, old videos published as current or false complaints,” its delegate to the Canary Islands, Anselmo Pestana Padrón, stated that migrants with “bad behaviour” would be subject to priority deportation. Many of these migrants have been “directly repatriated,” he said, while others have been transferred to the Immigration Detention Centres.

According to the Red Cross, at least 70 migrants were deported in the last week of January for supposed “bad behaviour.”

The PSOE-Podemos government is dutifully stepping up its efforts to rapidly deport migrants in line with Vox’s calls. In December, Vox leader Abascal declared in parliament that the government must “prevent any more illegal migrants from passing and demand their immediate and forcible deportation if it’s necessary.”

The government reacted by recently signing a deal with Air Maroc to carry out three deportation flights a week from the Canary Islands to Morocco. In mid-January, the Spanish Interior Ministry also pledged €10.89 million for charter flights to deport migrants over 18 months.

At the same time, it is refusing entry at its border to hundreds of thousands of migrants. In 2019 before the impact of COVID-19, nearly 500,000 migrants were refused entry. The effective shutting off of the direct migration route across the Mediterranean from Morocco, with the assistance of the European Union, has forced migrants to risk the far more dangerous sea crossing to the Canary Islands. Migration to the Canary Islands increased by 1,670 percent this January, as compared to the same month last year.

The bloody result of the “call effect” policy has led to the deaths of at least 2,000 migrants on this crossing in 2020, for which the PSOE-Podemos government bears direct responsibility.

Plea deal with Trudeau’s would-be assassin continues Canadian state’s cover-up of far-right attack

Roger Jordan

The trial of far-right Canadian Armed Forces reservist Corey Hurren—who was detained last July 2 following an attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—is being used to cover up the political background, purpose and import of the failed attack. Powerful forces within the state apparatus are working to bury details about what happened from reaching the public in a bid to continue the official propaganda campaign to trivialize the incident, by portraying it as the unplanned actions of a disoriented individual.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Last Friday, Hurren pleaded guilty to eight charges, including seven firearms counts and a count of willfully causing more than $100,000 in damage to property. The charges were substantially different and lesser than those initially levelled against the 46-year-old military reservist.

When he was first brought before a court last July, Hurren, who is an avowed supporter of the violent and fascistic QAnon conspiracy, was accused of 21 firearm counts and one charge of uttering a threat to kill or cause bodily harm to Trudeau.

The dropping of the latter charge is of great significance. It means prosecutors will not have to present any evidence in court demonstrating that Hurren planned to target Trudeau, even though such evidence is clearly in the hands of the police and prosecution.

Initial media reports on the attempted assassination indicated that Hurren had in his possession a letter in which he denounced Trudeau for allegedly establishing a “communist dictatorship” and threatened to hold him to account for his government’s imposition of coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions on gun ownership. This letter has never been made public and will likely not be submitted before the court as a result of the plea deal and the dropping of the sole charge linking Hurren’s actions to any threat to Trudeau.

In the so-called “agreed statement of facts” submitted to the court last Friday as part of Hurren’s guilty plea, the right-wing extremist is allowed to claim, without challenge, that whilst he crashed his pick-up truck through the gates of the estate on which the prime minister was temporarily living and then went in search of him with weapons drawn, he never intended to hurt anyone.

Hurren, it continues, merely wanted to “arrest” Trudeau, whom he considered “a communist who is above the law and corrupt,” and show “how angry everyone was about the gun ban and the COVID-19 restrictions.”

Asked by the judge presiding over his trial what his plan was, Hurren responded, “I don’t think there was one.”

This is all a transparent fraud. Hurren’s actions were anything but spur of the moment. While on active military duty, he drove in his truck, laden with firearms, for two days to reach Ottawa from Manitoba. One day prior to Hurren’s attack, a rally involving right-wing extremists and fascists on Parliament Hill called for the reintroduction of the death penalty, so it could be applied to Trudeau, while protesters carried placards of Trudeau standing in a gallows. It is not known whether Hurren attended this event, but his calls for the prime minister to be “arrested” and his absurd attacks on Trudeau as a “communist” are entirely in keeping with the far-right protesters’ propaganda.

When police detained Hurren on the grounds of Rideau Hall, Trudeau’s temporary residence, he was in possession of five firearms. These included a restricted Hi-Standard revolver, a prohibited International Arms break-open pistol, a prohibited Norinco S12 rifle, a Lakefield Mossberg shotgun, a Grizzly Arms shotgun and a prohibited high-capacity magazine. An additional 11 firearms were found at Hurren’s home.

New information provided in a CBC report on Hurren’s trial underscores that his intentions were anything but peaceful when he arrived on the grounds of Rideau Hall. Citing from the agreed statement of facts, the CBC wrote, “(A)fter crashing his truck Hurren was observed on surveillance video on the morning of July 2, arming himself with a number of firearms before setting out on foot.

“An officer approached him near the grounds’ greenhouse and asked Hurren to place his weapon on the ground. Hurren refused and said he would not disarm, according to the statement.

“The officer persisted but Hurren said, ‘I can’t do that.’

“Eventually another officer joined and noted that Hurren had a shotgun in his right hand, pointed at the ground and a second shotgun slung on his back. A long rifle lay on the ground, said the statement.”

This underscores that the Crown’s case against Hurren is a travesty. Despite his having issued a direct threat to Trudeau and being discovered armed to the teeth on the grounds of Rideau Hall, the prosecution has chosen to entirely exclude from the trial any consideration of Hurren’s plans to kill, harm or even “arrest” the Prime Minister.

Even if one accepts Hurren’s assertion that he aimed to “arrest” Trudeau not kill him, the fact that he was searching for him with arms drawn in the grounds of the prime minister’s temporary residence demonstrates that he was at the very least anticipating a potentially violent clash with Trudeau’s security detail. Outrageously, all of this is being swept under the rug at Hurren’s trial, which will be brought to a rapid conclusion when he is sentenced less than two weeks from now.

The latest developments in the Hurren case underscore the urgency of the Socialist Equality Party’s demand, first raised in a statement last month, for all internal investigations into the attempted assassination to be made public. This step is critical in order to lay bare Hurren’s political motivations for his premeditated attack and expose any possible accomplices or at least supporters he may have had both within and outside the military. Two internal inquiries have long ago been completed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but officials have insisted that they are “not for public consumption.”

The official narrative of Hurren as a disoriented individual who was overwhelmed by the pandemic and had no intention of harming anyone neatly dovetails with the ruling elite’s desire to prevent any serious examination of the role of far-right networks and right-wing extremists within the military and state apparatus. Such an investigation would undoubtedly uncover significant support for far-right views, including those expressed by Hurren and the demonstrators on Parliament Hill on July 1.

In recent years, there have been repeated exposures of far-right elements within the Canadian military. These include:

* On July 1, 2017, four serving Canadian military members, all of whom were members of the Proud Boys, broke up an indigenous ceremony in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Although the military investigated the incident, no charges or demotions were ever imposed on those involved.

* In January 2020, Patrick Matthews, a former Canadian combat engineer who had deserted his post just months earlier, was detained by the FBI as a member of the neo-Nazi terrorist outfit The Base. Matthews was briefly detained by the RCMP in August 2019, after he had been exposed by a journalist as a recruiter for The Base, but was allowed to flee to the United States. He was arrested in January 2020 for his involvement in The Base’s plot to launch a violent attack on the Virginia State Legislature.

* In July 2020, it was revealed that a neo-Nazi sailor was allowed to rejoin the Royal Canadian Navy despite his involvement with violent white supremacist groups, and his efforts to sell military-grade weaponry to far-right organizations.

* In August 2020, a CBC report revealed that two military reservists, who were members of the same unit as Hurren, were identified by counter-intelligence police four years earlier as supporters of far-right groups, including the Soldiers of Oden and 3 Percenters. One of them described Trudeau as a “treasonous bastard” and continues to serve as a reservist to this day.

* In early December 2020, a uniformed junior officer addressed an anti-mask rally in downtown Toronto in what was a flagrant violation of the military’s obligation to refrain from engaging in political activity.

No one within the political establishment wishes to expose the true extent of the far-right’s infiltration of and support within the armed forces and other state institutions. While all parliamentary parties united behind a New Democratic Party-inspired motion calling for the Proud Boys to be designated a “terrorist group” late last month, the cynical character of this manoeuvre is illustrated by the fact that not a single politician has raised serious concerns about, never mind demanded an exposure of all the facts surrounding the first attempted assassination of a Canadian head of government by a right-wing extremist in modern times.

The reasons for this are clear. Canada’s ruling elite, like the wing of the US ruling class that supports the Democratic Party, is responding to Trump’s attempted fascist coup of January 6 by downplaying the threat posed by the far right and extending an outstretched hand of “reconciliation” to the very political forces responsible for its promotion. In the US, this takes the form of Biden and the Democrats’ incessant appeals for “unity” with their Republican “colleagues,” while in Canada it was shown by the NDP and Liberals joining the Conservatives, a party with extensive ties to the extreme right, to issue a hypocritical condemnation of the Proud Boys.

The authorities’ attempt to downplay and trivialize Hurren’s actions reflects the fear that a full account of what happened, and its broader context and significance, would disastrously discredit the Canadian military, which would be exposed as a hotbed of far-right activity. This would cut across the unanimous push on the part of the ruling class to vastly expand military spending and carry out the largest rearmament program since the Second World War. It would also puncture the ideological propaganda used by the Canadian ruling elite to justify military interventions around the globe: namely the claims that its military is fighting for “democracy” and “human rights.”

Even more fundamentally, Canada’s ruling elite wants to keep the full extent of far right and fascistic activities under wraps because it wishes to leave open the option of using these reactionary political forces to suppress working class opposition. Under conditions of an unprecedented escalation of social inequality, the spread of joblessness, hunger, and poverty amid the pandemic, and the government’s catastrophic response to COVID-19, ruling classes in Canada and internationally are increasingly turning towards authoritarian forms of rule to maintain their grip on power.

Philippines Airlines (PAL) to destroy 2,700 jobs in March

Robert Campion

Philippines Airlines (PAL), announced on Monday that it would cut almost a third of its workforce by March 12. The restructuring will be used to implement long-held plans of reducing its labour costs and to maintain its competitiveness in an industry drastically reshaped since the onset of the pandemic.

PAL is the largest and oldest carrier airline in the country with 7,000 employees, 71 aircraft, and conducts continuous flights to Europe and the United States. The job cuts will be the second undertaken by PAL since the onset of the pandemic, after terminating 300 positions in February last year. Job shedding has also taken place by rivals Cebu Pacific and AirAsia Philippines, with 1,200 and 260 employees laid off in 2020 respectively.

A Philippines Airlines Airbus A330 (Wikimedia Commons)

As of February 4, all 2,300 PAL employees to be “retrenched” had been informed by the company, according to a statement. A number of unknown employees had accepted voluntary separation, though it was reported in December that at least 1,600 had refused the offer.

“We shall provide separation pay equivalent to one month pay for every year of service and shall also provide employee transition support including outplacement assistance,” PAL said.

Internationally, tens of thousands of jobs have been destroyed in the airline industry, with many subsidiary businesses responsible for services such as maintenance, baggage handling and in-flight meal catering also impacted.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), global operations will not return to pre-pandemic levels for another several years. Total losses for 2020 were estimated at $US118.5 billion, with projected loses for 2021 at $38.7 billion.

The job cuts at PAL were presaged as “inevitable” by the company last October, citing the collapse in travel demand and ongoing travel restrictions. With the emergence of the new COVID-19 strains, stricter travel restrictions barring foreign nationals from 30 countries were introduced for all of January.

By the latest figures, the listed operator, PAL Holdings, reported a net loss of P29.03 billion (roughly $US600 million) in the first 9 months of 2020, 269 percent greater than the P7.86 billion ($160 million) in losses it incurred in the same period in 2019.

All flights in the Philippines were grounded last March when President Rodrigo Duterte imposed one of the world’s longest and brutally policed lockdowns. Flights were resumed in June, but with a skeletal workforce at 4 percent capacity of weekly flights. Workers have so far experienced reduced salaries, furloughs and temporary working arrangements.

PAL reported that weekly flights have slowly increased to 30 percent of their pre-pandemic operations.

The government has so far rejected calls for aid to the industry.

Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez stated in October, “We are deep in discussion with them and we are prepared to participate in assistance to the airline industry. But let me point out that whatever assistance we have or we are going to provide will be part only of the entire process. The private sector banks have to cough up the majority of the assistance.”

“The government does not want to end up owning the airlines,” he added.

The company plans to file for creditor protection proceedings in the United States—reportedly home to 75 percent of its creditors—as well as to complete a $5 billion debt rehabilitation program, the largest in the Philippines history. Twenty of its leased aircraft will be returned, and $505 million will be raised, half proffered by billionaire owner Lucio Tan and the rest by the government and private banks.

Rather than suspending non-essential travel and placing relevant workers on paid leave as the pandemic is brought under control, corporations and the government are exploiting the financial pressures to destroy jobs, wages and conditions. This is an acceleration of a decades-long process of attacks on Philippine Airlines workers, in which workers have been pressured to make “sacrifices.”

In the midst of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis, 5,000 pilots, flight attendants and ground staff were sacked, freeing up capital for new aircraft purchases. In 2011, 2,600 ground staff were sacked to make way for contract workers hired through service providers, with a fraction of the original salaries.

Throughout the whole process, the unions have worked to isolate and suppress the protests of workers. In ending the dispute in 1998, the union covering 1,400 flight attendants refused to call any strike action. The Philippines Airlines Employees Association (PALEA) agreed to give up workers’ rights to collectively bargain with the company for 10 years in order to free the company to “rehabilitate.”

As the airline accelerated outsourcing to slash the workforce, the union made fruitless appeals to the government and even to shareholder meetings. It lodged petitions with the Court of Appeals, which, far from being an impartial state body, is a consistent defender of corporate interests.

In July 2019, PAL appointed Gilbert Santa Maria, a veteran of the outsourcing industry, as its new president and chief operating officer. Santa Maria was “handpicked” by the owner Tan on the condition that he would return the airline to profitability by slashing labour costs.

In response to the latest cuts, the umbrella organization of PALEA, Partido Manggagawa (Workers’ Party) appealed to the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to “regulate” the sackings.

“The DOLE cannot just be a passive collector of statistics of dismissed workers,” said national chair Rene Magtubo on February 3. “It should be regulating the series of mass firings since it may involve contractualization and union busting.”

The party also implored the Duterte administration for urgent action to assist millions of unemployed workers, citing statistics that of the 400,000 retrenched workers reported by DOLE, half were fired in the last quarter of 2020.

The Partido Manggagawa at times postures as socialist and even Marxist and claims to fight for the working class, but its actions and those of PALEA do not in any way challenge the framework of capitalism. Rather the union and party alike function as adjuncts of the airline and the government in suppressing any genuine fight by workers to defend their jobs, wages and conditions.