Iranian ship, petrochemical plant hit by fires amid threats from Israel

Bill Van Auken

Iran was struck with two major fires in the past two days. The first one ravaged and then sank a naval vessel, the Kharg, reportedly the largest ship in the Iranian fleet. After a 20-hour battle to extinguish the blaze, the ship sank Wednesday near the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

The second fire erupted Wednesday at a petrochemical plant in southern Tehran, sending up a thick cloud of smoke that could be seen throughout the city.

The Kharg, the largest warship in the Iranian navy, caught fire and later sank on Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman. (Source: Iranian army via AP)

Iranian authorities said that the cause of the fire that sank the Kharg, named after the island that serves as Iran’s main oil terminal, was under investigation. The ship was 40 years old and used for support and training purposes. There were 400 crew members and trainees on board when the fire began. There were no deaths or serious injuries reported.

Spokesmen for Iran’s petrochemical industry said that the fire at the plant in southern Tehran began in one of its gas pipelines and spread to a gas tank. They said that no one was injured in the fire and rejected the possibility that the blaze was the result of sabotage.

The two blazes have taken place in a tense environment characterized by repeated attacks on Iranian targets by Israel’s spy agency, Mossad. It has been standard operating procedure for Israel to neither confirm nor deny such attacks. For its part, Tehran for its own reasons has at times been loath to acknowledge Mossad’s ability to strike with impunity against targets on the soil of Iran or off its coast.

Israeli attacks on Iran have included the detonation of a bomb inside the country’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz in April, which had the potential of triggering a catastrophic chemical or radiation disaster.

This provocation was timed to coincide with the resumption of indirect talks between Tehran and Washington on the revival of the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and the major powers, a deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Trump administration unilaterally abrogated the agreement in 2018, imposing a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign that has led to soaring poverty rates in Iran and stymied the country’s attempts to obtain vital medical supplies to combat an accelerating spread of the coronavirus.

The two latest fires erupted just as the latest round of talks between the remaining parties to the JCPOA—Iran, China, Russia, Britain and Germany, along with the European Union—was wrapping up in Vienna.

While the Iranian delegate to the talks expressed optimism that outstanding obstacles to the deal’s revival could be resolved, the US administration of President Joe Biden has thus far taken the position that, as a precondition, Iran must roll back its increases in enrichment and stockpiles of uranium it built up in response to Washington’s illegally violating the agreement and reimposing sanctions.

Washington is also reportedly pressing Tehran for further concessions on its conventional missile program as well as demanding that it surrender its influence in the broader Middle East, bowing to the US quest for hegemony.

Also in April, Mossad carried out a mine attack on the Iranian military vessel Saviz, which had been deployed in the Red Sea by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as part of its anti-piracy efforts. The mining was part of a continuing campaign of attacks by Israel on Iranian shipping, particularly vessels bound for Syria, which is dependent upon Iran for oil imports.

Tensions in the region have increased in the context of the crisis in Israel, where a change of government was imminent on Wednesday that would end 12 years in power by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Tuesday, presiding over a change in command at Mossad, Netanyahu issued new threats against Iran, signaling that Israel would not be bound by any agreement reached between Washington and Tehran. “If we need to choose—I hope it doesn’t happen—between friction with our great friend the United States and eliminating the existential [Iranian nuclear] threat—eliminating the existential threat takes precedence,” he said.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who was on his way to Washington to request another billion dollars’ worth of US military aid to replenish the stockpiles Israel expended in its 11-day onslaught on the besieged occupied territory of Gaza last month, described Netanyahu’s remark as “provocative.”

The incoming head of the Mossad spy agency, David Barnea, was even more explicit, however. “The Iranian program will continue feeling Mossad’s might,” he said. “We are well acquainted with the nuclear program and its various components, we know personally the factors that operate in it and also the forces that drive them.”

The new Mossad chief also indicated that Israel would not limit its actions in deference to a renewed Iranian nuclear accord. “The agreement with world powers that is taking shape only reinforces the sense of isolation in which we find ourselves on this issue,” he said. “I say it clearly—no, we do not intend to act according to the majority opinion since this majority will not bear the consequences for the erroneous assessment of this threat.”

In reality, Washington has voiced no opposition to Israeli attacks on Iran. Biden and his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, have endlessly repeated the refrain that “Israel has the right to defend itself,” even during the recent massive aerial bombardment that claimed the lives of at least 253 Palestinians in Gaza.

For all the bluster by Israeli politicians about a supposed existential threat from Iran’s nuclear program, the greatest danger to the interests of the country’s capitalist ruling class comes from within, as was exposed by the widespread demonstrations and general strike by Palestinian citizens of Israel in opposition to the assault on Gaza and the Israeli police crackdowns and “ethnic cleansing” in Jerusalem.

Underlying this revolt are the immense internal contradictions of Israeli society as a whole. Among the most unequal of the OECD countries, the country has a poverty rate of over 20 percent and the world’s greatest concentration of billionaires.

The greatest fear within Israel’s capitalist oligarchy is that the emergence of mass opposition among Israeli Palestinians, who make up 20 percent of the population, will be joined by struggles of the Jewish working class, fatally undermining the entire Zionist project.

To counter this threat, the country’s ruling camarilla resorts to fomenting rabid nationalism and anti-Arab chauvinism, on the one hand, and attempting to divert growing social tensions outward through unrelenting militarism.

If the Israeli ruling establishment succeeds in forming a new government without Netanyahu, it will do nothing to defuse the attacks and provocations against Iran and the threat that they will precipitate a regional war that would rapidly draw in the major powers.

British Medical Journal says UK government’s COVID-19 response created “maelstrom of avoidable harm”

Thomas Scripps

On Tuesday, the BMJ (formerly, British Medical Journal ) accused the British government of having unleashed “a maelstrom of avoidable harm,” including the deaths of up to 150,000 people “who died earlier than they might have” as a result of its disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Executive editor Kamran Abbasi made this damning indictment in a comment on the testimony given last week by Dominic Cummings, former adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. His account, Abbasi writes, leads to “the inescapable conclusion… that the disastrous manner in which the government is run is a major contributor to excess deaths in the UK, although Johnson persists with his denials.”

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, centre, Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty, left, and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance speak at a press conference at Downing Street on March 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, Pool)

Cummings’ evidence confirmed that the Johnson government “slept on the job,” “relied on flawed pandemic modelling,” “sought a narrow caucus of expert views and kept them confidential,” “prioritised the economy over health,” “failed to protect vulnerable people in care homes and lied about it,” “ignored the potential of airborne spread,” “delayed mass testing,” “left international borders uncontrolled” and “oversaw a calamitous and costly procurement strategy for personal protective equipment.”

Britain “was ill prepared and had no pandemic plan, and even if it did it was a misguided plan that pursued herd immunity and was accepting of a large number of deaths. Johnson was dragged into each lockdown, particularly the first in late March 2020, and he delayed the key one in September by ignoring his own scientists and colleagues and backing cherry picked supporters of herd immunity.”

The BMJ is identifying a record of staggering criminality, as confirmed by Cummings. Johnson and his collaborators, according to Cummings’ account, were actively considering the deaths of 500,000 people, and up to 800,000 in one scenario, in pursuit of herd immunity through infection. He confirmed that the prime minister shouted he would rather “let the bodies pile high in their thousands” than implement another lockdown at the end of October, precisely because he “prioritised the economy over health.” While he was still writing COVID-19 off as a “scare story,” Johnson even suggested in Trumpian fashion that he be injected “live on TV with coronavirus so everyone realises it’s nothing to be frightened of.”

Cummings’ testimony painted a picture of a truly monstrous ruling class—stupid, vicious, greedy, utterly unmoved by the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and living in “surreal isolation,” to use Abbasi’s phrase. Yet the BMJ is almost alone in even acknowledging the significance of such an extraordinary event. This is the first piece of serious commentary on Cummings’ appearance outside of the World Socialist Web Site .

It is also the second time the BMJ —a prestigious medical journal of over 150 years’ standing—has published a major attack on the government for its pandemic policy. The journal’s editorial of February 4 this year argued that “At the very least, covid-19 might be classified as ‘social murder.’”

This devastating verdict—referring to a concept first elaborated by Friedrich Engels—was entirely ignored by the media, the Labour Party and the trade unions. And it is likely that the same fate will befall this latest editorial. How could it be otherwise? All of these organisations collectively did everything they could to blunt the impact of Cummings’ revelations.

For their part, the nominally left and liberal outlets, with the Guardian in pole position, used Cummings’ own reactionary politics and break with Johnson as an excuse to dismiss his statements as inconsequential and embittered ravings. Neither the trade unions nor the Labour Party made a single significant statement, such that John Rentoul in the Independent described Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s performance against Johnson thus: “It wasn’t exactly like being savaged by a dead sheep; more like being asked trick questions by a sheep that was only barely alive.”

None of them can acknowledge the crimes admitted by Cummings without indicting themselves. As the BMJ correctly notes of the essentials in Cummings’ revelations, “None of this is news, at least to close observers.”

The UK’s murderous programme of herd immunity was a conspiracy carried out in plain sight. It relied less on secrecy than on the complicity of every supposed oppositional or independent force in the country. The Labour Party, first under Jeremy Corbyn and now under Sir Keir Starmer, has operated as a de facto coalition partner of the Conservatives in the name of providing only “constructive criticism” in pursuit of the “national interest.” The trade unions participate in more tripartite meetings with the government and the employers than there are days in the week. The national newspapers of every political stripe have for the most part loyally parroted government propaganda, keeping all criticism within safe limits.

These organisations now have more reason than ever to bury this history along with the dead. Once again, they are lining up behind Johnson’s latest efforts to end the last vestiges of public health restrictions, in the teeth of a third wave of the pandemic.

A week after Cummings’ appearance before parliament’s health and science committees, with cases of the highly infectious (Indian) Delta variant doubling every week, Johnson felt free to announce, “I can see nothing in the data at the moment that means we can’t go ahead with Step 4 [ending all restrictions on June 21].”

Labour and the unions have so thoroughly suppressed opposition to Johnson that the most significant inconvenience the prime minister now faces in enforcing his agenda comes from Cummings’ pursuit of his own right-wing authoritarian fantasies. The former adviser told MPs, “In a well-run entity what would have happened here is essentially, in my opinion, you would have had a kind of dictator in charge of this.” This dictator would have “as close to kingly authority as the state has legally to do stuff… pushing the barriers of legality.”

The BMJ concludes its editorial by posing the question, “How much of this maelstrom of harm was avoidable with the right leadership?” Railing against the “unpractised Brexit loyalists” brought to prominence by Johnson and Cummings, it calls for “public accountability” to be established through convening a public inquiry immediately, rather than in a year’s time according to Johnson’s timetable.

But within the existing political set-up, there is no such thing as a “right leadership” and no possibility of public accountability. Every element of the British political establishment, from the Remain and Leave factions of the Tories to the Labour Party and the trade union bureaucracy has had a hand in this crime and its cover-up. An inquiry organised by Johnson and the judiciary, whenever it is held, offers no remedy for this essential problem. The British ruling class, veterans of the Hillsborough, Hutton, Chilcot and Grenfell inquiries, leads the world in the use of this mechanism to protect the guilty.

The same is true internationally. Not a single government anywhere has produced leaders who fought for a scientific, humane, globally coordinated response to the pandemic. The opposite is the case: the common policy has been one of nationalism and social murder in defence of private profits and fortunes, leading to the deaths of at least 3.6 million people officially and more realistically in the region of 7 to 10 million.

Far from changing course, governments the world over are intent on ending containment measures so that the exploitation of the working class can be resumed at full throttle. Meanwhile the lie of a Wuhan lab origin of the pandemic is amplified to conceal the responsibility of the world’s ruling elites for the pandemic’s spread, while paving the way for military aggression against China.

The BMJ ’s call for “the right leadership” to deal with the ongoing pandemic is in reality a revolutionary question. The universally brutal and incompetent response to the pandemic reflects a world capitalist system in a state of advanced decay, which serves the interests of an infinitesimally small, super-rich oligarchy and threatens the livelihoods and lives of millions. What is required to finally bring an end to the suffering wrought by COVID-19 is for the working class to secure its leadership of society. By taking power the working class will create the conditions to ensure that public health is given priority over private profit and bring to justice Johnson and other political and corporate criminals.

Fighting the Wrong Enemy in Africa

John Clamp

In the West, citizens have for years been given the impression that ‘jihad’ is spreading like a ‘contagion‘ n the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. News editors in London and New York know that adding the magical letters I and S to a story gives it instant wings.

Pentagon analysts’ dire warnings about the ‘risks of radicalization’ in our least developed continent are being echoed in Europe. Yet the fight in Africa against ‘insurgents’ who happen to be Muslim is the wrong fight. They’re merely rebelling against a system that has left them behind.

Why do all these young people sign up to Boko Haram, Islamic State in West African Province, and al-Qaeda in the Maghreb?

In Somalia, the name of the Islamic militant group al-Shabaab, (‘the youth’) provides a clue. Africa’s demographics, with a rapidly expanding youth, and its rampant inequalities, are what we really need to be paying attention to. The real dangers for the future lie in the systemic corruption and rapacious resource extraction that characterizes much of Africa.

In Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, attacks on coastal towns were blamed on an Islamic State ‘affiliate’, but the group, also dubbed ‘al-Shabaab’ by local people, were merely in agreement with local imams that Sharia law would likely ensure a more equitable distribution of the region’s wealth in natural gas. Locals live in abject poverty; the promises of trickle-down wealth in their remote region are empty rhetoric. Government functionaries in the faraway capital of Maputo carry on skimming millions.

Unless serious attempts are made over the next decade to address the core issues, there will be more waves of migration from Africa into Europe, exacerbated by the short-term Covid-19 slump and the medium- and long-term ravages of climate change. A report published last week by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center says a record 55,000,000 people are now internally displaced worldwide. 40.5 m were uprooted in 2020, and more than 30 m of these were fleeing natural disasters such as floods and droughts. How many are now intending to flee the poverty created by Covid-19? The shenanigans in Ceuta of late provide a worrying indication.

Serious academics, as opposed to CIA dilettantes, are clear about the root causes of much of the violence in Africa. Dublin University professor Catriona Dowd argues that ‘conflict research often emphasises the specificity of Islamist violence; but these conflicts can be understood as a form of political exclusion and grievance-based violence, comparable to other forms of political violence.’

Norweigan academic Stig Hanssen agrees. He says that in Somalia, al-Shabaab offered local people functional justice, unlike the officially recognized government: ‘[The] al Shabaab leadership’s ideology and its well-developed problem-solving mechanism…made it the most unified actor in southern Somalia.’

The corruption and inequities that drive this dynamic are facilitated and exploited by Western banks, corporations, mining companies, and antiquities collectors, for whom the status quo, as it is for the Pentagon, is just fine and dandy. We need to change this narrative before it becomes tragic for all concerned.

From 1980s Neoliberalism to the ‘New Normal’

Colin Todhunter

Sold under the pretence of a quest for optimising well-being and ‘happiness’, capitalism thrives on the exploitation of peoples and the environment. What really matters is the strive to maintain viable profit margins. The prevailing economic system demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption and needs a certain level of annual GDP growth for large firms to make sufficient profit.

But at some point, markets become saturated, demand rates fall and overproduction and overaccumulation of capital becomes a problem. In response, we have seen credit markets expand and personal debt increase to maintain consumer demand as workers’ wages have been squeezed, financial and real estate speculation rise (new investment markets), stock buy backs and massive bail outs and subsidies (public money to maintain the viability of private capital) and an expansion of militarism (a major driving force for many sectors of the economy).

We have also witnessed systems of production abroad being displaced for global corporations to then capture and expand markets in foreign countries.

The old normal

Much of what is outlined above is inherent to capitalism. But the 1980s was a crucial period that helped set the framework for where we find ourselves today.

Remember when the cult of the individual was centre stage? It formed part of the Reagan-Thatcher rhetoric of the ‘new normal’ of 1980s neoliberalism.

In the UK, the running down of welfare provision was justified by government-media rhetoric about ‘individual responsibility’, reducing the role of the state and the need to ‘stand on your own two feet’. The selling off of public assets to profiteering corporations was sold to the masses on the basis of market efficiency and ‘freedom of choice’.

The state provision of welfare, education, health services and the role of the public sector was relentlessly undermined by neoliberal dogma and the creed that the market (global corporations) constituted the best method for supplying human needs.

Thatcher’s stated mission was to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit by rolling back the ‘nanny state’. She wasted little time in crushing the power of the trade unions and privatising key state assets.

Despite her rhetoric, she did not actually reduce the role of the state. She used its machinery differently, on behalf of business. Neither did she unleash the ‘spirit of entrepreneurialism’. Economic growth rates under her were similar as in the 1970s, but a concentration of ownership occurred and levels of inequality rocketed.

Margaret Thatcher was well trained in perception management, manipulating certain strands of latent populist sentiment and prejudice. Her free market, anti-big-government platitudes were passed off to a section of the public that was all too eager to embrace them as a proxy for remedying all that was wrong with Britain. For many, what were once regarded as the extreme social and economic policies of the right became entrenched as the common sense of the age.

Thatcher’s policies destroyed a fifth of Britain’s industrial base in just two years alone. The service sector, finance and banking were heralded as the new drivers of the economy, as much of Britain’s manufacturing sector was out-sourced to cheap labour economies.

Under Thatcher, employees’ share of national income was slashed from 65% to 53%. Long gone are many of the relatively well-paid manufacturing jobs that helped build and sustain the economy. In their place, the country has witnessed the imposition of a low taxation regime and low-paid and insecure ‘service sector’ jobs (no-contract work, macjobs, call centre jobs – many of which soon went abroad) as well as a real estate bubble, credit card debt and student debt, which helped to keep the economy afloat.

However, ultimately, what Thatcher did was – despite her rhetoric of helping small-scale businesses and wrapping herself in the national flag – facilitate the globalisation process by opening the British economy to international capital flows and allowing free rein for global finance and transnational corporations.

Referring back to the beginning of this article, it is clear whose happiness and well-being counts most and whose does not matter at all as detailed by David Rothkopf in his 2008 book ‘Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making‘. Members of the superclass belong to the megacorporation-interlocked, policy-building elites of the world and come from the highest echelons of finance, industry, the military, government and other shadow elites. These are the people whose interests Margaret Thatcher was serving.

These people set the agendas at the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg, G-7, G-20, NATO, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.

And let us not forget the various key think tanks and policy making arenas like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institute and Chatham House as well as the World Economic Forum (WEF), where sections of the global elite forge policies and strategies and pass them to their political handmaidens.

Driven by the vision of its influential executive chairman Klaus Schwab, the WEF is a major driving force for the dystopian ‘great reset’, a tectonic shift that intends to change how we live, work and interact with each other.

The new normal

The great reset envisages a transformation of capitalism, resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance as livelihoods and entire sectors are sacrificed to boost the monopoly and hegemony of pharmaceutical corporations, high-tech/big data giants, Amazon, Google, major global chains, the digital payments sector, biotech concerns, etc.

Under the cover of COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, the great reset is being rolled out under the guise of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in which smaller enterprises are to be driven to bankruptcy or bought up by monopolies. Economies are being ‘restructured’ and many jobs and roles will be carried out by AI-driven technology.

The WEF says the public will ‘rent’ everything they require: stripping the right of ownership under the guise of a ‘green economy’ underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’.

At the same time new (‘green product’) markets are being created and, on the back of COVID, fresh opportunities for profit extraction are opening up abroad. For instance, World Bank Group President David Malpass has stated that poorer countries will be ‘helped’ to get back on their feet after the various lockdowns that have been implemented in response to the Covid-19 crisis. This ‘help’ will be on condition that neoliberal reforms and the undermining of public services are implemented and become further embedded.

Just a month into the COVID crisis, the IMF and World Bank were already facing a deluge of aid requests from developing countries. Scores of countries were asking for bailouts and loans. Ideal cover for rebooting the global economy via a debt crisis and the subsequent privatisation of national assets and the further ‘structural adjustment’ of economies.

Many people waste no time in referring to this as some kind of ‘Marxist’ or ‘communist’ takeover of the planet because a tiny elite will be dictating policies. This has nothing to do with Marxism. An authoritarian capitalist elite – supported by their political technocrats – aims to secure even greater control of the global economy. It will no longer be a (loosely labelled) ‘capitalism’ based on ‘free’ markets and competition (not that those concepts ever really withstood proper scrutiny). Economies will be monopolised by global players, not least e-commerce platforms run by the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Facebook and Google and their multi-billionaire owners.

Essential (for capitalism) new markets will also be created through the ‘financialisation’ and ownership of all aspects of nature, which is to be colonised, commodified and traded under the fraudulent notion of protecting the environment.

The so-called ‘green economy’ will fit in with the notion of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’. A bunch of billionaires and their platforms will control every aspect of the value chain. Of course, they themselves will not reduce their own consumption or get rid of their personal jets, expensive vehicles, numerous exclusive homes or ditch their resource gobbling lifestyles. Reduced consumption is meant only for the masses.

They will not only control and own data about consumption but also control and own data on production, logistics, who needs what, when they need it, who should produce it, who should move it and when it should be moved. Independent enterprises will disappear or become incorporated into the platforms acting as subservient cogs. Elected representatives will be mere technocratic overseers of these platforms and the artificial intelligence tools that plan and determine all of the above.

The lockdowns and restrictions we have seen since March 2020 have helped boost the bottom line of global chains and the e-commerce giants and have cemented their dominance. Many small and medium-size independent enterprises have been pushed towards bankruptcy. At the same time, fundamental rights have been eradicated under COVID19 government measures.

Politicians in countries throughout the world have been using the rhetoric of the WEF’s great reset, talking of the need to ‘build back better’ for the ‘new normal’. They are all on point. Hardly a coincidence. Essential to this ‘new normal’ is the compulsion to remove individual liberties and personal freedoms given that, in the ‘green new normal’, unfettered consumption will no longer be an option for the bulk of the population.

It has long been the case that a significant part of the working class has been deemed ‘surplus to requirements’ – three decades ago, such people were sacrificed on the altar of neo-liberalism. They lost their jobs due to automation and offshoring. They have had to rely on meagre state welfare and run-down public services.

But what we are now seeing is the possibility of hundreds of millions around the world being robbed of their livelihoods. Forget about the benign sounding ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and its promised techno-utopia. What we are witnessing right now seems to be a major restructuring of capitalist economies.

With AI and advanced automation of production, distribution and service provision (3D printing/manufacturing, drone technology, driverless vehicles, lab grown food, farmerless farms, robotics, etc), a mass labour force – and therefore mass education, mass welfare, mass healthcare provision and entire systems that were in place to reproduce labour for capitalist economic activity – will no longer be required. As economic activity is restructured, labour’s relationship to capital is being transformed.

In a reorganised system that no longer needs to sell the virtues of excessive individualism (consumerism), the levels of political and civil rights and freedoms we have been used to will not be tolerated.

Neoliberalism might have reached its logical conclusion (for now). Making trade unions toothless, beating down wages to create unimaginable levels of inequality and (via the dismantling of Bretton Woods) affording private capital so much freedom to secure profit and political clout under the guise of ‘globalisation’ would inevitably lead to one outcome.

A concentration of wealth, power, ownership and control at the top with large sections of the population on state-controlled universal basic income and everyone subjected to the discipline of an emerging biosecurity surveillance state designed to curtail liberties ranging from freedom of movement and assembly to political protest and free speech.

Perception management is of course vital for pushing through all of this. Rhetoric about ‘liberty’ and ‘individual responsibility’ worked a treat in the 1980s to help bring about a massive heist of wealth. This time, it is a public health scare and ‘collective responsibility’ as part of a strategy to help move towards near-monopolistic control over economies by a handful of global players.

And the perception of freedom is also being managed. Once vaccinated many will begin to feel free. Freer than under lockdown. But not really free at all.

Germany’s premature easing of lockdown measures threatens workers’ lives and livelihoods

Marianne Arens

On Monday the German government gave the green light for the opening up of most of the country’s schools, and crowds have gathered in the warm weather in parks, promenades and pubs. Normal schooling and holidays should now be possible again, according to Chancellor Merkel, regardless of vaccination statistics.

The pandemic, however, is by no means over. The price for the risky easing of restrictions will be paid by the working class. Fresh outbreaks of COVID-19 continue to take place in production halls, care homes and in agricultural and transport enterprises. Little is reported of such cases in the bourgeois media, due to the failure of employers, politicians and the trade unions to provide a full picture of infection incidence. Only sporadic reports reach the public.

A major outbreak took place in mid-May at a Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) site in Fulda. As BuzzFeed News Germany reported, more than 60 of around 600 workers at the location tested positive. Neither Deutsche Bahn nor the transport union, EVG, have disclosed how many workers suffered severe symptoms or had to be hospitalised.

Buzzfeed News writes that the press office of the district of Fulda only gave a very vague answer to its enquiries, declaring that there were “high numbers of cases in four different companies” in the district. Since then, the situation had quieted down “in three of the four companies.” The fourth company, apparently, is Deutsche Bahn.

Care workers in hospitals and retirement homes also continue to be affected. In Alzey, Hesse, two nursing staff and seven patients at a DRK (German Red Cross) hospital were infected last week when a staff member who had already been vaccinated once against COVID-19 unknowingly passed on the virus.

Asparagus harvest

An asparagus farm in Lower Saxony has been experiencing a particularly large outbreak since mid-April. At Thiermann GmbH in Kirchdorf, one of the largest asparagus farms in Germany, no fewer than 144 workers were infected with COVID-19 up until the Whitsun spring break. The first infected workers were discovered among the more than 1,000 harvest workers as early as April 18, but it was only 10 days later that proper tests were carried out. The virus therefore had 10 days to spread unhindered.

When the responsible health department finally carried out extensive tests, 47 workers tested positive, and since then nearly 100 more have been added to the list of those positive. The factory was not shut down and the direct contacts of those infected were not identified. A spokeswoman for the district told Deutsche Welle (DW) that the authorities were unable to track contacts “because of the diffuse nature of the infection within the farm.” Instead, a quarantine was imposed on the entire premises. Workers were not allowed to leave the farm, which was monitored by the police and private security guards. The workers were, however, “allowed” to continue working and ran the constant risk of also becoming infected.

This meant the virus was able to spread unhindered throughout the entire workforce. Neither the company nor the health department are willing to give any information about how many of the infected workers at the Thiermann asparagus farm were seriously ill and had to be hospitalised. Workers who spoke to DW reported that up to five people were in hospital and at least one person had a severe COVID-19 infection.

Workers reported that they share a room in twos and threes, but then work in different parts of the farm. “No attention is paid to who lives together,” one worker reported. Most of the time it was not even possible to abide by distance rules when working. In the sorting plant, for example, the harvest workers are led to work in groups of 50, and then divided into groups of 12.

A group of about a hundred workers apparently tried to oppose this practice and decided to go on strike the night after testing took place. Fearing the virus, they did not go to work for two days. As one worker told DW, they also demanded better pay, but had received nothing so far.

The harvest workers are paid a gross minimum wage of €9.50 (net: €6.80) per hour, which is linked to a bonus system. In addition, €9.80 per day are deducted from the wage for accommodation and lunch. To make the work worthwhile the workers toil seven days a week, for up to 11 hours a day. These grueling hours and hard work also contributed to COVID-19’s ability to spread so quickly and widely.

As was the case last year, the pandemic has revealed the brutal and exploitative conditions for seasonal workers who keep the food industry running. This was underlined by reports from Polish women workers to DW. On the day of the testing, women who tested positive were made to wait outside until 11 p.m. before being taken to new quarters. A number broke out in tears because they wanted to go home to Poland but were not allowed to. The police strictly enforced the work quarantine.

The latest outbreaks show once again that businessmen and politicians put profits before workers’ lives. The authorities and the media play along and cover up such cases, while the German trade union movement makes sure that workforces remained uninformed. This is especially true for the IG Metall union in the auto and car supplier industry, as well as for the service sector union, Verdi, with members at airports and in logistics centres like Amazon.

The pandemic is an international phenomenon; it will not be defeated until it is under control in every country. Until then, there is a danger that new virus variants will spread, driving the number of cases up again and once again filling intensive care units.

In Finland, the “India” virus variant B.1.617 is currently spreading in several hospitals, and is also affecting people who have already been vaccinated once. In Canada, too, there have been hundreds of cases of so-called breakthrough infections, i.e., infections of people who have already been vaccinated once. And a new pathogen has been reported in Vietnam, which had so far come through the pandemic well. The new variant dangerously combines characteristics of the British and Indian virus strains.

In Germany, incidence figures are currently stagnating at around an average seven-day incidence of 35 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants. What is not mentioned is that the incidence in children is much higher. Among 10-14 year olds, the last known incidence figure from May 25 exceeded 100. Only 41.5 percent of the population in Germany has received a first vaccination, and less than 16 percent are fully vaccinated.

At the same time, the B.1.617 variant is spreading across Europe. As has been shown in Great Britain, vaccination against this virus is only effective after a second vaccination dose, which the vast majority of people in Germany lack. For children, there is still no vaccination programme.

Government politicians are using the declining coronavirus numbers to give a false sense of security. Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) claimed at the beginning of this week that “safe schooling” is possible again, “regardless of whether a child is vaccinated or not.” The same applies to holidays, she said, which must be possible again “both in other European countries and in Germany.” Merkel absurdly justified her remarks by saying that testing was “perfectly sufficient”—at a time when there are multiple reports of systematic fraud in mass testing.

It is clear that the statements by establishment politicians cannot be trusted. They have proven to be reliable servants of big business and the banks since the beginning of the pandemic.

US continues diplomatic provocations towards Beijing over Taiwan

Ben McGrath

The United States is continuing its provocations over Taiwan in order to ratchet up pressure on Beijing. Both the Democratic Party, with the Joe Biden administration at the forefront, and the Republican Party are manoeuvring to undermine the “One China” policy without openly crossing Beijing’s red-line on the issue, an agenda that risks war.

Last Friday, House of Representative members Brad Sherman, a Democrat, and Steve Chabot, a Republican, introduced a bill to Congress called the Taiwan Diplomatic Review Act that would rename the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) as the Taiwan Representative Office.

Biden speaks at The Queen Theater, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. [Credit: AP Photo/Matt Slocum]

TECRO is the name of the office in Washington of the Taiwan Council for US Affairs (TCUSA), which serves as Taipei’s de facto embassy as the US has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The TCUSA is the relatively new name for the body known as the Coordination Council for North American Affairs (CCNAA) until 2019.

The bill, if passed, would call upon the US Secretary of State to enter into negotiations with Taipei to rename the office. Rep. Sherman openly stated the broader political rationale, “This bill simply says that it is time for the State Department, and Congress, to take action to elevate our relationship with Taiwan. We should also be taking action to encourage more robust engagement between US and Taiwanese officials.”

The proposed bill would also alter the diplomatic status of Taiwanese representatives in Washington by creating a special visa category. These officials currently do not receive diplomatic visas, but investor visas instead. The change is meant to facilitate closer relations between US and Taiwanese officials in line with the agenda set during the Trump administration.

It also includes the Taiwan Envoy Act, which would mean new directors appointed to the American Institute in Taiwan—the de facto US embassy on the island—would be required to receive Senate confirmation, similar to an ambassador.

The goal of these changes is to elevate Washington’s relationship with Taipei as the US prepares for conflict with Beijing. Taiwan is a self-governing island that the US and other countries recognize under the “One China” policy as Chinese territory. In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang was defeated in the Chinese Revolution and forced to flee to Taiwan, previously a colony of Japan, which had been returned to China following World War II.

From then until the 1970s, the US recognized Taipei as the legitimate government of all of China. Taipei even sat on the United Nations Security Council as a permanent member until 1971 when it was expelled from the UN and Beijing was acknowledged as China’s representative. In 1979, Washington cut formal ties with Taiwan and recognized Beijing as China’s government while upholding the “One China” policy.

To recognize Taiwan as an independent country, or to create the conditions for Taipei to declare independence, is a serious threat to Beijing. The ruling Chinese Communist Party will not allow Taiwan to be used as a launch pad for war against mainland China or set a precedent for Western powers to carve up existing Chinese territory in regions like Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet while returning the country to a semi-colonial state. As such, Taiwan represents a red-line for Beijing, which has stated that it will go to war if Taiwan ever declares independence.

Beijing’s fears of attack are not unfounded as demonstrated through documents recently published by Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers. The new publications revealed that Washington had been prepared to launch nuclear strikes on major Chinese cities in 1958, only five years after the end of the Korean War. To this day, Washington continues to engage in regime change operations around the world, leaving countries like Ukraine, Libya, and Iraq completely devastated.

The danger of war has not given Washington pause as it inches closer to overturning the “One China” policy. Last Thursday, nominee for assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, Christopher Maier, stated during a Senate hearing that the US should help train special operation forces in Taiwan, in effect, preparing for a guerilla war against China.

Maier stated, “I do think that is something that we should be considering strongly as we think about competition across the span of different capabilities we can apply, [special operations forces] being a key contributor to that.”

He was backed by rightwing Senator Josh Hawley, who supported Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election. Hawley suggested the US should train forces similar to those it had trained in the Balkans, a region carved up by US and European imperialism and plunged into war following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Since 1979, Washington has backed Taiwan militarily, including training troops, though this has not been officially acknowledged. Last November, Taiwan’s Naval Command confirmed that US Marines were in Taiwan for training exercises, the first public acknowledgement of such drills in over 40 years. The Ministry of National Defense and the US Pentagon walked back on this acknowledgement given the implications for a clash with Beijing. Therefore, official training exercises would set a dangerous precedent.

Alexander Huang Chieh-cheng, a professor of international relations and strategic studies at Taipei’s Tamkang University told the South China Morning Post, “[Improving and enlarging] the scale of US-Taiwan cooperation in training of special operations and irregular warfare…will definitely enrage Beijing and add difficulties to US-China and cross-strait relations.”

Washington has also encouraged Japan to take a more belligerent stance towards Beijing since Biden took office in January. Following a summit last Thursday between leaders of the European Union and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, the two sides released a joint statement calling for “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the first time Japan and the EU have included Taiwan in such a statement.

The language is nearly identical to that Biden and Suga used following their summit in April. Japan’s involvement has particular significance as Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945, having seized it from China during the First Sino-Japanese War.

None of these machinations have anything to do with defending democracy in Taiwan or anywhere else in the Asia-Pacific region. They are, above all, aimed at eliminating China as an economic and strategic competitor to US imperialism, even at the risk of instigating a devastating global war.

Class action lawsuit filed against company pushing unsafe ionizers to reopen classrooms across the US

Renae Cassimeda

In the interest of reopening schools as soon as possible, hundreds of K-12 school districts, private schools, and universities across the US have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in federal relief funding provided by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to purchase Needle Point Bipolar Ionizers (NBPIs), supposedly to clean indoor air and kill coronavirus particles.

Despite their lofty claims to neutralize virus particles, recent independent studies show that NBPIs do not improve indoor air quality. A recently filed class action lawsuit consolidates the science by air quality experts and puts forward strong refutations against the claims made by manufacturers, and echoed by hundreds of districts and campuses across the country, that NBPIs are safe and remove pathogens including SARS-CoV-2 from the air.

Air ioniser and purifier with its dust collection plates removed (Credit: Wikimedia)

Michael Mills, one of the attorneys on the case, told the World Socialist Web Site, “The evidence is overwhelming. We are convinced we are right. I don’t know how districts can continue to use these products. If teachers or students get sick, these districts have zero protection.”

The lawsuit was filed last month against Global Plasma Solutions (GPS), a top selling manufacturer of NBPIs. The suit charges the company with fraud and claims the company used false, deceptive and misleading claims to sell its products and capitalize from the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of the mad dash to reopen schools, ionizers have been installed in classrooms, school buses, offices, gymnasiums and cafeterias, providing a false sense of protection from COVID-19. Furthermore, harmful byproducts produced by the technology place the health and safety of millions of students and staff at heightened risk.

GPS and other manufacturers of NBPIs claim that their ionizers remove over 99 percent of SARS-CoV-2 particles from the air. However, a recent peer reviewed study led by three universities revealed that NBPIs had an entirely negligible effect on removing the airborne particles of coronavirus and only reduced 20-30 percent of the virus from surfaces.

Dr. Delphine Farmer, a leading researcher in the study, recently explained to the WSWS that ionizers do not actually accomplish their “bold claims” in real world settings. GPS based its claims of a 99 percent removal of coronavirus from the air on a company-funded study conducted in a shoe box-sized container (not a room or classroom). Instead of neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 particles in the air, the devices instead produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

According to the lawsuit, independent studies cited in the case documents show that the products are not only ineffective at cleaning the air in real world conditions, but byproducts from the devices include the following harmful toxins:

• Acetone: long-term exposure can produce damage to kidneys, liver, skin, central nervous system and reproductive system.
• Ethanol: chronic intermittent ethanol vapor exposure produces widespread significant tissue injury including hepatic, pulmonary, and cardiovascular changes.
• Toluene: long-term inhalation of toluene can cause permanent damage to the brain, muscles, heart, and kidneys.
• Butyraldehyde: inhalation of Butyraldehyde can irritate the lungs, causing coughing and shortness of breath, while higher exposures can cause a pulmonary edema.

In addition to the above toxins, Dr. Marwa Zaatari, a mechanical engineer, expert on indoor air quality and member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) epidemic task force, also warns that ionizers have been shown to produce ozone and formaldehyde.

GPS and other companies selling these “snake oil” ionizer devices have profited tremendously off of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the lawsuit documents, GPS, which was founded in 2008, had a previous focus on “providing energy savings solutions. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the company’s focus shifted, and in CEO Glenn Brinckman’s words, ‘it’s all about pathogens and coronavirus and COVID-19.’”

ActivePure Technology, which employs former Trump adviser Dr. Deborah Birx as its chief medical and science adviser, is another company profiting from ionizers. A recent LinkedIn job ad for the company recruiting salespeople stated, “Make Tons of Money with this COVID-killing Technology!!...We have reps [who] made over 6-figures in 1 month selling to 1 school district.” Foaming at the mouth over the profits to be made, the ad exclaims, “By the way, the company is expanding by triple digits each month and this is just the tip of the iceberg!”

These technologies are being utilized by districts to provide a false sense of security and reassurance to concerned students, staff and parents who have faced a relentless barrage of propaganda to send them back to unsafe classrooms. Significantly, when a recent statement from Columbia County School District in Georgia announced masks are no longer a requirement in classrooms, officials sought to reassure their community that the continued use of ionizers in classrooms and on buses would provide adequate protection from COVID-19.

The installation of ionizers also solves another issue for districts, as they are far less costly and have no industry standards compared to proven mitigation strategies for improving indoor air quality, such as updating Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) systems, using Merv-13 filters, and operating HVAC systems at high efficiency in order to ensure at least five complete air exchanges per hour.

The lawsuit itself shows that opposition among parents, educators, and students has emerged in response to haphazard reopening campaigns which have allowed schools and workplaces to transform into sites of spread and infection of the virus.

Concerned parents of Montclair Public Schools in New Jersey expressed opposition to the use of GPS ionizers in classrooms during an April school board meeting. Parents cited independent scientific papers, articles and letters from experts in air quality, and in response the district disconnected the devices until further notice.

Superintendent Mark Triplett of Newark Unified School District in California recently announced the district will turn off all 556 ionizers it installed from GPS until further notice. According to local news media, Triplett sent an email to the entire district on Tuesday, saying the district had “been made aware” of a proposed class action lawsuit filed against Global Plasma Solutions in Delaware.

UK teachers suffer increased workload as government plans to lengthen working day

Tom Pearce

UK teachers are threatened with an extended work day in the next academic year. The government’s post-Covid recovery plan is placing the burden of “catch-up” learning on already overstretched schools and teachers.

Ministers are considering two plans: A compulsory 30-minute extension of the school day—which would focus on academic catch-up—or an extension of the school day from 8am-6pm, with the extra time used for voluntary extracurricular activities.

Sir Kevan Collins, the education recovery commissioner, is leading the initiative, having said previously that teachers “will be asked to increase learning time for pupils as part of the catch-up effort.” Arguing that a voluntary approach will not work, Collins favours a compulsory extension in order to “guarantee” that disadvantaged pupils attend.

Alex Dickerson the reception class teacher, left leads the class at the Holy Family Catholic Primary School in Greenwich, London, Monday, May 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Collins is no stranger to squeezing value out of public services. In his 2009-2012 role as chief executive of the Labour Party-run London Borough of Tower Hamlets, he implemented £50 million in cuts over three years.

Whatever plan is enforced on schools will intensify the exploitation of education workers, already exhausted by the government’s schools policies since the beginning of the pandemic.

The government is utilising the coronavirus crisis to usher in long-planned education restructuring. This takes place amid an unprecedented increase in teacher workload related to the pandemic. In January, Prime Minister Boris Johnson cancelled A level and GCSE exams, but their replacement has put a huge burden on teachers.

Secondary school staff have been tasked with carrying out “assessments” to replace the cancelled exams for secondary pupils. Teachers have been placed under intense pressure and media scrutiny to carry out the marking, moderation and awarding of teacher assessed grades (TAGs).

The “assessments” that have been introduced expose the government lie that pupils have been herded back into school for their own well-being. Pupils in Year 11 and 13 have been put under intense pressure to perform, with some reports of pupils having over 30 different assessments over a two-week period. After all that these children have been through over the past year, they are now brought back from lockdown to be assessed!

Teachers are assessing, standardising, marking and moderating “assessments” with no extra time given to undertake a role usually done by the exam boards. The Scottish National Party government in Holyrood have given teachers in Scotland an insulting one-off payment of £400 for the extra workload. Nothing has been forthcoming from Boris Johnson’s Westminster government.

Last month, children's author Michael Rosen prompted a storm of against the prime minister after tweeting, “Dear Boris Johnson, You said that GCSE exams for this year were cancelled. They're not cancelled. They're called 'assessments'. And instead of examiners marking them, teachers are. For no money. But the schools have paid the exam boards. Where's the money?”

@SebsJoPatrick replied to Rosen “As a teacher; the time I am using to mark my year 11 assessments has an impact on the amount of time I have to plan engaging lessons for pupils lower down the school. Everyone is suffering through this. Any love for education is being eroded and it will just keep happening.”

According to a YouGov survey released last week, a third of all teachers are planning to leave the profession in the next five years, and 16 percent in the next year. The pandemic has compounded a longstanding teacher retention problem. According to the latest report from the Education Policy Institute, as of 2019 just two-thirds of early career teachers remained in the profession five years after they joined—down from 72 percent in 2010.

The cost of examination board fees also reveals the profits being made through the privatisation of the education system. If a school enters a large group of Year 11s sitting 10 GCSEs each, it is likely to cost the school between £75,000 and £100,000.

As a result, 2,000 headteachers have demanded a return of exam board fees. Headteachers say that the refunds—which would total around £220 million—would help fill the gaping holes in school budgets. The education sector has suffered a decade of funding cuts and been hit with countless extra costs related to the pandemic. The government has provided entirely inadequate additional funding and a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that 30 percent of Covid-related spending on education in England is due to come from existing budgets.

The National Education Union (NEU) have played down the extra work that secondary teachers have had to undertake this term, blocking teachers’ demands for a fightback against intolerable conditions.

The union has limited itself to creating an FAQ page regarding issues of workload and well-being, conducting a survey of members and writing a meekly worded letter to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson calling for a token one-off payment for teachers. It states: “Marking assessment or evidence of student performance for grades has added an average 12 hours per week to the usual workload of teachers”.

“We therefore urge you to offer teachers a one-off payment of £500 for their extra work relating to qualification grading.”

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson (credit: Wikimedia Commons-Kuhlmann/ MSC)

Williamson has repeatedly declared war on teachers, working with the right-wing media to paint them as lazy. He organised the mass reopening of schools with deadly consequences, including threatening legal action against individual schools to keep them open during the winter surge. To appeal to this figure is an insult to education workers. The NEU’s proposal also accepts the unmanageable demands being placed on teachers, in exchange for a pathetic £500.

Teachers on social media responded angrily to joint NEU secretary Mary Bousted tweeting “Where is the recompense for teachers in England?”

@physics_jamie asked, “What is the unions stance on this exam fiasco? Teachers are performing the role of exam boards and getting nothing other than heightened stress and anxiety. If there was ever a time to stand up for teachers.........”

@SiintheYate added, “I'll be honest, it's why I'm not a member. With respect to them, there's just too much posturing. Lip service. Nothing of substance.”

Educators must draw the lessons. Bousted proudly declared at the 2021 conference that “teachers don’t mind working hard. The profession already works the most unpaid overtime of any profession, with working weeks regularly exceeding 50 hours, and 55 hours for leaders.”

The unions have formally condemned the increase in workload and the government’s refusal to increase teacher’s pay—meaning a real-terms cut—but are organising no action in response. They cannot claim they lack the resources. The education unions have around a million members between them and have vast sums of money sitting in their bank accounts.