Over 100 dead in landslides, flooding in the Indian state of Maharashtra

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Adding more victims to the millions who have died from COVID-19, devastating landslides and flooding triggered by torrential rains over the last three days have killed more than 100 people in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Maharashtra, where India’s financial capital Mumbai is located, is also the state worst hit by COVID-19 in the country.

According to media reports, the toll from rain-related incidents in the state has risen to 112 as of July 25, while 99 people remain missing. Among the deceased are 38 people killed by multiple landslides in Raigad district’s Talai village on Thursday. India Today reported that officials fear 30 to 35 more victims are trapped under the debris.

Parts of India’s west coast have received up to 594 mm (23 inches) of rain, while the hill station of Mahabaleshwar recorded its highest ever rainfall: 60cm in 24 hours. As many as 54 villages were severely damaged by floods with 821villages partially hit. Nearly 100,000 people were shifted from flood-affected areas to safer places in Western Maharashtra’s Pune division on Friday, as rains battered the region. Major rivers are reportedly at risk of bursting their banks.

Rescuers work at the site of a mudslide triggered by heavy monsoon rain and flooding killed at least 15 people and buried 20 homes of tea plantation workers in southern India on Friday, police said. (AP Photo)

Media reported that rescuers are struggling to reach affected residents, as landslides have blocked roads, including the main highway from Mumbai to Goa. As a result, thousands of trucks were stuck for more than 24 hours on a highway linking Mumbai to the southern technology hub of Bengaluru, Reuters reported.

According to an NDTV article, “in Ratnagiri's Chiplun town, another of those completely flooded, rescuers raced to save people from a COVID-19 hospital cut off from aid. Other visuals from the town showed a terrifying image—a few people on the roof of a building pulling up a woman with rope.”

People trapped in the mudslide-hit areas recounted the horrific conditions there. Mujaffar Khan, a survivor from Mahad, told PTI, “there is a thick layer of mud … it is not just soil, there are dead animals in it … like rats.”

Apart from 30 teams from national and state disaster response agencies, the Indian Air Force, Army, Navy, the Coast Guard and other services also were called for flood-relief operations.

Like always after this type of tragedy, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi rushed to his Twitter account to express his “condolences to bereaved families.” Modi said he was “anguished by the loss of lives due to a landslide.” In another tweet, Modi announced a payment of 200,000 rupees ($US2,690) each to next of kin of those who lost their lives to landslides in Raigad and 50,000 rupees ($670) each for the injured.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray also announced a payment of 500,000 rupees ($6,700) each to next of kin of people who died in the landslide and promised the injured will be treated in hospitals “at state expense.” Maharashtra is controlled by the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition government with Indian National Congress, Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and National Congress Party, along with the support from several other parties.

By providing these meagre compensations to people who lost their loved ones or their homes, Modi’s central government and Thackeray’s state government are trying to shamelessly cover up their own responsibilities for the current flood disaster.

Climate experts have raised fears about the impact of climate change, which has played a major part of this devastation. Flooding in India was reported days after heavy rain across Western Europe and across China, as well as heat waves across the US. While it is true that all these are natural disasters, the principal responsibility for the human cost must be placed on the capitalist ruling elites. For decades it is those ruling elites that have failed to build infrastructure control to prepare for these disasters, failing to act upon warnings made by climate scientists.

They have also gone ahead with reckless construction projects based solely on profit motivations, with complete disregard for the impact these buildings have in facilitating floods.

In an article dealing with urban flooding, the DownToEarth website on October 11, 2019 noted: “Overburdened drainage, frenzied and unregulated construction, buildings constructed without paying any heed to the natural topography and hydro-geomorphology all add to the damage.” It highlighted that property developers have illegally built “on reclaimed wetlands, flood plains and law lands of the city as these areas have a cheaper land rate.”

The article gave a number of examples of how the government itself has been engaging in this reckless practice of building mega projects right on the flood plains of various rivers.

The article particularly highlights the recurrent urban flooding in Mumbai, where the city’s old drainage system is “heavily silted and damaged.” Citing from a report tabled in the Maharashtra state assembly in early 2019, it notes: “The BRIMSTOWAD (Brihanmumbai Strom Water Disposal System) project, proposed in 1993, was intended to be a long-term road map for the city’s vulnerability to flooding; but no action was taken on it till the major flooding of 2005. The system has not been fully updated yet.”

This year alone, India has witnessed numerous natural disasters spanning from heat waves, cyclones, floods and wildfire. Some of the major incidents include:

Uttarkhand flood was also known as the Chamoli disaster. On February 7, 2021, flooding in the Chamoli district ensued after an avalanche near Raini Village, Tapovan washed away the Rishiganga small hydro project and also hit the downstream hydroelectric power project at Tapovan on the river Dhauliganga. At least 72 workers were confirmed to have been killed. According to Wikipedia, the Indian government had disregarded warnings made by scientists for many years prior to the disaster that “the Himalayas had been warming at a dangerously high rate and the region’s ecosystem had become too physically exposed to the dangers of development projects.”

Cyclone Tauktae was a powerful and deadly tropical cyclone in the Arabian Sea which traveled parallel to the coasts of the Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra in May 2021. It brought heavy rainfall and flash floods to areas along the coast of Kerala and on Lakshadweep, an archipelago off the coast of Kerala. The storm displaced over 200,000 people in Gujarat. Overall, 169 people were confirmed dead and another 81 people missing. Losses from Cyclone Tauktae are estimated at $2.1 billion.

Cyclone Yass was a strong and very damaging tropical cyclone that made landfall in Odisha and devastated West Bengal in late May. More than 4,500 villages were damaged, and various rural homes and agricultural lands were hard hit. In West Bengal, over 1,100 of the damaged villages were submerged in floods triggered by storm surges, displacing about 500,000 people. Overall, around 1 million people were affected in the state alone. The state government estimates total damages from the storm to be $2.76 billion in West Bengal.

The Modi government and Indian ruling elite have repeatedly shown their complete indifference to the lives of millions of Indian toilers. Their reckless “herd immunity policy” has led to deaths of several million people by COVID-19 which has spread across the country, according to a recent study by US-based Center for Global Development. This government lavishly spends hundreds of billion of dollars on the military, while leaving hundreds of million of people to their fate.

Germany’s grand coalition presses ahead with military rearmament

Clemens Huber & Johannes Stern

Ahead of Germany’s federal election on 27 September, the federal grand coalition government is pressing ahead with military rearmament. In its last sitting of the legislative session, the parliamentary budgetary committee approved spending for 27 rearmament projects with a total value of close to €20 billion at the end of June.

The projects include major purchases for the navy, air force and land-based armed forces. According to an official report on the Defence Ministry’s website, the investments cover “a broad spectrum of land, air, naval, and cyber dimensions.” Some of the most comprehensive projects are:

• The purchasing of five P-81 Poseidon aircraft. (Cost: €1.43 billion)
• The construction and delivery of two 212 Common Design class submarines (U212CD). (Cost: €2.79 billion)
• The conclusion of a contract for the production and supply of long-range Naval Strike Missile 1A. (Cost: €512.2 million)
• The construction of three class 424 fleet service vessels (FDB424). (Cost: €2.1 billion)
• The purchasing of combat and reflecting gunsights, as well as laser modules for the army’s Sturmgewehr System. (Cost: €304.05 million)

Almost €2 billion was set aside for the modernisation of the Puma tanks. The goal is to equip the already existing 150 Pumas with technology so that they are operationally ready for the NATO spearhead Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF). In other words, the tank rearmament programme is aimed directly at Russia. The VJTF was established in 2014 as part of the NATO Response Force (NRF) with the declared goal of deploying troops more rapidly to NATO’s eastern flank.

Bundeswehr soldiers from Camp Marmal on patrol (Image: ISAF / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The largest sum, €4.4 billion, was made available to push ahead with the development of the gigantic Future Combat Air System (FCAS) project. “In the next stages, the technologies required for the development of a new jet fighter system in the areas of aircraft, engines, unmanned components, system operations, sensors, signature reduction and simulation environment … should be brought to the development stage,” wrote the Defence Ministry.

The FCAS is Europe’s largest armaments project. It is an integrated air combat system, linking drones, fighter jets, command-and-control aircraft and satellites with each other. Another element is the development of a sixth generation fighter jet. It is to possess stealth capabilities, a more powerful engine, and potentially cyberwar capabilities and energy weapons.

French Defence Minister Florence Parly described the project as “one of the most important tools for Europe’s sovereignty in the 21st century.” The participating European nations, Germany, France and Spain, believe the project promises more autonomy in combat and better coordination between other air units and ground forces.

In tandem with the FCAS, a German-French central ground combat system (NGCS) is under development to produce a tank. The budgetary committee demanded its rapid implementation. A “guideline decision” explicitly passed for the purpose by the federal government called for “the immediate adoption of measures to ensure a simultaneous timeframe for the FCAS and NGCS in the foreseeable future.”

The estimated costs of these projects are gigantic. Projections for the tank system alone amount to €100 billion. According to the Handelsblatt, the cost for the FCAS will reach “up to €500 billion … by mid-century.”

Under conditions of the coronavirus pandemic and the current flood catastrophe in western Germany, the financing of these projects is an even more despicable crime. With the sum of €600 billion, it would be possible to finance the entire health care budget for 2021 (€35 billion) for 17 years. And the €20 billion approved for weapons systems is 100 times more than the emergency aid approved by the government for victims of the floods on July 21.

As in the last century, the massive military rearmament is aimed at preparing for war. Just days before the multi-billion euro rearmament proposals were passed by the budgetary committee, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democrats) held her third keynote foreign policy address since becoming Defence Minister. In it, she threatened the nuclear-armed powers Russia and China, and announced an increase of the defence budget.

“Next year, 2022, we will be over €50 billion for the first time,” she said. “For many people,” that is “according to their values an ‘obscene’ amount of money. But that is a misconception for many reasons,” she cynically added. “For almost a quarter of a century…the defence budget (has been) used as the quarry for the federal budget.” Measured against this, the “budget is comparatively small.”

In reality, the defence budget is the second-largest segment of the federal budget, and it has increased continuously since 2014. Over the past four years alone, it has risen by more than €10 billion under the Social Democrat Finance Minister and Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz. Nonetheless, the plan is to increase it still further.

“In the face of modern new threats,” it is necessary to “invest massively in the most modern defence technology,” continued Kramp-Karrenbauer. Defence will be “much more expensive in the future because it will be more demanding. This is not even to touch upon the growing operational costs for personnel, capabilities and equipment.” The budget will “therefore have to increase if we want to remain safe. And if the German army is going to be a key player in Germany’s future.”

This “future player” status means militarism and war. In an emergency situation, “defence” and “deterrence” can mean “the use of military force, fighting,” said Kramp-Karrenbauer.

The Defence Minister is apparently making advanced preparations for a German submarine war. She explained that “prior to purchasing,” she went “diving with one of our submarines.” She enthused, “A highly modern, highly complex weapons system. A weapons system that can deter and fight if necessary. There are good reasons why we operate these weapons systems. It is important not only to know this but to understand it.”

She was speaking “so clearly because it is a commandment of decency towards our soldiers that we don’t deny them by shamefacedly describing their actual tasks.” This “honesty” must be “an expectation” of Germany. Anyone who defends “freedom and peace” must “know that they have to pay a moral price,” and they must “be prepared to pay this price.”

Coming from the mouth of a German Defence Minister, these statements are a warning. On June 22, 1941, the murderous war of the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union began, in the course of which 27 million Soviet citizens died and the industrial extermination of 6 million Jews was organised. Eighty years later, the Foreign Ministry is more or less openly declaring that Germany must be ready once again to commit war crimes. This is not about “freedom and peace,” but the imposition of geopolitical and economic interests with military force.

The grand coalition and the Defence Ministry can only press ahead so aggressively because they are supported by all parties in parliament, including the nominal “lefts.” In the budgetary committee, which is significantly led by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Green representatives voted for many of the rearmament projects. In the election campaign, Green Chancellor candidate Analena Baerbock regularly attacks the grand coalition from the right and demands a more aggressive course towards Russia.

The Left Party also plays a key role in the return of German militarism. While it makes certain public criticisms of the massive rearmament campaign, the Left Party, in the person of its former foreign policy spokesman Stefan Liebich, was involved in the drafting of the notorious document “New power – New responsibilities.” The document served as the basis for the aggressive great power speeches at the Munich Security Conference in 2014 and the subsequent rearmament offensive and military build-up led by the grand coalition.

Critical milestones in Germany’s return to an aggressive foreign policy, including the right-wing coup in Ukraine, and the imperialist interventions in Syria and Iraq were actively supported by the Left Party. In the election campaign, the Left Party’s lead candidates, Dietmar Bartsch and Janine Wissler, are demanding a government coalition with the pro-austerity, pro-war Social Democrats and Greens. In the process, they have made repeatedly clear that as a party of government, the Left Party would support NATO and the German army’s foreign interventions.

“Red tide” bacteria toxin devastates marine life along Florida’s Gulf Coast

Alex Johnson

Over the past several weeks, more than 600 tons of marine life have been found dead amidst an explosive growth of bacteria along the beaches of Florida’s Gulf Coast. The rapid spread of the harmful toxin, known as the “red tide bloom,” has been recklessly encouraged by human-induced nutrient pollution, mainly from the Tampa Bay area, which is placing the lives of wildlife and humans at significant risk.

The massive flood of red tide bacteria that has killed large numbers of fish has been reported in numerous counties in the region, including Pinellas (St. Petersburg), Hillsborough (Tampa) and Pasco. Investigations of the deadly bacteria have found them to be the result of a higher-than-normal growth of algae along Florida’s coastline.

On Friday, the National Weather Service issued an advisory warning for the Florida Gulf coast of the respiratory dangers residents face as a result of encountering harmful red tide bacteria. The warning was directed at Pinellas County in particular, where a Beach Hazard Statement was put in place to warn beachgoers and local authorities of respiratory irritation from the outbreak.

A red tide. (Image Credit National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Wikipedia)

In opposition to demands from environmentalists, fisherman, and local officials that a state of emergency should be issued to address the crisis, Governor Ron DeSantis rebuffed calls for an emergency declaration during a news conference on Thursday in St. Petersburg.

Although the governor told the media the state harnessed enough funds to ameliorate the disaster, nothing was said on how the crisis would be tackled in the next coming weeks or of any strategic planned outline. Most revealing during the conference was the governor’s tacit admission that an emergency declaration would create more problems for the state’s profitable vacation hotspots and that a wider-scale public health response would affect tourist revenue.

The type of dangerous algae appearing around the state’s bay and inlets areas are known as Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB), with this year’s HAB comprising one of the largest the Gulf coast has seen since 2018. HAB growth has been led by a bacteria known as Karenia b revis, a marine phytoplankton that grow within the algal blooms. K. b revis are known for congregating together under conditions of three ingredients: low water salinity, warm waters, and nutrient-rich waters.

Blooms such as red tide are significant threats to life and well-being, as they can lead to major respiratory issues in people. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, K. brevis produces toxins that cause “neurotoxic shellfish poisoning.” The bacteria can endanger people when they ingest shellfish compromised by toxins. This can lead to numbness, tingling, loss of coordination, vomiting and diarrhea.

Perhaps most ominously, hospital records researchers discovered after analyzing hospital records that respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses increase during periods of red tides. In one study, hospital admissions for respiratory diagnoses rose 54 percent for coastal residents.

When asked about the refusal to implement an emergency response, DeSantis declared during Thursday’s press conference that it would “hurt some of these people [tourists] because it would send the message that somehow all of Florida has problems.”

Democratic St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman pleaded with DeSantis to provide more assistance to derail the inundation of toxins on the city’s shoreline. The DeSantis administration responded with hostility, as a spokesperson issued a statement accusing Krisemen of “deliberately lying and using Red Tide as an attempt to score cheap political points.”

Krisemen, who was not invited to the press conference, criticized DeSantis on Twitter for his “politicization” of the state’s response, before calling the administration’s actions “truly sickening.”

In denying the accusation, DeSantis unconvincingly asserted that the threat of algal blooms was something he had “tackled from Day 1” while in office. The right-wing governor also claimed the state had prepared in advance for red tide outbreaks and supposedly had the resources to resolve the crisis.

This declaration is belied by the fact that the administration and state officials ignored warnings from scientists in April of this year when a massive amount of nutrient-rich wastewater was dumped into Tampa Bay from the Piney Point phosphate plant, an industrial site in Manatee County. While the full impact of the accident took months to discern, pollution experts feared that the elevated concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus in the wastewater were dangerous, as they are known to fuel phytoplankton growth and toxic algal bloom.

Three weeks before a hazardous emergency was publicly sent out to evacuate nearby Manatee County residents, a dangerous leak had sprung at Piney Point, which had been defunct since 2001. The facility houses stacks of phosphogypsum, a toxic, radioactive substance that is commonly utilized in fertilizer production. The phosphogypsum was placed within open-air ponds and was used as part of accumulated stacks of solid waste, which can reach up to five stories tall while becoming crudely efficient containment ponds for liquid waste.

Managing the open-air ponds requires round-the-clock supervision. In the Piney Point leak, one wastewater pond’s inch-thick plastic liner tore, releasing thousands of gallons a day into the sediment beneath. Despite the efforts of crews to plug up the berm, wastewater by the hundreds of millions of gallons ended up being unleashed.

An investigation conducted by the Tampa Bay Times following the leak quickly confirmed that the environmental disaster was the product of criminal neglect and subordination of public safety to the profit interests of financial firms. The crisis was triggered after the site’s current owner, private investment company HRK Holdings, added waste from a Port Manatee dredging project to Piney Point’s gyp stacks. This was despite opposition from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which warned that the project might come with unacceptable risk.

These warnings were repeatedly swept under the rug even after an independent engineering firm hired to evaluate the site in March of 2020 found an imminent danger of “catastrophic damage to the public and the environment” due to the “unknown and likely compromised condition” of the liner.

Numerous environmental organizations have released statements denouncing the governor’s failed response to deter red tide. Many have lambasted the governor for greenlighting the same disastrous and negligent policies of his predecessor, Rick Scott, now a US senator. Scott was embroiled in a similar crisis in 2018 when a massive red tide bloom along Florida’s southwestern coast killed approximately 2,000 tons of marine life and caused much damage or state and local businesses.

Scott’s tenure as governor is infamous for slashing funding for water management safety across districts and eliminating environmental regulations. Shortly after becoming governor in 2011, Scott spearheaded budgets that cut more than $700 million in funding for water management boards. The South Florida Water Management District, the agency that works on Everglades restoration and advises the Army Corps of Engineers on Lake Okeechobee discharges, had its budget slashed nearly in half and was forced to lay off more than 100 people.

While falsely hailing the budget reductions as the only method to protect the state’s waters, Scott signed legislation that capped the amount in property taxes water management districts could collect. Revealing his contempt for all regulatory restrictions that hamper the interests of the corporate and financial elite, Scott said in a news release announcing the cuts that they would allow “businesses to use more of their hard-earned money in the way they see best, rather than having to send it to a government agency.”

In subsequent years, the cuts had the effect of weakening environmental protections for the state’s wetlands, springs and rivers threatened by pollution. To date, water district budgets statewide are still $400 million less than when Scott took office. Scott also repealed a 2010 law requiring septic tanks to be inspected once every five years to curtail toxic sewage flowing into freshwater streams. Environmentalists say that unregulated and unchecked leaky tanks are helping fuel algal blooms on the Gulf coast.

COVID-19 surge explodes Biden’s claim of “independence” from pandemic

Andre Damon

On July 4, President Joe Biden gave a speech in which he effectively asserted that the COVID-19 pandemic was over in America. Biden said the United States was “declaring our independence from a deadly virus… We can live our lives, our kids can go back to school, our economy is roaring back.”

It was a theme Biden has repeated in speech after speech. On May 13, he said America was nearing the “finish line” of the pandemic. On June 15, he said: “America is headed into the summer dramatically different from last year’s summer: a summer of freedom, a summer of joy, a summer of get-togethers and celebrations. An all-American summer that this country deserves after a long, long, dark winter that we’ve all endured.”

In reality, since Biden’s announcement of “independence” from COVID-19, cases have surged seven-fold and hospitalizations and deaths are rising as the dangerous Delta variant of the disease has become dominant. In the epicenters of the current pandemic outbreak—Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida—cases are at the highest level since January and are on track to set new records.

President Joe Biden speaks during an Independence Day celebration on the South Lawn of the White House, Sunday, July 4, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Throughout 2020, then-President Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that the pandemic would “disappear.” Trump’s lies were aimed at eliminating all social distancing measures that had been imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19, with the aim of getting workers back on the job to increase the profits of the financial oligarchy.

Biden’s lying declarations of “independence” from the pandemic had the same aim: to justify the abandonment of restrictions on the spread of COVID-19. “Take your mask off. You’ve earned the right,” Biden declared in May.

And just as Trump’s insistence on reopening businesses and schools fueled a massive resurgence of the pandemic, the Biden administration’s encouragement of Americans to abandon mask-wearing and social distancing has fueled what may become the greatest outbreak of the pandemic to date.

“Almost the same number of cases were reported today (70,264) as this day last year (71,600),” stated Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University on Sunday.

But the worst is yet to come. Last Wednesday, the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, a consortium of researchers working in consultation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), released a model showing that the number of daily US COVID-19 deaths could surge to 4,000 by October—the highest level of any period of the pandemic.

While this is the worst case scenario in the model, the study’s authors stress that the current surge of the pandemic is in line with their earlier worst case projections. “What’s going on in the country with the virus is matching our most pessimistic scenarios,” noted Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, who helps run the modeling hub.

This is an extraordinary warning. Despite the availability of vaccines, death rates could again reach the levels seen last fall—a predictable result of the policies of the Biden administration and other governments around the world.

CNN led its Sunday “State of the Union” program with an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to Biden. The moderator began with the question: “Do you think it’s really possible it could get that bad, 4,000 deaths a day?”

While Fauci did not answer the question directly, he gave a blunt warning: “We’re going in the wrong direction.”

Separately from the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, epidemiologist Eric Topol told New York Magazine that a likely scenario would lead to US cases surging to 250,000 a day—nearly four times the current rate. “We’re tracking right with the UK,” he said. “They got to 50,000-plus cases. And if you multiply that by five, for the population difference, we’d get to 250,000—that’s easy extrapolation. That could be where we’re heading.”

Topol warned ominously that 10 percent of those infected could experience major “long COVID” symptoms lasting weeks, months or even the victim’s entire life. As he put it, “[T]he ones that can’t work, the real, significant brain fog, the ones that really are suffering—it’s probably one out of 10.”

In the face of this disaster, with hundreds of thousands of people dying and tens of thousands suffering debilitating long-term symptoms, the US ruling class is demanding the continuation of its murderous “herd immunity” policy.

In an interview on NBC News Thursday evening, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky doubled down on the Biden administration’s demand that schools fully reopen this fall, months before any children under 12 will be eligible to be vaccinated.

Asked, “Is there any consideration, any scenario in which you might want to reverse yourself on reopening schools,” Walensky replied, “I remain emphatic that our schools need to open in the fall. They need to open for full, in-person learning.”

Asked if the “CDC is not recommending people who are fully vaccinated wear masks?” Walensky bluntly stated, “We are not.”

In its total indifference to the defense of human life in the face of the pandemic, the Biden administration is carrying out the common policy of the ruling classes throughout Europe, the Americas and virtually every other part of the world.

This is perhaps expressed most nakedly by the government of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In a tweet this past weekend, UK Health Minister Said Javid said the public must not “cower” from the disease, instead learning to “live with” the pandemic.

Epidemiologist Deepti Gurdasani, a leading author of the Lancet study condemning the UK government’s promotion of “herd immunity through mass infection,” denounced Javid’s statement, saying, “Caring isn’t cowardice. Removing protections from people when almost half of our population hasn’t been vaccinated to bow to ideology is.”

The UK is, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, carrying out a “test case” for whether it is possible to “enjoy something approaching pre-pandemic life in the face of fast transmitting versions of the virus.”

The Journal elaborated: “The experiment should give a strong signal of whether COVID-19 can be relegated to the status of a manageable, seasonal menace such as influenza and whether lockdowns and social distancing can be consigned to the past.”

This “experiment” is being repeated around the world, including in the United States. As former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb made clear last weekend, “The assumptions built into those models is no mitigation, no mandates for masks, no closures of businesses.” He added. “I think that’s likely to be the norm.”

In response to the total intransigence of governments on abandoning all social distancing measures and enforcing the full reopening of schools and businesses, the financial markets have surged, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting a record of 35,000 on Friday.

From the start of the pandemic, the response of governments around the world has been animated entirely by the aim of preserving the wealth and privileges of the financial oligarchy, at the expense of preserving human lives.

In response to the murderous “herd immunity” policies of the ruling class, workers must demand urgent measures to stop the spread of the disease, including the closure of all non-essential production facilities, work locations and schools, with full compensation for lost wages and trillions of dollars in additional health care spending to ensure the ability to test, track and isolate every case.

All students must be provided broadband internet and high quality computers, and additional teachers must be hired to ensure the best possible remote learning until the pandemic is brought under control.

As scientists have repeatedly made clear, COVID-19 can be contained and must be contained if millions more lives are to be saved.

New Zealand PM aligns with Washington over Indo-Pacific

John Braddock

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern used several key opportunities this month to firmly align the Labour-Green Party government with US imperialism’s escalating economic, diplomatic and military confrontation with China.

Speaking to an audience of diplomats and government officials at the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs conference, “Standing in the Future: New Zealand and the Indo-Pacific Region,” held in Wellington on July 14, Ardern for the first time embraced the phrase “Indo-Pacific” to describe NZ’s foreign policy positioning.

The use of the term by Washington and the Pentagon, rather than the Asia Pacific, signified a significant shift to an integrated strategy towards the Indian and Pacific Oceans aimed at encircling China. The Indo-Pacific Command based in Hawaii took over responsibility for planning and operations in the Indian Ocean and the US has markedly boosted military ties with India.

Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern (Source: Scott Morrison Facebook)

Ardern announced that New Zealand, along with other countries, is now adopting the Indo-Pacific “outlook” in reaction to “more challenging geopolitics.” Her government has faced increasingly strident demands from Washington and Canberra to fall into line with the US-led build-up to war, regardless of the impact on economic relations with China.

Led by US President Biden, the so-called “ Quad ”—the quasi-military alliance of the US, Japan, Australia and India—is ratcheting up the confrontation with China throughout the Indo-Pacific. Australia and Japan are formal US allies, while India is in a strategic partnership with Washington involving basing arrangements and arms sales.

Other imperialist powers, including Britain, France and Germany are also intervening to stoke preparations for war. In April, the British government dispatched a Carrier Strike Group to the region in its largest military deployment since the Falklands War. The NATO-backed operation involved a provocative sail-through in the South China Sea.

Ardern cloaked her remarks in hypocritical concerns about climate change and COVID-19. “The Indo-Pacific is to some degree at an inflection point ... The forms of cooperation needed to overcome COVID-19 require countries to let go of narrow nationalistic approaches,” she intoned. Ardern cynically declared that the term “Indo-Pacific” was often used to “exclude some nations from dialogue”—meaning China—but New Zealand would not use the phrase as a “subtext for exclusion.”

However, Ardern said New Zealand wanted a world where there was respect for “rules,” consistency in international law, open trade and investment, and transparency in foreign policy objectives and “initiatives beyond borders.” This echoes Washington’s demands that China abides by the “international rules-based order”, in which the US sets the rules.

Again lining up with the US, Ardern expressed “concerns” over the South China Sea, “including artificial island building, continued militarisation, and activities which pose risks to freedom of navigation and overflight.” Success in combatting these, she said, would depend on “working with the widest possible set of partners,” that is, the US and its allies.

The US has repeatedly conducted provocative “Freedom of Navigation Operations” challenging Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea and encouraged other countries to do the same.

Ardern used the Wellington conference to praise the Biden administration, declaring: “New Zealand’s relationship with the United States has deep roots, built over many decades of cooperation. We share values and have common interests in how the region operates.”

Biden’s National Security Council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell live-streamed into the conference, explicitly attacking China, whose diplomacy and economic activities, he claimed, “go against global norms and values.”

Campbell declared that the US is determined to maintain “peace and stability”—i.e. its own unchallenged hegemony—“through deterrence, through necessary military actions and through engagements with partners who share our interests.”

Clearly impressed with Ardern’s performance, Biden subsequently made a personal phone call. Ardern told the media the two leaders discussed the “stability of the Indo-Pacific region,” trade and investment, and the domestic and Pacific vaccine roll-outs. She again stressed that NZ and the US shared “common values and interests… including a commitment to an open and rules-based Indo-Pacific.”

The issue surfaced again during a special online meeting of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) leaders on July 17, convened by Ardern as the organisation’s current host. The stated aim was to discuss a “collaborative approach” to tackling the COVID pandemic, but, according to New Zealand Herald correspondent Fran O’Sullivan, “geopolitical tensions did still colour the event.”

While Biden attended, Chinese President Xi Jinping sidestepped it, his officials playing a video address instead. Both Xi and Biden emphasised their respective countries’ contribution to regional vaccine rollouts, with China announcing a $US3 billion fund.

However, as O’Sullivan wrote, “Biden went way beyond the APEC script, using the event to reiterate his commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” saying he hoped the region would adopt a “values-based” and “transparent” vision.

The government’s solidifying pro-Washington stance takes place against an increasingly bellicose anti-China propaganda campaign in the political and media establishment designed to stir up popular sentiment for war preparations.

New Zealand joined its Five Eyes allies—the US, Australia, UK and Canada—last week in condemning alleged Chinese state involvement in hacking. A particularly blunt official statement, headlined “New Zealand condemns malicious cyber activity by Chinese state-sponsored actors,” was described by a Radio NZ commentator as a signal to both China and NZ’s allies that “New Zealand can talk tough on China when it wants to.”

The Chinese embassy in Wellington dismissed the statement as a “malicious smear,” and urged the NZ government to “abandon the Cold War mentality.” The Chinese ambassador took the unusual step of summoning NZ foreign affairs officials to a meeting to protest the accusations.

NZ Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta released a statement declaring that areas of difference “need not define our relationship,” but New Zealand would “continue to promote the things that we believe in, and support the international rules-based system.”

Earlier in the month Labour MP Louisa Wall gained significant media attention after she told reporters on July 6 that she believed “genocide is happening” against the Uyghur population of Xinjiang. This blatant and inflammatory lie is being used by Washington as a potential “humanitarian” pretext for war.

Wall is part of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a network of 200 politicians from 20 parliaments. It includes members of the Australian Liberal and Labor parties, politicians from the UK, Canada, Germany and other European countries, and leading US anti-China hawks—Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Rob Menendez. IPAC’s website says it aims to “foster deeper collaboration between like-minded legislators” to develop “security strategies” to counter China.

Divisions persist within New Zealand’s ruling elite, with some business leaders clearly disturbed by the rapidly deteriorating relations. Export New Zealand executive director Catherine Beard said the trade repercussions of the government’s stance were a big concern but she hoped the two countries could “keep politics and trade separate.”

New Zealand China Council chair Don McKinnon, a former National Party deputy prime minister, warned: “Once you reach a stage where you feel you have to criticise China publicly… you’ve got to be prepared for the consequences of that… Trade with China means money in people’s pockets in New Zealand from one end of the country to the other.” China took more than $19 billion of New Zealand exports in the 12 months to June last year.

UK “Borders Bill” criminalises asylum-seekers

Julie Hyland

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government's Nationality and Border Bill has passed its second reading in parliament by 366 votes to 265.

The Bill criminalises asylum-seekers and migrants, overturns the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention and significantly strengthens the power of border agencies.

Its reading coincided with the government's so-called “Freedom Day” on July 19, when it lifted all remaining protections to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic, despite cases soaring.

Border force officials stand up as people thought to be migrants who made the crossing from France are brought into port after being picked up in the Channel by a British border force vessel in Dover, south east England, Thursday, July 22, 2021. AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Home Secretary Priti Patel claimed the Bill will “increase the fairness of our system” and “break the business model of people smuggling gangs”. It does nothing of the sort.

The government has already blocked all “legal” means for migrants to reach Britain, through fines on airlines and other transportation companies for allowing someone to travel without a visa. Between 2015 and 2019, less than 5,000 people a year were able to come to the UK through official channels. This at a time when the annual number of refugees worldwide rose from 15.48 million to 20.45 million, and the number of asylum-seekers from 2.32 million to 4.15 million. In 2020, due to the pandemic, asylum applications fell to 29,456, compared to 93,475 applications in France and 121,955 in Germany.

The official policy of creating a “hostile environment” for migrants and refugees means those arriving already face appalling conditions. On Sunday, an unidentified 24-year old Sudanese asylum seeker was found dead in a hotel near Heathrow airport. He had reportedly been housed at the Crowne Plaza, used by the government for asylum seekers, for four months, after several months sleeping rough in Calais. He is among some 29 asylum-seekers who had died in Home Office accommodation in the last year.

Many asylum seekers, often fleeing persecution and torture, that were placed in hotels during the pandemic are being “decanted” into barracks and similar inhuman accommodation. This follows the xenophobic campaign by former UK Independence Party leader, Nigel Farage, charging that migrants were living in “luxury” at “tax-payers expense.”

The Napier Barracks in Folkstone, a former military garrison, witnessed a mass outbreak of Covid-19 among its 300 detainees, followed by a fire that left many without electricity, heating or drinking water. There are also reports of children being placed in immigration removal centres with no concern for their welfare.

Nonetheless, the government and media are attempting to stoke a right-wing frenzy over desperate migrants braving the Channel crossing in tiny vessels to reach Britain, virtually the only route now open to them.

Some 8,000 people, including many women and children, have made the perilous journey this year. On Saturday, a small inflatable with 12 migrants from Iran, North and Eastern Africa, including children too young to walk, were filmed landing on the beach at Dungeness, Kent. They were some of more than 430 people estimated to have made the crossing that day.

The bill also criminalises those attempting to help refugees by redefining the offence of “facilitating” illegal immigration. While the pretext is clamping down on “people smugglers”, the real target is those providing humanitarian assistance. The volunteer Royal National Lifeboat Institution was derided by Farage as “a taxi service for illegal immigration” when it released a craft to search for the migrant boat in distress off the coast at Dungeness. The clear intent is to leave migrants to drown.

Those who do make it to shore will be classed as “illegal” immigrants, as only those making a resettlement claim from abroad, before arriving in Britain, will be considered. The maximum sentence for entering the country via “unofficial means” is to be increased from six months to four years.

These measures jettison the 1951 Convention which recognised that refugees, forced to flee by irregular routes, may be without visas, and protected those assisting refugees on humanitarian grounds from prosecution.

The Bill will increase the reliance of refugees and migrants on the real people-smugglers. The “business model” of these operations, referred to by Patel, depends on the wreckage caused by imperialism's plunder of the globe. The decades of war inflicted by the major powers in the Middle East and Africa especially has caused the collapse of entire countries, widespread economic and social dislocation to which must now been added the catastrophe of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Significantly, the Bill enables the setting up of offshore “accommodation and reception centres” in Europe and Africa. Patel is reportedly in discussions with Denmark's social democratic government to share an immigration centre in Rwanda. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's government last month adopted legislation enabling it to open asylum centres outside Europe. Those submitting an asylum application at the Danish border are to be flown to Africa while it is processed.

Attacks on asylum rights are escalating across Europe. In Sweden, under measures piloted by the Social Democrat-Green government, residence permits for refugees will be time-limited. In Spain, the Socialist Party-Podemos government, with European Union backing, has deployed the army to drive back migrants attempting to cross the border between Morocco and Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta.

This underscores the critical role in the assault on migrants played by the social democratic and pseudo-left parties that are increasingly adopting the slogans and policies of the far right. This is epitomised by the nationalist diatribe penned by Germany's Left Party leader, Sahra Wagenknecht, denouncing migrants and refugees as wage depressors, strike-breakers, and foreign cultural elements.

Britain is also working with France to strengthen border patrols.

This week, London agreed to pay Paris £54 million to double its anti-migrant police to 200, twice the amount it had initially settled on in November.

The agreement came under attack, with Tory MP Tim Loughton complaining that French border patrols “are not doing their part” to prevent crossings. One former immigration official called for the British military to be called in as the UK’s Border Force is just “operating a collection service from the Channel.”

Increasingly, the language used is one of war, with talk of migrant's “massing” on the French coast, and of a refugee “invasion.” A major factor behind such hysteria is intimidating opposition to the anti-migrant campaign. In January, protestors who broke into Stansted Airport in 2017 to stop a jet deporting people to Africa, won their appeal against convictions usually meted out to terrorists. In Glasgow in May, hundreds surrounded immigration officials attempting to detain two asylum-seekers, forcing their release.

The measures have been condemned by refugee agencies, with the United Nations describing the bill as a “neo-colonial approach”. The opposition Labour Party tabled an amendment to Patel’s Bill that, while referencing the breach of the 1951 Convention, focused on government incompetence over migration. Even this milquetoast complaint was overwhelmingly defeated.

UK media declares contact-tracing “pingdemic” to distract from raging pandemic

Thomas Scripps

Headline after headline in the past week has proclaimed the dawn of a “pingdemic”. The story goes that the National Health Service (NHS) test and trace app, which uses Bluetooth to detect when people have been in close contact with an infected person and notifies (“pings”) those who need to self-isolate, is causing havoc by forcing hundreds of thousands to absent themselves from work unnecessarily.

The Daily Telegraph, described by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as “my real boss”, has been most prolific, publishing the front-page stories, “Neighbours ‘pinged’ through walls by app”, “Freedom day farce as PM told to end ‘pingdemic’”, “Critical workers given route out of isolation to prevent ‘pingdemic’ laying country low”, “PM urged to expand Covid app exemptions” and “Pingdemic disrupts supermarket food supplies”.

“What kind of state are we in?” and “Now will Boris see sense on Pingdemic?”, asks the Daily Mail, as the “Shocking toll of pingdemic is laid bare” and “Top firms demand an end to ping peril”.

Railway passengers at London Euston station during rush hour on July 19, 2021 (credit: WSWS Media)

The Times has published, “Fears over shortages as stores hit by pandemic”; the Mirror, “Britain is grinding to a halt”; the Express, “Covid chaos as 500,000 ‘pinged’ in one week”.

A Google News search for the term “pingdemic” returns 2,590,000 results, despite its very recent origin.

The substitution of a supposed “pingdemic” for a very real and escalating pandemic is a calculated ploy, designed to create the impression that the biggest danger to the UK population is not COVID-19 but the measures used to contain it. Its purpose is to reinforce the message that we must all “learn to live with the virus.”

The big business mouthpieces in the media are effectively regurgitating former US President Donald Trump’s infamous assertions that test and trace procedures “create more cases”. In a series of interviews last July, Trump told reporters that testing in the US was “really skew[ing] the numbers” and “in a way, we’re creating trouble”. He demanded of his officials at a campaign rally, “slow the testing down”.

The real responsibility for the huge numbers of people currently required to self-isolate in the UK does not lie with an inaccurate or “oversensitive” app. It lies with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative government’s catastrophic herd immunity policy. The spiraling numbers of self-isolations are a reflection of the already rapidly escalating number of infections and an anticipation of more to come.

In the week to July 15, just under 619,000 self-isolation alerts were sent out by the NHS app. In the same week, 240,307 confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported in England, giving an entirely plausible average of 2.6 close contact alerts per case. According to the Office for National Statistics coronavirus survey, one person in 75 had the virus in the week to July 17, or 832,000 people.

Specific examples paint the same picture. At the Iceland supermarket chain, where 1,000 workers are self-isolating, fully 27 percent have tested positive for the virus. This means 2.3 people isolating for every confirmed case, discounting of course infections they may have been exposed to outside of the workplace.

In any scientifically based pandemic response, a test and trace system would not have to deal with such large numbers of contacts. Cases of the virus would be brought to a sufficiently low level, by lockdowns as required, and kept there with the necessary measures such as mask wearing, adequate ventilation, social distancing and ultimately vaccines, so that only small, isolated outbreaks would have to be traced.

Johnson, however, is not using contact tracing to control the virus. The test and trace system has been maintained to apply the veneer of a public health response to the thoroughly anti-scientific policy of “allowing the virus to let rip throughout the nation,” in the recent words of the British Medical Association.

For the same reason, next to nothing is in place to support those asked to self-isolate, as has remained the case throughout the pandemic. If workers’ employers do not grant sick pay, they are left on an unliveable £96.35 a week, with a miserly £500 grant nominally available to those on low incomes.

Business leaders are pushing for Johnson to dispense with the charade altogether and bring forward the August 16 date for ending all self-isolation requirements so that profit-making can resume unimpeded. Tony Danker, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry, said Britain risked “grinding to a halt”, complaining, “The current approach to self-isolation is closing down the economy rather than opening it up.”

Their demands will soon be enacted. Speaking to Times Radio on Tuesday, business minister Paul Scully said whether to self-isolate or not after being alerted by the app was “up to individuals and employers”.

The government distanced itself from these remarks but announced yesterday that double-vaccinated workers in 16 key sectors would no longer have to self-isolate if alerted by the app or contacted by NHS test and trace. Instead, they will have to prove negative on a PCR test and take daily lateral flow tests for the next 10 days. These steps are a precursor to the scrapping of self-isolation more broadly, and ultimately of all serious test and trace procedures.

As over 1,200 scientists and doctors have warned, the breakneck removal of public health restrictions will leave millions of people vulnerable to unacceptable levels of risk. The millions of infections registered in the next months will leads to thousands of deaths, multiple times more cases of debilitating illness, and severe strain on the NHS. They will also give the virus ample opportunity to develop new and possibly more dangerous variants. On Friday it was confirmed by Public Health England that a new coronavirus variant, known as B.1.621, is under investigation. Sixteen confirmed cases of B.1.621 have been identified across Britain.

The homicidal “pingdemic” narrative, that all of this suffering should be allowed to take place without the added inconvenience and financial hardship of self-isolation, can only gain traction thanks to the complicity of the Labour Party and the trade unions. They have responded to the “pingdemic” not by denouncing the policy of mass infection but by demanding the Tory government find a way to end the disruption.

Unite Assistant General Secretary Steve Turner, touted by sections of the pseudo-left milieu as a possible “left” leader of the union in ongoing elections, said, “The reports Unite is receiving from our members and their employers are extremely worrying. It is not an exaggeration to say factories are on the verge of shutting and that at some sites hundreds of staff are off work…

“The government absolutely must not wait until August 16 to come up with a solution to significantly reduce the amount of people self-isolating unnecessarily.”

At the Nissan car plant in Sunderland, where some 900 workers are self-isolating, the Unite union praised management for having “done brilliantly” in preventing production lines shutting down.

Workers must reject the choice offered by the ruling class between herd immunity and mass self-isolation, or unmitigated herd immunity. The wealth and scientific knowledge exists in abundance to permanently suppress and, in time, end the pandemic. But it is monopolised by the major corporations who will accept no more public health measures cutting into profits.