Who Won Germany’s Election in 2021?

Thomas Kilkauer & Meg Young

Germany’s recent election had a few surprises and will lead to a new government. Overall, Germany’s recent election, held on 26^th September 2021 had a participation rate of 76,6% compared to 76.2% in 2017. In other words, ¾ of Germans voted.

All in all, 25.7% voted for the center-mildly-progressive social-democratic party SPD. With that, the SPD overtook Germany’s conservatives and strong-state favoring CDU – Angela Merkel’s political party – sitting at 24.1%.

The environmental Green party received less than expected ending up with 14.8%. While Germany’s truly neoliberal party, the FDP, did surprisingly well with 11.5%.  Germany’s Neo-Nazi party, the AfD lost a little bit of support arriving at 10.3%, but has established itself as a 10%-party. Finally, Germany’s socialist party, the Linke, received just 4.9% but entered the parliament because the party managed to get three candidates elected in local constituencies. This rule renders the 5% barrier obsolete. And, with a raft of micro-parties shared the remaining 8.7%.

Germany’s electoral system gives every German two votes: one vote is for the local candidate in a specific electorate (first past-the-post system) while the second vote is calculated on proportional representation.

In terms of a regional distribution of voting, Germany can roughly be divided into three regions. Central and north Germany voted social-democratic (shown as red), the two southern states Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria voted for conservative (shown as black), while two former East-Germany states – Thuringia and Saxony – voted for the Neo-Nazi party AfD (shown as brown). The map is lightened up by a few green spots as Germany’s environmental Green party does well in cities and in so-called university towns. Again, education plays a major role.

AfD and CDU voters tend to be less educated than neoliberal FDP, many SPD, and the vast majority of Green voters. Geeen voters have the highest proportion of university educated supporters and devotees with PhDs. Perhaps the English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was not entirely wrong when saying, conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. Donald Trump was not wrong either when saying, I love the poorly educated. Germany’s conservatives and Neo-Nazis love them too.

While corporate mass media pre-celebrate the SPD’s Olaf Scholz as Merkel’s successor and winner of the election, the electoral numbers tell a rather different story. To understand German politics one might group the six parties that have entered Germany’s parliament into two blocs:

1) There is a Neo-Nazi-reactionary-neoliberal-conservative bloc consisting of the Neo-Nazi AfD, the neoliberal FDP, and Merkel’s reactionary CDU;

2) The second bloc is made up of the environmentalist Green party, the traditional and moderately social-democratic SPD (Olaf Scholz’s party), and the radical-social-democratic or semi-socialist Die Linke (most likely this would be Rosa Luxemburg’s party – if right-wing death squad and SS predecessors would not have killed Rosa Luxemburg in 1919).

When looking at German politics from the perspective of these two blocs, one sees that the first bloc – the Neo-Nazi-reactionary-neoliberal-conservative bloc – received 45.9% of popular support. By contrast, the environmental-social-democratic bloc received microscopically less, sitting at 45.4%. In other words, more Germans voted for the Neo-Nazi-reactionary-neoliberal-conservative bloc than for the progressive bloc.

Most interesting is the fact that Germany remains a country in which twice as many people voted for the ideological successors of those who had once built Auschwitz compared to those who were, next to Jews, inmates in Auschwitz: communists like Hermann Langbein who survived Auschwitz and wrote one of the best books ever written on Auschwitz. This is, of course, not to say that all AfD voters are Neo-Nazis and that all those who run the AfD are Neo-Nazis. The AfD has very cleverly given itself the public image – mostly represented by the Swiss-resident and lesbian Weidel – of being just another populist party. In the end, 10% voted for the AfD while barely half (4.9%) voted for the ex-communist and semi-socialist Die Linke.

In terms of who changes their vote, Merkel’s CDU lost about two million voters to the SPD. The SPD has been highly successful in attracting the so-called “grey vote”. These are the people over 60 years of age. This used to be the traditional voting reservoir of Germany’s conservatives (the CDU).

They make up 40% of German voters, and they favoured the social-democratic SPD. On the other side of the coin, almost 20% of young voters between the age of 18 and 29 voted for the staunchly neoliberal FDP. Surprisingly, the AfD’s reservoir is not just old men but also men between the age of 30 and 44. Overall, the AfD remains twice as strong in former East-Germany compared to the rest of Germany.

While the SPD gained strongly from the CDU, it also gained 420,000 votes from the AfD; 520,000 from the neoliberal FDP; 820,000 from the Linke, and 700,000 from the environmental Greens. The bloodletting of the Linke to the SPD constitutes a severe hit for Germany’s socialists.

Overall, the SPD has been successful in attracting conservative voters from whom it gained roughly 3 million votes (CDU, AfD, FDP) compared to just 152,000 votes from Greens and the Left. In other words, the SPD won by attracting conservative voters – not by attracting environmental voters and left-wing voters. And, the SPD also won by attracting voters who previously had not voted at all. From those, the SPD received a further 1.25 million votes.

All this is translated into political reality through the distribution of seats in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. Replacing Merkel’s CDU as the strongest party in the parliament, the SPD gets 206 seats. Merkel’s CDU gets 196 seats – just ten seats less than the SPD. The environmental Greens gets 118 while the neoliberal FDP gets 92.

The Neo-Nazi AfD will have 83 seats and the semi-socialist party, the Left, will have just 39 seats. In other words, Germany’s Neo-Nazis are twice as strong as the ex-communists. By historical comparison, Germany’s last democratic election prior to Nazism was the November 1932 election. Despite rampant Nazi terrors, Hitler received 44% and the communists only 12%. Today’s Neo-Nazis are nowhere close – Germany today is not like Weimar in 1933.

Compared to 2017, Germany’s conservative lost 50 seats; the SPD gained 53 seats; Neo-Nazis lost eleven seats; neoliberal FDP gained 12 seats; the Left lost 30 seats; and the environmental Greens gained 51 seats. Four issues have been remarkable:

+ Firstly, the heavy losses of the CDU – even in local constituencies – came as a shock for the CDU and its unloved candidate Armin Laschet.

+ Secondly, the strong decline of the Linke came as a surprise just as the strong gains of the selfish, individualistic, neoliberal, “give-me-my-BMW-now” FDP.

+ Thirdly, the Greens were seen as a strong contender to replace Merkel in the weeks and months before the election. Suddenly, the party lost support.

+ Lastly, some argued, the Green’s Robert Habeck would have done better than Annalena Baerbock. Virtually, the same is said about the conservatives where Bavaria’s Markus Söder remains vastly more popular than Armin Lachet.

If one takes the aforementioned right-vs.-left bloc as a guide, Germany’s conservatives have a slight majority of parliament seats (371) compared to the progressives’ 363 seats. Yet, it is just eight more seats, nevertheless, it is a majority. Yet, the CDU remains unlikely to govern Germany as two options for coalition making are discussed.

German politics operates with party-indicating colours: SPD (red), Linke (red), Greens (green), FDP (Yellow), the AfD (mistakenly seen as blue but should be brown), and Merkel’s conservatives (black).

Merkel’s CDU shies away from a coalition with the AfD. This is based on a historical precedent. In 1933, German conservatives (black) supported Adolf Hitler (brown) in a multi-party coalition. In the 1930s, Hitler was never elected. Hitler never had 50% of voter support in a free election. In any case, German conservatives have become extremely reluctant to entertain a coalition with Germany’s Neo-Nazis, the AfD. This takes out 83 seats leaving Germany’s conservative bloc with just 288 seats – well below a majority to run a government. As a consequence, a progressive coalition is the more likely option. There are two options currently discussed:

1) The so-called traffic light coalition consisting of SPD (red), FDP (yellow) and Greens (green); and

2) The so-called Jamaica coalition based on the flag of Jamaica: CDU (black); Greens (green); and FDP (yellow)

Since the CDU is in the process of blaming, internal fights, and a deep crisis, recent polls have shown that Merkel’s party has further declined in popularity. Its leader, Armin Laschet, is today more unpopular than a month ago. As a consequence, most people expect a traffic light coalition. SPD, FDP and Greens do know that a continuation of a CDU/SPD coalition, this time not with Merkel but with Olaf Scholz as chancellor, is still possible. A CDU/SPD coalition would have a 401 seats strong majority. Yet, after many years of that – under Merkel’s leadership – Germans do not want a continuation of a CDU/SPD government. They want something different.

Behind the right-wing, anti-immigrant marches in Chile

Mauricio Saavedra

The recent series of violent marches in Chile against economic refugees, mainly from Venezuela, is the end product of a four-year anti-immigrant campaign whipped up by the right-wing government of the country’s billionaire president, Sebastian Piñera. The most serious incidents occurred September 25 when a mob of 5,000 marched through the northern port city of Iquique. By the end of the day, the mob lit a large bonfire in the middle of a square and burnt the Venezuelans’ documents, prams, toys, clothes, tents and whatever other little possessions they had.

Residents take part in a march against migration, in Iquique, Chile, Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Ignacio Munoz)

Based on reports, not one arrest was made even though there was a real danger of asylum seekers being lynched. The events indict the capitalist state, which has sanctioned and fostered the expressions of national chauvinism and xenophobia for electoral purposes.

That at a certain point fascist and ultra-nationalist dregs took the lead is obvious. Yet in the throng were also state officials. It has come to light that involved in the march were figures such as the mayor of Colchane, the director of a private school, and the government-appointed director of the Iquique Free Trade Zone, Felipe Hübner Valdivieso. More were surely lurking in the crowd.

Earlier in September, the government announced it would start expelling so-called “illegal migrants” on the basis of a new Migration Law enacted in April that facilitates deportations.

The Piñera administration had already deported 321 refugees this year and intended to carry out 1,500 more deportations before the United Nations intervened to urge their suspension. This is because human rights and migration advocates revealed that Department of Immigration and the PDI carried out mass raids on immigrants, launched mass arrests without warrants, held them incommunicado, denied them legal representation and proceeded to expel them en masse disregarding constitutional norms and guarantees, including due process.

“The Chilean government must immediately stop these collective expulsions of immigrants, as they have the right to an individual assessment of their cases,” the UN office for Human Rights in South America stated.

“Deportations cannot be carried out in a summary manner, but require an individual assessment, taking into account the humanitarian considerations,” added Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, Felipe González Morales.

Only the day before the march, Carabinero officers violently evicted 100 refugee families from Plaza Brasil, a public square in Iquique, on the grounds that their makeshift camp represented a health risk.

In announcing the reactivation of evictions, Interior Minister Rodrigo Delgado cynically remarked that it was “not permitted to use public spaces for leisure and recreational purposes to set up temporary housing.”

Several thousand undocumented Venezuelans, Haitians, Colombians, Peruvians and Bolivians who have entered through Chile’s increasingly militarized borders have been stranded in Iquique and Arica—the northernmost town bordering Peru—for months. Homeless, destitute and denied government assistance, they’ve had to set up donated tents on public squares, on the beach or on barricaded streets without the most rudimentary amenities. The camp in Plaza Brasil had been occupied since 2020.

On Friday September 24, cops “started to tear down our tents and here we were, standing on a corner, looking to see what we could grab, where we could spend the night with our children. Because we really have nowhere to sleep, we have nowhere to stay,” Venezuelan refugee Mariana Contreras told El Ciudadano.

“We witnessed the beating of minors and pregnant women,” wrote social and human rights groups in a communiqué that called for the guarantee of refugee rights that the Piñera government has brazenly trampled underfoot. In contrast to the Carabineros’ velvet glove approach towards Saturday’s marchers, up to 14 asylum seekers were detained.

Aided by the media monopolies Grupo Copesa and El Mercurio, with their inflated and salacious reports of supposed migrant crime waves, drug trafficking and delinquency, the Piñera government is attempting to recreate the same foul political atmosphere that brought it to power with the support of the extreme right in 2018. Piñera has calculated that by dehumanizing migrants—the poorest and most vulnerable section of the working class and oppressed—he may be able to increase his diminishing chances of winning the November presidential election.

March after police kill a Haitian migrant, Aug 2021 (Photo: Twitter / Coordinadora de inmigrantes)

During the last election cycle, right-wing and parliamentary left candidates ran on a platform calling for restrictions on migrant intakes, particularly excluding nationals from poverty-stricken Haiti and Venezuela. Piñera accused migrants of “importing evils like delinquency, drug trafficking and organized crime.”

The outgoing government of Socialist Party president Michelle Bachelet set the stage for this anti-immigrant crackdown with a draft immigration bill that purportedly sought to update Chile’s decades-old migration law, but in reality focused on strengthening border security.

The fact is that the Haitian migrants and refugees detoured into Chile in 2016 and 2017—an estimated 150,000 Haitians arrived during this period—because their destination of choice, the US, was closed off by the resumption of mass deportations by the Obama administration, which only escalated under Trump.

Once in power, Piñera put his program into practice with two executive decrees that particularly targeted Venezuelans and Haitians who were confronting a worsening economic and political situation caused primarily by Washington’s decades-long imperialist meddling.

The first decree ended the system that had previously allowed Haitians to go from being “tourists” to regular migrants once they obtained a job, and then to seek family reunifications. Now Haitians had to obtain a maximum 90-day tourist visa before entering the country and show bank statements, a criminal record check and a hotel reservation or notarized letter of invitation. Family reunification applications were limited to 10,000 and had a duration of 12 months, making a mockery of the concept. The calculated objective was to make conditions so unbearable and discriminatory that Haitians would leave.

The second decree affected the Venezuelan exodus. Piñera unveiled his “Democratic Responsibility Visa” with anti-communist rhetoric directed against the bourgeois nationalist regime of President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas. Yet the purpose of this visa was also to stem the influx of Venezuelans by requiring a visa before entry for a 12-month stay, renewable once.

To put the issue into perspective, there were an estimated 489,000 migrants in 2017, increasing to 1.3 million in 2018; 1.45 million in 2019 and 1.46 million in 2020. In four years, migrants went from 2.65 percent of the population to roughly seven percent, but their numbers have remained stagnant since. Along with the anti-immigration policies, the 2019 mass anti-capitalist movement and the pandemic ground regular migration to a halt.

Migration nonetheless continued but through precarious and vulnerable irregular entries. Between January 2018 and January 2021, there were over 35,400 entries through unauthorized crossing points. In the first six months of this year this number increased to 23,675.

It is these desperate people, many of whom have travelled thousands of miles through the Amazon jungle and Andean plateau just to reach irregular border crossings into Chile, who are targeted in this cynical political exercise.

Harvard University student workers overwhelmingly authorize strike

Andrew Timon & Josh Varlin

Student workers at Harvard University, members of the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers (HGSU-UAW), voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike in a vote that ended September 30, with 91.7 percent (1,860 members) voting in favor. The union says that 386 new student workers joined the union during the vote, which was only available to members. The last strike of Harvard graduate students lasted most of December 2019 but did not achieve strikers’ demands.

Harvard grad strikers at a gate to the university, 2020.

In fact, since the union began negotiating with the administration in October 2018, Harvard has not made any significant concession to key demands from student workers regarding wages, benefits and working conditions.

The HGSU-UAW is calling for salary increases of 5.75 percent, 4.5 percent and 3 percent in the three years of an agreement, retroactive to July 1, 2021. It is also calling for a $21-an-hour minimum wage for hourly student workers with $0.50 increases in following years. Harvard University is proposing raises of 2.5, 3 and 3 percent, with a $19 minimum wage for hourly workers followed by $0.50 increases in the following two years.

Neither proposal meets the needs of student workers. Even if the union’s proposal were adopted in full, which is highly unlikely, with inflation currently running at 5 percent annually, workers would be treading water and then experience falling wages in real terms.

The union does not mention once the COVID-19 pandemic and the dangers it poses to those working in person. The demands related to health and safety only reiterate health and safety laws already in place. They write: “SWs [student workers] will be provided with a safe University workspace and will not be required to work in conditions that pose an unnecessary threat to their health and safety. Towards that end, the University has policies in place to provide such a safe workplace; will maintain such policies during the life of this Agreement; and may improve such policies at its discretion.” In other words, the contract allows for what is “safe” to be up to the discretion of the university and the policies of the ruling class as a whole, not what is actually safe for workers, while sending student workers back into classrooms during a deadly pandemic.

As of yet the union bargaining committee is not calling for a strike, instead ostensibly using the threat of a strike at an unspecified future point as leverage, according to their recent Halloween-inspired post, to “spook Harvard and win the contract we deserve.” A similar tactic was utilized in June when the union sent a letter of intent to strike signed by over 500 grad student workers. Yet only four days after the letter was received, the bargaining committee began a membership vote to extend the contract after a 5-5 deadlock on the question of a strike.

The context of the two-month extension of the now-expired contract is important for student workers to consider.

During the contract extension vote, a strike by roughly 2,900 Volvo Trucks autoworkers in southwestern Virginia was reaching a decisive turning point after the workers had voted down three UAW-backed sellout contracts. Volvo Trucks workers took matters into their own hands by building the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee, which raised workers’ demands against the opposition of the corporatist UAW.

Just as the UAW blacked out coverage of the strike at other auto factories, the HGSU-UAW leadership made no mention of the struggles taking place by their class brothers and sisters and gave no perspective or strategy of linking their struggles in conjunction with a “no” vote in the extension of the no-strike contract.

The fact that only 61.5 percent of members supported a contract extension even though the HGSU provided no alternative and that students turned out to vote overwhelmingly to authorize a strike signifies the growing militancy of student workers and their opposition to the conditions sanctioned by the previous contract.

In this struggle, graduate workers must recognize their allies and their enemies. Harvard University, the oldest in the United States, is tied inextricably to its $41.9 billion endowment, the largest university endowment on the planet. The endowment, which has skyrocketed along with the stock market during the pandemic even as millions have died, provides about twice as much revenue as student enrollment fees for the university.

The process underlying these developments is an education system more and more dependent on and influenced by financing from ever-increasing market gains and wealthy donors, themselves enriched by financial parasitism. Yet these gains for the financial aristocracy are themselves dependent upon the further intensification of the exploitation of the working class and cuts in social spending, infrastructure and the living standards of working people.

Workers face not only the university and the financial aristocracy that funds it, but the UAW, a corporatist apparatus of highly paid executives (450 “earn” six-figure salaries), whose top officials have recently been convicted of taking bribes from auto companies or embezzling workers’ dues.

Like Harvard, the UAW is also deeply tied to the financial markets. Despite losing more than a million members over the last four decades, the UAW saw its assets grow to over $1.1 billion, $725 million of which is in investments. Just as the Harvard endowment cannot be touched for the living wage of student workers, so too the UAW strike fund is barely utilized, paying out only $250 a week to striking General Motors workers in 2019, for example, while UAW executives use it as a multimillion -dollar piggy bank for themselves.

The UAW’s efforts in recent years to unionize academic workers is driven by the desire to offset the loss of membership among industrial workers by opening up a new source of dues income from academic workers. A demand of the HGSU-UAW in the latest contract is that those who choose not to join the union should nevertheless have a service fee equivalent to union dues, deducted from their pay.

For the financial managers of Harvard and the labor managers of the UAW, the maintenance of their luxurious existence means the maintenance of the continued exploitation of the working class. The deepening social crisis, which the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating, is driving workers into struggle against the capitalist system and its defenders, including in the unions.

In this struggle, Harvard workers have powerful allies. There are 6,000 unionized Harvard employees, most of whom have contracts expiring this year, but the unions have made no attempt to unite these struggles. Less than an hour away in Worcester, Massachusetts, hundreds of nurses have been on strike for months, the longest such strike in state history. Graduate workers at Columbia University in New York City, also UAW members, have voted to authorize a strike, while thousands of workers in the auto industry are demanding strike action against sellout deals negotiated by the UAW. Workers internationally are also on strike, from Sri Lankan educators to South African metalworkers to German health care workers.

New Zealand COVID-19 outbreak grows after restrictions eased

Tom Peters

In the week since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that New Zealand would be “transitioning” away from its previous strategy of eliminating COVID-19, with more restrictions in Auckland to be lifted, the outbreak of the highly-infectious Delta variant has continued to rapidly expand.

Medical staff test shoppers who volunteered at a pop-up community COVID-19 testing station at a supermarket carpark in Christchurch, New Zealand. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

On Sunday, 60 new cases were reported, the highest daily figure since September 1. This was followed by 35 on Monday and 43 today, bringing the total active cases to 469—an increase of 175 in the space of a week.

With thousands of workers permitted to travel to and from Auckland, people have recently tested positive for the virus in the neighbouring Waikato and Northland regions, prompting the government to extend the “level 3” lockdown to those regions.

The outbreak was initially detected on August 17 and the country went into a strict level 4 lockdown the next day. Since then, however, the lockdown has been lifted in most of the country, while in Auckland it was eased to “level 3” on September 22, allowing up to 300,000 people to return to workplaces.

The media and the Labour Party-led government claim that the level 4 lockdown, among the strictest in the world, wasn’t working. This is a lie. The size of the outbreak shrank from a high point of 731 active cases on September 3, to just 202 cases on September 28, as the vast majority had recovered. Since then, however, the relaxation of restrictions has caused case numbers to more than double.

The number of daily reported cases that were infectious in the community (i.e. not isolated at home) prior to being tested has also increased, from single figures prior to September 22, to between 20 and 31 in recent days. The total number of unlinked cases in the past 14 days (where the source of transmission is not known) stands at 74, compared with just seven on September 22.

Amid this expanding outbreak, the government’s decision to abandon elimination has triggered alarm among public health experts, doctors, teachers and other workers, both in New Zealand and internationally. The decision was not based on scientific advice, but on the requirements of big business, which has demanded—via the corporate media and the opposition National Party—that the government reopen the schools and workplaces before it is safe to do so.

Ardern yesterday backed down from her announcement a week earlier that the government planned to reopen schools in Auckland on October 18. Radio NZ reported on October 7 that the reopening threatened to provoke “a teacher backlash,” based on members’ feedback to the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association. The government has not decided on a new date for reopening.

The Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Auckland region chairperson Michael Cabral-Tarry said “a good prerequisite [for schools reopening] might be 80 percent [of eligible people fully vaccinated] in those communities where Delta is still rampant.” The unions are also supporting a vaccine mandate for school staff. These measures would still leave many people unvaccinated, including all children aged under 12, and would not be sufficient to stop outbreaks.

Public health experts have spoken out against the government’s easing of restrictions in Auckland, which includes allowing people from different households to meet, and allowing outdoor recreational activities to resume. The government has forecast that it intends to allow retail and hospitality outlets to open in coming weeks.

Epidemiologist Michael Baker told the Guardian yesterday that the country’s outbreak was “on an exponential growth curve.” If the government loosened restrictions, “there’s only one way [case numbers] can go and that’s up. This is really simple. This is where every epidemiologist and disease modeler will agree 100 percent. Don’t do it.”

University of Otago senior lecturer Lesley Gray told Radio NZ on October 9: “Loosening alert levels at a time when we frankly do not have high enough vaccination rates, full stop, seems to be a very risky strategy.” She said the virus had already spread out of Auckland and further spread could be expected, adding that “we as a population should not really be prepared to accept this.”

Just 47 percent of the total population has received both shots of the Pfizer vaccine. The rate among Maori, who are among the most impoverished sections of the working class, is just over 30 percent.

Epidemiologist professor Nick Wilson told Stuff yesterday: “The government seems to be throwing up its hands,” with no clear direction after giving up on elimination. He called for a stronger border around Auckland and between the North and South Islands.

Professor Rod Jackson agreed, saying no one should travel to the South Island without being fully vaccinated and tested. He also warned that a 90 percent vaccination rate was “not good enough” to stop the disease from spreading, adding: “You don’t want people with COVID getting in until you are 95 percent vaccinated.”

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives are at risk if case numbers continue to expand at the present rate.

Andrew Stapleton, chair of the College of Intensive Care Medicine, told Stuff on October 7 that hospitals would not be able to cope with any surge in COVID-19 patients, unless another level 4 lockdown is imposed to reduce the overall burden of hospital admissions.

Dr Alex Psirides, from the Australia and New Zealand Intensive Care Society, told Newshub he was “afraid of the healthcare system I work in being overwhelmed” if case numbers get out of control. New Zealand has 324 staffed ICU beds at present, with 67 percent occupied. The number of ICU beds per capita is less than Australia and the UK, where hospitals have been thrown into crisis by COVID-19.

Despite these warnings, including from scientists who have advised the government in the past, Ardern told Radio NZ yesterday: “What we are doing today is no different to what we were doing on day one of this outbreak. We continue to work really hard to aggressively stamp out every case that we have.”

Indian foreign secretary visits Sri Lanka amid rising tensions with China

Vijith Samarasinghe

Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla made a four-day visit to Sri Lanka last week as part of New Delhi’s efforts to pressure Colombo to break its close ties with China.

Indian Foreign Minister Harsh Vardhan Shringla [Source: Wikimedia]

Shringla met with President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and other top officials, including finance and foreign ministers Basil Rajapakse and G.L. Peiris respectively. He also visited the strategic Trincomalee oil storage facility on the eastern coast and Jaffna in the Northern Province.

The visit occurred as the US and its allies, including India, are intensifying war preparations against China across the Indo-Pacific. It follows last month’s military agreement involving Australia, the UK and the US. Known as AUKUS, the deal, which will see the US supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, is targeting Chinese naval activities in the Pacific Ocean.

The trip also coincided with Colombo’s preparations for a ground-breaking ceremony at the Chinese-built Colombo Port City (CPC) on reclaimed land adjoining Colombo harbour. The CPC is part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative to counter US attempts to encircle China. New Delhi wants to remind the Rajapakse regime of Indian and US concerns about Beijing’s influence in Sri Lanka. Two weeks ago, the Indian and Sri Lankan foreign ministers held talks during UN General Assembly meetings in New York.

Shringla began his tour with a visit to the main Buddhist Shrine in Kandy, a token gesture of assurance to the Sinhala-Buddhist ruling elite, and then travelled to the Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm near the strategic deep-water port. The Indian Oil Company (IOC) currently operates 15 of the 99 tanks at the facility. New Delhi is seeking a new agreement that gives it extensive control over this key facility. Colombo has so far sidestepped these demands.

In Jaffna, Shringla inspected progress of some Indian-funded projects, including the $US11 million Jaffna Cultural Centre building. New Delhi sees these projects, which were offered by India following the bloody ending of the 30-year communal war in 2009, as a means of establishing its influence on the island and particularly in Sri Lanka’s north.

Back in Colombo, Shringla held talks with President Rajapakse, reportedly on issues that had been “straining relations” between the two countries. These include, security, growing Chinese influence and Indian investment projects. He also called for full implementation of the 13th Amendment to Sri Lankan Constitution, which was part of 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord that established provincial councils with limited devolution of powers, as a concession to theisland’s Tamil elite.

New Delhi wants Colombo to implement these power-sharing arrangements, not out of any concerns about democratic rights of the island’s Tamils, but as a lever to pressure Colombo to break its close ties with Beijing and more closely integrate with the US-India military-strategic partnership against China. The Indian elite also hope to use the Tamil elite in Sri Lanka to further its influence in Colombo.

President Rajapakse told Shringla: “Sri Lanka would not be allowed to be used for any activity that could pose a threat to India’s security.” New Delhi, he said, should “not … have any doubts” about Sri Lanka’s relationship with China. The president explained that his vision was to “reinstate India-Sri Lanka relations to the level that existed in 1960s and 1970s under Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike.”

However, reflecting Colombo’s aversion to any power-sharing with the Tamil elite, Rajapakse added the caveat that it was necessary to “understand the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the 13th Amendment.” He cynically declared that his government was committed to developing the North and East and resolving postwar issues, such as returning the land seized by the military and compensating the families of missing persons from the war.

Shringla addressed an event marking the inauguration of Indian Development Corporation projects in Sri Lanka, declaring that these projects would “employ local companies” and “use Sri Lankan material and labour.” He also met with the representatives of Tamil bourgeois parties, including the Tamil National Alliance and Tamil Progressive Alliance, as well as the Ceylon Workers Congress, the main plantation workers’ union.

New Delhi is increasingly concerned about Colombo’s economic dependence on China. Since Rajapakse became president in November 2019, China has secured several key infrastructure and investment projects and completed the first stage of the CPC, with construction of its second stage starting soon.

India and the US regard these projects as a flouting of their authority in the Indian Ocean region. New Delhi is also concerned that some Indian investment plans are being held back by Colombo, while Chinese projects are proceeding.

Early this year, Sri Lanka unilaterally withdrew from a $500 million deal with India and Japan to develop the partially-built Eastern Terminal of the Colombo Port. Late last month, however, the Sri Lankan Port Authority signed a $700-million agreement with India’s Adani Group to build a Western Terminal in Colombo Port.

The Rajapakse government has tried to appease Indian concerns over cancellation of the Eastern Terminal project. The Indian media has commented, however, that the cancelled port deal “hurt the credibility of the Sri Lankan government” and India will continue to push for its resumption.

There is anxiety within the Sri Lankan ruling class about the potential political repercussions of a falling out with the US and India. The Rajapakses in particular are nervous. In 2015, Mahinda Rajapakse was ousted as president in a Washington-orchestrated regime-change operation that brought the pro-US Sirisena-Wickremesinghe regime to power.

While Colombo is reliant on Beijing to keep Sri Lanka’s heavily-indebted economy alive, it is trying to maintain advanced strategic and military ties with the US and India initiated by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe regime.

The eighth “Mitra Shakthi”—joint army exercises between India and Sri Lanka—were held during Shringla’s trip. The Indian foreign minister also discussed this year’s forthcoming Colombo Security Conclave (CSC) meeting. The CSC, which is a security and intelligence network involving India, Sri Lanka and Maldives, will soon induct other Indian allies in the region, such as Bangladesh, Seychelles and Mauritius.

The Rajapakse regime’s political balancing act is untenable, amid growing geo-political tensions between the US and India on one side and China on the other. 

Nobel Prize in medicine awarded to the discovery of the cellular mechanism behind the sense of touch

Benjamin Mateus

This year the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine awarded the prize in medicine to two researchers from the US for their efforts in elucidating the molecular and genetic mysteries behind the sense of touch. The recipients, Dr. David Julius of the University of San Francisco and Dr. Ardem Patapoutian of Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, were jointly awarded this week “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.”

Drs. Ardem Patapoutian and David Julius, Nobel laureates in Medicine 2021

Professor Abdel El Manira, a neuroscientist and member of the Nobel committee, explained that “without the receptors we would not be able to sense our world, to feel the urge to pull our hand from a flame, or even stand upright. The discoveries have profoundly changed our view of how we sense the world around us.”

There is, perhaps, an unstated irony that the Nobel Committee has decided to award, during such a cataclysmic pandemic where people have been placed in lockdowns and asked to social distance to stem the tides of repeated infections and deaths, their prestigious prize to an issue that is literally skin deep.

But a closer look leads one to appreciate the importance of these discoveries that have eluded scientists until recently. The findings offer a far more compelling evaluation of human society and provide a deep dialectical connection between the physical world and life. In other words, life, more than just replicating, interacts with the world. But it does so through the confines enforced on it by the physical world. And through that interaction, it learns to change.

Dr. Patapoutian, in a review article published in the journal Nature last year, wrote, “From the sound of a whisper to the strike of a hammer on a finger, many familiar environmental cues occur as mechanical forces. Mechanotransduction, the conversion of mechanical perturbations into electrochemical signals, is conserved across all domains of life. It is possibly the most ancient sensory process and may have protected early protocells from osmotic and mechanical forces that threatened to break their membranes.”

The award for understanding the mechanism behind touch and temperature is only the latest, perhaps the last, recognized by the Nobel Committee. During the press conference following the announcement, Dr. Julius said, “It’s been the last main sensory system to fall to molecular analysis … for things like temperature and pressure sensors, we really didn’t have examples of the types of molecules [used in vision and smell] that we could look for.”

In 1961, George von Békésy, a Hungarian biophysicist, was awarded the Nobel prize for his work on the impact of sound on the human cochlea, translating the frequencies of sound waves into nerve signals leading to the brain. In 1967, three recipients, Ragnar Granit, Haldan Keffer Hartline and George Wald, shared the award “for their discoveries concerning the primary physiological and chemical visual process in the eye.” Then, in 2004, Dr. Linda Buck and Dr. Richard Axel were recognized for discovering hundreds of receptors in the nose for odors and how the olfactory system was organized and connected to the brain.

Dr. Julius’s discovery built on the work that Hungarian researchers in the late 1940s first conducted. The use of high doses of capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers that causes the sensation of heat, rubbed into laboratory mice relieved pain. Though drug discoveries followed that could help lower body temperature, decrease inflammation and help blood vessels dilate, no one understood how these mechanisms worked until Dr. Julius and his team set out to systematically find the molecules responsible for sensing capsaicin.

After an exhaustive trial and error process, his team identified one gene in sensory nerve cells that responded to the “burning” ingredient. That gene, now known as TRPV1, instructs the cell to build a protein known as an ion channel that allows the cell to perceive heat as painful and react to it.

Ion channels are particular proteins (or gates) lodged into a cell’s membrane that allows physical communication with the cell’s external environment through the influx and efflux of various ions. These ions act as chemical signals that lead to a cascade of secondary and tertiary signals to which the cell responds, leading to a concerted response by the living organism.

Julius and Patapoutian’s work converged, though independently, when they both used menthol to discover the receptor for sensing cold, named TRPM8, including several others that have intermediate responses.

Patapoutian then set to conduct research to identify similar ion channels that involved response to mechanical forces. This entailed working with cell lines that emitted a small burst of electrical signals when prodded with a micropipette, a fine-tipped instrument for collecting tiny quantities of liquids. Through the iterative process of switching off genes in these cells, they identified the crucial protein for sensing pressure, an ion channel they named PIEZO1.

In a thought-provoking statement reviewing the discovery of numerous mechanical-electrical ion channels, authors Dr. Dominique Douguet and Dr. Eric Honoré, writing in the journal Cell, said, “The opening of mechanosensitive ion channels at the plasma membrane of mammalian cells, in the microsecond range, is the earliest event occurring upon mechanical stimulation.” Precisely, the shear forces that stretch and bend a cell lead to opening these gates with the ensuing response that converts the mechanical stimulation to a chemical reaction that leads to the formation of a sensation at the molecular level with exorbitant speed.

Since then, numerous mechanically activated ion channels have been identified that provide a conscious sense of touch and the unconscious sense associated with blood pressure regulations and other organ functions involved in the life process. This ability for our cells to sense mechanical forces is a fundamental process conserved in the evolution of life.

Figure 1: abnormal enlargement of heart muscle cells involving PIEZO receptors. When heart muscles are on stretch, the PIEZO ion channel opens leading to the induction of a signal increasing the size of the muscle cells.

As the Nobel Committee statement noted, “The laureates identified critical missing links in our understanding of the complex interplay between our senses and the environment. The groundbreaking discoveries … by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates have allowed us to understand how heat, cold, and mechanical forces can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world around us.”

However, Professor Patrick Haggard of University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience said it best. “It is about the closest scientists have got to a truly mechanistic understanding of our own conscious experiences.”

Turkish government normalizes mass deaths as COVID-19 pandemic rages

Ulaş Ateşçi

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to intensify in Turkey, with all necessary public health measures lifted and workplaces and schools fully reopened, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government is normalizing mass infections and deaths.

On Saturday, Erdoğan declared, “As was the case with the times of the pandemic, Turkey possesses the necessary capacity, infrastructure, administrative capability and the political will to successfully manage the post-pandemic era as well.” He then added, “As I always say, Turkey will emerge stronger from this period.”

Despite Erdoğan’s claim to “success” against the virus, 7.4 million people have contracted COVID-19 and more than 66,000 people have lost their lives in the country, according to official figures. Moreover, the number of “excess deaths” during the pandemic period is 189,000, as filmmaker Güçlü Yaman, who conducts research on extra deaths in Turkey, stated on September 23. For weeks, Turkey has led the world in reported daily new cases, surpassing 30,000 last week for the first time since April.

The banner reads “As They Tell A Success Story, We Are Dying.” Doctors of the Istanbul Medical Chamber stand in homage to Dr. Salih Kanlı, who died of COVID-19, on October 20, 2020 in Istanbul. [Credit: Istanbul Medical Chamber]

Assistant Professor Emrah Altındiş of Boston College warned that if no measures are taken, the number of daily deaths in the winter could double. “Turkey has been among the first 3-5 countries with the most daily cases for a long time. I would like to warn you again, we are entering the winter with 30,000 cases per day. Even today, 200-250 people die every day—and in my opinion, the official numbers [that] are underestimates. These deaths can be in the range of 500-1,000 in winter.”

The government has pursued a policy of “social murder” based on keeping workers at work without interruption, placing profit before human life. With the opening of all workplaces and schools, it has abandoned any social distancing measure. As for vaccination, virtually the only tool still used in the so-called fight against the pandemic, only 54 percent of Turkey’s population is fully vaccinated.

According to the weekly incidence data for September 25-October 1 announced by Health Minister Fahrettin Koca on Saturday, the northwestern city of Zonguldak leads with 557 cases per 100,000 people; in only 8 of Turkey’s 81 major cities is it less than 100 per 100,000. It is 252 in Istanbul (population 16 million) and 363 in the Turkish capital, Ankara.

The reopening of schools and then universities in September, as expected, caused many youth to contract the disease and aggravated the pandemic. According to data collected by the education union Eğitim Sen, more than 1,500 classrooms are quarantined each week, while more than 5,000 students and teachers have tested positive for COVID-19.

According to a statement of the Student-Parents Association last week, at least 153,000 students have been quarantined since schools reopened in September. A 17-year-old high school student in Kütahya reportedly died of COVID-19 last week; government ministries refuse to disclose the infection and death rates among teachers and students.

Moreover, there is no free and mass testing in schools. Stating that the cases among children doubled after schools re-opened, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Ceyhan made clear the gravity of the pandemic. “We can see only one-tenth of [cases] because we only test those who have symptoms, but since 85 percent of all cases and 90 percent of the infected children are asymptomatic, those groups are not tested anyway. Therefore, I estimate that the number of active cases of 460,000-470,000 at the moment is in fact at least around 4.5 million.”

The Health Ministry has taken the government’s de facto herd immunity policy one step further, slashing the mandatory quarantine period of students from 10 days to 5 days. Children who are asymptomatic will be able to return to school if they have a COVID-19 test after the fifth day of isolation and the test is negative.

The government’s attempt to get parents back to work by reopening schools in line with the profit interests of the ruling class has caused an explosion of cases among youth, as in other countries that have followed the same path all over the world. Health Minister Koca admitted this last month, stating, “With schools staying open for the last three weeks, the number of cases between the ages of 0-17 has doubled. Our average [number of] active cases is currently 400,000. A quarter of them are in the 0-17 age group. Previously it was 10-11 percent.”

Trying to normalize preventable deaths and diseases, Koca added, “The increase in cases was not reflected in the number of [patients in] intensive care units and intubations. Therefore, there is nothing to be worried about in this sense.” Since the end of August, the daily death toll has hardly fallen below 200. The number of new cases, at around 20,000 per day before schools reopened, is now around 30,000. On Wednesday, Koca announced that more than 50 percent of active cases are young people under the age of 30.

Nonetheless, President Erdoğan declared that his government insists on keeping schools open. “For the last month, education and training activities have been carried out successfully in schools affiliated to the National Education Ministry without any serious problems. Our aim is to continue in-person education at all levels by pushing the conditions to the end.”

The government is implementing this policy with the support of the bourgeois opposition parties, pseudo-left groups and the trade unions. While admitting that it was not possible to reopen schools safely under pandemic conditions, Eğitim Sen nonetheless supported the government and advocated the reopening of schools. Now, it is again declaring, “We will not be silent about the risk of [terminating] in-person education!”

However, there is growing opposition to this criminal policy, which allows the virus to spread among children and the entire population causing mass death, infections and unknown long-term damage. Almost every day on social media, students, parents and teachers are demanding the transition to remote education, emphasizing that schools are not safe.

A parent whose 7-year-old child recently caught COVID-19 at school tweeted: “This tweet should be highlighted by mothers and fathers the most. Schools are the most dangerous place for our children. Look how your children are playing hand in hand at break times. I told the principal that I will not send my child to school. He/she fails the class, the principal said. #UrgentOnlineEducation. [Health Minister] @drfahrettinkoca you didn’t protect my child better than me. Nothing happened [to] my child for 2 years.”

The widespread anger and opposition among workers, parents and students must be given a conscious expression. There is only one way forward in the fight against the pandemic: a global eradication strategy. It is imperative that nonessential workplaces and schools be closed until zero cases are reached, together with mass vaccination, widespread testing, contact tracing and isolation of infected persons and other public health measures. There must be full income support for all workers affected by these measures.