Papua New Guinea morgues overflow as COVID-19 cases surge

John Braddock

Papua New Guinea’s (PNG’s) health authorities have been organising a mass burial to relieve pressure on the Port Moresby hospital morgue, where bodies are stacked on top of each other as COVID-19 cases surge.

The National newspaper reported on October 27 that 253 bodies were to be given a mass burial in the capital. The bodies had been in the Port Moresby General Hospital (PMGH) morgue since April, according to hospital chief executive officer Dr Paki Molumi.

National Pandemic Response Controller David Manning said: “The mortuary is now filled to and beyond capacity with more than 300 bodies stacked on top of one another, as more Coronavirus (COVID-19) bodies are brought in from the wards and homes.” The morgue was built to cater for only 60.

Medical staff of Papua New Guinea’s Defense Force received hands-on training on COVID-19 response. (Image Credit: WHO/ Papua New Guinea)

A newspaper advertisement is detailing the names and ages of the people who have died and been left unclaimed. After three days, the PMGH will take the bodies to a plot, allocated by the National Capital District Commission, to be buried together.

Among the deceased are 16 children, between the ages of two and 12, left by their relatives in hospital morgues for months. They will receive what is in effect a pauper’s burial, when someone dies destitute without anyone to pay for their funeral expenses.

Molumi said four children had died of COVID-19 at PMGH. They were among 39 paediatric cases admitted since September 22, with serious health conditions, including rheumatic heart disease and tuberculosis. “A child with a serious medical condition, which has been complicated by COVID-19 pneumonia has a very high chance of dying,” the doctor warned.

In a callous and dismissive statement, Pandemic Response Deputy Controller Daoni Esorom said children will only be vaccinated against COVID-19 “when the need arises,” and only after “data” is collected of children becoming infected. He falsely declared that there was no vaccine for those aged under 18, adding that in any case the “primary focus” was on vaccinating those over 18.

Just 1.2 percent of the population of nearly 9 million has so far been fully vaccinated. PNG has depended very much on supplies through COVAX, the so-called “vaccine equity” partnership through the World Health Organization. This has failed to bridge the vast gulf between the poorest and wealthiest nations in terms of access to vaccines.

According to the Global Dashboard for Vaccine Equity (established by UNDP, WHO and Oxford University) as of September 15, just 3.07 percent of millions of people in low-income countries have been vaccinated with at least one dose, compared to 60.18 percent in high-income countries.

Meanwhile PNG’s Health authorities scaled back the limited testing regime some months ago, on the pretext that it would allow them to “shift focus” to vaccinating vulnerable sections of the population.

PNG has officially confirmed 29,108 coronavirus cases and 367 deaths, but many more cases and deaths are going unreported. Official statistics drastically understate the reality of what is happening. What data is available shows a sharp spike in cases from April through June, and another this month, with 5,067 active cases over the last two weeks. On October 29, there were 285 cases reported, with a seven-day average of 340.

Radio New Zealand reported on October 11 that since PNG’s first reported case of the Delta variant, brought in by a ship’s captain in July, the virus had been largely left to “fester and spread.” Port Moresby is currently undergoing a third wave of the pandemic, as a disaster unfolds around the country, with the fragile health system and its hospitals overwhelmed by hundreds of cases.

The indifference of authorities was underscored in a decision by National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop last month to oppose any further lockdowns in Port Moresby because of the “costs” of previous ones. In an apparent change of tune, Parkop later told the National: “If the doctors tell me that we have to lock down because they cannot cope any more, then I will follow their advice.”

However, on October 27, Parkop confirmed that “after much deliberation with key stakeholders in the city and the national government,” there would not be a total lockdown of the capital, despite the rocketing number of deaths and positive cases. Police Superintendent Gideon Ikumu declared there was moreover an “absence of regulations” to implement the Pandemic Act 2020, “and we cannot arrest someone for simply not wearing a mask, as an example.”

Several other regions have imposed partial lockdowns and curfews in a bid to curb the spread of coronavirus. Eastern Highlands, Western Highlands and Enga are experiencing a surge in Delta variant cases. Hospitals in all three provinces have wards overflowing with COVID-19 patients, and shortages of beds and ventilators, forcing them to scale back services.

National health board deputy chair Mathias Sapuri said a two-week lockdown across the country was the only way to control the COVID-19 surge. “The virus stops moving when people stop moving,” he said.

This runs counter to the homicidal policy of the James Marape-led government, which, like governments around the world, has prioritised business interests above the health of the population. Following an initial national lockdown in July 2020, Marape bluntly declared: “COVID-19 not only affects us health-wise, but also economically. We must adjust to living with the COVID-19… we will not shut down our country again.”

While the culpability for the escalating catastrophe lies squarely with the PNG government, much media commentary points the finger at widespread “vaccine hesitancy” and misinformation among the general population for the extremely low testing and vaccination rates.

The Guardian reported an incident on 18 October, in the second largest city, Lae, where community health workers were harassed and threatened with sticks, rocks and iron bars during a mobile awareness and vaccination drive. The drive was promptly abandoned and vaccinations are now only offered in the province at Angau General Hospital and smaller suburban clinics.

Undoubtedly there is widespread distrust of the government and its agencies, including health authorities and police. PNG’s corrupt and venal ruling elite, which garners its share of the proceeds of the looting of the country’s mineral resources by transnational corporations, rules over one of the most deprived populations in the world.

According to UN figures, 39 percent of PNG’s people live below the poverty line of $US1.90 a day and 66.5 percent of the workforce earns less than $3.10 a day. In Port Moresby, tens of thousands live in crowded, unofficial settlements. More than 60 percent of the population has no access to safe drinking water.

The adult literacy rate is 64.2 percent, clearly a factor in keeping scientific knowledge from the working class and rural poor. The average number of years of schooling is 4.3 and just 11.7 percent of the population over the age of 25 has some secondary schooling. The deterioration of the public health system, compounded by a lack of roads and the remoteness of many villages, has had a devastating impact. Malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS are rife.

The backwardness and poverty, imposed by successive PNG governments since formal independence in 1975, was bequeathed by Australian colonial rule. The Australian ruling class never demonstrated the slightest concern for the PNG masses when it ruled over them, and is today doing virtually nothing to help contain the devastating and escalating COVID-19 outbreak on its northern border.

American Postal Workers Union prepares new betrayal

A. Woodson & Erik Schreiber

Two hundred thousand American postal employees continue to work under a contract that was set to expire on September 20. Having failed to reach an agreement by the prescribed deadline, the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) chose not to seek mediation, but to continue negotiating with the United States Postal Service (USPS). The union and the USPS had not reached a new agreement as of this writing and had made no significant information about negotiations available.

Whatever the outcome of the current talks, the final contract will continue the attacks that postal workers have endured for more than a decade. The APWU has been complicit in these attacks, which have included the closure of mail processing centers, wage cuts and the creation of a new tier of lower-paid workers. By the same token, the union bears responsibility for the ongoing degradation of mail delivery; an essential service on which millions of Americans rely.

Portland Main Post Office [Credit: Tony Webster (CC BY-SA 2.0)]

A new stage in this degradation, the 10-year strategic plan entitled “Delivering for America,” took effect on October 1. The document, which was drafted by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, is nothing less than a business plan intended to hobble and discredit the USPS, thus clearing the way for its privatization.

The plan is so objectionable that 20 state attorneys general have sued the Postal Regulatory Commission, claiming that the plan had not been fully vetted. The plan will “destroy the timely mail service that people depend on for medications, bill payments and business operations in rural parts of the state,” said North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein in a statement.

DeJoy, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, stands to profit handsomely from this plan. Among other things, it calls for increased truck delivery, a job that the USPS frequently outsources. DeJoy and his wife hold $30 million of stock in XPO Logistics (a company that he previously served as CEO) and $300,000 in UPS stock. The latter company could benefit from the privatization of the USPS.

DeJoy is not the only figure with conflicts of interest. Ron Bloom, chair of the USPS board of governors, is also vice chair and managing partner of investment firm Brookfield Asset Management, which owns $500,000 in XPO stock. Moreover, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that DeJoy purchased $305,000 in bonds issued by Brookfield, indicating a cozy relationship between him and Bloom.

The first step in the strategic plan is to lengthen the maximum delivery time for first-class mail from three days to five days. This measure, ostensibly undertaken to cut costs, will be accomplished by eliminating US Air Mail and transporting mail solely by truck. Eliminating US Air Mail, which was established in 1918, will set mail delivery back by more than a century.

The strategic plan also mandates the reduction of Post Offices’ operating hours and workers’ hours. Furthermore, the plan will raise prices for the public. The cost of a stamp already has increased by three cents, and the discount for periodicals has been cut by one cent.

In addition to cutting workers’ hours, the USPS will close 18 processing plants by November. Debby Szeredy, executive vice president of the APWU, published a 92-page document that she presents as a guide to help workers mobilize against plant closures. The guide emphasizes local and state actions but, apart from a few empty phrases, says nothing about mobilizing workers for a national fight.

More than anything else, the guide is intended to give workers the illusion that the APWU is advocating for them. The USPS figures that it quotes, however, tell a different tale. In 2006, 673 processing and distribution centers remained open. By 2015, the USPS planned to reduce the number to 232. Thus, approximately two-thirds of the facilities that had been open in 2006 have been closed under the APWU’s watch. These figures show that rather than resisting plant closures, the union is in fact complicit in them.

The only thing that DeJoy’s plan will add, rather than cut, is 47 package annexes. The plan does not specify the connection of these annexes to existing postal facilities or describe the status of the workforce of the annexes. Nevertheless, the annexes will shift the USPS toward package delivery and place it into competition with UPS, FedEx and Amazon.

The APWU has been complicit not just in plant closures, but also in attacks on workers’ wages. In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which required the USPS to fund postal retirees’ health care in advance for 75 years. The annual cost of this unprecedented requirement is about $5.5 billion, and it has created a financial crisis for the organization.

The APWU used this financial crisis to coerce workers into accepting concessions in the 2010 contract that it negotiated with the USPS. This agreement froze wages for the first two years and provided raises that barely kept pace with inflation in the remaining years. It contained no cost-of-living increases for the first two years and deferred them in the third and fourth years. Moreover, the contract created a second tier of workers who are paid about 10 percent less than their coworkers. It also expanded the USPS’s temporary workforce, which enjoys even fewer benefits than full employees.

APWU President Mark Dimondstein admitted that ratification “was carried out in a rapid fashion with little time for digesting, debating and reflecting on the massive changes agreed to by the parties.” He added that “the vote took place in a climate of uncertainty, confusion and fear.” This rotten agreement that workers ratified under duress became the basis for subsequent contracts.

But the APWU’s most criminal act has been to jeopardize postal workers’ health and lives during the pandemic. The union has not only failed to demand adequate protections for workers, it also has helped the USPS withhold vital information. It has supported the USPS’s concealment of infections and deaths on the fraudulent basis of protecting privacy. Thus, workers do not know whether they or anyone else in their facility has been in contact with a coworker who tested positive for the virus. APWU bureaucrats have also bragged about having opposed a vaccine mandate, which is a necessary measure for ending the pandemic.

Postal workers can have no faith in the APWU as it negotiates with the USPS behind closed doors. For years, the union has proven itself a willing accomplice in the crippling of mail delivery and the erosion of workers’ wages and working conditions. Like the other trade unions, it has degenerated into a tool for enforcing management’s requirements and betraying workers’ struggles.

Big Three automakers release earnings reports for third quarter of 2021

Jessica Goldstein

Last week, the “Big Three” US automakers, General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, issued their financial reports for the third quarter. Earnings across the board dropped year over year, though some did beat analysts’ expectations, pointing to the major impacts that the labor shortage and disruption to global supply chains continue to have on the automotive industry worldwide.

GM recorded gross profits of $3.79 billion for the third quarter ending on September 30, with total revenues of $26.78 billion for the quarter. Profits have dropped 40 percent year over year, according to the Detroit Free Press. GM’s revenues, while still enormous, reflect a 25 percent drop from the third quarter of the previous year. Despite this, GM’s third quarter earnings beat Wall Street’s expectations.

General Motors’ stock rose to $54.43 at the close of markets on Friday, inching up to its 10-year high of $59.31 in June 2021. This is up from the 10-year low of $22.29 from the near collapse of the stock market in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic, before the passage of the multitrillion-dollar CARES Act bailout.

Mary Barra (GM Media)

Ford’s earnings per share was 51 cents in the third quarter, nearly double analysts’ expectations of 27 cents. Ford’s stock jumped after the news to $17.08 Friday, its highest level since 2014. Auto revenue also slightly beat expectations at $33.21 billion compared to an expected $32.54 billion.

However, Ford’s revenue is still 5 percent below the level from the third quarter of 2020, and pretax adjusted earnings were $3 billion last quarter compared to $3.6 billion last year. Still, Ford announced Wednesday that, beginning in the fourth quarter, it would reinstate its regular dividend, which it had suspended beginning with the onset of the pandemic.

In its report, Ford noted stronger sales for its Bronco SUV and Mustang Mach-E, an electric vehicle. However, Ford’s sales and market share for its Ford and Lincoln brands are at their lowest levels in 6 years, according to Cox Automotive.

Stellantis, the company formed out of a merger between US-Italian automaker Fiat Chrysler and French automaker PSA in January 2021, reported net revenues of $37.8 billion in the third quarter, a 14 percent drop from what the two companies reported in revenues from the same quarter last year. It also reported 1.1 million vehicle shipments in the third quarter, a 27 percent drop compared to last year, according to the Detroit Free Press. The global semiconductor chip shortage caused planned production to drop up to 30 percent at Stellantis plants worldwide.

Richard Palmer, Chief Financial Officer for Stellantis, said in a press release last week that the corporation’s revenues “reflect the success of our recent vehicle launches, including new electrified offerings, combined with significant commercial and industrial actions executed by our teams in response to unfilled semiconductor orders.”

All major US automakers are investing more and more resources in electric vehicle (EV) production, with the overall aim of cornering the market to compete with production from China and dominate the global market. Ford, Stellantis and GM have all released electrified models over the past two years, and last month Stellantis unveiled plans to set up four new EV platforms to support production of 2 million vehicles per year.

GM CEO Mary Barra told the New York Times that its joint battery venture with LG would start up production next year in Ohio. Ford CEO Jim Farley announced Wednesday that Ford planned to “simplify the technology” of its BlueCruise hands-free highway driving system, delaying its rollout to the beginning of next year. His reason for the delay was that Ford needed to “catch up” to major EV competitors GM and Tesla, according to CNBC.

Yet obstacles to electrification efforts exist in the ongoing microchip shortages and disruption to global supply chains, themselves the economic consequences of the subordination of pandemic policies on the part of capitalist governments to private profit. But it is the working class who have been made to pay for disruptions to production in the form of wage and job cuts, speedup, longer workdays and more dangerous conditions.

All of the Big Three automakers have alternated shutting down and ramping up production since the global supply shortage began. It is notable that most production shutdowns were due not to the spread of COVID-19, which has killed dozens of autoworkers in the US alone, but due to a shortage of irreplaceable parts.

In a UAW memo circulated at the Stellantis Belvidere Assembly Plant in Belvidere, Illinois, which builds Jeep models, workers were told that they must work 60 hours per week through the end of this year. The plant has operated off and on since February 2021 and has laid off two shifts, leaving the plant operating with one shift only. When workers have been laid off, many have struggled to collect unemployment benefits from the state and have found no better recourse through the United Auto Workers.

Workers at several other plants worldwide have experienced similar patterns of production shutdowns and layoffs followed by brutal levels of forced overtime. Stellantis announced in October that it would lay off 1,800 workers at its Windsor, Ontario plant in Canada, where it had rotated shutdowns due to the chip shortage earlier this year. In India, Ford has plans to shut down all of its car-making operations in the country, leaving 4,000 workers and their families in the dust. Meanwhile, Sterling Heights Assembly Plant near Detroit has been placed on “critical status” until the Christmas holiday, with workers liable to work seven days a week for 90 consecutive days.

All of the major US carmakers expect the chip shortage to affect production and financial gains well into 2022, with Ford predicting that it could affect its production through the beginning of 2023, according to CNBC. Notably, GM, Ford and Stellantis all pointed to rising car prices as an earnings driver in the face of production stoppages. In the US, the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation of consumer goods, has stood at over 5 percent since at least July.

Companies are doing whatever they can to increase supply to make up for shortages. But perhaps the most important issue confronting auto executives is fear of opposition from the working class, such as that which forced a shutdown of global Big Three operations in March 2020. More than 10,000 workers at John Deere agricultural and construction equipment manufacturing plants in the US are currently on strike, part of a broader push by workers in the US and around the world to demand wage increases that keep pace with inflation, better working hours and safer working conditions.

Japan’s ruling party maintains majority in general election

Ben McGrath

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) maintained its parliamentary majority in Sunday’s general election. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida hopes to use the victory as a mandate for the policies of his new government, which took office on October 4 following the resignation of his predecessor Yoshihide Suga after widespread criticism of Suga’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the election was marked by extensive abstentionism, with voter turnout reaching only 55.33 percent, reflecting disillusionment in the official opposition parties and the entire political system.

Japan's Prime Minister and ruling Liberal Democratic Party leader Fumio Kishida, third from right, poses with key party members as he puts rosettes by successful general election candidates' names on a board at the party headquarters in Tokyo, Sunday, Oct. 31, 2021. (Behrouz Mehri, Pool via AP)

All 465 seats in Japan’s House of Representatives, the lower house in the National Diet, were contested, with 289 seats chosen through direct election and the other 176 decided through proportional representation. The LDP, originally projected to lose as many as 40 seats, only lost 17, dropping from 276 to 259. The LDP’s junior coalition partner Komeito increased its number of seats by three to 32.

The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) and affiliated independents had held 112 seats, but that fell to 96. The CDP had entered an electoral alliance with four other parties: the Stalinist Japanese Communist Party (JCP), the Democratic Party for the People (DPP), Reiwa Shinsengumi, and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The JCP won ten seats, losing two. The DPP, a splinter from the CDP, gained three seats, now totalling 11. Reiwa gained two seats, adding to the one it previously held. The SDP’s total remains unchanged with one seat. Additionally, 12 so-called independents won seats.

CDP leader Yukio Edano defended the alliance despite his party’s defeat, indicating that it will continue in the future. “Since the single-seat constituency system is based on creating a structure for a one-on-one fight, we, as the largest opposition party, have solicited understanding and cooperation from other opposition parties as we determine it is the goal we should be striving for,” he stated.

JCP leader Kazuo Shii echoed that. The JCP did not enter the election to advance a socialist perspective, but to prop up the deeply unpopular CDP, which prior to the election saw its public support rating in single digits. The CDP’s failure to gain ground with workers and youth is not a result of support for the LDP, but the inability of the Democrats to put forward any alternative to the ruling party. While there is popular anger over the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, declining economic conditions and plans for remilitarization, the CDP puts forward many of the same policies as the LDP, only in slightly revised form.

This has left the door open for more right-wing parties to posture as opponents of the government. The biggest winner among the opposition parties was Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Innovation Party), which won 41 seats, an increase of 30. Ishin no Kai was formed in 2015 as a right-wing populist party, favouring overturning the formal post-World War II constitutional limits on Japan’s remilitarization.

The election took place alongside a growing United States-led drive to war aimed at China, an agenda which the entire Japanese ruling class has backed. In its election pledges the LDP included support for Taiwan, challenging the “One China” policy and further raising tensions with Beijing. The One China policy, to which Tokyo has formally adhered since establishing ties with Beijing in 1972, states that Taiwan is a part of China and not independent. Beijing is concerned that if Taiwan declares independence, the island will be used by the US and Japan as a potential staging ground for military attacks on the mainland.

The LDP further stated it would deepen Japan’s remilitarization by more than doubling its military spending, raising the budget to over 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). This would give Japan the third largest military budget in the world, behind only the US and China.

For fiscal year 2022, Japan’s Defense Ministry has requested a record-high budget of more than 5.4 trillion yen ($US47.3 billion). This exceeds the previous record high from this year of 5.34 trillion yen. The budget contains plans to purchase F-35 fighter jets, with some stationed in the East China Sea. Tokyo claims it is necessary to safeguard the uninhabited and disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, which are also claimed by China. The LDP also pledged during the election to acquire weaponry to strike targets in other countries. This would be a flagrant violation of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which bans such capabilities.

The CDP also backs the militarization of the Ryukyu Island chain, which includes the Senkakus/Diaoyus, having vowed to increase the military presence around the disputed islands. The CDP therefore is lining up behind the LDP’s agenda, which includes plans to place ground-to-air and ground-to-ship missile batteries and up to 600 troops on Ishigaki Island, just 300 kilometers from Taiwan, by March 2023. Ishigaki will be the fourth island in the chain to host missile batteries.

The military also plans to put an electronic warfare unit on Yonaguni Island, which is just 110 kilometers from Taiwan. Prior to 2016, there were no military bases on the Ryukyu Islands excluding Okinawa, which hosts approximately 30,000 US troops.

Hysterical smear campaign against refugees arriving from Belarus

Peter Schwarz

German and European politicians are reacting with a hysterical witch-hunt to the influx of several thousand refugees from Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other war zones who are entering the Schengen area via Belarus.

The mistreatment of the refugees, in violation of international law, is being accompanied by press censorship, the construction of metres-high border walls, fierce threats against Belarus and Russia, and the establishment of a police state within Europe. The scale and intensity of the campaign is reminiscent of former US President Donald Trump’s smear campaign against refugees and the construction of a wall on the Mexican border to mobilize fascist forces against the working class.

Since Belarus lifted visa-free travel for several Middle Eastern and African countries in the summer, more refugees have flown from there to Minsk, then travelled overland to the Baltic states or Poland, and from there to Germany.

Polish soldiers erect a fence on the Belarusian border (Photo: Attila Husjenow/Instagram)

Their numbers are manageable. According to the Federal Police, just under 7,000 refugees have arrived in Germany via this route since the beginning of the year. That is only a small fraction of the 890,000 asylum seekers registered at the peak of the mass flight movement in 2015. Although the number has risen significantly in October, it has since stabilized at around 120 a day.

Nevertheless, the propaganda from Warsaw, Berlin and Brussels sounds as if these are not traumatized people in need of protection and urgent help but a horde of barbarians invading Europe.

The Polish government is reacting with merciless brutality. It has stationed 6,000 soldiers at the border who hunt down refugees, mistreat them and send them back to Belarus without allowing them to apply for asylum, even though such pushbacks are strictly forbidden under international law.

The rejected refugees, including families and pregnant women, are forced to languish in the boggy forest area in the damp and freezing cold without food, shelter, clean water and medical assistance. At least seven deaths have now been documented.

To further impede their escape, Poland is building a 2.5-metre-high barbed wire fence along a border more than 400 kilometres long, at an estimated cost of €350 million.

Lithuania has also begun construction of a 508-kilometre fence on its border with Belarus, which in its final stage will be four metres high and be reinforced with barbed wire. The cost is estimated at €152 million. Latvia plans to erect a fence by 2024.

To hide its crimes from the public, the Polish government has imposed a state of emergency along the border. Journalists and refugee workers are strictly forbidden from approaching the border and reporting on the human catastrophe.

Despite the government’s censorship and agitation, there is much support and solidarity with the refugees among the Polish population. Last Saturday in Michalowo near the border, mothers, in particular, demonstrated against the mistreatment with chants of “Shame” and “No one is illegal.” “We cannot stand idly by while children are forced to endure weeks in the cold, wet, dark forests on Polish territory,” the organizers declared on Facebook.

In contrast, the Polish government received support for its criminal policy from Germany. Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (Christian Social Union, CSU) supports the construction of a wall on the border with Belarus. “It is legitimate that we protect the external border [of the EU] in such a way that undetected border crossings are prevented at the green border,” he told Bild am Sonntag.

Demonstration in defence of refugees in Michalowo (Image: Kultura Rownosci/Instagram)

Seehofer also wants to tighten controls on the German-Polish border, which is normally open. He has already sent squads totalling 800 police officers to “closely control the border area and the green border with Poland,” he told BamS.

Saxony’s state Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) also defended the wall’s construction. “We need fences, and we probably need walls,” he said after talks with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels. The point now, he said, was “for the European Union to prove its defensibility.” After decades in which the CDU exploited the existence of the Berlin Wall, which the Stalinist regime in East Germany had built, for propaganda purposes, this latest turn has caused irritation even in its own ranks.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (Social Democratic Party, SPD) used the fate of the refugees to launch fierce attacks on Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko, publicly accusing him of being the “head of a state smuggling ring” and of using “refugees as an instrument” to “exert pressure on European states.” Maas advocated that the EU impose sanctions on airlines transporting refugees to Belarus.

Brandenburg’s state Interior Minister Michael Stübgen (CDU) went even further. He accused the Russian government of being behind the refugee movement. “I assume that the whole thing was not worked out in Minsk alone, but together with the Kremlin,” he told the FAZ. “It’s a strategy that can be described as a new part of a hybrid warfare that Moscow is pursuing with the aim of destabilizing the European Union.”

Green Party leader Robert Habeck, who is expected to be vice chancellor of the next German government, also spoke of “hybrid warfare,” accusing Lukashenko of using people to do so. The EU must not give in to this “blackmail,” Habeck told the FAZ.

Many media commentaries expressed similar sentiments. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which has massively increased its presence in Germany, raved about “Fortress Europe” in the manner of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). As long as it was not possible to control immigration in any other way, “a fortress is still better than the alternative: Islamist subcultures, growing violent crime among perspective-less foreigners ...”

The FAZ called for support for the “affected states on Europe’s eastern flank” in securing their borders. “A border fence cannot only separate but also protect.”

The weekly magazine Cicero published an article by former Bundeswehr (army) general and long-time Merkel adviser Erich Vad, who linked support for the brutal Polish border regime with calls for massive external and internal rearmament.

In a thinly veiled threat of war against Belarus, Vad compared the country to Libya. “We have learned that it is not enough to chase out dictators on human rights grounds—as in the case of Libya—but at the same time to shy away from using military means as well to ensure the establishment of a new order and the containment of a mass migration from there.

“Now it is Belarus, tomorrow it will again be the Balkans and North African countries,” Vad continued. “We need to learn anew and understand that the North African coastline and also the Middle East are important regions of our own security and not just allow their foreign and security development to run wild.” After the “massive reduction of the US presence in Europe,” he said, “Europeans must not allow a strategic vacuum to develop.”

To “protect the Schengen area,” Vad wants to establish a European Border Guard Force “to be deployed on land, sea and air.” He cites as models the French Gendarmerie and the Italian Carabinieri—both of which are paramilitary police units notorious for their brutal crackdowns on workers and opposition movements.

Vad’s contribution makes clear the real purpose of the smear campaign against the refugees: to stir up reactionary sentiments and mobilize right-wing forces to suppress growing opposition to social inequality, mass layoffs, policies of deliberate mass infection and preparation for future wars. The cruel and illegal methods used to seal off Fortress Europe, including in the Mediterranean, against refugees show the brutality the ruling class is capable of in the process. The parties of the current German government and any future coalition agree on these issues.

The new AY.4.2 sub-lineage of Delta: The implications of the evolution of coronavirus

Benjamin Mateus

The world is fast approaching the end of the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Already nearly one-quarter of a billion people have been infected by the coronavirus, a vast undercounting by a unanimous consensus among scientists and researchers. There have also been almost five million deaths, though the global excess deaths are estimated to be over 16 million.

What has distinguished the second year has been the introduction of life-saving vaccines that have without doubt saved numerous lives. Just over half the world’s population, an astounding 3.86 billion people worldwide, has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

However, as inequity in vaccine distribution continues to plague the globe, regions in the Middle East, the African continent, and many Latin American countries have fallen woefully behind high-income nations in Europe and North America. Africa has, on average, only administered a single dose to 8.3 percent of its population, a critical indictment of the ruling factions’ opportunistic approach to the crisis.

And yet, despite these achievements, albeit favoring the wealthier nations, the second year has been far more calamitous and deadly than the first, as almost every country across the globe has adopted a “we will learn to live with the virus” approach in their response to the pandemic. If we set the announcement of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization on January 30, 2020, as a fixed point in the beginning of the pandemic, exactly one year later, there were 103 million reported infections and 2.35 million deaths globally.

But with three months left in this second period, already 143 million more people have contracted the virus. A small but significant number have contracted COVID-19 twice or even three times. Another 2.64 million people have died. This means that despite the existence of vaccines that can dramatically cut the rate of severe disease and death, more have lost their lives in nine months than in the preceding 12.

It is important to consider these statistics, because the policy of living with the coronavirus has enabled SARS-CoV-2 to mutate and develop more virulent forms to ensure its “survival.” The ruling class has carried out policies to satisfy the incessant need by financial institutions to see their quarterly earnings climb, which have had the effect of allowing the virus to become endemic. There is an intimate correspondence between the financial earnings of the stock exchanges and the death toll from COVID-19.

The emergence of the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) in the second year is the counterpoint to this criminal policy of malign neglect. Hyper-transmissible, more virulent, and deadly and possessing more robust immune-evading properties, in just a few short months after debuting in India in a catastrophic surge of infections, it quickly dominated every other variant globally wreaking havoc across communities in every region of the world. As of August 24, 2021,163 countries have reported the Delta variant has been sequenced within their borders.

As countries prepare to face the third year of the pandemic, there are signs that new mutations are emerging that have aroused researchers’ concerns. Delta’s daughters are beginning to dominate, supplanting their parent. They have been designated by the PANGO (Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global Outbreak Lineages) lineage AY. The designation highlights the branches of the evolutionary tree that characterize their relationship. As the website notes, “The Pango dynamic nomenclature is a system for identifying SARS-CoV-2 genetic lineages of epidemiologic relevance.” The network is overseen by a team of researchers from the universities of Edinburgh and Oxford.

There have been 75 such lineages identified thus far, each possessing a unique mutation. AY.4 has been rising in the UK over several months, accounting for 68.2 percent of sequenced SARS-CoV-2 coronaviruses in the last 28 days. The sub lineage AY.4.2, also commonly being referred to as the new “Delta Plus,” has been growing slowly, accounting for 8.5 percent in the same period.

The origin of AY.4.2 was traced back to April in the UK’s Northumbria by COG-UK, a British consortium that has sequenced more than 1.2 million whole genomes of the coronavirus. The two samples related to recent travel to India. In explaining this new designation, Scroll.in said, “Once a lineage’s labelling gets five levels deep, a new letter combination is started to avoid the name getting too long. So, the AY forms of the virus are not vastly different from what’s come before, even though their labelling is different. They are all sub-lineages of the Delta.”

Some of the scientists studying AY.4.2 have estimated that it is between 10 to 15 percent more transmissible than Delta. Such an advantage, they assert, most likely won’t lead to a significant rise in infections. Others have attributed AY.4.2’s rise to a phenomenon called a founder effect. This means that all the people in a group isolated from a larger population became infected with this sub-lineage. It is a randomness that accompanies the selection of these small groups from the larger population and does not represent the larger population, nor should it be construed as a dominant variant. However, many have noted that it is still too early to be confident about this supposition.

There are two specific genetic mutations that define AY.4.2—Y145H and A222V—that affect the spike protein of the virus. The A222V was first seen in the B.1.177 lineage last year in Spain, spread by holiday travelers. However, it is the Y145H mutation that appears to have increased the transmissibility of the virus.

This section of the spike protein is frequently targeted by antibodies. Delta has mutations in this region that appear to enhance its greater ability to escape immunity. This means that antibodies have a harder time targeting the virus, thus allowing it to escape and more likely to infect an individual previously infected or vaccinated. However, scientists are studying these mutations and their findings have not yet been reviewed.

More recently, the number of sequenced AY.4.2 infections has been climbing in all regions of England, and Scotland and Wales.

Cornelius Roemer, a computational biologist at the Biozentrum, Basel, Switzerland, noted that the AY.4.2 in Scotland has an extra spike mutation S:1264L and in “less than 10 weeks going from first occurrence to 2,000 sequences. It’s now more than 50 percent of all AY.4.2 in Scotland. … Interestingly [it] was found also in AY.23, the lineage [that] emerged in Singapore and [is] prevalent in Southeastern Asia. … It’s also appearing in AY.26 in the US. At least three times convergent evolution with significant shares.” The last statement implies that these three different versions of the coronavirus have found the same mutation to exploit for their survival.

According to a recent article in The World, more than four million genomic sequences of SARS-Cov-2 have been analyzed. Sequencing these viruses can provide critical information for public health officials. By understanding the implication of these changing codes, specifically in known regions that increase a pathogen’s virulence, scientists can determine early warning signs that would make it possible to bring together public health resources to intervene before the particular variant is allowed a wide berth and can escape to other geographic regions.

Though this approach will be critical in studying and identifying future pathogens, that the virus can evolve through convergent evolutionary biological pathways to escape natural pressures placed in its way through population immunity highlights the critical need to eliminate COVID-19 from the face of the earth. The coronavirus, under the current pressures, is driven to develop the ability to escape immunity. Such a characteristic in a respiratory virus would be extremely catastrophic.

Caravan challenges Mexico’s complicity in US assault on immigrants

Bill Van Auken

Mexican officials scrambled Thursday to deal with a statement by the American ambassador that the Biden administration and the government of President Andrés López Obrador (AMLO) have an agreement to deport back to their countries Central American and other immigrants blocked from crossing the US southern border.

A caravan of migrants, mostly from Central America, head north along a coastal highway just outside of Huehuetan, Chiapas State, Mexico, on Sunday, Oct. 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

The controversy erupted as some 4,000 immigrants, many of them women and children, are marching in a “caravan” through the southern Mexican state of Chiapas en route to Mexico City to demand their rights, which have been trampled by the AMLO government.

Ambassador Ken Salazar, a former right-wing Democratic Senator from Colorado, made his remarks while touring border cities and praising the US Border Patrol. “Everybody should understand that the US-Mexico border is closed to unlawful entry,” Salazar said. “Persons attempting to enter the United States unlawfully will be detained. The United States and Mexico are committed to returning migrants who unlawfully enter to their country of origin.”

Senior Mexican Foreign Ministry officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to the daily La Jornada, claimed that Salazar’s statement was “ambiguous” and that there was no “bilateral” agreement on deportations.

Whatever agreements between Biden and AMLO have been put in writing, in practice, the Mexican government is collaborating fully in a brutal system in which refugees and migrants reaching the Mexican border are summarily expelled. Both the Trump and the Biden administrations have invoked Title 42, an obscure part of the US health code, to cloak their violations of the right to asylum and due process under the phony mantle of combatting COVID-19. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that migrants crossing the US southern border are a significant vector for transmission of the virus.

Under Biden, who sanctimoniously promised to pursue a more humane immigration policy, these Title 42 expulsions have reached roughly 100,000 a month, a 50 percent increase over those carried out during the last three months of the Trump administration.

Immigrants kicked out in this manner have been forced onto airplanes, without being told where they are going, and flown to the southern Mexico cities of ‪Villahermosa and Tapachula. There they are loaded into convoys of buses controlled by Mexico’s National Guard and immigration agency, INM, and driven to the Guatemalan border to be dumped in the middle of the night into what are among the most dangerous areas of Central America’s Northern Triangle.‬‬

Thousands of others have remained trapped, without means of obtaining any livelihood, in Mexico’s southern border cities of Tapachula and Ceibo, which are ringed by National Guard checkpoints.

It was in Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala, where the latest caravan began last week. Migrants have described the town as a “prison,” while even legislators of AMLO’s Morena party have called it a “concentration camp.” Many migrants have languished there for a year or more waiting for Mexican authorities to either grant them asylum or regularize their immigration status.

Chanting “We are not criminals, we are workers, we are immigrants” and “Libertad, Libertad,” at least 2,000 migrants marched out of Tapachula on October 23. Confronting a checkpoint north of the town, the marchers forced their way through columns of helmeted, shield-bearing members of AMLO’s National Guard. At least one three-year-old boy suffered injuries to his head in the failed attempt to turn back the marchers. Two previous caravans from Tapachula earlier this year were violently broken up.

The caravan has progressed relatively slowly, marching with temperatures reaching over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and under heavy downpours, forced in some cases to sleep on the side of the road. The Mexican government has forbidden the marchers from using any type of vehicles.

Leaders of the caravan have reported that a census showed that 1,200 of those on the march are children, and 70 percent of them are under the age of seven. Many workers are pushing baby carriages down the highway or walking with children on their shoulders. There are also reportedly 68 pregnant women on the march, as well as a number of disabled adults and children.

Some estimates have put the size of the caravan at 4,000 or 5,000, considerably smaller than those of 2018 and 2019, but the largest since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Republican Party and its media outlets, such as Fox News, have attempted to portray the caravan as an existential threat to the United States. Donald Trump fulminated: “I hope everyone is watching the MASSIVE Caravan pouring through Mexico and headed to our Country. This must be stopped before they reach our Border.”

It is apparently the number of marchers and the presence of so many women and children which has led to the Mexican government to adopt what Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard described as a policy of “prudence” toward the latest caravan, i.e., refraining, at least for now, from unleashing the National Guard to violently disperse it.

The caravan, launched in the name of “dignity, freedom and peace,” is a march against the illegal policies of both the Biden and AMLO governments in abrogating the right to asylum and the right of immigrants to protection and due process.

Luis Rey Villagrán, a Mexican immigrant rights advocates and one of the organizers of the caravan said that upon reaching Mexico City, the marchers would demand “permanent residence cards on humanitarian grounds for each and every one of those who is walking on this march.”

A coalition of civil liberties and pro-immigrant organizations from Mexico and Central America joined under the slogan #ProtecciónNoContención (Protection Not Containment) appeared on October 26 before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) to present charges of “grave violations of human rights against immigrants” on the part of the López Obrador government in Mexico. These include its collaboration in the Title 42 expulsions by the United States and the summary deportations from Mexico itself without providing migrants the right to appeal for asylum. The indictment also included the charge that the AMLO government has “militarized” Mexican immigration policy, treating migrants as criminals.

Since June 2019, when the Trump administration threatened Mexico with trade sanctions if it failed to contain the flow of immigrants to the US border, the AMLO government has adopted a policy of “containment” in league with Washington. With US logistical aid, it has deployed 28,000 members of the National Guard to Mexico’s southern and northern borders, a force larger than the entire US Border Patrol.

In March 2020, the López Obrador government agreed to accept Central Americans summarily expelled from the US on the Title 42 pretext, and in August 2021, it agreed to their airborne expulsions to southern Mexico. Meanwhile, within Mexico the National Guard has brutalized and killed migrants, while federal and local authorities have engaged in systematic repression.

In the latest incident, police in Tijuana Thursday surrounded an encampment of migrants expelled from the US, destroyed tents and confiscated belongings of those who were not present and then encircled the entire camp with a six-foot chain-link fence. A local official claimed that the raid was for the migrants’ “protection.”

The overwhelming majority of those marching in the latest caravan are from Central America, fleeing conditions of endemic poverty, violence and political repression which all have their roots in the horrific crimes committed by US imperialism to secure the profit interests of American banks and corporations across the region for over a century. This has included support for bloody dictatorships like that of the Somozas in Nicaragua, CIA-orchestrated coups as in Guatemala in 1954 and the genocidal counterinsurgency wars in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in the 1980s.

The refusal of those marching to accept the conditions created by imperialism and its corrupt servants in the national bourgeois governments of Central America and their defiance of anti-immigrant repression is part of a worldwide resurgence of the class struggle. Like workers everywhere, they are refusing to accept the conditions create by a failed economic system—capitalism—that threatens workers’ jobs, living standards and very lives, under conditions of a global pandemic.

As infections skyrocket, German government declares pandemic over

Johannes Stern

Despite exploding case numbers in Germany and across Europe, the German government is effectively declaring the pandemic over. Earlier this week, Health Minister Jens Spahn (Christian-Democratic Union, CDU) repeated his call for the currently declared “epidemic situation of national scope” to expire on November 25. This would eliminate most remaining protective measures.

Medical staff, in light blue, and funeral house employees close a coffin with a COVID-19 victim from the University Hospital in Bucharest, Romania, Friday, Oct. 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexandru Dobre)

Since the first wave of the pandemic in March 2020, the Bundestag had regularly extended this “epidemic situation.” Under the terms of the Infection Protection Act, this forms the legal basis for nationwide regulations, such as mask requirements or distance and contact restrictions.

Spahn’s calls, which essentially follow the line of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, is supported by all the parties in the Bundestag (German parliament). Representatives of the Left Party welcomed it just as much as the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens, who are currently forming the next federal government. A paper these three parties published on Wednesday on “ending the epidemic situation” makes clear that they plan to continue the “profits before lives” policy unabated, when they take office.

“The epidemic situation of national scope … ends at the end of November 24, 2021. It will not be extended. Because its preconditions no longer exist,” it says, adding, “The intervention-intensive catalog of measures … will no longer be applicable after the epidemic situation in the federal territory has ended. We will also remove the possibility, currently still provided for in the law … of state parliaments declaring this catalog applicable at the state level in accordance with the epidemic situation in individual states.”

That is black on white. Although the pandemic is once again rampant, the SPD, FDP and Greens have agreed in their coalition talks, which are taking place in secret, that there will be virtually no measures to contain the virus in future. In doing so, they are provoking a situation like that of last winter, when the health care system almost collapsed due to rapidly rising case numbers, and tens of thousands died under terrible conditions in Germany alone.

Already, the situation is catastrophic. The nationwide seven-day incidence of new COVID-19 infections is rising steeply every day. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), this figure increased on Friday to 139.2 per 100,000 inhabitants. The previous day it had been at 130.2, a week ago at 95.1. The death toll is also shooting up again. In the past four days, 489 people have died. That brought the official COVID-19 death toll in Germany to 95,606.

Hospitals are on the verge of overload. “We are in a critical pandemic situation,” the chief executive of the German Hospital Association, Gerald Gaß, told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland. He said the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 infections has risen sharply within a week. “If this trend continues, we will have 3,000 patients in intensive care again in just two weeks,” he warned. Currently, more than 1,800 people are in intensive care, and nearly 4,300 COVID-19 patients are in normal care, according to the DIVI intensive care registry.

The official justification given for ending the measures is the vaccination rate. In fact, only about two-thirds of the German population are fully vaccinated. Almost 30 million people, including all children under the age of 12, are completely defenceless against the virus. In addition, there is the danger of coronavirus infections breaking through the vaccine. From February until the end of last week, the RKI registered 117,763 probable vaccination breakthroughs. Nevertheless, according to the RKI, only 1.9 million people have received a third booster vaccination in Germany.

Despite vaccinations, the situation in Europe is worse than it was the same time last year as a result of the reckless reopening policy. Last week, 1.4 million COVID-19 cases were registered across Europe, 18 percent more than the previous week. Over the same period, 20,503 deaths were recorded, a 17 percent increase. This means that almost 1.3 million people have officially died from COVID-19 in Europe. And as in the US or India, the actual death toll is almost certainly far higher.

The situation is currently most dramatic in Eastern Europe. Russia and Ukraine are setting new record levels of infection and death almost daily. In Russia, 1,163 people died of COVID-19 on Friday, and 648 in Ukraine. The three Baltic states are among the countries with the highest incidences worldwide. In Latvia, the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in a week stood at 934.5 yesterday (Friday), in Estonia at 847.8 and in Lithuania at 747.

The situation is also out of control in Romania and Bulgaria, with incidences of around 500. In Romania, which has a population of around 19 million, more than 15,000 new infections were recorded on Saturday. Some 30 patients had to be transferred to neighbouring Hungary because of the overload on the health care system. The situation is so dramatic that the government in Bucharest has had to take some limited measures. As of Monday, masks will be compulsory throughout Romania, and larger events such as weddings and conferences will be banned in November.

The fact that the SPD-FDP-Green coalition is preparing to end all COVID-19 protections in such a situation exposes the class character of the incoming federal government. It is moving to implement the “profits before lives” policy even more aggressively than the SPD-CDU grand coalition before. Already in their exploratory paper, the SPD, FDP and Greens pledged to respect the constitutional balanced-budget amendment and to increase the “competitiveness of Germany as a business location.”

The message is clear: The new government sees it as its job to squeeze the gigantic sums that flowed to the big banks and corporations under last spring’s COVID-19 emergency bailouts out of the working class. Scientifically necessary measures to contain the pandemic—first and foremost, the closure of schools and nonessential businesses—are incompatible with this agenda.

Behind this ruthless policy of mass infection stand the geostrategic and economic interests of German imperialism, which is positioning itself against its international rivals and massively rearming. The exploratory paper states that the aim is to “ensure that Europe emerges economically strong from the pandemic on the basis of sound and sustainable public finances.” To this end, “increased cooperation between the national European armies” is declared essential, as is improving the German army’s equipment.