Germany’s incoming government vows to let COVID-19 run rampant

Peter Schwarz

Germany’s incoming government led by the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, who is replacing the Christian Democrat Angela Merkel after 16 years as Federal Chancellor, has declared war on the working population before it is even in office.

When the so-called “traffic light coalition,” consisting of the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Free Democrats (FDP), presented their government program on Wednesday, the number of COVID-19 deaths surpassed 100,000, according to the official count by the Robert Koch Institute. This gruesome coincidence had great symbolic power.

Social Democratic Party, SPD, chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz, second right, stands with the Green party leaders Annalena Baerbock, left, and Robert Habeck, second left, and the Free Democratic Party chairman Christian Lindner, right, as they arrive for a joint news conference in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Most of these deaths would have been preventable had the government followed the advice of science and pursued the elimination of COVID-19 using all available means—vaccination, mass testing, contact tracing, lockdowns, closing all factories and schools, quarantine.

But the Merkel government, in consultation with Germany’s state governments, made a conscious decision to sacrifice the health and lives of millions for the profits of the corporations. It only took action against the virus when the situation was about to explode, and then lifted the public health measures far too soon. Nonessential businesses were never closed at all. Schools remain open to this day, even though the virus is rampant among children and causes incalculable long-term damage.

While millions became infected, lost jobs and incomes, and performed superhuman efforts in hospitals and nursing homes, the corporate elite and super-rich gorged themselves during the pandemic. The fortunes of the 100 richest Germans alone rose from €606 billion to €722 billion in the first year of the pandemic.

The result is the current catastrophe. The number of new infections every day is increasing exponentially and was 76,000 on Wednesday, more than twice as high as at the height of the second and third waves. Desperate parents and teachers do not know how to protect children. Every day, 350 people are dying from COVID-19. The intensive care units are overcrowded and preparing for triage. Without drastic countermeasures, the number of fatalities will double to 200,000 by spring, according to expert estimates.

But the new government is acting even more inhumanely and criminally than the old one. A week ago, the SPD, Greens and FDP used their majority in parliament to end the COVID-19 emergency, the legal basis for lockdowns and similar measures.

Scholz’s appearance in front of the press on Wednesday was reminiscent of the notorious Emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome was on fire. Scholz and his coalition partners praised and celebrated each other, but apart from a general appeal for vaccinations and the establishment of a crisis team in the Chancellery, they did not propose a single measure against the pandemic.

Even mainstream media outlets commented at the government’s indifference to mass death. “The current decisions are like announcing in a flood disaster that more swimming instructors would be hired and a couple of armbands and bath ducks distributed,” commented the Süddeutsche Zeitung .

Contempt for the life and health of the working class pervades the government program, which we analysed on the WSWS. Every topic and every question is approached from the standpoint of profit optimization, the geopolitical interests of German imperialism and the suppression of popular opposition.

The program strives for a German great power policy, advocates nuclear deterrence and joins the US war front against China and Russia. It provides for an accelerated rearmament of the armed forces, police and secret services. It retains the debt brake, which prevents governments from borrowing for public spending, and categorically rules out tax increases for the rich. It draws inspiration from the notorious Agenda 2010 imposed by the the red-green government of Gerhard Schröder and develops its attacks on wages, social rights and pensions even further.

After Schröder’s resignation in 2005, the SPD continued this policy as a junior partner of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union. Scholz himself was Merkel’s vice chancellor and finance minister for the past three and a half years. Now the Greens are also returning to the federal government.

The Greens were founded in the early 1980s by participants in the 1968 student protests. They gathered former Maoists, anarchists, young socialists, opponents of nuclear power and peace activists under the banner of environmental protection. What they all had in common was their rejection of Marxism and the working class based on the theories of the Frankfurt School and postmodernism.

In the 1998 federal election campaign, the Greens presented themselves as pacifists and “leftists.” But no sooner were they in the federal government than they showed their true colors. The former squatter and street fighter Joschka Fischer, as Foreign Minister, organized the German army’s first postwar foreign military intervention in Yugoslavia. The social attacks on working people enforced under the Agenda 2010 also enjoyed the unreserved support of the Greens.

Now the Greens are returning to the federal government as an aggressive war and austerity party. They also subordinate climate protection, their trademark, to the interests of the corporations and banks. On closer inspection, their climate protection plans turn out to be a gigantic subsidy and enrichment program for the economy that falls far short of the urgently needed climate targets. The party is based on the wealthy, urban middle class, who have shifted sharply to the right under the impact of growing class tensions and are now allied with the open representatives of finance capital in the FDP.

This has created a situation where open class conflict becomes inevitable. The mood of the masses is far to the left of official politics. The anger over the murderous COVID-19 policy and the resistance to wage cuts, increasing workloads and layoffs are growing and will continue to increase in view of an inflation rate of almost 6 percent. Significant strikes and protests have already occurred on the railways, in hospitals, in the public sector and at numerous steel companies.

These moods no longer find any expression in the official parliamentary system. There is no established party that even remotely represents the interests of the workers. In the federal parliament, there are three right-wing opposition parties, the CDU, CSU and Alternative for Germany, but no party that is nominally to the left of the traffic light coalition—other than the rump that remains of the Left Party. The Left Party fully supports the federal government’s policies. It governs in four federal states in alliance with the SPD and the Greens.

This situation is not limited to Germany. All over the world, workers are learning that the nominally left parties and unions stand on the other side of the barricades and stab them in the back. In Greece, the pseudo-left Syriza implemented the Troika’s drastic austerity program. In Spain, the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Podemos are pursuing a murderous COVID-19 policy and attacking metal workers in Cadiz with riot police. In Britain, the Labor Party under Keir Starmer is trying to outdo the Tories from the right. In the US, the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) supports President Biden, who in turn embraces the Republicans as they drift towards fascism.

As a result of this criminal policy, Europe has become the epicentre of the pandemic. The WHO warned on Tuesday that the number of reported deaths in Europe will rise from the current 1.5 million to 2.2 million by the spring of next year if current trends continue, which means that 700,000 additional deaths will take place.

The Problem of Sanctions Against North Korea

John Feffer

North Korea is one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world. It has been subject to U.S. and international sanctions for more than 70 years. Those sanctions have come in three overlapping waves, first as a result of the Korean War, then in response to its development of nuclear weapons, and finally to roll back that nuclear program as well as activities such as counterfeiting and cyberterrorism.

These sanctions have contributed to isolating North Korea from the rest of the world. The country has not entirely welcomed this isolation. Despite longstanding suspicions of outside influences, Pyongyang has shown considerable interest in engaging with the West and with the global economy more generally. Economic sanctions have severely limited this interaction.

There is currently little political support in the United States for lifting sanctions against North Korea. Despite claims to the contrary, the Biden administration has settled into the same de facto policy of “strategic patience” adopted by the Obama administration. The new administration has not even reversed the Trump administration’s re-designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.

In general, the United States views economic sanctions as a tool of leverage to bring North Korea back to the negotiations table around its nuclear weapons program. The experience with Iran, for instance, suggests that if the pain of economic sanctions proves sufficiently high, a country will be more willing to restrict its nuclear program. Sanctions can then be reduced in a phased manner as part of a nuclear deal like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

But economic sanctions haven’t played that role with North Korea. They didn’t deter Pyongyang from pursuing a nuclear weapons program, nor have they been subsequently responsible for pushing it toward denuclearization. Unlike Iran, North Korea has been under sanctions for nearly its entire existence and it doesn’t have a strong international economic presence that can be penalized. It has been willing to suffer the effects of isolation in order to build what it considers to be a credible deterrence against foreign attack.

U.S. sanctions policy has demonstrably failed. Is a more credible policy possible or likely?

The Range of Sanctions

There is some controversy over whether North Korea is the most sanctioned country in the world or only the fifth on the list. This debate, stimulated by a report by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has revolved around a single point. If North Korea isn’t the most sanctioned country in the world, then there is room to apply even more sanctions against it.

Even if the United States and North Korea have practically no interaction—no diplomatic relations, no commerce, few informal ties—some political actors in Washington would still like to pile on additional sanctions against Pyongyang. It’s unclear what purpose these additional sanctions would serve: purely punitive, one more stick to push Pyongyang back to negotiations, or an effort to precipitate some form of regime change.

Before addressing the utility of the current sanctions regime, let’s take a look at the different categories of prohibitions that the United States and the United Nations has adopted against North Korea. In addition, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the EU have imposed their own sanctions against the country.

Economic sanctions against North Korea cover trade, finance, investment, even North Korean workers in foreign countries. The earliest of these were imposed by the United States after the Korean War, when Washington imposed a total trade embargo on North Korea and also froze all North Korean holdings in the United States. In the 1970s, the United States tightened these restrictions by prohibiting the import of any agricultural products that contained raw material from North Korea. The United States also prohibits any exports to North Korea if they contain more than 10 percent of U.S.-sourced inputs. There are some minor humanitarian exemptions to these sanctions.

Between 2004 and 2019, in the wake of the failed Agreed Framework of the Clinton era, Congress passed eight bills that further restricted economic and financial interactions with North Korea. On the financial side, the United States has effectively blocked North Korea from participating in the U.S. financial system but more importantly from engaging in any dollar-based transactions. Secondary sanctions target any countries that conduct business with North Korea, which further limits the country’s access to the global economy.

Because North Korea remains on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, it does not enjoy sovereign immunity from prosecution for certain acts such as torture and extrajudicial killing. The United States is further obligated by the stipulations of this regulation to oppose any effort by North Korea to join the IMF or World Bank.

A rather lengthy list of individuals and entities have been singled out for sanctions, from high-level officials and directors of banks to trading and shipping companies to specific vessels and even non-Korean business people.

The United States is not alone in imposing sanctions against North Korea. The UN Security Council has passed about a dozen unanimous resolutions that ban trade in arms, luxury goods, electrical equipment, natural gas, and other items. Other sanctions impose a freeze on the assets of designated individuals and entities, prohibit joint ventures with these prohibited entities, and restrict cargo trade with North Korea.

Japan has also imposed sanctions, largely as a result of North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests. “These measures freeze certain North Korean and Chinese assets, ban bilateral trade with North Korea, restrict the entry of North Korean citizens and ships into Japanese territory, and prohibit remittances worth more than $880,” reports Eleanor Albert.

South Korea, Australia, and the EU also maintain their own sanctions against the country.

The Problems with Sanctions

Regardless of whether North Korea is in fact the most heavily sanctioned country in the world or whether there is room to levy even more sanctions against Pyongyang, the obvious conclusion is that sanctions have not worked to change the country’s behavior. If anything, sanctions have achieved the opposite effect. In the face of a hostile international community, North Korea became ever more convinced of the necessity of building a nuclear weapons program. Once it acquired those weapons, it has decided that they represent the single most important deterrent against foreign intervention. On the economic front, North Korea has forgone the benefits of formal participation in the global economy and has developed various strategies to raise capital through black-market and grey-market activities.

North Korea also routinely evades sanctions. On the energy front alone, according to Arms Control Today’s coverage of a UN assessment, “In the first nine months of 2020, North Korea ‘exceeded by several times’ the annual 500,000-barrel cap on sanctioned imports by receiving at least 121 shipments of refined petroleum products. The panel also found that North Korea exported 2.5 million tons of coal during the same months via at least 400 shipments through Chinese territorial waters.”

The dream of a “perfect sanctions regime” that chokes off all economic interactions with North Korea is illusory as long as there are actors willing to engage the country. China, because it does not want a collapsing nuclear power on its borders, is willing to keep its fraternal ally on life support. Despite this design flaw, sanctions advocates are always coming up with a better mousetrap. They offer “smart sanctions” and “targeted sanctions” to direct punitive measures at those in power. They propose new enforcement mechanisms, like the Proliferation Security Initiative, to ensure more effective implementation of sanctions. These are often very sophisticated initiatives. But still the mouse avoids the mousetrap.

The expectation that North Korea will eventually surrender its nuclear program or experience some form of regime change also flies in the face of the evidence of 70 years of experience. If North Korea has defied these expectations for seven decades, why should we expect that capitulation is right around the corner?

Not only have sanctions failed to achieve their intended effect—a non-nuclear North Korea, a more law-abiding regime—they have produced the opposite. In addition to acquiring nuclear weapons, North Korea has been forced to rely on obviously illegal means to generate funds—smuggling, counterfeiting, traffic in illegal products. It has further concentrated power in the military. It has been further cut off from international contacts that could potentially expose the country to other ideas and practices. The result has been a much more isolated, parochial, defensive, militaristic country.

Sanctions, in other words, have produced a vicious circle. The tighter the sanctions, the more North Korea becomes a country that requires sanctioning.

The current U.S. approach is transactional. If North Korea promises in negotiations to behave a certain way and then follows through on its promises, the United States will reduce sanctions. On several occasions, this approach has produced certain results. The United States lifted certain sanctions as part of the Agreed Framework in the 1990s, then as part of the Six Party Talks negotiations in the 2000s. But any progress along these lines was eventually reversed.

It’s not that the logic of this transactional approach is flawed. Rather, there is a deep divide between the United States and North Korea that renders such an approach problematic. First, there is a profound asymmetry. U.S. sanctions policy is directed by a number of different actors—the president, Congress, the Treasury Department. And some of these sanctions follow from or otherwise contribute to international sanctions, requiring different authority for their suspension.

But North Korea is extremely hierarchical. The leader has unilateral authority to direct policy, even overruling the military if necessary (as was the case, for instance, in the promotion of the Kaesong Industrial Complex over military objections that the territory was strategic in nature and should not be given over to an inter-Korean economic project). The United States must abide by the legal requirements embedded in sanctions policy and legislation; the North Korean leader can, with a simple edict, create the law.

Second, there is a gap of trust between the two countries. Both sides have made promises that the other side argues have not been upheld. This makes any future promises that much more difficult to be believed. North Koreans generally don’t appreciate the disputes that arise between the executive and legislative branches in the United States – as they did over the implementation of the Agreed Framework provisions in the 1990s – and view the breach to be a result of bad faith rather than politics.

Third, there are certain assumptions in the transactional approach that are not shared. Essentially, the United States views North Korea as a mule that can be pushed one way or another through a policy of “carrots and sticks.” Sanctions are a big stick; removal of sanctions is a big carrot.

But North Korea views itself as an autonomous, independent actor. Self-determination is one of the most important elements of the country’s ruling philosophy. It does not look kindly upon foreign entities that treat it as an unreasonable animal that must be pushed and pulled. The transactional nature of the negotiations around the country’s nuclear program fails to take into account this fiercely independent approach.

Beyond Sanctions

It is not easy to do away with U.S. sanctions against North Korea. As Jessica Lee points out, “none of the economic sanctions against North Korea have a sunset clause, so they are difficult to amend or remove.” Presidential waivers are possible, but presidents are generally reluctant to invoke such waivers because of congressional pushback and the generally negative perception of North Korea in U.S. public discourse.

The most immediate task is to consider a range of exemptions to the current sanctions to ensure that the international community can help avert a humanitarian disaster in North Korea. Even the UN Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights Tomas Ojea Quintana has argued for such a relaxation of the sanctions regime in order to safeguard the livelihoods of ordinary citizens.

Beyond the humanitarian crisis, however, the United States should consider more radical approaches to North Korea that go beyond sanctions.

Donald Trump was willing to consider this more radical approach in part because he was more taken with grand gestures and foreign policy spectacles than with day-to-day political calculations. He attempted the top-down approach of engaging directly with Kim Jong Un. But he frankly didn’t understand the terms of engagement and, when frustrated by North Korea’s apparent lack of reciprocity, fell back on the default policy of applying even more sanctions. The virtue of Trump’s approach was that it established, at least on the surface, a measure of symmetry between the two sides: two “deciders” sweeping aside the procedural requirements to hammer out a deal. But in the end, Trump wasn’t willing to abandon the underlying carrot-stick mentality.

No U.S. administrations have seriously considered the “Chinese option” of undertaking a break-through agreement with North Korea comparable to the Nixon-Kissinger approach of the 1970s. Such an approach would reduce and eventually eliminate economic sanctions in order to facilitate North Korea’s engagement with the global economy in the expectation that it will become a more responsible global actor, which China has in fact become (certainly in comparison to its Cultural Revolution days). Constrained by the rules of the global economy, nudged away from illegitimate and toward legitimate economic activities, and cognizant of the importance of preserving new trade ties, North Korea would still possess weapons of mass destruction—as well as a considerable conventional military—but would be less likely to consider using them.

The United States took such a radical move with China in the 1970s in order to gain a geopolitical edge with the Soviet Union. It could do the same with North Korea today in order to gain some leverage over China.

The major objection, of course, is that the United States would unilaterally give up a powerful tool of influence by removing sanctions on North Korea. But, as has been detailed above, sanctions haven’t been effective. Instead of more coercive sticks, perhaps the United States should consider better carrots.

To persuade North Korea to reduce its nuclear weapons program, the United States should consider offering something akin to the Agreed Framework but substituting renewable energy for the civilian nuclear power plants of that deal. With Chinese and South Korean cooperation, the United States could offer to help North Korea leapfrog to an entirely different economy independent of fossil fuels. It was, after all, the huge jump in energy prices in the late 1980s and early 1990s that helped to precipitate North Korea’s agricultural and industrial collapse, from which it has never really recovered. A new energy grid that eliminates the country’s dependency on imported energy would be of great interest to the leadership in Pyongyang.

The current standoff between North Korea and the rest of the world is based on two fundamental misconceptions. North Korea believes that its nuclear weapons program provides it with long-term security. And the rest of the world believes that economic sanctions will eventually force North Korea to give up that program. The two misconceptions have generated a series of failed agreements and failed negotiations.

The United States in particular must consider instead a different kind of approach based not on bigger sticks but better carrots that can give North Korea what it really wants: engagement with the global economy on its own terms based on a stronger and more self-sufficient domestic economy. A more prosperous North Korea that is no longer backed into a corner would be a benefit to its own citizens, to the overall security of the Korean peninsula, and to the international community more generally.

COVID cases and deaths surge to record levels in Greece

John Vassilopoulos

Nearly 1,600 people have lost their life to COVID-19 so far this month in Greece. It brings the total number of people who have succumbed to the virus since the start of the pandemic to 17,517 out of a 10.3 million population.

There has been a huge upsurge in the number of daily cases over the previous month and a half. Over the first seven days of October average daily cases recorded were 2,174. Cases are now on average more than three times higher. The record for the highest number of daily cases was broken on November 9 when 8,623 were diagnosed.

Greece is rapidly heading towards a million cases of COVID, with yesterday’s 7,108 cases bringing the total to 901,661.

Particularly hard hit is northern Greece with hospitals forced to turn people away such as the Papanikolaou General Hospital located in the outskirts of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city. Speaking to SKAI TV on November 20, the head of the hospital’s intensive care units (ICU) said that his department saw all beds occupied at the start of the day. “This has never happened before… We are in an emergency situation and the health system, doctors and nurses have all reached their limits.”

A teacher wearing a protective face mask speaks to her pupils in junior high school in Athens, Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

The devastation of Greece’s healthcare system under the onslaught of the pandemic is the direct consequence of the brutal austerity imposed by successive conservative, social-democratic and pseudo-left governments at the behest of the European Union and International Monetary Fund over the previous decade. Total healthcare spending decreased from 9.52 percent of GDP in 2010, when the first austerity package was signed, to 7.72 percent in 2018. According to a 2020 OECD report Greece had 5.3 ICU beds per 100,000 population in 2019 just before the pandemic began, well below the EU average of 12.9 ICU beds per 100,000 population.

The New Democracy (ND) government has played down the crisis in the health service with a recent health ministry announcement boasting that “the government has more than doubled ICU beds adhering to all necessary procedures. All beds that have been procured meet all the prerequisites required, have all required equipment and are staffed with specialised personnel.”

A dilapidated health centre in Athens that is being used as a vaccination station (WSWS Media)

The government’s bragging is refuted by other official figures. Nearly 92 percent of all Covid ICU beds are currently occupied nationwide with the number of those on ventilators as of November 23 standing at 597—up nearly 39 percent since the start of the month.

The care provided in many of those newly set up units is “intensive” in name only. In an interview with medical news site iatronet.gr, Ioannis Kioumis a lung and infectious disease specialist who teaches at the University of Thessaloniki said, “When you create new ICU beds that did not exist before it follows that these and especially the personnel around them will not be of the same calibre as that in established Intensive Care Units.”

To deflect from its criminal handling of the pandemic the government has focused on the fact that the majority of those hospitalised have not been vaccinated. In a televised address last week Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called the latest wave “a pandemic of the unvaccinated”.

Only 61.1 percent of all adults have been fully vaccinated in Greece which is lower than the EU average of 65.5 percent and this has undoubtedly contributed to needless deaths. However, the fault for this lies with the government.

The number of fully vaccinated people hospitalised in the last couple of months has also been steadily increasing. Immunity from the vaccine reduces as time goes on, with millions of people susceptible to being infected or re-infected. On August 30, the proportion of fully vaccinated people on ventilators stood at 8.58 percent of the total. Just two months later, on October 31, this had nearly doubled to 15.2 percent. As of this week, the proportion of the vaccinated on ventilators was at 17.59 percent.

Following the lead from governments across Europe and internationally, Greece’s government did not present the vaccine as one of a series of public health tools to tackle the pandemic but as a panacea that would allow a return to normal life. The existence of COVID vaccines was used to justify the junking of all other public health measures that impinged on the profit interests of the ruling elite, despite increasing evidence that vaccination alone would not be enough to suppress the more contagious Delta variant.

This legitimised all manner of pseudo-scientific thought with a raft of self-styled “experts” given air-time in the media to promote their anti-lockdown, anti-mask and anti-vaccination theories.

One such individual is cardiologist Faidon Vovolis who has used his medical credentials over the past year to sow fear about the safety of mask wearing and vaccines, which he has dismissed as “experimental”. He has set up his own political party called “Free Again”. Figures such as Vovolis are presented in the media as a de facto opposition to the government, yet the promotion of such individuals has in turn facilitated ND’s herd immunity agenda of mass infection of the population with a deadly disease.

Seeking to present himself on the side of science in his TV address Mitsotakis said, “I call on you to turn your back to fear and to every charlatan who for the sake of raising their publicity and exposure capitalises on ignorance.” But far from seeking to mobilise the scientific community to dispel the lies spread by Vovolis and his ilk, Mitsotakis’ government court such layers, as underscored by the appointing of the far-right Thanos Plevris, a well-known vaccine sceptic, to the post of Health Minister in a cabinet reshuffle at the end of August.

When the H1N1 influenza pandemic spread in 2009-10, Plevris encouraged right-wing opponents of vaccination and railed in parliament, while he was a deputy for the far-right LAOS party, against doctors calling on citizens to get vaccinated, denouncing them for creating “panic”. At the start of July in an interview with the Alpha radio station Plevris, who is in charge of the government’s vaccination drive, told an interviewer it was not the government’s job to convince people to get vaccinated!

Mitsotakis made clear that no measures will be taken that will cut across the profit interests of the ruling elite, declaring, “Greece is mourning needless losses simply because it does not have the vaccination levels of other countries. And this despite the fact of the perfect campaign by the government, However, the government and society have signed an honourable contract: to not close down, with the vaccine as our shield. And we need to abide by the conditions of this agreement.”

The key measure announced to supposedly tackle the upsurge in cases was that, as of this week, the unvaccinated are not permitted entry into closed venues such as cinemas, theatres and gyms. Their entry into essential goods outlets such as supermarkets and pharmacies will require proof of a negative test.

As to preventing wider community transmission, no serious measures are being taken. Schools and non-essential businesses will continue to remain open while the only measure to address overcrowding on public transport during peak time is a requirement for businesses to operate a staggered timetable. Public transport routinely operates at full capacity despite the already high legal limit of 85 percent capacity mandated by the government.

Planned strikes by DHL workers in UK as Unite seek to block national action

Harvey Thompson

More than 2,000 DHL logistics workers who sort and deliver components to Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) plants have given “strong backing” for industrial action over pay.

A strike would directly threaten car production at West Midland JLR sites at Solihull, Castle Bromwich, Hams Hall and Midpoint, Tyrefort, as well as Halewood in Merseyside.

The workers had already rejected a pathetic 1.75 percent pay offer to cover the two-and-a-half years from 2020 by a margin of 96 percent. RPI inflation is already running at 6 percent.

A DHL driver (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Drivers and warehouse staff clashed with the company earlier this year over its abuse of the Job Retention Scheme’s furlough payments.

DHL had used the “flexible furlough” scheme during the pandemic, enabling businesses to bring back furloughed employees on a part-time basis and still receive government payment for some of their wages. In August, reports emerged of hundreds of workers having been underpaid, owed as much as £800.

The same month, Birmingham Live received accounts from anonymous former employees at DHL warehouses cataloguing what one called a “bully culture.” One worker said: “We worked throughout the pandemic. They won the new contract because of us. But there is no appreciation. There’s a bully culture here by senior management. It is their way or no way.

“Toilet breaks are timed… There have been instances where employees have been stopped by a senior manager who stood by the toilet and told them to go on their break…

“There was a massive uproar about people who work for Amazon. It’s exactly the same here.”

In October, the company sent letters out to hundreds of other workers announcing that up to 10 percent of their wages would be docked each month from November to next September due to furlough “overpayments”.

DHL is also facing strike action in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

In Scotland, around 90 drivers and warehouse workers based in Bellshill, near Glasgow have rejected an offer of 9 percent over two years because it did not address the “poverty pay” experienced by the workers earning on average £12.50 an hour. Workers are also in dispute with DHL over the failure to improve drivers’ working hours, among other terms and conditions.

At the Bombardier (now Spirit AeroSystems) Wing Logistics Hub in Belfast, a ballot of DHL workers returned a 100 percent vote in favour of strike action over poverty pay and poor conditions. The Unite union reported that staff earn an hourly rate of £9.24, with “some of the longest hours and enjoy the least holidays”.

Workers are determined to take on DHL, the largest logistics company in the world employing 41,000 workers in the UK, a tenth of its 400,000-strong global workforce. Its parent company made a record €1.3 billion profit in the first half of this year. The workers are in a powerful position to do so, forming a vital link in industrial and food supply chains in conditions of a very tight labour market.

However, they face a determined opponent in the Unite union which is working to throttle this movement on behalf of employers they have worked to protect for decades.

Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham made much of the fact that DHL workers at JLR had not received a pay rise since 2018. But this is thanks to the union’s past record in enforcing the dictates of management.

Unite did not lift a finger in August last year when DHL sacked over 1,200 workers in its JLR operations, saying only that they would try to keep job losses “to an absolute minimum”.

Confronted with a growing rebellion in the workforce, driven by the pressures of rising inflation and the experience of intense exploitation throughout the pandemic, Unite is seeking to delay and isolate disputes to prevent the development of a full-scale movement across DHL’s 40,000-strong national workforce.

The JLR fight has been dragged out for months. A dispute over pay was first raised in March 2020. It returned this August in the context of the conflict over furlough payments, with Unite announcing that it would “now begin the process of balloting its more than 2,000 DHL members”. More than two months later, on October 20, after talks with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), the union announced a ballot for industrial action closing November 15.

Unite has not even released the ballot result, admitting only that the membership has given “strong backing”. The union immediately returned to backroom talks with the employers at ACAS.

At Bellshill, Unite again sought to bury the dispute. After DHL’s initial offer was refused, the union entered talks and presented an “improved offer” (details undisclosed) to its membership. This was rejected by an 88 percent vote, on a 95 percent turnout. Announcing the result on November 17, the union gave no details of proposed strike action, but declared it would be re-entering talks with ACAS the next day.

Not a trace can be found of the dispute in Northern Ireland.

Every effort is made to keep disputes separate, despite all the workers involved being employed by the same company and facing the same issues.

Two other DHL strikes were taken off the table earlier this year.

A strike of 200 DHL lorry drivers at Sainsbury’s regional distribution centre for London and the South East in Dartford was called off in October after workers accepted a 6.2 percent pay increase. This settlement reflects the pressures being put on employers by the shortage of HGV drivers and points to what more would be possible without the union’s sabotaging a broader fight.

It made even more galling the sellout deal at DHL’s Croxteth, Liverpool plant this February, where 120 warehouse workers who had struck for a total of 10 days received a below-inflation 3 percent pay deal for 2021, and a one-off £75 payment.

Unite is following the same playbook used to demobilise the struggles of bus drivers, at Stagecoach, Arriva and the London operators. Faced with a growing fightback over pay and conditions, it divides workers from each other and as far as possible prevents them mobilising in strike action, creating the best conditions to enforce minimal pay offers.

British government makes out of court settlements to 417 Iraqis in tacit admission of war crimes

Jean Shaoul

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has paid out “several million” pounds in out-of-court settlements to 417 Iraqis in relation to British troops subjecting them to cruel and inhumane treatment, arbitrary detention or assault.

The MoD tried to keep news of the payout as low key as possible, making no public announcement. It was reported only by the Guardian and the Middle East Eye website, with the corporate news media and the BBC, the state-owned broadcaster, remaining silent.

The individual payouts amount to around £10,000 per person. The settlements follow the 2017 High Court decision that ruled in four test cases that Britain had breached the Geneva Conventions and the Human Rights Act during its military operations in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. The High Court awarded four Iraqis a total of £84,000 relating to three separate incidents that involved unlawful detention, assault and hooding.

A British soldier aims his LMG (Light Machine Gun on a shooting range in Basra, Iraq (Credit: Photographer: Harland Quarrington/OGL Open Government License)

According to the Guardian, the official disclosure showed that the MoD had settled 417 “Iraq private law” cases during 2020-21 and 13 such cases relating to Afghanistan. While details of most of the cases remain confidential, one case involved the death of a 13-year-old boy. Many of the claims involved hooding detainees, even though the practice was banned in 1972. Some British soldiers serving in Iraq stated they were not aware of the banning order.

The settlements are a tacit admission that the UK committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The MoD told the Guardian in a statement, “Whilst the vast majority of UK personnel conducted themselves to the highest standards in Iraq and Afghanistan, we acknowledge that it has been necessary to seek negotiated settlements of outstanding claims in both the Iraq civilian litigation and Afghan civil litigation.”

Martyn Day, senior partner at the law firm Leigh Day that has acted on behalf of the claimants, said the settlements undermined attempts by the government to publicly dismiss accusations of abuse. “The fact that the MoD has now agreed to compensation in so many cases shows how wrong it was for so many politicians to call the claims ‘vexatious’ and ‘spurious.’”

He added, “While we’ve had politicians like [former Conservative government prime ministers] David Cameron and Theresa May criticising us for supposedly ambulance chasing, the MoD has been quietly settling claims. The settlements here cover a mix of cases, instances of false imprisonment, assault.”

The payouts follow numerous reports from human rights organisations, UK public inquiries, parliamentary reports and civil court cases that found extensive evidence of torture, including video evidence of soldiers conducting wanton acts of cruelty. These were committed during combat operations in Iraq that ended in 2009—with most allegations focusing on the conduct of British military interrogators. A parliamentary report suggested that the abuses were not isolated incidents but had a systemic character, while the MoD’s training manuals, on its own admission, contained material that potentially “placed service personnel outside domestic or international law.”

The MoD has said it had received so many complaints from Iraqis unlawfully detained and mistreated by British troops that it was unable to say exactly how much it had paid out to settle claims. Figures released thus far suggest a total of around £25 million in out-of-court settlements to avoid criminal prosecution.

Despite this, there is no prospect that anyone will be prosecuted. All the remaining investigations into allegations of abuse have now ended without any prosecutions being brought.

In 2010, the government set up the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) to investigate allegations of 3,405 war crimes committed by British troops between 2003 and 2009. IHAT found evidence of widespread abuse and mistreatment at the hands of British forces, including the killing of unarmed civilians and children. The corporate media immediately denounced the investigations as “witch-hunts.”

In 2017, Theresa May’s government closed down IHAT without any prosecutions, using the excuse that Phil Shiner, a lawyer who had taken more than 1,000 cases to IHAT, had paid fixers in Iraq to find clients. May pledged, “We will never again—in any future conflict—let those activist, left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave.”

In 2019, the BBC’s flagship Panorama TV programme, working with the Sunday Times, revealed new information about alleged killings in British custody and their cover-up. It cited various egregious cases and concluded that government ministers and the MoD exerted political pressure to end the investigations to protect Britain’s reputation. The investigators said, “There was more and more pressure coming from the Ministry of Defence to get cases closed as quickly as possible.”

The MoD also lodged a series of complaints against the lawyers bringing the civil suits against it. Commenting in the Sunday Times, Ken Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, said “it is as though ministers feared the effects of justice.”

Last month, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the Service Police Legacy Investigations (SPLI) that had been examining 1,291 allegations by Iraqis of serious criminal behaviour by UK armed forces had now “officially closed its doors.” The SPLI, made up of navy and air force police, took over from IHAT investigations in February 2017. Wallace said the SPLI had pursued 178 allegations through 55 separate investigations without this resulting in any prosecutions. This included five referrals to the military prosecutor, the Service Prosecuting Authority.

While Wallace sought to denigrate many of the claims as “spurious” and lacking credibility, he was forced to admit that some allegations against British troops were credible. He said, “However not all allegations and claims were spurious, otherwise investigations would not have proceeded beyond initial examination and no claims for compensation would have been paid.”

These investigations were always a sham, set up to avoid any prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which as far back as 2014 had accepted a complaint alleging UK military personnel had committed war crimes against Iraqis in their custody between 2003 and 2008 and ordered a preliminary investigation. This was the first time the ICC had opened an inquiry into a Western state, having focused almost exclusively on African heads of state or officials, while allowing the imperialist powers, the greatest perpetrators of war crimes and human rights abuses, to get off scot-free.

The ICC, which came under massive pressure from the Trump administration, dutifully abandoned its inquiry, arguing that it could only mount a formal investigation and prosecution if the domestic courts and investigative bodies had failed to do so.

The silence of the media, the Labour Party and trade unions on this latest, tacit admission of war crimes confirms their unconditional defence of British imperialism.

Britain, a key player along with the US and the major European powers in numerous overt and covert military operations in pursuit of its geostrategic interests throughout the resource-rich Middle East, is determined to avoid any accountability for its actions. The government has introduced legislation imposing a six-year limit on prosecutions for soldiers serving outside the UK. The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act creates a “presumption against prosecution” that gives the green light to future war crimes, including torture and the mass murder of civilians.

The legislation protects the MoD, even more than the armed forces, that has repeatedly covered up war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, putting the government above the law. This is even as the government prepares for new and potentially catastrophic wars against China and Russia, both of which have nuclear weapons, and their ally Iran, amid growing economic and social unrest at home.

27 migrants confirmed dead as dinghy capsizes in English Channel

Chris Marsden & Robert Stevens

At least 27 people died on Wednesday after an inflatable dinghy capsized in rough seas in the English Channel near to the French port city of Calais. The number killed was originally reported as 31 but was revised down by the French government on Thursday morning.

The tragedy took place Wednesday afternoon, with French fishermen reporting bodies floating motionless in the sea. Sky News reported, “Fisherman Nicolas Margolle said he had seen two small dinghies—one with people onboard and another empty. He said another fisherman had called rescuers after seeing the empty dinghy and 15 people motionless in the water.”

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that 34 people had been on board the boat. “Amongst the 31 dead, as far as we know five were women and one was a little girl.” Two people were rescued and one was still missing. Of the two survivors Darmanin said, “There are two survivors... but their life is in danger—they are suffering from severe hypothermia.” He described the inflatable the migrants were in as “very frail... like a pool you blow up in your garden”.

A rescue workers van arrives at the port of Calais, northern France, Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. At least 31 migrants bound for Britain died Wednesday when their boat sank in the English Channel. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

The International Organisation for Migration said the deaths were the biggest single loss of life in the Channel since it began collecting data in 2014.

Responsibility for the deaths rests with the governments of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron. Migrants face systematic persecution by London, Paris and all of Europe’s governments after being driven into exile by imperialist wars and terrible hardship. This year more than 25,700 people have attempted the hazardous journey to the UK via the Channel, the world’s busiest shipping lane, in small boats and inflatables. This is a rise of more than 300 percent. Around 25 crossings were attempted yesterday alone.

The scale of death can be seen in the fact that the previous highest number of migrants killed in a single incident in the Channel was five Kurdish-Iranians who drowned in October last year. The 27 deaths are almost double the total of 14 people who have perished this year trying to cross the Channel from France.

People thought to be migrants disembark from a British Border Force patrol boat after being picked up from a dingy in the English Channel in Dover harbour, England, Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

London and Paris were at one in insisting that people smugglers were responsible for the deaths and that a harsher clampdown on migration was the answer.

Darmanin gave a press conference from Calais confirming the deaths as the “the biggest (migrant) tragedy that we have seen,” before declaring, “It is an appalling situation for France, for Europe and for humanity to see these people perish at sea because of people smugglers.”

He even boasted that since the start of 2021, around 1,500 arrests have been made including four today linked to the drownings.

“France will not let the Channel become a cemetery,” said President Macron, before promising to “find and condemn those responsible” and calling for an “emergency meeting of European ministers concerned by the migration challenge”.

Prime Minister Jean Castex also insisted that those who died are victims of “criminal smugglers”.

On Wednesday afternoon, Prime Minister Johnson convened a meeting of the government’s emergency COBRA committee. Afterwards Johnson said he was “shocked and appalled and deeply saddened by the loss of life at sea in the Channel… But I also want to say that this disaster underscores how dangerous it is to cross the Channel in this way.”

Further action was needed to stop “gangsters,” he said, 'We've had difficulties persuading some of our partners—particularly the French—to do things in a way in which we think the situation deserves. The operation that has been conducted by our friends on the beaches, supported with £54 million from the UK, to help patrol the beaches, all the technical support we have been giving, they haven't been enough.”

He made clear the government would use the tragic deaths to speed up the passage of draconian anti-immigration legislation through parliament, adding, “And that’s why it’s so important that we accelerate if we possibly can all the measures contained in our Borders and Nationalities Bill, so that we distinguish between people who come here legally and people who come here illegally.” The legislation effectively criminalises migrants and asylum seekers seeking to enter the UK via the Channel.

Home Secretary Priti Patel, author of the legislation, said the deaths serve “as the starkest possible reminder of the dangers of these Channel crossings organised by ruthless criminal gangs. It is why this government’s new plan for immigration will overhaul our broken asylum system and address many of the long-standing pull factors encouraging migrants to make the perilous journey from France to the United Kingdom.”

The Nationality and Borders Bill is described by the Freedom From Torture organisation as “the biggest legal assault on international refugee law ever seen in the UK”.

The opposition Labour Party has no fundamental differences with the Tories, epitomised by Sir Keir Starmer’s denouncing Patel for delivering “absolutely nothing” by not securing “strong enough agreements with France” to do “the work upstream.”

Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds told the BBC on the news of yesterday’s deaths, “It is unrealistic to think that the entirety of that coastline can be patrolled. We need to be looking at practical law enforcement action away from the coast as well. We need that wider joint law enforcement work with the French authorities to be disrupting further away from the coast.”

In stark contrast, migrant charities pointed the finger of blame squarely at Johnson, Macron and their European counterparts.

Zoe Gardener from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants told the BBC there is “no requirement on people to seek asylum in the first country they reach. Of course there isn't, otherwise nobody would end up seeking protection in the UK.”

The UK is “very able to offer protection to lots more refugees than we currently do. So if everybody is supposed to stay in France because we're slightly to the west of France, then France can say the same thing to Italy, and then Italy can say the same thing to Libya, and in the end, the entire international refugee protection regime will crumble.”

Activists and members of associations defending migrants' rights gather with posters outside the port of Calais, northern France, Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. They are holding placards asking "How many deaths do you need?" and declaring "Calais: Human Rights Violated, Broken, Martyred"

Beth Gardiner-Smith, CEO of Safe Passage International, called on Patel to immediately resign and for Johnson to prevent any further loss of life. “More and more people are risking the freezing, frightening journey across the Channel in small, unstable boats since the government closed safe routes to the UK last year.”

Clare Moseley, founder of Care4Calais, also insisted that the government's focus should be upon creating a “safe and legal” way for people to claim asylum. “People smugglers are a symptom, not a cause of the problem,' she told Sky News. “The underlying issue is the fact that if you want to claim asylum in the UK you have to be physically present here and these people don't have a way to get here. That's why they get in small boats.”