US-backed forces in Solomon Islands continue campaign to remove government after anti-Chinese riots

Patrick O’Connor

US-supported opposition forces in Solomon Islands are preparing a parliamentary no-confidence motion for December 6, aimed at removing the government and reversing its diplomatic recognition of China.

The attempt to oust the government through a parliamentary vote follows the failed coup that saw violent rioting in the country’s capital, Honiara on November 24–26. A mob of about 1,000 people attempted to storm the parliament and were blocked by riot police firing tear gas and rubber bullets. A hut adjacent to the parliament was razed, as was a police station and Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s residence.

In three days of violence, a total of 56 buildings were burned to the ground, some of them housing multiple small businesses. Chinese-owned shops and outlets were targeted. Three people were murdered, one adult and two children. Police found their charred bodies in the attic of one of the torched buildings.

Australian Army soldiers talk with local citizens during a community engagement patrol through Honiara, Solomon Islands, Saturday, Nov. 27, 2021. (Cpl. Brandon Grey/Department of Defence via AP)

The government estimates that 1,000 people have lost their jobs as a direct result of the destruction. More than 100 people have been arrested over the violence and looting.

The rioters were led by a separatist group called Malaita 4 Democracy that is closely connected with Daniel Suidani, the provincial premier of Malaita. Over the last two years, Suidani has promoted anti-communist and Christian fundamentalist demagogy against the national government and its 2019 decision to switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing.

Suidani has received crucial political support and funding from Washington. In August 2019, just weeks before Sogavare announced the country’s diplomatic recognition of China, a team of US officials travelled to Malaita and met with Suidani. The World Socialist Web Site noted at the time: “The contingent included members of the Department of State, Department of Defence, Department of Trade, as well as embassy and aid personnel. US intelligence agencies were no doubt also represented in the group. Unusually, the visit to Malaita was not accompanied by a single press release or social media post.”

The US subsequently pledged investment money for the construction of a new port in the province, and $US25 million in direct funding to Suidani’s administration. USAID officials are active in Malaita, as are others with the Republican Party-connected International Republican Institute, who have conducted “training” sessions for Suidani’s political allies.

Flouting the national government, Suidani has maintained independent ties with Taiwan and insists that no Chinese investment is permitted in Malaita. Suidani’s supporters last year issued a pogromist threat, demanding that all people of Chinese background leave the province within 24 hours.

Washington’s support for these forces is being suppressed in the Australian and Western media in the aftermath of the violent riots.

Several reports have suggested that the violence was spontaneously triggered by young people affected by poverty and unemployment. There is no question that the Pacific state is wracked by an enormous economic and social crisis. Its lucrative natural resources, including gold and timber, have been looted for decades by transnational corporations. A tiny elite layer have been enriched in the process, while much of the working class and rural poor lacks access to basic infrastructure such as electricity, running water, and public education.

The rioting, however, was not a spontaneous protest but part of a planned coup attempt. More information is emerging on how this was organised.

The day before the violence erupted, government ministers from Malaita issued a public statement warning of what was being prepared and calling on Suidani to “refrain from inciting Malaitans to engage in unlawful activities.” The statement also demanded that opposition leader Mathew Wale “refrain from fanning the flames of violence and incitement.” The government ministers urged Suidani and the opposition to act to prevent “our brothers and sons from carrying out such potentially dangerous and violent actions.”

One can imagine the howls of outrage that would emerge from the US and Australian media and political establishment if China were to act in a manner comparable to Washington in the Pacific. What would be the response if, within a country that recognises Taiwan, Beijing established diplomatic relations with a rebel province and then funded forces that staged a violent coup attempt? The Chinese government would be roundly denounced for violations of international law, and the issue would be made headline news.

It remains to be seen how the “regime change” drive in Solomon Islands will proceed. Prime Minister Sogavare insists that his government retains a parliamentary majority and will defeat the no confidence motion.

More than 100 Australian police and soldiers are now in Honiara, together with additional forces from Papua New Guinea and Fiji. The Australian-led intervention force was invited in by Sogavare, and their deployment ended the three days of rioting.

Suidani has bitterly complained about this, effectively criticising Canberra for interrupting efforts to overthrow the government. “Australia can help but not like this, through an intervention force, it’s not helpful,” the Malaitan premier told ABC News. “This intervention isn’t good because it’s keeping a corrupt prime minister in power… Australia should not be keeping this guy in power.”

While Suidani is publicly complaining about the Australian-led intervention, behind the scenes Australian officials are likely to be undermining the Sogavare government and encouraging defections to the opposition.

In 2006–2007, when Sogavare was previously in power, his government was the target of a sustained destabilisation drive orchestrated by the Australian government. The prime minister was regarded as a threat to the neo-colonial RAMSI operation (Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands) that had been launched in 2003.

Canberra’s ultimately successful campaign to remove Sogavare from office involved a series of provocations, including the illegal arrest and rendition to Australia of the Solomon Islands’ Attorney General Julian Moti, on trumped up charges. After this case was thrown out by Australia’s High Court, the Australian government was forced to issue a formal apology and pay compensation.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declared that Australian forces are only in the Solomon Islands to maintain security, will remain only for “weeks,” and will play no role in the country’s internal political disputes.

No credence whatsoever can be lent to these assurances. The Australian ruling class has longstanding and significant economic and geostrategic interests in the country, and in the wider South Pacific region. More broadly, Canberra is an intimate partner in Washington’s aggressive drive to maintain its hegemony in the Asia-Pacific and to counter China’s growing economic and diplomatic influence.

US seeks to block Spanish investigation into CIA operation against Assange as British ruling on extradition appeal is “imminent”

Oscar Grenfell

Over the past 24 hours, WikiLeaks has reported that a British High Court ruling on a US appeal aimed at securing Julian Assange’s extradition is “imminent.” Several other legal sources have also stated that the decision is to be brought down in early December.

The US appeal was directed against a January District Court judgement, which blocked Assange’s dispatch to his American persecutors. That narrow verdict endorsed the authoritarian argument that states have a right to prosecute publishers of “national security” material, but rejected extradition on the grounds that it would be “oppressive,” given Assange’s acute medical issues and the draconian conditions in which he would be detained in the US.

Judge Vanessa Baraitser accepted that there would be a “high risk” of Assange committing suicide, if he were extradited.

The US appeal, heard in late October, centred on callous attempts to undermine expert medical testimony about Assange’s health issues, and bogus assertions that the conditions of his imprisonment would not be as bad as claimed by the defence. The US “assurances” themselves stated that Assange could be placed under “Special Administrative Measures” at any point during his detention, a regime of total isolation likened to “living death” by human rights organisations.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is taken from court, May 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

At the appeal hearings, the defence spotlighted a recently-published Yahoo News report, which documented plans by the Trump administration and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to kidnap Assange or assassinate him when he was a political refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy in 2017.

Based on the anonymous statements of more than thirty former US officials, the article made clear the murderous plans were hatched in retaliation for Assange’s exposure of mass CIA spying and hacking operations. Officials explained that the US Justice Department cobbled together its indictment of Assange, over separate WikiLeaks publications, so that there would be a pseudo-legal cover if the CIA proceeded with its kidnap plan.

As Mark Summers, QC told the appeals hearing, “This is the first time, of which we are aware, that the US has sought the assistance of a UK court in obtaining jurisdiction over someone where the evidence suggests it has contemplated, if not plotted, the assassination, kidnap, rendering, poisoning of that person.”

The gross illegality of the US pursuit of Assange has not previously stopped the British judiciary from facilitating his persecution at every step. And whatever the upcoming ruling decides will be the subject of further appeals, underscoring the crucial importance of developing a movement of the working class for Assange’s immediate freedom.

While the US authorities have aggressively used willing British courts to further their vendetta against Assange, they have adopted a very different attitude to other legal proceedings relating to the WikiLeaks founder.

In a follow-up article late last month, Michael Isikoff, the chief investigative correspondent at Yahoo News reported that “The Justice Department has failed to respond to multiple requests from Spanish authorities for help in an investigation into a local security firm suspected of being used by the CIA to conduct aggressive—and potentially illegal—surveillance of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.”

The firm involved is UC Global, which held the Ecuadorian government contract for managing security at its London embassy. Whistleblowers from the company have alleged that in 2016, its CEO David Morales entered into a secret agreement with emissaries of the CIA to transform the embassy into a hub of spying and dirty tricks against Assange. Morales was arrested and later released on bail in late 2019, and is the subject of Spanish judicial proceedings involving three sets of alleged victims of his activities: Assange, WikiLeaks staff and German reporters who collaborated with them, and former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa.

Extensive evidence in the public domain has demonstrated that UC Global recorded every aspect of Assange’s life, including privileged meetings with his lawyers, before turning over the material to the CIA. The firm was allegedly involved in break-ins and other attacks on Assange’s lawyers, including in Spain. And the whistleblowers have asserted that there were discussions about facilitating a kidnapping or poisoning of the WikiLeaks founder, in cahoots with American intelligence.

Isikoff reported: “Since June of last year, Spanish judges have sent three requests for information to the Justice Department primarily seeking information about the ownership of IP addresses believed to be in the United States that had access to files documenting Assange’s activities while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, according to copies of the requests reviewed by Yahoo News.”

All of those requests had been ignored by the Justice Department, despite an agreement between Spain and the US for mutual assistance in criminal investigations. Justice Department officials, however, have sought to prise information from the Spanish judiciary about the case. Previous reports have indicated this included a sinister and extraordinary demand for the identities of the UC Global whistleblowers.

“I am not so pleased about it,” Santiago Pedraz, the investigating judge told Yahoo about the US stonewalling, adding: “They have absolutely not answered anything.”

There is no innocent explanation for the US response, which combines intense interest in the proceedings and the material held by the judiciary, with an attempt to prevent the investigation from establishing the truth. The Justice Department’s actions can only be interpreted as a tacit admission that Morales and UC Global were functioning as a CIA cut-out.

That the Justice Department is covering for the CIA is significant. Prosecution lawyers for the US extradition have previously suggested that even if there had been a spying operation against Assange, it had nothing to do with the Justice Department and the proceedings for extradition. They have touted supposed Chinese walls between different branches of the US government. But in the Spanish case, the Justice Department is protecting CIA surveillance of Assange, at the same time as it seeks his extradition from Britain.

The latest Yahoo revelations coincide with another explosive report, indicating that sections of the corporate press were aware of, and complicit in, the spying operation as it was underway.

An article in MintPress, by John McEvoy and Pablo Navarrete, published correspondence between Guardian journalist Stephanie Kirchgaessner and a “source” within UC Global, between July and November, 2018.

In September 2018, Kirchgaessner published a story alleging that in late 2017, there had been a failed plot for Assange to escape the embassy and travel to Russia, a narrative that has been thoroughly debunked by Assange’s lawyers and WikiLeaks staff.

Instead, in 2017 there were discussions between Assange, his lawyers and Ecuadorian officials, about conferring diplomatic status upon him to heighten his legal protections. There were also conversations about using that diplomatic status to seek refugee in a third-country. Aitor Matinez, one of Assange’s lawyers, told MintPress the countries Assange and his representatives proposed were China, Serbia, Greece, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba. When an Ecuadorian official suggested Russia, it was dismissed out of hand by Assange.

The plans would come to nothing after they were discovered by the US. As Isikoff’s initial article on the CIA campaign against Assange documented, the American authorities and their British counterparts had planned a shoot-out and other terroristic methods in London if Assange did leave the building.

The discussions about Assange’s potential exit were surveilled by UC Global, and passed on to the CIA. A December 21, 2017 meeting between Assange and Rommy Vallejo, then the head of Ecuadorian intelligence, prompted particular panic. Within 24 hours of the discussion, which reportedly centred on the means of Assange exiting the embassy, the US issued an international warrant for his arrest, demonstrating that it had been apprised of the conversation and its content by UC Global.

One of Kirchgaessner’s messages to her UC Global source is particularly significant. On November 12, 2018, she asked them for a “transcript” of the meeting between Vallejo and Assange. This would clearly indicate awareness that Assange’s meetings were being spied on by an entity that was hostile to him. The conversation with Vallejo was attended by Assange’s lawyers, meaning the Guardian reporter was requesting illegal material, obtained through covert surveillance, of privileged discussions involving a political refugee and his attorneys.

At the time, the Guardian was pumping out false stories seeking to depict Assange as a “Russian agent.” This included a notorious 2018 piece, alleging that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had visited the WikiLeaks founder in the embassy. MintPress cited internal UC Global reports indicating that the firm had tried to find evidence of such a visit, prior to it taking the security contract, but had come up empty handed. The Guardian published its lies about a fictitious meeting nonetheless and has never retracted them.

The latest revelations demonstrate that the web of those implicated in the illegal campaign against Assange is wide. The Guardian collaborated with entities, including UC Global, whom it must have known were themselves collaborating with the US authorities against Assange.

Beyond underscoring the role of the official press as a willing accomplice of the intelligence agencies, however, this suggests that the spying operation was an open secret in the political and media establishment. If the Guardian was aware of the illegal surveillance, so too must have been sections of the British Labour Party, the British government, and their counterparts in Australia.

Supreme Court launches frontal assault on right to abortion

Patrick Martin

Wednesday’s oral arguments on abortion before the Supreme Court showed how close the court is to rescinding this fundamental democratic right, with colossal political consequences.

Two generations of Americans have no experience of the world before Roe v. Wade, during which obtaining an abortion was a surreptitious, often criminalized process, sometimes ending in physical mutilation and even death, and the right of women to make such decisions was subordinated to the reactionary ministrations of police, priests and politicians. They will react with justified fury to this attempt to turn back the clock.

The hearing underscored the role of a clerical-reactionary faction in the US ruling elite, closely allied to the fascistic forces headed by ex-President Donald Trump. The prominence of right-wing Catholics on the high court—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts—has particular significance on the issue of abortion, where they are imposing a religious dogma in flagrant violation of the separation of church and state.

The Supreme Court building in Washington, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

These five justices, plus Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch, have clearly decided to uphold the Mississippi law banning abortion after a pregnancy reaches 15 weeks. The six justices asked few questions and seemed largely indifferent to the arguments being made. Their main concern was whether the case should be used for an immediate repeal of the landmark 1973 ruling, or whether to uphold the Mississippi law on narrower grounds, while not yet officially repealing Roe.

This would accomplish the same goal a bit more slowly, since it would abolish the standard set by Roe and the 1992 follow-up decision in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, which upheld the right to abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, at approximately 23 weeks.

If fetal viability is no longer the standard, there is no judicial reason why the 15-week limit set by Mississippi could not be further lowered, to 12 weeks, eight weeks, or even six weeks, before most women even know they are pregnant. A six-week “limit” would be essentially the same as an outright ban.

Much of the hearing was given over to the three remaining moderate liberal members venting their concern that the court was discrediting itself in the eyes of the American people, who overwhelmingly support abortion rights. (Opinion polls on the eve of the hearing found huge majorities opposed to repealing Roe v. Wade, ranging up to 75 percent in an ABC/Washington Post survey.)

Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor all warned that the court was taking unprecedented action in threatening a democratic right on which millions have relied for the past 50 years and doing so only because the composition of the court has changed, not because of any change in the nature of the issue or in public sentiment.

The sharpest criticism came from Sotomayor, who cited the statements of Mississippi state legislators, openly declaring that they had passed the 15-week law “because we have new justices.” She asked, “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts? I don’t see how it’s possible.”

The composition of the court is itself a manifestation of the decay of American democracy, brought to the brink of collapse last January 6 when Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election and maintain himself in power.

Trump himself appointed three of the six members of the ultra-right majority. The newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, was installed only days before the election, while Trump was openly declaring he would not abide by the results and was counting on Barrett to adjudicate a challenge to the election of Biden in the Supreme Court.

Neil Gorsuch was named to a seat held open for nine months by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who insisted that Barack Obama did not have the right to fill a vacancy during a presidential election year—a precedent he cynically repudiated to push through Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett four years later.

The Democratic Party conducted no serious opposition to any of Trump’s nominations. They protested impotently over Gorsuch. They side-tracked the hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second nominee, into a #MeToo-style diversion, while avoiding any discussion of his right-wing views and his role in the impeachment conspiracy against Bill Clinton.

This process reached its nadir with Barrett, the law professor affiliated with a reactionary Catholic secret society, who replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg. There was no basis in identity politics to oppose replacing a woman with another woman, and the Democrats were busy covering up Trump’s ongoing conspiracy to overturn the election, so they simply stood by as the court was moved sharply further to the right.

The Democrats have spent the past two decades accommodating and adapting to the right-wing attack on abortion rights. The New York Times—a quasi-official publication of the Democratic Party—marked the looming onslaught on the right to abortion by publishing and prominently featuring a rant by Ross Douthat, under the headline “The Case Against Abortion.”

The right to abortion is a class question. For all the handwringing of the Democrats, their social base in the upper middle class is not unduly exercised at the prospect of the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Women with money will still have access to abortion if they want it. They can easily travel to California or the Northeast, where it will still be legal, or even to Canada and Europe.

It is a far different question for working-class women in the South, the Midwest and other states where abortion would become severely restricted or outright illegal in the event of the repeal of Roe. Even now, lower-income women in those states have great difficulty in obtaining an abortion—in Mississippi, for example, there is only one clinic providing abortions in the entire state.

In Texas, the new state law authorizing vigilante civil lawsuits over any abortion provided after six weeks of pregnancy has virtually shut down access to abortion services in the second largest US state, forcing women to drive hundreds of miles to Oklahoma, Louisiana or New Mexico, with the risk of losing their jobs because of the time off work and at great expense.

Figures presented to the Supreme Court in amicus briefs and during the oral argument document the hardship for working women. One in four women will seek an abortion in her lifetime, and of these, 75 percent are low income, 59 percent already have children, and 55 percent experience disruptive life events, such as losing a job or a partner, which are factors in their choice to end a pregnancy.

The far-right political forces being mobilized to destroy the right to abortion are the same forces that have played a leading role in demanding the ending of all restrictions on the COVID-19 pandemic and which came close to establishing a fascist dictatorship with the coup attempt of January 6.

The Democrats have capitulated to these political forces over and over: They have totally accepted the demands for the reopening of schools and abandonment of other pandemic restrictions, and they have sought to cover up the role of their Republican “colleagues” in the January 6 coup attempt.

Philippine government ramps up campaign for “living with the virus”

Dante Pastrana

The Philippine health department reported today 167 new deaths from COVID-19. The total death toll now stands at 48,712 and counting. Since the pandemic began, 2,833,038 people have been infected in the country. Active cases are at 15,327 with over 1,025 in intensive care and 457 requiring ventilators.

The Philippine government of President Rodrigo Duterte, egged on by the financial elites, is rapidly dispensing with all of its half-hearted mitigation efforts. Like capitalist governments around the world, it aims to force workers and the general populace to “live with the virus” and remove all barriers to the profit-making of the capitalist class.

In November, the Philippine education department launched a pilot program of in-person schooling, comprising 100 public schools and 20 private schools. An estimated 5,245 students, many from kindergarten to Grade 3, participated, according to the news website, Rappler.com.

Three participating schools in Zambales province, however, according to the same website, postponed the opening following five teachers and two staff members testing positive for the Covid-19 virus.

Police operate a checkpoint Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2020, outside Manila, Philippines. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

In September, the Philippine government abandoned its quarantine tier system in Metro Manila, the national capital region, just days after daily infection rates in the country reached 26,208, the highest then recorded. It shifted to a so-called alert level system, aimed at ending mobility restrictions and based not on the daily infection rates but on vaccination rates and health facilities utilization. Since then, the alert level system has been rolled out for nationwide implementation with the capital and other key urban areas at alert level 2, a less restricted level.

The Duterte government never sought to break the chain of transmission, much less eliminate the virus. It did not conduct mass testing and contact tracing was severely hampered by lack of funds. While it imposed militarized lockdowns around poor communities, exceptions for construction, export processing and business outsourcing were carved out which kept workers in unsafe building sites, factories and poorly ventilated offices.

To the extent that the government sought to regulate the infection rate it was to prevent the largely privately-owned healthcare system from buckling under the wave of patients desperately seeking urgent care.

Two key elements of the government’s pandemic response, related to children, however, quickly drew the ire of the capitalist class. These were mobility restrictions imposed upon those 18 years of age and below, and the shutdown of all schools, public and private, which were shifted to remote learning.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Chua was quoted in a Manila Bulletin report in January complaining that restrictions imposed on children dampened demand as families with at least three members accounted for 90 percent of total non-essential spending.

Chua added, “Since children are not allowed to go out of their homes, even to study, family activities are restricted, and thus a big part of the economy is not functional.”

Parents, according to another study, were the largest contributors to the PHP 547 billion ($US10.8 billion) informal eat-out market, accounting for 48 percent of the spending, equivalent to PHP 277 billion.

Unsurprisingly, a key component of the alert level system from levels 1 to 3 is the lifting of all mobility restrictions on children. The government placed the national capital region at level 2 in November and is expected to bring the capital to level 1 by December.

The Philippine Star reported on October 26 that the shift in the national capital region in October from level 4 to level 3 was estimated to have resulted in an additional PHP 14.2 billion in sales over a period of two weeks.

Symptomatic of the drive in the capitalist class to reopen the economy is Joey Concepcion, one of the fifty richest Filipinos. Concepcion has an estimated worth of PHP 8.8 billion pesos and is a key business adviser to the Duterte administration.

According to business news website, bilyonaryo.com, in a webinar that presented increased vaccinations as a pretext for a rapid reduction of anti-Covid-19 restrictions, Concepcion stated, “Let’s take a more aggressive role in really vaccinating our citizens, especially in the provincial areas. And if we are able to do that, then if cases do go up—but who cares if cases do go up?”

The report quoted Concepcion as stating that catching COVID-19 should not deter Filipinos from going out and spending as he claimed they were unlikely to die or be hospitalized if they have been vaccinated against the virus.

In April last year, as the pandemic ravaged the Philippines, Concepcion also batted successfully for the resumption of construction work.

Arguing even then that workers must learn to live with the virus, he was quoted in Rappler.com as stating that the poor were unaffected by the virus because: “Maybe because they are so used to so much exposure that they have a better immunity than us, who are sheltered in a well-protected environment.”

According to the BusinessWorld, like the capitalist class around the globe, the fifty richest families in the Philippines saw their collective wealth increase by 30 percent, totaling PHP 3.94 trillion pesos over the course of the pandemic.

The consequences for working people have been terrible.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported in August that the Philippine Paediatric Society presented data that 48,411 children aged 18 and younger had been infected with COVID-19. Of the cases in children, 40.2 percent were in the 15- to 20-year-old age range, 23.8 percent among 10- to 14-year-olds, 17.4 percent among five to nine-year-olds, and 18.5 percent among those aged four and below.

The COVID infection rate is likely drastically underreported. A large portion of workers in the Philippines are paid on a day-to-day basis. Under a regime of “no work, no pay,” these workers and their families who, if they are lucky, have received meagre financial aid from the government, have suffered horrendously under the government lockdowns over the past two years.

Two or three families often share a single dwelling and a positive COVID-19 test result of one member places all under quarantine and cuts them off from their desperately needed earnings. As a single COVID-19 test costs over half of the monthly minimum wage earned by a Metro Manila worker, there is every incentive for ordinary people to avoid being tested for the virus, even they are symptomatic.

Omicron COVID-19 variant detected in the United States

Benjamin Mateus

The first case of a person infected with the Omicron variant in the United States was identified yesterday. The fully vaccinated individual whose identity is being protected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a working-age adult who resides in San Francisco.

According to the CDC, the infected person returned from South Africa on November 22. Subsequently, they developed mild COVID symptoms prompting testing, which was confirmed positive on November 29. Genetic sequencing was conducted on the sample at the University of California, San Francisco, showing the infection was caused by the Omicron variant. They have remained in self-quarantine since, and all known contacts have thus far tested negative.

During the daily White House briefing on the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, “We knew it was just a matter of time before the first case of Omicron would be detected in the United States.”

The Biden administration refused to take any serious measures to contain the spread of the disease.

San Francisco health director Dr. Grant Colfax talks about the first confirmed case of the omicron variant as Mayor London Breed, right of podium, listens during a COVID-19 briefing outside City Hall in San Francisco, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Speaking at the White House Wednesday, Biden pledged that there would not be any “shutdowns or lockdowns.” Even for international travel, the new measures to be employed, COVID testing for all travelers 24 hours before boarding regardless of vaccine status, will do little to slow down the spread of the coronavirus.

The Wednesday White House press conference was also notable for the near complete omission of the Delta variant's continuous deadly assault on the population. Such developments have become so commonplace they are no longer worth even serious considerations.

For instance, there was no mention that for 16 straight weeks, more than 100,000 children have been infected with COVID. Since September 1, 2021, 1.85 million children have been infected, meaning that 27 percent of all infected children became infected in just the last three months. Seven more children died over the holiday week, bringing the cumulative total to 643 perished from COVID.

Meanwhile, the state of the pandemic in Michigan grows disastrous each day. The seven-day average of daily COVID cases climbed to a record high of 8,409. The Positivity rate is nearly 20 percent. The number of COVID-positive adults hospitalized has reached a record pandemic high of 4,296. Two hundred people died yesterday from COVID. And there is no indication that the situation will ease anytime soon.

On November 29, more than 216,000 COVID cases were reported by The New York Times COVID tracker.. The Worldometer COVID dashboard noted there were 113,000 COVID cases and 1,500 COVID deaths yesterday. In total, there have been almost 50 million COVID cases and over 800,000 reported deaths in the US.

With the confirmation of the US case, at least 24 countries across five continents have identified the new variant. In the UK, where the sequencing of coronavirus is relatively robust, 22 cases have been found. And, as of this writing, Hong Kong and Ireland confirmed Omicron cases, adding to the list of countries by the hour.

In South Africa, where 77 cases have been sequenced, new COVID-19 cases have almost doubled, climbing from 4,373 on Tuesday to 8,561 on Wednesday, per the country’s health officials. Health experts have said the curve of infections is far steeper than Delta and predominately attributed to Omicron. Hospitalizations have been rising in concordance with cases. A worrisome data point is that admissions for children under four years of age have been dramatic.

Dr. Nicksy Gumese-Moeletsi, a virologist at the World Health Organization, told Newsweek, “There is a possibility that really we’re going to be seeing a serious doubling or tripling of the cases as we move along or as the week unfolds. There is a possibility that we are going to see a vast increase in the number of cases being identified in South Africa.” Only 24 percent of the country’s population has been fully vaccinated.

The repeated rise of new, more virulent variants is not just a biological phenomenon. The more people are infected, the more the virus is likely to mutate. Such ripe conditions for the constant evolution of the virus are a direct byproduct of the policies set forth by the government of capitalist countries who deem the market must remain unfettered by the concerns raised by the pandemic.

Dr. Peter Jay Hotez, Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, offered his take on the current Omicron variant. He tweeted, “[It] isn’t a surprise. We’ve been saying the finding of Omicron in the US was practically inevitable given that it’s in multiple European countries.” Warning that the spread of the omicron variant does not necessarily mean that the decline of delta variant cases, Hotez warned, “I see a possible twin epidemic or syndemic unfolding …”

Pregnant women endangered by “herd immunity” policy and conflicting official advice on COVID-19

Julie Hyland

The health and lives of pregnant women and their unborn babies have been recklessly endangered by the herd immunity policy of British and international governments that have allowed COVID-19 infection to spread.

Recent data from England shows that nearly 20 percent of the most critically ill COVID-19 patients are pregnant mothers. Almost all of them (98 percent) are unvaccinated, due to contradictory official advice. This will also have been impacted by anti-vax propaganda from spurious “parent” groups associated with right-wing Tories and promulgated by the media.

On November 1, Saiqa Parveen, 37, passed away after five weeks in intensive care. Saiqa, from Birmingham, contracted COVID-19 when she was eight months pregnant with her fifth child. She never got the chance to see or hold her newborn who was delivered by emergency caesarean section.

A pregnant and intubated COVID-19 patient is pictured in the Surgical Intensive care unit (SICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. (AP Photo/Kyle Green)

Samantha Willis, 35, a care worker and mother of three from Derry, Ireland, was also eight months pregnant when she and her husband, Josh, received positive COVID-19 test results on August 1. On August 5, Samantha’s baby, Eviegrace, was delivered by emergency caesarean. Samantha died in the early hours of August 20, again without holding her baby.

Saiqa and Samantha are two of the 13 pregnant or postpartum women killed by COVID-19 since July. In the 10 months between February and November, 1,714 pregnant women were admitted to hospital with the virus. Studies suggest that pregnant women are 13 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people of a similar age who are not pregnant.

Experts say pregnant women infected with SARS-CoV-2 are three times more likely to need an emergency delivery, and much earlier than planned. The Independent revealed that 694 babies have been born prematurely to mothers hospitalised by COVID-19 over the 17 months of the pandemic, of which 604 have had needed critical care.

Nine-day old Ivy-Rose Court died on October 22. Her mum Katie Leeming, 22, contracted COVID and Ivy-Rose, who was born 14 weeks premature, tested positive a few days after birth. Already suffering major complications, including pulmonary and brain haemorrhages due to her early birth, Ivy-Rose deteriorated rapidly and could not be saved.

Asya, 35, from south-east London, also contracted COVID-19 and went into labour at 27-and-a-half weeks. Although her symptoms were “bad, but manageable at home”, she realised her baby was not moving as much and was admitted to hospital. Her premature son, Daniel, tested positive for COVID-19 and was transferred to a neonatal unit, requiring treatment for bleeds on his brain and his lungs, where he remained for eight weeks.

Speaking from Downing Street on November 16, England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, urged all women already pregnant or planning to be, to get vaccinated. Citing the “stark” data on the numbers ending up in hospital with COVID-19, he described these as “preventable admissions.”

Likewise, the Daily Mail featured the latest appalling data under the headline that “hospital labour wards are at breaking point as pregnant women who refuse Covid jabs plunge maternity services into ‘crisis’,” claiming that this had led to “healthy mothers being ‘abandoned’ mid-labour, midwives self-isolating and birth units forced to close.”

The Daily Mail is a leading proponent of herd immunity, whose occasional support for vaccination is only to prevent other mitigating measures it argues will “damage the economy.” The numbers of expectant mothers critically ill with COVID-19 is worse today than in earlier stages of the pandemic, when vaccines were not available, because the Delta variant was left free to surge.

As for the crisis in maternity services, midwives, students of midwifery and support staff held protest vigils on November 21 over major staff shortages caused by more than a decade of austerity, leading to “completely unsustainable” staffing levels during the pandemic.

Blaming individual pregnant women for “refusing” vaccination and putting hospital and midwifery services “at risk” stands reality on its head.

Official advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) at the start of the vaccine roll-out in December 2020 was that only pregnant women considered at “high risk” should get vaccinated. This is the same JCVI that first declined to support the vaccination of children over the age of 12 and then limited this to just one jab.

It was only in April that data from 130,000 pregnant women in the US showing the vaccine to be safe caused the advice to be changed. But mothers-to-be were only offered vaccination at the same time as everyone else in their age group. As most are under the age of 40, this meant further delays.

The sudden change in advice also created confusion and hesitancy. According to the BMJ, (formerly, British Medical Journal) on November 22, vaccine uptake among pregnant women increased from 65,000 to 80,000. Even so, data from Public Health Scotland (England does not collected data related to vaccinations, pregnancy and birth) showed that only 23 percent of those aged 35-39 who gave birth in August 2021 were fully vaccinated, compared with 71 percent in the general population.

The BMJ cited Pat O’Brien, consultant obstetrician and vice president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who said the cause was two-fold. First, “the natural and understandable reluctance of pregnant women to take anything unusual or new during pregnancy because of fear that it might harm their baby”, compounded by initial JCVI advice that pregnant women should avoid the COVID vaccine.

April’s change in advice was still left as an individual choice, with little to no information given on its importance.

Samantha had been advised against vaccination at earlier antenatal appointments, her husband told the Guardian. “They gave her a flyer telling her there wasn’t enough research on the Covid vaccine in pregnant women.” This said that “until more information is available, those who are pregnant should not routinely have this vaccine.” Likewise Saiqa, who was close to her due date when the guidance changed, decided to wait until after the birth.

Those pregnant women who did attempt to book vaccinations encountered great difficulties as online booking systems did not allow them to specify the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, in line with JCVI advice, and many were turned away.

Professor Marian Knight of the University of Oxford leads the MBRRACE-UK collaboration conducting surveillance and research into the causes of maternal deaths, stillbirths and infant deaths. She told the Guardian this month, “Never before have I wanted to cry so much as I have in the last few weeks, because I feel we’ve failed these women.” They died “from a vaccine-preventable disease due to the high levels of uncertainty among pregnant women, and inconsistent advice.”

Dr Latifa Patel, a senior paediatric registrar and chief officer at the British Medical Association, told the i newspaper, “I feel pregnant women have been let down by society, the NHS and the government” due to conflicting advice.

Pregnant women, said Patel, were told at the end of last year, regarding the vaccine, “There is a sweet in front of you, but you can’t eat that sweet in any circumstances. It’s not for you.”

Then—in February—they were told “you can have the sweet” but only if an obstetrician “put in writing that they are giving you permission to eat it.” In April this was changed to, “you can have the sweet. We just need you to sign you are happy to have it.

“And now pregnant people are being told: ‘Of course you can have the sweet’”.

Similar tragedies are repeated internationally. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, just 35 percent of expectant mothers in the US were vaccinated for COVID-19 as of November 6. More than 24,700 expectant women have been hospitalised with COVID-19 and, as of November 8, 227 had died.

Rise in coronavirus outbreaks in German workplaces

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Germany’s new Infection Protection Act has been in force since 24 November. The law stipulates that employees are only allowed access to workplaces according to the 3G rule. This means that they must prove that they have been vaccinated, have recovered from a Corona infection or tested negative. Governments and corporations claim that this is to protect workers, but this is patently not true.

The aim of the Infection Protection Act introduced by the Germany’s new “traffic light” coalition of the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and neo-liberal Free Democratic Party is not to protect the health and lives of the population, but rather to ensure that the economy and profits flourish as the pandemic spreads uncontrollably.

Worker in a slaughterhouse processing meat (Wikipedia Commons)

For almost two years the principle of “profits before lives” has determined official pandemic policy. Governments and corporations are ruthlessly accepting tens of thousands of deaths in order to keep factories, warehouses, offices and schools open.

Protection against infections and the health of the population is not and never was the priority. This would have necessitated a rigorous vaccination campaign, far-reaching contact restrictions and, above all, the closure of schools and non-essential businesses—with resources made available to deal with the resulting social consequences—until the virus was suppressed.

Instead, against all warnings from scientists, schools were opened in the summer, contact restrictions lifted and vaccination centres closed. At the end of last week the COVID-19 death toll in Germany passed the 100,000 threshold, with the threat of at least as many more deaths this winter. This danger is compounded by the new Omicron variant, first identified in southern Africa, which is clearly different from the previous variants and much more contagious.

In addition to schools, workplaces are major hotspots for infection, but the facts and figures pertaining to infection are being carefully concealed. The ruling class have no interest in counting and making public the many thousands of cases of workers who have become infected in workplaces or carried the virus into workplaces from their infected children. The number of workers who have died from COVID-19 has also been suppressed. Even the death toll among health care workers is no longer published.

Workers are left in the dark regarding the extent of coronavirus infections in their workplaces. There is no central accounting and evaluation of infections which would provide the basis for concrete protective measures. Even the local press is increasingly failing to report on outbreaks in factories. Companies are intent on covering up the figures anyway because they fear protests and economic losses.

Health offices are either unable to adequately trace the contacts of those infected or have been asked to stop doing so by political leaders. Earlier this year, enquiries to occupational health and safety authorities across Germany made by Report-Mainz and BuzzFeed News revealed that 90 percent had approached businesses about violations of COVID-19 regulations, but had imposed almost no fines and closed only a small minority of businesses. At best, companies were given verbal or written warnings.

Despite the suppression of statistics, skyrocketing national and state incidence rates plus occasional reports in the local press give some idea of the dangerous situation developing in many workplaces.

Last week, for example, the logistics company BLG in the port of Bremerhaven had to arrange mass testing after 19 employees tested positive for COVID-19. According to the company's own statements, around 1,300 employees were tested with no new cases detected. BLG is a global logistics company, which employs 20,000 workers in ten countries at a hundred locations in Europe, America, Africa and Asia. Over half of its staff work in Germany.

The city administration suspects that a factory meeting was behind the outbreak. A Bremerhaven spokesperson told local media that the health department was aware that company meetings with around 800 people had been held in rooms designed for 200 people. Social distancing had not been observed and those in attendance had not worn masks.

Also last week several major outbreaks were reported in slaughterhouses. Sixty-one workers at the Vion slaughterhouse in Landshut (Bavaria) contracted the virus and the slaughter of animals was suspended for several days. Operations in cutting, packing, dispatch and other areas continued.

According to Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), 40 employees initially tested positive last week and slaughter operations were suspended. At the beginning of the week, the number of infected persons had nevertheless risen, leaving the company—including those workers in quarantine—with just 90 workers from a total workforce of 400.

There had already been major COVID-19 outbreaks in slaughterhouses last year. In June 2020, more than 2,100 workers at Germany's largest slaughterhouse, Tönnies in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, contracted the virus. In November 2020, 100 workers at the Vion slaughterhouse in Vilshofen were infected. At the Vion slaughterhouse in Landshut, which is now affected again, 70 workers had been infected in December last year.

Vion insisted it had already introduced the 3G rule in September. According to a company spokesperson, a “considerable portion” of the Landshut workforce has been vaccinated twice. The seven-day incidence in the Landshut district was 869 (infection cases per 100,000 population) on November 25.

In Harsewinkel (NRW), an undisclosed number of workers have been infected at the sausage and ham producer Windau. “We're talking about an infection rate in the mid-single digits,” explained managing director Andreas Hilker, i.e. around 20 to 30 of the total workforce of 500. According to Hilker, “the positive detections are affecting our production for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic.” The company plans to overcome the restrictions in production by additional work schedules. Harsewinkel had by far the highest incidence in the Gütersloh district with 454 as of November 15.

Here, too, the company boss emphasises that “the infections occur outside our company.” Staff are tested daily before starting work. The health department confirmed that hygiene controls, including extensive testing, are working.

This line of defence, i.e. that people are infected outside and not in workplaces, is aimed solely at preventing factory closures.

Due to the “good cooperation” between companies and the authorities, Clemens Küpper, spokesperson for the Baumgarte iron foundry in Bielefeld, was also able to declare in September that he was glad “we did not have to close down due to the administration.” In September, 54 of 260 employees were infected with the coronavirus, and production output had dropped by about 25 percent. Once again the short-term loss of turnover was made up for by overtime working.

At the steel company Thyssenkrupp, the number of infected workers among the 13,000 strong workforce in Duisburg has doubled from 36 to 70 within a week. In addition, 40 workers are absent due to quarantine, i.e. a total of 110 workers are affected—and the trend is rising.

Alongside the health authorities and company managements, the trade unions and their affiliated works councils ensure that infection rates are concealed and business operations continue.

Health protection is subject to the German corporatist system of “co-determination.” In every company, the works council has the right to be informed about the coronavirus situation but in reality the works councils and trade unions systematically block and stonewall.

Referendum in Switzerland: A vote for the fight against the coronavirus pandemic

Marianne Arens

Amid an explosive new coronavirus wave, a clear majority of 62 percent in Switzerland voted on Sunday to keep the COVID-19 law in place. The turnout was unusually high at more than 65 percent. This should not be interpreted as approval of the government’s coronavirus policies but rather as a vote by the population for a truly effective fight against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

At the centre of the vote was the COVID-19 law, the legal basis for the official “3G” certificate documenting a person’s status as vaccinated, recovered or tested negative. The referendum was initiated by a committee of “friends of the constitution,” close to the right-wing populist Swiss Peoples Party (SVP). The committee claims the certificate is an “attack on personal freedoms” and should be abolished because it leads to “health apartheid” in Switzerland. There were loud demonstrations for a “No” vote with cowbells and the waving of Swiss flags.

Despite all the propaganda, the result on Sunday was clear. Only two cantons, Schwyz and Appenzell-Innerrhoden, rejected the coronavirus measures. Several major cities—Basel, Bern, Zurich, Lucerne—approved them by over 70 percent. This reflects the growing will of the most advanced layers of the population to fight the pandemic effectively.

Unlike other Alpine countries, Switzerland kept its ski resorts open throughout the pandemic (AP Photo/Jamey Keaten)

In this country of 8.7 million people, case numbers have been climbing steeply for weeks. Nearly one million, or 11.32 percent of the population, have already been infected, according to official figures, and 11,471 coronavirus patients have died. The seven-day incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants was over 500 on voting day, meaning that 5 out of every 1,000 residents had been infected with coronavirus in the past week. The vaccination rate is also below the European average: just 65 percent are fully vaccinated. The first suspected cases of the Omicron variant are now forcing the government to tighten entry regulations.

The clear vote in favour of the COVID-19 law should not be seen as giving the Swiss government policy a blank cheque. Rather, it shows that people want to oppose the right-wing lobby, which is pursuing a profits-before-lives policy under the slogan of “national freedom.” Under pressure from big business and the banks, the government was one of the first to lift pandemic measures last spring. Cinemas, theatres, restaurants and entertainment establishments were reopened, while commercial businesses were never closed and the recommendation to work from home was being implemented only very half-heartedly.

The Pandemic Act would indeed allow the Bundesrat (federal executive) to establish nationally applicable rules up to and including a lockdown. But with an eye on the business associations and the SVP, which sits in the all-party government, Health Minister Alain Berset (Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, SP) has so far refrained from imposing any drastic measures.

Schools in particular have long been open without restrictions and have deliberately dispensed with mask wearing, testing and social distancing rules for the younger grades. The Swiss Society of Paediatrics (SGP) has explicitly endorsed this herd immunity strategy.

Concerned parents have responded by joining forces on social media in advocacy groups such as #ProtecttheKids, “Safe School,” or “Protect Children—Now!” They published an “Open Letter to Swiss Paediatricians—Protect the Kids” with 15 questions, the last of which reads, “How do you justify your current recommendation to abandon virtually all attempts at containment in children—especially since vaccination for children under 12 will only be available in a few months?”

The paediatric association’s policy has also drawn open criticism from scientists, including Geneva-based virologist Isabella Eckerle. She has written a document, “A science-based public health strategy for SARS-CoV-2 should guide Swiss schools through the coming winter.”

One of the signatories is Bern epidemiologist Christian Althaus, who left his position as a government adviser in January 2021 in protest. The National Council (lower chamber of the federal parliament) Economic Commission tried strenuously to muzzle the members of the federal government’s scientific task force and ban them from speaking out.

At the time, the task force had called for “nationwide strong measures analogous to the March [2020] lockdown.” However, while coronavirus deniers and QAnon types receive the most media attention, warning voices from scientists are being systematically sidelined.

Meanwhile, outbreaks at schools have been erupting for weeks, and hospitalizations and admissions to intensive care units are steadily increasing. Employees at old age and nursing homes are also increasingly reaching their limits, and resentment is rising.

This was also clearly demonstrated on Sunday in a second vote on emergency care. The popular initiative “For strong care” also received more than 60 percent approval. It is explicitly directed against a half-hearted counter-proposal by the government and parliament.

Significantly, the care initiative goes back to a petition that took place long before the coronavirus pandemic. As early as November 2017, the Swiss Professional Association of Nurses (SBK) had submitted more than 120,000 signatures for its initiative against the nursing crisis. Amid the pandemic, it has now been approved by a large majority.

The pandemic has exacerbated all the smoldering social conflicts and taken them to the extreme. However, the vote has by no means resolved the conflicts. They are deeply intertwined with the class interests of big business and the banks, as is evident from the fact that the controversial COVID-19 law simultaneously authorizes the government to hand out large sums of money to businesses as “Coronavirus aid.”