Putin warns US seeks to “drag” Russia “into an armed conflict”

Clara Weiss

Speaking at a press conference with Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the written response by the US to Russia’s key demands from December indicated that “the fundamental concerns of Russia have been ignored.”

The main demands from the December 17 document, which the Kremlin made public, were the non-extension of NATO, including a guarantee that Ukraine would not be admitted as a member; a return to its borders as agreed upon in the 1997 NATO-Russia agreement; and a guarantee that it would not station missiles in Eastern Europe and withdraw those that already exist.

NATO has nuclear missiles stationed in Romania, just 1,000 kilometers away from Moscow. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1991, NATO has systematically encircled Russia, with all countries in Eastern Europe near its borders—with the exceptions of Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus—now members of the military alliance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gives his annual state of the nation address in Manezh, Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, April 21, 2021. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Putin stated that for the US, “Ukraine is just a tool … They can drag Ukraine into NATO, they can deploy their strike weapons and instigate an offensive to retake Donbass or Crimea with military force and drag us into an armed conflict again.” Putin also pointed out that, in Ukraine, the “retaking of Crimea,” a peninsula in the Black Sea, is part of Kiev’s official military strategy.

The statements by Putin underscore the immense dangers of the situation that has been created by the aggressive moves of NATO and above all, US imperialism. Driven primarily by an extraordinary crisis and enormous class tensions at home, Washington has embarked on a series of reckless provocations—of which the response to Russia’s demands was a part—designed to create conditions and pretexts for war.

While a massive campaign of war propaganda alleging an impending “Russian invasion” of Ukraine was launched in the media, the White House has placed 8,500 troops on alert and has delivered 300 Javelin missiles and other weaponry to the Ukrainian army. Moreover, the Biden administration has threatened Russia with “crippling sanctions,” the implementation of which could only be understood as an act of warfare.

These provocations have created a powder keg in Eastern Europe that threatens to erupt into a war that could engulf not just the entire continent but the entire world.

The Russian newspaper Gazeta.Ru reported on Tuesday that officials of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic, both located in the Donbass in East Ukraine and controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014, had received information that Kiev was planning a military offensive in the Donbass. The region has been the site of a civil war between pro-Russian separatists and US-backed and trained Ukrainian army and paramilitary forces since the US-EU-backed coup in February 2014, which ousted a pro-Russian government.

Eduard Basurin, head of the People’s Militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic, told Gazeta.Ru that Ukraine’s general staff was preparing an offensive operation. Basurin claimed that the plan for the offensive would be discussed later this week by the leadership of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. Separatist leaders also told the business daily Kommersant that new Ukrainian reconnaissance groups had recently arrived in East Ukraine, and that additional Ukrainian military units were about to be sent to the area.

Ukraine, which has been at the forefront of NATO’s war preparations since the 2014 US-backed coup, has been deeply destabilized by the war crisis and the ranging pandemic.

Last week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected US claims of an impending Russian invasion, urging President Joe Biden in a phone call “to calm down the messaging.”

In the Ukrainian oligarchy and state apparatus, Zelensky has come under fire from various sides, most notably from his predecessor Petro Poroshenko and neo-Nazi forces which have been heavily funded and armed by the imperialist powers. Russian news reports suggest that Washington may view Poroshenko as a potential replacement for Zelensky.

On Monday, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry declared that it had uncovered and prevented plans for violent mass demonstrations across the country against Zelensky’s government. The demonstrations were set to take place on January 31 and designed to involve clashes with the police and create a media sensation. Demonstrators would have carried banners calling for a military offensive to “return” Crimea and the Donbass. The Russian business daily Kommersant highlighted the fact that the planners of the demonstrations were clearly very familiar with the modus operandi of Ukraine’s security forces, suggesting that they themselves had or still were part of the latter.

In Ukraine’s working population, which is plagued by inflation and yet another surge of the pandemic, the continuation and let alone escalation of the de facto proxy war against Russia is deeply unpopular. Over the past eight years, the war has already claimed over 14,000 lives and displaced millions. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have deserted the front, refusing to engage in combat.

Polls have repeatedly indicated the main concern of the overwhelming majority of the population are rising prices, not Putin. These sentiments are a major reason why the imperialist powers and the Ukrainian ruling class are systematically arming fascist forces: both to carry out a war against Russia and to suppress opposition within the working class.

The situation in Russia is hardly any more stable. The pandemic, which has already led to a horrific drop in life expectancy by three years, is now experiencing its biggest surge yet with daily cases topping 125,000 on Tuesday, more than several times the peak during the Delta wave last fall. About 15 percent of the all cases are reported among children, the equivalent of 18,750 children on Tuesday alone. However, the Kremlin, mirroring the criminal response of the ruling class to the pandemic elsewhere, is ruling out any lockdowns and other critical public health measures.

Viewing the working class—not imperialism—as its central enemy, the response by the Russian oligarchy to the war preparations by the imperialist powers has consisted in a combination of military drills with a series of diplomatic maneuvers, which are aimed not only at potentially achieving a deal with imperialism after all, but also at securing support from potential allies in its conflict with NATO.

In Europe, the Kremlin is trying to play on divisions within the European Union over relations with both the US and Russia. At his meeting with Prime Minister Orbán on Tuesday, apart from Ukraine, Putin discussed increasing Russian gas deliveries to Hungary by another 1 billion cubic meters per year. Hungary already receives almost all of its gas from Russia.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry denounced a new deal between Russia’s Gazprom and Hungary last September as “a purely political, economically unreasonable decision taken in favor of the Kremlin.” Relations between Budapest and Kiev have long been strained over ethnic and border disputes.

Europe as a whole relies on Russia for about 40 percent of its gas imports. Amid fears of war over Ukraine, gas prices have spiked in recent weeks, adding to what are already very high inflation rates. Concerns about a potential disruption of oil and gas flows to Europe, and US opposition to the Russian-German gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, have long been a major factor in fueling divisions within the EU over its policy toward Russia and the US.

Despite these divisions, however, the EU has effectively backed the US war drive against Russia. Hungary, for its part, is reportedly discussing the deployment of NATO forces in the country in response to the crisis in Ukraine.

Putin is now traveling to China, where he is set to discuss Ukraine and other issues in a meeting with Xi Jinping. Last week, China openly denounced NATO provocations against Russia over Ukraine. Russian media reports suggest that Xi and Putin will be working out a political document. The Nezavisimaya Gazeta carried an editorial on Tuesday, noting that Washington had brought about an “unprecedented rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing.”

“Meaningfully milder” Omicron variant continues to kill more than 2,300 Americans each day

Bryan Dyne

The death toll caused by the coronavirus Omicron variant has risen to an average of more than 2,300 Americans a day, a figure that continues to undermine the lie promoted by media outlets such as the New York Times that the Omicron variant is “meaningfully milder than its predecessors.”

To put the current wave of death into perspective, it is higher than both the surge of deaths caused by the Delta variant in the fall, which peaked at just over 2,000 confirmed deaths each day, as well as the initial wave that peaked in April 2020 at more than 2,200 daily fatalities. It is still to be seen whether the current wave of death, which is still rising, will eclipse last winter’s peak of just under 3,600 deaths each day.

There are also still more than 125,000 people hospitalized across the country, including 23,000 who are in intensive care units. Hospitals remain at or near “crisis standards of care,” such as the ChristianaCare health network in Wilmington, Delaware. The 1,200-bed hospital system implemented its emergency protocols in early January, the first time in its 130-year history, and has not relaxed them since.

A healthcare worker stands near a COVID-19 patient at the University Hospital of Torrejon in Torrejon de Ardoz, Spain, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez]

Even the Biden administration has been forced to tacitly acknowledge the immense danger the current variant poses. During a meeting with US governors on Monday, President Biden sat 10 feet away from everyone in the meeting, including Vice President Kamala Harris, according to the Associated Press. Everyone in the room was required to wear N95 masks instead of the far-less-protective surgical masks, and only Biden himself was given a glass of water to prevent anyone else from taking their mask off for a drink.

The devastating Omicron death toll comes as new guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “retire” its requirement that hospitals report to it “Previous day’s COVID-19 deaths.” The new policy was issued on January 6 and will go into effect February 2.

In effect, the HHS will no longer act as a central repository for daily in-hospital deaths caused by the coronavirus. Instead, it will be up to each state to report deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), creating 50 points of potential failure and confusion as each state reports its COVID-19 deaths differently. Tennessee, for example, has only reported COVID-19 deaths on a weekly basis since December. Timely data on how many people are dying from the pandemic is no longer certain.

Alongside weakening efforts to tally coronavirus deaths, states across the country are also halting their contact-tracing efforts. Among the most recent is the Virginia Department of Health, which announced last week that it will only be doing contact tracing for “long-term care facilities and other congregate settings, healthcare settings, and other high-risk settings” because “it is not possible or fruitful to track every case.” Instead, “individuals” are encouraged to take “appropriate actions” if they suspect they have been infected, shifting the burden of basic public health measures to the population as a whole. At least a dozen other states are taking a similar approach.

The drive to limit death reporting and end contact tracing is reminiscent of remarks made by then-US President Donald Trump in the summer of 2020 that “Cases are going up in the US because we are testing far more. … With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!”

With Biden and the Democrats, it has become “with less reporting, we will have fewer deaths!”

The reality is quite the opposite. At least 65,510 people died from COVID-19 in the US in January, including at least 72 children, according to data gathered by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Total deaths have exceeded 913,000, among them 807 children. Worldwide, more than 5.7 million men, women and children have been officially declared dead as a result of COVID-19. Excess death estimates place the true total at more than 20 million.

Moreover, many survivors will likely suffer for months or years from Long COVID symptoms. An article published in Bloomberg on Monday noted that an estimated one third of those who contract COVID-19 will have lingering problems that have a myriad of symptoms, from brain fog, fatigue and pain to potential immune disorders and other chronic conditions such as diabetes.

Consider just the United States, where there have been more than 76.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases, nearly a quarter of the population. Using Bloomberg ’s estimate, that indicates that 25.5 million people, including nearly 4 million children, will develop such long-term health issues that can make life unbearable. Globally, the just under 382 million cases indicate 127 million people have contracted Long COVID, a pandemic in its own right.

Johnson government to double UK troop presence in Eastern Europe, threatens sanctions against Russia

Chris Marsden

The UK is preparing to double its existing troop presence in Eastern Europe to reinforce US-NATO military provocations against Russia.

Britain has indicated it will deploy 1,200 troops to Estonia and Poland this week, including paratroopers and Royal Marine mountain and arctic warfare specialists. They will be equipped with Apache helicopter gunships and Deep Fire missile systems, as well as electronic warfare and cyber units from the Royal Signals and the Royal Marines' specialist Y Squadron.

There are already more than 100 troops providing training in Ukraine, in the most frontline role in the escalating war danger on Russia’s border. But Britain’s main concentration is in Estonia, where it already has 900 troops in a battle group established in 2017 following the installation of a pro-US regime in Ukraine. The Enhanced Forward Presence also includes multinational battle groups in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces James Heappey are updated on the situation in Ukraine at the Ministry of Defence by the Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin and Chief of Joint Operations Lieutenant General Charles Stickland, CB, OBE (left). 26/01/2022 (Picture by Andrew Parsons /No 10 Downing Stree/FlickR)

A Type 45 destroyer and an offshore patrol vessel will be stationed in the Black Sea and an additional RAF squadron will be deployed to Cyprus to patrol Bulgarian and Romanian airspace. The Prince of Wales aircraft carrier has been placed on standby. A Light Cavalry Squadron of around 150 people is already deployed to Poland.

The plans were the focus of repeated bellicose statements by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his key ministers over the weekend. Johnson told reporters he was sending a “clear message to the Kremlin” that Russia must not choose “a path of bloodshed and destruction” by invading Ukraine. The UK was demonstrating that it was “able to support our NATO allies on land, at sea and in the air” and would “stand with our NATO allies in the face of Russian hostility.”

Earlier last week he threatened that an invasion of Ukraine would be “painful, bloody and violent” and many Russian soldiers “won’t come home.”

Johnson was to speak by phone to President Vladimir Putin Monday night, with his spokeswoman boasting, “The prime minister has been deeply engaged on this issue throughout and was one of the first world leaders to raise concerns about Russian hostilities in a speech at Mansion House in November, along with Nord Stream 2.” He had, moreover, “a close personal relationship” with Ukrainian President Zelensky and had spoken to US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and others about this issue “on numerous occasions.”

The call with Putin fell through because Johnson was required in Parliament following the arrival of the inquiry report into “partygate.”

Johnson’s relentless self-promotion is part of his effort to counter the crisis over “partygate” by placing himself at the forefront of the US campaign of provocations and a raft of right-wing domestic measures—above all the ending of pandemic restrictions. He is to visit Ukraine today.

His appeal is to a Tory Party united in support of warmongering over Ukraine, with Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace set to go to Moscow for talks after Truss wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, “Moscow's campaign against Ukraine and fellow democracies is undermining the very foundation of European security. And so, it is vital we face down the clear and present threat posed by Russia.”

Also in the Telegraph, Armed Forces Minister James Heappey warned that Putin “could be days away from giving the order to invade.”

Tobias Ellwood, chair of the Commons defence select committee, described Russia-Ukraine tensions as “our Cuban missile crisis moment, and we must not blink”.

The UK is also threatening sanctions targeting those close to Putin, with Truss identifying “any company of interest to the Kremlin and the regime in Russia' as “Putin’s oligarchs.” This pledge, made amid similar threats from the US, follows weeks of complaints by Washington that no economic measures against Russia would be effective while London remains a global centre for its investors.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov promised “retaliatory measures” if Russian companies are targeted, saying the statement from London was “very worrying” and “demonstrates a fair amount of unpredictability on the part of London and is a cause for serious concern for international financial structures.”

Washington was seemingly less convinced of the UK’s intentions than Moscow, with a US State Department source telling The Times, “The fear is that Russian money is so entrenched in London now that the opportunity to use it as leverage against Putin could be lost.”

The UK’s other service to Washington is the waging of a campaign pillorying Germany for a lack of resolve in dealing firmly with Russia. Treasury minister Simon Clarke encapsulated the Johnson government’s message of how much more reliable an ally London was for the US, telling Sky News, “Brexit Britain is one of the foremost opponents of the actions of the Putin regime… If you look at the EU, it is countries like Germany that are dragging their feet in the response to this crisis. We are the ones tightening this sanctions regime, making sure we support our Nato allies and standing up to Putin in a way that is, frankly, leading the continent rather than following it.”

This mixture of anti-German and anti-Russian rhetoric finds expression across the media political spectrum, with the Guardian/Observer writing Sunday regarding the German Chancellor’s Social Democrats, “No party in the Bundestag has used Germany’s historic crimes as a cover for expanding ties with Russia as much as Scholz’s…” and the Spectator declaring that “If Germany has come out of its dugout at all, it’s playing the wrong game… Berlin needs to step up to the mark. At the moment it is letting the side down.”

Nowhere does the Tory drumbeat for war find a more enthusiastic echo than in the Labour Party. Even as its MPs proclaim their outrage over drinks parties at Number 10, they jostle for position as warmongers in chief. Many of their attacks on Johnson over “partygate” have centred on its impact on his leadership in the campaign against Russia. “We need to see leadership from this prime minister and frankly at the moment his priority’s saving his own skin,” complained Stephen Morgan MP.

In an interview last month with Politico, following his visit to Kyiv, Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey said it was an “embarrassment” that “with Europe facing the most serious security crisis since the Cold War, Britain has a non-functioning prime minister.” Johnson was “ducking and diving to try to deal with the mess that he’s created around Downing Street parties” and was “incapable of playing the statesman role and offering the British leadership that’s required.”

Last week, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer grandstanded over his insistence that Johnson make the “tough decisions” on sanctions, “cutting Russian access to the international financial system” and stopping the illicit money “laundromat” in the City of London. This was only days after he took to the pages of the Telegraph January 21, to demand that the UK “stand firm against Russian aggression.”

He wrote, “I must commend the work of the Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, on this matter. He has worked hard to bring people together, written with moral clarity on the nature of Russian aggression and ensured that the UK continues to support Ukraine’s ability to defend itself through military aid.”

Canada records highest daily COVID-19 death toll since start of pandemic

Dylan Lubao

Confirming the most dire warnings made by scientists at the onset of the Omicron-fueled fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitalizations and deaths have reached record highs across Canada. This is a product of the profits-before-lives herd immunity strategy pursued by governments at the federal and provincial levels, regardless of whether they are led by parties of the nominal “left” or right.

A grim milestone was reached on January 27 as 309 COVID-19 deaths were recorded nationally, the highest-ever daily total since the start of the pandemic. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths sits at 156 as of January 30, nearing the highs of the first two waves of the pandemic, before vaccines were widely available. Hospitalizations are also at record highs, with over 10,000 people in hospital for COVID-19 every day since January 21, according to COVID19Tracker.ca.

A member of the Canadian Armed Forces working at a Quebec nursing home. (Canadian Dept. of Defence)

An urgent warning must be issued to the Canadian working class: without the independent mass intervention of the working class to put an end to these herd immunity policies and enforce the implementation of the science-backed Zero COVID strategy, thousands of additional lives will be needlessly lost in the weeks and months to come.

Governments, acting at the behest of the major banks and corporations, are rapidly dismantling all remaining public health measures designed to limit the spread of the virus. They are also concealing the extent of transmission and spreading lies about the severity of disease caused by the Omicron variant, regarded as the fastest-spreading SARS-COV-2 variant to date.

These herd immunity policies, lifted from the pages of the far-right Great Barrington Declaration, are designed to maintain the flow of profits to the banks and corporations, and swell the wealth of the super-rich. Schools and non-essential workplaces have been forced open to guarantee a workforce for these corporations, even if legions of workers and their family members are killed or face long-term health problems due to COVID-19 in the process.

Even the unprecedented levels of mass death reported over the past week are likely underestimated, according to infectious disease experts. Due to the decision by provincial governments across the country to dismantle testing capacity for all but the most high-risk individuals, many are dying of COVID-19 without being added to government figures.

Dr. Tara Moriarty, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Toronto, spelled this out in comments to CBC News.

“If you die with COVID, even if it looks like COVID, smells like COVID, everything ... if they don’t have a positive test, they will not be reported as a COVID death,” Moriarty said. “We know this is a very significant problem.”

Dr. Moriarty stressed the unprecedented character of the current surge, which is taking place even though 80 percent of the Canadian population is double vaccinated.

“We’re seeing scales of infection that we have not seen in the entire epidemic to date,” she commented. “There are going to be a lot of deaths, even if the virus is half as severe [as previous variants].”

With the dismantling of PCR testing for the general public, governments have succeeded in decoupling official infection numbers from hospitalizations and deaths. Millions of workers are flying blind as workplaces and schools across the country experience staggering numbers of absences due to COVID-19 illness, without any notification of who is infected and virtually no contact tracing.

Despite, or rather because of this, governments are quickly moving to remove all remaining public health restrictions that could limit the spread of the virus. They are doing so while insisting that the Omicron variant leads to “mild” disease and that the working class has to “learn to live with the virus”—that is, accept the reality of mass death and the debilitating symptoms of Long COVID.

Schools in most provinces have been open for in-person learning since January 17, helping to fuel the current surge. The vast majority of non-essential production, from factories to warehouses, have remained open throughout the pandemic, ensuring the virus has an ample supply of hosts in which to multiply and spread.

Following a similar announcement by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provincial governments reduced isolation times for infected individuals from ten days to five, going against all scientific advice. This policy’s only function is to get potentially still infectious workers back to work sooner.

On January 31, non-essential businesses such as restaurants, gyms, sports venues, and gaming establishments were reopened in Ontario with some capacity limits. Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford has issued a three-phase plan to fully remove all indoor gathering restrictions by mid-March, potentially including the use of masks.

Repeating the same lie told by countless big business politicians at each stage of the pandemic, Ford claimed, without a shred of evidence, “the worst is behind us.”

In Quebec, restaurants were reopened to indoor dining on January 31 at half capacity. Although bars, casinos, and gyms remain closed, the hard-right Coalition Avenir Quebec government of Premier Francois Legault is expected to quickly move to follow the example of Ontario, throwing caution to the wind and removing all remaining restrictions.

Ford and Legault’s counterparts across the country are carefully following developments in Canada’s two largest provinces to inform their own homicidal reopening plans. At the same time, some of the most reactionary political leaders can barely conceal their excitement at the prospect of doing away once and for all with public health measures that, while offering limited protection to the population, have lowered profits for some sections of big business.

Typical were the remarks of Alberta’s United Conservative Party Premier Jason Kenney, who gushed, “I’m pretty confident it [reopening plan] will come in before the end of March, and I hope it comes... I’ll tell you this: we will eliminate the Restrictions Exemption Program as soon as it is safe to do so.”

In July 2021, in the midst of a short-lived lull in COVID cases, Kenney effectively declared the pandemic over and tore down all COVID-19 public health measures to usher in the “best summer ever.” This led directly to a September surge driven by the Delta variant, which produced Alberta’s highest hospitalization and death rates to that point. Those numbers are now being surpassed in the current wave of the pandemic.

Every section of the capitalist political establishment has adopted the herd immunity policy wholesale. The supposedly “progressive” New Democratic Party government in British Columbia presides over a pandemic policy that is identical in almost all respects to its counterparts across the country. The NDP government has even forced hospital patients infected with COVID-19 to share rooms with uninfected patients, as long as the latter are double vaccinated.

Hospitalizations in BC are now more than double their previous pandemic highs, with a jump in deaths all but guaranteed. Across Canada, health care systems are reaching the breaking point as countless health care workers hang up their scrubs due to unbearable work trauma or are themselves incapacitated by COVID-19.

The federal Liberal government, for its part, has spearheaded the reopening drive throughout the pandemic by insisting that all measures be taken at the “local” level. This policy has left public health decisions in the hands of hard-right provincial governments that are deliberately infecting the entire population. Meanwhile, the federal Liberal government continues to issue billions in tax breaks and subsidies to major corporations, even as they claw back the extremely limited financial lifelines available to a dwindling number of workers.

Under these conditions, a far-right-led protest involving a few thousand truckers and their fascistic supporters was systematically built up by powerful sections of the media and political establishment over the past week. The purpose they saw in promoting the so-called “Freedom Convoy,” which has called for the overthrow of the federal government so as to scrap all pandemic-related measures, was to use far-right shock troops as a battering ram against the widespread support among working people for stringent public health measures, including lockdowns, to combat COVID-19.

However, opposition is growing within the working class to these policies of death and profits. Mass sickouts of educators, and walkouts of students across Canada and the US in response to exploding cases in schools, are an initial expression of widespread outrage and a desire to protect lives.

Poverty in Germany: 2021 report exposes profit-before-lives policy

Laura Grau

The pandemic has dramatically worsened the poverty of millions of Germans. This is the message of this year’s report of the German Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband (Paritätische Welfare Association), which highlights the rise in poverty. According to the report, the poverty rate in the country had trended continuously upward since 2006, reaching a new highpoint with the appearance of the pandemic. This unprecedented situation is exacerbating the plight of billions worldwide who already live below the subsistence level.

According to the Wohlfahrtsverband, the poverty rate reached a new high in 2020 of 16.1 percent. In absolute figures, this means that 13.4 million Germans lived in poverty in the first year of the pandemic, 200,000 more than a year before. Never before has a higher poverty rate been measured in the surveys of the German Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband.

Bottle deposit collector, a common sight in Germany (Bild: Sascha Kohlmann / CC BY-SA 2.0)

A clear picture emerges when one considers the poverty rates of the individual German states. The prosperity gap between the wealthy states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg and the rest of Germany has consolidated and even widened. While the two southern states show the lowest poverty rates, Bremen shows the highest, followed by Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt. In relative terms, this means that in Bavaria more than one in nine people are officially afflicted by poverty, in Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt one in five and in Bremen more than one in four.

Provisional measures and reduced-hours working allowances—loudly proclaimed by the government—neither prevented massive income losses nor the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. As a result, the unemployment rate increased from 5 to almost 6 percent in 2020. One in five people was affected by income losses, mainly among the gainfully employed. The self-employed, whose poverty rate increased massively during the pandemic, stand out particularly in the report.

Households with three or more children and single parents are most severely affected by poverty: 40.5 percent of all single-parent households and 30.9 percent of households with multiple children are poor. Also disproportionately affected by poverty are the unemployed (52 percent), those with low educational qualifications (30.9 percent), those with an immigrant background (27.9 percent) and those without German citizenship (35.8 percent). Women have a higher poverty rate (16.9 percent) than men (15.3 percent). The difference between the sexes increases with age.

Living disproportionately in poverty are children and adolescents (20.2 percent) and young adults up to the age of 25 (26 percent). The reason for the high level of poverty among young adults is the low wages of trainees and students. The poverty figures for pensioners are also strikingly high at 20.7 percent.

The unemployed rate rose from 8 percent in 2019 to 8.7 percent in 2020. There was likewise a sharp increase in unemployment among the self-employed, up fully 4 percent in the first pandemic year, with an overall rate of 13 percent. According to a survey of the working population conducted by the Hans Böckler Foundation referred to in the poverty report, 37 percent of self-employed and 44 percent of the solo self-employed workers surveyed reported a loss of income during the pandemic.

The number of self-employed people receiving a monthly income below €1,500 increased immensely. Meanwhile, the total number of self-employed fell by hundreds of thousands, far more than in previous years. Reduced hours allowances and other various “aid programs” only partially counteracted mass insolvencies and unemployment and did not prevent income losses from exacerbating poverty.

Among the labor force—both employed and unemployed—the Hans Böckler Foundation found pandemic-related financial losses for nearly every second person. This affected people with lower incomes more than those with higher incomes.

A grave development is evident in the number of unemployment payment recipients. In 2020, more than 1 million Germans received short-term unemployment benefits, hundreds of thousands more than the year before. The rate of those receiving social welfare for jobseekers (long-term unemployment) was 8.3 percent in 2020.

Statistically, the long-term unemployment rate and the poverty rate are strongly interrelated. The income of people receiving social welfare benefits is determined and limited by standard rates, which, however, do not protect against poverty and fall below subsistence levels. A large segment of the poor lies at or just above the welfare limit.

The pandemic disproportionately burdened the already difficult lives of the poor in several ways. First, access to social assistance was reduced. Support from job centers, food banks and free school meals was commonly cut. Access to emergency facilities was likewise restricted. In addition, Germans must pay for masks and hygiene products themselves, an additional financial burden for those on low incomes.

The homeless have been hit particularly hard by the government’s profit-before-life policies. According to estimates by homeless assistance services, 256,000 people did not have an apartment lease in 2020. About one-fifth of them were living on the streets—a situation worsened by the life-threatening pandemic. Institutions that offered assistance had to reduce their shelter and counseling services. Homeless and low-income people lost access to public spaces that provide shelter, sanitation and water.

The Wohlfahrtsverband accuses the outgoing government of massive “poverty policy failures.” It had done “virtually nothing” in 2020 to alleviate the misery of those living in poverty, especially those receiving Hartz IV social security or basic old-age benefits. Renaming the Hartz IV system “citizen’s income” (Bürgergeld)—as envisaged by the incoming coalition government—“will not help those affected by poverty,” the report states. What is needed is an increase in the standard assistance rates.

However, the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Liberals (FDP) are pursuing a deliberate policy of class warfare. During the pandemic, they put profits before lives and well-being and transferred hundreds of billions to the banks and super-rich. This money is now to be squeezed back out of the working class. Just days ago, Finance Minister Christian Lindner (Free Democratic Party, FDP) announced in the Bundestag that the government was working to “return to the rule of the debt brake (balanced budget) of the Basic Law.” The “goal is to reduce the German debt ratio,” he said.

While the living conditions of hundreds of thousands are constantly deteriorating, poverty and unemployment are increasing, and the number of riots against pandemic restrictions is rising, a small financial aristocracy is amassing astronomical fortunes. According to the latest Oxfam report, the 10 richest individuals in Germany have “increased their cumulative wealth from about $144 billion to about $256 billion since the beginning of the pandemic.” This increase alone “is close to the total wealth of the poorest 40 percent, or 33 million Germans.”

Denmark scraps all pandemic restrictions as Omicron subvariant runs rampant

Jordan Shilton

Beginning on February 1, Denmark’s Social Democratic government will scrap all public health measures designed to limit the spread of COVID-19. Requirements to wear a mask in public, maintain social distance from others, and trace contacts of infected people will be abandoned in what the homicidal advocates of “herd immunity” are gleefully labelling “Freedom Day 2.0.” The only public health measure remaining in place is for people who test positive to isolate for four days, well short of the incubation period for COVID-19.

Like its northern neighbour Sweden in the early stages of the pandemic, Denmark is emerging as one of the most ruthless proponents of a criminal herd immunity strategy that, unless opposed, will make mass infection and death a permanent feature of daily life. The policy shift is made all the more criminal given the fact that Denmark’s infection rate was last week the highest of any European country, apart from the tiny Faroe Islands, and the potentially more infectious Omicron subvariant BA.2 is raging across the country.

Mette Frederiksen, in Copenhagen, Denmark on May 17, 2021 (Photo: Wikipedia)

The Social Democratic government declared last week that COVID-19 no longer represents a “danger to society.” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen asserted, “The critical phase of the pandemic is behind us.” She confirmed that businesses will be free to decide whether to retain COVID-19 protections in the workplace. A government recommendation to allow employees to work from home where possible will be abolished.

In line with the advocates of the fascistic Great Barrington Declaration, those promoting the lifting of all restrictions in Denmark openly declare that infections will skyrocket. Epidemiologist Tyra Grove Krause from the State Serum Institute (SSI) noted, “The coming weeks could be difficult, because many people will get sick and will have to stay at home.”

Health Minister Magnus Heunicke stated that 63 percent of new infections are linked to the BA.2 subvariant. The SSI reported that BA.2 could be up to 1.5 times more infectious than the original Omicron variant. The health agency also warned that BA.2 can reinfect people who already suffered an Omicron infection. Krause was forced as a result to acknowledge that the peak of the Omicron wave, previously assumed to occur in late January, would not be reached until mid-February. Repeated reinfections pose a serious risk to individuals with weak immune systems and pre-existing health conditions.

Several medical experts have spoken out against the reopening plan. “The infection rate has risen rapidly in recent days, and we’re so close to the goal that it makes no sense to relax controls,” remarked Eskild Petersen, professor emeritus for infectious diseases at the University of Aarhus. “I’m quite astonished. I’ve always been a proponent of doing one thing after the other. We should keep the mask, because that ensures that the virus stays in your mouth when you’re infected. Why in the world are we doing this? We currently have 918 COVID-19 patients in hospital and we know that there will be a new variant.”

This is the second time in less than six months that the Danish government has proclaimed the pandemic to be over. In September, Frederiksen declared an end to all public health restrictions and oversaw the organisation of a massive rock concert to celebrate “freedom day.” Within less than two months, the spread of the Delta variant pushed infections and hospitalisations up, compelling the government to reintroduce a COVID-19 pass for access to public spaces that required people to be either fully vaccinated or have a negative test. However, the Danish government never returned to significant restrictions on gatherings prior to the emergence of Omicron. The fact that virtually no public health measures were in place played a major role in making Denmark one of the European countries hit hardest by Omicron, as a series of superspreader events transmitted the extremely infectious variants throughout society. Only when cases rose to record levels were limited restrictions reimposed for several weeks.

Denmark has recorded over 3,700 coronavirus deaths since the beginning of the pandemic and more than 1.5 million infections. With a population of 5.8 million, this means that more than one in four inhabitants has been infected. Denmark’s death rate equates to about 60,000 deaths in a country the size of Germany.

The population has thus far been spared a far worse loss of life thanks to the country’s comparatively well-developed public health system. All COVID-19 testing is centrally organised by the government, and all tests are screened for variants, which is part of the reason why Omicron was detected so early on. Denmark also achieved a very high vaccination rate, with well over 80 percent of the population having received at least two doses.

Yet this makes the latest decision to scrap all non-pharmaceutical measures even more criminal. By letting the Omicron subvariant run free, the government is creating perfect conditions for the emergence of a new variant, which may prove more resistant to vaccines or more lethal. Even if this worst-case scenario does not materialise, working people will face a growing number of COVID-19 reinfections, which could produce severe long-term health problems and an increase in deaths.

The Social Democratic government has prioritized the profit interests of big business over the protection of workers’ health throughout the pandemic. Billions of kroner in state-backed loans, tax breaks for big business, and other bailout measures have enabled Danish companies and investors to profit from COVID-19. The Economist magazine, a mouthpiece of “free market” liberalism, put Denmark in top spot of its rankings for the best-performing OECD economy during the pandemic. The rankings were based on factors such as share market performance, capital investments, GDP growth and government debt.

The Social Democratic government has also launched attacks on workers. Last August, it passed an emergency law in parliament to end a 10-week strike by 6,000 nurses by imposing a meagre 5 percent pay increase over three years. The government-imposed deal, which falls well short of inflation and did nothing to rectify years of low pay for health care workers, had previously been voted down by the nurses in June in a rebellion against their union’s support for the agreement.

Last month, the government reached a compromise with opposition parties to reform the labour market in the interests of business, including measures to encourage retirees to return to the workforce to free up labour shortages.

Frederiksen’s ending of all public health restrictions followed a sustained weeks-long campaign by corporate executives and lobbyists for a return to “normalcy.” “We will experience this year after year, and we can’t just shut down society, reopen and close again,” commented Brian Mikkelsen from the Danish Chamber of Commerce. “It costs far too much money, jobs, and prosperity. That’s why we need planning certainty for businesses.”

“We need a strategy for the future that doesn’t always have us in a state of emergency,” stated Jannick Nytoft of Horesta, the trade organisation for hotels and restaurants. “We would like COVID-19 to become a disease that is treated like all others.”

The Danish government’s pro-business record during the pandemic is particularly politically revealing because it depends on the support of two self-styled “socialist” and “left” parties in parliament. The Socialist People’s Party and ex-Stalinist Red-Green Alliance/Unity List, which includes the Danish section of the Pabloite United Secretariat, the Socialist Workers Party, reached an agreement with Frederiksen in 2019 to make her prime minister.

Denmark’s decision to abolish all pandemic-related public health measures is being seized on by political governments and forces across Europe who want nothing more than to follow Copenhagen’s example, regardless of the horrendous levels of infections and deaths it will produce.

In the neighbouring northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, the Christian Democrat-led state government is discussing the option of a “Danish path,” according to regional broadcaster NDR. Minister President Daniel Günther (CDU), reacting to the abolition of restrictions in Denmark, asserted Thursday, “They’re a little ahead of us on Omicron, have a higher vaccination rate as we have in Germany. So, the Danish path can be a bit more courageous … I think that in Germany, too, we can move on it very, very soon.”

One year since the military coup in Myanmar

Peter Symonds

Today marks one year since the military seized power in Myanmar, imposed a state of emergency and arrested top leaders of the National League for Democracy (NLD), including Aung San Suu Kyi. The military coup provoked widespread protests and opposition, which the military brutally suppressed—with almost 1,500 killed, either shot on the streets, tortured and murdered in custody, or simply disappeared. Thousands more were injured and at least 11,800 have been arrested.

Protesters shout slogans during a protest against the military coup in Mandalay, Myanmar, Sunday, Feb. 28, 2021. (AP Photo)

In justifying its takeover, the military took a leaf out of Donald Trump’s playbook. Coming less than a month after Trump’s failed January 6 coup at the Capitol in Washington, the Myanmar military claimed the NLD had “stolen” the country’s national election in November 2020. Its claims were if anything more farcical than those of Trump—the NLD won 396 of the 476 seats in the combined lower and upper houses while the military’s Union Solidarity and Development party gained just 33 seats. The new parliament was due to convene on the day of the coup.

In reality, the façade of democracy established under the 2008 constitution drawn up by the military was always paper-thin. A quarter of the seats in the parliament were reserved for military appointees, ensuring they could block any constitutional amendment. Moreover, the military retained control over key ministries, including defence and home affairs.

The “democratic” shift by the military was bound up with a deepening economic crisis. The military, which had been closely tied to Beijing, turned to Washington as a means of ending a crippling international sanctions regime. The Obama administration, which had launched its “pivot to Asia” to isolate and encircle China, embraced the military with open arms, ignoring the cosmetic character of the constitutional changes.

Suu Kyi and the NLD went along with the charade. Indeed, Suu Kyi formed a de facto partnership with the military that only became closer after the NLD won the 2016 elections and formed government. The “democracy icon” toured the world touting for investment in Myanmar and notoriously became the apologist for the military’s murderous operations against the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority that drove hundreds of thousands to flee for their lives.

However, the ending of sanctions failed to result in a flood of foreign investment and any significant economic boost. As it did internationally, the COVID-19 pandemic only intensified economic and social crisis in Myanmar, leading to sharpening political tensions in ruling circles. The first wave of infections peaked at the time of the November elections in 2020, which revealed the lack of any significant popular support for the military.

Feeling the political ground moving from under their feet, the generals decided to dispense with the trappings of democracy and openly take power into their own hands. The coup, however, has resolved nothing. On every front, the junta confronts a worsening impasse, which cannot be overcome through its methods of brute force.

A second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic hit Myanmar, peaking at over 5,000 daily infections in July 2021—far higher than the 2020 wave. The country’s limited health system virtually collapsed under the impact, exacerbated by protests by doctors and medical staff, who treated patients in the community rather than state-run hospitals.

The overall number of infections since the start of the pandemic is more than half a million and the death toll is over 19,000. These official figures, however, are grossly understated due to the inadequacy of testing and treatment. While figures are currently substantially lower, the first cases of the highly-infectious Omicron variant have emerged, and this is likely to lead to another huge surge in infections.

The pandemic and the nation-wide opposition to the coup have had a profound impact on the economy. According to the World Bank, it shrank by 18 percent in the financial year to September 2021 and is expected to grow by just 1 percent this financial year. The International Labour Organisation estimated that the country lost about 1.6 million jobs in 2021 and hours worked dropped by 18 percent compared to 2020. Hardest hit were agriculture, construction, garment, tourism and hospitality.

By a UN estimate, almost half the population now lives in poverty. The World Food Program estimates that by October 2021, the cost of a basic food basket was almost a third higher than in the month prior to the coup. Fuel prices have jumped by more than 70 percent. UNICEF estimated recently that 25 percent of the population needed humanitarian aid, including five million children.

The junta’s vindictive treatment of its erstwhile political ally and apologist, Suu Kyi, is just a small indication of the far more brutal methods meted out more broadly. She has been convicted on trumped-up charges of incitement, breaking COVID-19 rules and illegally importing walkie-talkies, and sentenced to six years’ jail. She faces further charges of corruption, electoral fraud and violating the state secrets act, which carry far higher jail terms.

The junta’s chief target has been the civil disobedience movement, which initially encompassed significant layers of doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers and other public servants who refused to work under military rule. This movement also began to draw in layers of the working class, including garment workers, dockworkers and others.

The political orientation of the NLD, however, was not to this incipient movement of the working class. The National Unity Government (NUG)—in effect a government-in-exile—formed by NLD ministers and parliamentarians who evaded arrest, along with leaders of various ethnic separatist organisations, turned to the major powers to pressure the junta to make concessions.

At the same time, the NUG encouraged young protesters to flee the cities and take up an “armed struggle” with training provided by ethnic militias that have been engaged in a war with the military for decades. It announced the formation of a Peoples Defence Force last May and its armed militia have engaged in various attacks on the military.

Significantly, the major powers, including the US, the EU and Australia, have been somewhat equivocal in their support for the NUG. Its offices have been established in some countries, including the US, UK, Australia and France, and high-level discussions have been held with its representatives, such as Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan last October. However, the US and its allies have not reimposed blanket sanctions on Myanmar but rather on individual junta representatives—an indication that Washington is seeking to pressure the military into a new accommodation.

China similarly has not thrown its full support behind the junta, but rather held out its hand to the NUG, holding talks with its representatives. In September, Beijing chose not to support the junta’s appointee to the UN, but did a deal with the US to maintain the seat for Kyaw Moe Tun, the ambassador pointed by the NLD government in 2018. In part, Beijing’s manoeuvring is aimed at neutralising the anti-Chinese chauvinism that has been whipped up by elements of opposition in Myanmar, resulting in attacks on Chinese businesses.

New poll shows growing political discontent and anger among young people in the US

Dominic Gustavo

A large majority of young people in the United States feel pessimistic about the future, and furthermore, that the US state and its political institutions do not represent their vital interests, according to a new poll.

New York students during the walkout (Credit: @ShawnGarcia_NYC)

The survey, conducted online between January 2 and January 6 by the Alliance for Youth Organizing in collaboration with Civiqs, polled 1,936 registered voters ages 17-39 on questions pertaining to their feelings about the direction of the United States, as well as their thoughts about national political figures and parties. The results were weighted by race, sex, age, education and party identification.

The poll found a growing mood of discontent with the current trajectory of the US, with 66 percent describing themselves as “pessimistic” about the future of the country. This mood was especially pronounced among the younger Gen Z’ers (those aged 17-25) with 69 percent reporting a pessimistic attitude about the future.

Over half, 56 percent, of those polled reported feeling “frustrated” with politicians in Washington, while 37 percent described themselves as “angry.”

Both of the capitalist parties are viewed negatively, with 55 percent reporting a negative view of Democrats in Congress and an even higher number, 69 percent, viewing the Republicans negatively. Just 36 percent of respondents said they had a “favorable” view of President Joe Biden. Just over 30 percent of respondents said they viewed Donald Trump positively—on the flip side, 61 percent of young people had a “very unfavorable” opinion of the ex-president.

The overwhelming majority, 75 percent, of respondents said that they felt politicians in Washington prioritized the interests of the wealthy, and this included 52 percent of those who identified themselves as Republicans.

The results of the poll are an indication of the enormous anger and opposition that is brewing against the US capitalist state and its institutions. It is a damning indictment of the Biden administration and the Democratic Party, which was brought to power largely because of popular anger over the policies of the fascistic Trump.

Significantly, 53 percent of those polled believe that Congress should more vigorously investigate the attempted fascist coup of January 6, 2021. Among young African Americans, this number was even higher, at 69 percent.

Workers and youth who voted for Biden, with expectations that he would repudiate the policies of Trump, have been given a hard lesson in what “democracy” truly entails in modern capitalist society. The Biden administration has in many respects continued and escalated Trump’s assault on the working class.

The homicidal “herd immunity” policies of Trump—allowing for the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 among the population in order to safeguard corporate profits—have reached a new level under Biden. Confronted by the collapse of its “mitigation” strategy due to the exponential spread of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the Biden administration has shifted to a policy of “living with COVID-19.”

In practice this means that the US state has surrendered the population to the pandemic, which is now as a matter of policy set to continue indefinitely. The results have been an unmitigated catastrophe: over half a million new infections per day on average, with the seven-day average of deaths standing at over 2,500 per day. Faced with this mass death, the response of the US government has been to move towards the ending of daily case and death counting.

When asked about which COVID-19 impacts most worried them, the majority of respondents, 55 percent, said they were most concerned about the ongoing threats to their health and the health of their loved ones. This would indicate that the claims made by the corporate press, that the population and especially the youth are eager to throw caution to the wind and “live with” the deadly virus, are patent nonsense.

A sense of the true feelings of the youth can be seen by observing the remarkable wave of protests and walkouts conducted by high school students nationwide.

The growing outrage of the youth is rooted deeply in the experiences through which the population has passed over the past decades. Young people are responding to the enormous objective crisis of American capitalism, which has been brought to a fever pitch by the destabilizing effect of the pandemic. The youth are coming of age in a society of staggering social inequality, many of them saddled with debt, many others with no prospects for improving their economic position.

They have grown up under conditions marked by wanton despair expressed in the epidemic of drug overdoses and suicide and inundated in violence and brutality meted out by the police. Even the schools have become potential killing fields; the phenomenon of school shootings, which the ruling class has always met with indifference, has been a staple of American life for decades.

And how could it be otherwise, in a nation that has been involved in a permanent series of criminal wars for the past 20 years, that so many young people are growing hostile to the political order? The pandemic has accelerated and intensified each of these degenerate tendencies. Beset by an intractable social and political crisis and threatened by growing domestic unrest, the US ruling class is now seeking a way out of its predicament by intensifying its war drive against Russia, with potentially incalculable consequences for all of humanity.

One year of the Biden administration has made it abundantly clear that not a single step forward can be taken under the wing of the Democratic Party, the party of the imperialist bourgeoisie. It will be necessary to dispel illusions in the two-party system among young people and to reject the lies of charlatans such as Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, whose purpose is to channel the progressive aspirations of young people and redirect it behind the Democratic Party.