As US COVID-19 deaths continue to surge, corporate media maintains near blackout

Benjamin Mateus

COVID-19 deaths in the United States have reached their highest level during the Omicron wave, coinciding not with escalating efforts to save lives but an escalating drive to cover up the devastating impact of the pandemic on the health of the American people.

Mandatory reporting of COVID-19 deaths by hospital systems to the US Department of Health and Humans Services (DHSS) ended on February 2, 2022.

Additionally, in quick succession, states across the country are allowing their mask mandates to lapse. New York Governor Kathy Hochul dropped the state’s stringent indoor mask mandate last Wednesday. These include populous Democratic-held states, such as Illinois, California and New Jersey, to name a few.

Patient in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

According to the Worldometer dashboard, the 7-day moving average reached 2,600 deaths per day by the end of January. On February 1, 2022, the New York Times COVID-19 dashboard recorded a daily average of 2,653 deaths with a single-day high of 3,582.

Since then, the COVID-19 trackers report a sudden and significant drop in the daily death averages—2,044 for Worldometer and 2,454 for the New York Times. Only the Johns Hopkins coronavirus resource center, one of the leading and most reliable trackers frequently used by government and international bodies, has indicated that the number of deaths has plateaued or continues to climb though at a much slower pace. According to their tracker, the 7-day average for COVID-19 deaths remains over 2,500.

Indeed, the change in the trajectory of deaths can be supported by the decline in new infections and hospitalizations for COVID-19, although they still remain at pandemic highs. However, other countries with similar trajectories in their infection metrics have continued to see deaths climb, with Denmark and South Africa being two notable examples.

Aside from how hospital administrators and health officials are adjusting their reports of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, recent efforts on the part of states and governments to dismantle reporting systems are part of the more considerable effort to dispense with such metrics altogether as they interfere with efforts to force schools and businesses to open and stay open while getting the country back to work en masse permanently. The critical and necessary tracking of infections has grown to become a nuisance for the ruling elite.

In this regard, the complete silence on the part of major media outlets on the number of deaths that continue to mount plays a major role. A cursory survey of the US Sunday papers is remarkable in that not one has mentioned the devastating toll the Omicron variant continues to take on the population. The rapid shift is astounding. One would assume that the pandemic has ended or that it was a nightmare from which we are all awakening. In reality, the nightmare continues in a new form.

Placing the present daily COVID-19 death toll into context, more than 2,700 people died on September 11, 2001, in the World Trade Center towers and the surrounding area after two hijacked planes were flown into the buildings. The deaths were eulogized and referenced repeatedly on every major news outlet. They were used as a pretext for US wars across the Middle East and suppression of democratic rights at home, which have had considerable relevance to developments during the pandemic.

And last week, more than 14,000 people died from COVID-19, the equivalent of almost five 9/11 events. But there is barely a mention by any media commentator. That is because these deaths are attributable, not to a terrorist “enemy,” but the US ruling class itself, and both its parties, Democratic and Republican, whose deliberate policy has allowed the disease to run rampant throughout the country.

Since New Year’s Day 2022, more than 90,000 people in the US have perished from COVID-19 and its complications. This is equivalent to twice the number of American combatants killed in combat in the Vietnam conflict. Instead of a war that encompassed a dozen years, the pandemic deaths took place in the span of just six weeks.

Furthermore, since President Joe Biden was sworn into office, more than a half million Americans have died of COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus deaths to more than 943,000, according to Worldometer. Indeed, far more have died under Biden’s administration than under Trump, as the twin parties of American capitalism pursued the policy of herd immunity.

It is noteworthy that the plans to end the last vestiges of the paltry mitigation measures were drawn up even before anyone heard of the Omicron variant. Inevitably, these had to be put on hold for several months after Omicron sparked a huge surge in the pandemic.

Last week, the New York Times wrote: “The easing of New York’s pandemic restrictions on businesses comes as Democratic-led states from New Jersey to California have announced similar moves this week, in a loosely coordinated effort that is the result of months of public-health planning, back-channel discussions and political focus groups that began in the weeks after the November elections.”

That the Omicron surge delayed only briefly this closing down of public health measures only underscores the wholly unscientific character of the decision. The federal and state governments were driven, not by data and analysis but by the necessity to recoup the trillions paid out to corporate America in the course of the pandemic.

With the number of cases on the decline (but still at staggering levels), governors took their concerns to the White House, demanding the shift to “living with the virus” under the guise that SARS-CoV-2 was on its way to becoming endemic.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, also the Vice Chairman of the National Governors Association, speaking to reporters after meeting with Biden, said, “What does the road from pandemic to endemic look like, and how do we keep score? There was broad agreement that that’s the task before us.”

In other words, the ending of the pandemic also means the termination of all the metrics and measures that remind the population that a deadly virus continues to kill people at record highs, with the cumulative death toll approaching closer to 1 million every day.

Indeed, what does the road from pandemic to endemic look like?

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), a UK government body that advises the central government, recently published on February 10 a paper by academics on COVID-19 viral evolution scenarios.

They provide four scenarios from the most optimistic to the direst. They wrote: “In each scenario, it is assumed that a relatively stable, repeating pattern is reached over time (two to 10 years), but it is likely that the transition to this will be highly dynamic and unpredictable. It may not be possible to know with confidence from what happens in the next 12 to 18 months which long-term pattern will emerge.”

They note particularly: “There is also a feedback loop between the global epidemic dynamics (i.e., transmission and incidence) and viral evolution and adaptation: higher global SARS-CoV-2 prevalence provides more opportunities for viral evolution, while new variants can drive higher prevalence.” And they warn that it should not be assumed that a more transmissible variant is necessarily of lower severity, or vice versa. On the contrary, in the worst case scenario, a more lethal and more contagious variant may emerge.

Dr. Zoë Hyde, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at the University of Western Australia and an expert on COVID-19, in response to the report wrote on social media: “The best-case scenario doesn’t seem realistic [a variant of both lesser virulence and lesser transmissibility]. It’s inconsistent with what’s occurred so far. … Based on our experience with SARS-CoV-2 to date, the central pessimistic scenario seems most likely to me. However, I think one element of the worst-case scenario—increased long-term impacts following infection—may also be correct.”

Zelensky again rejects US claims of imminent Russian invasion even as Kiev continues war preparations

Jason Melanovski

On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky again contradicted new US claims that a Russian invasion is imminent and implored Ukrainians to remain calm. Throwing doubt on the latest allegations by Washington, Zelensky stated, “Today the best friend of our enemy is panic in our country, and all this information, which only helps panic, doesn’t help us.”

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan earlier stated Russian forces were “in a clear position to be able to mount a major military action,” but admitted, “[w]e don’t know exactly what is going to happen.” The supposedly forthcoming attack, Der Spiegel and the New York Times reported, could come “as early as next Wednesday.”

In this handout photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, right, speaks at a press conference in Kherson, Ukraine, Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

Zelensky went on to state that his government had no information that an invasion would occur in the upcoming week, as claimed by the US. “We understand all the risks, we understand that there are risks. If you or anyone else has 100 percent true information regarding an invasion by the Russian Federation starting on February 16, then please give us this information.”

Later he released photos via Facebook of him doing a tour of military exercises. He again begged Ukrainians not to panic. Zelensky is aware that there is mass opposition to war in Ukraine and that the US/NATO-led provocation of a war with Russia will unleash a social and political crisis in the country.

Washington and its allies around the world, including Britain, Germany, Israel and Australia, have begun telling their citizens to leave the country, and Russia has announced that it will downsize its embassy in Ukraine.

Despite its repeated rejection of US claims about a supposedly imminent invasion, Zelensky’s government has continued its belligerent stance towards Moscow and the pro-Russian political opposition within Ukraine. Pro-Russian television station Nash, which is affiliated with politician Yevheniy Murayev, was closed down. Murayev was recently identified by British intelligence as a potential replacement for Zelensky in a supposed Russian plot to overthrow the Ukrainian government. As Murayev himself pointed out, however, he is currently banned from Russia and has had his assets seized by its government.

Even as it attacks the opposition inside Ukraine, the Kiev government is continuing military drills with drones and US-supplied anti-tank Javelin missiles. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksio Reznikov insists these are in response to Russian training exercises.

The country’s political far right, led by former President Poroshenko, has called for Zelensky to act even more aggressively towards Moscow and echoed the warnings of his US backers that an invasion is forthcoming.

“It now arises to the responsibility of politicians to take all emergency measures to protect the country and its people from the worst-case scenario,” Poroshenko said on Twitter.

Poroshenko also attempted to insert himself into the decision making, calling for “a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council with the participation of leaders of all parliamentary factions to discuss proposals and develop a common and joint action plan on how to protect the country.”

Having developed a close relationship with Joe Biden during his term as vice president in the Obama administration, Poroshenko is the preferred puppet of US policymakers. It appears Poroshenko is waiting to step forward should war start and the Zelensky government fall.

In Kiev, Mayor Vitaly Klitchko has undertaken far-reaching preparations for war. According to the Russian online newspaper Gazeta.ru, Klitchko created a commission that has worked out evacuation plans for every party of the city and prepared its infrastructure for a war. The number of bomb shelters in the Ukrainian capital has been tripled and 4,500 underground parking lots and underpasses, subway stations and basements, set up as shelters. Klitchko also announced that he is deploying a brigade to defend the city.

On Friday, aides to Ukrainian President Zelensky continued to maintain a hardline stance in negotiations with Russia held on Friday in Berlin.

The talks, part of the “Normandy format” brokered by France and Germany, were intended to work out the details of full implementation of the Minsk Peace Agreement. Those accords were first agreed to by both Moscow and Kiev in 2015 in order to end the civil war between the Ukrainian government and Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk provinces.

Seven years later, the civil war continues and has killed approximately 14,000 Ukrainians, as successive governments in Kiev, with the backing of the United States and NATO, have refused to implement the Minsk Accords. The government has continually refused to negotiate, as called for in the agreement, with the leaders of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, whom it labels as “terrorists.”

On Friday, Ukrainian officials maintained the same stance, once again sabotaging any chance for a negotiated settlement.

“Unfortunately, almost nine hours of talks have ended without any significant results. The Ukrainians presented a very hard position. We did not manage to overcome this,” Russian Deputy Chief of Staff Dmitry Kozak said following the meeting.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, while stating he hoped for a “diplomatic settlement of the conflict” signaled to Ukraine’s far-right militia groups that it would never cross the “red line” of direct negotiations with the pro-Russian separatists.

“The key question yesterday—was direct talks with the separatist Donetsk and Lugansk provinces. This question is well known to everyone. Russia insists that Ukraine holds a direct dialog with the so-called Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. If Ukraine goes for this, then the status of Russia changes to just a negotiator in the conflict. And that is why we can’t accept this,” Kuleba stated.

All sides agreed to another round of Normandy format talks in March, with Russia calling for France and Germany to pressure Ukraine to negotiate with the separatists. A previous round of talks was held in Paris on January 26 and likewise ended in failure.

A week before Friday’s meeting, Kuleba also ruled out a special federated status for the breakaway areas, another one of the key points that Kiev refuses to accept in the Minsk Accords.

Speaking with Poland’s Rzeczpospolita newspaper, Kuleba said, “No Ukrainian region will have a right for national state decisions. This is set in stone! There will be no special status, as Russia imagines it, not voting power.”

The Ukrainian government and its imperialist backers rightly fear that reintegrating the provinces without them being fully subjugated to Kiev would jeopardize the country’s chances for entry into NATO, thus limiting Ukraine’s usefulness as a proxy against Moscow.

Until the 2014 United States-backed coup of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, NATO membership was opposed by a majority of the Ukrainian population. More recently, in December of last year, polling from the US Republican Party-affiliated International Republican Institute showed that just 58 percent of Ukrainians support a referendum to join NATO despite seven years of pro-NATO propaganda. If polling had included Crimea and the separatist-controlled Donbass regions, the number would be significantly lower.

US steals billions in Afghan bank funds

Patrick Martin

In an action that combines brazen theft, imperialist brutality and unlimited hypocrisy, the Biden administration announced Friday that it will seize control of $7 billion in Afghanistan financial assets, held largely at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, rather than return them to the Afghanistan central bank.

Media attention has largely been devoted to Biden’s splitting of the $7 billion, with $3.5 billion set aside to meet the legal claims of survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and $3.5 billion to be used for “humanitarian aid” to the people of Afghanistan. Both actions are cynical diversions from what is an effort to starve the country and avenge the humiliating defeat which US imperialism suffered last summer.

A Taliban fighter stands guard in front of people waiting to enter a bank, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

The $3.5 billion supposedly to be used for aid will not be available for many months, if ever, as State Department officials acknowledged over the weekend, ensuring that nothing will reach the starving population of Afghanistan during the winter months. According to the UN World Food Program, some 23 million Afghans face hunger and malnutrition this year, while UNICEF warns that as many as one million Afghan children could die of severe malnutrition and outright starvation.

The delay is due to the administration’s decision to allow legal claims against the Taliban amounting to $7 billion, awarded by default in a court proceeding nearly a decade ago, to go forward. Some of the plaintiffs are likely to challenge the 50-50 split in Afghan bank funds, which could tie up any allocation more or less indefinitely.

That appears to be the real purpose of the Biden decision: to allow millions to suffer and starve in Afghanistan, while claiming to be above the battle. “It’s all up to the courts,” Biden will declare, washing his hands of the spectacle of mass death in Central Asia, just as he has facilitated mass death in the COVID pandemic.

In addition, by refusing to return any portion of the $7 billion to the central bank of Afghanistan, the Biden administration intensifies its vengeful wrecking operation against the Afghan economy. Without a functioning central bank—and outright collapse is now a distinct possibility now that its main reserves have been confiscated—Afghan banks and businesses cannot function, workers cannot be paid, no international corporation will do business with the country, and few aid organizations will be able to operate.

Afghan-American groups and aid groups overwhelmingly condemned the action, pointing particularly to the impact on the overall economy. It is not the lack of aid, in itself, but the inability of the economy to function which is the principal cause of mass suffering in Afghanistan.

The message to the Afghan people is clear. As long as you are ruled by the Taliban, you will starve. It is not necessary for American imperialism to bomb the country back to the Stone Age, as military warmongers threatened in Vietnam. They can do so by cutting off all credit and international commerce to a country they have already bombed for 20 years.

The Biden action is illegal on a number of levels. Even the Washington Post, which published an editorial enthusiastically supporting the decision, had to acknowledge that the White House position is self-contradictory: The Biden administration refuses to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan; at the same time, it authorizes the use of Afghan national bank resources to pay off a legal judgment against the Taliban.

The invocation of 9/11 is particularly monstrous and cynical. As numerous commentators in Afghanistan, Pakistan and internationally have pointed out, none of the 9/11 hijackers hailed from Afghanistan. Most were Saudis, citizens of a country that is the closest US Arab ally and the recipient of hundreds of billions in US arms sales.

Even if one accepts, for the sake of argument, the claim that the Taliban protected Osama bin Laden against US government demands for his surrender, there is no evidence that the Taliban had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. More fundamentally, why should the people of Afghanistan be punished for this, on top of 20 years of US conquest and occupation, which have left their country in ruins?

It is particularly cynical to suggest that Afghan children not even born on September 11, 2001 should suffer because of the actions of terrorists like bin Laden, a Saudi multi-millionaire who began his career fighting in the CIA-backed mujahadeen war against Soviet troops. The US military-intelligence apparatus had far closer connections to Al Qaeda than anyone in Afghanistan, and these connections resumed in 2011 when the Islamists served as the CIA’s ground troops in Libya and Syria.

The Taliban government in Kabul denounced the Biden decision. “The theft and seizure of money held/frozen by the United States of the Afghan people represents the lowest level of human and moral decay of a country and a nation,” Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem said on Twitter.

Faiz Mohammad, a Kabul resident, made another critical point in an interview with Iran’s Press TV. “First, I don’t think the US has the right to use Afghanistan’s money to compensate 9/11 victims,” he said. “The US had no reason when it attacked us, but a lot of people died in the past 20 years. So, it’s the US that should compensate us, and they should not spend our money.”

There is no doubt an additional consideration in the White House action: the pressure of the fascist right, which is uppermost in Biden’s political calculations. Releasing even a small portion of Afghanistan’s assets will come under fire from Fox News, Breitbart, Donald Trump, and the bulk of the Republican Party. “After the surrender to the Taliban, comes the payment of tribute”: the script for know-nothings like Tucker Carlson almost writes itself.

Similar charges were made about the Iran nuclear pact, where the release of a fraction of Iran’s own assets, held in foreign bank accounts that handle payments for oil exports, was portrayed as “paying tribute to the ayatollahs.”

So, to protect his right flank, Biden invokes the scarecrow of 9/11. White House officials claimed that a lawsuit by 9/11 survivors and relatives required action on Afghan assets by February 11 because of a court-imposed deadline, but this is a transparent pretext.

More than 20 years after 9/11, a tragedy that has never been fully investigated because connections with the Saudi monarchy and the US military-intelligence apparatus had to be covered up, the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans is still utilized to serve the interests of the American ruling class.

How Germany’s domestic intelligence agency promotes the far right

Peter Schwarz

Germany’s leading weekly news magazine Der Spiegel recently published a long background article about Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (Verfassungsschutz) from 2012 to 2018. The article posed the question: “…did Maassen become radicalised after his involuntary departure from the top post, or had he previously developed his penchant for ultra-right positions? To what extent did Maassen politically influence the Verfassungsschutz?”

Hans-Georg Maassen in 2012 (Image: BMI / Sandy Thieme / CC BY-SA 3.0)

In fact, the answer to this question has been clear for a long time. Maassen was agitating against Germany’s asylum laws and refugees even before these themes were taken up by the country’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). As head of the Verfassungsschutz, Maassen met on several occasions with AfD leaders to help them evade surveillance by the agency he headed. The German government was finally forced to send Maassen into temporary retirement in November 2018 after he spoke out in defence of a far-right demonstration in the city of Chemnitz—an act that provoked a storm of protest.

At the same time that Maassen was protecting and promoting far-right extremists, he clamped down hard on anti-fascists, opponents of war and socialists. It was Maassen who was responsible for listing the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP–Socialist Equality Party) as a “left-wing extremist” organisation in the Verfassungsschutz’s annual report, subjecting it to official surveillance, because—as the Federal Interior Ministry later argued—the party opposes “capitalism, alleged nationalism, imperialism and militarism.”

Meanwhile, Maassen is so deeply immersed in the far-right camp that, as Der Spiegel writes, this is “not only a problem for the CDU [Christian Democratic Union] but also for the agency Hans-Georg Maassen headed for six years” and increased in size from 1,100 to 3,500 employees. “Maassen is tarnishing the office,” one security official is quoted as saying.

Maassen has been blatantly flaunting his fascist nostrums during his retirement, while drawing a state pension estimated at 6,000 euros a month. He has whitewashed attacks on defenceless refugees, spread far-right conspiracy theories, called for a “ban on COVID vaccinations” and raged against the “dangers of socialist ideology” and the alleged destruction of society by those on the left.

Maassen is a member of the Christian Democratic Union and temporarily joined the WerteUnion (Union of Values). The chairman of the ultra-conservative WerteUnion is Max Otte, who is running as the AfD’s official candidate for the post of president of Germany. Maassen has also published articles in Junge Freiheit, the central organ of Germany’s New Right, and is active on the social network Gettr, a platform of the Alt-Right movement.

“Day by day, Maassen seems to be plunging deeper into the world of right-wing ideologues and conspiracy advocates,” Der Spiegel writes. Maassen’s successor at the Verfassungsschutz and his deputy for many years, Thomas Haldenwang, is trying to “distance himself as much as possible from his former boss.” According to the magazine, Haldenwang “declared that a firm course would be taken against old and new far-right extremists in the country. But each new provocation by Maassen undermines his efforts.”

Der Spiegel is visibly trying to assist Haldenwang. If Maassen has already ruined his own reputation, then at least the reputation of the Verfassungsschutz must be saved. The journalists at Der Spiegel “spoke with active and former employees of both the federal- and state-run Verfassungsschutz” and “evaluated documents classified as secret and confidential from Maassen’s time in office.” The authors of the article take great pains to reveal only what is already common knowledge, but the balance of their report is nevertheless devastating.

A mere summary of the facts makes clear that the Verfassungsschutz is a hotbed of the type of far right-wing extremism it is supposed to combat. The AfD and the country’s militant neo-Nazi scene owe their successes largely to the complicity of the Verfassungsschutz. Any serious fight against the dangers emanating from the far right must begin with the dismantling of this opaque and conspiratorial agency.

Support from interior ministers from all parties

Maassen is only the most obvious expression of a much broader problem. Although—or because—his right-wing views were known early on, he was promoted and supported by a series of interior ministers and all of Germany’s parliamentary parties.

He began his career under Otto Schily (Social Democratic Party–SPD), the interior minister of the SPD-Green government at the time. Under Schily, Maassen became department head in the Federal Interior Ministry. He ensured that Murat Kurnaz, who was born and grew up in Germany, was not allowed to return to Germany and had to spend five years in the notorious US Guantánamo prison camp although he had committed no crime.

In 2012, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich (Christian Social Union–CSU) appointed Maassen to head the Verfassungsschutz in order to cover up the scandal surrounding the NSU (National Socialist Underground) terror group. Shortly before Maassen’s appointment, a trio of neo-Nazis had been exposed after a reign of terror, during which they committed 10 racist murders, several bombings and a number of bank robberies, all carried out under the noses of the security authorities. Although dozens of undercover agents were active in the milieu around the NSU, the Verfassungsschutz claimed to have known nothing about the fascist group’s activities and destroyed relevant secret files.

As soon as he took office, even Germany’s Left Party opened its doors to Maassen and invited him to take part in a public meeting in Berlin.

As new head of the Verfassungsschutz, Maassen paraded himself as “Mister Clean” and announced a “day of opening up of the safes.” The secret files were to be opened and inventoried.

Based on its research, Der Spiegel concludes that “the action was never carried out.” The neo-Nazi network remained intact. Stephan Ernst, who assassinated the Kassel district president Walter Lübcke in 2019, was part of this network. Ernst had known the members of the NSU personally and, like them, was in close contact with undercover agents of the Verfassungsschutz.

Friedrich’s successors as federal interior minister, Thomas de Maizière (CDU) and Horst Seehofer (CSU) also protected Maassen. When Maassen, together with his friend, federal police chief Dieter Romann, denounced Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy to news editors in 2015, de Maizière did not dare to dispatch his disloyal official into retirement. According to Der Spiegel, de Maizière allowed Maassen to “increasingly pursue his own agenda and align his domestic intelligence service accordingly.”

Horst Seehofer even wanted to promote Maassen and make him state secretary for security in the Interior Ministry when it was clear he was no longer tenable as head of the domestic intelligence service. In his new post, Maassen would have been responsible for all of the country’s security agencies. Only after strong protests did Seehofer abandon his plan and send Maassen into temporary retirement.

Seehofer continued his efforts to protect the AfD after Maassen’s departure. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on January 21 of this year that the interior minister personally intervened a year ago to water down an 800-page confidential report on the AfD by the Verfassungsschutz. In particular, Seehofer was not prepared to classify Islamophobic and xenophobic statements as examples of far-right extremism.

For years, Maassen had refused to take up the question of the AfD and its neo-Nazi “völkisch” wing, led by Björn Höcke, although, according to Der Spiegel’s research, several state Verfassungsschutz agencies favoured such a course. In 2015, prior to the AfD taking seats in the Bundestag (German federal parliament), Maassen met with the then-AfD party leader Frauke Petry on at least two occasions. According to Der Spiegel, there is “the suspicion that Maassen gave the party tips on how it could avoid being targeted by the agencies.”

Maassen denies this took place, but all of the circumstantial evidence points to it having happened. Between the two meetings with Petry, for which there are no minutes, Maassen attended a conference of the Saarland interior ministry, where surveillance of the particularly radical Saarland AfD was discussed. Shortly afterwards, Petry met again with Maassen and dissolved the Saarland state association.

According to Der Spiegel, Maassen also prevented surveillance of Götz Kubitschek’s Institute for State Policy, an ideological cadre school for the New Right, members of the Identitarian movement and völkisch AfD members.

The new interior minister is brought into line

Meanwhile, it is the fascist Höcke wing that dominates the AfD. After party founder Bernd Lucke and Frauke Petry, Jörg Meuthen is the third leading official in the AfD to resign. Meuthen resigned at the end of January, arguing that the party had moved too far to the right. It was the protective hand of Maassen and Seehofer that enabled the openly fascist wing to increasingly dominate the AfD.

The situation has not changed under Haldenwang. The Verfassungsschutz is a state within a state. It has long since evaded any democratic control. This has been confirmed by the recent attacks on the new interior minister, Nancy Faeser (SPD).

Faeser has been heavily criticised because she published an article last summer in the magazine of the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime/Federation of Antifascists (VVN-BdA). The article dealt with the death threats signed “NSU 2.0” sent to Faeser in her previous function as chair of the SPD in the state of Hesse.

The VVN-BdA carries out anti-fascist education. Among its best-known members was the recently deceased Auschwitz survivor Esther Bejarano. The organisation also includes other surviving victims of the Nazi regime and former concentration camp inmates, including members of the German Communist Party (DKP, the successor organisation to the KPD, which was ruthlessly suppressed by the Nazis).

Because of the presence of DKP members, the VVN-BdA continues to be spied on by the Verfassungsschutz at the federal level and in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hamburg and Baden-Württemberg. The Bavarian Verfassungsschutz goes so far as to describe the VVN-BdA in its report as the “largest left-wing extremist-influenced organisation active in the field of anti-fascism in Germany.” This means that education about the crimes of the Nazis is considered to be illegal and anti-constitutional.

Because of her article, Faeser has been accused of cooperating with a “left-wing extremist” organisation. The first to make this accusation was Junge Freiheit, the central organ of the extreme right. The yellow press Bild - Zeitung and several CDU deputies then eagerly took up the campaign.

In fact, even the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung attests that Faeser is “not on the left, but rather on the right wing of the SPD.” It writes: “The fully qualified lawyer did not, after all, work in a large international law firm in Frankfurt’s banking district in order to destroy capitalism from within.” The newspaper continues: “She was able to earn good money there and had a job that many a supporter of the [free market] FDP [Free Democratic Party] could only dream of. Faeser is one of the social democrats who appeals to more conservative voters.”

Faeser will react to these attacks in the same manner as all social democratic ministers since Gustav Noske, who ordered the bloody repression of revolutionary workers and sailors during the November Revolution of 1918. Instead of seeking to contain right-wing forces in the state apparatus, she will invariably seek their confidence by proving her own reliability to them.

Puerto Rico: Teachers strikes and protests continue against debt payment deal

Rafael Azul

A powerful movement of Puerto Rican teachers and public employees is defying the Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB) which controls the island’s finances. Teachers are demanding the right to keep their existing pensions, as well as wage increases, the cancellation of school closures, increases in the Education Budget, and an end to the privatization of education and other public agencies.

Two weeks ago, Puerto Rican teachers launched demonstrations across the island, a colonial territory of the US. Teachers rallied at their schools in San Juan, Bayamon, San Germán, Guayanilla, Camuy, Lares and Juana Díaz. Hundreds of teachers also marched and rallied at the Fortaleza government house in San Juan, the capital.

Striking teachers in Puerto Rico (Twitter/@irizarry_aimee)

The protests were held in opposition of the debt agreement reached between Puerto Rico and the Wall Street debt supervisory board, approved by federal judge Laura Taylor Swain.

The agreement freezes pensions for public school teachers and modifies the defined benefits plan that grants teachers 75 percent of their final wages. The new plan is solely based on deductions from teachers’ wages into a retirement account tied to financial markets.

Prior to this agreement, teachers were eligible for full retirement after completing 30 years on the job no matter how old they were. Under the new agreement, the age of retirement has been set at 63, meaning educators who begin their careers in their twenties would have to teach far longer than 30 years to retire with a full pension.

The fiscal agreement contemplates a $470 increase in monthly wages only if teachers and students meet recently imposed attendance requirements for students and teachers. Currently, there is an exodus of teachers fleeing the widespread poverty on the island, many being actively recruited by school districts in Florida, Texas, and other US states.

On February 2, the Financial Oversight Board rejected a plan to raise monthly base salaries from $1,750 to $2,700, under conditions of sky-rocketing housing, food, and fuel prices. Many educators spend their days teaching and work nights and weekends at other jobs. In addition, teachers report that they often buy classroom supplies out of their own pockets as a consequence of previous cuts in the public education budget.

In addition to the attacks on pensions and wages, anger is being fueled by a new round of school closings. Education authorities had promised in May 2021 that no schools would close, but have now issued a “master plan” that proposes the closure of 83 schools, affecting 18,644 students in the cities of Humacao, Ponce and San Juan. For Ponce and Humacao this is the second round of school closures.

Renewed protests have been triggered in recent weeks after it was revealed on February 2 that Pablo Mas Oquendo, a teacher, had died the previous day from a traffic accident on his way from a night gig as a security guard. Mas Oquendo fell asleep while driving home. He had two part-time jobs, in addition to teaching.

A mass march was held on February 4 in honor of Mas Oquendo, demanding the resignation of Puerto Rico’s Governor Pedro Pierluisi.

In an attempt to stop further protests, Governor Pierluisi met with the teacher union bureaucracies and promised a $1,000 temporary wage increase for teachers and a $500 raise for firefighters, beginning in July 2022 until 2024. He also promised to revive a program of incentives for teachers who received masters and doctorate degrees.

Undeterred, teachers declared a “Red Flu,” leaving their classrooms and taking to the streets, supported by their students. Other public workers, including firefighters, joined their strike action.

Provocatively, Pierluisi denounced the teachers’ job action, saying: “Those who don’t go to their jobs, unless they are really ill, are ignoring their duties. That is not right; it is unjustified. One can protest and march outside of work hours.”

Last Wednesday was the largest day of teachers’ protests, with over 80 percent of teachers going on strike. Thousands surrounded the Fortaleza in San Juan in a so-called “Great March of Indignation.” Many fire stations also closed.

Protests continued the next day, February 10. Pierluisi is now promising that the wage increases will be permanent and that pensions will improve, without indicating how these measures will be paid for without breaking with the Wall Street vulture funds and the Financial Oversight Board.

The aim of the protest organizers, the Broad Front in Defense of Public Education (FADEO), is to channel opposition behind fruitless appeals to pressure the Puerto Rican senate and federal courts to repudiate the agreement. FADEO is a coalition of several trade unions, including Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR), Educadores por la Democracia, Unidad, Cambio, Militancia y Organización Sindical (Educamos) and Unión Nacional de Educadores y Trabajadores de la Educación (Unete).

FADEO does not include the Puerto Rican Teachers Association (AMPR), affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The AMPR, for its part, participated in negotiations with the Financial Oversight Board and accepted the changes to the pension plans, arguing cynically that this betrayal was the only way to “save” pensions for teachers.

The Puerto Rican Teachers Federation announced that strikes and demonstrations will continue this week, beginning on Tuesday, to protest against plans in the legislature to make an expedited $10 billion payment to the hedge fund holders of Puerto Rican debt, reversing its previous approval of the debt agreement. At a press conference announcing the protests, an FMPR spokesperson reminded legislators of the mass demonstrations in 2019, which involved up to a third of the island’s population and forced the resignation of then-Governor Ricardo Rosello.

However, by directing teachers’ opposition into the dead-end of appeals to the Wall Street-dominated political establishment, while isolating them from the struggles of teachers in the United States and across the world, the teachers’ unions are leaving workers at the mercy of the very same big banks and their political representatives.

The Terrible Fate Facing the Afghan People

Vijay Prashad

Millions of Afghans have been displaced by the war. Photo: MikrofonNews

On February 8, 2022, UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) Afghanistan sent out a bleak set of tweets. One of the tweets, which included a photograph of a child lying in a hospital bed with her mother seated beside her, said: “Having recently recovered from acute watery diarrhea, two years old Soria is back in hospital, this time suffering from edema and wasting. Her mother has been by her bedside for the past two weeks anxiously waiting for Soria to recover.” The series of tweets by UNICEF Afghanistan show that Soria is not alone in her suffering. “One in three adolescent girls suffers from anemia” in Afghanistan, with the country struggling with “one of the world’s highest rates of stunting in children under five: 41 percent,” according to UNICEF.

The story of Soria is one among millions; in Uruzgan Province, in southern Afghanistan, measles cases are rising due to lack of vaccines. The thread to the tweet about Soria from UNICEF Afghanistan was a further bleak reminder about the severity of the situation in the country and its impact on the lives of the children: “without urgent action, 1 million children could die from severe acute malnutrition.” UNICEF is now distributing “high energy peanut paste” to stave off catastrophe.

The United Nations has, meanwhile, warned that approximately 23 million Afghans—about half the total population of the country—are “facing a record level of acute hunger.” In early September, not even a month after the Taliban came to power in Kabul, the UN Development Program noted that “A 10-13 percent reduction in GDP could, in the worst-case scenario, bring Afghanistan to the precipice of near universal poverty—a 97 percent poverty rate by mid-2022.”

The World Bank has not provided a firm calculation of how much of Afghanistan’s GDP has declined, but other indicators show that the threshold of the “worst-case scenario” has likely already passed.

When the West fled the country at the end of August 2021, a large part of the foreign funding, which Afghanistan’s GDP is dependent on, also vanished with the troops: 43 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP and 75 percent of its public funding, which came from aid agencies, dried up overnight.

Ahmad Raza Khan, the chief collector (customs) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan, says that exports from his country to Afghanistan have dropped by 25 percent; the State Bank of Pakistan, he says, “introduced a new policy of exports to Afghanistan on December 13” that requires Afghan traders to show that they have U.S. dollars on them to buy goods from Pakistan before entering the country, which is near impossible to show for many of the traders since the Taliban has banned the “use of foreign currency” in the country. It is likely that Afghanistan is not very far away from near universal poverty with the way things stand there presently.

On January 26, 2022, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that “Afghanistan is hanging by a thread,” while pointing to the 30 percent “contraction” of its GDP.

Sanctions and Dollars

On February 7, 2022, Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen told Sky News that this perilous situation, which is leading to starvation and illness among children in Afghanistan, “is not the result of our [Taliban] activities. It is the result of the sanctions imposed on Afghanistan.”

On this point, Shaheen is correct. In August 2021, the U.S. government froze the $9.5 billion that Afghanistan’s central bank (Da Afghanistan Bank) held in the New York Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, family members of the victims who died in the 9/11 attacks had sued “a list of targets,” including the Taliban, for their losses and a U.S. court later ruled that the plaintiffs be paid “damages” that now amount to $7 billion. Now that the Taliban is in power in Afghanistan, the Biden administration seems to be moving forward “to clear a legal path” to stake a claim on $3.5 billion out of the money deposited in the Federal Reserve for the families of the September 11 victims.

The European Union followed suit, cutting off $1.4 billion in government assistance and development aid to Afghanistan, which was supposed to have been paid between 2021 and 2025. Because of the loss of this funding from Europe, Afghanistan had to shut down “at least 2,000 health facilities serving around 30 million Afghans.” It should be noted here that the total population of Afghanistan is approximately 40 million, which means that most Afghans have lost access to health care due to that decision.

During the entire 20-year period of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, the Ministry of Public Health had come to rely on a combination of donor funds and assistance from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It was as a result of these funds that Afghanistan saw a decline in infant mortality and maternal mortality rates during the Afghanistan Mortality Survey 2010. Nonetheless, the entire public health care system, particularly outside Kabul, struggled during the U.S. occupation. “Many primary healthcare facilities were non-functional due to insecurity, lack of infrastructure, shortages of staff, severe weather, migrations and poor patient flow,” wrote health care professionals from Afghanistan and Pakistan, based on their analysis of how the conflict in Afghanistan affected the “maternal and child health service delivery.”

Walk Along Shaheed Mazari Road

On February 8, 2022, an Afghan friend who works along Shaheed Mazari Road in Kabul took me for a virtual walk—using the video option on his phone—to this busy part of the city. He wanted to show me that in the capital at least the shops had goods in them, but that the people simply did not have money to make purchases. We had been discussing how the International Labor Organization now estimates that nearly a million people will be pushed out of their jobs by the middle of the year, many of them women who are suffering from the Taliban’s restrictions on women working. Afghanistan, he tells me, is being destroyed by a combination of the lack of employment and the lack of cash in the country due to the sanctions imposed by the West.

We discuss the Taliban personnel in charge of finances, people such as Finance Minister Mullah Hidayatullah Badri and the governor of the Afghanistan central bank Shakir Jalali. Badri (or Gul Agha) is the money man for the Taliban, while Jalali is an expert in Islamic banking. There is no doubt that Badri is a resourceful person, who developed the Taliban’s financial infrastructure and learned about international finance in the illicit markets. “Even the smartest and most knowledgeable person would not be able to do anything if the sanctions remain,” my friend said. He would know. He used to work in Da Afghanistan Bank.

“Why can’t the World Bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) be used to rush money to the banks?” he asked. This fund, a partnership between the World Bank and other donors, which was created in 2002, has $1.5 billion in funds. If you visit the ARTF website, you will receive a bleak update: “The World Bank has paused disbursements in our operations in Afghanistan.” I tell my friend that I don’t think the World Bank will unfreeze these assets soon. “Well, then we will starve,” he says, as he walks past children sitting on the side of the street.

Omicron sweeping through workplaces in Germany

Marianne Arens

A wave of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is sweeping through workplaces and factories in Germany. Workers are paying a heavy price. The death toll from the virus in Germany is nearing 120,000. One hundred twenty thousand people have died unnecessarily and too soon, leaving behind sons and daughters, grandchildren, partners, friends, colleagues. Hundreds of thousands more who survive the epidemic risk the chronic effects of Long COVID.

Since the pandemic began, the “system-relevant” industries—health care, social services, schools, transportation and logistics—have been particularly hard hit by coronavirus infections. Since the outbreak of the Omicron variant in November, health insurers have been registering increasingly severe outbreaks in private-sector companies, in automotive manufacturing, automotive engineering, metal processing, plastics and rubber production, and in mechanical and industrial engineering.

From the beginning of the pandemic onward, few figures on COVID-19 infections made their way into public view. The economy is to be kept running so that profits continue to flow. That is why schools are kept open while the pandemic is allowed to rage unchecked. From the factories filter only single stories, however typical and telling, that enable a glimpse of the virus’ spread.

Workers in a hog slaughter and processing plant (Wikipedia Commons)

On January 20, when new daily infections in Germany exceeded 100,000 for the first time, the business newspaper Handelsblatt published a survey of several DAX-listed corporations and smaller companies, concluding that “companies are feeling the increase in infection figures pretty much everywhere—albeit with varying degrees of intensity.”

At MN Maschinenbau in Saxony, for example, the sickness rate was rising steadily, and at the end of January, nine out of every 100 employees were absent. Engine manufacturer MTU noted a “significant increase in infection figures” since the beginning of the year, and the situation was similar at chipmaker Infineon. According to the report, several companies are keeping reserve staff on standby and hiring additional temporary workers to make up for coronavirus absences. This is the case at BMW, for example, as well as at laser specialist Trumpf in Austria and Switzerland.

Carmaker Opel in Rüsselsheim is also hiring “a mid-three-digit number” of temporary workers through Adecco, WirtschaftsWoche reported. The automaker, now owned by Stellantis, cut several thousand jobs since it was acquired by PSA; 2,100 employees have been terminated just since the beginning of 2020. Now, however, workers are being hired to compensate for “shortfalls due to the Omicron wave,” as explained by Opel management. In Rüsselsheim, more people have contracted the coronavirus since the Omicron wave (i.e., since November) than in the whole of last year.

At Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, news reached the public on February 8 that the paint shop was ordering “renewed shift cancellations” as a result of clusters of workers calling in sick due to coronavirus. At VW, it is particularly difficult to obtain information about colleagues who have fallen ill.

All reports indicate that an unusually high number of workers have contracted SARS-CoV-2 since the beginning of 2022. According to a study by the insurer AOK, more than 130,000, or 5.5 percent, of the 2.4 million workers insured by AOK Baden-Württemberg had sick leave due to a COVID-19 diagnosis between March 2020 and November 2021. Of these, nearly 20 percent fell ill just in the month of November 2021. Without doubt many more workers have contracted the disease since then, in December 2021 and January 2022.

In the energy industry, enough workers are falling ill that management is training additional staff, bringing back workers and those recently retired, a spokesman for the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) told the news portal ntv.de.

The situation in the slaughterhouses is dire. New coronavirus infections have been on the rise for weeks, especially in the cutting area, where workers toil shoulder-to-shoulder. These are ideal conditions for the virus to spread and workers can do virtually nothing to protect themselves.

Here, too, the outbreaks are not made public by alarmed health authorities or the representative NGG trade union, but through the complaints of entrepreneurs afraid for their profits. For example, on January 24, the Federation of Livestock and Meat Producers’ Associations (VEZG) complained of difficulty meeting the quota for slaughtered pigs because “due to a sharp rise in coronavirus infections, there was a shortage of staff in the slaughterhouses, especially in cutting.”

The Aalen slaughterhouse in the state of Baden-Württemberg has been closed since early February due to an undisclosed number of coronavirus infections. There are also new coronavirus outbreaks at the Bamberg slaughterhouse and the Danish Crown cattle slaughterhouse in Husum. As announced on February 1, 120 employees had been infected with the coronavirus at the Husum plant.

In the first summer of the pandemic in 2020, Tönnies slaughterhouses in the district of Gütersloh became notorious as coronavirus hotspots. Over 1,500 employees were infected with the coronavirus onsite. At the time, the Social Democrats (SPD) passed a new “Occupational Health and Safety Control Act,” prompting both the owner, Clemens Tönnies, and the district and state governments to promise to remedy the miserable working and living conditions that led to the outbreak.

These were but empty words. Today there are once again reports of coronavirus outbreaks at Tönnies. This was reported on February 2 by the ZDF magazine Frontal, which likewise documented life-threatening violations of occupational health and safety and illegal dismissals in the event of illness.

Omicron is raging particularly rampant in the public transport sector. Cities such as Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg, Augsburg, Chemnitz, Frankfurt am Main are trimming schedules and shutting down routes because of the persistently high level of sick leave.

In the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the cities of Hamm, Remscheid, Mönchengladbach, Herne and Castrop-Rauxel, among others, have done likewise in recent days, and the city of Bielefeld has suspended night bus service. In the Rhine-Main region, public transportation in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt has been reduced for days. In Wiesbaden, school bus routes are also affected, resulting in crowding—and increased risk of infection—on the buses still running.

On February 7, Redaktions Netzwerk Deutschland (RND) reported on a “cross-industry flash poll” conducted by the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce. Of 370 entrepreneurs, one in four described their current staff shortages as “considerable.” Another 4 percent rated their understaffing as “critical.” Thirty-one businesses in the health care sector said the impact was “significant,” while among transportation and logistics companies, the figure was as high as 36 percent. Virtually all businesses expect the situation to worsen.

The RND introduced this information with the sentence: “The German economy is suffering from the consequences of the current coronavirus wave.” This entrepreneurs’ lament was combined with a demand to the government to shorten quarantine periods. This shows with complete clarity that profit maximization, not public health protection, is at the heart of such considerations.

In all of this, no one asks how the workers are faring. According to official figures, more than 11 million people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 so far, 4 million of them just since the beginning of 2022. In Germany last month, around 5,000 people, 175 per day, paid for the virus with their lives.

Yet everything could have been different. If scientific advice had been heeded from the start of the pandemic and a global strategy had been adopted to eliminate the virus, as was done, for example, in the eradication of measles and smallpox, then several million people worldwide could still be alive today.

China has shown the way: Unlike most governments, China is pursuing a strategy that repeatedly eliminates the virus through a combination of vaccination, systematic testing, contact tracing and temporary shutdowns. The world’s most populous country, with 1.4 billion people, has recorded fewer than 5,000 deaths and just under 100,000 cases of the disease.

Even today, it is still possible to bring the pandemic under control and defeat the deadly disease internationally. However, this is only possible by taking up a fight against the new coalition government in Berlin and their counterparts in all other countries, who are in the process of deliberately mass infecting schools and all of society in the interest of capital. The focus is not on the lives of the people, but on the profit of the capitalist corporations.

Unions are also an integral part of this conspiracy to force workers to labour under life-threatening pandemic conditions. They, too, systematically conceal coronavirus outbreaks in the factories and downplay their consequences.

The chairman of IG Metall union, Jörg Hofmann, stated that the facts “do not support shutting down industry to reduce the number of coronavirus infections. ... Shutting down industry would have the most severe economic consequences.”

From the start, the service sector union Verdi stated on its website that becoming infected with disease at work is part of the “general risk of life.” And the teachers’ union GEW has continuously pushed to keep schools open at all costs.