Anti-war protests are continuing in Russia, despite aggressive police repression and a battery of new laws criminalizing opposition to the war in Ukraine. According to the Russian-language human rights project OVD-Info, which receives funding from the European Commission, 668 people had been detained in 36 cities as of the end of the day yesterday.
Police detain demonstrators during an action against Russia's attack on Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, March. 1, 2022. Protests against the Russian invasion of Ukraine resumed on Tuesday, with people taking to the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and other Russian towns despite mass arrests. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
The previous weekend saw around 10 times as many detentions in twice as many cities. Since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, OVD-Info has documented more than 14,000 arrests of anti-war demonstrators within Russia, with more than 170 people remaining in custody. Many others have been released but face pending legal actions on the basis of a slew of new laws and regulations that dramatically restrict free speech, as well as limit access to some of the most popular social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
One new restriction prohibits any speech or conduct that would “distort the purpose, role and tasks of the Russian Armed Forces, as well as other units during special military and other operations.” The maximum penalty under the expanded new laws, which attaches to any person convicted of knowingly spreading “false fakes,” is a prison sentence of 15 years. The vague language of the law, together with the severe punishment for its violation, opens the door to arbitrary persecution of any expression of dissent relating to the war.
While the anti-war demonstrations have largely been rooted in sections of youth and the middle class, and are politically dominated by the pro-US liberal opposition, they reflect, if in a very limited and distorted sense, anti-war sentiments that are widely and deeply felt throughout the population. The crackdown by the Putin regime is not least of all aimed at intimidating the many workers who have not joined the demonstrations, and at preempting the emergence of a genuine anti-war movement within the working class.
The Kremlin has now banned major social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, where many videos and statements opposing the war were shared and watched by millions. Instagram will be blocked starting March 15.
Police officers detain a demonstrator during an action against the Putin government's invasion of Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
In one short video that has been viewed nearly 10 million times, police in St. Petersburg detained a well-known artist and survivor of the Siege of Leningrad, Yelena Osipova, 77, who was carrying two large hand-made signs calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.
Banners at demonstrations have read, “No to war, please,” and “We are for peace.” In videos posted on social media, anti-war protesters chant “Shame,” “Ukraine is not our enemy,” and “Putin, withdraw the troops.” A common chant, which can be heard in the background of Osipova’s arrest, is the simple three-syllable “No to War” (nyet voinye), which has also seen widespread use as a social media hashtag (#нетвойне).
A number of audio recordings purporting to capture the verbal and physical abuse of detained anti-war demonstrators circulated widely on Russian-language social media platforms over the past week, gathering hundreds of thousands of interactions across multiple platforms.
In one, dated March 6, 26-year-old feminist activist Alexandra Kaluzhskikh is verbally and physically abused during an interrogation at a police station in Brateyevo, a suburb of Moscow, after attending a rally at Komsomolskaya Square. In another, 22-year-old Marina Morozova confronts an interrogator who douses her with water, kicks her in the arm, and waves a pistol in front of her face.
The tabloid Komsomolskya Pravda, which is aligned with the Russian Communist Party, published an article claiming that the recordings are “fake,” warning that anyone distributing them can be subject to prosecution under the newly expanded laws against spreading “fakes.”
The recordings have been published and amplified in sections of the Russian media aligned with the right-wing, pro-western opposition within Russia, including imprisoned “opposition leader” Alexei Navalny. This includes platforms like Novaya Gazeta, whose co-founder and editor-in-chief dedicated a recent Nobel Prize to Navalny, and Mediazona, a project founded by two members of the punk band Pussy Riot, which has received substantial support from Western politicians.
The reported abuse of anti-war demonstrators at the Brateyevo police station have also been carried in the pro-NATO western media, where they have been used to underscore the authoritarian character of Russia, contrasting it to its allegedly “democratic” adversaries. Notwithstanding their hypocritical expressions of sympathy for the anti-war protesters persecuted by Moscow, there is no doubt that a genuine anti-war movement in the West, when it emerges, will face similarly brutal repression.
School in Berlin—the Max Planck Gymnasium in the Berlin-Mitte district (Image: Jörg Zägel/CC BY-SA 3.0/wikimedia-commons)
The Berlin government passed its 2022 and 2023 budgets last week, codifying massive austerity measures. The coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Left Party is slashing the budget of just over 40 billion euro to 36.4 billion this year and 35.7 billion the year after. These budget cuts are to be financed in particular by cutting the budget of the already decrepit school system.
Berlin schools felt the first consequences of the cut last week: their annual disposition fund will be reduced to 3,000 euro. Previously, the disposition fund ranged from 15,000 to 30,000 euro per school, depending on the number of students. These funds are now being slashed by up to 90 percent.
When the German Association of School Directors learned of the looming cuts, they levied an appeal to mayor of Berlin, to the Senator for Education (Bildungssenatorin) as well as to the education committee in the House of Representatives, which, however, fell on deaf ears.
Ronald Rahmig, chairman of the Association of School Directors for Vocational Education in Berlin (BBB), spoke of a “massive cut in the ‘formative possibilities’ of the schools.” Previously, the money was used to finance in-school support programs, which will now be effectively cut. According to Karina Jehniche, acting chairwoman of the Berlin Association of School Principals, the cuts are “calamitous for schools.”
Sven Zimmerschied, head of the Charlottenburg district Friedensburg School, explained the consequences of the cuts to the Tagesspiegel: “Our school is now missing over 20,000 euro that could have been employed relatively flexibly.” For example, speakers at the school had been paid for study days, minor renovations had been paid for directly and simple furniture had been purchased by the school. “Now all of this impossible,” criticized the principal.
“We will have to cut back on IT support, maintenance, study days and continued training,” Gunilla Neukirchen of the Lankwitz district Beethoven Gymnasium told the same paper. She added that this would lead to “significant restrictions in the pedagogical work of schools at a time when the consequences of the pandemic have to be dealt with.”
Even the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which vehemently supported budget reductions, felt compelled to criticize the extent of the cuts. Paul Fresdorf, education policy spokesman for the FDP faction in the House of Representatives, called the cuts a scandal. “For years, Berlin has held last places according to the education monitor and simply does not budge from that position, and now this is to be set in stone.”
Last year, the “Red-Red-Green” coalition (SPD, Left Party and Green Party) imposed an austerity budget on schools. The education senator at the time, Sandra Scheeres (SPD), issued a budget freeze from mid-October until the end of last year. This meant that schools were not allowed to spend their desperately needed funds in the midst of the pandemic.
The cuts to the annual appropriation fund are just the beginning of even more far-reaching budget reductions. Staff cuts are on the table, since 80 percent of the costs in the education budget consist of personnel costs.
Although there is already a massive shortage of educators and comprehensive schooling can only be assured by hiring substitutes and untrained personnel to teach, school representatives fear further cuts. In 2021, 500 teaching positions in Berlin were officially unfilled.
Education will not be the only area to suffer budget cuts. As already announced by the Senate, cuts are to cross the board. Above all, the areas of social services and culture will take the brunt of fiscal rationing. These two areas are headed politically by Katja Kipping and Klaus Lederer, both representatives of the Left Party who unreservedly support the Senate’s austerity policy.
Like the SPD and the Greens, the Left Party made grandiose promises during last September’s election campaign that expanding the education budget in Berlin was a priority and that sufficient funds would be made available for the purpose. Now in power, they are pursuing the exact opposite course.
The Senate’s housing policy is just as overtly directed against the population. Although a clear majority of Berliners voted in favour of expropriating the large housing corporations, which the Left Party had supported during the election campaign, the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party are now ignoring the result of that referendum and are working closely with the real estate kingpins, known universally in Germany as rent sharks.
The governing mayor, Franziska Giffey (SPD), has initiated a so-called housing alliance in which the state government and representatives of private real estate groups closely collaborate to remove any hurdles for the same companies that for years have driven rents to dizzying heights which for most Berliners are barely affordable.
While parts of the Left initially made a show of advocating expropriation, Left Party state leader Katina Schubert has since officially buried the project. A law on the socialization of housing would inevitably end up before the Federal Constitutional Court, and there one would get a “slap in the face,” she said, attempting to justify her backpedalling.
The approved budget cuts are reminiscent of the radical austerity measures of the Red-Red Senate (SPD and Left Party) that governed the capital from 2001 to 2011. Both parties supported a social slash-and-burn policy. The state’s public housing was sold off at pitiful prices to rent sharks, public institutions were closed down in droves and budgets for education and social services were trimmed to the bone. A third of the jobs in the public sector were destroyed and at the same time the wages of the remaining employees were massively reduced.
The current Finance Senator, Daniel Wesener, is following in the footsteps of Thilo Sarrazin, the far-right Finance Senator of that previous Red-Red Senate. Wesener boasted in the BZ that he would confront the population with his policies. “You will not see a finance senator strewn with garlands,” the Green politician cynically stated.
Like Sarrazin in his time, Wesener explained that spending cuts and debt repayment would be his priority. The full 810-million-euro coronavirus emergency loan would be repaid in the coming year and not only 270 million, as planned. In total, repayment of 1 billion euro is scheduled for 2023.
Whether loans will actually be repaid to this extent remains to be seen, Wesener said. In saying so, the Finance Senator is not thinking of the broken schools or of a health system bled dry by the pandemic. On the contrary: Like his predecessor, he has sat on the supervisory board of the state-owned Vivantes clinics since mid-February in order to enforce its fiscal discipline. His real concern is the costs of the Ukraine war. “War is not ready for budgeting,” Wesener said.
That statement needs little explanation. While education and social services continue to be cut and there is “no money” for health and care even in the midst of a deadly pandemic, the massive increase in the defence budget is enshrined in the Basic Law. This policy is supported by all established parties, from the far-right Alternative for Germany to the nominal left.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks during a news conference. (AP Photo/Paul White)
Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is escalating its threats against Russia, in line with the war drive of the United States, the European Union (EU) and the entire NATO alliance.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez travelled to NATO’s military base of Ādaži, Latvia, about 120 kilometers from the Russian border. Standing next to Latvian Prime Minister Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš, NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Sánchez said: “NATO is united, the transatlantic link is stronger than ever, Putin has made a mistake, he is alone, the whole world is with Ukraine.”
He claimed, “we are here because of Putin’s brutal aggression. We are here to support our allies. But our main commitment is to peace. Our actions are deterrents.”
It is not to defend the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine—its reactionary response to NATO’s 30-year policy of militarily encircling Russia—to state that Sánchez’s claims are absurd.
NATO battle-groups in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, once part of the Soviet Union but now part of the European Union and the anti-Russian NATO alliance, are set to almost double from 3,400 troops at the start of 2022 to more than 6,000. Sánchez announced that Spain will send an additional 175 troops to Latvia, beyond the 350 troops stationed there, as part of a wider NATO buildup in the region.
Currently, there are around 800 Spanish troops deployed in Eastern Europe against Russia, including a detachment of 130 airmen and four Eurofighter jets that regularly mount provocative missions from Bulgaria into the Black Sea near the Russian coast. There are also three Spanish warships patrolling the waters of the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea with NATO naval groups.
Last week, the Spanish government committed to send 1,370 C90-type grenade launchers, designed to destroy Russian tanks, and 700,000 rifle and an undetermined number of machine gun cartridges for the Ukrainian army and its far-right militias. Spain has confirmed these are already being used by Kiev’s forces.
On Wednesday, Defense Minister Margarita Robles restated her commitment to sending more weapons. Spain, Robles said, would send more war materiel if Ukraine “needs it.” In typically Orwellian language, she concluded, “Spain and peace are the same thing,” adding: “Our solidarity with Ukraine is total, so if they need it, we will send the material we have and that can help the heroic defense they are doing.”
The day before, Robles had said Putin “should not go unpunished,” affirming that his invasion should be “criminally prosecuted.” Afterwards, the Spanish public prosecutor’s office announced a probe of possible Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
On must recall the fate of heads of state accused of war crimes by the NATO powers. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi was tortured and murdered, Saddam Hussein sentenced to death and hanged by a kangaroo court in Iraq, and Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic died of a heart attack in a jail cell shortly after the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia denied his request to seek specialized treatment at a cardiology clinic in Russia. It is apparent, examining such a list, that Robles’ statements about Putin are tantamount to death threats.
Sánchez is now lobbying the EU to finance gas interconnection infrastructure from Spain to the rest of Europe. Spain has Europe’s largest network of regasification plants, which are key infrastructure in the current crisis, since they can unload liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments, as gas supplies from Russia are at risk of being halted by NATO. This would let European countries keep threatening Russia while relying less on its gas.
What accounts for Spain’s aggressiveness in Eastern Europe, beyond the lust for plunder of all the NATO imperialist powers? Above all, behind the Spanish ruling class’s banging the war drums are the attempts to deflect internal class tensions outward. The war drive is intimately connected to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has deeply destabilised political life in every country.
Spain has had over 122,000 excess deaths, one of the highest number per capita in Europe. This is the direct results of the PSOE-Podemos’ policy of prioritising profits over lives. It has suffered over 11 million COVID-19 infections. Nonetheless, the PSOE-Podemos government is lifting all mitigation measures like indoor masking, even as weekly deaths are still over 1,000 and weekly infections above 20,000.
This, before the rise of the BA.2 Omicron subvariant, which in Hong Kong has risen dramatically. Contrary to the narrative spun by the Sánchez government that the virus is now “endemic” and a stable “new normal” in place, the virus is once again spreading rapidly internationally, threatening to kill millions more worldwide.
Moreover, Spain is recording its fastest annual inflation since 1989, at 7.5 percent, while Italy records 6.2 percent, Germany 5.5 percent, and France 4.1 percent.
Sánchez, however, has cynically blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the months-long surge in inflation. Last Wednesday, in a parliamentary session, he said: “It is important to tell the truth and not try to confuse,” adding: “inflation and energy prices are the sole responsibility of Putin and his illegal war in Ukraine.”
The truth is that inflation was already over 6 percent before the invasion, a by-product of the policies adopted by the ruling class in the US and Europe in response to the pandemic. This included pumping trillions of dollars and euros into financial markets to prop up share values. Further adding to inflationary pressures are disruptions in supply chains due to the refusal of capitalist governments to implement effective public health measures to halt contagion.
The current inflation hike after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the product of a NATO strategy aimed at encircling and subjugating Russia. Directly violating earlier promises not to expand eastward after the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO has expanded to include almost all major countries in Eastern Europe, apart from Ukraine and Belarus. Now, it is threatening to cut off Russian exports of energy and grain, driving prices of key commodities to record heights.
Inflation is now provoking a wave of class struggles and protests that the unions can barely contain. Four thousand Spanish truckdrivers have announced a strike on Monday to “paralyze the country.” In Cádiz, fishermen at Barbate have decided to moor their boats in an indefinite strike.
Meanwhile, the trade unions, in their role of policing the class struggle, are attempting to impose one collective agreement after another to enforce de facto wage cuts. According to data published on Thursday by the Ministry of Labor, the agreements signed until February accumulated an average wage increase of 2.3 percent. Thus, most workers continue to lose purchasing power: 8 out of 10 workers had a wage increase below the current inflation level.
These trends will not be stopped by “Left Populist” Podemos. Having made some token objections to sending weapons to Ukraine and its general secretary Iona Belarra even criticizing the PSOE as a “party of war,” Podemos quickly shelved these empty criticisms.
On Monday, however, Podemos spokesperson Isabel Serra said: “Sánchez knows that he has our support, even if we think differently. Sánchez knows that in these difficult times he can count on Podemos even if we have these differences about what is the most effective way to achieve peace.”
An Uber sign is displayed inside a car in Palatine, Ill., Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
Rapidly rising gasoline prices are placing financial burdens on rideshare and delivery drivers for such companies as Lyft, Uber and DoorDash. These drivers, who are classified as independent contractors rather than employees, are among the most exploited sections of the working class and had already been making meager incomes and few if any benefits.
Gasoline prices represent the largest expense for these drivers. Prices had already been rising before the invasion of Ukraine and are now skyrocketing.
At the beginning of 2021, the average gasoline price across the US was $2.25, according to GasBuddy. By the end of the year, it had reached a high of nearly $3.50, the first time it was above $3.00 since 2014.
Drivers in California, where gasoline prices have long been the highest in the country, are being hit with prices averaging more than $5 per gallon, but other areas are rapidly approaching that mark, with the nationwide average now over $4 a gallon. In Massachusetts, for example, the average price has increased by two-thirds within a year, rising from $2.68 to $4.16 per gallon. As of March 11, the American Automobile Association (AAA) reported the national average had reached $4.33, an all-time high.
For rideshare and delivery app drivers, whose compensation is largely based on a flat rate per mile, the skyrocketing price of gasoline is squeezing their already tight margins to the point that continuing to work is becoming economically infeasible.
A petition to rideshare companies Uber and Lyft asking for adjustments to compensation to deal with this growing burden has so far garnered more than 7,000 signatures. Unsurprisingly, the companies have made only token moves to address these concerns.
Delivery service DoorDash has suggested that drivers take advantage of the 2 percent cash back they can obtain by using its DasherDirect credit card to purchase gasoline and for car maintenance. This sop would barely make a dent in drivers’ rising costs, but would bring in more revenue to the company via interest charged on card balances. Similarly, Uber has instituted a measly 25 cents per gallon cash-back program.
Scott Trowbridge, a rideshare driver in California for over five years, told Fox News, “Our take has dropped and we’re paying outrageous gas prices. They’re not compensating us. We are working a lot more for a lot less.”
Joseph Klappenger, who has driven for multiple food delivery and rideshare companies in the San Antonio, Texas area for five years, described his situation to local station KSAT. “I was using this to pay for certain necessities like insurance and, you know, gas money, smaller bills that I had. But now I just don’t do it anymore because it’s not profitable for me at all.” He could fill up his Honda for $25 and go 400 miles. Now, that only gets him half a tank.
In Minnesota, rideshare driver Kafi Ali told CBS, “It’s absolutely very bad, we have to maybe look for another job because of the gas.”
Boston Lyft driver Ed Bushard, complained to CBS, “I went from approximately $100 a week in gas up to almost $150.”
The steeply rising price of oil will have widespread and very painful impacts on the working class as a whole. Russia is the world’s third-largest supplier of crude oil. With that source being rapidly shut off by US/NATO sanctions, and other suppliers not able or willing to ramp up production at a commensurate rate, the price of oil will almost certainly continue to increase rapidly. This will drive up not only fuel prices, but also a wide range of commodities and services dependent on transportation, or on oil as a raw material.
Students wear face masks during a ceremony to mark the 32th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Contrary to the claims made by politicians and the media that the peak of the Omicron wave has passed, the daily COVID-19 infection and death rates have risen again massively since the beginning of the month. The even more contagious Omicron sub-variant BA.2, which is considered by experts to be the most dangerous of the SARS-CoV-2 variants, already accounts for 48 percent of all COVID-19 infections in Germany.
The latest weekly report from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) states that the “current renewed increase in transmitted COVID-19 cases” is “due to the easier transmissibility of the sub-variant BA.2 and the withdrawal of contact reduction measures.” The number of people currently affected by COVID-19-related acute respiratory disease has increased in almost all age groups and is estimated to be “between 1.2 million and 2.1 million.” More than a million new cases were reported last week.
The number of new infections is greater than ever before. According to the RKI, the highest incidence rates are still found in children and adolescents aged 5 to 24 years, with 7-day incidence rates of around 2,000 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by the age groups of 0 to 4 years and 25 to 44 years with incidences of around 1,800 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The number of outbreaks in old people’s and nursing homes has also continued to increase compared to the previous week. The RKI warns that around 2.2 million and 7.7 million people in the oldest and second oldest age groups respectively have not yet received a single vaccination.
Despite this catastrophic situation, the Federal Government of the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and the Free Democrats (FDP) is insisting on eliminating almost all protective measures by March 20, ending mask mandates and completely excluding lockdowns. A corresponding bill by Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) was passed on Wednesday in the government cabinet and is due to pass through the parliament and Federal Council, Germany’s upper house, in the next few days.
As Lauterbach and Buschmann confirmed to ZDF, the state governments will in future only be able to impose mask and test regulations in care homes and hospitals, as well as tests in schools and masks in public transport, in general. In particular, the draft law of the ministers provides for an end to the mask mandate in schools and supermarkets, as well as the requirement for restaurants, bars and other “offers to the public” to create an effective hygiene plan to prevent infections.
As part of a “hotspot regulation,” the state parliaments will only be allowed to reintroduce mask rules, social distancing rules and access restrictions locally and for a limited period of time in order to respond to “new outbreaks,” worrying virus variants, or “high numbers of cases.” To this end, however, the relevant state parliament must first determine a “concrete risk of a dynamically spreading infection situation”—a formulation that places virtually no limit on the discretion of the state politicians.
After the parties of the traffic light coalition government decided in November to lift the law declaring an epidemic emergency of national significance, they are now going one step further with the amendment of the Infection Protection Act. Justice Minister Buschmann stated to the press with satisfaction that in everyday life “there will be virtually no more restrictions.”
Health Minister Lauterbach’s assertion that the new law still allows states to “react appropriately” to “new outbreaks” and a possible “summer wave” of COVID-19 is nothing more than a smokescreen. His cabinet colleague, Mr Buschmann, emphasised that the states will not be able to “invent” more far-reaching measures that are not provided for in the draft law, such as curfews and lockdowns, as well as business and school closures.
When asked why neither incidence rates nor hospitalisations play a role in the amendment to the law, Lauterbach provocatively stated that “explicitly no figures were mentioned,” since this would “make no sense from a medical point of view.” In other words, no matter how many people become infected, hospitalized or die in the future, there will no longer be any mandatory measures.
In the past, the government tried to argue that incidence rates and infections were no longer decisive due to vaccinations. Now, even hospitalizations and deaths no longer play a role. For a policy whose primary objective is to safeguard the capitalist economy in order to generate profits, the loss of human lives is of little consequence.
In total, more than 125,000 people have already died of COVID-19 in Germany alone, and 250 more are added every day. While the incidence rate on Thursday was 1,388 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, the adjusted incidence of hospitalisations has been in the range of the highest warning level for weeks and is increasing. The number of cases is also exploding in other European countries. In Denmark, where the government stopped all measures at the beginning of February, the number of deaths is higher than ever before.
The new law will massively intensify the spread of COVID, especially in schools and families. Although leading federal politicians—including Lauterbach himself—repeatedly cited the alleged primacy of the federal states in school policy in order to beat back demands for better protection of children and young people, the federal government is now immediately preparing to enforce the abolition of mask mandates in schools. In Austria, a similar policy has led to more than 50 percent of all schoolchildren being infected with the coronavirus, of which more than 250,000 have been infected since the end of the Christmas holidays.
Since the test capacity will be used as a priority for public institutions, and will not be increased, a particularly large number of the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions who live with their children and grandchildren, or are cared for by them, are at risk of dying. This is in line with a policy that does everything it can to reject responsibility for mass death and shift it to the “private sphere.” To use the language of the FDP, people should die “freely” and “autonomously” in the circle of their relatives.
In a popular post, an account called “Risk Family” wrote on Twitter: “How are the seven million at-risk patients under the age of 60 protected? Like the 700,000 high-risk patients under the age of 18? Fundamental rights such as the right to life and integrity no longer count? With these regulations, at-risk patients who do not live in the nursing home, but among us, are endangered. By what right are their fundamental rights further and massively curtailed?”
A foster mother of two children with disabilities wrote: “Without masks in the supermarket we will no longer go shopping. Leisure activities, it’s impossible, except for walks in the woods. So we will be completely isolated, [our child], my wife and I. How long are we supposed to live like this? Is this even a life? What is the alternative? Risk our son infecting his little sister? Then both lives would be destroyed.”
Under the slogan #SchwereSchuld (severe guilt), countless social media users are demanding that politicians be held accountable for their murderous decisions. Other users point out that infected people who survive a COVID-19 infection often fall into the category of a “vulnerable group” due to Long Covid—a vicious cycle that points to the eugenic principle of “survival of the fittest.”
The web developer Markus M. tweeted: “It is not ‘personal responsibility’ if nurses continue to burn out, life-saving surgeries are postponed, pupils are infected every few weeks, millions are ill with long covid and so on—but rather inhumane madness!” Another Twitter user added: “More illness, more death, more suffering and misery. Speak the truth and confront the politicians who actually want to walk over corpses and talk some bullshit about ‘normality’ and ‘freedom.’”
The traffic light coalition is fully aware of the catastrophic consequences of its policies. Even the day before the announcement of the amendment to the law, Lauterbach indicated his agreement with a British study, according to which even “relatively light” courses of COVID-19 can be associated with the loss of grey matter in the brain, which means a massive increase in the risk of dementia. On Wednesday, the Minister of Health even stated that if the vaccination rate remains unchanged—and the government does nothing to increase it—“there will be 200 to 300 deaths every day for many weeks.”
A study by the University Hospital Tübingen, which interviewed around 1,900 people infected with the coronavirus, concluded that the risk of Long Covid is higher the more pre-existing conditions a patient has. Forty-six percent of the outpatients still suffered from symptoms 12 weeks after the infection, compared with 73 percent of hospital patients. Eighty-seven percent of the respondents stated that they had survived their COVID-19 infection at home.
While the children and their relatives are being infected and killed in the interest of the profit economy, the federal and state governments are also slashing funds from public services in order to invest them in rearmament and war. This is most striking in the capital city of Berlin, where the SPD/Left Party/Green state government, the so-called Red-Red-Green Senate, recently decided to cut up to 90 percent of annual funding for public schools across the board.
United States Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking at a press conference in Romania on Friday, pointed her finger at Russian actions in Ukraine and declared, “We are clear that any intentional attack or targeting of civilians is a war crime. Period.”
An explosion is seen in an apartment building after Russian's army tank fires in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Harris’ remarks were part of a litany from Washington invoking war crimes charges against Moscow for alleged atrocities in Ukraine. Linda Greenfield-Thomas, US ambassador to the United Nations, accused the Russian government of war crimes, declaring that “attacks on civilians [that] cannot be justified by any—in any way whatsoever.”
The Russian military is accused of bombing a maternity ward in a hospital in Mariupol, killing 3 people, and wounding up to 17. Photos showing the devastated hospital structure and bloodied pregnant women have been published widely.
There should be no objection to the investigation of war crimes charges against Russia, on one condition: that this apply not only to war crimes by opponents of the United States but also to those committed by the United States itself. American presidents and military leaders must be brought to trial for the murder of countless civilians deliberately targeted by US imperialism.
What has been done to Mariupol does not begin to approach the magnitude of the crimes perpetrated by US imperialism around the globe.
Washington has deliberately attacked and targeted innocent civilians the world over. To list the war crimes of the US empire would fill the pages of a lengthy book. Among the chapter headings we would find the names Wounded Knee, Bud Dajo, My Lai, Fallujah, and photo after painfully familiar photo of the corpses of men, women and children surrounded by US soldiers leaning on their rifles.
One could select at random any conflict in which the United States has taken part at any point in the past 30 years and find numerous war crimes for which Washington has been responsible but for which no one has been held accountable.
On February 13, 1991, the US Air Force targeted two smart bombs at an air raid shelter in the Amiriyah suburb of Baghdad. The US military knew that the Amiriyah facility had been used as a civil defense shelter during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s but targeted it anyway, bombing it without any advance warning. About 1,500 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed.
Wikipedia summarizes the findings of former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, “Neighborhood residents heard screams as people tried to get out of the shelter. They screamed for four minutes. After the second bomb hit, the screaming ceased.”
The account continues: “People staying in the upper level were incinerated by heat, while boiling water from the shelter’s water tank was responsible for the rest of the fatalities. Not all died immediately; black, incinerated handprints of some victims remain fused to the concrete ceiling of the shelter and can still be seen today.”
No one has been held accountable for this immense war crime.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tweeted on Thursday, “If Russian leadership would rather not be accused of committing war crimes, they should stop bombing hospitals.” How many hospitals has the United States bombed? Here is a small sample:
On October 3, 2015, US aircraft bombarded a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz for over an hour, killing at least 22 civilians, including 12 hospital staff and 10 patients. Evidence later revealed that the hospital was deliberately targeted. Then Secretary of State Clinton termed the bombing “deeply regrettable.” Hospital bombings are only war crimes when carried out by Putin.
In August 2017, the US dropped phosphorus bombs on a hospital in Raqqa in Syria. The WSWS wrote, “Both the targeting of a hospital and the use of phosphorous munitions are war crimes. These chemical weapons, which burn flesh to the bone and reignite inside wounds, are banned under the Geneva Conventions for use in civilian-populated areas.”
In May 1999, NATO warplanes bombed a major hospital complex in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, destroying the intensive care unit and damaging the maternity unit. At least 3 people were killed, pregnant women were hit with flying glass, and 20 babies were evacuated.
The bloodshed is ongoing. In December 2021, the New York Times published the “Civilian Casualty Files,” an investigative report that exposed how US bombings killed thousands of civilians in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and how the US government covered this up. A single airstrike in July 2016 killed 120 civilians in Northern Syria.
Civilians are deliberately targeted. There is a secret military calculus to every strike, defining the tolerable number of civilian deaths based on the perceived value of the target. The Civilian Casualty Files documented that the US military, through its video monitors, watched children playing on the roof before killing them and reducing their home to rubble.
The media is coldly indifferent, and a stony silence greets each new revelation. There are no meaningful investigations launched; no rapid fire questions from courageous reporters. The American media reserves its unfelt sorrow for the victims of the enemies of Washington.
Targeting Putin for war crimes in Ukraine while covering up the crimes of American empire, the US media dredges up prejudices as old as the medieval Crusades. Well-rehearsed horror greets the deaths of “civilized Europeans,” while Arabs and Asians count for nothing. A piteous outcry is raised for light-skinned refugees from Ukraine, but those refugees of darker skin, fleeing from America’s wars, can drown in the Mediterranean.
Washington declares its profound concern to document Russia’s war crimes, but Julian Assange has been mercilessly persecuted because he exposed the crimes of the United States. For his courageous publication of material detailing such crimes as the murder of Iraqi civilians by US forces, his life has been effectively stripped from him. Washington demands his permanent silencing and will stop at nothing to see him dead.
The hypocrisy extends yet further. The United States, which is calling for charges against Putin, does not acknowledge the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over its own combatants. No American has been prosecuted by the ICC for war crimes, and the US government has obstructed all attempts to do so.
Washington’s condemnation of war crimes in Ukraine is self-serving, and the moral outrage of the corporate media is manufactured and selective. The hand-wringing over Mariupol has a specific political function. The concern is not to protect the well-being of citizens but to demonize Russians as barbaric and inhuman.
Tendentiously selected and presented by the state and the media, curated for public outrage, war crimes are useful for the fomenting of war. The bombing of a hospital in Mariupol is used to add emotional indignation to the dangerous demands for a NATO-imposed no-fly zone over Ukraine. Such a no-fly zone would inescapably lead to world war.
There is no statute of limitations on war crimes. If Putin is to be sent to the Hague for his crimes, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and all their accomplices in the US killings of civilians should join him in the dock.
Ukraine is becoming a rallying point for neo-Nazis and mercenaries from all over the world. They are being given the opportunity to fight, kill and gain experience under real war conditions.
The resulting unrestrained banditry is exacerbating and prolonging the war. Moreover, the mobilization of such forces is a danger to the working class in the countries from which the mercenaries originate.
Mussolini’s fascist shock troops, who terrorised Italian workers after the First World War, the German Freikorps, who murdered socialists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht and the bourgeois politicians Walther Rathenau and Matthias Erzberger, and Hitler’s Storm Troopers were recruited from such brutalised front-line fighters.
Armoured vehicles of the Azov Regiment in Mariupol. (Image: Wanderer 777 / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia)
Ukraine’s role as a place of pilgrimage for militant neo-Nazis did not just begin with the start of the current war. The far-right militias that played a central role in the overthrow of President Yanukovych in 2014 and subsequently kept the war in the Donbas going are very well networked internationally, maintaining relations with militant neo-Nazi groups all over the world.
According to Time magazine in January of last year, “more than 17,000 foreign fighters from 50 countries have come to Ukraine in the last six years,” as the WSWS has reported .
In particular, the Azov Regiment, founded by the self-confessed neo-Nazi and anti-Semite Andriy Biletsky, plays a central role in recruiting and training far-right forces. The regiment was incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard in the autumn of 2014 and deployed in the fight against the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, giving it access to state-of-the-art weaponry provided by the US and other NATO member countries.
Since the beginning of the current war, the recruitment of mercenaries has been official government policy. At the end of February, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the creation of an “International Legion.” He declared, “If you have combat experience, you can join us and defend Europe with us.”
Since then, the Ukrainian government has been intensively recruiting volunteers, preferably with military training and combat experience, via social media and on special websites. It provides detailed instructions on how to join the “fight against the aggressor,” and refers people to the Ukrainian embassies, which will clarify experience and suitability and help with travel.
Official Ukrainian video advert for the International Legion (screenshot)
An official promotional video makes clear to whom the appeal is aimed. With a mixture of right-wing hero worship and vulgar Russophobia, it appeals to the basest instincts.
The video begins with the words: “This is an open call to all the heroes of the free world.” Then, accompanied by images of battle scenes and heavy war equipment, it says of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “He planned the ‘blitzkrieg’ but got the ‘blitz-fuck’ instead, when his numerous bastards who call themselves the “Russian Army” met Ukrainians armed with Stingers, Javelins, Bayraktars and an uncompromising willingness to protect liberty.”
Although recruitment is now taking place through official government channels, right-wing extremists continue to play a central role. According to research by DieZeit, whose reporter claimed to be interested in volunteering, “the boundaries between the state’s official International Legion and the far-right volunteer regiment” are seemingly fluid.
For example, according to a recruiter, the Azov headquarters in Kiev is “the official place for gathering and training” not only for the far-right regiment, but also for volunteers seeking to join the Ukrainian military’s International Legion.
Olena Semyanka, the best-known leading figure of the Azov Regiment’s political wing, who has had herself photographed with a Swastika flag, told DieZeit that she was now an assistant to a deputy of President Zelensky’s ruling party and was supporting him in building up the International Legion.
“A right-wing extremist who also recruits foreign fighters for Ukraine’s official International Legion—can that be true?” asks DieZeit. Apparently, the answer is yes.
Georgian and Chechen Legion
The Georgian Legion and the Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalion, recruited from veterans of the Georgian and Chechen wars, also serve as a focal point for international legionnaires. Both were formed in 2014 to fight the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine because the Ukrainian army had largely collapsed following the right-wing coup in Kiev.
Although the new government reinstated conscription, which had been suspended by ousted President Yanukovych, most soldiers were unwilling to fire on their fellow citizens in the breakaway regions. Hundreds of thousands evaded conscription by going into hiding or fleeing to neighbouring countries. The government systematically conducted raids to apprehend them. In February 2016, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence reported that 26,800 cases of draft evasion had been opened.
Under these circumstances, the vehemently anti-Russian Georgian and Chechen legionnaires, notorious for their brutality, played a decisive role in keeping the war in eastern Ukraine going. The 2015 Minsk Agreement, which provided for a ceasefire and an autonomy arrangement for eastern Ukraine, was signed by the Kiev government merely to buy time.
The Georgian Legion, commanded by former Georgian officer Mamuka Mamulashvili, prides itself on recruiting only battle-hardened professionals. In addition to Georgians, its ranks include numerous mercenaries from Western countries and Ukrainians who volunteered to fight against Russia in Chechnya and Georgia. A report that appeared in the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail on 13 February paints a picture of the character and ethos of these mercenaries.
Igor Mazur, a “Ukrainian ultranationalist has been fighting in wars around the ex-USSR since he was 18,” the newspaper reports. In 1992, he went to Transnistria, where he joined the ultra-right Ukrainian People’s Self Defence (UNSO). As a UNSO member, he fought against Russia in Abkhazia and in the first Chechen war, and supported the pro-Western regime change operations in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014. He then fought in the ranks of the Ukrainian army against Russian forces in Mariupol. Now, the 48-year-old has joined a reserve unit and is waiting to go to war again.
Cooperation between the Ukrainian government and these ultra-right militias works well because many government members share their far-right views. For example, Andriy Melnyk, the Ukrainian representative in Germany since 2014, through whose embassy the recruitment of legionnaires is now being carried out, is an admirer of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles.
Tweet by Ukrainian Ambassador Andriy Melnyk celebrating Stepan Bandera
Melnyk is notorious for his undiplomatic attacks on the German government, which he accuses of providing insufficient political and military support. On Thursday, he told Die Welt that when it came to the survival of the Ukrainian nation, “I don’t give a shit what choice of words I use.” He said the German government’s decision to continue to buy gas and oil from Russia was “a knife in the back of Ukraine,” adding that Chancellor Olaf Scholz lacked determination in the fight for freedom.
Melnyk’s crude behaviour and far-right views did not prevent the members of the Bundestag (German parliament) from hailing him with a standing ovation as he watched from the public gallery their approval of arms deliveries to Ukraine and the biggest German rearmament since Hitler.
NATO support
Most NATO governments are supporting or encouraging their citizens to join the fight in Ukraine, even though this is illegal in many countries.
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said people from Britain who wanted to fight in Ukraine had her “absolute” support.
The Latvian parliament unanimously supported allowing its citizens to take part in the war.
The Danish government said it was not illegal for individuals to choose to go to war.
The Canadian government announced that each citizen could decide for himself whether or not to fight in Ukraine.
In a joint statement, the German interior, justice, and foreign ministries stated that German citizens who officially joined the Ukrainian army were not liable to prosecution, as long as they did not violate international law. The German government, the ministries said, did not want to prevent its citizens from going to Ukraine to fight as a matter of principle.
This is despite the fact that recruiting a German citizen for military service in support of a foreign power is punishable by a prison sentence of three months to five years, according to the Criminal Code, and even the mere attempt to recruit for this purpose is punishable.
In the meantime, numerous legionnaires from all over the world have set off for Ukraine. According to Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, 20,0000 volunteers from 52 countries had registered by 6 March. Many have come from Georgia and Belarus, but many are also said to be on their way from the US, Canada and Britain. According to the Ukrainian embassy in Washington D.C., up to 3,000 volunteers in the US have responded to Zelensky’s call.
Numerous reports about volunteers have appeared in the international media, making clear that there are many right-wing extremists among them.
The Frankfurter AllgemeineZeitung, which inquired among volunteers and in relevant chat groups, reported on March 7:
“Those who expect extremists among the volunteers are not wrong. On Telegram, a man asked how he can fight. His profile picture includes the saying, ‘Loyalty and Honour,’ behind it is the ‘Black Sun,’ a well-known runic sign of the neo-Nazi scene.”
And at another point, the article states: “In the Telegram groups, there is no glossing over what the operation means. Fighters post close-ups of the faces of dead Russians, covered in blood, with their mouths half open.”
BuzzFeedNews writes: “The Western foreigners who have come to Ukraine are a motley crew. There are idealists, adventurers and then there are the extremists who have seen opportunities to link up with far-right paramilitary groups fighting in Ukraine.”
British newspapers report that veterans with Afghanistan and Iraq war experience are heading out. The Mirror reports on a “crack team of SAS veterans” heading to Ukraine, “funded by a country in Europe, still to be named, via a private military company.”
According to the newspaper, “among them there are highly trained snipers and experts in the use of anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.” The Times writes: “More than 150 former paratroopers who served in Afghanistan are on their way to fight on the front line with Ukraine against Russia.”
