Omicron BA.2 subvariant threatens to deepen record surge of US child deaths

Emma Arceneaux

The staggering rise in child deaths seen throughout the Delta and Omicron waves of the pandemic in the United States continues to reach new heights, with COVID-19 now the leading cause of death by disease in children.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Demographics Data Tracker, there have been 1,656 pediatric COVID-19 deaths as of March 12, 2022. Seventy percent of these (1,156) have occurred since September 2021. Since the start of 2022, a staggering 616 deaths have been added, representing 37 percent of the total.

Child COVID deaths increase over 3.3X during Omicron surge (WSWS)

So far this year, each month has been deadlier than the last. The increases during February and March of this year have been particularly dramatic, with the weekly total additions increasing every week for the past six weeks (see graphs 2 and 3). In the first two weeks of March, 226 child deaths were recorded by the CDC, more than all of January or February, at an unprecedented average rate of 18.8 deaths per day.

Although this data set does not include dates of death, the increases recorded since the fall coincide with the full reopening of schools and the record infections and hospitalizations of children during this same period. Another limitation of this data is that it does not include location.

On Monday, using data from the CDC, health care expert Gregory Travis, who has been tracking the impact of COVID-19 on children, tweeted a graph showing that COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death by disease among children, and the fifth leading cause of death overall among children.

Additional evidence continues to emerge dispelling the lie that COVID-19 is comparable to other common respiratory viruses in children, namely influenza and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus).

A study published in the JAMA network in late February found that among hospitalized children, those diagnosed with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) as a result of a COVID-19 infection had the highest incidence of cardiovascular, hematologic, kidney and gastrointestinal complications, compared with patients diagnosed with COVID-19 without MIS-C, influenza and RSV. Children hospitalized with COVID-19 without MIS-C had the highest rate of neurological complications.

The median cost for a hospital stay among children diagnosed with COVID-19 ($10,399) and with MIS-C ($23,585) were approximately 2 and 4.5 times the median cost of an influenza hospitalization ($5,200).

The mass infection of children is ongoing. According to the latest “Children and COVID-19” report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), during the week ending March 10, another 41,631 children were infected and 403 were hospitalized with COVID-19. In total, 12,752,636 children have officially been infected in the US. The report also added another 17 pediatric deaths across 13 states, including three in both New York City and Michigan.

The AAP data, particularly on hospitalizations and deaths, are quite limited. Only 25 states plus New York City publish age distribution data for hospitalizations. The vast discrepancy in cumulative child deaths—931 compared to the CDC’s current figure of 1,656—is due to the fact that the AAP report uses public state-level reports, whereas the CDC also receives direct reports from local jurisdictions and hospitals. For instance, Texas’ cumulative child death toll of 127, the highest of any state, has not been updated in the AAP report since February 3, 2022.

While the overall seven-day average for daily deaths in the US remains above 1,200 and the official death toll approaches 1 million, all attention has been diverted away from the ongoing mass casualty event inside of the US and towards the Russia-Ukraine war, which Washington and its NATO allies are exploiting to carry out longstanding plans for regime change in Russia and to shift internal social tensions onto an external enemy.

One can Google “Mariupol hospital” and find thousands of articles devoted to the Russian bombing of a nearly vacant maternity hospital that left three people dead, while there is no commensurate coverage for the hundreds of children’s deaths being reported by the CDC each week in the US.

This is in line with the general trend throughout the pandemic in which both capitalist parties, the corporate media, and the CDC itself have downplayed the dangers of COVID-19, undermined and outright rejected the necessary public health measures needed to contain and eliminate the virus, and refused to coordinate a massive education campaign on the necessity and safety of vaccines.

The last failure is especially evident in the low rates of vaccination among eligible children, the lowest of any age group. According to the CDC, as of March 14, only 26.5 percent of 5–11 year olds and 55.9 percent of 12–17 year olds have received two doses of the vaccine.

Meanwhile, children ages 0–4 remain ineligible for vaccination. In February, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) delayed its Advisory Committee Meeting on the emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for this age group after trials showed two shots of the 3 microgram dose to be ineffective against the Omicron variant.

The agency is awaiting data from Pfizer’s trial on a third dose before moving forward with emergency use authorization. Significantly, this age group represents the largest share of pediatric deaths from COVID-19, with 517 total deaths recorded by the CDC as of March 12.

While the full impact of the Omicron surge on children continues to unfold, the stage has been set for yet another and possibly worse wave to come.

Across the world, the Omicron BA.2 subvariant is rapidly spreading and leading to record infections in multiple countries throughout Asia and Europe. In Hong Kong, per capita hospitalizations and deaths have surpassed previous world records throughout the pandemic. In Germany, daily infections have set new records in the country for the past three days.

In the United Kingdom, where cases are rising again after the Omicron peak in January, hospitalizations are rapidly increasing. UK Journalist Chris Turnbull posted a series of tweets on Monday about the alarming growth in hospitalizations among children over the past week.

While admissions among all age groups increased by 23 percent between March 2–9, admissions among infants and toddlers jumped 45.8 percent and 32 percent among ages 6–17. Turnbull noted that many parents have reported their children were reinfected with BA.2 only weeks after being infected with BA.1.

It is only a matter of time before the BA.2 subvariant takes hold in the US. Already, the decline in cases has nearly stagnated. Following the unscientific and reckless changes to masking recommendations by the CDC in February, Democratic-led states across the US have ditched statewide mask mandates, including in schools. The virus has preemptively been given free rein to infect and disable the population.

The promises by Biden and the major teachers unions that a Democratic administration would “follow the science” and keep children safe in schools has been exposed as a fraud. In every significant way, the Biden administration has followed Trump’s “herd immunity” playbook, including by reducing in-hospital death reporting, removing mitigation measures, and demanding the population accept a “new normal” of mass infection.

In February 2021, Biden infamously lied to a second-grader during a town hall meeting when he said, “Kids don’t get … COVID very often. It’s unusual for that to happen.” Since February 2021, more than 9 million children in the US have contracted COVID-19.

Perhaps the most egregious silence on the devastating impact and ongoing dangers of COVID-19 for children comes from Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

Throughout the pandemic, Weingarten has earned the contempt of educators and parents across the US for her central role in forcing through the reopening of schools, stifling rank-and-file opposition to the return to unsafe classrooms, and her cozy relationship with far-right parents groups Open Schools USA and Great Barrington Declaration author Jay Bhattacharya.

Most recently, when not preoccupied tweeting her support for the US intervention in Ukraine, Weingarten is praising the end of pandemic mitigations. On March 12 she tweeted, “I’m so grateful that we’re in a new phase of the pandemic, with the ability to be in person, maskless if you feel comfortable, and returning to normalcy.”

One searches in vain for any recognition by Weingarten of all the children who have died as a result of the full reopening of schools or the more than 2,300 educators who have perished throughout the pandemic, according to an unofficial tracker. Indicative of the growing hostility among educators toward her, Weingarten has disabled all public comments on her tweets.

Despite the treachery of the trade unions, educators and other sectors of the working class continue to struggle against dangerous working conditions and falling wages amid soaring inflation. The teachers' strike in Minneapolis, which Weingarten has already tried to sabotage by isolating it from the struggle in St. Paul, is the latest in a series of educator and student strikes that have occurred throughout the pandemic.

The essential lessons of the past two years must be assimilated by the working class. Under conditions in which over 6 million have officially died from the pandemic, with 18 million excess deaths confirmed in a recent report in the Lancet, every advanced capitalist country except China has dropped all remaining measures to restrict the spread of the virus. This is not an accidental miscalculation but a deliberate policy to surrender the population to the pandemic.

US threatens China over Ukraine crisis

Peter Symonds

The US used a meeting in Rome yesterday between National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s top foreign policy official Yang Jiechi to warn Beijing against assisting Russia as Washington ramps up the war in Ukraine.

Yang Jiechi in 2019 [Source: Wikimedia]

Neither side provided any details of the talks, other than to confirm that there had been “substantial discussion of Russia’s war against Ukraine.” In the lead-up to the meeting, however, Sullivan appeared on US talk shows on Sunday and issued blunt threats.

The national security adviser told CNN that the US would not “allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world.” He said Washington was “watching closely to see the extent to which China actually does provide any form of support, material support or economic support, to Russia.”

While he refused to spell out the punitive measures that the US would take, Sullivan said: “We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them.”

Underscoring the threat, an unnamed senior White House official told the media that the US had “deep concerns about China’s alignment with Russia,” adding: “The national security adviser was direct about those concerns and the potential implications and consequences of certain actions.”

Prior to the Rome meeting, the Biden administration upped the ante by circulating unsubstantiated allegations from unnamed US officials that Russia had approached China for military assistance. Official cables to European allies containing the accusation were widely leaked to the US and international media.

According to the New York Times report, American officials alleged that Moscow had asked Beijing for military equipment and support for the war in Ukraine as well as additional economic assistance to counter the crippling economic sanctions imposed by the US and its allies.

The US officials provided no details of the weapons, military support or economic aid requested by Russia, saying they were determined to keep secret their means of collecting the intelligence.

A Reuters report went one step further. Citing comments from two anonymous US officials, it claimed that not only had Russia asked for military aid, but China “had signaled its willingness to provide military and economic aid to Russia to support its war.” One of the officials told Reuters: “It’s real, it’s consequential, and it’s really alarming.”

The US claims have all the hallmarks of misinformation concocted by its intelligence agencies to heighten the pressure on China immediately before the talks between Sullivan and Yang. Even if the claims were true, the utter hypocrisy involved is staggering. While accusing China of preparing to assist Russia, the US and its NATO allies are pouring arms to the tune of billions of dollars into the Ukrainian military.

Yesterday Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed the allegations, saying: “Russia has an independent potential to continue the [military] operation.” Pressed by journalists to confirm if Russia had made a request to China, he flatly declared: “No, there wasn’t.”

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he had never heard of the request from Russia. He reiterated China’s call for a peaceful settlement, saying: “The high priority now is to prevent the tense situation from escalating or even getting out of control.”

While China has not condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, neither has it endorsed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recognition of two pro-Russian separatist-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine as independent. Beijing has insisted that the security interests of all sides in the conflict—both Ukraine and Russia—have to be respected.

The US has deliberately stoked the tensions that led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by refusing to rule out the inclusion of Ukraine as a member of the NATO military alliance. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US and NATO have not only advanced into Eastern Europe but incorporated former Soviet republics.

At the same time, the US over the past decade has escalated its confrontation with China, including through a huge military build-up and the strengthening of alliances across the Indo-Pacific. The intensifying US threats have increasingly driven China and Russia to put aside their differences and consolidate their relations.

Putin visited Beijing in early February at the opening of the Winter Olympics to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders issued a lengthy joint statement affirming that their friendship had “no limits” and outlining broad areas of cooperation.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, has cut across Chinese interests in the country, including its Belt and Road Initiative that involves massive infrastructure spending to link China to Europe both overland and by sea. Last June, China signed a major agreement with Ukraine for the construction and financing of transport infrastructure, potentially paving the way for alternate road and rail links between China and Europe.

The war also has undermined China’s efforts to strengthen relations with the major European powers as a means of warding off the United States. Last week President Xi held online talks with President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a bid to establish the basis for negotiations to end the war.

The US threats against China are part of an escalating campaign to pressure Beijing to distance itself from Moscow. Australia has been among the most strident of Washington’s allies in denouncing China and demanding that it condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison branded Russia and China as an “arc of autocracy” threatening the “rules-based international order.”

In comments to the Washington Post, former adviser to the US Indo-Pacific Command Eric Sayers pointed to the wider dangers of the Ukraine crisis. “If Beijing is offering any type of military assistance to aid Moscow’s war in Ukraine, the spill-over effects on US-China policy could be vast,” he said.

“It would abruptly end debate about pathways to working with Beijing. More importantly, it would push Washington to accelerate retaliatory and decoupling actions toward China, and create new pressure on companies now doing business in China,” Sayers warned.

The latest US threats against China are another warning of the enormous dangers involved in the conflict in Ukraine. Its implications go well beyond Eastern Europe and raise the danger of embroiling other powers in a far wider war.

Citing the pandemic, Biden administration continues to deny asylum to immigrant families and adults

Norisa Diaz

On Friday the Biden administration announced it will continue to carry forward the brutal immigration policies of the Trump administration, continuing the tight restrictions under Title 42 which force asylum seekers at the southern border to remain in Mexico. The only update announced was that it would continue to apply to all families and persons seeking asylum but would make exceptions for unaccompanied minors, allowing them to enter the US as they seek asylum through immigration courts.

Immigrants seeking asylum hold hands as they leave a cafeteria at the ICE South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas on August 23, 2019 (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

The draconian anti-migrant measure—implemented under the guise of combatting the spread of COVID-19—is being kept in place even as the Biden administration has spearheaded the lifting of every other pandemic-related public health measure, and the American population has been told they must learn to “live with the virus” and “return to normal.”

Title 42 was first seized upon in March of 2020 under then President Donald Trump at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic to place the harshest restrictions to date on who can cross the border “in the interest of public health.” The 1944 statute grants the president broad powers to block foreigners from entering the country in order to prevent the “serious threat” of a dangerous disease. Trump’s fascistic immigration adviser Stephen Miller had attempted to invoke the law twice before, during a mumps outbreak in immigration jails and once again during the flu season.

According to White House officials, Miller had long viewed the special protections offered to minors as a major hurdle to carrying out full immigration bans and an obstacle for speedy deportations. The spread of COVID-19 was quickly seized upon to justify a halt to the international protections of asylum and has continued to be pursued just as vociferously by the Biden administration, which has deported over 1 million migrants and detained a record 1.7 million migrants along the US-Mexico border last year.

According to the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), last month the Biden administration hit a terrible milestone of deporting its 20,000th migrant sent back to Haiti aboard the 198th flight since the president’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. The large figures were the result of a massive deportation blitz carried out by the Biden administration that sent hundreds of flights full of Haitian refugees seeking asylum in the United States back to Haiti.

The announcement to maintain Title 42 continues the assault on the international right to asylum. Furthermore, it is yet another version of what the Trump administration did early on in the pandemic—using the threat of COVID-19 to coerce parents to separate from their children by telling parents they will allow only children to leave COVID-infested detention facilities, but not parents.

By refusing to process asylum applications for all, aside from unaccompanied youth, the stage is being set for tens of thousands of parents to make a devastating sacrifice and separate from their children in the hopes that at least their children will be able to reach the United States.

According to Department of Homeland Security data, the Biden administration carried out 1.8 times the number of Title 42 apprehensions and deportations of migrants at the southern border between February and August 2021 (690,209) as the Trump administration carried out during the same time frame in 2020.

Lip service to the plight of migrants has been paid by members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, including Chairman Raul Ruiz (Democrat, Calif.), who stated, “It is long overdue to completely end the Trump-initiated Title 42 policy and stop using the pandemic as an excuse to keep it going.” The crocodile tears of the Democratic Party officials could not ring more hollow.

The reality is that even if the COVID-19 pandemic had never happened, the prisons, child detentions and separations, the heavily armed and surveilled walls and fences, fit with drones, barbed wire and attack dogs—real and robotic—would still be there to menace and abuse those seeking to cross the border. This brutal reality was in force even prior to the pandemic and has been a key part of Washington’s bipartisan anti-immigrant policy. The overcrowded detention prisons, heavily expanded under the Obama administration, were endorsed by Vice President Kamala Harris just a few months into Biden’s presidency.

The Biden administration has made only cosmetic changes to Trump’s immigration policies including the ending of the “Remain in Mexico” program that required tens of thousands of immigrants to wait in Mexico for their US immigration hearing, only to shuttle them directly onto deportation planes, carrying forward the attacks on asylum spearheaded by Obama and Trump. The Biden administration resumed the Remain in Mexico policy late last year under court order.

The inhumane conditions facing asylum seekers and migrants on the US-Mexico border have been ensured through a collaboration between the Biden administration and the Mexican government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) in a brutal campaign to suppress migration. The AMLO government has been tasked by Washington to stop migrants and ensure they do not reach the southern border of the United States.

The number of people applying for refugee or asylum status in Mexico almost doubled between 2019 and 2021 and reached a historic high of over 130,000 in January as the economic and political fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic pushed increasing waves of migrants to try to reach the US.

While endless barbarism is meted against the people of Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa seeking asylum as refugees from US imperialist interventions throughout the globe, a very different response has met Ukrainian refugees fleeing the US/NATO-provoked war by Russia against Ukraine.

On March 2 the European Union (EU) ordered its member states to prepare to receive a “mass influx” of refugees. According to the order, Ukrainian refugees should be allowed to stay for at least one year and be given the option of extending their stay up to three years without a visa. In contrast to those from the Middle East and Africa who meet the walls of Fortress Europe or the unknown thousands who have perished in the heavily patrolled waters of the Mediterranean, Ukrainian refugees are to be permitted to receive social benefits, housing, education and the right to work.

In recent days Russian and Ukrainian citizens fleeing the war have begun turning up at the San Diego-Tijuana, Mexico border crossing in Southern California having boarded flights to Tijuana by way of Moscow and Romania’s Bucharest airport.

US authorities allowed a Ukrainian woman and her three children to seek asylum Thursday, a reversal from a day earlier when she was denied entry under the Biden administration’s sweeping restrictions for seeking humanitarian protection. The 34-year-old woman named Sofia and her children, aged 6, 12 and 14, were initially blocked from entering the US due to Title 42.

With the arrival of Ukrainian refugees, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and other Democrats are suddenly advocating the ending of Title 42. Schumer hypocritically made mention of the Ukrainian family when calling for an end to Title 42 on Friday, noting, “They requested refuge in one of the ports of entry on our southern border but were turned away because of Title 42. ... This is not who we are as a country. Continuing this Trump-era policy has defied common sense and common decency.”

Sofia and her family have dodged the nightmare that tens of thousands in makeshift encampments face along the US-Mexico border, where many migrants have reported kidnapping, extortion and assault from gangs while waiting for the processing of asylum applications in crime-ridden cities in Mexico.

If Title 42 should in fact be lifted, it will not be because the right to asylum under international law has been reinstated or has been strengthened. It will be for the purpose of public consumption and propaganda to justify the US/NATO-provoked war against Russia all while the tens of thousands of poor souls from Mexico, the Northern Triangle and Latin America will continue to confront the same brutality.

Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and the hypocrisy of imperialism

Patrick Martin

No Russian military operation in the invasion of Ukraine goes by without a torrent of denunciations from the Biden administration and the corporate media in the most strident of terms, portraying Putin as the new Hitler and the Russian military as a modern version of the hordes of Genghis Khan. But when a US ally and major supplier of oil to world capitalism carries out a barbaric massacre, Washington does not make even the mildest protest.

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz at the Pentagon in Washington D.C., Mar. 22, 2018. (DoD photo by Navy Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Kathryn E. Holm)

Neither the White House nor the State Department has issued any statement on the execution of 81 prisoners Saturday in Saudi Arabia, which was widely condemned by human rights and Saudi exile groups. Even when the issue was raised Monday at the regular State Department press briefing, spokesman Ned Price would say nothing more than “we are continuing to raise concerns about fair trial guarantees,” although he said he “can’t speak to the timing of that, but we have raised these concerns.”

In plain English, this means that the administration has said nothing about the executions to the Saudi monarchy and its murderous ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who dispatched a hit squad to murder and dismember Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018. The State Department flack could only point to past statements about giving prisoners a “fair trial” (after they have been brutally tortured and denied access to legal representation) before the executioner does his bloody work.

Beheading is the standard method of execution in Saudi Arabia. The majority of the victims of this medieval barbarism were young men from the eastern region of Saudi Arabia, where the majority of the population is Shi’ite—regarded as heretical by the Wahhabite Sunni clergy which sets the rules for daily life in the kingdom.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, 41 of the victims of the mass execution had taken part in antigovernment protests in 2011-2012. Another seven were Yemenis, allegedly linked to the Houthi rebellion in Yemen which ousted a Saudi-backed regime. “Implementation of death sentences following trials that do not offer the required fair trial guarantees is prohibited by international human rights and humanitarian law and may amount to a war crime,” she said.

It requires little effort to imagine the reaction in Washington if the Russian military had executed 81 prisoners of war in Ukraine claiming they were “terrorists.”

The entire policy of the Saudi monarchy in Yemen is a war crime, targeting the civilian population of that country, the poorest in the Arab world, for starvation and murder. According to a report issued Monday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, associated with the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), 538,000 children in Yemen are already severely malnourished, and that figure will rise to 2.2 million by the end of this year.

Around 1.3 million pregnant women or nursing mothers will be acutely malnourished by the end of the year, while 161,000 people are likely to experience famine, the most acute deprivation of food, five times the current figure. “These harrowing figures confirm that we are on a countdown to catastrophe in Yemen and we are almost out of time to avoid it,” said David Beasley, head of the World Food Program, adding that action was urgently needed to “avert imminent disaster and save millions.” More than half the population of Yemen, 19 million out of 30 million, will be unable to meet minimum food needs during the second half of this year, according to the IPC report, up from 17.4 million now.

According to another UNICEF statement issued Friday, March 11, the UN has verified the killing or injury of at least 10,200 children since the Saudi military intervention began in 2015. Nearly all the casualties came from Saudi bombs and missiles, most of them delivered by US-supplied warplanes and using targeting information provided by US specialists.

There is an obvious element of racism in the selective outrage of imperialist governments and the corporate media, expressed in saturation coverage of the suffering of the Ukrainian people, accompanied by virtual silence over the equally terrible suffering of the population of Yemen.

This was summed up in the comment by CBS correspondent Charlie D’Agata, who blurted out that victims who “look like us” are more likely to evoke a sympathetic response. He was only one of many. Daniel Hannan of Britain’s Daily Telegraph remarked, “They seem so like us. That’s it. That is what makes it so shocking. Ukraine is a European country. Its people watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts, vote in free elections and read uncensored newspapers. War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations.”

Government officials followed suit. Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze, told the BBC, “It’s really emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed, children being killed every day with Putin’s missiles.” Kiril Petkov, prime minister of Bulgaria said, “These are not the refugees we are used to. They are Europeans, intelligent, educated people, some are IT programmers ... this is not the usual refugee wave of people with an unknown past. No European country is afraid of them.” Retired British general Richard Barrons, former assistant chief of the general staff, said, “I think one of the issues … is how does public opinion in the UK and other countries react to seeing people who look and live like us being slaughtered.”

The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA) issued a statement condemning this racist double standard. “AMEJA stands in full solidarity with all civilians under military assault in any part of the world, and we deplore the difference in news coverage of people in one country versus another,” the organization said. “This type of commentary reflects the pervasive mentality in Western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. It dehumanizes and renders their experience with war as somehow normal and expected ... “

Race is, of course, not the determining factor. There were tears aplenty in the imperialist media for Syrian victims of repression by the Assad regime. The decisive issue is whether the government carrying out the slaughter is allied with American imperialism. Hence the silence over atrocities in Saudi Arabia, Colombia, India and the Philippines—to say nothing of the millions of victims of the Pentagon and CIA in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and across North Africa—in sharp contrast to the screaming headlines and nonstop coverage of the victims of Putin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine.

The working class should not be swayed by any of the campaigns in the capitalist media, aimed at mobilizing public opinion in support of the foreign policy of American imperialism and its European allies.

US threatens trade embargo as fighting continues to escalate, sanctions devastate Russian economy

Clara Weiss

Announcing a further escalation of the economic warfare against Russia, US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo threatened on Monday that the United States was considering the imposition of a full trade embargo on Russia and the closure of international waterways to the country. Both demands had earlier been advanced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

People retrieve belongings from an apartment in a block which was destroyed by an artillery strike in Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, March 14, 2022. .(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

The threats came after another dangerous escalation of the conflict on Sunday, when 8 Russian cruise missiles struck the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security in Yavoriv, a town just 10 miles from Ukraine’s border with NATO member Poland. The air strike reportedly killed 35 people and injured 134.

On Sunday evening, Russia announced that more such attacks could follow, claiming that the attack had killed “180 foreign mercenaries” and disrupted Western arms supplies. Speaking to the Washington Post on conditions of anonymity, a US defense official denied that shipments of Western military aid had been disrupted.

Twenty NATO countries are involved in large-scale shipments of ammunition, handheld or shoulder-fired anti-tank and antiaircraft systems to Ukraine—weapons that are particularly suitable for use in insurgencies. The US alone has pledged a total of $1.2 billion to Ukraine this year, with Biden announcing the latest tranch of $200 million on Saturday.

NATO and the Ukrainian government are also explicitly encouraging foreign fighters, as well as far-right forces all over the world, to come to Ukraine to join the “International Legion” and fight in fascist paramilitary formations, such as the Azov Battalion. The latter has reportedly been able to grow its membership significantly in recent weeks.

The Center in Yavoriv, where members of the “International Legion” have been stationed, has long been a major hub for the military supplies and training that NATO has provided to Ukraine’s military since the US-backed far-right coup of 2014. According to BuzzFeed, troops from the Florida National Guard were training Ukrainian soldiers at the facility as part of a NATO mission as recently as early February.

Fighting, especially in southern Ukraine and around the city of Mariupol, continues to escalate, with signs that both sides are increasingly targeting civilian areas and the Russian military intensifying its attack on Ukrainian cities.

On Monday, a missile strike killed at least 23 people in Donetsk in East Ukraine, among them 20 civilians and several children, according to the Russian-backed separatist authorities. Blaming the attack on the Ukrainian military, the separatist leader Denis Pushilin called it a “war crime.” While the Ukrainian army denied responsibility for the attack, blaming it on Russia, the Western press has maintained a conspicuous silence on the incident which may have been the deadliest for civilians in the war yet.

The UN’s most recent estimates put the number of civilian deaths at 596, among them 43 children. Over 4 million people have been forced to flee; about 1.5 million of them are now in Poland.

Peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are continuing, and a representative of Zelensky’s administration indicated on Monday that a settlement could be reached “within a week or two or in May.” Both Ukrainian and American officials had earlier pointed to a readiness for “compromise” on the part of the Kremlin.

In the first admission that the war was not going as planned by a Russian military figure, the head of Russia’s National Guard, General Viktor Zolotov, acknowledged in a speech on Sunday that “not everything is going as fast as we would like.” The speech has since been removed from the National Guard’s website. The Kremlin has now also admitted that draftees are being sent to Ukraine, something Russia had earlier denied.

There have also been unconfirmed reports that Russia has requested military aid from China. Military analysts are speculating why Russia, which has many times more air power than Ukraine, has so far made only very limited use of it. An analysis in the German magazine DerSpiegel suggested that poor equipment, the lack of experience by pilots, as well as fears of high casualties among soldiers, may be behind the Kremlin’s hesitancy. Western-delivered air defense systems are reportedly doing serious damage to Russia’s air force.

The latest figures from the Russian Defense Ministry put the number at 498 Russian soldiers have died, but the figures have not been updated in over two weeks and are widely believed to be severe underestimates.

The war and the impact of the sanctions have significantly deepened an already serious crisis of the Putin regime. On Friday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki gloated that with the existing sanctions, the US and its allies had “basically crushed the Russian economy.”

A recent piece in Foreign Affairs gave an inkling of the extraordinary scale of the social disaster that the economic warfare by the imperialist powers is producing: “Russians will soon face shortages of basic products—not just luxury goods such as iPhones and iPads, the import of which is now banned, but also more ordinary goods and commodities such as clothes, cars, household appliances, and food.” The piece warned that “entire industries could shut down in the coming months, precipitating not just shortages of goods but mass unemployment, a collapse of the tax base, and an inability to pay salaries to state employees. Already, Russia’s largest automobile producer has had to temporarily halt production because of shortages of imported components.”

Even before the war, millions of Russian workers had been completely impoverished by the restoration of capitalism in 1991 and were struggling to buy basic food staples. Many, especially pensioners, have been long dependent on home-grown food in order to eke out a living.

The impact of the sanctions will extend well beyond Russia’s borders, compounding the immediate horrific impact of the war itself. Together, Russia and Ukraine provide about 30 percent of the world’s wheat consumption. While Ukraine’s economy has been brought to a standstill by the war, Russia has banned the export of all grains and sugar until August 31 to counteract the impact of the sanctions.

In anticipation of a severe food crisis, countries across the globe have begun imposing export restrictions, and wheat markets have hit an all-time high. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday of “a hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system.”

The war in Ukraine, which is increasingly assuming the form of an open conflict with NATO, combined with the impact of the economic sanctions, has also deepened rifts within Russia’s ruling class and has driven larger sections of the upper middle class into exile or toward openly supporting the pro-US “liberal” opposition of Alexei Navalny or both.

Members of Russia’s narrow upper and middle classes, who had savings and connections abroad, have left the country in droves for the Baltic states and former Soviet republics in the Caucasus. As of last week, their number was estimated to be as high as 150-200,000, but the real number is likely much higher.

In a widely publicized incident on Monday, an editor at Russia’s state-owned Channel 1 TV station interrupted a show with a “no war” sign. In a video message, she declared her support for Navalny and called on Russians to join the anti-war demonstrations that have been politically dominated by the liberal opposition. Several oligarchs that used to be close to Putin, including Oleg Deripaska, have also spoken out against the war.

Poland Government Banach Scholarship Programme 2022

Application Deadline:

31st March 2022 3:00:00 pm of the local time (Warsaw)

Tell Me About Poland Government Banach Scholarship:

The objective of the Programme is to promote socio-economic progress of developing countries by raising the level of knowledge and education of their citizens in the form of scholarships for second-degree studies in Polish or in English at Polish universities supervised by the Minister of Education and Science in the field of engineering and technical sciences, agricultural sciences, exact sciences, and life sciences.

The NAWA scholarship may be applied for by citizens of the following countries: Albania, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Lebanon, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Palestine, Peru, the Philippines, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

In addition, the citizens of Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Montenegro, Moldova, North Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan can complete second-degree studies in the fields of humanities and social sciences under the Programme, with the exception of philological studies in the field of the beneficiary’s native language.

The Programme is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange in the form of Polish development aid.

In 2021, the existing scholarship programmes that are a joint initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Agency for Academic Exchange NAWA in the form of Polish development aid, i.e. the Banach Scholarship Programme and the Lukasiewicz Scholarship Programme, had merged into one scholarship programme for young people from developing countries who wish to take up studies in Poland.

Which Fields are Eligible?

Engineering and technical sciences, agricultural sciences, exact sciences, and life sciences.

It shall not be possible to participate in the Programme within other fields of science.

What Type of Scholarship is this?

Masters

Who can apply for Poland Government Banach Scholarship Programme?

Foreigners who meet all of the following criteria at the time of the call for proposals may apply for a scholarship under the Programme:

1.               are citizens of one of the following countries: Albania, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Montenegro, Ethiopia, Philippines, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Colombia , Kosovo, Lebanon, North Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Nigeria, Palestine, Peru, South Africa, Senegal, Serbia, Tanzania, Tunisia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam;

2.               do not have Polish citizenship and have not applied for Polish citizenship;

3.               are planning to start second-cycle studies or a preparatory course in the academic year 2022/23;

4.               at the time of submitting the application to the Programme are students of the last year of first-cycle studies in the field of engineering and technical sciences, agricultural sciences as well as exact and natural sciences, or have a first-cycle studies diploma in the above-mentioned fields obtained in a country covered by the Programme not earlier than in 2020. For candidates from Europe, Central Asia and the South Caucasus, first-cycle studies diplomas obtained in the field of social sciences and humanities shall also be allowed;

5.               have not obtained a diploma of completion of second-cycle studies or long-cycle  master’s studies; If there is no system of two-cycle studies commonly applied in the candidate’s country of origin, candidates with a diploma of master’s studies or equivalent shall be admitted;

6.               have a documented knowledge of the

a)      Polish language:

·        minimum at the A2 level in case if applicant is planning firstly start the one-year preparatory course and after course continuing education at the second-cycle degree studies in Polish language;

·        minimum at the B1 in case if applicant is planning to start the second-cycle studies in Polish language without one-year preparatory course;

or

b)     English language minimum at the B2 level in case if applicant is planning to start studies in English language.

How are Applicants Selected?

• Recommendation by a diplomatic and consular mission, non-governmental organization or university = 40%
• The arithmetic average of grades for the first-cycle studies on the diploma of completion of the first-cycle studies or on the certificate confirming the arithmetic average of grades = 60%

Which Countries are Eligible?

The NAWA scholarship may be applied for by citizens of the following countries: Albania, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Lebanon, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Palestine, Peru, the Philippines, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

Where will Award be Taken?

Poland

How Many Scholarships will be Given?

Not specified

What is the Benefit of Poland Government Banach Scholarship Programme?

The scholarship shall amount to:

1.               PLN 1700 per month during the preparatory course (the scholarship holder shall not have the status of a student, which shall prevent him/her from taking advantage of discounts applicable to students, e.g. in public transport);

2.               PLN 1,500 per month during second-cycle studies.

During their studies, the scholarship holders shall also receive:

1.               in the first year of studies, the first monthly scholarship increased by PLN 500,

2.               in the last year of studies, the last monthly scholarship increased by PLN 500.

In the event of a documented fortuitous event, the NAWA Director may, upon a written request of the Scholarship Holder, increase the scholarship by PLN 500 once.

The NAWA Director’s scholarship shall be paid through the centre which conducts the course or the university where the Scholarship Holder is studying.

How to Apply for Poland Government Banach Scholarship Programme:

• Only in electronic form in the Agency’s ICT system, // FILL IN THE APPLICATION //
• The application shall be prepared in Polish or in English
• It is important to go through all application requirements before applying.
• The results of the call for proposals shall be announced by 15 July 2022

Visit Award Webpage for Details

The IMF’s Agreement With Argentina Could Prove a Game-Changer

Joseph Stiglitz & Mark Weisbrot

A new draft agreement between Argentina and the International Monetary Fund has eschewed austerity. Pending approval by Argentina’s congress and the IMF board, it will allow the Argentine economy to grow while the government continues its efforts to reduce poverty and gradually bring down inflation. With so many countries facing debt distress from the pandemic, the IMF will need to adopt similar changes to its policies elsewhere.

It is well known that the old model of austerity does not work. Not only does it cause the economy to contract and inflict excessive hardship on the population; it also fails to meet even the narrow objectives of reducing deficits and increasing a country’s capacity to repay creditors.

Advocates of austerity have claimed success in a few countries. But these were small economies lucky enough to have trading partners that were enjoying a boom at the time that austerity was being implemented. Those positive spillover effects offset the cutbacks in public expenditure, but these same economies might have grown even more if they had they not embraced Herbert Hoover-style austerity policies.

Argentina, meanwhile, has demonstrated the merits of an alternative strategy focused on growth. When the economy is allowed to expand, tax revenues can increase rapidly.

The announcement of a new IMF agreement with Argentina has elicited some critical comments suggesting there is something in Argentines’ blood that makes their country untrustworthy – as if it were a nation of deadbeats. The assumption is that the only way to deal with a serial defaulter is to be ruthlessly tough. Otherwise, fiscally profligate “left-wing” Peronist governments supposedly will leave a mess for the next center-right administration to clean up, with the cycle repeating endlessly.

This rote criticism could not be further from the truth. When the most recent center-right president, Mauricio Macri, took office in late 2015, Argentina’s foreign public debt was relatively small, at 35% of GDP, owing to the preceding governments’ growth and debt-restructuring policies. Macri then went on a borrowing spree, winning praise from Wall Street lenders happy to capitalize on the high interest rates he offered. Within a couple of years, however, everything began to unravel. By 2019, Argentina’s foreign public debt had risen to 69% of GDP.

The IMF made its largest loan ever to the Macri government in 2018, without even imposing conditions to prohibit the money from being used to finance capital outflows or service unsustainable debts to private creditors. What happened next was no surprise: capital flight, economic contraction, and soaring inflation, which reached 53.8% in 2019.

The same pattern had played out in the 1990s under President Carlos Menem. A darling of the IMF, Menem had been brought to Washington and showcased as an exemplar of good governance and sound economic policymaking. But following a period of massive government borrowing from abroad, Argentina fell into a devastating depression that lasted from 1998 to 2002. In 2003, Néstor Kirchner’s Peronist administration was able to achieve a rapid recovery. It did so by implementing a broad-based growth strategy.

Financial markets often have an obsession with inflation, and inflation can be a problem for the workings of a market economy. Obviously, Argentine President Alberto Fernández would have preferred not to have inherited a high-inflation economy when he took office in 2019. But every government must play the hand it is dealt, and there will always be difficult tradeoffs in economic policymaking. Traditional IMF programs have often put aside concerns about the cost to people and the economy, the loss in growth, and the increase in poverty, and pursued a slash-and-burn strategy of budget-cutting austerity.

With inflation at 50.9% in 2021, there are people who insist that Argentina needs a recessionary program to bring prices under control. But even if renewed austerity were to deliver on this objective, the cure would be worse than the disease. In a country where 40% of the population is already living below the poverty line, no program that increases unemployment enough to bring down inflation quickly would be sustainable or justifiable.

Argentina’s new agreement with the IMF is just the beginning. But there will always be those who long for the old IMF, with its contractionary, often harsh or pro-cyclical conditionalities. These policies would be a disaster for Argentina and the world. They would deepen the divide between the advanced economies and developing and emerging-market countries, further undermining the credibility of the IMF, which is tasked with ensuring global financial stability, at a time when measures to improve this stability are critically needed.

During the new program’s implementation, Argentina will inevitably experience shocks – positive and negative. With COVID-19 still pervasive, and in view of ongoing geopolitical conflicts, the risk of negative shocks is real. A large adverse shock would imply lower growth and larger deficits than anticipated, requiring a recalibration. In that case, the IMF’s old language – “the country has gone off track” – would need to be scrapped. Here’s a replacement: “The government and the IMF are continuing to work together to ensure that the country responds effectively to the shock so that shared growth is restored, because it is only through such growth that the agreed upon objectives can be attained.”

Old ideas die hard (no matter how many times they are proved wrong), and rebuilding institutions is a slow process. Fortunately, the IMF’s new agreement will allow Argentina to tackle the challenges it faces, rather than tying its hands.