Impoverishing Ukraine: What the US and the EU have been doing to the country for the past 30 years (Part 2)

Andrea Peters

In addition to breaking up whatever was left of Soviet-era nationalized property and the social welfare state, austerity measures were aimed at disciplining Ukraine’s oligarchs. While their wealth was accumulated on the basis of the country’s integration into the world market, and thus made possible and sustained by the centers of global capital, investors from the West hesitated to descend directly into the dog-eat-dog world of Ukrainian big business, where bribe-taking, ever-changing economic laws, tax rates that on paper sometimes exceeded profits, and the use of bankruptcy for profiteering were rampant.

“[O]mnipresent lawlessness were damaging for foreign relations, political and trade. Western investors from the USA, the EU and particularly Germany (Ukraine’s strongest EU-isation backers) became ‘disenchanted with the country,’” notes Yurchenko. Still, they salivated at the prospect of getting access to tens of millions of consumers and wage-labor that was cheap and skilled. According to Yurchenko, “In a personal interview with the Corporate Europe Observatory think-tank, the former Secretary General of ERT, Keith Richardson, said that the demise of the USSR was as if they ‘have discovered a new South-East Asia on the [EU] doorstep.’”

Concerned not just about the loss of potential investment opportunities in Ukraine but also the geopolitical future of the country, the United States and Europe responded. First, a whole number of business associations and advisory groups--American Chamber of Commerce (ACC), Centre for US–Ukraine Relations (CUSUR), US–Ukraine Business Council (USUBC), the European Business Association (EBA), and the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE)—were either created or mobilized for the purposes of, in the words of the EBA, “discussion and resolution of problems facing the private sector in Ukraine.”

Established in 1999, the European Business Association provides a forum in which members can discuss and find solutions to common problems affecting business in Ukraine. Initially supported by the European Commission, the initiative has grown to one of the largest and most influential business communities in the country. Currently the EBA brings together about 970 European, Ukrainian and multinational companies. It has regional branches in Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Lviv and Odessa.

These institutions were staffed with representatives from major Western corporations and Ukraine’s business elite, with many sitting on more than one board. By 2010, 105 of the world’s top 500 transnational corporations were active in them. They sought out, or even established, lobbying groups and advisory councils active in Ukraine’s government.

These include such bodies as the Investors Council under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the Working Group of Justice (co-chaired by the European Business Association) under the Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice, the Working Group on Tax and Customs Policy (also co-chaired by the EBA) under the country’s Ministry of Finance, the Foreign Investment Advisory Council of Ukraine (FIAC) under the president of Ukraine, and the Public Councils that are within different ministries and state committees.

Over time, the lobbying groups and advisory councils, according to Yurchenko, collectively got their hands into all of the following areas of Ukrainian governance; the “reduction of state control over economic activity and marketisation alike”; the “simplification of import and export procedures, harmonisation of regulations with the EU in IT and electronics sector, revoking of medication advertising ban, creation of State Land Cadastre in preparation for land privatisation, simplification of market entry for pharmaceutical and insurance companies from the EU”; and “market reform; fiscal and tax policy; banking and non-banking financial institutions and capital market.”

Furthermore, being housed in government agencies, these groups did not just make suggestions as to how Ukraine ought to transform its economy, they were involved in the drafting of law and strategy documents laying out state policy. In short, there is not even one degree of separation between Ukrainian governance and Western corporations, financial interests, and state power.

Between 2006 and 2013 alone, Yurchenko found upwards of 50 instances of “successful lobbying” by just the European Business Association—in other words, the EBA’s suggested policies became Ukrainian law. The Americans have also had their direct means of leverage. The Centre for International Private Enterprise, one of the many lobbying organizations active in Kiev, “serves as a bridge agency between the US Congress and Ukraine’s authorities by proxy of ACC (American Chamber of Congress). The Centre is run by the Chamber but is in fact one of the four programs of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that is funded by the US Congress,” notes the scholar.

As Western political and business interests have increasingly been integrated into the Ukrainian state, the IMF, other foreign lenders, and the EU have used the ongoing crisis in the country’s economy to pile on the pressure. They have regularly held back on releasing loans or signing trade agreements because Kiev has not privatized and cut enough. When, in order to get the promised money, the government has pushed through the required measures, the outcome for the population have been devastating.

An April 2009 article in the New York Times devoted to Ukraine’s failure, yet again, to meet the requirements of foreign lenders, noted that while there had been tens of thousands of jobs axed in the country’s industrial towns in the east, bankers viewed it as still not enough.

In Donetsk, “unemployment has officially almost doubled, to 67,500, in the past two months, and the authorities suspect that up to one-third of the 1.2 million registered workers are toiling for a small fraction of their nominal salary,” wrote the newspaper, adding, “In Makeevka, with 400,000 residents, just outside Donetsk, the Kirov factory laid off nearly all its workers in December and January. Now, an average of four people vie for every job. In nearby towns, that ratio soars to 70 or 80 people for every available job, officials say.”

But, citing the comments of a bank analyst in Kiev, the Times observed that still more was expected. Another steel producer in Donetsk, the analyst said, “could easily cut 20,000 to 25,000 people and keep the same output.”

Ruined Factory in Konstantinovka in Donetsk Oblast July 2008 (Creative Commons)

As part of the process of making Ukraine’s economy “more competitive,” the IMF and the EU have demanded the raising of the retirement age, the ending of fuel subsidies that enable households to afford to heat their homes and cook their meals, and the selling-off of the country’s highly profitable timber and agricultural lands. The latter in particular has been long sought, as Ukraine has 25 percent of the world’s “black earth,” some of the most naturally fertile soil in the world.

All of this and more have now been achieved. A 2017 study of Ukraine’s garment industry published in the Journal for Labour and Social Affairs in Europe, noted that the Kiev government has introduced the following measures in response to the demands of the international financial institutions and EU representatives over the last several years. It has:

• Frozen the legal minimum wage and stopped adjusting it to the cost of living
• Reduced social welfare payments and pensions by ending cost of living indexing
• Changed the labor code to restrict union access to workplaces, make the disclosure of “commercial secrets” grounds for dismissal, require unionized workers to agree to overtime, end limits on the number of overtime hours workers must accept, permit factories to monitor workers using cameras and other technologies, and end the requirement that unions agree to a layoff
• Increased utility charges dramatically
• Placed a moratorium on inspections, including labor inspections, in small businesses (This resulted in the growth of wage arrears from 1.3 million hryvnia in 2015 to 1.9 million in September 2016.)
• Decreased employers’ mandatory social insurance contributions, thereby ensuring there is less money for social services and pensions
• Cut the number of public sector employees
• Canceled family payments for childbirth, childcare and schools.
• Closed hundreds of hospitals
• Stripped higher education and cultural institutions of funding

As the authors of this study note, all of this is extremely unpopular with ordinary people. Polls have found that 70 percent of citizens are upset about the growth of inequality, 58 percent about job loss, and 54 percent about “interference of western countries in the governance of Ukraine.”

But this continues unabated. The ongoing assault on Ukraine’s healthcare system has been particularly severe. Due to demands from the IMF and the terms of Ukraine’s EU Association Agreement, the country has been implementing healthcare reforms. On the grounds of increasing “efficiency,” it stopped paying medical institutions on the basis of their number of beds and instead on how many patients they treat. This has resulted in the layoff of an estimated 50,000 doctors and the shuttering of 332 hospitals, with rural areas being especially hard hit and left, for all intents and purposes, without medical services.

According to the Ministry of Health, as of 2020 half of Ukraine’s remaining 2,200 hospitals were underfunded. An article that same year in the online press Current Time reported that the director of Dnipropetrovsk Regional Rehabilitation Hospital went on a hunger strike in late April of that year in protest. “That month, the National Health Service slashed the facility’s monthly financing by more than five times, she told Current Time: from 2 million hryvnia, or about $75,224, to 237,000 hryvnia or $8,914.”

All of this left, in the words of Ukrainian President Zelensky in 2020, Ukraine “medically naked” when it came time to combat the coronavirus. COVID-19 has infected over 5 million Ukrainians and killed 112,000. After Zelensky’s pleading with the United States to send vaccines to help, in the summer of 2021 the Biden administration finally dispatched 2 million doses, enough to cover less than 4 percent of the country’s population.

Burial of Deceased Covid-19 patient in Chernivtsi Ukraine 2020 (Creative Commons)

Between just 2008 and 2019, Ukraine shed over 1.4 million industrial jobs, according to the data analysis firm CIEC. When measured in constant US dollars, World Bank data shows that the country’s GDP has now declined by 56 percent compared to what it was when it was still a Soviet republic in 1989.

According to President Zelensky, Ukraine is “paying off billions of U.S. dollars annually to international organizations.” And still, as of that year Ukraine had $40 billion of “non-performing loans”—i.e., debt it could not pay. In 2022, on top of the interest on its IMF loan, the country was supposed to pony up another $35 million to cover IMF “surcharges” in February and $29 million in March.

This disaster has been achieved not simply through the domination of Ukraine’s economy by foreign capital, but through direct American and European political interference. Over the last 15 years, the country has experienced two so-called “revolutions”—one in 2004 and one in 2014. In both cases, Washington and Brussels were directly involved, backing forces in the country that were committed to drawing the country out of Russia’s orbit and shoring up its relation with the West. They had no problem with neo-Nazi street fighters doing the dirty work necessary to secure their preferred outcome.

In the latest exercise in “popular democracy,” Ukraine’s 2014 “Revolution of Dignity,” US State Department official Victoria Nuland was caught on tape speaking to America’s ambassador to Ukraine with instructions as to what the composition of the new government in Kiev would be. Washington’s choice, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, was installed as prime minister and immediately signed a deal paving the groundwork for Ukraine’s eventual ascension to the EU, resulting in the implementation of all of the policies listed above.

These historical facts are dismissed in the Western media as nothing but “Russian disinformation.” The Kremlin has its own reasons, which have nothing to do with concern over the well-being and freedom of Ukrainians, for drawing attention to the dirty role played by Washington and Brussels in Ukraine’s “revolutions.” But the use of these facts by the Putin government to promote Russian nationalism and justify its criminal invasion of Ukraine does not make the facts themselves untrue.

Ukrainian economic and political sovereignty, the democratic and social rights of its population, have been systematically and grossly violated for thirty years by the US and its NATO allies. No one in Washington, Brussels, or elsewhere has ever lost a minute’s sleep over the death of a Ukrainian man, woman, or child from poverty, ill health, job loss, or COVID.

Rather, they have orchestrated, welcomed, and profited off of Ukraine’s social misery. For them, ordinary Ukrainians are now little more than war materiel to be expended in the battle with Russia, whose working class they are also now strangling to death with economic sanctions, despite years of decrying their repression under the evil dictator, Vladimir Putin.

Strike by airport security staff halts hundreds of flights across Germany

Marianne Arens

Once again, a protest strike by security staff has brought flight operations in Germany to a virtual standstill. At eight airports—Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Bremen, Hanover, Stuttgart, Cologne/Bonn, and Düsseldorf—there was almost 100 percent support for Tuesday’s strike by security personnel. Passengers could only disembark at these airports and could not take off. Several hundred flights had to be cancelled.

Warning strike at Terminal 1, Frankfurt Rhein-Main Airport (Credit: WSWS)

The employers’ association, the Federal Association of Aviation Security Companies (BDLS), rigorously refuses to negotiate seriously on the workers’ demands. It firmly rejects even the very limited demand to increase the hourly wage of security staff by one euro and to equalise wages nationwide. Talks are to continue next Thursday in Raunheim, Hesse.

Many workers are angry, forcing service sector union Verdi to call an almost nationwide, all-day protest strike. The turnout made it clear the strength and power airport security staff wield.

At the largest hub in Frankfurt, there was only emergency service. According to the operator Fraport, 108 of 790 planned flights were cancelled by noon. Severe restrictions were also reported from Berlin and Hamburg. Hamburg airport reported that all 88 planned departures had to be cancelled. At Berlin-Brandenburg airport, according to a spokeswoman, about 100 of 150 planned departures were cancelled, and of the 150 or so arrivals, about 50 were cancelled.

At Düsseldorf Airport, 140 out of 260 departures and arrivals were cancelled, at Cologne Bonn Airport 50 of 60 take-offs could not take place, and in Stuttgart, 40 of 50 departures were cancelled.

The German Air Transport Association angrily called the strike disproportionate.

However, despite the security workers' willingness to fight and the enormous solidarity among other airport staff, Verdi is working towards a rotten compromise. The employers' association’s negotiators know the union well since they used to be Verdi and German Confederation of Trade Unions (DGB) officials themselves.

Negotiator Rainer Friebertshäuser and other representatives of the aviation industry have criticised the workers’ demands as “unrealistic” and indignantly claim they would lead to a 40 percent wage increase. Matthias von Randow, BDLS Chief Executive, even declared that the workers were “putting at risk the economic revival after the pandemic-related collapse” with their demands.

Both Friebertshäuser and von Randow are long-time Social Democratic Party (SPD) and union members. Von Randow previously served as Head of Division of the DGB Federal Executive Committee, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Transport and Director of Air Berlin. Friebertshäuser, after 40 years of Verdi membership, is now the labour director of FraSec, the subsidiary of the Frankfurt airport operator Fraport.

Several strikers at Frankfurt's Terminal 1 spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about the angry outburst by management.

Rainer, who has worked in airport security for over twenty years, said, “We should make demands in double digits from the start. Judging by the wage sacrifices during the pandemic and the last few years, the constantly rising prices and the inflation that is yet to come, that would be appropriate and necessary.”

His colleague described how “We have shifts here around the clock. Many come from far away and already pay double for petrol now. Others have to finance a small second home or a room around here.”

Andrea, who has worked at the airport for 15 years, raised the question: “Where has all the money gone? The corporations have collected billions in the pandemic, but workers are supposed to do without.” When told that the government was in the process of raising an extra 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) to prepare for World War III, Andrea said, “It's all madness, it will only lead to more war. Nobody wants that.”

Another worker said, “They'd better give us more money. We managed relatively well the last few years. But now everything is getting more expensive, and there is really a lot of work stress here because so many colleagues have had to leave and have not been replaced.”

Wolfgang, who has worked in airport control for 18 years, explained that at least ten percent of the workforce has been cut during the pandemic. “Everyone with a temporary contract had to leave because the [government’s] short-time allowance wasn't paid for them,” he reported. “In addition, contracts were terminated with long-time colleagues who still had contracts as public service employees.”

When airport control was privatised, these workers were subjected to special arrangements under EU law. “These contracts have all now expired, and so colleagues with 30 years of experience have had to resign,” they said.

Wolfgang and his colleagues also witnessed how the service provider WISAG at Frankfurt Airport dismissed long-time workers overnight and replaced them with temporary staff. They agreed that airport workers must fight together not to be divided and played off against each other.

Wolfgang told how he had started at the airport with an hourly wage of 7.50 euro: “Little by little we worked our way up, and thanks to the big strike of 2014 we finally had halfway decent wages.”

Today, however, workers were confronted with the fact that the shareholders “only skim off the profits.” He did not see why the workers should give up their demands: “There is money for everything. They pulled 100 billion euro out of a hat for the Bundeswehr, but we are supposed to do all the work with far too few staff.”

Commenting on the fact that senior Verdi officials like Friebertshäuser openly switch sides, Wolfgang said, “For union officials above a certain pay grade, this is just a job like any other. That's why they grab it if someone offers them an even more lucrative career.”

Russia steps up political repression as economic crisis intensifies

Andrea Peters

As the economic impact of anti-Russian sanctions is becoming increasingly felt in the country, the Putin government is intensifying political repression of critics. The Kremlin is concerned that a sharp economic downturn will provoke mass social opposition and frictions within the ruling class, which forces hostile to him will utilize to drive him from power and realize the “regime change” agenda that is openly advocated in Washington.

On Tuesday, a Russian court found Putin oppositionist Alexei Navalny guilty of contempt of court and multiple charges of fraud. The prosecutor is requesting that Judge Margarita Kotova sentence Navalny to 13 years in prison and slap him with a 1.2 million ruble fine for supposed theft of 350 million rubles from his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. (AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov, File)

He is already serving a 2.5-year term for parole violations. Navalny was taken into custody upon voluntarily returning to Russia in January 2021 after receiving treatment in Germany for alleged poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok, which the West insists was done at the direction of the Kremlin. This charge—and the poisoning with Novichok itself—has never been proven, and there are many forces that have benefited from his illness, not the least of which is Washington. The West has uniformly turned the right-wing, pro-market, immigrant-hating Navalny into an icon of democracy.

The extension of Navalny’s jail sentence was followed by news on Thursday that Anatoly Chubais, a longtime leading figure in Russian politics, adviser to President Putin, envoy for the Kremlin on climate policy, and recently board chairman of Rusnano, the state’s nanotechnology corporation, has quit the government over the Ukraine war. While reports suggest he has left the country, his whereabouts remain unclear.

Chubais’ abandonment of the Putin government is one of many signs that splits are emerging within the Russian elite. Several of the country’s leading oligarchs have publicly stated their opposition to the invasion of Ukraine and even used social media to display photos of Putin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered in Moscow in 2015.

According to the business daily Kommersant, the Kremlin is considering suspending gubernatorial elections slated to take place this September, either postponing them or placing the choice of governor in the hands of local legislatures. While there is an effort to window dress this action with the claim that it will be done due to the financial strain placed on regions for holding elections, as Kommersant reported, the “sociological” reason is that “unemployment, the shrinking of available consumer products, deficits of essential goods, and the growth of prices” are expected to significantly erode support for the government by the fall.

The backdrop to the deepening political crisis in Russia is growing signs that sanctions and the mass exodus of foreign corporations from the Russian market are taking a massive toll.

The Yale School of Management reports that in total 330 companies have either pulled out entirely from Russia or suspended operations, although the number is likely much higher. Authorities in Saint Petersburg stated that 400 foreign firms have departed from just that city alone in the last several weeks.

As a result, layoffs are mounting, with tens of thousands being “furloughed.” The aviation industry is being particularly hard hit, due to the suspension of much international air traffic to and from Russia and the closure of airspace. Moscow’s largest airport, Sheremetyevo Alexander S. Pushkin International Airport, has temporarily cut its workforce by 20 percent due to a 70 percent decline in activity at its facility. It has closed three terminals, two business lounges, three airstrips and an interterminal train, as well as frozen investment and ended all nonessential expenditures.

Krasnodar International Airport is furloughing 40 percent of its employees and paying them only two-thirds of their regular wages. Platov International Airport in Rostov is also shrinking its workforce, although by how much has not yet been reported. Urals Airlines announced that it is preparing lists of workers, including pilots and flight attendants, whose jobs will be placed temporarily on hold in order to “save” the company. The charter airline Royal Flights has ceased operating entirely.

The auto industry, which has seen dozens of international firms pull out in recent weeks, is also facing a jobs crisis. AvtozVaz, which has plants in Izhevsk, Tolyatti, Khabarovsk and elsewhere, is furloughing thousands of workers for varying amounts of time—from a few days to a few weeks. They report that workers are being paid two-thirds of the “average” wage during that time.

Avtotor, the home to a BMW factory in Kaliningrad, is taking similar measures. There is an effort to cover up the consequences of the jobs crisis, with Avtotor officials stating that workers are being sent to health resorts during their downtime.

The federal government just released countrywide data on furloughs, with the statistical agency declaring that about 96,000 workers have temporarily been laid off. While the word “furlough” is being used everywhere, it is clear that given the state of the crisis many of these Rosstat positions will not be coming back soon, if ever.

The news outlet RBC reported that analysts are seeing the number of job vacancies in Saint Petersburg fall by between 8 and 24 percent, with the insurance, human resources and automotive industries seeing the biggest decline. In the last few weeks, 12,000 people, who listed themselves as formerly employed in the city at a foreign corporation that has now pulled out of Russia, have posted their resumes on the online job hunting site hh.ru. Restaurants, IT companies, auto plants and transportation firms, in particular, are all freezing hiring.

A March 21 article in bne IntelliNews cites a recent study that identifies Russia’s “pharmaceutical and chemical industries, aircraft and ship manufacturing, car manufacturing and plastics, and electronics” as being the most vulnerable to job losses because of the high percentage of firms that have been hit by sanctions. They predict that 6.2 million people in the transportation and storage sectors and 1.5 million in the finance and insurance sectors will face layoffs in the near term.

While attempting to hide and sugar coat the burgeoning disaster, authorities at the local and national levels are clearly aware of what is coming, with Putin himself acknowledging that unemployment and inflation “will” rise. Regional governments have been receiving hundreds of millions of rubles of financing to subsidize local companies’ wage obligations and to help keep workers on the books, as well as fund various efforts to support the “temporarily” unemployed.

Saint Petersburg, for instance, just announced plans to find work for the jobless in government-funded “social labor”—i.e., some form of community services. It will also give enterprises up to 60,000 rubles per person to retain them on their payroll. They are preparing measures to handle the needs of as many as 40,000 workers.

One way in which the scale of the crisis is being hidden is that workers are being kept on the books but not being paid. Wage arrears are a growing problem, with the official total value of Russia’s unpaid salaries growing in February by 1.7 percent to 930.9 million rubles.

On Wednesday, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced federal level plans to spend 437 million rubles from the country’s reserve fund on support for the unemployed and those in danger of losing their jobs but provided no further details as to how the money would be used.

However, inflation is rapidly eroding both workers’ wages and the support given to enterprises. In city after city, the cost of basic foodstuffs in rising even as the value of the ruble plummets. The price of sugar, of which Russia is a major exporter, has risen by 15 percent nationwide over just the last two weeks. In Yalta, which is on the now-Russian territory of Crimea, the local government has said it may nationalize the local food market in order to bring runaway prices under control.

Last Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov warned against panic at the stores, telling reporters, “Russians have absolutely no need to run to the shops and buy up buckwheat, sugar and toilet paper.”

The Russian economic crisis is hitting the entire former Soviet sphere, in particular, parts of Central Asia dependent on remittances from family working in Russia. In Tajikistan, where the average monthly salary is $250, the value of the money workers send home has fallen by one-third. And many Tajik workers have lost their jobs in Russia altogether, returning home to already jobless communities.

As Omicron BA.2 threat grows, US COVID-19 testing, treatment funds exhausted

Patrick Martin

Amid mounting evidence of a new surge in coronavirus driven by the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, federal funds for COVID-19 testing and treatment and future mass vaccinations are running out.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Friday, March 18, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

At a White House briefing Wednesday, officials of the coronavirus task force warned that the congressional failure to approve a $15.6 billion funding package last week meant that federal financial support for a wide range of programs would be ending over the next month.

The first cutbacks have already been made, as the administration has reduced the supply of monoclonal antibody treatments being distributed to the states by 35 percent. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told the Wednesday briefing that this cut would be followed by ending federal reimbursement of the cost of COVID testing and treatment for the uninsured, and ending federal funding of vaccinations for the uninsured sometime in early April.

White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients, who is leaving the administration at the end of the month, told the briefing, “The virus is not waiting for Congress to act. With every minute this funding request is stalled, we’re losing our ability to protect people and be prepared.”

Zients was speaking only of the mitigation efforts conducted by the administration over the past year, which are nothing like a genuine campaign to suppress the deadly virus and actually protect the population. But even these limited actions are headed for the scrap heap.

The specific cutbacks outlined by Zients included a hold on placing orders for a second round of booster shots (fourth doses) of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, if these prove to be useful in extending immunity or combating further variants of coronavirus. He added, “If things change, and if there’s a need for that new vaccine, a new formulation, for example, a very specific vaccine, we won’t be able to secure doses for the American people.”

Zients said that funding has already been provided to secure a full supply of vaccine doses for children younger than age 6 when and if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorizes administration of those vaccines. Moderna announced Tuesday it was submitting a formal request for FDA approval for its version of the vaccine for young children.

At the same briefing, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), confirmed that BA.2 now accounts for about 35 percent of new COVID-19 cases in the United States, and that in some regions this figure is over 50 percent.

BA.2 is significantly more infectious than Omicron BA.1, the subvariant which has wreaked such a deadly toll over the past three months. BA.2 has largely displaced BA.1 wherever it has had the chance, including in Britain and much of continental Europe, and it is now doing so in the United States.

In just the past week, BA.2 has gone from 22 percent of coronavirus infections to 35 percent, while in New England the figure has jumped from 39 percent a week ago to 55 percent. Other areas with higher levels of BA.2 include California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Texas.

Perhaps the most immediate damage would be the impact on the use of monoclonal antibodies such as Pfizer’s new oral antiviral Paxlovid, which has cut rates of hospitalization by as much as 90 percent when administered after the initial infection is detected. This is particularly valuable for millions of immunocompromised people and elderly people with severe underlying health conditions. Effective use of these treatments requires early detection, and therefore frequent and regular testing.

The funding crisis will lead to the shutting down of test administration facilities, cutbacks at laboratories which process test results, and a delay in orders to the manufacturers like Pfizer.

According to a White House fact sheet, “the federal government has no more funding for additional monoclonals, including a planned order for March 25.” This amounts to a death sentence for a large number of poor and uninsured, since the cost of a monoclonal treatment paid for by the patient runs to $2,000 per course.

For another treatment, AstraZeneca’s Evusheld, which in one study reduced the risk of immunocompromised people developing COVID-19 infection by 77 percent, the Biden administration has only bought enough to provide 850,000 courses of treatment. A planned purchase of a second allotment will be dropped unless funding is restored.

The looming cutback in monoclonal antibody purchases and distribution is a particularly glaring demonstration of the class savagery that characterizes the response of the US ruling elite to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The death toll has reached the 1 million mark in the United States, its overwhelming majority consisting of working people, the elderly, and those with severe underlying health conditions, particularly those who were uninsured and therefore frequently untreated until too late.

The wealthy and powerful, by contrast, rarely die even when they contract COVID-19, because they have access to the type of all-encompassing medical treatment, including highly expensive ones like monoclonal antibodies, which first came to widespread public attention when they were administered to then President Donald Trump at the Walter Reed Medical Center in October 2020.

In the course of the past three months, in the Omicron upsurge, a raft of well-known political figures have contracted COVID-19, but they have so far suffered no deaths and few hospitalizations, because they had ready access to a Trump-style battery of treatments.

Most recently, former president Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton revealed they had tested positive for COVID, along with White House press secretary Jen Psaki (for the second time), and Douglas Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris.

No less than 12 US senators and nearly 60 members of the House of Representatives have tested positive for COVID-19 since Omicron emerged as the dominant variant in early December 2021. The actual number is likely far higher, since many Republican legislators would not acknowledge the infection or even undergo testing for it.

BA.2 variant fueling new COVID surge in Australia

Oscar Grenfell

A rapid spread of the BA.2 variant of COVID, more infectious and deadly than the original strain of Omicron, is such that it can no longer be hidden by a government-media cover-up. BA.2 was first detected in Australia months ago, and by the end of February was reportedly accounting for a third of new infections in New South Wales (NSW), the country’s most-populous state.

Despite the circulation of a variant that is resulting in unprecedented surges in a number of countries around the world, Australian governments and the official media have sought to present the pandemic as a thing of the past.

A pedestrian walks past vacant office space in Sydney, Australia, Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

The consequences of the “live with the virus” policy, however, are emerging, with infections now reaching levels not seen since the height of the Omicron tsunami of December–January.

As with every previous surge, the current spread is not primarily the result of the biological characteristics of the virus. Rather, it is the outcome of deliberate government policies that have subordinated public health to private profit.

A speech by Premier Dominic Perrottet at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia summed up the conspiracy by the political establishment, to force the population to “live with the virus,” ensuring new waves of infection.

Perrottet explained that his partnership with Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews had been the central factor in allowing the governments to begin the new stage of the “reopening” in late January, early February. The centrepiece of this was the herding of millions of students and teachers back into the classrooms.

Perrottet explained that he and “Dan” had “worked together” on a daily basis. They had devised a tag team act. If there were criticism of the reopening policies of Perrottet, an extreme right-winger, he could point to identical measures being implemented by Andrews, who was previously identified with limited public health measures. Andrews, meanwhile, could present his lockstep march with Perrottet as proof that his latter-day conversion to the “let it rip” program was sincere.

The collaboration, overseen by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, had “worked perfectly,” Perrottet told the big business audience. It had succeeded in “pushing back” against a “campaign” of epidemiologists and other medical experts, who had warned that the school reopening would result in mass illness and death.

The partnership between Perrottet and Andrews is only the sharpest expression of a complete bipartisanship on the pandemic. Each stage of the “reopening” has been formulated by the national cabinet, composed of the state and territory leaders, most of them from Labor, and Morrison.

What has been the consequence? Hundreds of thousands of students have been infected in the past month-and-a-half. Despite a government insistence that schools remain open no matter what, some have been compelled to send entire year groups home because the spread of COVID means there are not enough teachers. The school transmission is fuelling a much wider uptick.

Nationally, 61,975 new infections were reported yesterday. That is the highest single-day tally since January 21, at the tail end of a tsunami of Omicron cases that overwhelmed the testing system over the summer holiday period. From March 16 to March 23, national infections surpassed 50,000 on four occasions and 40,000 on three.

The number of active cases, i.e., those people who have tested positive and remain infectious, is also ballooning. The figure has exceeded 420,000 today, up from fewer than 300,000 on March 16 and less than 200,000 on February 16.

Because the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing system was dismantled during the December–January wave and its aftermath, the majority of new infections everyday are being self-reported after less reliable rapid antigen tests (RATs), generally administered by the infected person.

At the height of a Delta outbreak last year, a record of more than 250,000 PCR tests were conducted in the state of NSW alone. Now, most days fewer than 100,000 PCR results are being reported across the entire country. Some days the figure is far lower, with just 39,917 PCR test results revealed on Tuesday.

The arrangement is guaranteed to result in a substantial undercount of true infection numbers.

The absence of mass surveillance testing means that the vast majority of asymptomatic cases will not be detected. The RATs system, whereby individuals are supposed to notify the authorities of positive results, but not negative returns, means that there are no longer any accurate positivity figures. The positivity rate, indicating the proportion of positive results from the total number of tests conducted, is crucial to determining how widespread viral transmission is.

In NSW, daily infections are now approaching 25,000, having been in the teens for weeks, after lows of around 6,000 at the end of February. Health Minister Brad Hazzard declared earlier this month that BA.2 will likely be the dominant strain by the end of March, but the absence of mass genomic sequencing means the proportion of new cases that are BA.2 is unknown.

Other jurisdictions where infection numbers are rapidly rising, however, indicate that BA.2 is probably already dominant in large swathes of the country.

In the north-eastern state of Queensland, cases have increased by 15 percent over the past week, with daily infections around 9,000. The state Labor government’s chief health officer, John Gerrard, revealed that 58 percent of cases sequenced over the past fortnight have been of BA.2.

Summing up the criminality of all the governments, Gerrard blithely declared that 'We can reasonably expect hospitalisation numbers will increase in the coming days and weeks.” Gerrard added: 'We have always known that the virus will change, it will mutate and with that, cases will wax and wane.'

In reality, the emergence of new and potentially more lethal variants is the direct consequence of the decision by governments to allow COVID to circulate freely, on the grounds that the public health measures required to reduce transmission would impact on production and business profits. Gerrard, while acknowledging that BA.2 is more infectious even than Omicron, insisted that there would be no reintroduction of an indoor mask-mandate or any other safety restrictions.

A similar increase of infections is occurring in most states and territories, meaning that the new variant is likely taking hold across the country. This includes in Western Australia, where the Labor government ended a successful suppression strategy that had largely spared the state from the December–January Omicron surge. Daily infections have skyrocketed from the double digits in mid-February, to over 8,400 yesterday.

The patchwork of often limited sequencing data means that an accurate national picture of the spread of BA.2 does not exist. According to GISAID, a global science initiative that tracks variants, some 69 percent of recent samples from across the country are of BA.2.

In several of those countries where BA.2 has rapidly become the dominant variant, infections, hospitalisations and deaths have exceeded even the Omicron surge. Hong Kong has been hit with an outbreak that for a period was claiming more daily deaths, per million people, than any upsurge of the virus, in any country, over the past two years.

Hospitalisations are already rising, with 2,138 patients admitted across the country, up from 1,782 on March 16. Each of the past three days have seen more than 25 deaths. As has been the case in every previous wave, both deaths and hospitalisations are lagging indicators, showing up in the figures weeks after infections rise. Some 3,577 fatalities have been reported this year, compared with 2,239 in the first two years of the pandemic.

The national cabinet has responded by seeking to ensure that the surge does nothing to disrupt business operations, with policies that will only result in further mass infection.

The body also called for a “transition to not routinely undertaking PCR testing in otherwise healthy people with mild respiratory illness and promote voluntary self-isolation while symptomatic for this group.” This policy effectively means forcing COVID-infected workers to remain on the job. In comments after the meeting, Prime Minister Scott Morrison made clear that the changes were dictated, not by public health, but by the need to ensure businesses did not suffer “labour shortages.”

According to media reports, health authorities in a number of states have voiced concerns over the plan to scrap the close contact regulations, warning that it will exacerbate the surge. Governments, however, are insisting that it is necessary to press ahead with the homicidal “live with the virus” program.

Britain bans RT

Laura Tiernan

Britain’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) stripped Russian state news channel RT of its license to broadcast last Friday. Ofcom ruled that RT was not “fit and proper” to broadcast in the UK and that failure to revoke its license risked “undermining audiences’ trust in regulated broadcast news”.

RT has been off-air in the UK since March 2, after European Union (EU) sanctions against RT and Sputnik cut its feed from satellite companies in France and Luxembourg to Britain’s Sky, Freesat and Freeview. The EU’s sanctions also cancelled RT from social media platforms Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok and Google’s YouTube and Google News search.

Ofcom revokes RT’s broadcast licence (screenshot: ofcom.org.uk)

The British government has seized on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, provoked by NATO’s expansion to Russia’s border, to ramp-up state censorship and anti-Russia hysteria. Ofcom’s ban is the culmination of efforts to strip RT of its license since the channel was first aired in 2010 (its first breach, while licensed to Information TV, was in 2011).

RT is a state-funded media outlet promoting the views and aims of Russia’s capitalist oligarchic government. The WSWS holds no brief for the Putin regime and opposes its invasion of Ukraine that divides the Russian and Ukrainian working class and plays into the hands of NATO. But RT’s closure by Britain, the US and EU is a reactionary measure stoking anti-Russia sentiment, demonising the Russian people and laying the ground for war.

On February 23, one day before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Boris Johnson called on Ofcom to investigate RT. He did so at the urging of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer who denounced RT in parliament, demanding “will the Prime Minister now ask Ofcom to review its licence?”

Johnson replied that Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries had written to Ofcom to review the matter, “but we live in a democracy and a country that believes in free speech. I think it is important that we leave it to Ofcom to decide which media organisations to ban, rather than politicians—that is what Russia does.”

Ofcom, whose CEO Melanie Dawes was appointed by Secretary of State Priti Patel in January, moved swiftly. On February 28 it announced it was investigating 15 complaints about RT’s Ukraine war coverage. By March 2, it was investigating 14 more.

Ofcom’s March 18 notice cancelling all three broadcast licenses held by RT’s owner, ANO TV Novosti, was couched in the language of “impartiality” and “freedom”. The 12-page notice cites “due impartiality” 29 times and “freedom of expression” or “freedom of opinion” 12 times. It is a document that reeks of hypocrisy and is a new milestone in wartime censorship, establishing a precedent to instantly close down media organisations which challenge British foreign policy.

Ofcom said its “expedited process” for banning RT was justified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, citing the UN General Assembly’s March 2 resolution condemning Russian aggression, and sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland.

Needless to say, Ofcom did not strip the BBC, CNN or hundreds of other media outlets of their broadcast license for promoting state propaganda in support of the US-led invasion and military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. These war crimes under international law led to one million deaths but did not trigger sanctions or a UN resolution condemning US-British military aggression.

In further justification of its expedited ban, Ofcom cited repressive new laws introduced by the Russian government making “Public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” punishable by imprisonment for up to three years or a fine of up to 1.5 million rubles; or up to 15 years if such false information results in “grave consequences”.

What then of Julian Assange, who has already spent 10 years arbitrarily detained in the UK and faces 175 years in a US federal prison under the Espionage Act (1917) for publishing true information exposing war crimes, secret rendition, torture and illegal mass surveillance by the US, British and allied governments? Home Secretary Priti Patel is currently preparing to sign his US extradition warrant.

ANO TV Novosti was denied even the semblance of due process. Its ban was announced despite Ofcom admitting it had concluded none of its investigations into complaints about RT’s war coverage. Novosti was initially given just two days to respond to Ofcom’s allegations that it was not “fit and proper” to hold a license, and the regulator refused to allow RT the time it requested to access legal representation in the UK.

Britain’s anti-Russia juggernaut was proceeding full speed. On March 15, Margarita Simonyan, RT’s Editor-in-Chief, was subject to UK sanctions banning her travel and freezing her personal assets.

Not only had RT failed to meet the “due partiality” requirements of the Communications Act (2003), Ofcom explained, but its reporting on Ukraine had breached the Act’s more stringent “special impartiality” obligations in “matters of political and industrial controversy and matters relating to current public policy”.

Ofcom’s ban has shut down a news channel with a quarterly viewership of 2.5 million people—a decision made “to protect audiences from harm”. John Pilger, George Galloway and Ken Livingstone are among those who made regular appearances on RT, their criticisms of Britain’s neo-colonial wars long since expunged from the BBC and other major networks.

The RT phone app (screenshot)

Ofcom’s March 18 notice reviewed ANO TV Novosti’s “compliance history” in Britain, including 15 breaches of its Broadcasting Code between 2012 and 2017. Seven of these involved alleged breaches of due impartiality and/or due accuracy. RT was in fact sanctioned for airing material that contradicted British/NATO war propaganda, including:

Russia Today, 21 August 2011, claimed that Libyan rebels opposing Muammar Gaddafi lacked popular support and that NATO’s airborne campaign in Libya was being accompanied by efforts to manufacture mass consent for regime change.

RT’sSyrian Diary,March 2013, exposed sectarian atrocities committed by Syria’s Islamist opposition groups who were being universally hailed as “freedom fighters” by the US and British press.

RT’sThe Truthseeker: Genocide of Eastern Ukraine, July 2014, depicted mass repression and displacement of civilians in Eastern Ukraine by the Ukrainian military and far-right militias. RT’s programme cited United Nation’s sources on the scale of the refugee crisis.

In 2018, RT was hit with further sanctions after it ridiculed lurid allegations that Russia ordered the “novichok” poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Canterbury, England. The unsubstantiated claims were parroted by the entire British press, unleashing a tidal wave of anti-Russian jingoism and giving succour to NATO’s military build-up in the East.

Ofcom says it had “considerable engagement” with RT over its “section 5” breaches between 2012 and 2017, including “several meetings” with Ofcom’s Orwellian “Standards and Audience Protection team”. Novosti argued that Ofcom should consider RT’s publicly stated aim of “providing an alternative perspective on major global events”. Its appeals were ignored.

Of course, RT’s coverage of global events generally bears the clumsy stamp of the Russian government. The channel promotes all manner of far-right movements, including the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and Nigel Farage in Britain, reflecting the nationalist outlook of the Russian state. But GB News and Fox promote similar views and neither channel is under the slightest threat from Ofcom.

It is symptomatic of the war-fever gripping the upper middle class that not a word of protest has been heard from a single prominent intellectual or journalist condemning the state ban on RT. The editorial staff at the Guardian are the surest reflection of this social layer, lacking even a scintilla of democratic instinct and eager to ingratiate themselves with Britain’s military and intelligence agencies whenever and wherever possible.

“Will Ofcom’s decision to ban RT stop Kremlin message reaching UK audiences?” the Guardian ’s headline demanded last Friday. Its conformist, pro-imperialist journalists, including Luke Harding, Carole Cadwalladr and Jonathan Freedland have been unceasing in their efforts to pollute public consciousness.

UK schools in crisis as COVID surges, with cases highest among youngest and unvaccinated

Margot Miller

The rampant spread of the BA.2 COVID variant through British schools is barely mentioned in the media.

Mitigation measures in education settings, which were already at a bare minimum, were removed entirely on January 19. Twice-weekly free testing ended in most schools on February 21. On April 1, it will end in special schools, leaving children with comorbidities undefended against the virus.

The latest figures published Tuesday by the Department for Education (DfE) showed that more than 200,000 pupils could not attend school March 17 due to COVID-19. Recorded cases had tripled in two weeks. Of these, 159,000 pupils were absent with a confirmed COVID case—up from 45,000 on March 3. Another 16,000 pupils had a suspected case of coronavirus, up from 6,000 earlier in the month.

Children have breakfast at the Little Darling home-based Childcare after nurseries and primary schools partially reopen in England after the COVID-19 lockdown in London, June 1, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

Most worrying is the increase in the number of serious COVID cases involving younger children, including babies. Data compiled by Safe Education for All member @TigressEllie, found that admissions to hospital among those aged 0-5 doubled in two weeks, from 218 to 432 on March 9. A similar increase took place for 6-17-year-olds.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) data reveals the highest infection rates in all age groups are among 2-11-year-olds. This age group remains unvaccinated in the UK, yet is expected to attend pre-school settings, nurseries and primary schools with no mitigation measures in place at all—no masks, no appropriate ventilation, no social distancing.

The above graph shows child COVID hospital admissions throughout the pandemic. It was published by Independent Sage member Professor Christina Pagel. Referring to all age groups, Pagel tweeted March 19, “deaths within 28 days of +ve test [positive] are flat in UK as a whole, but this wave is still recent… and might end up higher than first Omicron wave.”

Rising case numbers have prompted scientists to demand the Conservative government roll out vaccinations for 5-11- year-olds. This was approved by the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation on February 16, but no plans have been enacted for the necessary mass vaccination campaign.

The Guardian reported in January data from the US Centres for Disease Control showing unvaccinated 5-11-year-olds were three times more likely to end up in hospital than those with two jabs. To date, only a quarter of 12-15-year-olds have received a second dose in the UK.

Meanwhile, the number of schools in England self-reporting COVID cases is accelerating. Figures compiled by parent Daniella Modos -Cutter show cases in at least 167 primary schools, 27 secondary schools, 9 combined schools, three colleges and eight pre-school settings between February 28 and March 14. Schools in Essex, Greater Manchester, Gloucester, Newquay, and Cardiff and Merthyr in Wales sent classes home due to staff off sick with COVID last week.

On Monday, at least 11 schools in Hampshire closed or sent some classes home due to COVID outbreaks. Three schools in Essex have also moved to temporary online learning due to staff sickness.

Speaking to the WSWS this week, Dr. Stephen Griffin, a virologist at Leeds University said, “[L]ast autumn the government got rid of all the mitigations pretty much in schools because they felt that it was more important to get kids in school at no matter the cost and just assumed the level of harm that would happen would be acceptable. And in my view, I don’t think it has been [acceptable].”

Teachers speaking out on Twitter describe a nightmare scenario as staff struggle to maintain the education of their pupils while falling sick with COVID themselves.

A tweet by headteacher Caroline Derbyshire, shared hundreds of times, read, “So many school leaders are struggling to keep schools open because of the highest yet numbers of staff who are sick with Covid. Many schools now have alternating year groups working from home. This level of disruption seems to be going deliberately unnoticed and unreported.”

Another teacher tweeted: “In my year 2 class this week I had 3 children off with chicken pox and 5 off with Covid. Since September last year there have been 2 days when I have had every single member of my 30 strong class in school. Yes - 2 days!”

One tweet read, in relation to the pandemic, “It’s NOT over. It’s worse than ever. It’s hammering schools. After 2 years this is unsustainable. We can’t live with it when it’s making people too unwell to learn and work. How the hell can we be expected to operate an education system of any quality as things are?”

A sufferer with Long COVID, who is campaigning for awareness of the condition, said, “Still waiting for vaccines for the under 12s in England… government has removed all covid measures, free testing gone soon as well. Schools are Covid swamps, kids and teachers off sick. It’s carnage”.

SchoolsWeek reported last week the failure of the government’s criminally irresponsible plan to plug the staffing gap with retired teachers. The Department for Education refused to publicise figures for the number of ex-staff who actually returned to the classroom.

A school leader tweeted, “I’ve held (virtual) meetings with staff all week in my school and others. The stress levels are stratospheric. The tears are common place. My friend with 30yrs teaching experience has quit EYs [Early Years] to work for National Trust. Unfilled HT [headteacher] and DHT [deputy headteacher] vacancies, schools on rolling closures.”

Another headteacher wrote, “All this talk of stopping testing and learning to live with it [the virus] ignores the fact that my staff with it are too ill to be at work and too many off at once. What am I supposed to staff my (infant) school with?”

The main responsibility for this worsening crisis lies with the education trade unions. They have worked hand in glove with the government throughout the pandemic to ensure that unsafe schools have, with a few months’ exception, remained open.

One recent tweet from a teacher read, “It’s shocking-I’ve tweeted the union so much about SATS [academic tests] going ahead and nothing! No one is doing anything! As for the supply budget [for temporary staff] that’s when you can actually get a supply as they’re all stacked!”

As a result of the unions’ suppressing teacher and parent action to close schools which serve as a major vector for the spread of COVID-19, well over three million children have been recorded infected. The virus has killed 158 children and at least 570 staff. Hundreds of thousands have or are suffering Long COVID.

Nothing will move the education unions to mobilise their hundreds of thousands of members in opposition. In response to the latest ONS figures, Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said, “Today’s survey shows the percentage of primary/nursery-aged children with Covid-19 has risen significantly in just a week, from 4% to 6.3%. This now equates to two infected pupils in every primary class on average…”

He made no call for COVID infested schools to be closed, quite the opposite, arguing, “If Boris Johnson wants us to ‘live with Covid-19’ then he must make it viable for schools and colleges to do so.” The NEU leader appealed to the government to reintroduce a few, albeit limited, safety measures in schools, and to “stop burying its head in the sand on ventilation and fund a nationwide programme of support to ensure no classroom fails to get the monitoring, air filtration, training, or building improvements required”—pleas he knows will fall on deaf ears.