The war in Ukraine is beginning to spill over the country’s borders, threatening to light the entire region on fire. The US and NATO are funneling ungodly amounts of arms to Kiev, as more than 12 million flee the violence, with masses of people pouring into the neighboring states of Poland, Romania, Hungary, Belarus, Moldova, Slovakia and Russia.
Smoke rises from the Metallurgical Combine Azovstal in Mariupol, in territory under the government of the Donetsk People's Republic, eastern Ukraine, Wednesday, May 4, 2022. [AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov]
On Tuesday, officials in Transnistria, a Russian-controlled breakaway enclave in Moldova, which borders Ukraine to the southwest, reported intercepting an unmanned vehicular drone loaded with a bomb at a radio tower. On April 26, two explosions at this and another radio transmission station in the Grigoripol district left significant damage.
Also on May 3, representatives of the region, whose independence neither Moldova nor international institutions recognize, said they foiled a planned terrorist attack on Transnistrian soil. They did not provide details, but in this and all other attacks they have blamed Ukraine. Kiev insists these are Russian false flag operations. Its military just declared that Moscow is evacuating the families of Russian servicemen and officials from Transnistria, a claim that the Kremlin has not confirmed.
The Moldovan government, which in March officially applied for EU membership, passed a law on Tuesday that authorizes the European border police and coast guard to patrol its borders. This creates conditions in which, depending on the course of the Ukraine war, EU security personnel could end up stationed directly across from Russian troops.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, declared Wednesday following a visit to the capital city Chisinau that the EU will “significantly increase [its] support to Moldova by providing its armed forces with additional military equipment.” It will also help to beef up its logistics, cyberdefense and “military-building capacities.” In short, the EU aims to turn the tiny country of 2.6 million, which competes with Ukraine for being the continent’s poorest state, into an armed camp.
In addition, tensions are rising along Ukraine’s northern border. On Wednesday, Belarus announced it is conducting a previously unplanned review of its military readiness. It is checking both its ground and air defenses, as well as its combat plans and ability to respond to crises. Minsk, an ally of Moscow, said in February that Russian troops with which it had been conducting joint exercises would remain on its territory indefinitely.
The situation along Belarus’ western frontier is also strained, with reports of Polish border guards harassing their counterparts with floodlights and slingshots. Last year, a massive conflict erupted between the governments of Minsk and Warsaw, when refugees from the Middle East, who were attempting to cross into the EU via the Belarusian-Polish border, were beaten back with water cannons.
The most significant cross-border conflict is happening in Russia. In late April, there was a series of eruptions at military sites in three regions just to the east of Ukraine—Voronezh, Belgorod and Kursk. There have been unexplained fires at ammunitions and oil depots, as well as mid-air explosions near a military base, which the Russian government says were from their air defense systems responding to an attack. Residents of the region reported hearing fighter jets take off just after the blasts. A Ukrainian drone has also allegedly been shot down 140 miles into Russian territory.
The Zelensky government has said that it neither denies nor confirms launching attacks on Russian territory, which is simply an underhanded way of acknowledging that it is behind these events while attempting to shield itself and its backers in Washington and Brussels from their grave implications.
The weaponry, intelligence and training enabling Kiev to strike across the border all come from the United States and NATO. If Ukraine is lobbing bombs on Russia, then the American and European governments are waging an undeclared war on Moscow.
On April 30, just days after these events took place, the UK’s minister of armed forces, James Heappey, declared it was “completely legitimate” for Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia.
In response, Maria Zakharova, press secretary for Russia’s foreign ministry, said, “Do we understand correctly that for the sake of ‘disrupting the logistics of military supplies’ Russia can strike at military targets on the territory of those NATO countries that supply weapons to the Kiev regime? After all, this directly leads to death and bloodshed on the territory of Ukraine. As far as I understand, Britain is one of these countries.”
The US and the EU are consciously preparing the groundwork for a European-wide war, which will rapidly spiral into a global conflict driven by Washington’s desire to crush Russia and, above all, China.
On Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Schulz appealed to Kosovo to resolve its tensions with Serbia in order that “all the western Balkans” can join the EU—in other words, be completely drawn into the anti-Russian war campaign. The region, which straddles the Adriatic, Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas, is of major geostrategic significance.
The same day, US Admiral and Chair of the NATO Military Committee Rob Bauer said that the alliance no longer considers itself limited by the 1997 Russian-NATO Founding Act. One of the central stipulations of that agreement is that NATO cannot station atomic weapons or build nuclear arms storage facilities on the territory of countries entering the alliance after it was signed. It also prohibits both sides from deploying large numbers of nuclear weapons on their borders.
Yesterday, at the European parliament in Strasbourg, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for an EU embargo on Russian oil to crush Russia’s financial system.
As Washington and its European NATO allies pour tens of billions of dollars of arms into Ukraine, risking total war with Russia, the EU is waging economic war on Russia and on the working class. An embargo would devastate both Europe and Russia: the EU imported $147.8 billion in energy from Russia last year, including $104.4 billion in crude and refined oil. Even if the EU successfully arranged alternative deliveries of oil, such an embargo would produce a surge in energy prices and massive job losses and economic hardship across Europe.
[AP Photo/Martin Meissner]
Von der Leyen announced multiple punitive measures. New EU sanctions target “high-ranking military officers and other individuals” including Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. The EU will ban Russian broadcasters from its airwaves and remove three Russian banks, including Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, from the SWIFT system for international dollar-denominated transactions.
The EU’s goal, von der Leyen said, is “the complete isolation of the Russian financial sector from the global system.”
She called to ban financial and public relations services to Russia: “the Kremlin relies on accountants, consultants and spin doctors from Europe. And this will now stop. We are banning those services from being provided to Russian companies.” Europe’s spin doctors, it appears, are to be employed exclusively in promoting NATO and EU policy.
On the oil embargo, she said, “it will not be easy. Some Member States are strongly dependent on Russian oil. But we simply have to work on it. … We will make sure that we phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion, in a way that allows us and our partners to secure alternative supply routes and minimizes the impact on global markets. This is why we will phase out Russian supply of crude oil within six months and refined products by the end of the year.”
She finally called for an “ambitious recovery package” of economic reconstruction to “pave the way for Ukraine's future inside the European Union.” She ended by calling out “Slava Ukraini,” the battle cry of the Nazi-collaborationist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during World War II and of far-right Ukrainian-nationalist militias that are fighting Russia today.
Her speech triggered a sharp rise in oil prices yesterday, up 5 percent to $107.81 per barrel in New York and $110.14 in London. Russia for its part is shipping oil to India and China and urgently building more overland pipelines to China. New projects include a pipeline from Sakhalin island via Vladivostok and the “Soyuz Vostok” pipeline via Mongolia to China. Russia is also planning inter-connector pipelines to redirect gas previously exported to Europe eastwards to China.
The EU oil embargo is economically suicidal, and EU officials are well aware that they are setting into motion a confrontation with the working class. In March, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck warned that the dislocation caused by an embargo would provoke mass strikes and protests. “I wouldn’t support an embargo on imports of fossil fuels from Russia,” he said. “I would even speak out against it, because we would threaten the social peace in the republic with that.”
Before von der Leyen’s speech yesterday, however, Habeck said Germany has made “great progress” in finding alternatives to Russian oil, though “other countries may need more time.”
The oil embargo, which EU member states must unanimously agree on, faces opposition. Hungary and Slovakia, both dependent on Russian energy, have warned that the one-year exemption the EU is offering them is insufficient. Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said, “We do not see any plans or guarantees on how a transition could be managed based on the current proposals, and how Hungary’s energy security would be guaranteed.”
On Tuesday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Hungary would oppose sanctions “that will make the transport of natural gas or oil from Russia to Hungary impossible. … It is currently physically impossible for Hungary and its economy to function without Russian oil.” Yesterday, however, he said he could support the embargo if Russian crude oil exports to Hungary were exempted.
Slovak Deputy Economy Minister Karol Galek supported action against Russia but asked for three years’ delay before the embargo begins. He warned that an embargo would cripple Austria, the Czech Republic and Ukraine: “This will destroy our European economy.”
Von der Leyen’s speech shows that though the embargo is economically suicidal, the leading EU powers are pushing for it. The NATO alliance is recklessly escalating conflict with Russia, with utter contempt for the lives and well-being of workers across Europe.
The EU is abandoning its concerns at war with Russia. As recently as April 22, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Der Spiegel that everything must be done “to avoid a direct military confrontation between NATO and a highly armed superpower like Russia, a nuclear power.” He said it was a matter of “preventing an escalation that would lead to a third world war.” Now, Germany and the EU are taking measures directly posing the risk of a nuclear Third World War.
The EU, which already in mid-April had pledged €1.5 billion in arms to Ukraine, is accelerating arms deliveries. Newly re-elected French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to send Caesar artillery systems and Milan anti-tank missiles.
After a two-day closed-door German government meeting in Schloss Meseberg, Chancellor Olaf Scholz boasted: “We have supplied from Bundeswehr stocks and are always looking at what else is possible … We have made sure that there is a list of arms deliveries that we have coordinated with industry.”
Against the Russian offensive in the Donbass, where “air defense now plays a role,” he added, “We have therefore said that we will supply up to 50 Gepard tanks suitable for this purpose. We've also said that we want to provide the support, together with our allies, that artillery can be deployed.”
Berlin plans to deliver Howitzer-2000s to Ukraine. German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Berlin has “made the decision” to train Ukrainian fighters on these howitzers, which the Netherlands are supplying. A March 16 expert report from the Bundestag's Scientific Service found that training Ukrainian soldiers on German soil constitutes war participation under international law.
The EU is demanding that the billions of euros for war with Russia be taken from the workers. Speaking after the Meseberg retreat, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner left no doubt that the German and European working class is to be made to pay.
“In view of inflation,” he stressed, “we will also have to adjust questions of financial policy in Germany and Europe.” Because of what he called “the changed financial possibilities of the state,” Lindner opposed anything that could “additionally drive up prices—for example, subsidies—or curtail the European Central Bank’s scope for action, namely by placing members of the monetary union deeper in debt.”
The working class is increasingly driven into struggle by social attacks and skyrocketing energy and food prices. Recent weeks have seen warning strikes by nurses and educators in Germany, a massive truck drivers' strike in Spain, protests in France after the presidential election, and postal workers’ strikes in Britain, among others.
“Paxlovid will remain a boutique treatment available to the well-to-do, but the majority of the working class will not be able to access it in time for it to be effective.”—Gregory Travis, health care expert and data scientist
If one thing characterized the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association that brought together 2,600 rich and famous people—establishment journalists, high-level politicians, including President Joe Biden, and Hollywood celebrities—it was their utter contempt for the impact of the pandemic on the American population. COVID-19 has killed more than one million, left more than 200,000 children orphaned, and has caused millions more to suffer from the debilitating post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, better known as Long COVID.
The derision was most notably affirmed by comedian Trevor Noah, who knowingly quipped, “It is my great honor to be speaking tonight at the nation’s most distinguished superspreader event. No, for real, people. What are we doing here?” And unsurprisingly, CNN has confirmed that dozens of reporters and staffers have since tested positive for COVID-19. Yet, without any contact tracing and testing in place, health officials are relying on text messages, social media and emails being shared among attendees to place an estimate on the number infected.
The net worth of the attendees most likely places every one of them in the top one percent of the financial pecking order. What this means is that they all have premier access to first-rate health care, with their physicians on speed dial should they need various post-infection and anti-viral treatments.
Indeed, Vice President Kamala Harris’ use of Paxlovid after contracting asymptomatic COVID-19 only brought to light the class issues behind Pfizer’s highly effective anti-viral medication that has been touted as a magic bullet by the Biden administration. Some have questioned why Harris was given the medication when she is not deemed a medically high-risk individual. New York University Professor and medical ethicist Arthur Caplan said of the revelation, “It’s what I make of the American health care system— better to be rich and connected.”
Speaking for this layer, celebrity physician and Washington Post columnist Dr. Leana Wen recently told the Wall Street Journal, “We have many different ways of protecting ourselves at this point. People are going to choose different levels of protection based on their own tolerance of risk and how much they want to avoid COVID-19, and at this point, the role of government needs to be to empower people to use the tools that are readily available.”
The Journal said most succinctly, “Health officials are leaving it up to people to assess if they need booster shots, whether to wear a mask and how long to isolate after a positive test. Businesses, schools and other entities are scaling back specific guidelines as they prepare a return to normal.” And to achieve this normality requires the complete abandonment of all public health principles and any effort to enlist them in protecting the life and welfare of the population.
From the perspective of the well-fed and well-financed, it is easy to dispense opinions to the public that are analogous to the infamous saying associated with Queen Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution: “Let them eat cake!” Working people in America are no more likely to have access to high-priced drugs like Paxlovid than the starving population of 1789 Paris could obtain cake.
Over 30 million Americans are uninsured and another 70 million are underinsured, with high deductibles and large out-of-pocket expenses. Many may disregard their symptoms as another flu and risk waiting it out or fear repercussions at work for taking time off. Amazon recently announced that workers will no longer receive paid time off for COVID-19. The company added that it would not be sending out site-wide alerts about positive COVID-19 cases nor require masking at work.
In a report published in 2018 by the Commonwealth Fund, “41 percent of underinsured adults said they delayed needed care because of cost … [and] almost half report medical bill and debt problems.” And these are being compounded by the intensification of the inflationary pressures that are driving up costs for all basic goods and services. And this must be placed in the context that four in 10 adults, or approximately 93 million people, have risk factors for developing serious illness if infected with COVID-19.
Individuals at risk for severe COVID-19 include cancer patients, those with chronic kidney disease, prior stroke, chronic lung or liver disease, diabetes and obesity. Also at risk are those with immune deficiencies, heart conditions, mental health disorders, smokers, transplant patients and those who take corticosteroids or immunosuppressives.
What Dr. Wen fails to take proper account of is how limited the current tools are in fighting COVID-19. They come with major caveats that the mainstream press does little to bring to light, including the failure of current monoclonal antibodies, rapidly waning antibodies from existing vaccines, the continued waves of infection that propel the present versions of the Omicron variants towards even more contagious and immune-evading variants and concerns over development of viral resistance to Paxlovid and other treatments.
Though the immediate goal of holding the White House Correspondents’ Association gala was to disarm the concerns raised by COVID-19, the objective evidence demonstrates that the insane and cavalier policy of ignoring the pandemic, now being pursued by almost every country across the globe, is only exacerbating the dangers posed by allowing the virus to persist in human populations.
From vaccine-only to Paxlovid-only
One of the last elements in the shutdown of pandemic measures by the Biden administration has been the promise to ensure that post-infection treatments and anti-viral medications are made readily available to the general public. This might be termed the “Paxlovid-only” strategy, a revival in even more threadbare form of the pragmatic vaccine-only strategy that has guided the Biden administration.
A recent study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine on the durability of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines against hospital and emergency department admissions for Omicron found that nine months after the original course of two doses, the vaccine was only 41 percent effective in preventing hospitalization and 31 percent effective in preventing death. A third dose raised effectiveness to 85 percent for both. But only three months after the third dose, effectiveness fell to 55 percent.
The share of fully vaccinated people in the US has remained static at 66 percent. Half the population was vaccinated back in mid-July 2021. By mid-January 2022, four months ago, 25 percent had received a booster. Vaccination has appeared to have reached an insurmountable barrier.
Concerns regarding the declining effectiveness of vaccines are intersecting with evidence of reduced efficacy of the current monoclonal antibodies against the subvariants of Omicron.
Presently, Evusheld’s long-acting antibody combination—tixagevimab and cilagavimab—remains active against Omicron and is given as an intramuscular injection. Manufactured by AstraZeneca, it is authorized only as a prevention of COVID-19 for vulnerable populations who have medical conditions or are receiving immunosuppressive treatments and would not be able to mount an immune response with a COVID-19 vaccination. Additionally, individuals for whom COVID-19 vaccinations are not recommended for other reasons can receive the treatment.
In April the FDA removed its authorization for Sotrovimab, as it was found ineffective against the dominant BA.2 subvariant ending its nationwide distribution. Similarly, in January, both REGEN-COV and the combination treatment of Bamlanivimab and etesevimab were shown to be ineffective against BA.1, with the announcement by the FDA that they “were not currently authorized for use in any US region because of markedly reduced activity against the Omicron variant.”
Only Eli Lilly’s Bebtelovimab, authorized by the FDA in February, has been shown in-vitro to work against BA.1 and BA.2. However, real world data in the form of placebo-controlled trials is lacking.
This leaves Paxlovid as one of the main choices for treatment after mild to moderate infection to block the risk of severe disease. Remdesivir also remains in the limited arsenal, although it has proven over the course of multiple studies to be suboptimal.
Paxlovid is the brand name for Pfizer’s anti-viral treatment for COVID-19. It contains two medications—Nirmatrelvir and Ritonavir—and was given emergency use authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus with mild to moderate symptoms at risk for severe disease or hospitalization.
Though the medication is taken orally, it requires a prescription by a licensed provider due to its extensive potential drug interactions. If taken within five days of symptom onset, it has shown to reduce the chance of hospitalization or death by about 88 percent. It is approved for those weighing over 40 kilograms (88 pounds) and aged 12 or more. Of note, recent prevention trials (involving exposure to someone with COVID-19 at home) did not significantly reduce infection rates.
The rollout of Paxlovid and “test-to-treat”
Last week the Biden administration said it had secured 20 million treatment courses of the Pfizer antiviral COVID-19 pill. Dr. Ashish Jha, the new White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator, told NPR, “Now we’ve got to turn those pills into prescriptions and into the things that patients can get so that they can get better if they get infected.” However, a senior White House administrator said that without further funding, “We will not be able to purchase more.”
Nearly all those seeking testing in the US are symptomatic. (Health expert and data scientist Gregory Travis said that 95 percent of the 70 million documented infections in the CDC database were listed as symptomatic.) This means, in the context of a very unhealthy population, most of those infected even mildly could derive some benefit from the anti-viral treatment.
But the supply is entirely inadequate for that purpose. And considering the scale of the effort to deliver these treatments to such a large population, with the tight time limits prescribed—five days or less from test to treat—and with the current rise in cases in the US, the only outcome that can be expected will be disorganization, chaos or even the abandonment of the effort entirely.
Speaking on the issue of access, Politico said, “Only physicians, physician assistants and certain registered nurses—not pharmacists—can prescribe the drug. That means patients may have to visit a testing site, a doctor’s office and, in the worst-case scenario, visit a participating pharmacy just to get the pills.” Added to this is the five-day window between symptom onset, testing and actual taking of the antiviral.
However, about a quarter of Americans do not have a primary care physician. And if they do, a return call can take several days when time is of the essence. Though the test-to-treat initiative sounds cogent on paper, a service map of nationwide locations by the Department of Health and Human Services shows many of them are concentrated in major metro regions.
And despite attempts to claim that treatments are plentiful, according to Travis there are roughly only 660,000 courses available. Because of lack of any real metric on the amount held at pharmacies across the country, Travis designed a tracker to list pharmacies’ supplies of Paxlovid and other treatments, which can be accessed through this link. Based on the state and county, it provides an address to pharmacies in the region and the number of courses available to the antiviral treatment.
With Omicron BA.2 and its sub-lineage BA.2.12.2 rapidly spreading across the US, and with hospitalization rates climbing, even the New York Times has acknowledged that Paxlovid and other drugs are sitting on shelves because people do not know how to access them due to the inefficiencies in the process and inadequate messaging. People infected with COVID-19 do not know they are eligible, and overworked providers oftentimes read the eligibility guidelines very narrowly or raise concerns about the drug interactions as listed in the FDA packaging.
And though Paxlovid is currently free, there are consultation fees that customers must be able to pay at test-and-treat sites that are not included in the Biden program. Public health officials have also noted that appointments are difficult to get and can often require long drives to reach an available site.
The Times wrote, “test-to-treat is supposed to let people visit hundreds of qualified pharmacy-based clinics, community health centers and long-term care facilities across the country to get tested for the coronavirus and, if positive, receive Paxlovid on the spot. But almost two months later, it is still limited in its reach and has not dramatically sped up access to the drug beyond what its sites were already equipped to do, experts said.”
Rebound infections and the limitations of anti-virals
These issues are being compounded by reports of rebound coronavirus levels after COVID-19 patients complete the five-day Paxlovid treatment. Clifford Lane, the deputy director for clinical research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Bloomberg last week, “It is a priority! [The issue] is a pretty urgent thing for us to get a handle on.”
Little is currently understood about rebound cases—how frequently they occur and if the Omicron variant plays a role in it. Dr. Paul Sax, an infectious disease specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said, “providers who are going to be prescribing this should be aware that this phenomenon occurs, and if people have symptoms worsening after Paxlovid, it’s probably still COVID.” As these experts have noted, such information was not included in the drug labeling.
Immunologist Dr. Michael Mina explained in a Tweetthat possibly Paxlovid acts as a crutch for the immune system by preventing the virus from replicating. If the virus rebounds after treatment, the immune system kicks in, leading to the reappearance of the symptoms of infection. He warned that if rebound occurs, then the person should consider himself or herself still infectious.
He wrote, “To be clear, this is not likely because the virus is becoming resistant, but rather an interaction between the immune system not having to work as much to clear the virus while on treatment, and so when treatment ends, the virus grows fast before immunity turns on again. In my view, this is a serious issue and one that may increase chance of a resistant mutation in a virus forming and spreading.” Health officials and Pfizer officials are considering increasing the length of treatment for high-risk individuals to 10 days.
The issue of resistance to Paxlovid was raised in January in Nature. The journal wrote about the success of the two antivirals that includes Merck’s less robust Molnupiravir antiviral, which reduced the risk of hospitalization and deaths by only 30 percent. Nature continued:
“It’s too soon to tell whether SARS-CoV-2 is likely to develop any resistance to these first-generation antivirals,” says Tim Sheahan, a corona-virologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Although its sky-high rate of replication is a breeding ground for mutations, he says, the virus also caused acute infections that offer relatively little time for resistance-causing mutations to accumulate.
The journal then added:
But the threat of resistance is particularly severe for monotherapies such as Molnupiravir and Paxlovid that each target only one part of the virus. That’s why it’s imperative to develop new antivirals aimed at different targets, or ones that can be combined into a single treatment to attack the virus on multiple fronts, says Sheehan.
The article then explains that if the antivirals do not destroy the virus lurking in the body or the medications are not taken as prescribed, the treatment could lead to the virus developing various defenses against the drug. Second generation broad-spectrum treatments will require significant time and investments that simply are lacking, though hundreds of billions are dollars are readily made available for the military destruction of human life and property.
A report from Rutgersin March 2022 on the fears of developing resistance in SARS-CoV-2 against such treatments noted that though Paxlovid still remained effective, “scientists discovered through genetic analysis that the virus is beginning to evolve in ways that may produce strains that can evade present treatments.”
The key protein that Paxlovid targets which jams the virus’s machinery is called Mpro, which the virus uses in replicating. The most common new mutation found in the main protease of the Omicron variant is called the P132H mutation. Though Paxlovid remained effective against Mpro with the P132H mutation, Dr. Jun Wang, author of the study on the P132H mutation, said, “Although this mutation does not cause drug resistance to Paxlovid, this implies that the virus can still evolve to create additional mutations that might cause drug resistance. When a drug gets widespread use, it is just a matter of time before resistance appears.”
BA.2.12.1, a descendent of the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, now accounts for more than 30 percent of all recently sequenced strains. In New York, where hospitalizations are up, it accounts for 58 percent. Meanwhile, the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, more infectious than BA.2, which are causing the fifth wave of infections in South Africa, have also been recently detected in the US.
Deborah Birx, former White House coronavirus taskforce member in the Trump administration, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” on Sunday that the US should prepare for another surge in cases this summer due to the natural waning of immunity.
As evidenced by the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, there is little interest on the issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic as all the necessary measures have been put into place to ensure schools, businesses and financial markets operate undisturbed.
The current Paxlovid-only strategy, the latest iteration of the overarching construct of malign neglect, poses serious dangers to the working class population. Entering the third year of the pandemic, the dangers posed by the virus have only been heightened.
As detailed in these findings, without an elimination strategy the war against the pandemic will never end and the current available treatments will be exhausted. These life-saving treatments were never intended nor can they stand alone against a virus that has nimbly evaded every defense put in front of it. The only one that has proven effective has been demonstrated by China in its current effort, and that is Zero-COVID.
The Pulitzer Center, a nonprofit organization that supports independent global journalism, is now accepting applications for a new reporting initiative focused on climate change and its effects on workers and work.
This ambitious initiative, Your Work/Environment, seeks to explore the global climate risks playing out in fields and on factory floors and being discussed in company boardrooms. As the world heats up, what jobs and employment sectors, what factory practices, what sorts of manufacturing–from computer chips to batteries to food production to fast-fashion–are threatened or must change?
What Type of Scholarship is this?
Grants
Who can apply?
We encourage freelance and staff journalists with ambitious enterprise and strong in-depth reporting ideas to apply for Pulitzer Center support to cover the intersection of labor and climate in their communities. We are particularly interested in reporting from regions in Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America. All types of formats are welcome: print, digital, broadcast TV, radio, and film projects, as well as data and computer-assisted journalism. We encourage vivid, innovative storytelling that can be shared across platforms and in multiple languages.
Which Countries are Eligible?
Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America.
How Many Scholarships will be Given?
Not specified
What is the Benefit of Scholarship?
The grants will be in the range of $10,000-$25,000 per project, depending on the scope and complexity of the project, the media formats involved, and the distribution plan.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has addressed Ukraine’s parliament, striking a Churchillian pose as he described war with Russia as the country’s “finest hour”.
Johnson is the first world leader to address the Ukrainian assembly since the war began in February. His speech, delivered by videolink, follows a walkabout in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressing the Ukraine Parliament from Downing Street. 03/05/2022. (Credit: Picture by Andrew Parsons/Number 10 Downing Street/Flickr)
The UK continues to position itself as the leading voice in Europe for an escalation of the NATO-Russia war over Ukraine, in order to curry favour with the United States. Johnson’s appearance followed European Union discussions the evening before on an embargo on Russian oil to be phased in by the end of the year, after months of needling from Johnson and the British press over Germany’s energy reliance on Russia.
German opposition leader Friedrich Merz, head of the Christian Democratic Union, was visiting Ukraine as Johnson spoke. He has accused German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of “procrastination, dithering and timidity” over the war.
The UK prime minister’s speech was filled with nationalist rhetoric, hailing “the immovable object of Ukrainian patriotism and love of country”. He saluted “Ukrainian democracy against Putin’s tyranny” on the day the same parliament to which he was speaking banned the activities of political parties “who justify, recognise or deny Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine,” according to the news agency Interfax.
Johnson’s invoking of Britain’s Second World War history, employing the phrase from Churchill’s June 1940 speech, “This was their finest hour”, reinforces a broader lying narrative of the NATO powers. His implication is that Russia’s invasion, a reactionary response to the threat of NATO encroachment on its borders, is a twenty-first century version of Nazi Germany’s military campaigns.
The deceit is twofold.
First, the Russian invasion cannot be remotely compared with the genocidal offensive of the Third Reich. Any such allusion is designed to minimise the horrors of the Nazi war of annihilation in the East, whip up a frenzied anti-Russian hysteria, and draw a veil over the destruction wrought by the wars of the United States and its allies in recent decades in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Second, it is the NATO powers allied to Ukraine and using it as a proxy who are pushing for a wider war in the East, with the aim of the collapse and carve-up of Russia. This has been essentially admitted by the US Secretaries of State and Defence and the Speaker of the House, variously declaring Washington’s intention to “bring Russia to its knees”, “breaking [its] back” militarily and pursuing the conflict “until victory is won”.
Johnson made a point of lamenting how the NATO powers “failed to impose the sanctions then that we should have” in 2014, “when Crimea was taken from Ukraine”. He vowed “we cannot make the same mistake again”.
Last Wednesday, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Britain and its allies must “double down” and “push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine”. This would include seizing Crimea, annexed by Russia and considered vital to its security. Her stance was backed by Defence Secretary Ben Wallace.
An article published in the Guardian Monday, by the head of Chatham House’s Ukraine Forum Orysia Lutsevych, applauds Truss, asking, “What would victory actually mean now for Ukraine—and for Europe?” She answers, “Any ending must be decisive,” referring to a claimed “consensus among the [Ukrainian] people regarding the return of Crimea and Donbas to the control of Kyiv” and the “collapse of Putinism as a doctrine and an end to Russian claims to territorial dominance elsewhere in eastern Europe and Central Asia.”
Ukraine’s objectives “coincide with those of its allies”, Lutsevych concludes.
To these ends, the US and the European powers are piling weapons into Ukraine, many of them destined for its far right and fascist military formations, including the Azov regiment occupying the besieged Azovstal steel works in Mariupol. During his speech Johnson announced the dispatch of an additional £300 million of British military equipment, including electronic warfare equipment, a counter battery radar system, GPS jamming equipment and thousands of night vision devices.
This comes after the declaration in parliament last week that the UK would be sending Brimstone missiles and Stormer air defence vehicles to Ukraine and is considering shipping Challenger 2 tanks to Poland to replace others gifted by Warsaw to Kyiv. The UK is already one of the biggest contributors to the NATO-Ukraine war effort and has now given half a billion pounds of military equipment, besides training tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and deploying thousands of its own troops, tanks, ships and fighter planes to Eastern Europe, and special forces to Ukraine itself.
The US has supplied $3.7 billion in declared military aid so far and is making $20 billion more available.
The working class is being made to pay the price of this warmongering. Ahead of his Ukraine speech, Johnson gave an interview to the Good Morning Britain news show. Challenged on the worsening cost-of-living crisis, the prime minister ruled out any support for families facing an historic collapse of their incomes, warning of an “inflationary spiral” and declaring “[W]e have to be prudent.”
Johnson complained, “We’re already spending £83 billion a year to service the cost of government debt; that’s huge, that’s far more than we spend on defence”.
He made these comments on the day energy company BP announced its highest quarterly earnings in a decade of $6.2 billion, citing “exceptional” oil and gas revenues, and the Office for National Statistics revealed four in ten Britons are struggling to pay for gas and electricity and being forced to buy less food.
Price rises, de facto wage cuts, and government austerity are having a devastating impact on living standards and provoking widespread opposition in a working class deeply skeptical of the government and NATO’s declared intentions in Ukraine.
A worried piece by the Financial Times European Economics commentator Martin Sandbu published Sunday warned, “The expression is ugly and its content even uglier, but ‘Ukraine fatigue’ is a real risk in western democracies.” Under the headline, “Western leaders must prepare public for a war economy”, Sandbu declared, “The cost of living crisis is likely to get worse before it gets better.”
No trace of popular sentiment finds expression in mainstream politics. The newspapers, most jubilantly the Guardian, are reporting that Johnson’s Conservative Party could lose more than 500 local government seats in the local elections in their worst result since the 1990s. But this will do nothing except transfer responsibility for implementing austerity policies from Tory councillors to their Labour, and in some cases Liberal Democrat and Green, counterparts.
Were a general election called tomorrow and Labour to win it, the same would be true of the UK’s foreign policy. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said in response to Johnson’s speech, “We support the provision of military equipment”. He refused even to criticise the timing of the statement, two days before the local elections, saying, “I don’t think our arguments about the timing cut much ice” and that he did not want the parties to be “divided” over support for Ukraine.
Starmer also solidarised himself with backbench Tory MPs demanding higher military spending: “I do think the government is going to have to come back to Parliament and look again at defence spending and I know many Conservative MPs think that as well.” He called on the government not to cut “a further 10,000 [personnel] from our armed services”.
Labour’s unanimity with the Tories on all fundamental points of policy means its sole criticism of Johnson is that he is not up to the task of carrying them out, with a relentless focus on the “partygate” scandal. The absurdity of official political debate in Britain was summed up by the Good Morning Britain interview when Johnson was asked “Are you honest?” not in connection with his absurd claim that the UK was not involved in Ukraine to “drive some geopolitical change”, but with lockdown drinks parties in Downing Street.
Polish air traffic controllers have had a “truce” imposed on their struggle. At the last minute, to prevent a widespread shutdown of Polish airspace from May 1, the air traffic controllers' union ZZKRL and air traffic control authority PANSA agreed on a temporary contract.
Chopin Airport in Warsaw (Photo: Bartlomiej Mostek/CC BY-SA 2.0/Flickr) [Photo by Bartlomiej Mostek / CC BY 4.0]
On Thursday evening they signed an agreement that will only last until July 10. According to the union, it is “a truce, not the end of the war.” The time will be used to better prepare the attack on the air traffic controllers and undermine their willingness to fight.
Polish air traffic controllers are fighting back against the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic being dumped on them—their salaries cut by up to 70 percent, workloads increased, and safety rules undermined.
The air traffic control authority, which is backed by the Polish government, is financed by the fees levied from airlines flying to and over Poland. Due to the slump in air traffic because of the pandemic, its revenues had dropped significantly. In 2021, they were 43 percent lower than in 2019, and well below its operating costs.
PANSA president Janusz Janiszewski, who took office in 2018, sought from the start to pass the losses on to the nearly 600 air traffic controllers the agency employs. These workers were responsible for managing nearly a million flights a year in 2019 before the pandemic.
In 2020, air traffic controllers' pay had fallen by an average of 15 percent. Janiszewski boasted to Polska Times that PANSA had cut its budget by over a billion złoty (€214 million) compared to original plans. “In 2020-21, we optimised costs, including staff costs, by 25 percent.”
While the air traffic controllers and millions of other Polish workers have been forced to bleed because of the pandemic, the financial oligarchy has enriched itself, as in other countries. Michał Sołowow, Poland's richest man for years, increased his fortune by 2 billion złoty (about €400 million) from 2019 to 2021. According to Forbes, he now controls $4 billion, twice as much as in 2016.
To enforce further wage cuts of up to 70 percent, PANSA then sent out notices of dismissal pending a change of contract to the air traffic controllers earlier this year. They were effectively sacked when the notice period expired at the end of April, with the offer to be rehired on much worse terms from May 1.
But PANSA, the government and the union working closely with them, had not counted on the willingness of the air traffic controllers to fight, demonstrating their ability to paralyse air traffic and thus counter the social attacks on behalf of the entire working class.
The vast majority simply refused to sign the new contracts and work on the worse conditions. At Warsaw’s two airports, Chopin and Modlin, 170 out of 208 air traffic controllers refused to sign. This threatened a widespread breakdown of air traffic control from May 1, when most of the dismissals came into effect.
Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, warned of around a thousand flight cancellations a day due to the dispute in Poland. The situation was serious, as not only would connections to Poland be affected but also flights through Polish airspace, a spokesperson for the EU Commission said.
For the two Warsaw airports alone, a reduction in daily flights from 510 to 170 was predicted. The Polish government published an emergency flight plan, according to which only 32 routes would be served by eleven selected airlines from Sunday. The main airport, Chopin, would only be open from 9.30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the smaller Modlin would only offer two connections a day.
Government threatens martial law
Behind the scenes, efforts to break off the conflict were in full swing. PANSA representatives and union officials met almost daily, but nothing was made public about the content of the talks. Mostly, only short joint press releases were published, emphasising that the talks were being “conducted objectively in an atmosphere of mutual respect.”
The government also intervened in the dispute in the person of Infrastructure Minister Andrzej Adamczyk. PANSA head Janiszewski had to resign in March and was replaced by Anita Oleksiak. At the same time, the government threatened to deploy the military, citing the war in neighbouring Ukraine.
Early last week, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stressed, “The responsibility of air traffic controllers must be emphasised in the context of the very, very difficult time we are operating in,” referring to the central role Poland plays in NATO’s proxy war against Russia.
The eastern Polish airports of Rzeszów and Lublin are important hubs for the supply of weapons to Ukraine. Rzeszów, which is only a two-hour drive from Lviv in Ukraine, has at times been so crowded with military cargo planes that some had to be diverted, the Wall Street Journal reported. Since early March, the US has also stationed a Patriot air defence system there.
In an interview with Radio ZET, Deputy Infrastructure Minister Marcin Horała threatened that “all means will be used to ensure …control of the airspace.”
Ex-PANSA head Janiszewski had already declared on March 19, “Currently, half of Poland's sky is reserved for the work of the army, air defence and allied forces.” In the event of the “worst scenario, i.e., the introduction of martial law or war in Poland,” PANSA would become part of the Polish air defence system.
The agreement reached between the air traffic control authority and the union has averted the flight cancellations for now. “We are no longer threatened with paralysis of air traffic,” assured Infrastructure Minister Adamczyk. The air traffic controllers wanted to “work and fulfill their current tasks. In the event of a war beyond the eastern border, Polish airspace will also serve to support Ukraine. There will be no restrictions on the number of flights.”
Adamczyk said they would pay the same salaries as before the pandemic until July 10. Meanwhile, negotiations on new pay scales, work rules and other regulations are to continue.
There has been no press release from the union so far, and it is still unclear how it will sell the deal to its members. It has clearly sided with the government, agreeing to an industrial truce in the face of the Ukraine war, and stalling the controllers' struggle. Because of the drastic level of inflation, now over 12 percent, paying the old salaries is equivalent to a massive wage cut.
PANSA has also gained three months to better prepare the attack on the controllers and to provide replacements for the recalcitrant and supposedly too expensive controllers.
Cuts jeopardise flight safety
The Polish media have accompanied the dispute with the usual inflammatory commentary, portraying the air traffic controllers as a well-off elite who are never satisfied. This is not only factually wrong, but also politically reactionary. Precisely because the air traffic controllers have a strong position, the attack on them serves as a prelude to an offensive against the entire working class.
A cautionary example is the busting of the American air traffic controllers' union, PATCO, in 1981 by then US President Ronald Reagan. At that time, Reagan fired all 13,000 air traffic controllers who were fighting for better wages and working conditions, and who were then isolated and sold out by the other unions.
The busting of PATCO was the prelude to endless attacks on the American working class that continue to this day. These have massively lowered the living standards of working people and led to unprecedented levels of social inequality. While millions of American workers can no longer make ends meet, the wealth of the richest US citizen, Elon Musk, equates to six months of Poland's GDP.
Moreover, incomes are only one point of contention in the current dispute in Poland. The air traffic controllers are also primarily concerned about the safety of passengers, for whom they are responsible. As in the pandemic, where it refused to implement a life-saving lockdown to ensure the profits kept flowing, the ruling class is subordinating people's lives to its capitalist interests.
To achieve his cost-cutting goals, PANSA boss Janiszewski had already attacked not only the salaries but also the air traffic controllers’ working conditions. He expanded shift work and cut sick, weekend, and holiday pay. Most drastically, shift work was extended from eight to twelve hours and “Single Person Operations” (SPO) introduced, whereby one controller alone monitors air traffic.
In early February 2021, when two air traffic controllers spoke out about the safety risks involved, in a report by broadcaster TVN24, PANSA sacked them without notice. Since one of them, Franciszek Teodorczyk, is a board member of the ZZKRL union, and union leaders are subject to special protection against dismissal, PANSA summarily revoked the union's recognition and reported it to the public prosecutor's office. Legal proceedings are still ongoing.
The systematic increase of air traffic controllers’ workloads has already led to several near-disasters:
In December 2020, President Duda's plane took off without the assistance of an air traffic controller, as he was only on duty until 10 p.m. at Zielona Góra's smaller airport.
In February 2021, the air traffic controller in Katowice, working in SPO mode, gave permission to land even though a repair team was working on the runway.
In March 2021, an air traffic controller did not answer a pilot's call for nine minutes because he had fallen asleep; an hour later, he fell asleep again.
In May 2021, a Warsaw air traffic controller cleared a taxiway for take-off that was already occupied by another aircraft. He was later found to have alcohol in his blood.
In December 2021, an air traffic controller at the airport in Krakow became unconscious. A colleague was able to rush to his aid, but traffic at the airport was not stopped.
Air traffic controllers report that PANSA management is trying to create a climate of fear and intimidation to sweep mistakes and shortcomings under the carpet. It has replaced critical and experienced controllers with younger and lower paid ones. The new contract presented to the controllers is designed to enshrine the intolerable and life-threatening working conditions.
The union and the air traffic control authority must not be allowed to use the “truce” to enforce this contract in a slightly moderated form. The ZZKRL—like all other Polish and international unions—works closely with the government and accepts the profit-logic of capitalism. Air traffic controllers must therefore build independent action committees and link up their struggle with other workers in Poland and internationally.
There is hardly any other industry that is as internationally interwoven as air transport. It is expected that the volume of traffic in European airspace will significantly exceed pre-pandemic levels in the coming months. In addition, there is a significant increase in military air traffic because of the Ukraine war.
However, personnel levels have been cut back everywhere—in air traffic control, among aircrew and on the ground—and now profits are to be raised by a corresponding increase in workloads. Resistance to this is growing everywhere.
In the last month alone, air traffic controllers and ground staff went on strike in France (27 March to 4 April), in Germany (several warning strikes were held in March), in Italy (11 and 22 April), in Greece (6 April) and in Peru (16 April).
The social situation is tense to bursting point in other areas of Poland, as well. In recent years, there have been repeated large protests and strikes in the health and education sectors. The mass demonstrations against the reactionary restricting of the abortion law brought the fermenting anger against the PiS government to the surface.
