Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants fuel yet another global surge of COVID-19 infections

Benjamin Mateus & Evan Blake

The COVID-19 pandemic is once again spiraling out of control in a growing number of countries, driven by the highly contagious and immune-evading Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants. North America, Europe, Brazil, India and Australia are at the epicenter of the latest broad-based surge. After reaching a low of 466,297 daily new cases on May 30, the global seven-day average of daily new cases now stands at 661,420. The number of official new infections is growing despite the widespread dismantling of surveillance and reporting of COVID-19 metrics, with test positivity rates rising in each of these countries and regions.

The sudden rise in test positivity rates means that unreported infections are occurring faster than those being documented by public health departments. For instance, in the United States, where BA.4 and BA.5 account for more than 35 percent of sequenced cases, the seven-day average of daily new cases has risen by roughly 10 percent over the past week, reaching 109,105 daily new cases on Sunday. However, the test positivity rate has been continuously over 10 percent since mid-May and continues to rise. After several weeks in which the average daily death toll stood between 300-350 per day, it has now climbed to 420, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 dashboard.

Portugal, which experienced its second largest wave of infections during the pandemic in early June due to BA.5, also saw its positivity rate exceed 50 percent by June 1. Eighty-six percent of Portugal’s population is fully vaccinated, and 65 percent have had at least one booster shot, yet daily new deaths have surpassed the peak reached during the first Omicron wave over the winter. This highlights the critical fact that COVID-19 vaccines alone will not stem repeated assaults on the population.

Test positivity rates are skyrocketing across the rest of Europe, with Spain reaching 30 percent, France surpassing 20 percent and Germany exceeding 40 percent by mid-June. Brazil is in the midst of its fourth wave, while the fascistic Bolsonaro government has effectively ended all pandemic emergency measures. Testing has, for the most part, come to a standstill.

In the UK, the seven-day average of daily new cases has jumped fourfold from a low of 4,754 per day on June 2 to 19,695 infections per day today, while hospitalizations have surged 27 percent in three weeks, and the death toll has begun to turn upwards once again. As in many countries, the elderly will face the brunt of this assault. Most completed their vaccinations several months ago, and they have limited immunity against infection, with their age and medical condition placing them at risk for severe consequences.

Global map of weekly new COVID-19 cases by country per one million population (Credit: @antonio_caramia)

In Israel, where the vaccination-only strategy has been emphatically promoted, COVID-19 cases have jumped nearly five-fold over the past three weeks, approaching 10,000 cases per day. In the same period, hospitalizations have more than doubled. According to the Jerusalem Post, 255 people are in serious condition, with 41 intubated and two on heart and lung bypass machines. The positivity rate is an astronomical 41.5 percent.

Australia has remained in a continuous undulating surge of infections since the first Omicron wave slammed into the island nation, and daily new cases are once more pushing upwards. As of yesterday, more than 3,000 are in hospitals receiving treatment.

In the past two months, at least four studies have been published in scientific journals proving that the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants are highly resistant to immunity from the vaccines, as well as prior infection with the Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants that have been dominant throughout the world since late November. With immunity from both vaccines and prior infection waning and pandemic restrictions totally lifted amid the summer travel season, the implication is that potentially billions of people could be infected globally in the coming weeks and months.

While nearly every world government refuses to protect their populations from yet another assault by the deadly pathogen, mainland China reported only two COVID-19 cases yesterday. The seven-day average of new COVID-19 infections has declined to just 24. Shanghai, which had defeated a difficult wave of infections last month, reported only a handful of new COVID-19 cases last week.

The differences between China’s dynamic Zero-COVID policy and the imperialist nations’ demand that the working class “live with the virus” could not be more stark. Even without another surge of deaths, the current death rate in the United States would amount to an annual death toll of at least 130,000, almost four times higher than an average flu season and 25 times higher than China’s cumulative death toll from COVID-19.

Furthermore, evidence is mounting that after its acute impact, COVID-19 can cause far more harm to the human body’s various organ systems in a disease process known as Long COVID or Post-Acute Coronavirus Syndrome (PACS), which afflicts 10-30 percent of those infected.

In the US, approximately 50 percent of the adult population was infected by February, a figure which has risen considerably since then. Last week, the US government officially acknowledged that upwards of 20 million American adults are presently suffering from Long COVID, which includes a wide range of symptoms that can assault the cardiovascular, pulmonary, renal, neurological and other organ systems.

Debilitating Long COVID may impact one-third of all Long COVID patients, profoundly affecting their ability to work or care for themselves and their families for an undetermined period. Other studies have emerged that vaccines provide very little protection against Long COVID, and even individuals with mild COVID-19 symptoms face an increased risk of dying from complications from their infections compared to their uninfected counterparts.

For the ruling elites, their inaction in addressing the pandemic is snowballing as they face continued massive labor shortages, a by-product of people sickened by infections and reinfections, and many who have given up on the job markets because of the attack on their living standards. Unrelenting inflation is compounding these processes.

Faced with this mounting crisis, the corporate media is issuing increasingly delusional statements on the pandemic. This was exemplified in a Washington Post Editorial Board statement published Sunday titled “The pandemic is in a twilight zone. Enjoy it—but stay safe.”

The statement begins with a series of absurd claims, writing, “The pandemic has entered a twilight zone, neither causing major disruption to the nation nor vanishing. Everyone is looking forward to a summer without masks or terrifying case spikes. The government has dropped the requirement that international air travelers test before entering the United States. We have vaccines, antivirals and diagnostic tests in surplus. So far, so good.”

Every one of these claims is false. As noted above, the US is presently in the midst of a major surge of infections, which has risen steadily since the beginning of April. This deepening surge has disrupted all industries, in particular, the airline industry where staffing shortages have fueled unprecedented levels of flight delays and cancellations. Funding for vaccines, antivirals and tests is now gone, supplies are evaporating, and congressional Republicans have made it absolutely clear that not a penny more in pandemic funding will be allocated.

Owned by the pandemic profiteer Jeff Bezos (net worth $140 billion), the Post expresses here in the most unvarnished form the recklessness and stupidity of the American ruling class. It is these social parasites who are living in a “twilight zone” of fantasy and self-delusion.

The Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants are the most contagious versions of SARS-CoV-2 so far. With world capitalism refusing to implement public health measures and thereby providing the virus with billions of hosts, it remains fit to continue evolving into potentially more dangerous variants. This evolutionary process is occurring so rapidly that vaccine makers cannot keep pace with the changes in the virus’ genomic sequence, with scientists warning that the next iteration of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Moderna is already outdated.

Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government denounces migrants as “hybrid threat”

Alice Summers

Spain’s PSOE (Socialist Party)-Podemos government has demanded that NATO consider migration, as well as food insecurity and terrorism, to be “hybrid threats.” This reference to NATO denunciations of Russian “hybrid warfare” before the war in Ukraine comes as Madrid prepares to host the 2022 NATO summit from June 28–30.

PSOE Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told Reuters the Spanish government intends to push for the inclusion of these “nonmilitary” threats into NATO’s “Strategic Concept” document, the alliance’s new policy roadmap for the next decade. The document, to be drafted at the conference, will lay out NATO’s “mission” amid the war in Ukraine and the admission of new members such as Sweden and Finland.

NATO must also strengthen its “southern flank”—i.e., the Sahel and Maghreb—Albares told Reuters, even as the military alliance funnels billions of dollars worth of weapons and military vehicles to Ukraine to wage NATO’s proxy war against Russia.

“We want it to be recognised,” Albares stated, “that there are also serious threats coming from the southern flank. Terrorism, cybersecurity, the political use of energy resources and irregular migration affect our sovereignty.” The inclusion of these “hybrid threats” in the NATO strategic document, as well as an explicit reference to the “southern flank,” would have a “deterrent” effect, Albares claimed.

The PSOE-Podemos government’s characterisation of migration as a “hybrid threat” is not only a declaration of its intent to launch a brutal crackdown on refugees and asylum seekers. Madrid means to instrumentalise the arrival of a few thousand refugees a year at its borders to push for neo-colonial wars and interventions in these resource-rich regions of North and sub-Saharan Africa.

“Nobody should doubt that these hybrid threats could be used to challenge our territorial integrity and our sovereignty,” Albares continued. “We don’t have to do anything new; we just have to take into account that a series of threats can come from the southern flank that at any moment could require a defensive reaction from NATO exactly like what we’re seeing on the eastern flank [emphasis added].”

This is nothing less than a call for NATO to turn the Maghreb and Sahel into a new Ukraine, asserting its interests in this region via proxy wars or even direct military intervention.

If migration were to be acknowledged as a strategic, “hybrid” threat, several questions are raised. Would the arrival of refugees on the southern borders of the NATO bloc constitute an “attack” on the alliance? Would this trigger Article 5 of NATO’s treaty, obliging all 30 member states to come to Spain’s “defence” by waging war on impoverished African or Middle Eastern states?

Which country would be considered the aggressor? The one from which the majority of migrants are coming? Or any country that refugees pass through on their way to Europe, and which fails to apprehend them? Each of these scenarios risks the outbreak of large-scale war.

In this regard, it is significant that Albares framed his reactionary demands as being a part of NATO’s ongoing conflict with Russia, explaining that interventions in the Sahel and Maghreb would be necessary to combat the “growing Russian influence” in the region. Referring to the deployment of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Groupin Mali, he stated: “The presence of Russia [in Mali] doesn’t help anything, doesn’t help to advance democracy, to stabilise, at all.”

The statements made by Albares recall events last autumn. In October and November, as a few thousand refugees from Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other war zones tried to enter the European Union from Belarus, European politicians and media denounced Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko for supposedly using refugees and migrants as a weapon in a “hybrid war.” Their aim was to ramp up tensions with Belarus, a Russian ally, as part of their campaign to militarily encircle and ultimately wage war on Russia.

Spain’s calls for a strategic focus on the “southern flank” come amid growing Spanish-Algerian tensions triggered by the Algerian-Moroccan conflict over the Western Sahara.

Algerian–Spanish relations have been strained since PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez recognised Morocco’s claim to the Western Sahara in mid-March. The Western Sahara is a sparsely inhabited former Spanish colonial possession on Morocco’s south-western border, with considerable mineral and phosphate reserves. Rabat has long sought to bring it under Moroccan administration as an “autonomous region.”

After Spain ended its long-standing neutrality in this dispute, Algeria, which has backed the pro–Sahrawi independence Polisario Front, withdrew its ambassador from Madrid. On June 8, reports then emerged that Algiers had officially ended its 20-year treaty of friendship with Spain, although the Algerian government later denied the report.

The Spanish government fears that Algeria, which provided 40 percent of Spain’s natural gas imports in 2021, may now cut energy supplies to the country. This comes as the European Union and NATO campaign for an energy embargo against Russia, the EU’s major oil and gas supplier, amid the war in Ukraine.

Spain’s economy minister and first deputy prime minister, Nadia Calviño, tried to blame Madrid’s deteriorating relations with Algeria on Russia, telling Catalunya Radio she’d “already seen that Algeria was more and more aligned with Russia. [The decision] did not surprise me that much. The important thing is for the EU to respond with unity and determination.”

The call for refugees to be considered a type of “hybrid” warfare is a significant escalation of Madrid’s vicious anti-migrant campaign, which it has adopted directly from the programme of the far-right Vox party.

In a statement on May 18, Vox declared: “The Moroccan government continues to attack Spain through its hostile actions against the autonomous cities [Spain’s North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla].” Referring to migrants on the Spanish–Moroccan borders as “hybrid warfare,” Vox continued: “the aggression suffered by Spain is not finding any response in the face of the hostilities of Morocco.”

Vox’s comments themselves echo those made by Prime Minister Sánchez last May. As several thousand Moroccan migrants tried to cross over into Ceuta, Sánchez had all but accused the Moroccan government of waging war on Spain. Rabat, which had reportedly opened its side of the border in retaliation for Spain’s earlier position on the Western Sahara, had “used immigration,” Sánchez stated, “due to disagreements in foreign policy.”

Sánchez declared that this was “inadmissible” and akin to “attacking borders.”

The PSOE-Podemos government already has the blood of thousands of refugees on its hands. Blocking off “legal” routes to enter Spain, it has forced desperate migrants to make perilous sea journeys in unsafe or makeshift vessels, in which thousands have drowned. On Friday, dozens of African migrants were killed and hundreds injured as they tried to climb the border fence between Morocco and Melilla.

Elon Musk confirms termination of 10 percent of Tesla salaried employees amid economic turmoil

Ike Sasson

On Tuesday, Tesla CEO and multibillionaire Elon Musk confirmed that the company would be laying off as much as 10 percent of its salaried workforce, or roughly 3.5 percent of its total workforce, over the next three months. His announcement has taken place amid disruptions in supply chains, which have impacted the electric vehicle industry, a drop in Tesla’s stocks, and numerous lawsuits filed against Tesla for frequent violations of labor and civil rights laws.

Earlier in the month, Reuters stated that they had obtained emails sent from Musk to executives in which he expressed that he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and would be carrying out a mass layoff of salaried employees and would “pause all hiring worldwide.”

Since the leaked information, Musk has attempted to reassure employees about the current stability of the company while also openly admitting to Tesla’s economic uncertainty.

An email was sent out to all employees to clarify that the layoffs would “not apply to anyone actually building cars, battery packs or installing solar.” He also stated that Tesla would continue to hire for hourly positions. However, Electrek, a news website focused on electric transportation, later confirmed that there has been a second round of layoffs impacting hourly workers in sales and delivery teams.

The company reported in 2021 that it employed 100,000 people, which would translate to roughly 3,500 layoffs by the end of the summer if the 3.5 percent figure given by Musk is accurate.

On Tuesday, he attempted to reiterate his claims of stability, giving a statement at the Qatar Economic Forum that “A year from now, I think our [employee] headcount will be higher.” Musk’s statement likely reflects an attempt at damage control as Tesla stocks have spiraled following Reuters’ report on the layoffs.

Workers at the company have said they were “blindsided” by the sudden layoff. Some have also taken to social media to lament the poor working conditions among salaried employees at Tesla and to lament that they had not left the company sooner.

On TheLayoff.com, one worker wrote: “They utilized PIP [performance improvement plan, an internal policy often used to justify firings] to trim the people who they don't like for whatever reason. Obviously, Elon doesn’t have any sense about this. He doesn’t think that feeding your family is his job as a boss.”

Another worker left an anonymous post that stated: “Musk has obviously lost his damn mind. He wants everybody to work 60+ hour weeks with no breaks, no vacations, no days off, and certainly no work from home. All of this for the same pay (the lower the better)—just like the ‘exemplary’ employees in China do. You know, the desperate people who have no other choice if they want to survive. That's his ideal employee. If you got away from that, your situation can only improve.”

Musk’s public confirmation of mass firings took place between filing a lawsuit by former employees at Tesla’s factory in Sparks, Nevada—where a separate mass firing took place—and the release of statements Musk gave in late May in which he raises the possibility of Tesla going into bankruptcy.

The lawsuit, which was filed on June 19 by John Lynch and Daxton Harsfield, alleges that Tesla carried out a mass firing of 500 workers at Gigafactory 2 in May and June. The plaintiffs allege that the largest electric vehicle producer was in violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act because it fired over 499 workers without providing a written notice 60 days in advance.

Tesla is also the subject of multiple other lawsuits including one alleging that the company allowed for “rampant sexual harassment” of women at the Fremont, California factory. In a separate suit a judge had awarded Owen Diaz, an African American elevator operator at Tesla’s Fremont plant, $15 million in payment for the racial abuses he experienced on the job. Diaz has rejected the payment, instead calling for a new trial claiming the amount would not change the conduct at the company. In an initial trial Diaz was awarded $137 million by a jury, which was later reduced.

In June, Solomon Chau, a Tesla investor, disclosed that he was also suing the company claiming the poor workplace culture is damaging the company’s reputation and in violation of its fiduciary responsibilities to investors. Chau’s suit specifically names Musk, Tesla’s board members and the company as defendants.

Chau’s lawsuit likely also reflects growing concerns among investors over Tesla’s economic downturn. In an interview with Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley in late May, but published this week, Musk described the factories in Berlin, Germany and Austin, Texas as “gigantic money furnaces,” which are unable to produce because of continued supply chain concerns. Musk specifically pointed to the inability to supply these factories with batteries due to COVID-19 related lockdowns in China.

Tesla operates a plant in Shanghai, which produces batteries used in their vehicles.

Musk also raised the possibility of Tesla going into bankruptcy if it is unable to keep up production. Business experts have also pointed out that the company could face difficulty transferring funds out of China and that Tesla is likely going to announce a drop in earnings compared to the previous year. Analysts at Refinitiv estimated adjusted earnings could drop to $2.5 billion in the second quarter compared to $3.7 billion in the first quarter.

Musk’s statements are surprising given his history of making grandiose claims about the operations of various companies he is a part of. He has frequently used Twitter, a company he is currently attempting to purchase, as a means of encouraging stock and digital currency speculations.

Tesla’s high market valuation, particularly compared to the number of vehicles it produces, has largely been the byproduct of rampant speculation and the ruthless treatment of workers. Throughout the pandemic this has found a particularly sharp expression with Musk rejecting remote work and violating California’s lockdown measures to reopen the Fremont factory.

The announced firings confirm that in times of economic downturn, Tesla and other companies will respond even more ruthlessly to unload the crisis onto the workers.

Notably, the layoffs at Tesla have coincided with job cuts among the more traditional automakers as well as tech companies, and portends further attacks on autoworkers.

Bank for International Settlements calls for accelerated interest rate hikes

Nick Beams

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the umbrella organisation for the world’s central banks, has called for an escalation of interest rate rises to stop inflation becoming “entrenched,” that is, to hit harder against wage demands by slowing down economic growth, even to the point of inducing a recession.

BIS meeting (Image: BIS annual report)

The call was made in the BIS annual economic report issued over the weekend as leaders of the G7 group of major economic powers were meeting in Germany to determine future action against Russia, and to discuss policies in response to the deepening crisis in the global economy.

“Gradually raising policy rates at a pace that falls short of inflation increases means falling real interest rates. This is hard to reconcile with the need to keep inflation risks in check,” the report said. “Given the extent of the inflationary pressure unleashed over the past year, real policy rates will need to increase significantly in order to moderate demand.”

The BIS pointed to the effects of the previous monetary policies of the world’s central banks in pumping trillions of dollars into the financial system after the global financial crisis of 2008 and the market meltdown of March 2020. These measures had boosted stock markets and lifted asset prices to record highs, especially property.

“The coexistence of elevated financial vulnerabilities and high inflation globally makes the current conjuncture unique for the post-World War II era,” it said.

Tighter monetary conditions needed to bring down inflation could cast doubt on asset valuations, including housing, priced on the basis of persistently low interest rates and the provision of central bank liquidity and “even traditionally more secure assets could be exposed.”

“Bonds, for example, have provided a safe haven for investors in the low-inflation environment of recent decades. During this phase, bad economic times, when the prices of riskier assets like equities typically fall, were generally met with monetary easing, which boosted bond prices. But when inflation is high, economic downturns are more likely to be triggered by tighter monetary conditions, causing both bond and stock prices to fall.”

The BIS said that a “modest slowdown” in the economy “may not be enough,” and lowering inflation “could involve significant output costs, as after the ‘Great Inflation’ of the 1970s.” It said that “some pain will be inevitable,” but the “overriding priority is to avoid falling behind the curve.”

The economic response to the 1970s inflation, which resulted in an upsurge of struggles by the working class around the world, was the “Volcker shock” of the early 1980s.

Under the chairmanship of Paul Volcker, the Fed lifted lifted interest rates to record highs—20 percent at one point—resulting in the deepest recession to that point since the Great Depression to crush wage demands.

But as the Wall Street Journal noted, the risks to the global economy are much greater today because “overvalued assets and high debt … were much less of a concern” at that time.

As with central banks around the world, the BIS insisted that the key issue is wages and “whether inflation becomes entrenched or not ultimately depends on whether wage-price spirals will develop. The risk should not be underestimated, owing to the inherent dynamics of transitions from low- to high-inflation regimes.”

It warned that “price-induced cuts in real wages are likely to prompt workers to seek to recoup the lost of purchasing power” and noted that “in many countries, a substantial part, if not the bulk of wage negotiations were still to come.

In other words, the present upsurge in the struggles of workers seeking higher wages is only the beginning of a much bigger movement building up.

The BIS left no doubt about what the response had to be. It drew attention to the fact that existence of private debt at “historical peaks” and “elevated valuations” could make financial markets overreact. This raised a “policy dilemma” because financial markets reactions “may counsel caution.”

But, it insisted, notwithstanding this “dilemma,” central banks had to press ahead because “the risk of inflation becoming entrenched calls for a more pre-emptive and vigorous response.”

Underscoring this prescription, the BIS general manager Agustín Carstens said, “The key for central banks is to act quickly and decisively before inflation becomes entrenched.”

On top of a pre-emptive strike against wages, the BIS called for cuts in vital government spending, in other words, an austerity drive.

“For far too long,” it said, “there has been a temptation to turn to fiscal and monetary policy to boost growth, regardless of the underlying causes of weakness” and that loosening during contractions had not given way to “consolidation” [that is, major spending cuts] when the economy was growing.

“The temptation to postpone adjustments has been too strong. Such a strategy has arguably generated unrealistic expectations and demands for further support,” the report stated.

The rapidly worsening economic outlook hangs over the G7 leaders meeting now underway in Germany. While the first day of discussions were dominated by moves to increase measures against Russia with regard to oil exports, the economic crisis is a key issue.

A survey of economists conducted by the Financial Times on the eve of the meeting concluded that the risk of recession in Europe and the US had increased markedly following the decision by the US Federal Reserve to “go big” on rate increases with its decision to lift its base rate by 0.75 percentage point earlier this month.

The mood was summed up by Berenberg chief economist Holger Schmieding who said the balance had “tipped” in favour of an economic contraction. “What used to be a rising risk has now turned into a base case,” he told the FT.

“It would have been impossible to imagine at the last G7 summit that we’d be facing a situation like this,” he said. “Things are pretty bad and could get even worse.”

An unnamed “senior German official” cited by the newspaper said at the start of the pandemic there was a “simple consensus” on how to respond through “expansive monetary and fiscal policy.”

“The situation we’re now in is a lot more complex, a lot more difficult. This completely clear, almost instinctive idea that you just pursue expansionary polices is no longer so obvious,” he said.

The way in which the leaders of the major powers will seek to use the economic crisis that their own policies have created in order to intensify the war against Russia and draw China into the line of fire was revealed in Schmieding’s comments.

“It’s not the G7 leaders who have caused these problems—it’s [Chinese president] Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin,” he said.

That is, the inflation crisis is not the result of the inflationary monetary policies pursued over the last two decades and the refusal of capitalist governments to eliminate the pandemic but the product of Putin’s Ukraine war while the Chinese government is responsible for the supply chain crisis because of its zero COVID policies based on necessary and effective public health safety measures.

Johnson under renewed threat as prime minister after devastating by-election defeats

Robert Stevens

Boris Johnson’s crisis-ridden premiership became more so Friday after the ruling Conservatives suffered two worse than expected by-election defeats. The elections were the first held since the “partygate” scandal that has rocked Johnson’s leadership since last November.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaving London to attend Chogm 2022 in Rwanda. 22/06/2022 [Photo by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-ND 4.0]

The defeats ignited calls for Johnson, currently in Rwanda at the June 20-25 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, to step down as party leader. It is less than three weeks since Johnson survived a vote of no confidence by his party, with 41 percent of Tory MPs casting their vote against him.

Conservative Party chair Oliver Dowden resigned Friday morning, issuing a letter at 5.00am stating, “We cannot carry on with business as usual.” Former Tory leader (2003-2005) Michael Howard told the BBC, “the party and more importantly the country would be better off under new leadership.”

Both elections were triggered by sex scandals. The vote in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, was forced followed the resignation of Imran Ahmad Khan, jailed in May for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008. Tiverton and Honiton was triggered after Neil Parish resigned in May after admitting twice watching pornography in Parliament’s main chamber.

In Wakefield, the Tories lost the seat to Labour, with Simon Lightwood securing a 4,925-vote margin in a 12.7 percent swing. The result saw Labour regain one of the Brexit-voting “Red Wall” constituencies lost to Johnson in the 2019 general election the Tories fought on a policy of “Get Brexit Done”.

Wakefield has historically been a safe Labour seat, held by the party from 1932.

Johnson will be far more concerned at the loss of the safe seat of Tiverton and Honiton in Devon, south-west England to the Liberal Democrats. The result was the worst in by-election history, in terms of overcoming a large majority held by the incumbent party. It was the third time within a year that the Lib Dems have won a previously safe Tory seat.

Liberal Democrat candidate Richard Foord overturned a 24,239 vote majority to win a seat the Tories had held ever since its creation in 1997. The Tories’ vote fell to 16,393, by nearly 22 percent. The Liberal Democrats won with the aid of tactical voting—increasing their vote by over 38 percent while Labour’s dropped by nearly 16 percent. The almost 30 percent swing to the Liberal Democrats from the Tories is one of the largest ever. The result was so bad that Tory candidate Helen Hurford barricaded herself in a dance studio at Crediton sports centre, where the count was being held, refusing to speak to the media.

Politico noted, “The last time this seat was represented by a non-Conservative MP was [in 1835] two years before Queen Victoria ascended to the throne…”.

Barring two seats, the Tories hold every seat in the largely rural southwest of England. Thursday’s results will prompt further attacks on Johnson’s leadership from MPs fearful of losing their seats in any upcoming election.

Johnson’s pitch that he is best placed to secure a successful post-Brexit era didn’t wash in Tiverton and Honiton, a constituency which voted to leave the European Union by 58 percent to 42. His presence was considered so toxic that when he visited the constituency on June 10 it was not published on any of Hurford’s campaign social media sites/leaflets.

Pollster Joe Twyman has noted there are 291 Tory MPs with smaller majorities than Tiverton and Honiton, out of a total of 359 MPs.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the backbench 1922 Committee and MP for the Cotswolds, with a 20,214 majority over the Lib Dems, declared, “I think factually if I were to run under a bus today it would be difficult to hold my seat, there’s no doubt about that.”

One unidentified Tory MP told PA that the by-election “precipitates electoral disaster, which can only be avoided by replacing Boris Johnson with the better leadership the Conservative Party needs and deserves.”

Johnson still has a commanding parliamentary majority of 75, and, having won the no confidence vote, under party rules cannot be removed in a leadership challenge for 12 months. But such is the crisis enveloping the government that changing the party’s rules to allow a challenge, first mooted by 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady during the no confidence vote, is being discussed.

The Daily Telegraph reported, “Some Tory MPs now think that the rules should be changed to allow Mr Johnson to be removed from office if a majority can be reached… Tory MPs are preparing to vote in the 1922 Committee elections… expected to be completed before Parliament's summer recess, which begins on July 21. The election could see some of Mr Johnson’s opponents on the Conservative back benches elected to key roles, making rule changes more likely.”

Asked as he boarded the plane to the east African state on Wednesday, 24 hours before polling day, if he would resign if the by-elections were lost, Johnson replied, “Are you crazy?”

Speaking Friday from a news conference in Kigali, he doubled down declaring, “in mid-term governments post-war lose by-elections.”

He then cynically referenced the devastating crisis hitting millions and fuelling intensified class conflict as a factor in his leadership woes. “I think as a Government I’ve got to listen to what people are saying—in particular to the difficulties people are facing over the cost of living, which I think for most people is the number one issue. We’re now facing pressures on the cost of living, we’re seeing spikes in fuel prices, energy costs, food costs—that’s hitting people.”

Despite such bromides, the Johnson’s government’s agenda is one of militarism and war abroad and class war at home. As Johnson boarded his flight to Rwanda, where the Tories intend to illegally send hundreds and then thousands of asylum seekers, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab put before Parliament his Bill of Rights, which will replace and eviscerate the Human Rights Act. Further anti-strike legislation is being prepared.

The criminal Johnson and his government only remains in office, committing the UK to war with Russia and China and able carry out a devastating offensive against the working class, because there is no fundamental opposition to his agenda within political circles.

The Liberal Democrats, who only seven years ago were booted out of office after being the junior partners in a Tory-led coalition that imposed brutal austerity against workers, are just as frenzied in their war fervour.

The main force preventing the hated Johnson government being dealt with from below is the Labour Party and the trade union bureaucracy.

Under conditions in which every sector of the working class is demanding a turn to industrial struggle, the unions have permitted only one major strike by 50,000 rail workers to proceed. Labour responded with horror to the first national strike on the rail for 35 years, with party leader Sir Keir Starmer threatening any Labour MP who went on a picket line (only 25 did) with disciplinary action.

Over 2.4 million other workers are involved in disputes, just considering those employed in council and schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (1.4 million); doctors and nurses (666,000); civil servants (188,000); Royal Mail (115,000) and BT telecoms (40,000). The Trades Union Congress and its affiliated unions operate as the industrial police force of the government.

Dock workers strike at six German ports

Ulrich Rippert

Thousands of dockworkers at Germany’s major ports went on strike Thursday at the beginning of the early shift. The ports of Hamburg, Emden, Bremerhaven, Bremen, Brake and Wilhelmshaven were affected.

This was the second 24-hour warning strike in the ongoing contract bargaining round. Approximately 12,000 dockers had already stopped work on June 9. Dock workers are not prepared to accept the wage dictates of the Central Association of German Seaport Operators (ZDS) and, in view of rapid price increases, are demanding appropriate compensation for inflation.

Container terminal in the port of Hamburg (Alexander Hoernigk, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The trade union Verdi is leading the negotiations in the 58 port companies in Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Bremen covered by the contract. Verdi’s demands are very limited; they include an increase in hourly wages of €1.20 and, in container companies, an increase in the annual allowance of €1,200. Because neither of these would even compensate for the already horrendous inflation, the union has also demanded an unspecified “compensation for actual inflation.”

In fact, even these minimal demands, which do not recompense the wage theft already caused by the price increases, will not be pushed through by Verdi. The union is desperately seeking a deal with the employers, but these are not even willing to make cosmetic concessions.

After a long period of hesitation, ZDS presented an offer that meant a massive real wages cut. Under the new contract, wages would increase by 3.2 percent for this year and by only 2.8 percent next year. In addition, there would be a one-off payment of €600. In a provocative statement, the employers’ association said that “in combination with the federal government’s relief package” this was equivalent to an adjustment for inflation.

When the union’s negotiating commission rejected the offer as non-negotiable and announced strike action because it feared workers’ anger, the ZDS reacted angrily. “We are in the middle of an absolutely exceptional situation,” ZDS negotiator Ulrike Riedl said in a written statement.

Global supply chains had been severely disrupted, he said. On the one hand, there was a large wave of delayed ships approaching ports; on the other hand, there were major bottlenecks in rail freight transport, which delayed onward carriage and caused additional storage costs. Calling warning strikes now was absolutely irresponsible, Riedl said.

The Kiel Institute for World Trade (IfW) also warned against the effects of a dock strike and drew attention to the ongoing disruptions in container shipping in the North Sea.

International trade was suffering greatly from the congestion and delays in container shipping, which were now also reaching the North Sea, Vincent Stamer, head of Kiel Trade Indicator, explained in the current issue of World Trade Indicator.

Container ships are also backed up in the North Sea off the ports of Germany, Holland and Belgium. According to the IfW, almost 2 percent of global freight capacity is currently stuck there and cannot be loaded or unloaded. About a dozen large container ships with a total capacity of about 150,000 standard containers were waiting to dock in Hamburg or Bremerhaven, according to a press release.

But dockworkers were not intimidated and stuck to their demand for compensation for inflation and an increase in real wages.

The employers then presented a new “final” offer, which included Verdi’s demand for an increase in hourly wages of €1.20. In the area of car shipping, where many low-wage workers are employed in so-called car handling, the hourly wage would increase by only 90 cents. The employers agreed to increase the allowance to the €1,200 demanded and, as compensation for inflation, there would be a one-off payment of €1,000 in container operations and €500 in conventional ones. At the same time, however, the contract duration would be extended by six months.

Verdi’s negotiating commission showed that calculated overall, the new offer was pure sham and with a duration of 18 months, meant a deterioration compared to the first offer.

This was followed by the second warning strike, in which even more workers participated on Thursday, marching in protest demonstrations through Hamburg, Bremen and other port cities.

It has been several decades since dockers in Germany have gone on strike. Up to now, Verdi and its predecessors have always negotiated a compromise, which they pushed through even if it meant real wage losses and a deterioration in working conditions. This has resulted in hourly wages of between only €14 and €20 being paid for the hard and often dangerous work of loading large containers and operating container gantry cranes.

Even now Verdi is trying to reach an agreement as quickly as possible.

Workers must be on their guard and organise themselves independently of Verdi in rank-and-file action committees to extend the strike and assert their own interests.

Verdi is closely linked to the governing Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Greens and supports the government’s policy of imposing the cost of billions in corporate giveaways and military build-up on the working class through massive price hikes and lowering living standards.

Verdi has already signed collective agreements in other sectors, such as the printing industry, insurance, private banking and newspapers, which are far below what the port employers have offered. Most of these Verdi wage agreements run for two years and consist of one or two one-off payments of €500 and annual wage increases of 1.5 to 3 percent. Like the IG Metall union, Verdi also rejects seeking compensation for inflation.

The real level of inflation is much higher than the usual figures quoted. Above all, prices for food, heating, rents and energy, which represent a particularly heavy burden on those dependent on low and middle incomes, have risen several times more than the official inflation rate. The World Bank expects international food prices to rise by 22.9 percent this year. For many workers and their families, this threatens their very existence; they are simply no longer able to make ends meet on their monthly salaries.

In addition, there are unbearable levels of work stress, the threat of losing jobs and the consequences of the government’s ruthless coronavirus policy, which has claimed 140,000 lives in Germany alone and infected 3.6 million, one in 10 of whom are suffering from long-term consequences.

On the other hand, profits in many corporations are rising astronomically. The top companies listed on the German Dax index have also set new profit records. In the first quarter of 2022, their profits were 21 percent higher than in the same period of the previous year. The large container shipping companies are also taking advantage of the crisis to make massive profits. Because the demand for overseas transport exceeds the supply of available shipping capacity, freight rates are being driven up. Nevertheless, it is workers who are made to bleed.

All over the world, workers are concluding that they must fight if they are to defend their rights and gains. The number of strikes and protests has increased significantly around the world—from the US to Europe, Asia and Africa. This week, 50,000 rail workers are taking strike action in Britain.

Dockers in Germany need to see their wages struggle as part of this international mobilisation of the working class, and they need to address the issues today facing workers everywhere.

US Supreme Court abolishes constitutional right to abortion

Eric London

On Friday, at the stroke of a pen, six unelected judges ended the right to abortion, dramatically altering the country’s legal and social landscape. For the first time in American history, the Supreme Court eliminated a fundamental constitutional right broadly recognized and supported by the overwhelming majority of the country’s population.

The 6-3 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is effective immediately. Abortion is now or will imminently become illegal in at least 21 states with a combined population of 135 million people. For the vast majority of working women, travel to the mostly coastal states where abortion remains legal will not be an option.

This is the new reality: Many will die in botched back-alley operations. Doctors who perform abortions or prescribe medication to terminate pregnancies will be sent to prison. There is often no exception to abortion bans in cases where the individual is a child or was impregnated through rape or incest.

Abortion rights demonstrators protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday, May 3, 2022 in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The decision is the opening salvo in an historically unprecedented attack by the ruling class on all democratic rights. The concurring opinion by Clarence Thomas announces that the court will now begin to revisit all prior cases in which the Supreme Court protected the substantive due process rights of the population. “In future cases,” Thomas wrote, “we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” These decisions, respectively, protected the right to contraceptives, overturned laws criminalizing sodomy, and legalized same-sex marriage.

Though these decisions are first on the chopping block, Thomas’ concurrence makes clear they are just the starting point. “After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated,” he wrote.

Such cases include Brown v. Board of Education (barring school segregation), Gideon v. Wainwright (establishing the right to free criminal defense counsel), Loving v. Virginia (banning laws against interracial marriage), West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parish (upholding minimum wage and child labor restrictions), and many more. The day before issuing its decision in Dobbs, the court issued a separate decision drastically scaling back protections against police violating the rights of those under arrest.

The decision is not legally legitimate. It is part of a far-right political conspiracy. It is the latest in a long train of reactionary decisions legitimizing state surveillance, police violence, mass deportations and corporate domination of the electoral system. It was issued by a court that does not constitute a democratic branch of government but a battering ram for medieval clericalism and bigotry.

The court is now dominated by fascistic ideologues. Three of the justices voting with the majority in Dobbs (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett) were appointed by Donald Trump, the would-be dictator who conspired with two of the justices (Alito and Thomas) to orchestrate a coup attempt on January 6, 2021, overturn the results of the 2020 election and establish a dictatorship.

Dobbs is the judicial continuation of Trump’s coup attempt. It is being wildly celebrated by the far-right across the country, which views it as a testament of their power and prospects for the future.

Trump issued a pious statement declaring that “God made the decision.” In Texas, pro-Trump state Attorney General Ken Paxton declared June 24 a holiday and closed state offices “in honor of the nearly 70 million unborn babies killed in the womb since 1973,” the year of Roe v. Wade.

The Republican Party will press forward in the fight to abolish abortion even in those states where it remains legal. Fascist congresswoman and January 6 co-conspirator Marjorie Taylor Greene declared, “We are one step closer to ending the mass genocide of abortion in America,” but warned that “it’s not totally over.” Former Vice President Mike Pence said, “We must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land.”

The response of the Democratic Party confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that the defense of even the most basic democratic rights is impossible through the framework of capitalist two-party politics.

At a press conference Friday, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi read a poem and solemnly said, “We hope that the Supreme Court will open its eyes.” House Democrats gathered on the steps of the Capitol building and sang “God Bless America” as protesters chanted in the background. President Joe Biden stumbled through a perfunctory 11-minute speech in which he called the decision “sad” and urged “Congress to restore protections of Roe v. Wade as federal law,” which everyone knows will never happen.

Biden did not announce that the Democratic Party would use the last months of its House and Senate majority to overturn the filibuster, appoint additional Supreme Court justices, or initiate impeachment proceedings against Clarence Thomas for his role in Trump’s coup. Instead, Biden absolved himself of any responsibility, declaring that “no action of the president” can protect abortion. After admitting that the Democratic Party will do nothing to legally protect abortion on a federal level, he then urged people to vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.

Biden also gave voice to the Democratic Party’s primary concern that mass opposition to the decision may produce a social explosion and warned protesters not to “intimidate” the far-right. “Keep all protests peaceful. No intimidation. Violence is never acceptable. Threats and intimidation are not speech.” As Biden spoke, a phalanx of Capitol Police deployed to respond to a protest that had broken out at the Supreme Court building. In marked contrast with January 6, 2021, the police were wearing full riot gear, and there were snipers deployed on the courthouse roof.

The day before the Supreme Court ruling, as the fifth day of hearings took place showing the Republican Party was fully engaged in Trump’s coup plot on January 6, Biden referred to the Republican Party during a press conference as “my Republican friends.” In the same remarks, Biden blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for rising gas prices and defended the massive armament of Ukraine as necessary to spread “democracy” and combat “Putin’s murderous ways.”

Biden and the Democrats rely on their “Republican friends” to wage US imperialism’s neocolonial war against Russia, which aims to open up Eastern Europe and all of Eurasia to the unbridled domination of American corporations, and risks nuclear war. But this bipartisanship legitimizes the extreme right, provides wind in the sails of an increasingly fascist Republican Party, and paves the way for the Supreme Court’s rampage on democratic rights.

The Dobbs decision has the character of a “civil war ruling,” akin to the Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in Sanford v. Dred Scott, which hastened the outbreak of the American Civil War of 1861-65 by ruling that southern slaves remained private property when taken to northern free states, and that all individuals of African descent had no rights because they were not citizens.

Today, Biden is playing the role of then-Democratic President James Buchanan, who was inaugurated two days before Dred Scott was issued and whose administration was defined by his efforts to conciliate his slaveholding “friends” in the doomed, reactionary belief that accommodation with the right would preserve the union.

Dred Scott shocked the Northern population and contributed to a growing realization that democracy was incompatible with the “peculiar institution” of slavery, which allowed a tiny slaveholding elite to dominate the laws of the entire country. The conflict over slavery came to be seen as “irrepressible,” and the question was resolved through the revolutionary war for emancipation.

Today, millions are coming to similar conclusions about capitalism, in which a handful of reactionary oligarchs dominate the political system, attempt to establish dictatorships, wage war with potentially catastrophic consequences, allow the deaths of millions through the preventable spread of diseases like SARS-CoV-2, destroy the environment for profit and oversee the expansion of massive levels of social inequality and poverty.

The Dobbs decision shows that the defense of basic democratic rights today is entirely dependent on the development of a mass movement of the working class independent of the rotten two-party system. Such a movement is developing in the United States and internationally, spurred by the rising cost of living which is driving millions into deeper levels of economic hardship.