Data cover-up deepens as at least 3 children die of COVID every day in the US

Emma Arceneaux

Last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announced that it would discontinue publishing child hospitalization and mortality figures in its weekly “Children and COVID-19” report. The notice states that as of June 16, 2022, “due to only a portion of states reporting hospitalizations and deaths, we are no longer providing updates on cumulative hospitalizations and mortality data.”

Child with COVID-19 in hospital bed (Medical University of South Carolina)

The news highlights the degree to which surveillance and public reporting of the COVID-19 pandemic has been systematically shut down under the Biden administration, beginning with the Department of Health and Human Services ending the requirement for hospitals to submit daily death reports in early February.

Since the spring of 2020, the AAP has reported state-level information about child infections, hospitalizations and deaths. While the data has always been limited due its reliance on inconsistent public data from the states, the report has nevertheless been an important tool in tracking the far-reaching impact of the pandemic on the most vulnerable population in society. It has been particularly insightful in documenting the calamitous impact of the forced reopening of schools during the Delta and Omicron surges, during which the vast majority of infections, hospitalizations and deaths among children occurred.

The latest report notes, “Almost 13.8 million children are reported to have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic according to available state reports; nearly 315,000 of these cases have been added in the past 4 weeks. Approximately 5.9 million reported cases have been added in 2022.”

It adds as well that for the week ending June 30, nearly 76,000 children were infected with COVID-19, up from 68,000 last week. By contrast, this is a 528 percent increase from the number of child cases reported a year prior on July 1, 2021.

The rising cases are part of the latest wave of the pandemic ripping through the United States and internationally. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants are now dominant across the country, accounting for 70 percent of cases last week. The subvariants are known to be highly resistant to immunity from vaccines and prior infections.

The AAP’s last update for child hospitalizations recorded a cumulative total of 43,316 since the start of the pandemic but with data from only 25 states and New York City. It also recorded 1,055 deaths with data from 46 states, New York City, Puerto Rico and Guam.

Though alarming in themselves, the figures from the AAP are known to be undercounts due to the limitations noted above. Over 86,000 children ages 0-17 have been hospitalized from COVID-19 according to CDC data and at least 1,624 have died. The CDC Data Tracker, which is the most real-time source to track deaths by age group, has added 63 pediatric deaths in the past seven days alone, an average of nine per day. Over the past month, 101 pediatric deaths have been added to the Data Tracker, an average of over three per day.

Even these horrific figures are also likely undercounts. In a still unexplained incident, on March 16, 2022, the CDC abruptly removed 72, 277 deaths from the Data Tracker, including 416 pediatric deaths, or 25 percent of the total. Despite repeated attempts by the WSWS to clarify this change to their data, the CDC never issued a clear explanation.

The only plausible explanation for this data manipulation can be gleaned from a report in the Guardian and a form publicized by anti-COVID activist Gregory Travis, which note that the CDC now differentiates between children dying “with COVID” and dying “from COVID.” Initially a far-right talking point at the start of the pandemic, this was adopted by the Biden administration and state Democrats during the Omicron surge last winter.

Though the discontinuation of hospitalization and death data in their weekly report is alarming, the AAP is correct in noting the scarcity of information being made public about the spread of COVID-19.

According to Johns Hopkins, at present half (25) of US states report case information only once a week. Only four states continue to report case numbers seven days per week: Texas, Arkansas, New York and New Jersey. Twenty-four states report COVID-19 deaths only once per week, while Nebraska and North Dakota report deaths “0 days” per week.

On March 18, North Dakota changed from daily reporting to once per week reporting, but the state’s new weekly dashboard does not include deaths. Instead, COVID-19 deaths are now included in a provisional data report released by the Vital Records division once a month. Similarly, Nebraska’s “Respiratory Illness Dashboard” does not publish COVID-19 deaths.

Other states that have reduced reporting since mid-March include Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Montana and Vermont.

The CDC has led the charge in perpetuating the lie that tracking infections is not necessary. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky laughed during a recent interview when she stated, “I know we’re not counting all the rapid [tests]... One of my favorite lines from somebody at the CDC was, ‘you don’t need to count the rain drops to know how hard it’s raining.’” In fact, identifying cases is a prerequisite to isolating infected individuals and stopping the chain of transmission.

Nearly every state, in seeking to justify the reduction in reporting, cited the CDC’s changes to its community risk guidelines in February, which sought to convince the public that risk was tied not to community transmission but to local hospital capacity.

Announcing the reduction in weekly reporting on April 4, a spokesperson for Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services stated, “The change in the way the state will report cases and deaths going forward adheres to a national surveillance strategy created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

On May 18, Vermont decommissioned its COVID-19 dashboard and changed to weekly surveillance reports, which its website states provide “the data and indicators most useful to help monitor and determine risk of COVID-19” but do not include mortality data. Death information, as well as more robust data sets with demographic information, is only available through the state’s Open Geodata portal, which is also updated only once per week.

On a COVID-19 Update podcast episode in April, the American Medical Association interviewed Marcus Plescia, MD, MPH, the chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO). The ASTHO consists of the chief health officials from each US state, Washington D.C., US territories and Freely Associated States. In the interview, Plescia stated that the reduction in data reporting is consistent with reaching “a different stage with how we’re handling the pandemic.”

Plescia repeated the lie that infections in themselves don’t matter. “We don’t want people to get COVID but people are going to get COVID and if they’ve been vaccinated, they’re probably going to be okay,” he said.

Every new detail that scientists learn about Long COVID, or Post-Acute Coronavirus Syndrome, underscores that this statement could not be further from the truth. At least 10 to 30 percent of people who contract COVID-19 will develop Long COVID and an estimated 20 million adults in the US currently suffer from persistent symptoms, which can affect nearly every organ system in the body.

As for children, very little is known about the long-term impact that an infection will have on their health and development. The recent release of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for ages 6 months-5 years is an important but limited step toward protecting children from the most severe acute outcomes. Vaccines have been shown to reduce the incidence of Long COVID by only 15 percent in adults.

Many children ages 5-17 remain unvaccinated altogether. As of June 29, 2022, only 36 percent of children ages 5-11 had received at least one dose and only 29 percent had two doses. Among ages 12-17, 69 percent had received at least one dose and 59 percent had two doses.

With the intentional shutting down of surveillance and public reporting of COVID-19 data, it is increasingly difficult for people to track the disease and understand their own risk. This has ominous implications for the coming fall and winter when millions of children will be forced back into dangerous classrooms and during which time the White House has projected 100 million Americans could contract the disease.

Turkish security forces fire on migrants, killing a child and wounding 12

Hasan Yıldırım

Turkish Gendarmerie forces opened fire on a vehicle carrying migrants in the eastern city of Van on the Iranian border, killing a child and wounding 12 other immigrants. The entire political and media establishment has been relentlessly waging an anti-refugee campaign and bears political responsibility for this incident. It occurred shortly after the massacre of at least 37 migrants by security forces on the Spanish-Moroccan border.

The father of his a child killed by Turkish Gendarmerie gunfire sitting next to the child’s remains, July 3, 2022. [Photo: Twitter]

On July 3, gendarmerie teams carrying out a road check in Van’s Saray district on the Iranian border opened fire at a van that allegedly disobeyed a “stop” warning. The driver of the van fled the scene, but Gazete Duvar reported that four of the 12 wounded are in serious condition and one of the deceased was a child, aged four. According to the Van Governorate’s statement, all of the wounded were lightly wounded.

In its statement, the Van Governorate said: “In order to stop the vehicle whose driver did not obey the ‘stop’ warning and drove towards the Gendarmerie personnel, shots were fired at the tires of the vehicle.” However, photographs taken after the incident show numerous bullet marks on the rear of the vehicle.

The governorate also claimed that the death and injuries were caused by “ricocheting” bullets, alleging: “It was determined that the vehicle was used in migrant smuggling and there were 40 irregular migrants inside. Unfortunately, one migrant unfortunately lost his/her life and 12 irregular migrants were slightly injured due to ricocheting bullets.”

Before that, on July 1, 35 refugees escaped from a refugee camp in the Cevdetiye district of Osmaniye, a southern city. A fascistic mob rapidly formed alongside the deployment of large numbers of gendarmerie personnel to catch them. This underscores that the anti-refugee propaganda which has long been carried out by bourgeois politicians and the media establishment has reached an extremely dangerous level.

Many recent similar incidents make clear that refugee camps in Turkey are no different from prisons. Recently, in a camp for 30,000 refugees in the southern city of Adana’s Sarıçam district, a group of refugees marched to protest poor food. On June 15, hundreds of refugees protested in a refugee camp in the Kapuçam district of Kahramanmaraş. The demonstrators were dispersed by police.

These events were almost completely ignored by the bourgeois political establishment and media. For decades, the Turkish ruling class and its media have supported US-led imperialist wars and regime-change operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and beyond. Entire societies have been devastated by these criminal wars, with tens of millions of people displaced.

While millions of people from Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa try to reach Europe in the hope of finding refuge, the European Union’s (EU) “Fortress Europe” policy has turned the Mediterranean into a refugee graveyard. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government, together with Greece, has taken on the task of protecting Europe’s borders from refugees.

Ankara’s dirty deal with the EU to keep refugees out of Europe has turned Turkey into a massive refugee prison. According to President Erdoğan’s statement in December 2021, there were around 5 million refugees in Turkey. According to a report by the Refugees Association, as of June 23, the number of Syrians in Turkey is 3,684,488.

The Erdoğan government and the entire ruling class face a deepening economic, social and political crisis amid the COVID-19 pandemic and NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine. While official annual inflation in Turkey has reached 78 percent, according to the independent Inflation Research Group (ENAG), real annual inflation has reached 175 percent. With 90 percent of the population estimated to be living below the poverty line, social inequality is wider than ever as the government pursues policies in favour of the bourgeoisie in the pandemic.

This year, as a wave of wildcat strikes by workers spreads across many industries, the political and media establishment are responding to growing social anger and working class militancy with a chauvinist anti-refugee campaign. This campaign, which aims to divide and confuse workers, turns defenceless refugees into scapegoats, while all the establishment parties commit to preventing asylum seekers from coming to Turkey and to returning refugees to their countries of origin.

Boasting that they had repatriated half a million Syrians since 2016, Erdoğan announced in May that they would send 1 million more Syrian refugees back. He said, “We are preparing a new project that will ensure the voluntary return of 1 million Syrian brothers and sisters we host in our country. We will implement this project with the support of our country and international non-governmental organizations.”

The bourgeois opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and its allies, including the far-right Good Party, backed by the pseudo-left parties, have criticized the government’s actions from the right. They attack the government’s efforts to block the refugees as “insufficient.” CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said of Erdoğan’s plan to send back one million Syrian refugees: “Come off it! There are still flows of fugitives coming from the border. We will send the rest back in two years, and we are all fed up with your fake projects.”

The most prominent party in the anti-refugee campaign, however, has been the Victory Party (Zafer Partisi). Founded by Ümit Özdağ, a former Good Party member, this middle class party brands refugees as Turkey’s main problem and hysterically campaigns for their deportation.

On June 27, Özdağ announced that he would visit Reyhanlı, a town in Hatay bordering Syria, to plant a land mine on the border, and pledged to plant more mines after coming to power. While Özdağ was prevented from entering the city by the Hatay Governorate, no one thought to ask where and how this fascistic politician had found a land mine.

As a result of this reactionary campaign by the entire political and media establishment, fascistic attacks against refugees in Turkey are on the rise. Three Syrian refugees were burned to death in Izmir last November, and a far-right mob raided a Syrian neighbourhood in Ankara in August. After a quarrel between Syrian refugees and Turkish citizens broke out in Adana last May, attacks were reportedly carried out on Syrians’ homes; four people were injured.

These and many other attacks are a serious warning to the working class as a whole. The fascistic mobs that today, with the encouragement of the ruling class, target defenceless refugees will in the coming period target workers who go on strike or organize protests for decent wages, better social conditions, and democratic rights.

Turkish health workers on two-day nationwide strike after murder of Dr Ekrem Karakaya

Ulaş Ateşçi

Yesterday, Ekrem Karakaya, a cardiologist at Konya City Hospital, was killed while on duty in an armed attack by Hacı Mehmet Akçay, a relative of a patient. The assailant committed suicide after the murder.

Healthcare workers march during a strike on December 6 in İzmir, with a banner saying ‘Health care is teamwork. We want wages to live decently, above the poverty line!’ [Credit: @sesgenelmerkezi on Twitter]

After the murder, hospital staff stopped work. Physicians and health workers organizations such as the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), Hekimsen and SES unions are stopping work today and tomorrow in protest. They blame the government, which they correctly hold responsible for increasing attacks on health care workers and are demanding that necessary measures be taken.

The World Socialist Web Site condemns this attack and calls for the preparation of a mass political movement in the working class in defence of health workers. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government, and governments across Europe and the Middle East, have contempt for the needs of health care workers and the working class as a whole. Amid a new upsurge of COVID-19, it is essential for all workers and youth to mobilize in solidarity with health workers in this critical fight.

Hekimsen, which has approximately 20,000 members, said in a statement: “Our union has decided to take action for 2 days (July 7 - July 8, 2022) all over Turkey. We will discuss with our stakeholders about what to do after the Eid al-Adha.”

The TTB, which has around 110,000 members, held a press conference, announcing its support for the two-day strike. In a statement titled “We are sorry, we are furious! We will hold those responsible to account,” TTB officials stated: “As the Turkish Medical Association, we have repeatedly warned the government against the widening spiral of violence. We have repeatedly explained that violence in health care sector is not an isolated issue, but a social and political problem.”

Stressing that they had demanded action be taken and the law be amended to address increased armed or physical attacks on health care institutions, the TTB accused the government of ignoring its warnings. It said: “The source of violence was detached from its social context, and the problem was reduced to individuals.”

It continued: “The entire responsibility of the health system, which is collapsing in every sense, is placed on the shoulders of physicians and health care workers. This situation causes us to become targets, and the policies carried out in the field of health come back to us in the form of violence, death, helplessness and hopelessness.”

The TTB emphasized the responsibility of President Erdoğan himself, who has increasingly targeted physicians and health care workers recently: “We call out to those who told us to let them go, today a colleague of ours has died. You are also responsible!”

The brutal murder of Dr. Karakaya outraged hundreds of thousands of health care workers and broader layers of working people. After the murder became known, the social media topics were almost entirely devoted to this issue. Both health care workers and many of their supporters criticized the decision of health care unions and TTB to strike for only two days and called for an “indefinite strike.”

The government’s initial reactions to the murder only deepened public anger. Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, who is thoroughly discredited for his policy of mass infection and death in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, was widely criticized for his vague statement on Twitter. Demands are mounting for his resignation.

Koca wrote: “A security guard from Konya Yunak District State Hospital shot a fellow physician at Konya City Hospital and took his life. He also died in the incident. Judicial authorities are continuing their investigations into this horrifying criminal act.”

Concerned that the political and social causes of the murder are being discussed by millions, the government imposed a gag order on reporting on the murder in a Konya court. Thousands of people nevertheless discussed the issue on social media.

Since December last year, physicians and health workers have gone on strike across Turkey almost every month to demand better wages and benefits, making them one of the most combative sections of the working class. One of their main demands was the adoption of deterrent legal measures against dozens of daily incidents of violence in health institutions.

Recent press reports reveal how the government’s targeting and impunity for physical attacks encourage new attacks on health care workers. On Monday, Prof. Koray Başar, a former President of the Psychiatric Association of Turkey, was physically attacked by an organized group.

Yesterday, before the murder, the SES union in Bursa issued a press release on another act of violence, stating: “Unfortunately, our physician friend working at Duaçınarı Oral and Dental Hospital has been subjected to constant threats and verbal violence by a patient and has no security of life.”

On April 15, which was declared “Day of Struggle against Violence in Health Care Sector” by the TTB, Süleyman Kaynak, an official of the Izmir Medical Chamber, shared the latest data on the situation. “Dr. Ersin Arslan and 10 other colleagues killed in the last 20 years were taken from us not only by angry patients and relatives, but also by the severe problems of the current health care system,” he said.

According to Kaynak, the number of acts of violence against health care workers “increased from 11,942 in 2020 to 29,826 in 2021. According to a survey conducted by the TTB, 84 percent of physicians have been subjected to physical or verbal violence at least once in their professional lives.” This means an average of 81 violent incidents per day.

The statement continued: “The government’s policies in the field of health care service have returned to physicians in the form of violence, death, despair and hopelessness, and working conditions have become unbearable” and that physicians have resigned, retired or left the country in response.

This year alone, around 1,000 Turkish physicians have gone abroad. According to the Hekimsen union, “approximately 9,000 doctors have resigned from the public service in the last 20 months; nearly 2,000 of them have gone abroad or are about to leave.”

Kaynak concluded his statement, stating: “Without acknowledging the root causes of violence in health care system, that is, without improving the living conditions of citizens, the working conditions of physicians, without changing the health care system that does not prioritize public health, a mere violence law cannot permanently solve violence in health.”

The murder of Dr. Karakaya and the increasing attacks on health care workers in Turkey can only be understood in the context of the deepening crisis of the capitalist system as a whole.

For nearly two decades, the Erdoğan government and capitalist governments internationally have subordinated health care to the profit interests of corporations, gutting public health while also massively impoverishing the working class amid deepening social inequality. Militarism is relentlessly glorified, police violence against social protests commonplace, and basic democratic rights completely disregarded.

US extends economic war on Russia to China

Peter Symonds

An article published in the New York Times on Tuesday, entitled “US aims to expand export bans on China over security and human rights,” explicitly linked Washington’s escalating economic war on China with the US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine.

Citing administration officials, the article declared that “the Biden administration is applying lessons learned from controls on Russia during the Ukraine war to try to limit China’s military and technological advances.” It noted that the White House has declared China to be the “greatest long-term rival” of the US.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk to each other during their meeting in Beijing, China, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

US Commerce Department official Alan Estevez told an event organised by the Center for a New American Security: “We need to ensure that the US retains technological overmatch. In other words, China cannot build capabilities that they will then use against us, or against their neighbours for that matter, in any kind of conflict.”

Estevez is head of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees export controls. Significantly he is also a former Pentagon official, underlining the direct link between economic and military warfare. Estevez told a Commerce Department policy conference last week: “My goal is to stop China from being able to use that technology to advance their military, modernize their military.”

The fact that the Biden administration is targeting China with the measures being used in its war against Russia is highly significant. Increasingly openly, the US is treating the military war against Russia and the mounting confrontation with China as part of a far broader conflict to weaken and subjugate potential rivals.

Just as the US goaded Russia into invading Ukraine by refusing to rule out NATO membership, so it is strengthening ties with Taiwan and boosting arms sales to the island. Washington knows full well that any move by Taipei to declare independence could provoke Chinese military intervention. As with Russia in the Ukraine war, the US would use conflict over Taiwan to undermine and destabilise China.

All of these war plans are hypocritically dressed up as the defence of democracy and human rights. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told the same departmental conference that export controls were “at the red-hot centre of how we best protect our democracies.” She boasted that global export controls on Russia had led to a 90 percent slump in its semiconductor imports and could soon decimate its fleet of commercial aircraft.

China is also in the crosshairs. The Biden administration announced another round of bans last week against five Chinese companies claiming that they were continuing to support Russia’s military-industrial complex and that their activities were “contrary to US national security and foreign policy interests.” The Commerce Department provided no evidence for its allegations.

The companies added to the export blacklist—Connec Electronic, King Pai Technology, Sinno Electronics, Winninc Electronic and World Jetta Logistics—are all in the hi-tech sector. The bans, the first on China for allegedly aiding Russia, were implemented even though American officials acknowledge that the Chinese government and most Chinese companies have complied with US-led sanctions.

These are just one element of the battery of bans and tariffs imposed on China under Trump and now extended under Biden in an effort to weaken its economy. Whatever the pretexts, which range from connections to the Chinese military to allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the measures are particularly aimed at crippling China’s efforts to compete in hi-tech fields.

Not only do the bans apply to US companies and investors, but the Biden administration is seeking to extend them to foreign companies using the threat of economic penalties. The US has blocked foreign companies from exporting certain items if they are made with American technology to listed entities including the Chinese hi-tech telecommunications giant, Huawei. Bans are also in place over the export of goods containing specific amounts of American-made content.

Washington has marshalled its allies in Europe and Asia in the proxy war against Russia to join in the economic bans on Russia. However, its efforts to do the same against China have met with some resistance in American and global business circles fearful of the economic impact of such measures and of Chinese retaliation.

Myron Brilliant, executive vice president at the US Chamber of Commerce, told the New York Times that while businesses supported sanctions against Russia, views on China were “more complex and nuanced.” The business community, he said, had deep concerns about China’s policies, “yet we must also recognize that the two largest economies are very integrated… So the impact of broad decoupling or extensive sanctioning of China would be much more destabilising.”

Nevertheless, the Biden administration is proceeding with its efforts to tighten the economic noose around the Chinese economy. Bloomberg reported this week that the White House “is expanding its campaign to curb the country’s rise” by seeking to block the Dutch corporation ASML Holding NV from selling chip-making technology to China.

The Trump administration had already bludgeoned the Dutch government into barring the export of the most sophisticated chip-making technology to Chinese firms. ASML is the world’s top maker of lithography systems, machines that perform the crucial step of etching the microscopic circuitry essential to the manufacture of semi-conductors.

Now US officials are in talks with their Dutch counterparts to prevent ASML from selling older mainstream technology, known as deep ultraviolet lithography (DUV), required to produce the less advanced chips used in a broad range of devices from cars to computers, phones and robots.

As Bloomberg explained, such a ban would significantly broaden the range and class of chip-making gear now forbidden from heading to China, potentially dealing a serious blow to Chinese chip-makers from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp to Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd.

Just as the Trump administration set out to destroy the Chinese tech giant Huawei by cutting off its global access to advanced computer chips and technology, so the Biden administration is seeking to block China from developing its indigenous chip-making capacity that is vital across a broad range of commercial and military applications. According to Bloomberg, American officials are also pressuring Japan to ban the export of chip-making technology to China.

Along with US propaganda over Chinese “human rights” abuses, unsubstantiated allegations of threats to invade Taiwan, the strengthening of US military alliances in Asia and the boosting of the American military in the region, the escalating economic war is another warning of US imperialism’s advanced plans for conflict with China.

Far from being an isolated episode in Eastern Europe, the US proxy war in Ukraine is rapidly morphing into a global conflagration between nuclear armed powers.

Citing Europe’s “cohesion” against Russia, Norway’s government bans oil workers strike so imperialist powers can continue to wage war

Jordan Shilton

Norway’s Labour Party government stepped in on the first day of a strike by oil and gas workers Tuesday to criminalise their job action. The move demonstrates how governments in every country are illegalising working class opposition to the spiraling cost of living so that the imperialist powers can continue waging war with Russia.

The strike involves 74 mainly senior oil and gas workers on the North Sea platforms of Gudrun, Oseberg Sør and Oseberg Øst and was set to have expanded to include a further 117 workers on the Heidrun, Aasta Hansteen and Kristin fields on Wednesday. Under conditions of inflation of over 5 percent and bumper profits for the oil and gas giants due to high energy prices, workers are demanding wage increases.

Despite the relatively small number of workers involved, their strategic position in Norway’s oil and gas production would have seen total gas output drop by 25 percent and oil by 15 percent by the weekend. This prospect was intolerable for the Norwegian government and the major European imperialist powers in Berlin, Paris and London, which are increasingly reliant on Norwegian natural gas to replace supplies from Russia. The government therefore announced just hours after the strike that the job action had been banned and all outstanding issues would be submitted to a compulsory wage board, a government-appointed body that will make a final determination on the pay dispute.

“When the conflict can have such great social consequences for the whole of Europe, I have no choice but to intervene in the conflict,” declared Labour Minister Marte Mjøs Persen in a statement. “It is unjustifiable to let gas production stop to such an extent.”

Underlining the explicitly political character of the decision, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs released its own statement, which demanded that Norway “must do everything in its power to help maintain European energy security and European cohesion against Russia’s war.”

The logical conclusion to be drawn from the government’s action and this chilling statement is that any job action or protest by workers that threatens the imperialist powers’ war will be declared illegal and prohibited by using the full force of the state apparatus. A regime that resorts to “everything in its power” to crush popular opposition and “maintain … cohesion” ought to by rights be called a dictatorship.

The oil workers’ union rushed to give its stamp of approval to the government’s draconian action. Audun Ingvartsen, leader of the Lederne union, vowed that workers would return to their jobs as soon as possible. Asked if the strike was over, he told Reuters, “Yes.”

Norway’s trade unions are among the most important backers of the Labour Party. They preside over a heavily regulated and centralised collective bargaining system designed to suppress workers’ struggles. Norway’s trade union confederation LO (Landesorganisasjonen), counts approximately 1 million members out of a total population of just over 5 million and a working population of around 3.5 million people.

Far from being exceptional, Tuesday’s events in Norway are increasingly the norm across Europe and North America, as deeply unpopular governments sitting atop unprecedented levels of social inequality, trample basic democratic and social rights under foot at home and wage war abroad. Late last month, the Biden administration intervened to ensure that a threatened strike by over 20,000 dockers at the port of Los Angeles was called off before it had even begun. The workers were determined to fight for wage increases and an end to a brutal regime of casual labour that has left many workers sleeping rough in their cars in a desperate effort to secure a shift. But for the American ruling class, any disruption to the key trade route is unthinkable because it would disrupt its war aimed at reducing Russia to the status of a semi-colony.

Spain’s Social Democratic-led government intervened last week to criminalise a strike by Ryanair pilots and cabin crew for improvements to wages and conditions.

In Germany, the Social Democrat-led government met Monday for the first session of a corporatist dialogue with trade union and business leaders to determine how to suppress workers’ wage demands to fund the war effort. The “Concerted Action” called by Chancellor Olaf Scholz aims to impose the full burden of Germany’s massive €100 billion rearmament programme on the backs of working people.

Norway is a major gas supplier to Britain and Europe, and its role has increased still further following the US-NATO-instigated Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 2021, Norway accounted for a quarter of gas supplies to Britain and Europe. In March, Equinor, the state-owned oil and gas firm, confirmed that it received permits from the Norwegian government to increase gas production at the Oseberg and Heidrun fields by 1 billion cubic metres and 0.4 billion cubic meters respectively by September 2021. It was no mere coincidence that this announcement came as German Deputy Chancellor Robert Habeck visited Oslo to sign an agreement with the Norwegian government for increased gas supplies to Germany, which already depends on Norway for 30 percent of its natural gas needs.

German news magazine Der Spiegel reported at the time that the German government would supply Norway with specially equipped ships capable of converting liquified natural gas into gas off the German coast in order to facilitate Norway’s export of an additional 1.4 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Europe this summer. Habeck also announced during his visit the creation of a bilateral working group to consider the building of a gas pipeline between Germany and Norway.

In addition to supplying energy for the imperialist powers war effort, the Norwegian government is more than a willing partner in the massive military build-up against Russia. Sharing a short Arctic border with Russia, Norway has played host on several occasions over recent years to major NATO exercises. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who has overseen a vast expansion of the aggressive military alliance’s presence in Eastern Europe and has initiated the creation of a 300,000-strong rapid reaction force, served twice as Norway’s prime minister between the late 1990s and 2013. During Stoltenberg’s second term in office, Norway’s current Prime Minister and Labour Party leader, Jonas Gar Støre, served as his foreign minister.

The banning of the Norwegian oil workers’ strike by a government claiming to be “left-wing” underscores how workers in Norway and internationally entering into struggle against the intolerable increase in the cost of living and dangerous working conditions, including the threat from the pandemic, confront a political fight against imperialist war. Behind the backs of the population, the major powers have decided that everything, including workers’ democratic and social rights, must be sacrificed to a war aimed at carving up Russia and seizing control of its rich natural resources.

Greece forces refugees to participate in brutal “pushbacks” on Turkish border

John Vassilopoulos

Greek border authorities are enslaving asylum seekers and coercing them to participate in illegal police “pushback” operations forcing desperate refugees back across the border into Turkey.

Those involved are promised transit through Greece into Europe.

Six asylum seekers who participated in pushback operations along the Evros river, running across the land border with Turkey in north-eastern Greece, gave testimony to a joint investigation by the Guardian, Lighthouse Reports, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and ARD Report München. The journalists also interviewed Greek police sources, and residents in surrounding towns and villages.

The media outlets published their month-long investigation simultaneously on June 28, and in the Greek language Reporters United. The revelations confirm numerous accounts of “proxies” being used in pushback operations, most recently in a report published in April by NGO Human Rights Watch.

Pushbacks have increased since 2020, with the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR recording almost 540 incidents since then across Greece’s land and sea borders. This represents a fraction of the pushbacks that have taken place. The NGO Aegean Boat Report, which monitors the Greek government’s pushback operations across the Greek-Turkish sea border, recorded 81 such incidents in the last month alone.

Greek police and army guard as migrants gather at a border fence on the Turkish side, during clashes at the Greek-Turkish border in Kastanies, Evros region, on Saturday, March 7, 2020. [AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos]

Bassel, a man in his late 20s, was arrested in late 2020, according to Reporters United, as part of a group of Syrians “after they crossed the river in an inflatable dinghy. They were beaten and stripped to their underwear before being taken to the police station [in the border town of Tychero] in a vehicle without number plates. There they took their belongings and locked them in a cell with 150 other detainees.”    

At the police station, Bassel was “confronted with an appalling choice” according to Lighthouse Reports. Threatened with smuggling charges because he spoke English: “His only way out, they told him, was to do the Greeks’ dirty work for them. He would be kept locked up during the day and released at night to push back his own compatriots and other desperate asylum seekers. In return he would be given a travel permit that would enable him to escape Greece for Western Europe.”

Bassel was told the “work” would be unpaid but that “he could take his pick of the migrants’ belongings” according to the Guardian. Similar accounts were given by other asylum seekers interviewed, who stated they were beaten by police if anything went wrong.

Based on the testimonies received, Reporters United described in chilling detail what goes on during a pushback operation:

At night police transported the ‘slaves’ and the migrants to be ‘pushed back’ separately. The ‘slaves’ prepared the boats under the supervision of the policemen who were armed. During the pushbacks the border guards’ collaborators would often force migrants to take off all their clothes and if they found that they still had money hidden on them they would take it and beat them. This practice was corroborated by a police source. After that was the difficult part of getting across the river. Bassel recounted how he had to tie the rope onto a tree on the Turkish side of the river in order to pull the boat. The ‘slaves’ would then lead the migrants onto the boats. Usually 20 per trip (18 asylum seekers and two ‘slaves’ one at the front and one at the back of the boat) until all the migrants had been pushed back across. Bassel has said that he saw people drowning in the river.  

Some of the asylum seekers captured and forced to participate in “pushbacks” had been lured for this purpose by people smugglers, who handed them over to Greek border guards. This was the fate of three of the asylum seekers interviewed, who were held at the Neo Cheimonio police station. According to Reporters United, “they each paid €5,000 to a middleman in Istanbul who brought them into contact with a people smuggler who took them across the border from the Turkish side into the Greek side. There another Syrian known as ‘Mike’ was waiting to pick them up accompanied by police. Their collaboration with Greek police had just begun. Two of the three said that they weren’t aware before they came to Greece of what would be required of them. The third one said he knew.”

“Mike” reportedly works directly for the Greek police as recruiter and co-ordinator of migrants used in pushbacks. He lives in a container on the grounds of the police station in the border village of Neo Cheimonio. According to Reporters United, “Mike and his brother, who is also involved in trafficking, face multiple charges in Syria for fuel and people smuggling.”

The extent of the operation is such that it is widely known in the surrounding towns and villages. According to Reporters United, locals who were interviewed openly talked of “migrants who are collaborating with the police”, saying they could be found “working near the river” or “in the local area where they are often seen masked and accompanied by police officers as they buy supplies such as cigarettes, potato chips and croissants before going for the pushback operations at night-time so that they are not detected by the Turks.”

The policy of coercing migrants to participate in pushbacks was approved by the government. According to Reporters United one of the investigation’s police sources revealed “the idea was proposed to politicians as a means of protecting officers from direct involvement in pushbacks, given that they are afraid of being exposed to danger from skirmishes with Turkish forces or with smugglers.”

Europe’s response to the revelations that a European Union member is engaged in state sponsored criminality on a massive scale was a perfunctory statement by European Commissioner spokeswoman on migration affairs Anitta Hipper asking Greece to investigate. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock responded with a tweet stating that events in Evros and Melilla are “unacceptable”.

In practice, the pushback operations are conducted not against the EU’s wishes but with its direct approval and participation. A recent investigation by Lighthouse Reports found that European Border Agency Frontex was involved in at least 22 confirmed pushback operations in the Aegean between March 2020 and September 2021 while the real number could be ten times higher than that. 

The Greek government has avoided commenting on the revelations, assisted by Greece’s mainstream media which has barely reported the story. Its silence has been enabled by the pseudo-left Syriza, the country’s biggest opposition party, whose mention of the investigation was confined to comments by Kostas Arvanitis, a Syriza European Parliament member. He said, “these chilling revelations demand here and now concrete, responsible and convincing answers,” while claiming that “the EU has repeatedly expressed concern”. 

In power between 2015 and 2019, Syriza set up camps to intern refugees fleeing hardship and persecution, at the behest of the EU. The most notorious was on Moria, on the island of Lesbos, dubbed by the BBC as the worst refugee camp on Earth before it burned down in September 2020.

Cabinet resignations seek ouster of Boris Johnson

Chris Marsden

Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid quit their ministerial roles today to force out Boris Johnson as prime minister.

The move comes from two senior cabinet members at various times advanced as leadership challengers. The immediate reason cited is Johnson’s appointment of Chris Pincher as deputy chief whip in February this year, despite Johnson knowing of sexual misconduct allegations against him. But it brings to a new pitch the civil war within the Conservative party after months of scandal over drinks parties during lockdowns that have led to the Tories haemorrhaging support even in their heartlands.

Sajid Javid said in his statement that the British people “rightly expect integrity from their government,” declaring that the electorate no longer viewed the government as either “popular” or “competent in acting in the national interest… The vote of confidence last month showed that a large number of our colleagues agree.”

Sunak announced his resignation within half an hour on Twitter, in almost identical terms, writing, “The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously.”

These resignations alone--and half a dozen more have followed though not yet at ministerial level--make it difficult for Johnson to continue in office. More cabinet ministers will resign and Johnson “will be shown the door”, said Tory MP Andrew Bridgen.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson pauses during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, in London, Monday April 5, 2021. (Stefan Rousseau/Pool via AP)

The Pincher scandal has been made worse by proving once again that Johnson is a compulsive and serial liar.

On 5 November 2017, Pincher resigned as an Assistant Whip and referred himself to the party’s complaints procedure and the police, after being accused of sexual assault by former Olympic rower and Conservative candidate Alex Story. He was also accused of “touching up” former Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop but was found to have not breached the code of conduct.

Pincher was finally forced to resign as Deputy Chief Whip on June 30 after admitting to groping two men while drunk at the Carlton private members’ club, a Tory haunt. Other allegations have since emerged.

Johnson was reportedly so aware of Pincher’s behaviour that he called him “handsy”, with the prime minister’s arch enemy Dominic Cummings saying that he joked, “Pincher by name, pincher by nature” in 2020.

But Johnson once again tried to brazen things out at the expense of his MPs. On July 1, Number 10 said Johnson had not been aware of any “specific allegations” against Pincher before appointing him. Pincher was suspended two days later. Leading allies continued to claim until July 4 that Johnson was ignorant of the specific allegations, but that day his official spokesperson said he knew of previous “allegations… that were either resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint” but “it was deemed not appropriate to stop an appointment simply because of unsubstantiated allegations”.

Johnson, through Paymaster General Michael Ellis, was finally forced to admit yesterday to being briefed on previous allegations, while claiming he could not “recall this” after the latest allegations emerged and “bitterly regrets” not acting on the information. He admitted, “About three years ago there was a complaint made against Chris Pincher in the Foreign Office… I was briefed on what had happened and if I had my time again I’d think back on it and I’d realise he wasn't going to learn a lesson and he wasn’t going to change.” In hindsight, he said, giving Pincher a government role as deputy chief whip “was the wrong thing to do”. In a BBC interview, Johnson blamed his own team for “saying things on my behalf or trying to say things about what I did or didn’t know.”

It is highly likely that this latest scandal could tip the balance of forces against Johnson, although that could still take time. During a cabinet meeting earlier, photographers and reporters were let in. Sebastian Payne, Whitehall editor of the Financial Times, said “You could see the faces of [Johnson allies] Jacob Rees Mogg, Nadine Dorries... they were looking stony. Their personal reputations have taken the hit, as well as the prime minister and as well as the rest of the government.” Warning of a domino effect of any prominent resignation before Javid and Sunak acted, he added, “I think eventually the rules of political gravity do kick in.”

The former head of the Civil Service Lord Kerslake said it was “inconceivable” that those around the PM were also unaware of the sexual misconduct claims. He endorsed a letter sent to Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone from former Foreign Office official and bitter enemy of Johnson, Sir Simon [Lord] McDonald, saying, “The original No 10 line is not true and the modification is still not accurate.”

Leading backbencher Sir Roger Gale used the same letter to insist that the Conservatives need to change their rules to allow a fresh vote of confidence in Johnson to go ahead. Under the existing rules of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, Johnson’s surviving a no-confidence vote last month should give him a year’s grace before another can be called. But moves are already underway to change the composition of the committee’s executive in upcoming elections.

The latest scandal has prompted Sir Keir Starmer to call variously for a change in government and for Tory MPs to act in the national interest and remove him, and a call for a general election from Blairite chair of the Commons Standards Committee Chris Bryant.

This raises essential issues for workers.

Johnson’s opponents are demanding even tougher measures against the working class under conditions of the deepest crisis facing British and world capitalism since the 1930s. In his own resignation letter, Sunak indicated his latest disagreement with Johnson was over how far to go in imposing austerity against the working class. “[O]ur country is facing immense challenges. I publicly believe the public are ready to hear that truth,” he wrote. “Our people know that if something is too good to be true then it’s not true. They need to know that whilst there is a path to a better future, it is not an easy one. In preparation for our proposed joint speech on the economy next week, it has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different.”

Likewise, the Labour Party is most concerned with proving to the ruling elite that it will do nothing to endanger the “national interest”—a code word for supporting savage attacks on workers and the looting of the economy by the major corporations, suppressing strikes, eviscerating democratic rights and waging war against Russia and China.

German government funds its war spending by increasing health insurance contributions

Marianne Arens

Germany’s Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach (Social Democratic Party, SPD), plans to recoup a health insurance deficit of at least €17 billion next year by increasing contributions from ordinary insurers and plundering health insurance reserves. In announcing his plans the minister explicitly referred to the Ukraine war.

Two months ago, the WSWS described the federal budget as a “declaration of war on the people” after the government decided to triple overall military spending and award the German army (Bundeswehr) a “special fund” of €100 billion. We wrote: “The cost of the rearmament will be borne by the working class in every respect.”

This analysis has now been confirmed. Lauterbach is no longer prepared to fill the health insurance deficit via state subsidies as has been done in the past. Instead, he is demanding increased contributions from the large majority of the population who are unable to afford private insurance. In doing so, the health minister directly affirmed the intent of the ruling “traffic light” (SPD, Greens, Free Democratic Party) coalition to comply with the debt brake mechanism (i.e., no new loans) in the 2023 federal budget.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) during a press conference on 14 January 2022 (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

When Lauterbach appeared before the press on Tuesday, June 28, he repeatedly thanked Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) for “the good cooperation and consensual result.” He reported that the finance minister had taken care “we do not end up with proposals that violate the debt brake, that would necessitate tax increases or would require a supplementary budget ... I expressly share all three objectives of the Federal Finance Minister.'

The anticipated €17 billion health insurance deficit for 2023 is probably an underestimate. Other forecasts assume a sum of €25 billion. The BILD newspaper published this figure from the Institute for Health Economics (IfG) in Munich together with its explanation that the estimate of €17 billion “does not yet include the war in Ukraine and its consequences.” Additional deficits amounting to billions of euros are also expected for unemployment insurance and care for the elderly insurance.

In order to plug the financial hole in the health insurance funds, contribution increases from blue- and white-collar workers are expected to raise €5 billion. In addition, insurance reserves will also be plundered. Lauterbach explained that the various health insurance companies and their joint health fund have a combined €6.4 billion in reserve that could be used to help cover the deficit. “We are in the middle of the Ukraine war,” the minister stressed. “All the reserves in the funds must be called upon.”

Up until now the deficit has been absorbed by federal subsidies, which amounted most recently to €14 billion—but “this would not apply next year!” the minister said. According to Lauterbach, there will be a tax subsidy of just €2 billion and a federal loan of €1 billion. The minister plans to raise another €3 billion from “efficiency improvements,” without giving any further information.

According to Lauterbach: “It will be a difficult autumn. Pandemic-related. We will have to fight the Ukraine war. We will have difficulties providing the tax-based funding we need in other areas.” In response to a journalist’s question as to whether the increase in contributions was the end of the story or whether there would be more cuts, Lauterbach replied: “A lot will depend on how the Ukraine war continues.”

The increased contribution rates will raise health insurance contributions to a record high. Public insurance companies have about 57 million members and insure 73 million people: blue- and white-collar workers, family members, pensioners and the unemployed. The planned additional contribution is currently 1.3 percent but will be increased by 0.3 percent to 1.6 percent. As the name suggests, the new increase is levied in addition to the general health insurance contribution, which stands at a maximum of 14.6 percent.

At 16.2 percent in future, this amount will be higher than ever before. It is true that the respective employer contributes to the insurance on a pro-rata basis. Nevertheless, depending on the tax bracket, total tax and insurance contributions can now amount to 40 percent of gross wages. This means that from a gross wage of €2,000 net, a sum of just €1,200 is left to live on.

On Tuesday, Lauterbach announced he would levy a one-time “solidarity levy” on the pharmaceutical industry, “which has earned a great deal in the pandemic,” and thereby raise another billion euros. The minister also claimed there would be “no cuts in benefits in health care” but his attempts to create an appearance of social equity are risible and completely implausible.

In reality, the country has long since been plagued by a major nursing emergency. In Germany, along with the rest of the world, nurses and other health workers are struggling with overbearing workloads, exhausting working conditions, the threat of coronavirus infection, and a drop in living standards due to inflation. An indefinite strike at university hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia has been going on for more than two months. In this situation, the ministerial promise that services will not worsen amounts to a slap in the face of all nursing staff.

Less than a week earlier, on June 22, Lauterbach promised health care workers protesting at the Health Ministers Conference that a new Care Relief Act would come “before the summer break.” The law will “put an end to financial shortages in hospitals” through minimum requirements in departments, declared Petra Grimm-Benne (also SPD), health minister in the state of Saxony-Anhalt and the chair of the conference of health ministers. Sylvia Bühler, a member of the Verdi service trade union executive, praised “a big step forward.”

The opposite is the case. Lauterbach is simply acting according to the motto: “Who cares about what I said yesterday.” As the WSWS noted when he took office, Lauterbach “always gives the profit interests of capital the benefit of the doubt over his scientific findings” and/or his hypocritical social commitment.

On the coronavirus issue, it is significant that the first decision of the government when Lauterbach joined was to abolish the “national epidemic emergency.” Lauterbach voted in favour of this decision, which decreed the end of pandemic-related lockdowns and led to a mass resurgence of infections.

During the period in power of the last SPD-Green government and afterwards, Lauterbach played a key role in the dismantling of social systems and the privatisation of hospitals. He was involved in the development of the fee-per-case system, which nurses oppose so vehemently today. For 12 years he sat on the supervisory board of Rhön-Klinikum AG, which made the headlines due to its abysmal treatment of nursing staff. When the Bertelsmann Foundation called for mass hospital closures, Lauterbach tweeted in June 2019: “Everyone knows we should close at least every third, in fact every second clinic, in Germany.”

Just a few days ago, Lauterbach ordered the existing system of free coronavirus tests be abolished—while at the same time admitting to journalist Eckart von Hirschhausen that Long COVID causes organic damage and is equivalent to an “untreated widespread disease.”

With his announcement that the government will no longer pay the deficit of the health insurance funds due to the Ukraine war, the health minister has confirmed the necessity on the part of health workers struggling for decent working conditions to withdraw Verdi’s negotiating mandate and join forces internationally in independent action committees.

Verdi, like all other unions, is fully on the side of the government. Its officials are members of the ruling parties and support government policy, which basically gives priority to profits over health. That is why conditions in nursing were unbearable even before the pandemic. And as the Action Committee for Nursing writes in its call for the strike in NRW, “The private and public hospital operators are also benefiting from this intolerable situation! Every understaffed shift, every mental and physical breakdown of colleagues due to overwork and every under-resourced patient helps their coffers grow!”