According to a recent National Institutes of Health survey, United Press International reports, “use of marijuana and hallucinogens among young adults in the United States reached an all-time high in 2021.”
According to the survey, 43% of young adults admitted to having used cannabis in the past year, with 8% saying they’ve tried LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, or other “hallucinogens.”
That, believe it or not, is good news. Both of these “drug” categories have a history of use as long as the history of humanity, with known medical and mental benefits, few negative side effects, and virtually no correlation to violent behaviors.
None of these items should have ever been illegal to use, possess, sell, or grow/manufacture in the first place, and increasing familiarity with them continues to feed growing opposition to the “war on drugs.”
They’re all, in three words, “safer than alcohol.”
Which, the same survey says, remains the most popular “drug,” with binge drinking rebounding from a 2020 low and “high-intensity” drinking steadily increasing.
That’s the bad news.
If I knew one of my children (all now thankfully and safely out of their teens) was going out to “party,” and that recreational substances would be involved, I’d much rather they got into a bag of weed or some mushroom caps than into a case of beer or a fifth of bourbon. There’s just less potential for senseless brawls, sexual assault, or driving while impaired.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve personally got nothing against alcohol, and don’t think it should be illegal. I use it, although these days I drink maybe a six-pack of beer and a few ounces of whiskey a year; it used to be … well, quite a bit more.
Here’s the thing:
People have both self-medicated and recreationally dosed themselves with various things since there have been humans.
They’ll keep doing so, even if politicians get together and decree that they mustn’t.
The choice we face is not between a society of junkies and a “drug-free America.” History has taught us that neither of those things is going to happen.
The choice is between a society where we’re free to choose what we eat, drink, smoke, or otherwise ingest — and are responsible for what follows — or a society where eating, drinking, smoking, or otherwise ingesting the “wrong” substance may mean prison whether we harmed anyone else or not.
We’re moving in the former direction. And should continue to do so.
Thousands of people will die this autumn and winter in Britain as a result of fuel poverty, in what National Health Service (NHS) bosses warn is a looming “humanitarian crisis”.
Last Friday the NHS Confederation, representing the health service in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said it needed to make an “unprecedented move” and warn of the terrible implications of tens of millions more people being plunged into fuel poverty.
NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor said, “The country is facing a humanitarian crisis. Many people could face the awful choice between skipping meals to heat their homes and having to live in cold, damp and very unpleasant conditions. This in turn could lead to outbreaks of illness and sickness around the country and widen health inequalities, worsen children’s life chances and leave an indelible scar on local communities.”
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, warns “The country is facing a humanitarian crisis. Many people could face the awful choice between skipping meals to heat their homes and having to live in in cold, damp and very unpleasant conditions. This in turn could lead to outbreaks of illness and sickness around the country and widen health inequalities, worsen children’s life chances and leave an indelible scar on local communities."
The organisation wrote to Conservative Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi ahead of an announcement to be made on August 26 on the new energy price cap, noting “latest estimates suggesting that the cap could go as high as £4,200 by January.”
Introducing the letter, the body raised its concern “that widespread fuel poverty will increase the already high number of annual deaths associated with cold homes estimated at around 10,000 a year.”
The letter states, “Even taking into account the £400 cost-of-living rebate promised by the government,” price rises “will push over two thirds of UK households into fuel poverty, exacerbating health inequalities that were already widened during the pandemic.
“Healthcare leaders warn that rising rates of fuel poverty will be a public health emergency, causing and exacerbating physical and mental illness across the whole population and further straining already stretched health and care services.”
The energy cap figures cited by the NHS Confederation likely underestimate the catastrophic financial burden being imposed on the working class. According to predictions published Tuesday by consultancy Auxilione, due to expected rising natural gas prices, average yearly energy bills are set to rise to £3,576 from October 1, £5,066 in January 2023 and, in just seven months’ time, £6,552 from April 2023.
Millions of households are already in fuel poverty, but price gouging on this scale will plunge most of the population, especially workers, into dire straits.
In April, 22 million people saw bills shoot up by an average of £693, from £1,277 to £1,971 per year. Prepayment customers, mainly the poorest people, saw an increase of £708 from £1,309 to £2,017. This rise led to 6.32 million households being thrust into fuel poverty. Within weeks, as new bills from October run into many thousands of pounds, tens of millions of people will be unable to afford to cook, turn the heating on, or even wash.
According to research published by the University of York last week, two thirds (65.8 percent) of all UK households will be trapped in fuel poverty by January. This equates to 18 million families, or 45 million people.
In a country with over 14 million already living in crushing poverty, the staggering increases in energy bills alone will wipe out all disposable income for millions and most of if not all the savings of millions more.
The crisis is massively compounded by price surges that set a new record each month. Last week the lower consumer prices index (CPI) measure of inflation reached over 10 percent for the first time in 40 years, while the more accurate retail prices index (RPI) measure shot up to nearly 12.5 percent. This week US financial services group Citi predicted that CPI would hit 18 percent in the first quarter of 2023, and the retail prices index rate would soar to 21 percent.
This impossible situation is driving sharp increases in poverty, malnutrition and suicide attempts. At the weekend Karim Brohi, a Trauma and Vascular Surgeon and Director of the London Major Trauma System, tweeted, “Multiple admissions for attempted suicide overnight, again. ‘Jumped because can’t afford to eat’. Again.”
Many people were moved by the shocking case of Kelly Thomson, a single mother of two children who after paying bills was left with just £40 per week to feed herself and her two children. After being signed off from work as the pandemic worsened in December 2020, Kelly was forced to try to survive on rock bottom welfare payments. This led to her being hospitalised for malnutrition twice in the last 18 months. Kelly lost two stone in weight. She needed blood transfusions to bring her iron levels back to normal.
The Metro newspaper reported that during this period the “family resorted to lighting their home with candles and relying on neighbours to heat their food.” The mother told the Metro , “I’m worried for my health, I’m faint with hunger all the time. In June, my children watched me collapse. I’ve never been so scared in my life and the impact on their mental health must be awful.”
Hundreds of people donated to a Go Fund Me appeal, raising over £8,700 for the family. But those in ruling circles are impervious to any such cries for help, including demands by the NHS that immediate relief must be provided for millions of families.
Ahead of an August 11 meeting between outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and the heads of 15 energy companies earlier this month, Downing Street insisted that no emergency measures would be rolled out to prevent mass suffering and death this winter. Johnson, in between topping up his suntan during several holidays abroad, said it would be down to his successor, due to be announced September 5, to make any fiscal decisions.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson attended an energy round table at No11 Downing Street. The roundtable was hosted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng also attended along with CEO’s/Representatives of energy companies. [Photo by Kyle Heller/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0]
The energy firm heads, even as they collectively reported surging profits of over £15 billion so far this year, strolled in and out of the meeting refusing to make even minimal concessions on energy prices.
Workers are being made to pay for the billions in military spending Britain has committed for NATO’s proxy war against Russia through the hike in energy prices that has followed. Johnson, speaking from Kiev Wednesday to mark Ukrainian independence day and celebrate the war, declared that UK households would have to “endure the pressure” of rising bills. He was supported by Armed Forces Minster James Heappey, who said that backing Ukraine’s war against Russia means that a “really expensive winter lies ahead” and has to be borne by working people, “whatever the short-term pain and cost might be”.
The Labour Party is playing a major role in this drive to force workers to bear the brunt of what is in reality “a cost of keeping the corporations in profit crisis” and to pay for the massive ramping up of military spending. Party leader Sir Keir Starmer put forward a plan calling only for a freeze in the current energy cap level of £1,971 a year, an amount already unfordable for millions of families. This would be paid for by a vast subvention of £29 billion, paid for by the taxpayer, handed over to the energy firms to make up the difference between soaring wholesale costs and what they charge.
Moreover, Labour’s freeze proposal only applies to projected energy cap rises in October this year and January 2023, but not from April 2023 when bills could reach £6,500 annually. Labour’s plan even cancels the £400 discount off bills, despite them being over 50 percent higher than last winter, already announced by the Conservative government!
Starmer refused to back calls for the nationalisation of the energy firms, declaring, “If you go down the nationalisation route, then money has to be spent on compensating shareholders.”
Labour would of course never contemplate seizing the assets of the major shareholders. But it will not even consider nationalisation of the “Big Five” energy retail companies—British Gas, E.ON, EDF, Scottish Power and Ovo—with £2.85 billion compensation for shareholders. Doing so might suggest that the holy-of-holies, the “free market”, is being placed under threat and alienate the corporate elite Labour speaks for.
Considering the forever-COVID policy being adopted by almost every major industrial country across the globe, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeated his warning at last week’s press brief, stating, “We’re all tired of this virus and tired of the pandemic, but the virus is not tired of us.”
The financial oligarchs and their political lackeys have essentially abrogated all mitigation measures against the continued spread of COVID. They have forced their populations to accept the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a permanent fixture of daily life.
Approaching the end of the third year of the COVID pandemic, there have been close to 600 million infections reported, with almost 6.5 million deaths. However, the global excess deaths are fast approaching 23 million or 3.6 times higher than official figures.
Though global infection rates are projected officially at around 650,000 per day, current estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) are closer to 13.3 million per day, 20 times as high, underscoring the lack of testing and reporting that has become part and parcel of the efforts to conceal all relevant metrics—and dangers—from the working class.
Figure 1: Seven-day average COVID infections per capita Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the US from January 1 to August 22, 2022. Source Our World in Data.
The WHO director-general added that weekly COVID deaths over the last month had reached 15,000, a figure “completely unacceptable when we have all the tools to prevent infections and save lives.” Given the changes in reporting criteria and database dismantling, it is not surprising that excess deaths, according to the Economist’s modeling, are running five to six times higher than official figures.
Nonetheless, accepting these conservative official estimates would mean around three-quarter million people will succumb to COVID annually. Placing this figure into context by comparing it to HIV, global annual deaths from HIV are presently about 680,000, and in the last four decades, it has killed 40.1 million people. When weighed against another deadly contemporary pathogen, COVID is not mild by any yardstick.
This makes Japan’s case illustrative of the dangers posed by the current deadly policies that have been adopted to ensure national economies remain unfettered by any public health concerns.
A country of almost 125 million people, Japan had been lauded by the mainstream press for handling the pandemic. However, it is facing its harshest wave of infections and deaths with the highly contagious BA.5 subvariant of the Omicron, despite 80 percent of its population being fully vaccinated and two-thirds of all its citizens (nearly 90 percent of seniors), having received their booster shots. It holds the dubious distinction of being the epicenter of the COVID pandemic for the moment, along with South Korea and Australia.
People wearing masks to help protect against the spread of the coronavirus walk in front of a screen showing the news on U.S. warning against visits to Japan Tuesday, May 25, 2021, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Japan has reported more than 17 million COVID cases, up from only 1.7 million on January 1, 2022. With over 37,000 COVID deaths to date, more than half of these deaths occurred during the Omicron phase of the pandemic. The seven-day average of fatalities is currently at a pandemic high of 266 per day, which translates to over 700 per day compared to a country the size of the United States, where the COVID death rate is currently 500 a day. However, excess deaths estimates for 2020-21 had placed the figure at five times above reported COVID deaths, implying the current figures are gross underestimates.
On August 19, 2022, the country reported its highest single-day number of infections at close to 261,000. Since the beginning of the month, the seven-day average of cases had consistently remained over 200,000 per day, far outpacing its previous peak of nearly 100,000 infections per day in early February when the original Omicron variant, BA.1, washed over the county.
As in other countries, when faced with a deluge of infections, the Japanese press notes that ambulances transporting patients to health facilities struggle to find hospitals that can admit them. In turn, this is leading to delays in responding to urgent calls for medical assistance.
Meanwhile, health systems are buckling under the pressure of tending to these patients as they deal with staffing and supply shortages that further complicate the overall health delivery so critical to the functioning of society. According to Japan Times, 15 of 47 prefectures have seen COVID occupancy rates reach over 50 percent. Kanagawa prefecture, a highly urbanized and populated region south of Tokyo, has the highest rate at 71 percent.
The Japan Times wrote, “Even when beds for COVID-19 patients are open, the seventh wave is affecting the health system more generally due to staff shortages caused by workers recovering from the disease or needing to isolate, experts say. As of Monday, Fukuoka University Hospital had closed two wards, as 120 of the 1,900 medical staff were either infected or deemed close contacts.”
Shigeru Omi, the president of the Japan Community Health Care Organization and the head of the government’s COVID-19 expert panel, told reporters in Tokyo, “People who could have visited fever clinics are now calling ambulances because the clinics aren’t able to accommodate them.” Dr. Hiroki Ohashi, vice president of the Japan Primary Care Association, added, “We need to work on increasing the number of fever clinics, but at the same time, we would also like every citizen to help us overcome this crunch in the medical system by recuperating at home first, as most cases of the Omicron variant present symptoms similar to that of the flu.”
Meanwhile, infected elderly patients in nursing homes or extended care facilities cannot be transferred to overcrowded hospitals. Dr. Hideki Yamazaki, a psychiatrist and director of Seizankai, a corporation that runs dozens of nursing homes and facilities for the elderly with dementia, told the Times that the patients are “trapped.” He said, “Every nursing care home is working very hard to keep infections at bay, but it’s impossible to prevent all cases from entering the facility. Elderly people who get infected should be moved to hospitals … now such facilities are too crowded to take in infected elderly. So, now we have had no option but to continue taking care of them.”
Yet the government has pledged it wouldn’t impose restrictions on business or people’s movement. In fact, at the height of the current surge, the government added insult to injury when it announced it was planning to scrap its entry requirements for travelers. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is isolated and working from home after contracting COVID during a week-long vacation, like his counterpart, President Joe Biden.
After winning a second-round vote against Taro Kono and replacing Yoshihide Suga last September as prime minister, Kishida vowed he would bring COVID to an end. Instead, his government ended pandemic restrictions in March. As Bloomberg recently, “The world’s third largest economy recovered to its pre-pandemic size in the second quarter, as consumer spending picked up following the end of coronavirus curbs on businesses.” Yet, inflationary pressures continue to haunt Kishida’s leadership which has seen his approval rating plunge from a month ago.
Figure 2: Seven-day average COVID deaths per capita for Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the US from January 1 to August 22, 2022. Source Our World in Data.
Like the US, UK, and the EU, Japan is shifting to a vaccine-only strategy by promoting the latest bivalent COVID vaccine boosters. The UK approved Moderna’s bivalent booster jab last week, though it is formulated to deliver the spike protein equivalent of the original and BA.1 strain, combined. The US has asked the two mRNA COVID vaccine manufacturing giants, Pfizer and Moderna, to concoct a bivalent jab tailored to the BA.5 subvariant despite the lack of any clinical data to inform this decision.
As Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and the director of the vaccine education center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, observed after the June 28, 2022, virtual FDA advisory committee meeting about updating COVID-19 vaccines, “It is not reasonable to assume that data generated for an Omicron BA.1 vaccine can easily be extrapolated to BA.4 and BA.5. These new Omicron subvariants are highly transmissible. Therefore, they will require a very high level of neutralizing antibodies present at the time of exposure to prevent symptomatic infection.” Given that the BA.1 component of the vaccine only offered a modest rise in neutralizing antibodies, he added, “Why would we think using BA.4 and BA.5 would be any different?”
As many are waiting in the wings, BA.4 and BA.5 are not the last subvariants. However, as the sequencing of these new variants has plummeted, scientists, researchers, and public health experts are entering the fourth year of the pandemic, blind to the developments with the coronavirus.
The experience in Japan only highlights that previous immunity, high levels of vaccination, and reliance on bivalent vaccines offer little in attenuating the number of infections and the continued high number of deaths the world is experiencing.
As the director-general noted, in a warning echoed last year and the year before that, “With colder weather approaching in the northern hemisphere and people spending more time indoors, the risks for more intense transmission and hospitalization will only increase in the coming months, not only for COVID-19 but for other diseases, including influenza.” This has significant implications as the US and EU, as well as northeast Asia, enter the fall and winter months, and schools return to in-class instruction.
The ultra-right Polish government of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) is playing a central role in NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. It acts as a provocative and aggressive ally of US imperialism in the region.
After the US and UK, Poland has promised Ukraine the third largest sum in arms deliveries, $1.8 billion, although its gross domestic product is only a fraction that of the major imperialist powers. While large parts of the already impoverished Polish population are being thrust into penury by the rapidly rising inflation and the consequences of the pandemic, Warsaw is using the war in Ukraine to push ahead and expand long-cherished rearmament plans.
Tanks of the Polish Armed Forces on 'Army Day' 2008
At the end of last year, PiS leader and then Minister of National Security Jaroslaw Kaczynski presented the “Plan for the Defence of the Fatherland.” This revised the modernisation plan for the armed forces adopted in 2017. The defence budget was to be increased from 2.2 percent (about $13 billion) to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2030. By 2035, some $115 billion was to be invested in the army and its strength was to grow from 110,000 to 250,000 troops.
A few months after the start of the war, the pace of rearmament was then increased again significantly. Instead of 2.5 percent, the budget is now to increase to 3 percent of the GDP, and not in 2026, as was said, but in the coming year. In addition, there will be billions more from a special fund to support the armed forces.
The special fund is a centrepiece of the new law to ensure the financing of rearmament. It escapes parliamentary control and also circumvents the legal obligations (comparable to Germany’s debt ceiling) to consolidate the budget. Its financing is fed from various channels—from government bonds and bonds issued by the national development bank BGK, from the state budget and the profits of the National Bank of Poland.
Since the government had a problem issuing government bonds due to economic reasons and high inflation, it rushed an amendment to the law through the Sejm (lower house of parliament) allowing for separate defence bonds. According to the government, the support fund will be worth 20 billion zloty (€4.2 billion) this year and around 50 billion zloty (€10.5 billion) next year.
The Defence of the Fatherland Act came into force on April 23. Prior to that, it had been adopted almost unanimously and without objection by both chambers of the Polish parliament (Sejm and Senate). The approval of all opposition parties makes clear that the war policy is supported both internally and externally by all sections of the ruling class. As far as there is criticism of the PiS, this is merely a matter of tactical differences.
The militarisation of society and strengthening of extreme right-wing forces
A central component of Poland’s rearmament plans is the introduction of a one-year voluntary basic military service. Poland had abolished its general conscription in 2010. Since then, NATO’s nominally eighth-largest army has had problems finding enough personnel. The massive expansion of the military and paramilitary units goes hand in hand with the strengthening of Poland’s longstanding state-sponsored radical right-wing forces.
The new system is clearly designed to exploit the abject poverty of large sections of the Polish working class, especially the youth. It relies on financial incentives to integrate young people into the murderous machinery of militarism. A full scholarship entices a commitment to a five-year service, and there is also supposed to be priority treatment when applying for jobs in public administration. Those who still hesitate are lured with the statement that “you can quit at any time.”
After an extremely shortened basic training of 28 days, for which they receive a full soldier’s salary of 4,400 zloty (€925), the recruits are sworn in and admitted into the reserve. Then they have the choice of completing voluntary military service after another 11 months of military training or being taken over by the professional army. Alternatively, they can join the Territorial Defence Forces (WOT) after the 28-day basic training.
The paramilitary WOT, which reports directly to the defence ministry, is a central component of the rearmament programme. Unlike the classic reserve, it is composed of soldiers and volunteers and is of a limited duration. It conducts exercises several times a month, with pay and corresponding time off work. According to government plans, the WOT will also grow from around 30,000 to 50,000 forces.
Like its Ukrainian counterpart, the Territorial Defence, where neo-Nazi formations such as the Azov Battalion and the International Legion set the tone, the WOT is also dominated by ultra-right forces.
It was created in 2016 by then Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz, who is a militant anti-communist and anti-Semite with close ties to radical right-wing circles. Macierewicz has played a key role in the PiS’s campaign to strengthen anti-Semitic forces, in particular, denying the responsibility of Polish nationalists for anti-Jewish pogroms such as those in Jedwabne and Kielce.
Today, Macierewicz is vice-chairman of the PiS, and the WOT is now under the leadership of Mariusz Błaszczak, his successor, who also holds ultra-right positions. For example, he described the march of 60,000 fascists in Warsaw in November 2017 as a “beautiful sight.”
Propagating the views of the extreme right is also officially one of the tasks of the WOT, which is euphemistically described as “strengthening the patriotic and Christian foundations of the Polish system and armed forces.” The WOT explicitly serves domestic security purposes.
Deputy Defence Minister Wojciech Skurkiewicz described the establishment of a 66-member WOT orchestra in Radom as “the beginning of a great project, the creation of a central institution in our city to popularise a defence culture and WOT tradition.” In addition to the orchestra, the intention is to set up centres where the “popularisation of defence” will be carried out in cooperation with local authorities, NGOs and social partners, he said. There is also to be a “centre for culture and tradition.”
In other words, the WOT serves as an instrument for the complete militarisation of society and as a vehicle for the massive social and political strengthening of radical right-wing forces.
What the militarisation offensive looks like could be seen from mid-May, when the recruitment campaign based on the new law began. Throughout Poland, 32 “military picnics” were organised, and 70 recruitment centres set up. On August 15, the traditional Army Day (marking the anniversary of the Battle of Warsaw in 1920), instead of the traditional military march, there was also a “Weekend with the Army” (Weekend z wojskiem) with extensive festivities and events.
The “military picnics” sought to entice visitors with “numerous attractions for children and adults,” getting hands on with military technology, military orchestras, stalls and presentations. The images of these are repulsive: Bouncy castles stand next to armoured personnel carriers; children pose with machine guns.
The Territorial Defence Forces also specifically advertise among schoolchildren, students and apprentices to use their summer holidays for the 16-day reception training course, which is cynically advertised as a “holiday with the Territorial Defence Forces.” Here, too, the lure is the equivalent of about €100 on completion of the course.
Tomasz Klucznik, press spokesman for the 7th Pomeranian Territorial Defence Brigade, even encouraged secondary school teachers take part in the training. “Teachers can brush up on their practical knowledge of how the force works and get to know our modern equipment,” Klucznik said.
The background to this is the change in teaching the subject “Safety Education” (EdB) ordered in March by Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek. From September onwards, defence education is to be part of the school curriculum in the eighth grade of primary schools and the first grade of secondary schools—including firearms training.
After two years of the pandemic, defence education replaces the previous module on health promotion, of all things. Other new learning content includes survival in hostilities, first aid during the use of conventional weapons and cyber security.
The whole thing is framed by a comprehensive right-wing education reform, also known as Lex Czarnek. In addition to the authoritarian surveillance and control of pupils and the work of teachers, the focus is on “national education.”
The textbook History and the Present—1945-1979 (by Wojciech Roszkowski) for the new subject of the same name resembles a right-wing extremist pamphlet. Even representatives of the official opposition parties accuse it of being influenced by an ultra-nationalist and arch-Catholic view of society. It rails against atheists, communists, Greens, neoliberals, blacks, LGBTQ, artificial insemination and even rock music.
Should ideological indoctrination and aggressive advertising campaigns fail to produce enough “volunteers,” the defence reform also stipulates that all Polish citizens aged 18 and over will be required to register for the purpose of “keeping military records and military qualifications.”
In order to fill the military database, the army will have access to the entire data of all conceivable institutions “for any purpose, without control, without limiting the catalogue of data or the time of their processing,” according to Wojciech Klicki of the Panoptykon Foundation Against the Surveillance Society. “Thanks to the new regulations, the military authorities can check how often we are sick, what taxes we pay, whether we have been punished, whether there is a case for legal proceedings against us.” And this, Klicki continues, with direct access to the data servers. Through the law on the “defence of the fatherland,” the army itself thus becomes an unrestricted secret service.
Poland’s orgy of rearmament and the growing tensions in Europe
The scale of the rearmament shows that Poland has greater ambitions than just playing one of many violins in the NATO war orchestra. The country has long been a key ally of the US in Europe. The Three Seas Initiative, which Ukraine officially joined in June, blatantly harks back to the Pilsudski regime’s Intermarium project from the time between the two world wars and has been officially supported by Washington since 2017. Then as now, the Polish bourgeoisie dreamed of playing the role of a great power in the shadow of the US, at least regionally.
PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński made clear that the ruling PiS is using the NATO alliance to position itself against Germany as well. On the fringes of a press conference, he remarked that he was not at all sure whether the upgrading of the Bundeswehr (armed forces) initiated by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was really directed against Russia—or perhaps against Poland after all. At the beginning of August, Kaczyński had publicly railed against the “German plan for domination” in Europe and worldwide.
It is therefore not surprising that Poland’s long shopping list does not include a single German product.
In the last six months alone, Poland’s Defence Minister Błaszczak has signed arms purchases worth over $11 billion. That is almost half the size of all arms purchases in the last seven years combined. In addition, there are other purchase announcements and signed framework agreements.
The biggest items among them are:
Three Miecznik frigates for the equivalent of about $2 billion, to be built under British licence in Polish shipyards. The last of the three ships is to be handed over to the Polish Navy in 2034.
250 M1A2 Abrams tanks including support vehicles, bascule bridges and a logistics and training package for $4.75 billion from the American company General Dynamics, expected to be completed by 2026. To date, this is the largest purchase in the history of the Polish army. In mid-July, the purchase of 116 used M1A1 Abrams tanks was also announced.
A battery of the Polish short-range missile defence system Narew, based on the British CAMM surface-to-air missile from MBDA for $360 million. In the long term, the Narew programme is expected to cost over $13 billion and comprise 23 units. It is part of the “Shield of Poland,” a multi-layered missile and air defence programme announced back in 2015, which in addition to Narew also includes the Wisła medium-range defence system and the Pilica anti-aircraft gun.
Wisla consists of US Patriot batteries, two units of which were already purchased in 2018 for $4.75 billion. At least six more batteries are to follow.
Serial production for Pilica started this year. It consists of a 23mm anti-aircraft gun supplemented by two Piorun missiles and radars. Six batteries of this type are to be delivered to the Polish army this year for $160 million by the Polish state-owned company Mesko.
The Piorun missiles are also produced as a shoulder-launched variant. Poland has also delivered an unknown number of them to Ukraine. According to the manufacturer, the production quantity is to be doubled to 600 this year and increase to 1,000 from 2023. Poland had ordered 3,500 more for $750 million in June.
Four modules of the Gladius unmanned drone system from the Polish WB Electronics Group for $440 million. It includes several hundred reconnaissance and suicide drones.
Three Kormoran-class mine hunting vessels worth about $800 million, built by a shipyard of the state-owned defence company PGZ in Gdansk.
32 AW-149 multi-role helicopters for $1.8 billion from Italy’s Leonardo Group. Production is to be taken over entirely by the Polish subsidiary PZL-Świdnik.
70 ZSSW-30 gun turrets for the Rosomak wheeled tank for $370 million. This order will also be taken over by the state-owned PGZ armament group. At the same press conference, Błaszczak announced that the final tests are underway for the new Borsuk infantry fighting vehicle, which is also scheduled to go into series production by the thousand in 2024.
In addition to these already sealed purchases, there are other, much larger purchase plans.
32 Kruk combat helicopters for an estimated $2.3 billion. According to the Ministry of Defence, the US companies Boeing and Bell are in the final selection for cooperation partners.
Three new Orca-class submarines for around $2.6 billion. In 2019, Poland received German, French and Swedish offers, but has not yet decided.
In May, Defence Minister Błaszczak announced that the acquisition of a total of 500 HIMARS missile systems would be examined. The self-propelled multiple rocket launcher system has been blamed for sensitive Russian army losses since the Ukrainian army has had it. Poland already has 80 units and had ordered 20 more in 2019 at a cost of $414 million, which are due to arrive next year.
In July, a framework agreement was signed for the delivery of Poland’s new Ottokar Brzoza anti-tank vehicle in unknown numbers. Its armament—British Brimstone guided missiles with a range of 12 kilometres—comes from MBDA.
The climax of the armaments orgy so far was reached a few days ago: On August 6, the conclusion of a framework agreement for the purchase of 1,000 main battle tanks from South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem Group was announced, with 180 K2 tanks ordered immediately for $2.2 billion. The remaining 820 are to be manufactured in Poland as a modified licence build (K2PL) from 2026. In total, the purchase is likely to cost well over $10 billion.
In addition, further South Korean purchases are being discussed. For example, 672 K9A1 self-propelled howitzers and 48 FA-50 light combat aircraft, both of which are to be built under Polish licence. The self-propelled howitzers alone are estimated to cost another $2.5 billion.
Officially, the massive arms purchases are being justified by the fact that Poland, which has made extensive arms deliveries to Ukraine, needed to restore its defence capabilities. In fact, Poland is the third largest supplier of military equipment to Ukraine after the US and the UK. According to the international military portal Oryx, it has supplied 230 T-72M tanks, 40 APC 1 infantry fighting vehicles, 20 T-72 Goździk self-propelled howitzers, 20 Grad BM 21 multi-lead rocket launchers, 100 air-to-air R-73 missiles, 10,000 Grot assault rifles and FlyEye reconnaissance drones.
Behind the Polish military purchasing policy is also the unconditional solidarity with the US Army. In the case of several purchases, Defence Minister Błaszczak explained that the decisive factor was the greatest possible compatibility with the US military. The South Korean army is already closely integrated with the US military.
This became clear at the opening of the Abrams Academy in Poznan. This is to train Polish soldiers on borrowed Abrams tanks under the guidance of the 5th US Corps until the newly ordered tanks arrive.
The Corps previously provided the Forward Rotation Command of the US armed forces but became the permanent headquarters a few months ago after President Biden announced it. In doing so, Biden openly violated the 1997 NATO-Russia agreement that ruled out a “permanent” deployment. Commanding General John Stephen Kolasheski praised Poland as a bulwark and declared: “Soon no one will be able to distinguish between a Polish and an American tank. Only the strongest military alliance will be visible.”
Defence Minister Blaszczak resurrected anti-communism à la Ronald Reagan and pathetically declared that “the evil empire” had already been stopped once. “Today, the rulers of the Kremlin want to rebuild the empire of evil, but the free world” would win. In reality, the Reagan era saw the beginning of an international wave of social counterrevolution that bloodily suppressed all resistance with the help of far-right paramilitary forces.
In this respect, the minister has indeed chosen the appropriate comparison. While Poland is using the Ukraine war to prepare for a new world war, the massive militarisation and build-up of right-wing paramilitary forces is primarily directed against the working class of Poland and Europe.
According to experts, Poland is on the verge of a recession after its GDP slumped by 2.3 percent in the second quarter of 2022, more than other countries in Eastern Europe. At 15.5 percent, inflation in Poland is one of the highest in Europe and by far the worst since 1989 and is expected to rise further to 18.8 percent by next year.
Three-and-a-half million refugees from Ukraine have found asylum in Poland, which itself has a population of almost 38 million. In some cities, the high number of refugees has increased the population by 15 to 20 percent, in Gdansk by as much as 34 percent. From the beginning, almost all the aid for the refugees has come from working people, although their own living conditions are rapidly deteriorating. The PiS government refuses to provide any significant help to the refugees.
For the autumn, many commentators predict a wave of workers’ protests and strikes, especially among the 500,000 teachers whose nationwide strike in 2019 was betrayed by the unions.
Half a year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine provoked by the imperialist powers, they are continuing to escalate the NATO proxy war—even though this raises the danger of a third world war.
On Tuesday, the White House revealed that it would provide Kiev with another $3 billion to support and train the Ukrainian military. Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz followed suit. In his video statement on the 31st anniversary of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union on August 24, 1991, he expressed his solidarity with the war against Russia, underlined the central role of Germany and promised new arms supplies.
“We think of the heroes of Ukraine, of the men and women who have been bravely defending their homeland against the brutal aggressor for six months now,” he said. “Your courage impresses us all. Ukrainian soldiers who are currently being trained here in Germany on anti-aircraft guns, and on tanks that we are supplying to Ukraine. And we will continue to deliver weapons, from the self-propelled howitzer to the anti-aircraft system, month after month.”
Kiev is to receive three more Iris-T anti-aircraft systems, twelve armoured recovery vehicles and 20 rocket launchers mounted on pick-ups, a government spokesman said. All in all, the additional weaponry is worth significantly more than half a billion euros. The weapons are to be delivered “predominantly in 2023,” but “some” also “much earlier.” The official list of the German government on “military support for Ukraine” is thus becoming longer and longer. Last week alone, Germany delivered the following weapons to Ukraine:
54 M113 armoured troop transporters with armament (systems from Denmark, retrofitting financed by Germany)
53,000 rounds of flak ammunition
20 laser target illuminators
The following items have been added to the section “Support services in preparation/implementation”:
heavy machine gun M2 spare parts
167,000 rounds of handgun ammunition
12 M1070 Oshkosh heavy-duty semitrailers
12 frequency scanner/frequency jammers
field hospital (Roller 2)
Military support also includes 255 shots of the 155-millimeter “Volcano” artillery ammunition. According to a report by Der Spiegel, the precision-guided projectiles are supposed to “be able to strike with an accuracy of 1 metre” and “with a range of around 70 kilometres, they would also have a significantly greater range than conventional artillery projectiles, which usually fire at a range of around 40 kilometres.” In other words, the ammunition is made for attacks on sensitive Russian targets and infrastructure in eastern Ukraine and possibly also in Russia itself.
Scholz repeatedly boasted in his video message about how far-reaching the German war participation is. “We will continue to train Ukrainian soldiers on the latest European military equipment. We will continue our sanctions. We will support Ukraine financially and help rebuild the destroyed towns and villages. Our trains will continue to load Ukrainian grain and transport it to Europe’s ports. Our hospitals will continue to treat wounded Ukrainian soldiers,” he said.
Then the chancellor assured that Germany would continue to “help” as long as “Ukraine needs our support.” It is the declared aim of the imperialist powers to defeat Russia in Ukraine and to conquer the Russian-occupied parts of the country militarily. This message emerged from the second meeting of the so-called Crimea Platform on Tuesday in Kiev, attended by both NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and leading representatives of the imperialist powers.
In his opening speech, Zelensky stated that the “reconquest” of Crimea was Ukraine’s most important military goal. “I know that Crimea belongs to Ukraine and is waiting for our return,” he said. “I want you all to know that we will return. We must win the battle against Russian aggression. That is why we must free Crimea from the occupation.”
Scholz, who took part virtually along with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, agreed: “We condemn Russia’s attempts to forcefully integrate parts of Ukrainian territory. Our message is clear: any sham referendum or other attempts to alter the status of parts of Ukrainian territory will never be recognized and ... such steps preclude any negotiation approaches.”
Nobody explained exactly what this means. The “reconquest” of Crimea would be a genocidal project in every respect. It would threaten the lives of the majority Russian-speaking population on the peninsula, which, after the pro-Western Maidan coup in Kiev in 2014, supported the Russian annexation by a large majority and rejected the right-wing, anti-Russian regime in Kiev.
An all-out attack on Crimea would lead to a third world war. “For us, Crimea is part of Russia. And that means forever,” warned the former Russian President and Prime Minister and current Deputy Head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, in the Russian weekly Argumenty i Fakty at the end of June. “Any attempt to invade Crimea is a declaration of war against our country,” he added. “And if this is done by a NATO member state, it means a conflict with the entire North Atlantic Alliance. World War III. A complete catastrophe.”
NATO leaders know what they are risking with their policies. As long ago as April, Scholz stated in a Der Spiegel interview that everything had to be done “to avoid a direct military confrontation between NATO and a highly armed superpower such as Russia, a nuclear power.” The aim was “to prevent an escalation that would lead to a third world war. There must be no nuclear war.”
These warnings are now a thing of the past. The leaders of the NATO powers are prepared to risk the destruction of the entire planet in order to assert their geostrategic and economic interests. Yesterday, British Conservative leader Liz Truss declared during a campaign appearance in Birmingham that she was “ready” to start a nuclear war, even if it meant “global annihilation.” At the end of June, the Air Force Inspector (commander-in-chief) Ingo Gerhartz threatened Russia with the “implementation of nuclear deterrence if necessary.”
Such threats and extermination fantasies expose the NATO powers as the actual aggressors and warmongers. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is reactionary, but ultimately a desperate response by the capitalist Putin regime to the explosion of imperialist war over the past 30 years. The imperialist powers have left a trail of devastation in the Balkans, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, NATO has also systematically encircled Russia with the aim of subjugating and exploiting the resource-rich country. In 2014, Washington and Berlin orchestrated a right-wing coup in Ukraine to establish a right-wing, anti-Russian regime in the former Soviet Republic. Subsequently, the Ukrainian military and far-right militias in the country were comprehensively upgraded and the current proxy war systematically prepared.
The incessant propaganda in the media and from the political establishment about the Russian “aggressor,” “war terror” and “backward-looking imperialism” (Scholz) cannot conceal the fact that the ruling class is reviving its old imperialist great-power policy of war. In the 20th century, in two world wars, German imperialism tried to annex Ukraine and subjugate Russia militarily. Berlin is now attempting to do so once again.
Resistance is growing among the population, which has not forgotten the terrible crimes of German imperialism and is now being forced to bear the costs of the insane war policy once again. According to a recent survey by the market research institute INSA, 62 percent of the respondents are “dissatisfied” with the work of the chancellor and only 25 percent are “satisfied.” An even higher 65 percent are dissatisfied with the traffic light coalition government of the Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats.
Japan is currently experiencing its worst surge of COVID-19 cases for the entire pandemic, driven by the highly infectious BA.5 Omicron subvariant. Cases have reached record highs while deaths over the last two weeks are near the highest in the world. None of this has given the Japanese political establishment pause as it pushes to eliminate all virus mitigation measures at the behest of big business.
People wearing protective masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus wait to across a crossing at downtown in Tokyo, Thursday, July 28, 2022. [AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama]
Cases began to skyrocket in early July. Since then Japan has registered numerous record-highs in daily cases, including the current highest total in one day of 261,252 on August 19, according to the Worldometer COVID-19 tracker. As of August 24, a total of 17,325,025 infections have been recorded throughout the entire pandemic.
In addition, in the last week alone, 1,852 people have died, second in the world only to the United States. On August 17, there was a record-high number of daily deaths from COVID-19 as well, hitting 300 for the first time.
Furthermore, 15 people per million have died over the past seven days, making Japan the deadliest country for COVID-19 in Asia, nearly double South Korea and Taiwan, which both saw 8 people per million die over the same period. According to official figures, which underestimate, 37,277 people have died throughout the entire pandemic.
Demonstrating how widespread the virus is in the population, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) became the latest world leader to contract COVID-19, testing positive on August 21. The government stated that he was working from isolation and resting at his official residence, where he will have access to treatment far beyond what the average Japanese worker can receive.
As a result of the surge, the healthcare system is once again being overwhelmed, demonstrating that the government has taken no serious steps during the pandemic to ensure sick patients can receive the care they require. Kanagawa Prefecture currently has a hospital bed occupancy rate of 91 percent while Okinawa, Shiga, and Shizuoka Prefectures all have occupancy rates over 80 percent. In the densely populated capital, Tokyo’s hospital bed occupancy rate is 60 percent.
The extremely limited measures Japan has taken in the face of the current health crisis include distributing less accurate rapid antigen tests, so that people can test at home and then register their results with municipal health centers. This only encourages people to recuperate at home instead of seeking medical help.
Healthcare workers are also facing mass infection. Fumie Sakamoto, a nurse and infection control manager at Tokyo’s St. Luke’s International Hospital told the Japan Times in early August, “Medical workers are human beings, just like everyone else. Since the arrival of BA.5, we have seen an inevitable rise in the number of medical workers who are testing positive or who are suspected of being infected even if they test negative.”
Despite these realities, Tokyo is treating the COVID-19 pandemic as no longer serious. In fact, the government is downgrading COVID-19 to a less serious category of illnesses, thus reducing what healthcare workers are required to report. The current surge in deaths, however, exposes the fraudulent claim that COVID-19 can be treated like other illnesses such as the flu or the common cold.
The huge number of COVID infections last month did not stop the government from further slashing the last remaining mitigation measures. Tokyo announced on July 22 that it would reduce the isolation period for close contacts from five days to three days, so long as the contact tested negative on the second and third days. Untested contacts had their isolation period reduced from seven to five days. That same day, Kishida told the Japan Business Federation, known as Keidanren and the largest business lobby in Japan: “We are not considering new restrictions on movement at this point.”
However, even the limited virus measures that remain in place are too much for the financial establishment. Nikkei Asia published an article on August 13—as daily cases surged past 200,000—titled, “Japan’s tight COVID rules stand out as virus risk ebbs.” While admitting that “COVID-19 poses more of a threat to elderly Japanese and other at-risk segments of the population,” the article demanded that the government lift the few remaining testing and quarantine requirements for travel and close contacts.
The government is now doing just that. Kishida announced on August 22 that his government would take steps to raise the cap on the number of overseas tourists visiting Japan from 20,000 to 50,000. Testing requirements for those entering the country who have received a vaccine booster shot are to be scrapped, a prelude to ending the testing of arrivals altogether.
The Nikkei Asia article claimed that COVID is no worse than the flu for those under 60, the implication being that older and elderly people should accept an early death. The response from the ruling class around the world to the pandemic contains more than a whiff of eugenics. Governments and big business see older, retired people as a drain on their profits, no longer producing surplus value.
At the same time, the establishment ignores the debilitating impact of Long COVID on those who have been infected, including damage caused to a person’s organs. Children who have contracted the virus are at higher risks for developing blood clots in the lungs, heart inflammation, kidney failure, and Type 1 diabetes, in addition to other serious health complications.
None of the establishment parties—from the ruling LDP and main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan to the right-wing Nippon Ishin no Kai and the Stalinist Japanese Communist Party—has advocated measures to eliminate the virus as the only means of halting the pandemic.
