Orion spacecraft splashes down, completing Artemis I mission

Bryan Dyne

The uncrewed Artemis I mission came to a conclusion Sunday morning after the Orion spacecraft successfully completed a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula at 12:40 p.m. Eastern Time. The landing was the final major milestone of the Artemis I mission, which is being hailed by the Biden administration and the corporate media as the precursor to new crewed missions to the Moon and possibly Mars.

The mission came after several setbacks, including a two-and-a-half-month delay after technical difficulties halted the initial launch attempt on August 29. Additional engineering issues cropped up in early September, including a leak in the rocket’s fuel line, pushing the launch date back to the end of the month. Further delays caused by weather threats from Tropical Storm Ian and Hurricane Nicole forced NASA to push back the launch several more weeks.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 9:40 a.m. PST on Sunday, Dec. 11, after a 25.5 day mission to the Moon. [Photo: NASA]

Artemis I finally launched on November 16, beginning a mission that lasted more than 25 days. The first part of the mission, from launch to about 90 minutes after liftoff, was a test of the Space Launch System (SLS), a super-heavy launch vehicle designed by NASA to lift Orion to lunar orbit. Its primary task during Artemis I was completed after its upper stage, the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, fired for 18 minutes to put Orion on a trajectory to the Moon. It then separated from Orion, deployed 10 miniature satellites (CubeSats) and then completed a final burn into an orbit around the Sun, effectively being disposed.

The rest of the Artemis I mission consisted of testing the Orion spacecraft. It entered the Moon’s gravitational influence on November 20 and began a series of complex orbital maneuvers designed to enter orbit around the Moon on November 25, while minimizing fuel use. After several orbits, the spacecraft performed a burn on December 5, just after its closest approach to the Moon, just 128 kilometers (80 miles) from the lunar surface, to set itself on an earthbound course.

Orion’s final test was just before splashdown when it performed a “skip entry.” Similar to how one can skip a rock off the surface of a pond, a spacecraft oriented properly can skip off Earth’s upper atmosphere. The technique, when employed correctly, is designed to bleed off the spacecraft’s velocity in two stages rather than one to reduce the stress on astronauts returning to Earth.

A view of Earth and the Moon from the Orion spacecraft when it was at its maximum distance from Earth on November 28, 2022. [Photo: NASA]

While the technique was first theorized during the Apollo era, it was never implemented because the calculations to perform the maneuver were too complex for the computers aboard the Apollo Command Module. Orion, however, is fully capable of making the calculations needed to skip off Earth’s atmosphere just enough to reduce its speed but not enough to bounce back into orbit. The rest of the descent happened as expected and the capsule was ultimately recovered by the US Navy after landing safely.

The next task of the scientists and engineers on the Artemis program will be to analyze the data collected by the instruments on board the spacecraft. Orion carried a variety of acceleration, vibration and radiation sensors to gather data about the various stresses that astronauts will face while traveling aboard the spacecraft.

Several of these were mounted on three mannequins to better simulate a human’s experience during spaceflight. One of the most important experiments involved two mannequins, nicknamed Helga and Zohar, and measured radiation exposure on different points of the body, with and without shielding from a radiation vest. These are among the more important measurements taken during the Orion mission and will inform future missions about dangers to humans from prolonged radiation exposure as they travel far beyond the protection provided by Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field.

There were, however, at least three unexpected issues that cropped up during the mission that had to be resolved in flight. The first was an ongoing glitch in Orion’s star tracker, one of the systems used for spacecraft navigation. There were also instances of one of the current limiters from the solar panels to the command module opening erroneously, and which had to be ordered to close. And during the final flyby of the Moon, four devices “responsible for downstream power,” specifically propulsion and heating, turned off and had to be turned back on again.

The issues, which in the end did not end the mission, raise several potential problems for a crewed mission. Problems involving navigation, power, propulsion and heating bring to mind the Apollo 13 disaster and the near loss of astronauts James Lovell, John Swigert and Fred Haise. The next Artemis mission is scheduled to be launched in May 2024 and these problems will have to be resolved in the next seventeen months if the spacecraft can ever be considered as safe as possible.

This first high-resolution image, taken on the first day of the Artemis I mission, was captured by a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays. The spacecraft was 57,000 miles from Earth when the image was captured, and continues to distance itself from planet Earth as it approaches the Moon and distant retrograde orbit. [Photo: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of Communications]

And there are even more problems with the Artemis missions on the horizon, foremost among them being that while Orion is capable of orbiting the Moon, it is not designed to land on it. Instead, NASA has contracted Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop the Starship Human Landing System (HLS), a variant of the fascistic billionaire’s Starship spacecraft. In theory, the HLS will launch before Orion, be fueled by propellant launched into orbit by between four and fourteen other Starship missions, transition to lunar orbit, rendezvous with Orion, receive the crew, land on the Moon, take off and transfer the crew back to Orion for their return to Earth.

Not only is such a scheme not at all efficient for landing on the Moon’s surface, it is not complete. Design of the HLS only began in March 2020, when NASA awarded nearly $3 billion to SpaceX to design the vessel rather than develop a modern analog to the Apollo-era lunar module. And while Musk has claimed that the HLS will be reusable, which will ostensibly cut costs, that will require great expenditures of money and fuel just to refuel the vessel. The entire concept is absurd.

The Starship HLS does, however, exemplify the profit-driven character of the Artemis program. Landing on the Moon is not primarily seen as an endeavor of human exploration, but a means to shovel billions of dollars into the pockets of the already super-rich. A genuinely renewed space program is only possible when the constraints of capitalism on spaceflight are eradicated.

An addendum: Why going to the Moon is not a “gateway” to Mars

One of the many claims about Artemis by NASA and echoed by the corporate media is that going to the Moon will be a stepping stone for Mars missions. In particular, much is made about the proposed Lunar Gateway, a still conceptual space station that will orbit the Moon and supposedly prepare astronauts for a trip to Mars.

In reality, going from Earth to the Moon and then from the Moon to Mars, in two stages, offers nothing other than wasted fuel. The main limiting factor across all spaceflight is the needed change in velocity, the delta-V, to enter and exit orbits and to land and take off from celestial bodies. For example, one needs to change one’s velocity by 9.4 kilometers per second to leave Earth’s surface and enter low orbit around our planet. In contrast, one only needs a delta-V of 1.73 kilometers per second to take off from the Moon, which is why the rocket on the Apollo lunar lander could be so much smaller than the colossal Saturn V.

To go from Earth’s surface to Moon transfer, where one could go to the Moon, requires a total delta-V of 12.52 kilometers per second. It takes another 0.82 kilometers per second to actually enter low lunar orbit and rendezvous with the Lunar Gateway at one of its potential orbits. And one has not even yet left the full gravitational influence of Earth!

In reality, there is no reason to go to the Moon before heading to Mars. To go from Earth’s surface to being captured by Mars’ gravity requires a delta-V of 13.67 kilometers per second, less than what is needed to land on the Moon and only a little more than what is needed to orbit the Moon.

The orbital mechanics are clear: the claims that going to the Moon is a “gateway” to Mars are absurd. There are commercial, political and military interests that drive such conceptions, but not scientific ones.

The World Cup and human rights: Qatar 2022 and Argentina 1978

Cesar Uco & Don Knowland

Qatar, a country with no tradition in the game of soccer but possessing trillions of Petrodollars, was selected by FIFA (the Fédération Internationale de Football Association) to host the 2022 World Cup. This was in the main due to the Qatari regime’s extensive business relations with the largest world economies, and its services to US imperialism, which maintains up to 10,000 troops at the Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base. Along with naked political pressure, FIFA’s long history of payola and corruption played their part.

Argentina's Mario Kempes celebrating goal against the Netherlands at 1978 World Cup in Buenos Aires. [Photo: El Gráfico]

Over the years, FIFA has been transformed into a mafia-like cartel. FIFA officials have gone to jail for filling their pockets with millions of dollars, making a mockery of the billions of people who cherish the World Cup. FIFA alone anticipates revenues of over $7.5 billion, while Qatar expects the games to add $17 billion to its economy.

This year’s World Cup has been overshadowed by the gross oppression and human rights violations committed by Qatar’s despotic ruling monarchy, including in the preparations of the games themselves, which required the building from scratch of stadiums and other facilities. The work was done by South Asian migrant workers, forced to work under slave-like and dangerous conditions for starvation wages. In the decade following FIFA’s selection of Qatar to host the World Cup in 2010, a total of more than 15,000 migrants lost their lives, according to Amnesty International. Many more suffered life-altering injuries, for which few have been compensated.

The role played by massive amounts of money and sinister political forces in corrupting and discrediting the “beautiful game” is nothing new, as has been spelled out with the release of a trove of documents on the hosting of the 1978 Cup by a country then ruled by one of the most brutal dictatorships on the face of the planet, Argentina.

On November 25, 2022, as the Qatar World Cup soccer games were underway, 27 declassified documents on the 1978 Argentina World Cup were made public by human rights organizations, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, el Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) y Memoria Abierta. The 27 documents, in English, are part of a cache of thousands of documents put together as a three year project by the human rights groups, with the assistance of students and academicians. They can be accessed through the portal desclasificados.org.ar (by scrolling down to Colección Mundial 1978).

The documents reveal the joint strategy of the military dictatorship and US imperialism to exploit the games in order to “preserve” Argentina’s ruling military junta’s “image in the international order.”

Under the military regime that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983, at least 30,000 workers, students, trade unionists and left-wing activists were “disappeared” and murdered. Many tens of thousands more suffered torture and imprisonment.

The declassified documents reveal that months before the 1978 World Cup began, a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report had shown the Carter administration’s concern that public information from foreign press sources about the brutal repression going on in Argentina could ignite riots across the world, and suggested that this major sports event should be a priority for the military and security forces, as a form of what today is known as sportswashing, or shifting international public opinion with the World Cup spectacle.

The objective, according to the declassified files, was to “defuse criticism of human rights.' To this end, the military junta headed by Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla invited the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to make a special visit to the country. It hinted at the possible release of arrested union leaders and the suspension of some restrictions on freedom of the press.

At the same time, in the name of national security, the dictatorship had organized special units to arrest and threaten to wipe out any organized opposition which could endanger the holding of the World Cup in Argentina.

The Argentine butchers were clearly afraid that hosting the World Cup could backfire, further exposing its brutal repression. Such fears were fueled by a global campaign for a boycott of the games, which were compared to the Berlin Olympics held in Nazi Germany in 1936.

The documents also expose the concern by the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies over the threat of an eruption of the class struggle in Argentina, ignited by a potential railroad strike in the midst of the World Cup. One DIA document warned that a walkout by rail workers could “lead to other sympathetic strikes” and noted with apparent sympathy the “difficulties the government has is identifying where the actual [railroad workers’] leadership exists. This is being closely watched.”

Argentina’s military dictator General Videla and his advisor, the war criminal and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who today faces an arrest warrant that prevents him from leaving the US for crimes against humanity, directly intervened to influence the outcome of the 1978 World Cup, which crowned Argentina as world champion.

The chances of Argentina making it to the final were extremely low after Brazil had beaten Poland 3–1. This result gave Brazil an advantage of five goals. The Argentine squad had to defeat Peru by at least five goals in the semi-final match.

What followed was one of the most shameful events in the history of the sport, the visit of Videla and Kissinger to the Peruvian locker room.

As former Peruvian soccer player José Velásquez later recounted, “Videla went into the dressing room with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, supposedly to wish us luck. What did they have to do there? It was a way of pressuring us and seeing those who had sold out.”

Another player, Roberto Moquera, declared: “I saw [Videla] in the locker room and it disgusted me. I was 20 years old and I didn’t shake his hand. When a president enters the locker room with that kind of arrogance, they are abusing you, because you can’t do anything. He is using his power to subdue you psychologically. You feel assaulted and abused.”

Even the Argentine players were ashamed by the presence of the butcher president after the 6–0 victory over Peru.

Leopoldo Jacinto Luque, a member of the Argentine soccer team, who personally scored two goals against Peru, recounted at the time how the jubilation over the victory was suddenly cut short by Videla’s abrupt entrance into the locker room: “With his cowardly macho voice he told us ‘Very well, boys, we’ve reached the final. The World Cup closes with us. The goal was to reach the final and now we are going for the title.’ Not a word more, not a word less.”

Years later, in testimony before an Argentine special human rights court, former Peruvian senator Genaro Ledesma declared that the Peruvian government had agreed to throw the match as part of a deal with the Videla junta to assist in “disappearing” Peruvian political prisoners. Ledesma, a trade union organizer in Peru, recounted that he and 12 other Peruvian trade unionists had been shipped to Argentina to be imprisoned and tortured.

River Plate stadium, where the 1978 Argentina-Peru match took place, is only 10 blocks from the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), the main clandestine detention center in Buenos Aires, where political prisoners were tortured and exterminated. From there many of the prisoners would be drugged, loaded onto helicopters and dumped into the ocean. Pregnant women were held there, only to be murdered after giving birth, their babies handed over to the families of military officers and regime supporters.

The macabre proximity of the games to one of the junta’s principal torture centers meant that prisoners could hear clearly the football chants. Some were even invited to join their torturers to view the games on television, and even go out for a ride among the celebrating crowds, only to later be murdered, tossed either semi-conscious or already dead from aircraft into the sea.

ESMA is now a museum in memory of the victims of the Videla dictatorship. In 2018, at the opening of an exhibit marking the 40th anniversary of the Argentina World Cup, an ESMA survivor described the day of the Argentina-Peru game:

I remember that we saw the Argentina-Peru game in the basement. I was with a comrade, another witness, a word that I prefer because the word ‘survivor’ brings up so much suffering. We won 6-0 and obviously we were happy. At that moment we heard the sound of slamming doors —which used to happen when they brought in another kidnap victim. As we left, we went from that small euphoria to seeing one of our comrades on the floor, dead, quickly bringing us back to the reality of where we were.

The newly released files on the 1978 Buenos Aires World Cup add to the already existing information on the crimes against humanity committed by the Argentine dictatorship and its US allies: documents on the disappeared, the appropriation of their children and Operation Condor, the CIA-backed coordination by Latin America’s military dictatorships in hunting down and killing their opponents.

The mass killing, repression and torture that were carried out in Argentina and throughout much of Latin America in the 1970s is the bitter legacy of US imperialism’s domination which is still felt to this day. The deepening crisis of Latin American and global capitalism combined with the upsurge in the class struggle once again raises the threat that the region’s venal ruling classes backed by Washington will return to the bloody methods that the 1978 World Cup was meant to whitewash.

Anti-government protests continue in Iran despite mounting repression

Jean Shaoul & Keith Jones

Iran’s bourgeois-clerical regime—led by religious conservative President Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei—was the target of a three-day “national strike,” from Monday through Wednesday of this week.

Iranian state censorship and the western media’s visceral hostility to the Iranian regime, which the imperialist powers view as an obstacle to their unbridled domination of the Middle East, make it difficult to gauge precisely the extent of the protests and their social composition.

That said, it is clear, the denials of the regime notwithstanding, that the “strike” had a significant, albeit varied, impact across all or at least most of Iran.

The most significant economic impact of the protest was the widespread closure of shops. But there were also several significant worker strikes, possibly the largest direct worker participation in the now almost three-month long wave of anti-government protests.   

People walk in front of closed shops of Tehran's Grand Bazaar as riot police look on, Iran, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022. [AP Photo/Vahid Salemi]

The fissures within the Islamic Republic’s ruling elite also appear to be deepening, with suggestions from some elements of the regime that the much-hated morality police has been or should be disbanded, and calls from others for more ruthless repression of the anti-government protests.            

The “strike” was timed to climax Wednesday on Student Day, an annual event honouring three students killed by the Shah’s regime in 1953, shortly after he was restored to power in a CIA-orchestrated coup against the nationalist government of Mohammad Mossadegh.

Industrial workers, including several thousand at the Isfahan Steel Company, Sanandaj Petrochemical workers, and Sepahan Cement works, and bus drivers in Mashhad joined part or all of the three-day protest. Workers at the Daroogar pharmaceutical plant held protests over the non-payment of their wages for the last four months.

The most widespread participation in the anti-government protests was in Iran’s Kurdish areas. They have borne the brunt of the government crackdown on the unrest that began in mid-September, after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, detained by the morality police for wearing the hijab “improperly,” died in police custody.

Outside the Kurdish areas the anti-government agitation has been centered on university campuses, although several recent protests have seen shutdowns of bazaar shops, once a pillar of the regime.

Last month, Ayatollah Khamenei warned against what he claimed was the threat that the imperialist powers and their Middle East allies would seek to incite worker unrest. His remarks indicate the regime’s extreme nervousness that the protests and the growing fissures within the ruling elite could open the door to an eruption of mass working class opposition.

University campuses across the country appear to have been the site of significant protests this week. At a university in the city of Qom, home to many of Iran’s most prestigious religious seminaries, some students reportedly chanted, “We don't want a corrupt system, we don’t want a murderer as our guest.” Interrupting a speech by Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, a close ally and deputy of President Ebrahim Raisi, they shouted, “This is the year of blood, the Supreme Leader will be toppled.”

The state media sought to downplay the shop closures and strikes, claiming most shop owners “ignored” the strike call and “intimidation” by protest supporters. For his part, Iran’s police chief Hossein Ashtari said the police had succeeded in keeping the protesters away from their “evil and empty” goals. He warned protesters, “Security forces will no longer exercise restraint” and praised his officers for their efforts to counter “seditionists.”

The protests that started in the Kurdish provinces last September after Amini’s  police custody killing soon morphed into wider, anti-government rallies throughout the country, testifying to the widespread anger over unemployment, social inequality and the soaring cost of living. The terrible plight of Iran’s workers and rural poor stems principally from the brutal sanctions regime imposed by Washington after the Trump administration unilaterally abandoned the 2015 Iran nuclear accords. But the systemic corruption and monopolization of the country’s economic resources by the Shia clerical establishment and its big business backers have exacerbated the widespread poverty.

There is also widespread anger over the mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. The refusal to allow the import of western-produced vaccines led to higher death rates, under conditions where the sanctions regime has severely impacted the availability of medicines and other pharmaceutical products

The government’s decision to end its subsidized exchange rate and subsidy cuts have led to an unprecedented increase in food prices, making it almost impossible for poorer workers to put food on the table. Meanwhile, the surge in the price of agricultural commodities, including fertilizers—largely driven by the US/NATO-led war on Russia—amid a widespread drought and the government’s mismanagement of Iran’s water resources have had a devastating impact on the rural masses.

Mounting economic pressures have also severely impacted broad sections of the middle class. Some of the more privileged middle class layers support elements within the bourgeoisie and clerical political establishment that favour a rapprochement with the imperialist powers and/or imperialist-aligned emigré opposition groups.

While many protesters have chanted “Women, life, freedom!” and called for reforms, particularly to Iran’s strict dress code for women, others have declared “Death to the dictator” and called for an end to the country’s clerical regime. The protests and rallies, although not the largest, have lasted longer than those that rocked the country in late December-January 2018-2019 and November 2019.

This week’s national shutdown was called in response to a lethal crackdown by police and security forces. This has included intimidating protesters’ families and closing cemeteries to families trying to commemorate the deaths of those killed in the protests.

At the end of October, the authorities announced they would hold public trials in the capital, Tehran, for 1,000 people, over the protests, marking the government’s first major judicial action aimed at quashing dissent. The state-run IRNA news agency accused them of “subversive actions,” including assaulting security personnel and setting fire to public property. Some, it said, would be charged with collaborating with foreign governments, in line with the government’s frequent assertions that the protest movement is being fomented by the US and Israel.

The police have been under orders from the judiciary to “identify and put to trial” those promoting the shop “strikes,” amid threats to “seal” striking shops, remove their owners’ licenses to trade and confiscate their property. Masoud Setayeshi, a spokesperson, declared that “the judiciary will not make any concessions on the lives of 200 citizens” lost because of “provocations” by the opposition. He added, “The trials of defendants will be held quickly, carefully and seriously, and those who have committed crimes will face punishment.”

The Iranian authorities have acknowledged that around 200 people have been killed in the protests, including around 50 to 60 security personnel, as well as “rioters,” some “innocent” civilians and individuals who were victims of “plots” by dissident groups. Amnesty International has put the number of deaths at 305, including 41 children, while the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) claims at least 475 people have been killed, including 65 minors, and some 18,000 arrested.

On Monday, Iran carried out its first execution of a protester, hanging Mohsen Shekari, a 23-year-old man convicted of stabbing a member of the Basij, a voluntary organization under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and frightening people by blocking a street during the protests on September 25. The authorities claimed he had confessed, but close relatives say he was not allowed legal representation and that during his interrogation and trial, which was held in closed court, his face showed signs of bruising. His body has not been released.

In a separate case, five men have been sentenced to death for killing a member of the Basij in the city of Karaj west of Tehran. Eleven others, including three minors, have been sentenced to long jail sentences. As many as 21 people have been charged with sentences likely to carry the death penalty.

The IRGC praised the judiciary for its tough stance and urged it to move swiftly and decisively to issue judgments for defendants accused of “crimes against the security of the nation and Islam.”

This comes at the end of a year that has seen Iran execute more than 500 people, according to Iran Human Rights, up from 333 in 2021 and the highest toll in five years. On Monday, the Norwegian-registered NGO said four Iranian men were hanged in Rajai Shahr prison, accused of collaborating with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. Iran is second only to China in the number of executions carried out annually.

The protests have roiled Iran’s political elite. Speaking ahead of Students Day, former President Mohammad Khatami, who belongs to the so-called Reformist faction, urged the government to take a more lenient approach with protesters and listen to their demands before it was “too late.” He had earlier tweeted that “bitter events” in Iran were being caused by the “faulty and incorrect mechanism and method of governance.”

Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri announced that the morality police would be disbanded, a claim that was reaffirmed by Ali Khan-Mohammadi, the spokesman for the Headquarters of Promoting Virtue and Prohibiting Vice, one of the government’s religious agencies. However, it is unclear that this has any substance since the morality police have not been much in evidence in recent months, with most of the enforcement of Iran’s hijab laws carried out by the Basij.

This followed Montazeri’s announcement of the previous day that a committee was reviewing the laws surrounding the wearing of the hijab. He gave no indication whether the government would revoke the law.

Ahmad Rastineh, who chairs parliament’s cultural committee responsible for enacting the country’s morality laws, accused the government institutions responsible for “explaining the hijab issue” of weakness and even failure, calling on them to “educate” the public and carry out reforms. As Rastineh belongs to the regime’s conservative wing, his call reflects deep concern over its loss of support, the failure of the security services to suppress the protests and the urgent need for the government to protect the regime’s stability.

This comes as the Biden administration continues to ratchet up pressure on Iran, with a view to leveraging the splits within the ruling elite to bring about a political reconfiguration move amenable to Washington’s predatory interests, if not full-scale regime change.

Washington has signaled that reviving the Iran nuclear deal is no longer a priority for the United States. It is focusing instead on Iran’s supply of drones and missiles to Russia—a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of billions of dollars of weaponry and aid supplied by Washington to Ukraine. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby claimed this week that Iran was continuing to send arms to Russia. On Dec. 3, US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said, “Iran is not interested in a deal and we’re focused on other things,” adding “Right now we can make a difference in trying to deter and disrupt the provision of weapons to Russia and trying to support the fundamental aspirations of the Iranian people.”

Low levels of testing in Europe obscure rapid COVID-19 winter surge

Samuel Tissot

Despite the near-total abandonment of testing across the EU, it is becoming clear that COVID-19 is surging across the continent. Alongside major surges of the flu and other respiratory viruses, this latest surge of COVID-19 threatens European hospital systems with another winter of overcrowding, horrendous working conditions, triaged care and mass death.

An intubated COVID-19 patient gets treatment at the intensive care unit at the Westerstede Clinical Center, a military-civilian hospital in Westerstede, northwest Germany [AP Photo/Martin Meissner]

According to Worldometer, Europe has recorded 1,966,286 COVID-19 deaths and nearly 240 million cases. In September of this year the World Health Organization Europe estimated that the number of Long COVID sufferers now number 17 million people, a figure that has undoubtedly risen across October and November.

The latest wave of infections is being driven by the BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 variants, which are both descendants of BA.5, itself descended from the original Omicron variant. BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 are estimated to account for over 50 percent of cases in Europe and are expected to account for 80 percent by the new year.

According to a study published in Nature on Tuesday by a team from the University of Texas Medical Branch, the anti-body response in people vaccinated with bivalent vaccines was four times lower against BQ1.1 than against BA.5. On Friday, the European Medicines Agency warned that the BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 variants, which appear to be becoming dominant in Europe, can at least partially evade anti-viral treatments due to radical changes in their spike protein.

A major issue facing health care workers, scientists and the wider population is the lack of accurate testing data across the continent. In many European countries, PCR testing has effectively stopped, and even access to professionally administered rapid antigen tests is restricted—forcing many symptomatic individuals to rely on unreliable home tests or to forgo testing altogether.

A low level of testing during the rapid circulation of any communicable deadly disease is extremely dangerous for a population. Firstly, no one, from concerned individuals, scientists to health care officials, let alone government officials, can have an accurate picture of the infection rate and all its consequences.

Secondly, as new, potentially deadlier COVID-19 variants evolve, it is impossible to accurately track their movement through local and global populations. Indeed, according to the European Center for Disease Control, over half of its member states, including Spain, Portugal, Italy and most of Eastern Europe, failed to reach the sequencing volume target as a result of an insufficient number of tests.

The UK is one telling example. Official tracking of the virus has been almost completely abandoned by the government. Using self-reported data from voluntary participants across the UK (excluding Northern Ireland), the Zoe Health study group estimates that on December 9 there were 182,579 new infections. This single day total is over five times larger than the UK government’s official weekly tally of 28,830 (including Northern Ireland).

The UK is hardly unique in its near-total destruction of measures to accurately track the virus. In Italy, Spain and Sweden, cases are also only published once a week. The Netherlands publishes case tallies only once every three days.

Countries like France, where case and hospitalization data are published each weekday (but not over the weekend), give an insight into actual conditions in neighboring countries where it is being more thoroughly suppressed.

On December 9, the seven-day average of 59,138 daily cases is the highest since the summer surge of the virus in France. In the last seven days, hospitalizations for COVID-19 (6,771) are up 16.4 percent and deaths 20.2 percent (435).

Even in countries like France these figures are highly incomplete. France’s current test positivity rate of 28.6 percent indicates a huge undercount. The upfront cost of both PCR and antigen tests and the promotion of complacency toward the virus by the bourgeois media discourage the population from promptly testing for and reporting cases of COVID-19.

While during previous waves the test and trace efforts pursued by health authorities across Europe was far from sufficient to find and isolate all cases, it at least allowed scientists, health officials and members of the public to have a relatively accurate idea of the extent of infection on any given day.

In June 2020, then US President and fascist coup-plotter Donald Trump stated, “if we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases.” While this statement was widely ridiculed on both sides of the Atlantic at the time as the words of a deranged far-right COVID conspiracy theorist, this murderous suggestion in the face of a deadly pandemic has become the modus operandi of the European ruling class.

In November 2021, European countries followed the lead of US President Biden and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by declaring Omicron as a “milder” variant, despite there being no evidence for this assertion. On this anti-scientific basis, new lockdowns were ruled out, and isolation requirements were cut. Over the spring of 2022, this policy was extended to the end of even the most limited mask mandates and the drastic reduction in testing.

In the face of another deadly winter surge—and the ninth wave since the beginning of the pandemic—European governments not only refuse to take any action against the virus, by deliberately dismantling test infrastructure, they prevent the population from accessing the information necessary to make informed decisions to protect themselves, their families and the wider society. This actively aids COVID-19’s spread.

A drastic winter pan-European resurgence confirms once again that the “herd immunity” policy is not only criminal in demanding millions lay down their lives and “live with the virus,” but that is also a false concept.

A very high proportion of the European population has had multiple infections or a three or four vaccine doses, or both. However, due to COVID-19’s capacity to evolve extremely quickly under conditions of mass infection, once again a new variant is moving its way through the population.

Adopted by nominally left- and right-wing governments across the continent, the final destruction of measures to track the virus is the logical outcome of all capitalist governments’ “herd immunity” policy. That the capitalist system can only respond to the pandemic by a systematic attack on science and truth is a natural consequence of its historical bankruptcy.

Sick children turned away as crisis deepens in Australian hospitals

Clare Bruderlin

Australia’s health system is being pushed to breaking point, with new reports emerging daily of hospitals unable to meet demand as a result of chronic underfunding and crippling staff shortages exacerbated by surging COVID-19 infections.

Staff prepare to collect samples at a drive-through COVID-19 testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022. [AP Photo/(AP Photo/Mark Baker)]

On Monday, the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Victoria, released a statement advising families to seek alternative care because it faced “unprecedented demand” in its emergency department. The hospital said a high number of “extremely unwell children” were presenting to the ED, and it expected that some patients would wait more than 12 hours to be seen.

Elective surgeries have been deferred at two major hospitals in Victoria. The Alfred Hospital, one of Melbourne’s largest trauma hospitals, cancelled all elective surgeries on Tuesday, reporting its highest level of staff sick leave since early 2022. At the Royal Melbourne Hospital, “Category 3” surgeries were deferred. These include joint replacements for mobility, eye surgeries to prevent blindness, and certain cardiac surgeries to prevent heart attacks.

Ambulance Victoria issued a “code red” in Melbourne last week, meaning some emergency cases could not be reached on time, due to a “surge in workload and demand.” Ambulance Victoria has reported eight such alerts in 2022. According to ABC News, “code orange,” meaning people requiring “non-emergency care” must find alternative transport to hospital, was called 17 times in November alone.

Ambulance and other health services are seeing major staff shortages due to COVID-19 infection. Some 1,635 public hospital and 126 ambulance workers in Victoria were unable to work due to COVID-19 last week, according to a report in the Age.

In New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, 1,897 healthcare workers were off work with COVID-19 on December 7. The ongoing staffing crisis means many health workers are forced to work double-shifts and overtime, placing them under immense psychological and emotional stress.

The catastrophic conditions in hospitals are a product of “let it rip” COVID-19 policies, implemented with bipartisan approval since late 2021 and deepened by the federal Labor government of Anthony Albanese.

Even the most basic of public health measures to stop the spread of the virus, such as testing and isolation requirements, pandemic leave payments, daily reporting of cases and mask mandates have been abandoned. This has been carried out in defiance of epidemiologists and medical experts, whose advice has been ignored because it conflicted with the demands of big business that there could be no further disruption to corporate profits.

Amid a “fourth wave” of COVID-19, hospitals are facing a renewed influx of patients. More than 3,100 people are currently hospitalised with COVID across Australia, including some 1,500 in NSW.

In NSW, Bureau of Health Information (BHI) reports reveal that the state saw its worst ambulance response times on record between April and June this year, smashing the record set in the previous three months. Urgent cases categorised as “P1” are supposed to be attended within 15 minutes, but half of patients under this classification waited more than 16.3 minutes.

At Maitland Hospital in regional NSW, which has reported some of the worst wait time statistics in the state, the BHI reported that 70 percent of patients are leaving hospital emergency departments without receiving treatment. There was a 15 percent drop in the number of patients starting treatment on time compared to the same July to September quarter last year.

Similar conditions exist across the country. Recent data from the Australia Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) for 2021‒22 show that nearly 40 percent of patients across the country waited more than four hours in emergency departments, the worst performance recorded in 20 years, up from less than 30 percent in 2017‒18. The longest wait times were in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Tasmania and Victoria.

In Tasmania, 44.8 percent of all patients waited more than four hours for care. Of those triaged as urgent, just 43 percent were seen within the clinically recommended time frame. The ACT’s average emergency department wait time was the longest nationally for the fifth year in a row, with 47.6 percent of patients waiting more than four hours.

In South Australia, Labor Health Minister Chris Picton revealed last week that ambulance ramping outside hospitals had increased substantially to 3,516 hours in November, up from 3,331 hours the previous month.

In Queensland, government department figures made public in November showed that from June to September, more than 6,900 patients waited longer than 24 hours in hospital emergency departments across 26 hospitals.

In Western Australia (WA), ambulance ramping figures for November were the worst ever for that month, with paramedics across the state spending more than 5,700 hours outside emergency departments. Western Australia saw a 23 percent reduction in elective surgeries in public hospitals this year, the second-largest after NSW, as a result of staff shortages exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Elective surgery wait times have blown out across the country, the product of decades of funding cuts to public healthcare under successive Labor and Liberal governments and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated the strain on public hospitals.

This crisis is being compounded by general practitioner (GP) shortages and a decline in Medicare “bulk-billing,” a system whereby doctors and medical clinics send their patients’ bills direct to the government. This has forced patients to seek care from public hospital emergency departments.

Dr Sarah Arachchi, a general paediatrician in Melbourne, told the Guardian, “GPs are overwhelmed and many no longer bulk bill… that has resulted in a lot of people unable to afford the gap and so they’re bringing their children to the emergency departments.”

This crisis will only worsen under the Albanese Labor government. After a decade-long virtual freeze, the federal government has refused to increase rebates under the Medicare insurance scheme for doctors in its latest budget. Nor was there any increase in remuneration for longer consultations, or reinstatement of longer telephone consultations.

According to Labor’s budget, announced in October, payments to the states and territories for public hospitals will be slashed by more than $755 million this financial year and $2.4 billion over four years. The government has imposed a cap on federal hospital funding of 6.4 percent, while inflation, currently at 7.3 percent, continues to soar.

These increasingly intolerable conditions have sparked a wave of strike action and protests by health workers across Australia. This year, public sector nurses in NSW have gone on strike five times, demanding safe staffing and opposing the slashing of real wages.

In November, nurses across WA went on strike for 24 hours, their first statewide action in more than two decades, in defiance of a ruling by the Industrial Relations Commission. Nurses are fighting an offer from the WA Labor government of a 3 percent per annum pay “rise,” a substantial pay cut compared to inflation, and a nurse-to-patient ratio plan that will do nothing to resolve a major staffing and patient safety crisis in Western Australia (WA).

These struggles reflect the determination of health workers around the country to fight. But in every case, they are running up against a union apparatus that is actively working to isolate, minimise and shut down disputes, to clear the way for sell-out deals that do nothing to address the demands of workers for improved pay, decent conditions and patient safety.

In WA, the Australian Nurses Federation (ANF) announced last week that it would not defy any further rulings by the industrial court, in other words, that there will be no more strikes.

This is a continuation of the role union bureaucracies, in health and throughout the working class, have played over decades as the enforcers of the cost-cutting demands of governments and corporations. The decimation of the public health system, under state, territory and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, could not have been carried out without the full collaboration of the health unions.

Danish Social Democrats seek coalition with right-wing parties

Jordan Shilton

Denmark’s Social Democrats are seeking a coalition government with right-wing and even far-right parties after emerging from last month’s general election as the largest party.

After campaigning prior to the vote for a “broad government” of the centre, interim Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has been in talks with the right-wing Liberals and far-right Danish People’s Party for over a month.

Frederiksen’s goal is to establish a government behind the backs of the population, ready to enforce Denmark’s continued participation in the US-NATO war with Russia, a major increase in military spending, and “reforms” to health and social services that will entail sweeping austerity measures.

Mette Frederiksen [Photo by Sandra Skillingsås / CC BY-ND 4.0]

The Social Democrats decided against continuing its previous minority government, even though the “red bloc” of parties that backed it secured a parliamentary majority of 90 seats against 89 for the “blue bloc” in the election. The “red bloc” consists of the Social Democrats, Social Liberals, Socialist People’s Party (SF), the pseudo-left Red-Green Alliance/Unity List (RGA), and The Alternative. The right-wing parties, including the Liberals and conservatives, and far-right Danish People’s party (DF), New Right, and Denmark Democrats, are part of the “blue bloc.”

The formation of a coalition between the Social Democrats and Liberals in the coming weeks appears likely. On Monday, Liberal leader Jacob Ellemann-Jensen told broadcaster TV2 that he was satisfied with the “good rhythm” of the talks with the Social Democrats, and Frederiksen added a day later that her party has “spent a lot of time” with the Liberals.

All of the parties, including the SF and RGA, have participated in talks and helped give legitimacy to a process which will result in a sharp shift to the right. They did so even though Frederiksen held initial talks with the New Right and Danish Democrats, who are considered to stand even further to the right than the DF, whose support for previous Liberal-led governments has seen Denmark establish one of Europe’s most stringent immigration systems.

After a meeting with Frederiksen in late November, the RGA announced its departure from the talks. Media reports interpreted the move as an effort by Frederiksen to send a clear signal to the Liberals, the traditional leading party in the “blue bloc,” that she is prepared to sacrifice cooperation with “extreme” left-wing parties to finalize a coalition deal with the political right. The SF soon followed the RGA, announcing earlier this week that it is withdrawing from the government talks.

Frederiksen is now pursuing a coalition or some formal agreement to guarantee parliamentary support with the Liberals, Social Liberals, and the Moderates of former Liberal prime minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen. This coalition would have the support of 96 of the 179 deputies. Alternatives are possible, with DF’s five MPs or 14 deputies from the libertarian Liberal Alliance, another “blue bloc” party, potentially playing a role.

“We can build a broad government in Denmark,” Frederiksen stated on November 23. “A precondition for that is our ability to agree on the political content… There is a real desire from several parties to cooperate more closely and in a new way.”

Underscoring that this “broad government” involves a strengthening of the political right, Frederiksen’s Social Democrats refrained from installing their preferred candidate as speaker of parliament with the votes of the “red bloc” parties when parliament reconvened last month. Despite the “red bloc” majority, the Social Democrats supported the election of Liberal candidate Sören Gade. A similar approach was taken to elections for the parliamentary presidium, which determines the bills and other motions placed on the agenda.

The Social Democrats pushing for an alliance with right-wing and even far-right parties is the logical outcome of its own shift sharply to the right. During three years at the head of a minority Social Democrat government, Frederiksen pursued a hardline immigration policy, including the retention of the discriminatory measures adopted by previous right-wing governments under the direct influence of DF. These measures include the notorious “ghetto law,” rebranded “parallel societies” by the Social Democrats, which enables authorities to declare districts of towns to be “ghettoes” if they have a high percentage of migrant residents. When an area is declared a “ghetto,” punishments for crimes can be doubled and residents are obliged to obey “integration” measures.

Frederiksen’s government also oversaw a major bailout of big business in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, including billions of kroner in subsidies and tax breaks. Her government’s pandemic response was so business friendly that the Economist gave Denmark the top spot in its rankings for best-performing economies in the OECD during the pandemic. Criteria for the ranking decisions included share market performance, capital investment, GDP growth, and government debt levels.

The Social Democrats’ policies while in power, which were backed by the supposedly “left” SF and RGA as supposedly the best way to keep the right out of power, helped politically strengthen the far-right. Although DF lost ground in the elections, the overall representation of far-right parties in parliament grew.

The Denmark Democrats, set up by former Interior Minister Inger Støjberg, who served a prison sentence for violating the law by illegally separating asylum-seeker couples on the pretext of combatting “child marriages,” won 14 seats. The New Right, with ties to Giorgia Meloni’s fascist Brothers of Italy, secured six seats. If the mandates of DF, the Denmark Democrats, and New Right are counted together, the far-right has a larger parliamentary group than the Liberals and is second only to the Social Democrats. The “left” parties, meanwhile, saw their support stagnate, with the RGA losing four deputies and SF gaining one.

The Social Democrats’ overtures to the right-wing parties are in recognition that the deeply unpopular policies the next Danish government must carry out will be worked out behind the scenes and then supported by a strong parliamentary majority. These policies include the implementation of the initial stages of a plan to almost double military spending to 2 percent of GDP over the next decade, and further expand Danish support for the US-NATO war on Russia. The new government will also seek to enforce stringent controls on public spending to pay for the war, military rearmament, and the large sums made available to support big business during the pandemic.

These austerity measures will have a devastating impact on the country’s health care system, which is already breaking at the seams. Last year, health care workers took two months of strike action to demand wage increases of 5,000 kroner (€600). The strikes were halted when parliament intervened to impose a real-terms pay cut, including a 5 percent increase over three years. In the year since the strike, 6 percent of nurses have quit the profession.

By contrast, for a country of just 5.8 million people, Denmark has provided significant financial and logistical support to the war. According to figures from the Danish government, total financial support since the Russian invasion amounts to €510 million for military operations and €147 million for civilian purposes, including humanitarian aid. Denmark supplied harpoon anti-ship missiles to Ukraine with US approval, a significant escalation of the conflict that enabled Kiev to strike Russian vessels in the Black Sea. The Danish army is sending 130 officers to Britain to participate in the UK’s training of 10,000 Ukrainian servicemen and will host an unspecified number of Ukrainian troops for training on Danish soil.

The Social Democrats, Liberals, and most parliamentary parties joined forces to successfully campaign for the scrapping of Denmark’s “opt-out” from the European Union’s common defence policy in June. The move means that Danish forces can be integrated into EU military operations and that military forces from other EU states, above all Germany and France, can operate in strategically significant areas in the Arctic due to the Danish military presence in Greenland and the Faroe Islands.