The revival of the Berlin-Tokyo Axis

Peter Schwarz

Japan ranked only 18th among Germany’s trading partners last year, with a trade volume of €45.7 billion. Outside Europe, it ranked fourth. Germany’s trade volume with China was more than six times higher and that with the United States more than five times higher, while that with Russia was slightly higher.

Despite this, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz traveled to Tokyo last weekend accompanied by six ministers and a high-ranking business delegation for the first German-Japanese government consultations. According to government circles, such consultations are reserved for “close and strategically important partners,” which so far have included China. The chancellor had already visited Japan last April and will fly there again in May for the G7 summit. “Japanese-German relations are stronger and closer than ever,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stressed.

Participants in the first German-Japanese government consultations in Tokyo [Photo by Bundesregierung / Steins]

The rapprochement between the two countries evokes historical memories. The last time Germany and Japan were so closely allied was during World War II. The Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 and the Three-Power Pact of 1940 made Japan, along with Italy, Nazi Germany’s most important international allies. While the Nazis waged their murderous war of extermination against the Soviet Union, Japan conquered large parts of China and East Asia, committing bestial war crimes.

After their defeat in the war, both countries had to disarm. In its postwar constitution—formally still valid today—Japan renounced “for all time, war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes,” as well as the maintenance of “land, naval and air forces or other means of war.” Postwar West Germany’s armed forces were limited, at least officially, to defensive tasks.

Japan and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) resumed diplomatic relations in 1955, and trade and cultural exchanges developed from the 1970s onward. Politically, relations were largely free of tension but not particularly close. With the end of the Cold War, both countries began to shed their military restraint. The renewed rapprochement now comes at a time when they are abandoning all inhibitions and rearming massively.

The German-Japanese government consultations were dominated by the escalation of the Ukraine war against Russia and preparations for war against China. Whereas Germany had previously let its foreign policy in Asia be guided primarily by economic interests and maintained close relations with China, now military and political considerations and confrontation with China are taking centre stage.

Even the economic projects discussed and agreed upon in Tokyo were marked by war policy—or “security,” as it is officially termed. Topics ranged from access to rare minerals and raw materials to securing supply chains and defending against cyberattacks. “We want to reduce dependencies and increase the resilience of our economies,” Chancellor Scholz said.

Agreement had been reached on strengthening supply chains for minerals, semiconductors, batteries and other strategic areas to “counter economic coercion,” Premier Kishida added, alluding to China, which is a leader in mining rare earth minerals for batteries and producing solar panels.

Kishida had already created the world’s first Ministry of Economic Security after taking office in the fall of 2021. Then last year, Japan passed an economic security law that allows for far-reaching intervention in trade and business: securing supply chains for “strategic goods” such as semiconductors and medical products; keeping patents secret for technologies that can also be used for military purposes; establishing close cooperation between the state, universities and corporations in the development of critical technologies; and setting up state regulation of software in the infrastructure sector, targeting Chinese corporations, such as Huawei.

But German-Japanese cooperation is not limited to these issues. The governments also agreed to collaborate closely on military matters and defence production.

Both countries have more than doubled their arms budgets since the start of the Ukraine war a year ago. Germany has agreed to a special armaments fund of €100 billion and an immediate increase in the annual arms budget from 1.5 to 2 percent of GDP. The German government’s stated goal is to become “Europe’s leading military power.”

Japan plans to increase military spending of 43 trillion yen (€300 billion) by 2027 and to double its military budget from 1 to 2 percent of GDP. In December 2022, Tokyo released a new National Security Strategy that drops the last veneer of a “pacifist” constitution and prepares the country for war against China, which is described as an “unprecedented and greatest strategic challenge.”

The security strategy aims to rapidly acquire “counterstrike capabilities.” New fighter jets, medium-range missiles and other weapons are expected to enable the Japanese army to strike targets deep inside China.

This would open up new opportunities for closer cooperation, including in arms matters, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said in a press briefing. He cited submarine propulsion systems as an example. Of course, “Japan as a strong naval nation is also an interesting partner for us.”

Both Japan and Germany have so far worked closely with the US in terms of military and armaments technology, whose military capabilities exceed its own many times over. But both are seeking to break free from dependence on the victorious power of World War II.

While Germany seeks to bolster Europe’s arms production and military clout, Japan wants to revive its own defence industry after decades of restraint. In December, it agreed with Italy and the United Kingdom to jointly develop a new fighter aircraft—the first major defence collaboration without US involvement.

Joint military manoeuvres are also to take place more frequently in the future. Two years ago, the German warship “Bayern” stopped off in Japan on a voyage of several months through the Indo-Pacific and South China seas. Last summer, six German Air Force Eurofighters participated in manoeuvres in Australia and visited Japan. Now, a legal framework is to be established for mutual logistical assistance and support, and once again a German Navy frigate will dock in Japan as a “commitment to freedom of the seas,” as Chancellor Scholz said. He was referring to those parts of the South China Sea claimed by China.

The extent to which a “new era“ is also taking place in Germany’s Asia policy was confirmed on Tuesday by the first visit to Taiwan by a member of the German government in 26 years.

Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (Liberal Democrat, FDP) visited the island to discuss cooperation on semiconductors, electric car batteries, hydrogen and artificial intelligence. The visit, which Stark-Watzinger said was closely coordinated with the chancellor’s office and the foreign ministry, was regarded as a deliberate provocation by Beijing. The Chinese Foreign Ministry protested sharply against this violation of the One China policy, to which Germany remains committed, at least in words.

The revival of the Berlin-Tokyo military axis confirms that NATO’s war in Ukraine is the prelude to a violent redivision of the world among the imperialist powers that will lead to a nuclear catastrophe if not stopped in time by a mass movement of the working class.

The Ukrainian war did not begin with Russia’s attack but with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and NATO’s systematic expansion eastward. Now, NATO is using the reactionary attack by the Putin regime to escalate the war. Its goal is not peace for Ukraine but the subjugation of Russia, with its huge reserves of raw materials, and the encirclement of China.

Japanese Prime Minister Kishida “spontaneously” traveled to Kiev immediately after the meeting with the German government to pay his respects to President Zelensky and demonstrate his full support for NATO’s war policy. He made a stopover in New Delhi to increase pressure on a reluctant Indian government to fully join the war front against Russia and China.

“You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours,” as the saying goes. Germany supports Japan, which is unwilling to accept China’s emergence as Asia’s dominant economic power; and Japan supports Germany, which sees the Ukraine war as an opportunity to emerge as Europe’s “leading power.”

It may seem a coincidence that Germany and Japan are allying once again. But geopolitics follows certain geographic patterns. Germany, as Europe’s dominant economic power, had sought to subjugate the continent during World War I and World War II; Japan forcibly subjugated large parts of East Asia for the same reason. Both eventually came into conflict with the United States, which would not allow competing world powers to emerge in Europe and East Asia.

US bombs Syria in defense of its illegal occupation

Bill Van Auken

The US Air Force carried out a series of strikes against targets in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor Thursday night, acts of illegal aggression to defend Washington’s criminal occupation of the country in defiance of Syrian sovereignty and international law.

According to the Pentagon, the bombing raids were ordered by US President Joe Biden after a drone struck a US military maintenance facility at the Kharab al-Jir military airport near the city of Hasakah in northeastern Syria, killing one military contractor and wounding five US military personnel along with another contractor.

US soldiers fire an M777 howitzer while deployed in Syria at Mission Support Site Conoco on December, 4, 2022. [Photo: US Department of Defense/ Army Sgt. Julio Hernandez]

US munitions fell on the Harabish neighborhood of the densely populated city of Deir Ezzor, as well as on the town of Al Mayadin and a target in the Al-Bukamal desert. The Pentagon claimed that the strikes hit “facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

Local residents, however, told Iranian and Lebanese media that the US missiles hit a grain depository and a rural development center. Iran’s state-run media stressed that no Iranian had been killed in the US strikes.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that the US bombings killed at least 11 militia members, including two Syrian citizens. Iran’s Press TV quoted local sources as saying that those killed in the American attacks were Syrian soldiers.

On Friday it was reported that the US military base near Hasakah came under rocket attack. White House national security spokesman John Kirby told the media that the missile caused no casualties.

Late Friday there were reports that rocket attacks continued against three US bases, with at least one more US soldier wounded, and that the US military was carrying out strikes using fighter jets and attack helicopters.

US military spokesmen have made it clear that further and bloodier American military attacks may be in the offing. Gen. Erik Kurilla, the chief of US Central Command, which oversees all US military forces in the region, told the US Armed Services Committee Thursday that they “are postured for scalable options” in supposed retaliation to “additional Iranian attacks.” For his part, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin vowed that Washington “will always respond at a time and place of our choosing.”

The attempts by the Biden administration, the military and the US media to present US strikes in Syria as “retaliatory” responses to “Iranian aggression” are fraudulent and cynical.

US forces are illegally occupying Syrian territory. Some 900 US troops, joined by an even greater number of US military contractors, are engaged in this occupation, supplemented by special forces rotated in an out of the country. They have been deployed in Syria’s northeastern oil fields, denying the war-ravaged country access to sorely needed energy supplies and at Al-Tanf in the south, impeding traffic along the strategically vital Baghdad to Damascus highway.

The criminal character of this occupation, along with Washington’s attempt to economically strangle the country with sanctions, has only been deepened by last month’s catastrophic Turkish-Syrian earthquake, which killed thousands of Syrians and forced millions from their homes.

Continued under the pretext of combatting the remnants of ISIS (Islamic State), the occupation is in reality directed against the Syrian government, the Iranian-backed militias and the Russian military, which together played decisive roles in ISIS’s defeat. ISIS was itself the product of the CIA-orchestrated war for regime change in Syria, in which Washington poured billions of dollars of arms and money into Al Qaeda-linked militias, fostering a conflict that killed hundreds of thousands and turned millions into refugees.

The US occupation is a continuation of this savage war. It is a violation of international law, sanctioned neither by the Syrian government nor the United Nations. Under these conditions, the armed actions of those resisting this occupation and seeking to drive the US out of Syria and restore the country’s sovereignty are entirely legitimate.

The occupation follows three decades of US imperialist military intervention in the region which decimated entire societies, not only in Syria, but in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen as well, killing and maiming millions.

It is also directed at supporting the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine by countering Russia, whose military intervened in support of Syria’s government in Damascus and remains deployed there. The threat of a direct military confrontation was underscored this week by allegations from the US military command that Russia has violated a previous agreement by flying armed jets over the Al Tanf US garrison every day during the month of March.

At the same time, Washington leans ever more heavily on its military presence in the Middle East to oppose China’s growing economic and political influence in the Middle East.

China has become the largest investor in the Middle East, while its total trade with the region far outstrips that of the United States. In 2021, China’s imports from the Middle East—largely oil and gas—were four times those of the US, $130 billion versus $34 billion; and Chinese exports were nearly triple those of American, $129 billion versus $48 billion. In 2021 alone, Chinese investments in the region increased by 360 percent.

Twenty years after the US launched its criminal war against Iraq, the country ranks among the top partners in China’s s Belt & Road Initiative, under a deal which trades the export of 100,000 barrels of Iraqi oil per day for major building projects funded by China.

It is hardly a coincidence that the sudden eruption of US “kinetic activity” in Syria has erupted in the wake of Beijing brokering a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia, which was previously a key ally of Washington in supporting the Al Qaeda-connected militias in Syria, and Iran, which backed Damascus against them.

The US military escalation also comes just days after the report that Syria and Saudi Arabia have reached an agreement to reestablish diplomatic ties, and after Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has made state visits to the United Arab Emirates and Oman, also both previously aligned with Washington in seeking his overthrow. One Arab government after another is resuming ties to Syria, despite intense US pressure.

Washington’s continued use of military force in the Middle East, in an attempt to offset the decline of US imperialism’s economic and political domination of the region, serves to expose the rank hypocrisy of all the propaganda about defending “human rights” and “national sovereignty” in Ukraine.

The proxy war being waged by the US and NATO against Russia represents a continuation and dangerous escalation of the decades of US military aggression against the peoples of Syria, Iraq and the rest of the region, whose sovereignty and human rights were laid waste by “shock and awe” bombardments, colonial-style occupation, massacres and torture.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), which has indicted President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal for Russia’s evacuation of children from war zones in Ukraine, has kept its lips sealed in relation to Washington’s flagrant violations of international law through its continued occupation and bombing of Syria, not to mention the more than 30 years of US imperialist crimes that preceded it.

Every US president over the past three decades deserves to be standing in the dock of a war crimes trial for the wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen, along with unilateral sanctions regimes that have claimed the lives of millions, and the criminal CIA assassination and torture programs.

Washington, which has refused to recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction, has gone so far as to enact legislation threatening to use military force against The Hague should the court attempt to try US military or political figures, while imposing sanctions like those used against terrorists and drug traffickers on ICC jurists for even daring to investigate charges of US war crimes in Afghanistan.

While the Pentagon has shifted its focus from the decades of wars of aggression in the Middle East to the preparation of new and potentially world-catastrophic nuclear wars against Russia and China, it still has the capacity to unleash massive violence against the peoples of Syria, Iran, Iraq and the rest of the region.

FATF: The “Most Powerful Organization You’ve Never Heard Of” Strikes Again

Paul Cochrane

FATF Logo – Public Domain

The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental technical and policy-making body that is “the global standard setter on combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism,” is once again trying to emphasize it is not a politically influenced body, but strictly technical in its globally-reaching decisions.

At the end of February, FATF suspended the Russian Federation for its “illegal, unprovoked and unjustified full-scale military invasion of Ukraine.” It is the first time in the body’s history that one of the 37 members has been treated in this way. South Africa and Nigeria were also added to FATF’s lengthy gray-list, which signals a serious economic blow to both countries.

Being gray-listed means you are high risk in the financial sector. What the high risk designation does, in a nutshell, is deter inflows of investment, and makes trade, debt repayments and the like so much harder and more expensive, particularly when it comes to accessing foreign currency, whether as loans or for trade financing. Being high risk can also undermine the local currency, causing depreciation, which makes debt repayments more expensive.

“The most powerful organization most people will have never heard of”

Created in 1989 by the G7, in large part by the US Treasury, to combat the narcotics trade, FATF is one of those international bodies that has incredible global clout yet is largely unknown by the public, a bit like the Basel, Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS), AKA the “central bank of central banks”. 

As Tom Keatinge, the director of the Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies at the RUSI think tank in London, told me back in 2018, FATF is “the most powerful organization most people will have never heard of… and one that’s only grown more influential in recent years”…“A lot of aggravation that people suffer with their banking is FATF-related but they don’t realize it.”

The ‘suffering’ the average person in the US or Europe experiences is having to go through a bank’s Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, such as declaring source of income, or having certain payments queried if there is unusual account activity, such as large amounts of funds going in and out. Clamping down on money laundering is also why it is harder to pay for large ticket items with cash and why it is harder to open a bank account in another country.

The public invariably does not know why they are subjected to these controls, but financial institutions are following the rules of their governmental regulator, which have enacted laws in response to FATF’s guidelines on anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism.

Yet while FATF is largely unknown in the West, countries and populaces on the receiving end of FATF’s decisions do know of it. The body makes headlines in what FATF calls ‘high-risk jurisdictions’. And during the height of the US-led War on Terror, people around the world, particularly Muslims or those with Arab names, faced issues when opening bank accounts, transferring money abroad, or making donations to charities, ostensibly over concerns over ‘terrorist financing risks’.

FATF’s expansion post-9/11

Indeed, the FATF’s importance increased exponentially following the September 11 2001 attacks on the US, when terrorist financing suddenly became a global concern. A special unit was established in the US Treasury, documented by Juan Zuarte, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crime, in his book Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare.

The US Treasury pushed global adoption of FATF’s standards, and over the next decade countries  scrambled to put anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism legislation into place.  Central and Western Asia were particularly under the spotlight, given the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Then came the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or Daesh. Terrorist financing became a primary focus of FATF.

Several years ago a participant at one of FATF’s bi-annual plenaries told me that, to his exasperation, they spent 90 percent of the week discussing Daesh. This was at the expense of focusing on major financial crimes such as human trafficking, the illegal wildlife trade, real estate, and trade-based money laundering, which only garnered more focus in the past few years.

FATF’s focus has been on whatever is the political zeitgeist. Last year I could barely get an interview to discuss Daesh and terrorist financing, including at US-based think tanks that had churned out articles on the topic during the heyday of the War on Terror.

Suspending Russia from FATF

Terrorist financing is still on the agenda, but it has slipped down the list of priorities. Today it is of course Russia that is under the spotlight, with the US and Europe using all the weapons in its financial arsenal to cut Moscow out of the financial system. First it was sanctions, and now FATF has joined the melee in suspending the Russian Federation from the body.

FATF stated that Russia’s actions “unacceptably run counter to the FATF core principles aiming to promote security, safety, and the integrity of the global financial system. They also represent a gross violation of the commitment to international cooperation and mutual respect upon which FATF Members have agreed to implement and support the FATF Standards”.

This is clearly a political decision, given membership is dominated by what is essentially the “international financial system” – the US and Europe. The only members that are outside of the Western block are Argentina, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, India, and Malaysia. Then there are West Asian members Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel. The core FATF members include most of the 45 countries that sanctioned Russia in 2022, and again in February this year.

Russia was very much part of the FATF club. In fact Russia held the year-long presidency of FATF in 2013-14, during the same period Russia invaded Crimea.

But the tide has turned on having undesirable members in the big financial clubs. Last year, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) suspended Russia. “The access of the Central Bank of Russia to all BIS services, meetings and other BIS activities has been suspended,” the bank stated. This move effectively cut-off Russia from clearing money through BIS.

FATF’s move further tightens the screws. It did not need to gray-list Russia as Moscow was already a high risk jurisdiction due to US and European sanctions. But the decision was not a technical one, based on Russia having inadequate controls or policies following a periodic Mutual Evaluation Report, as is typically the case for a country to be gray-listed until it gets its act together. The membership decided to suspend Russia – which members supported, rejected or abstained is not public knowledge.

Selectively going after aggressors

What is significant is that it is another case of selective use of mandates by international bodies. No such action for undermining the “security, safety, and the integrity of the global financial system” has been taken against any other member before, or for invading, occupying or violating the sovereignty of another country. Neither has FATF ever, to my knowledge, deplored the “huge loss of lives and malicious destruction” from other invasions, other than in regard to Russia’s recent warmongering.

Russia was not disciplined in the past for its wars in Chechnya, Georgia and the Crimea. The USA, the UK, Saudi Arabia and Israel – among others – could equally be called up for violating the FATF’s principles. Yet there was no call for this to be done following the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor military involvement in the conflict in Syria, or the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

And Syria and Yemen are gray-listed by FATF. Neither country has been subject to an on-site visit to assess whether reforms have been implemented since 2014, not due to war, but to the more tamely worded “security situation”.

FATF has also used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to not review Iran and North Korea, having put the process on hold since February 2020. Presumably this is also because no members of FATF are pushing for reviews of these pariah states to be carried out.

South Africa and Nigeria were gray-listed at the FATF plenary in February. Immediately questions were asked whether this was politically motivated. The South African Broadcasting Corporation asked the FATF president whether the country had been listed because it hosted a joint military exercise with China and Russia in February (it also held one with France, which seems to have gone largely unnoticed). The president said that was not the case, and indeed, South Africa had been evaluated and called upon to address its deficiencies since June 2021. It was a technical decision.

However, the timing of FATF’s announcement is problematic amid global tensions, and South Africa being under pressure for not condemning Russia, having abstained at the UN.

Gray-listing equals GDP loss

Gray-listing is a major financial blow at a time no country can afford further dents to their economies amid high fuel prices, inflation, rising debt levels and, in the case of Turkey, the devastating earthquake in early February. It is a lengthy list of “jurisdictions under increased monitoring” by FATF – Albania, Barbados, Burkina Faso, the Cayman Islands, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gibraltar, Haiti, Jamaica, Jordan, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Panama, Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, the UAE, and Yemen. On the “black-list” are North Korea, Iran and Myanmar.

Being FATF gray-listed is meant to make a jurisdiction clean up its act ASAP due to the financial repercussions – borrowing money becomes more expensive, financial inflows dry up, and the cost of business rises overall.

According to a 2021 IMF paper, being gray-listed has “a large, significant negative” … “on capital inflows. The empirical results suggest that capital inflows decline on average by 7.6 percent of GDP when the country is gray-listed. The results also suggest that FDI [foreign direct investment] inflows decline on average by −3 percent of GDP, portfolio inflows decline on average by −2.9 percent of GDP, and other investment inflows decline on average by −3.6 percent of GDP. The estimated impacts are all statistically significant.”

While there are of course strong technical grounds for gray-listing the above-listed countries, no such action has ever been taken against what are considered the world’s money laundering hubs – the United Kingdom and the US.

Furthermore, most of the gray-listed countries do not have banks accused of the sort of multi-billion-dollar money laundering schemes that Lloyds, HSBC, Deutsch Bank, Danske Bank and other Western heavyweights have been involved in. While these banks were penalized, they did not disappear off the face of the planet, as two Lebanese banks did when fingered by the US Treasury for being banks of “prime money laundering concern” for allegedly facilitating funding for Hizbullah.

Then again, there does not seem to be the political will to truly go after the launderers, with ongoing efforts to curb money laundering proven to be largely ineffective, at 1 percent or less of proceeds of crime being recovered by the authorities. Indeed, in a 2018 speech, before stepping down as executive director of Europol, Rob Wainwright said: “Professional money launderers – and we have identified 400 at the top, top level in Europe – are running billions of illegal drug and other criminal profits through the banking system with a 99 percent success rate.”

The ineffectiveness of the fight against money laundering is another matter, for another article, but it does fit into an interconnected-narrative of which jurisdictions can get away with what.

Risky business

What also needs to be highlighted is that if a country is removed from FATF’s gray-list it does not equate to a country suddenly being considered a less risky jurisdiction. Many non gray-listed countries are considered high risk, certainly by the US, and pretty much by default by other US allies.

The UAE is a case in point, which was gray-listed in 2021. A former US Treasury official told me last year that “the risk rating for the UAE increased with the listing, but it was already in a risk area due to the fact of its geography. If I were advising a company, it would be in the high risk bucket due to the known issues. That is already pegged in. Taking the UAE off the gray-list doesn’t make a big difference from the US risk standpoint.”

An oil-rich country like the UAE can arguably afford to deal with being deemed high risk, given its attractiveness to international capital and as a major hydrocarbons producer, but many countries do not have such buoyant economies or the petrodollars.

As a result of being high-risk, money flows out of countries and gets deposited in ‘safe jurisdictions’, particularly the USA, and to a lesser extent the UK, Europe and its archipelago of offshore tax havens. This helps shore up US dollar hegemony, or what economist Michael Hudson has termed the “current volatile and predatory dollar-centered system”.

FATF’s recent decisions show once again where the so-called international financial system is centered and how it is politicized. The rules – as well as the loop-holes – were created by the West, and can be used as a form financial warfare elsewhere in the world to shore-up the dominance of the Western financial system.

New warning strikes in Germany’s public sector

Marianne Arens

Public sector workers in Germany are striking again this week. Hundreds of thousands have already stopped work, and virtually all federal states are affected. It is well known that kindergartens, hospitals, public utilities, public transport companies and administrative offices have long been working at their limit in the face of rampant staff shortages and cuts in real wages.

There is also growing anger at the service sector union Verdi, which does not want to organise an effective joint strike movement. Verdi officials may be making big speeches about the “frivolous” offer from the other side, but behind the scenes they are preparing a sell-out, as the example of Deutsche Post shows.

Postal workers voted 86 percent in favour of an indefinite strike in a ballot, but Verdi subsequently struck an agreement with the Deutsche Post board within hours. The Verdi negotiating committee has accepted a contract that is just as bad as the first offer, which workers overwhelmingly rejected.

'Underpaid, understaffed, overworked, overburdened,' this social worker from Hesse expresses the mood among public sector workers [Photo: WSWS]

“Underpaid, understaffed, overworked, overburdened”—with this hand-made poster, a social worker from Hesse summed up the general mood of public sector workers. For a fundamental improvement in their situation, social workers, educators, municipal employees, nurses in municipal hospitals, retirement homes and providing care for the disabled, as well as refuse collectors, streetcar drivers and many others went on strike yesterday.

While in Saxony there was a strike on Monday, in Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia Verdi called for a separate strike on Tuesday. Around 30,000 took part in three rallies in Gelsenkirchen, Monchengladbach, and Cologne. Another 20,000 took part in warning strikes in Baden-Württemberg on Wednesday, and there are to be further actions and a central rally in Leipzig on Friday.

In Berlin, staff at the Employment Agency and Job Centre were on strike on Wednesday, along with employees in vocational training and student services. On Thursday, the Berlin hospitals Charité, Vivantes and the Vivantes subsidiaries as well as the Jewish Hospital were again on strike.

Workers in the city's sanitation services and water companies were also set to strike on Thursday and Friday. Apprentices at various municipal companies and the local transport provider BVG also took part in the warning strike Thursday. Drivers are planning to strike March 27 together with EVG railroad workers, who are also in a wages dispute.

In Hamburg, Germany's largest port remained closed to large ships on Wednesday morning, as pilots remain on strike until Friday. Furthermore, workers on the Kiel Canal (NOK) at the locks in Kiel and Brunsbüttel are also to go on strike for the first time on Friday.

Strikers rally in front of the headquarters of the employers' association (KAV) in Frankfurt/Main [Photo: WSWS]

In Frankfurt on Wednesday, several thousand workers from the city's public utilities, nurseries, AWO nursing homes, Mainova (electricity and gas supplier) and the municipal transport company took part. The city appeared very quiet, as no streetcars or subway trains were running, and municipal offices were closed. About 2,000 strikers from the city and surrounding areas participated in a central rally in the city centre, in front of the headquarters of the employers' association (KAV).

Many of them felt that Verdi was demanding too little, while others expected at least the official demand would be enforced this time. This amounts to a 10.5 percent wage increase for a period of one year, with a minimum of €500 per month and €200 for apprentices.

In the second bargaining round, federal and local public sector employers rejected raising basic rates, something that would particularly benefit low-wage earners. Instead, they are offering a total of 5 percent over 27 months, plus an additional one-time payment of €2,500. This does not come close to compensating for the loss in wages due to inflation and the pay freezes of recent years.

Ben, a municipal utility worker from Bad Nauheim, with colleagues [Photo: WSWS]

Ben, who works at Bad Nauheim's municipal utility provider, came to Frankfurt with his colleagues. “Above all, we need more money,” Ben says. “Everything depends on that. We definitely need the ten percent for one year, that’s what we're fighting for, and that’s what we have to achieve.” Low wages meant that hardly anyone was interested in the profession, and staff shortages were the result, he said.

This was confirmed by Kirsten, Merle, and Anna, three educators from a municipal after-school care centre in Mühlheim. “Improved conditions, better wages, more staff and good training,” one said, then we could see further, that would be a start. Right now, we’re all exhausted because there’s a lack of staff, and it’s getting worse.”

Horst, who works for the city of Offenbach, thinks Verdi was asking for far too little. “Giving everyone a thousand euros more per month, that would be a start,” Horst says.”' "Why is our work worth less than that of IT specialists and bankers?” But he has no confidence that Verdi will follow through: “What Verdi did at Deutsche Post was a breach of trust; they should have gone on strike.”

An employee of the Offenbach Youth Welfare Office also agrees: “It’s an outrage what happened at Deutsche Post office.” But no one is talking about it, he says. “There, 86 percent voted for a strike, and then it’s all concluded [by the union] very quickly.” He suspects Verdi doesn’t want a big strike at all. “Why don’t we all strike together? We could really achieve something.”

Employees of the Youth Welfare Office, Offenbach [Photo: WSWS]

Many reacted with horror to information about the hasty deal struck at Deutsche Post, as did Steve, a social worker from Frankfurt. “We’re fighting for higher wages and better working conditions here, after all,” he says. At the moment, the situation is so tense that there is no time at all for proper pre- and post- case processing, he adds. “This also affects the children and young people. The staffing shortage affects everything; it’s built up over decades.”

Steve feels the union leadership has “slept through” the situation. He himself studied social work, has a degree, “but compared to engineers and all the other degrees, I make a lot less. That doesn’t make any sense. Why is it worth more to build a house or a bridge than to take care of your kids and take care of society?”

Like many others, Steve says he does not understand “why we’re so tame here.” At the same time, he says, there was a real strike going on in France right now.

Very many felt that under no circumstances should Verdi be allowed to make a deal for two years. One worker said: “Who knows what will happen in a year? There’s a war in Ukraine, and several banks—like Credit Suisse—have already collapsed.”

Educators from Hesse demand, 'Education instead of child minding.' They charge, 'We can't work as badly as we are paid' [Photo: WSWS]

The warning strikes foreshadow the power workers could unleash to truly change conditions. Some 2.5 million federal and local public service workers are affected by the current pay round, which also impacts municipal contractors, non-profits, and civil servants.

But federal and municipal public sector employers will not offer an acceptable solution next week either. Especially after the sell-out at Deutsche Post, they are relying on Verdi, hoping the union will succeed—as it has every time so far—in stalling the labour dispute and pushing through a new sell-out.

Scientists find extensive wildlife DNA from the Wuhan wet market mixed with SARS-CoV-2

Benjamin Mateus

A devastating blow has been dealt to the claims by US right-wing politicians and media outlets that the COVID-19 pandemic is the product of a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, with a new study documenting scientifically, for the first time, the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA mixed with the DNA of numerous wild animals being sold at the Huanan wet market in Wuhan.

A preliminary finding of SARS-CoV-2 RNA mixed with the DNA of a raccoon dog from the Huanan wet market was made public late last week, and the WSWS commented on it March 20. Now the full report has been released linking the DNA of several other wild animals from the market to the virus that causes COVID-19.

The study adds to the mountain of evidence supporting that theory of a zoonotic origin for the coronavirus, with the virus jumping from animals to humans when they came into contact at the market. SARS-CoV-2 is a natural virus, not an artificial one, manufactured in a Chinese laboratory, as the US media campaign claims, on the basis of zero evidence except for the sick imagination of fascists like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and racist former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade.

The study was released Monday on the Zenodo website by Dr. Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (NCSR) and lead author. Dr. Débarre and her co-authors found genetic evidence of susceptible wildlife among positive SARS-CoV-2 samples at the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market taken in January and February of 2020.

Dr. Florence Débarre

It is precisely the recent identification of raccoon dog and other wild animals’ DNA at the Huanan market mixed with SARS-CoV-2 RNA that provides further compelling evidence that this was the epicenter for the origin of the pandemic in late 2019.

As Débarre noted in introductory remarks, she and her team, almost by chance, had on March 4, 2023 come across a set of genetic sequences publicly posted on the database of the GISAID, the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data, from environmental samples collected at the wet market in Wuhan. Débarre told Nature, “Basically, [they’re] the ones we’ve been waiting for, for a year.”

She and her colleagues downloaded approximately half-a-terabyte of genetic sequences for around fifty different samples that included drains, market stalls and carts, as well as the grounds in the Huanan market. What was remarkable was finding genetic sequences for multiple animals. 

The Chinese authorities had denied the existence of such wild animals known to be susceptible to SARS-Cov-2 and able to function as potential intermediary hosts for a zoonotic spillover into human. But a paper published on June 7, 2021, in Nature under the title, “Animal sales from Wuhan wet markets immediately prior to the COVID-19 pandemic,” reported that between May 2017 and November 2019 some 47,381 individual animals from 38 species (including 31 protected species) had been sold.

The paper additionally noted that no pangolins were traded there, which supported an earlier finding that these animals were not likely to have caused the spillover into human populations. Dr. Peter Daszak had explained that “it was doubtful that this species played a role in the outbreak. We need to keep looking for the original reservoir.” The president of EcoHealth Alliance, Daszak has for more than two decades worked tirelessly on the question of potential pandemic pathogens. He has become the target of the right-wing conspiracy theorists because his group had collegial connections with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Indeed, the present report corroborates that no pangolin DNA was found. However, DNA samples for five different species of wildlife—raccoon dog, Malayan porcupine, Amur Hedgehog, masked palm civet, and hoary bamboo rat—were present. 

Chart shows where at the Wuhan wet market wild-animal DNA was found mixed with SARS-CoV-2 RNA.

Débarre and colleagues wrote that when they notified the former head of the Chinese CDC, George Gao, on March 10, 2023, that they had found animal species linked to SARS-CoV-2 in the genetic samples, the sequences were made unavailable the next day and the CCDC declined to respond to inquiries. The NCSR researchers were also admonished by the GISAID Secretariat for supposedly not complying with terms of use and their privileges suspended, until objections were raised that there were no violations of the terms of use.  

The Chinese CDC had said in a February 2022 report on their investigation, released in preprint form, that no infected animals had been identified after the market was closed down on January 1, 2020. 

As the CCDC report stated, “Herein, we presented the SARS-CoV-2 detection results of 1,380 samples collected from the environment and the animals within the market in early 2020. By SARS-CoV-2 specific RT-qPCR, 73 environmental samples tested positive for SARS-Cov-2 and three live viruses were successfully isolated … In contrast, no virus was detected in the animal swabs covering 18 species of animals in the market. The SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acids in the positive environmental samples showed significant correlation of abundance of Homo sapiens with SARS-CoV-2. In summary, this study provided convincing evidence of the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in the Huanan Seafood Market during the early stage of COVID-19 outbreak.”

On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) was informed of the Débarre group’s findings. The next day, leading epidemiologists Michael Worobey, Edward Holmes, and Kristian Andersen met some of the members SAGO (the WHO-convened Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel pathogens) to review the findings. 

As the introductory comment from the published report notes, “We cannot comment on the CCDC team’s findings, as those are theirs to share, but some findings from our analyses have already been shared in the media and in in public statements by the WHO. This meeting constitutes one of several efforts to establish a collaborative relationship with our colleagues at CCDC to share data and findings as rapidly as possible.” 

Moreover, Débarre recognizes the important work that was done by the CCDC when she said, “They did what needed to be done. We wouldn’t have this data, if it wasn’t for their work.” Behind her comments stands the need to address the origin question through scientific and open collaboration, rather than the right-wing imperialist demonization of China that is escalating once again.

Although it is understood that SARS-CoV-2’s ancestors originated in bats, how coronavirus passed into human populations is a critical question that scientists have been attempting to study in the laboratory since the SARS epidemic two decades ago. Field research has been critical in identifying recent SARS-CoV-2 related viruses. Additionally, research into such specific features as the furin cleavage site and the adaptive mechanisms these viruses evolve to jump into other species is critical. Apparently, the acquisition of such genetic characteristics is more commonplace than previously understood.

This is a an issue of political as well as scientific importance, because right-wing conspiracy theorists have sought to capitalize on the lack of understanding of the scientific complexities to suggest that the furin cleavage site had to be specially engineered in a laboratory and could not have evolved naturally.

A report from 2021 on the global diversification and distribution of furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses found that at least “86 types of furin cleavage sites have been detected in strains of three coronavirus genera in 24 animal hosts in 28 countries since 1954, including at least 25 types in Beta-coronaviruses recorded in the years 1988-2019 in 14 countries. Most of them could cause unexpected threats to human beings or other mammals. Four of seven coronaviruses known to infect humans carry furin cleavage sites, including two with low pathogenicity (HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-HKU1) and two highly pathogenic zoonotic viruses (MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2).”

They added, “Moreover, evidence of frequent interchange of furin cleavage site motifs among the three coronavirus genera indicates that frequencies of recombination of coronaviruses’ furin cleavage sites may have been underestimated.”

Graphical representation of the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 comparing the same location n the coronaviruses of the bat and the pangolin

In the early days of February 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), NIH Director Francis Collins, and Dr. Jeremey Farrar, then Director of the Wellcome Trust, assembled an international cadre of foremost virologists and scientists to study the question of where COVID-19 came from, which eventually led to the critically important and still relevant paper titled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.” 

After extensive debate and analysis of the extant data, the scientists wrote, “Our analyses clearly shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

Most extraordinary is the list of authors on the report who have been at the forefront of studying the question, including several directly involved in this question in late January 2020 when they first raised their concerns that the novel coronavirus may have been bio-engineered. But their investigation convinced them otherwise.

They concluded, “Although the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here [various notions of how the zoonotic transfer took place]. However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD [Receptor Binding Domain] and polybasic cleavage site [Furin Cleavage Site], in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

They noted, “More scientific data could swing the balance of evidence to favor one hypothesis over another. Obtaining related viral sequences from animal sources would be the most definitive way of revealing viral origins.”

Despite the continued accumulation of evidence corroborating the zoonotic spillover of SARS-CoV-2, the highly provocative and malicious congressional hearings held on March 8 on the COVID origins attempted to give political credence and legitimacy to the reactionary conspiracy theory that posits the virus that causes COVID was bio-engineered and leaked from the WIV.

This week President Joe Biden signed the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, a bill sponsored by the fascistic Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. This new legislation which passed the Senate and House earlier and has unanimous support from both parties, ordered the Director of National Intelligence to declassify within 90 days all pertinent information pertaining to the Wuhan institute and COVID-19. 

By all accounts, the release of the intelligence data of low confidence, will be couched in the most obvious and malignant terms. Regardless of the weight of evidence that continues to be discovered, the ruling elites in Washington will seize the opportunity to use the bogus lab-leak conspiracy theory to further their anti-China agenda.