Fantasy, Illusion and Reality in Two Wars

L. Michael Hager

Photo by César Hernández

Wars seem to breed fantasy: hero worship, victory parades, exuberant patriotism, or “a war to end all wars.” Such fantasies are usually based on inflated expectations, grand illusions, or outright lies.

Even some of history’s great generals have fallen prey to fantasy. An illusion of imminent victory caused them to miscalculate and lose battles.  For example, Napoleon thought he could conquer Moscow before the snows arrived.  He was wrong and his wintertime invasion of Russia in 1812 led to a catastrophic French defeat.

Or recall the illusion of Japanese General Isoroku Yamamoto at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. He thought he could eliminate American carriers in a decisive battle, but U.S. forces deciphered his intentions and launched a devastating counterattack. Yamamoto lost both the battle and his life.

Closer to home, U.S. General George Custer mistakenly believed he could overwhelm a larger combined tribal force at the Battle of Little Big Horn in June 1876.  By dividing his troops into three separate battalions for an untimely attack he suffered an ignominious defeat.

Like those defeated generals before them, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have both pursued illusory paths–with U.S. President Joe Biden tagging along behind them.

The U.S. and NATO helped Ukraine rightfully and successfully defend Russia’s attack on Kiev in February and March 2022.  However, the existential war for national survival transformed into a contest over long-disputed land in the southern and eastern regions. A failed Ukraine counterattack last summer morphed into a continuing stalemate, with heavy losses on both sides.

Rather than agree to a ceasefire or invoke diplomacy to settle territorial claims, Zelensky has held fast to his top two strategic goals: expulsion of all Russian troops and recovery of Crimea. Such prospects are an illusion. How can Ukraine expect to achieve such a vision of success when it faces an enemy four times its size and confronts its own manpower shortfall.

Until declining weapons support from the West causes him to rethink his goals, Zelensky will likely remain in the grip of illusion.  His valent troops will continue to die on the battlefield and in the trenches.

Following the brutal and inexcusable massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas militants on October 7, Netanyahu announced as his primary goal the total elimination of Hamas in Gaza. Unlike Zelensky in Ukraine, Bibi must have known that his stated goal was illusory. How could such a deeply entrenched organization as Hamas, with its thousands of active militants either comingled with innocent civilians above ground or concealed underground in miles of deep tunnels, be “eliminated?”

The Israeli leader must have realized that his purported vision was in fact an illusion; that the intended but unannounced purpose of his invasion of Gaza was the complete elimination of Palestinians there.

Evidence of such intention may be found in the relentless IDF bombing, shelling, and sniping in all parts of the Strip; the repeated use of unguided bombs and bunker busters in crowded spaces; the frequent bombardment of hospitals, schools, libraries, mosques, churches, refugee camps and humanitarian facilities; the targeting of journalists, medical personnel, and intellectuals; a siege that has almost entirely eliminated civilian access to clean water, food and other necessities of life; and forced evacuations that have relocated most of the 2.2 million Palestinians to confined areas near the Rafah border with Egypt.

Even the Egyptian army could hardly restrain a border breach by more than a million desperate Gazans seeking food and safety.  The most likely outcome would seem to be the forced relocation of the expelled Palestinians to a desert camp in the Sinai.  Then the crafty Netanyahu can claim credit for reenacting the 1948 Nakba. 

For his part, U.S. President Joe Biden has fully bought into both illusions, without any apparent recognition of the realities in either Ukraine or Gaza.  In Ukraine, he continues to advocate for more weapons to help Ukraine pursue its illusion of victory over Russia.  In the Gaza war, Biden seems to accept at face value Israel’s publicly stated illusion of eliminating Hamas.  Accordingly, he continues his cheek-by-jowl support of Netanyahu.  He continues to supply offensive arms that kill women and children; and he continues to defend Israel in the United Nations.

America’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine costs Zelensky the lives of his soldiers. America’s enabling of Netanyahu not only costs civilian lives in Gaza, but also risks regional conflict. More importantly for the longer term, it undermines the international rule of law established with U.S. leadership after the Second World War and it establishes a dangerous precedent for lawless behavior.

When the illusions of the three leaders are exposed, reality will overtake fantasy.

Global Debt Is Beyond Control

Mel Gurtov

The Washington Consensus

The debt of developing countries is at “crisis” levels, the World Bank has just said. Supporting that view is a New York Times story December 16 headlined “The Debt Problem is Enormous, and the System for Fixing It is Broken.”

The article goes on to explain: “The foundational ideology — later known as the ‘Washington Consensus’ — held that prosperity depended on unhindered trade, deregulation and the primacy of private investment. Nearly 80 years later, the global financial architecture is outdated, dysfunctional and unjust.”

Indeed, the world is awash in government debt, led by the US, Japan, and China, which together account for about half the total. But great powers have many options for handling indebtedness. Small, economically weak countries do not.

What the Times account hints at, but never directly confronts, is the concentrated power of the Washington Consensus. It reflects American and European economic predominance—not just a consensus of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) leaderships, in which the US has always had sole veto power, but also the US Treasury Dept. and the global network of financial centers that stretches from New York and Chicago to Frankfurt and Zurich.

Predominance means the ability to dictate terms of loans. Over many years, World Bank and IMF decisions have aimed to condition loans to poor and middle-income countries on their openness to private investment, free trade, and deregulation of state-run agencies—roads, railways, banks, key industries.

Openness translates to opportunities for Western capital to penetrate developing-world economies, often resulting in the hollowing out if not elimination of local private and state-owned business.

Large borrowers must also deal with high interest rates. To ensure repayment, the World Bank and IMF preach austerity: Governments should slash social welfare programs to pay down the debt. Any family deeply in debt would understand the terrible choice facing governments here: Stay on good terms with the bankers by eliminating or reducing subsidies to the poor on food, health care, and fuel.

Consequently, António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations, says in the Times article: “Even the most fundamental goals on hunger and poverty have gone into reverse after decades of progress.”

A Human Development Crisis

The global debt crisis is really not a new problem, just one that is surging again. As the Times explains: “Pounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, spiking food and energy prices related to the war in Ukraine, and higher interest rates, low- and middle-income countries are swimming in debt and facing slow growth.”

But the Times leaves out the China factor—the billions of dollars in loans to poor countries that cannot possibly be repaid. Sub-Saharan Africa, with about $140 billion in loans, stands out here: Of the top 15 countries that have received China’s loans, only one (Bolivia) is outside that region.

China proclaims that its loans, mainly under the Belt and Road Initiative, come without demands for austerity and with lower interest rates. The BRI has been well received in a number of countries.

But there is no free lunch here and—to mix metaphors—strings are attached, hence the “debt trap.” Recipients of Chinese loans may have to pay back with access to ports and rail lines, extraction of mineral and other resources, use of Chinese labor, damage to the environment, and adherence to Chinese policy views on (for example) human rights and Taiwan.

The debt crisis is one symptom of a development crisis, in which far too many countries do not have the financial resources to support decent conditions of living, from health and food security to environmental protection. Moreover, these countries often are the victims of rich countries’ behavior, as in the case of climate change.

As one source points out, the richest one percent of the world’s population, representing 80 million people, account for about half of global carbon emissions, while the poorest 50 percent, with 3.9 billion people, account for about eight percent of carbon emissions.

Top Down or Bottom Up Models?

For as long as I can remember, the typical solution to the debt problem has been to give developing countries seats at the table where decisions are made, and to convert loans into grants. A seat at the table might help if the major players, starting with the US, were ever persuaded to reduce their voting power.

Even then, it is the loan conditions—the amount of money available, the high interest rates, requirements of local regulations, and terms of repayment—that would still depend on the good graces of the major financial institutions. And those institutions, to put it mildly, don’t believe in being charitable.

As for providing grants rather than loans, well, that day is long gone and would be very difficult in today’s competitive environment to recover. Foreign aid from nearly all countries, particularly in the form of direct grants, has been on the downslide for many years.

The Times report is weakest in failing to report on bottom-up approaches to development in the human interest. Giving aid or loan relief means dealing exclusively with governments that may be corrupt, excessively bureaucratic and incompetent, dominated by the military, and authoritarian—in any of these cases, giving low priority to human security.

Channeling funds to NGOs with successful experiences promoting human development is far more likely to help than providing unworthy governments with debt relief. There are plenty of grassroots development programs that work—for example, in microfinance.

Kiva is one: It provides small loans at very low interest to villagers, usually women, who are eager to start small businesses. The real choice for international financial organizations comes down to this: Do you want to bail out governments or empower people?

Britain steps up military action in Middle East, threatens Iran, Russia and China

Robert Stevens

Britain is stepping up its military provocations as part of the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, the naval operation in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen. The main aim is to ratchet up tensions with Iran, as a precursor to direct military action against Tehran.

Backing Israel’s genocidal onslaught against Gaza, the Biden administration authorised a significant increase in the naval and air power it deploys in the region.

HMS Diamond in waters off Bournemouth, England in 2018

Operation Prosperity Guardian was mounted under the guise of protecting the flow of trade through the Red Sea, following a series of attacks on merchant ships by the Houthis in Yemen. It was launched by the US alongside a group of imperialist powers including Britain, France, Spain, Italy and Canada, plus the Netherlands, Norway, Bahrain and the Seychelles.

The Guardian noted that such are the sensitivities involved with military deployments in one of the world’s critical trade “choke points” that “nine others [countries] do not want to be named for now.” It added, “There are some notable absentees: India (although they might send ships), Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for example.”

Britain’s main military asset in the operation is HMS Diamond, described by the Royal Navy as “A jewel in the naval crown”. It is “the third of the highly capable Type 45 air defence destroyers and one of the most advanced warships in the world.” The ship is loaded with the Sea Viper missile system capable of launching eight missiles in under 10 seconds, and up to 16 missiles simultaneously. Also onboard is a Wildcat helicopter with Martlet air-to-surface missiles.

HMS Diamond was already in the Middle East region before Operation Prosperity Guardian was announced by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on December 19.

It was sent to the Persian Gulf earlier in the month as part of an operation to bolster the UK’s main warship in the region, the Type 23 Frigate HMS Lancaster, which has been in the Gulf since November 2022. Also backing Lancaster, “to ensure the safe and free flow of trade by sea”, were “minehunters HMS Chiddingfold, Middleton and Bangor, their command/support ship RFA Cardigan Bay and the RN’s headquarters east of Suez, UKMCC in Bahrain,” announced the Royal Navy.

At the same time a joint statement by the Ministry of Defence, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and Home Office, headed “UK military activity in the Eastern Mediterranean”, announced, “In support of the ongoing hostage rescue activity, the Ministry of Defence will conduct surveillance flights over the eastern Mediterranean, including operating in air space over Israel and Gaza.”

Having transited the Suez Canal on December 14, the evening of the next day HMS Diamond downed with a Sea Viper missile an attack drone launched from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen. The Royal Navy said the drone had been targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Britain has maintained a permanent maritime presence in the Persian Gulf since 1980. The Royal Navy boasted, “Diamond’s actions in the small hours of Saturday morning is the first time a Type 45’s Sea Viper missile has been used in action and the first such shootdown by the Royal Navy since the 1990-91 Gulf War.”

While the Royal Navy statement announcing Diamond’s deployment to the Gulf put it in the context of protecting sea lanes and combatting Houthi attacks, Minister of Defence Grant Shapps made clear that the real target was Tehran. Diamond’s deployment, he said, would “send a very clear message to Iran in particular and their proxies not to get involved” in opposing Israel’s decimation of Gaza.

“With the activity in the Red Sea [and] the Houthis from Yemen, not just firing missiles, but also now intervening with vessels, we think it’s the right time to step up that force presence… to really assure our many partners there.”

Shapps added, “They [our partners] have been asking for it. They want us to be there. They want us to provide that level of reassurance.”

In the last days, military action under Operation Prosperity Guardian has escalated. On December 31, US helicopters associated with the Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group fired on and sank three boats used by Houthi militants in the Red Sea. Their crews were reportedly killed in the attack. A fourth boat fled the scene.

US Central Command said they acted in “self-defence” to protect a commercial ship, the Maersk Hangzhou, which is registered to Singapore and operated and owned by a Danish firm.

The previous day, the USS Gravely shot down two ballistic missiles it said had been launched at the Hangzhou from Houthi-controlled areas.

Following these actions, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said he had informed Iran’s foreign minister that Tehran “shares responsibility for preventing these attacks given their long-standing support to the Houthis”.

Britain’s media were immediately onboard as Downing Street stepped up its offensive, with articles by the BBC state broadcaster and the Times upping the ante, alongside a Telegraph op-ed by Shapps warning Iran that military action was being prepared.

In the article “UK preparing for attacks on Houthi rebels with US”, the Times reported, “Britain’s military is preparing to launch a wave of air strikes against the Iranian-backed Houthis creating chaos in the Red Sea, raising the prospect of a significant spiraling of tensions in the region.” The newspaper cited Shapps who said, “If the Houthis continue to ­threaten lives and trade, we will be forced to take the necessary and ­appropriate action.”

The Times revealed, “Under the plans the UK would join with the US and possibly another European country to unleash a salvo of missiles against pre-planned targets, either in the sea or in Yemen itself, where the militants are based.” The “co-ordinated strikes could involve RAF warplanes or HMS Diamond.”

UK Typhoon war planes stationed at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, and “currently carrying out missions over Iraq and Syria”, could be used in the attacks.

The widening war aims of British imperialism are made clear, with the Times noting that the mission over Iraq and Syria has already “expanded to spy on Iranian-backed militia believed to be smuggling weapons into Lebanon.”

The annihilation of Gaza and the expanding military operations of the imperialist powers in the Middle East is only one front in a developing global conflict. NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine, in which Britain is involved up to its neck as provocateur-in-chief, has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

In his Telegraph comment, after first drawing attention to the “first time that our Navy had shot down an aerial target in anger in more than 30 years,” Shapps declared, “There is a wider issue at risk here as well. This is a test for the international community—not least in terms of contested waterways elsewhere in the world.”

In a warning made against Russian and China, he added, “If we do not protect the Red Sea, it risks emboldening those looking to threaten elsewhere including in the South China Sea and Crimea.” Shapps concluded, “As HMS Diamond illustrated earlier in the month, we are willing to take direct action.”

Netanyahu suffers defeat on curbing judiciary, but Supreme Court and opposition parties back Gaza genocide and planned war on Iran

Chris Marsden

Israel’s Supreme Court has narrowly overturned the “reasonableness” amendment passed last July 14 by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government.

This was nominally a political victory for last summer’s mass protest movement against Netanyahu’s efforts to remove minimal checks on his government by ending the Supreme Court’s power to strike down decisions of elected officials by citing their “unreasonableness”—though the retirement of two “liberal” members of the court, Esther Hayut and Anat Baron, means the conservatives are set to have a 7-6 majority.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a press conference with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, October 28, 2023. [AP Photo/Abir Sultan]

The amendment, one of a package of planned curbs of the judiciary, met unprecedented opposition because it would enable Netanyahu and his fascist and ultra-religious coalition partners, Jewish Power and Religious Zionism, to assume virtually dictatorial powers to mount an assault on social and democratic rights in Israel and press ahead with plans to annex large swathes of the West Bank through the expansion of illegal settlements, while denying the Palestinians citizenship rights.

The amendment, if successful, would also have paved the way for legislation enabling Netanyahu to evade conviction on charges of corruption. One of the issues that brought Likud into conflict with the Supreme Court was its January 2023 ruling that it was “unreasonable in the extreme” for Aryeh Deri, chair of the Shas party, to be appointed as a cabinet minister due to his past criminal convictions.

Israel has no constitution and its pretensions to be “a Jewish and democratic state” rest on just 12 Basic Laws passed since 1958, portrayed as the basis for a “future constitution” of the State of Israel.

The majority of one in the 8-7 ruling against the Netanyahu-backed law pitted previous Basic Laws against Netanyahu’s amendment, also a Basic Law passed as an amendment, which was judged to be incompatible with its predecessors.

Moreover, in a separate vote of far greater significance, 12 of 15 Supreme Court judges ruled for the first time that the court had the authority to exercise judicial review of Israel’s Basic Laws, in exceptional and extreme cases where the Knesset had exceeded its legislative powers and authority, and to prevent “unprecedented and severe harm to the democratic values of the state.”

During the mass protests, preserving the authority of the Supreme Court was proclaimed by their Zionist leaders as the central aim of an oppositional wave that included more than 10,000 army reservists refusing to serve in the Isarel Defense Forces. But there was never any real concern for democratic rights represented by the Supreme Court and its political advocates, who prevented the development of a genuine oppositional movement through their insistence on loyalty to the Zionist state.

As the World Socialist Web Site explained, the sole concern of Netanyahu’s opponents—former ministers, generals and security and intelligence chiefs—was that he was destabilising Israel and risked discrediting it politically, “under conditions where Israel is a social and political powder keg and the entire Middle East has been destabilised by the deepening global economic crisis, the pandemic, climate change and US-led plans to escalate the war against Russia in Ukraine and its regional allies, Iran and Syria, with Tel Aviv as its chief attack dog.”

The democratic bona-fides of the Supreme Court never withstood scrutiny. As was noted by Amnesty, “Israel’s judiciary has regularly upheld laws, policies and practices which help to maintain and enforce Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians—the Supreme Court has signed off on many of the violations that underpin the apartheid system.”

This has included signing off on the demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes and even entire villages, and upholding administrative detention orders imprisoning Palestinians without trial or charge. Above all, the Supreme Court upheld the 2018 “nation state law”, defining Israel as the exclusive “nation state of the Jewish people” and endorsing settlement expansion as a “national value.”

In addition, in a January 1 op-ed complaining, “If only the ‘reasonableness law,’ nixed by Israel’s top court, had never been initiated”, Times of Israel editor David Horovitz writes of how “The fiercely independent and world-renowned top court, it should be noted, has been vital to Israel’s capacity to push away efforts by international courts and tribunals over the years to prosecute the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], its commanders, soldiers and political overseers for war crimes and other alleged offenses.” He fears that without a credible judiciary that is ostensibly capable of examining human rights abuses and war crimes, Israel will be open to investigation and prosecution by the international courts.

If further proof of the reactionary character of Israel’s Supreme Court were needed, then its response to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza provides it.

Time and again it has cited the “compelling reason” of the October 7 incursion by the Palestinians and Israel’s one-sided war as providing “compelling” national security considerations justifying the abrogation of democratic rights that have included not providing information on Palestinian detainees to civil rights groups, and allowing the government to ban pro-Palestinian speech and the police to ban demonstrations calling for a ceasefire.

At the same time, Israel’s senior law enforcement officials and the courts have taken no action against the plethora of genocidal statements loudly proclaimed by senior Israeli officials.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza refutes forever all claims that democratic rights can be defended in Israel other than through a movement centred on opposition to the systematic and bloody dispossession and repression of the Palestinians, and rejecting any support for the Zionist state and all its political representatives.

Almost every commentary on the Supreme Court verdict, when speculating on its impact on Netanyahu’s future, acknowledges that it is likely that the preservation of wartime “unity” will for now keep him in power.

More grotesque even than the Supreme Court’s role is the rush by Netanyahu’s putative opponents to back the mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and advanced plans for a wider military conflict led by the US and targeting Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet on October 12, less than a week after hostilities began. The former defence minister, in calling for the Supreme Court ruling to be respected, declared on X, “We are brothers, we all have a common destiny. These are not days for political arguments, there are no winners and losers today. Today we have only one common goal—to win the war, together.”

The other main opposition leader and former prime minister, Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid Party, warned that if the government did not abandon its struggle against the Supreme Court, then “They have not learned anything from October 7th. They have learned nothing from 87 days of war to defend the homeland.”

It should be added that the other declared “hero” of the protest movement was none other than Netanyahu’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, who opposed the amendment and was temporarily fired, but who now once again leads the IDF.

Given the unswerving loyalty of Gantz, Lapid and their ilk, the major concern expressed over the impact of the Supreme Court verdict is that Netanyahu does not jeopardise this by trying to appease his Minister of Justice Yariv Levin and the fascist Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir of Jewish Power who has stridently denounced the Supreme Court for weakening “the morale of the fighters in Gaza” and undermining “the war effort.”

Recognising his weakened position, Netanyahu has not yet commented on the verdict while his Likud party has complained that the Supreme Court has gone against a national desire “for unity” by bringing “a ruling at the heart of the social dispute in Israel precisely when IDF soldiers on the right and the left are fighting and risking their lives in the campaign.”

Horowitz declares in the Times of Israel, “For now, the war comes first.” And as far as the Zionist bourgeoisie is concerned, war always comes first. Any professed commitment to democracy, even for Jews, is a sham.

Netanyahu’s position is increasingly precarious, so that even a war he has actively sought may not save him in the end. Already deeply unpopular, he faces a mounting crisis over revelations that the security services and the military under his command knew about the planned October 7 incursion and allowed it to take place to serve as a pretext for a long-planned assault on Gaza.

On January 1, a group of survivors injured at Israel’s Supernova music festival initiated legal action seeking $56 million in damages from the Shin Bet security service, the Israel Defense Forces, Israel Police and the Defence Ministry for failing to make even a “single phone call” calling for “the party to disperse” immediately, that “would have saved lives and prevented the physical and mental injuries of hundreds of partygoers, including the plaintiffs.”

However, should Netanyahu fall on this basis alone he or his entire government would only be replaced by political forces equally committed to the war against the Palestinians, most likely led by Gantz, who commanded the IDF in the 2014 Gaza War. Launching his 2019 election campaign, Gantz bragged about “sending parts of Gaza back to the Stone Age”—a policy he is now implementing in toto as a member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet.

Despite the cover-up, current coronavirus wave reaches new heights in Germany

Tamino Dreisam

In a  Perspective article published at the end of the year, the World Socialist Web Site described 2023 as the “year of the total COVID cover-up.” We wrote: “the contrast between the objective reality of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the delusional fantasy promoted by capitalist politicians and the corporate media has never been greater.” This assessment applies in full to Germany.

[AP Photo/Elaine Thompson]

The year 2022 ended with a massive campaign by establishment politicians and the media declaring that the pandemic was over and all protective measures had to be lifted. In 2023, this was aggressively put into practice: even the obligation to wear masks in local and long-distance transit, as well as in health and care facilities, was lifted nationwide and the Coronavirus Occupational Health and Safety Ordinance abolished.

At the same time, monitoring of the virus was discontinued. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) published its last COVID-19 weekly report in June and since then has only reported COVID-19 developments in one or two paragraphs of its eleven-page weekly report on acute respiratory illnesses. The RKI also discontinued the pandemic radar on July 1. Only a few reports about the virus can still be found in the bourgeois media and even these do not describe the real situation in any way.

However, contrary to the official propaganda about its supposed end, the pandemic continued to rage in 2023 and cost many lives. By the end of the year, almost 180,000 people in Germany had officially fallen victim to the virus, almost 18,500 of them last year. It can be assumed that the actual figure is significantly higher: The last estimates of excess mortality in Germany from April 2023 already came to 180,000 deaths at that time (ifo Institute) or even 195,000 for 2020 and 2021 alone (WHO). The effects of the pandemic are also particularly evident in the fact that life expectancy in Germany has fallen by almost six months since the start of the pandemic.

In addition to the thousands who died from the virus last year, there are hundreds of thousands who have developed long-term consequences as a result of infection. Although the exact extent of how many people are affected by Long COVID is barely known, more and more is coming to light about the severity of the long-term effects of the virus and the impact on the daily lives of hundreds of thousands.

In a recent article in taz newspaper entitled “Coronavirus—Long-term consequences: The statistics are breath-taking,” the head of the Long Covid Outpatient Clinic in Koblenz, Astrid-Weber, reports on the everyday lives of many of those affected: “Many voluntarily reduce their [working] hours and go part-time. Others just drag themselves to work. They can just about manage, but their hobbies, leisure time and family are reduced to zero. There are a lot of people who cut everything but their job—and they don’t appear in any statistics.”

Jena psychiatry professor Martin Welter also supports these observations. He told taz: “The post-infectious disease situation is not over, and at the moment we are helping to increase the problem for the future.” The article also refers to Epiloc, a study from Baden-Württemberg with almost 12,000 participants, which concluded that a quarter of COVID-19 sufferers were still experiencing symptoms six to twelve months later.

Another study by the University of Greifswald, which has not yet been published, observed the progress of 200 patients who attended the university’s Long COVID consultation for an average of eight months after a coronavirus infection. At their first visit, 47 percent of these patients were unable to work. Six months later, this proportion was still 33 percent.

The lie about the end of the pandemic is most clearly refuted by the fact that the highest incidences ever were reached towards the end of the year. The RKI officially reported 29,051 cases last week. That is 10,000 more than in the previous week. However, the RKI itself states that it estimates the actual 7-day incidence rate at 3,000 per 100,000 inhabitants, based on information from FluWeb. This corresponds to just under 2.5 million new cases per week. For the previous week, the RKI had estimated the incidence rate at 2,600.

Other indicators also confirm the sharp rise. The RKI’s Wastewater Monitoring for Epidemiological Situation Assessment (AMELAG) currently indicates a value of 727,275 detected gene copies of SARS-CoV-2 per litre of wastewater. This also represents a new record value for wastewater data, which has been evaluated since June 2022. Just the previous week, the value was 687,386 gene copies per litre of wastewater.

SentiSurv, a project of the Mainz University Medical Centre, which collects data from 14,000 people from Rhineland-Palatinate who regularly test themselves and make the results available, also reported an incidence rate of between 3,000 and 4,000 for the last few weeks.

In recent days, the BA.2.86 “Pirola” sub-variant has become the dominant strain in Germany and currently accounts for around 55 percent of infections. Pirola is characterized by its approximately 30 mutations in the spike protein, which make it more difficult for the variant to be recognized by the body’s immune system in vaccinated and recovered people.

At the same time, the proportion of the Pirola offshoot JN.1 has increased to 35 percent. JN.1 has an even better immune escape and is classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a “variant of interest,” the precursor to a “variant of concern.” JN.1 is currently causing an increase in the number of cases worldwide.

It is particularly worrying that there has also been a high number of severe cases recently. Over the last six weeks, there have been consistently more than 7,000 hospitalizations per week; in calendar week 49, the number was as high as 8,710 and in calendar week 50, it was 7,998. In view of the fact that follow-up reports are still outstanding, the hospitalization incidence rate is therefore between ten and twelve.

In comparison, at the peak of the first wave in 2020, the hospitalization incidence rate was 7.5, at the peak of the second it was 15 and at the peak of the third wave it was 9.8. Contrary to claims that the virus has become harmless, the hospitalizations are thus around the level of previous coronavirus waves.

Infectiologists such as Julian Schulze von Wiesch from the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) suspect that even the hospitalization incidence rate is only of limited significance. “There will be a high number of unreported cases,” he explains, as many patients are not even tested for COVID-19 in hospital.

Hospitalization rates are particularly high in Berlin. The rate there is currently at 19, an increase of 20 percent compared to the previous week. The Charité hospital also announced that the number of coronavirus patients requiring intensive medical care was increasing. Nationwide, this figure currently stands at 1,254 (previous week: 1,214).

The number of deaths is also rising again. Over 300 people have died every week since November. Last week there were 361, in the previous week 347.

Charité expert Leif Sanders warned on broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) that the time of severe cases was not over. A coronavirus infection could still make you “quite ill,” he said. This included “the kind of manifestations we saw a few years ago,” which could be due to the fact that many people were vaccinated a long time ago.

Numerous hospitals across Germany are responding to these drastic developments by independently introducing masking requirements and visitor restrictions. The government had lifted the statutory masking requirements in care and health facilities at the beginning of the year.

Thai ruling establishment promotes amnesty bills for political offences

Robert Campion

Opposing political parties in Thailand have proposed drafts for a supposedly wide-reaching amnesty bill to pardon those either charged or imprisoned for political reasons. Such a bill would both whitewash the crimes carried out by the Thai military and ruling class over the last 20 years and be aimed at preventing a genuine struggle for democratic rights by workers and youth.

Former Thai general and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha surrounded by at media at the Thailand-Japan Youth Center stadium in Bangkok, April 3, 2023. [AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

The proposed drafts for an amnesty bill would retroactively pardon or grant amnesty for political crimes beginning from February 2006. This encompasses events such as the military coup that year against then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the 2010 protests during which 91 people were killed, the 2014 coup against Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra, and the mass demonstrations in 2020‒2021 against the military government of coup leader General Prayut Chan-o-cha.

The main opposition Move Forward Party (MFP) first submitted a draft amnesty bill in October and includes those accused under Thailand’s infamous lèse-majesté law. Also known as Section 112 of the Criminal Code, the law forbids criticism of the royal family. It is regularly used to trample on the rights to free speech and to protest under the claim that demonstrators are “insulting” the monarchy.

Exempt from the MFP’s amnesty bill would be state officials who carried out repression against protesters and those charged under the Criminal Code’s Section 113, which deals with insurrection and overthrowing the government.

While the MFP is posturing as a defender of protesters and democracy, Section 113 has been used against protesters calling for the reform of the monarchy and the ousting of military figures from government. The MFP is in reality stating that the current government cannot be changed and giving its approval to the present Thai state, dominated by the military and a conservative bureaucracy.

In response, the pro-military United Thai Nation Party (UTN) is preparing to submit its own draft bill. UTN is affiliated with 2014 coup leader Prayut, who is now a privy councillor to King Maha Vajiralongkorn. The bill will supposedly absolve people in cases of political expression against the state or its representatives. “It’s time to call a permanent truce,” said UTN deputy leader Witthaya Kaewparadai on December 17. The bill does not cover those accused under the lèse-majesté law.

Representatives from the Democrat Party, the Chart Thai Pattana Party, and the Thai Teachers Party have publicly ruled out supporting any bill including Section 112. The government of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin and his ruling Pheu Thai Party (PT) have not submitted their own bill. Instead, PT is calling for a special house committee with representatives from each party to discuss the matter behind closed doors.

“We don’t want to see a new amnesty bill provoke a new wave of social division when it is submitted to the House for deliberation,” said PT parliament member Chusak Sirinial, warning: “That kind of division would likely end in a major new political conflict, which is why we need to be extra careful.”

Hundreds of protesters face time behind bars including for cases related to lèse-majesté. Thai Lawyers for Human Rights has reported that of 100 cases between 30 November 2021 and 30 October 2023, 79 defendants were found guilty for supposedly insulting the monarchy and 21 were acquitted. The longest prison sentence imposed during this period was 28 years.

Political offences by bourgeois politicians on the other hand are being quietly dismissed and settled. Thaksin Shinawatra, who founded Pheu Thai’s predecessor Thai Rak Thai, returned from self-imposed exile in August facing corruption charges as part of a deal hatched between the monarchy and the current Pheu Thai leadership.

Upon his return, Thaksin’s sentence was reduced by the king from eight years to one and it may be reduced even further come February. Citing poor health, the 74-year-old Thaksin has avoided a single day in prison and is comfortably serving his time in the Police General Hospital in Bangkok. His sister Yingluck, who is living a privileged existence in exile, had a corruption charge dismissed by the Supreme Court on December 26. She now only faces one arrest warrant on corruption charges from the National Anti-Corruption Commission.

Among the other main beneficiaries of the bill include the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), commonly known as the Red Shirts and which has been allied with Pheu Thai and its previous political incarnations since 2006.

In 2013, then-Prime Minister Yingluck pushed for an amnesty bill in order to clear the record of the UDD and that of her brother, Thaksin. The bill was aborted as a result of the 2014 coup, which kept Prayut in power until Pheu Thai formed a government last year.

These bills have nothing to do with defending the democratic rights of protesters or working people more generally. Instead, the entire political establishment is conscious that it is sitting on a social powder keg. Household debt has reached record levels, totaling 90.7 percent of GDP according to the Bank of Thailand. Nearly one-third of workers and the poor are forced to spend as much as 50 percent of their monthly income on paying off debt.

At the same time, the economy remains sluggish. The World Bank has projected Thailand’s growth to be the lowest among the ASEAN countries for the next 20 years at 3.2 percent. The economy grew by only 1.5 percent for the July-September quarter this year, lower than the widely predicted estimate of 2.4 percent.

In order to improve growth, the central bank has recommended reining in public spending particularly in healthcare and education to improve growth. No doubt this is currently being considered by all the parliamentary parties as they deliberate over the next budget for 2024.

The amnesty bills are meant to give the impression that Thailand has entered into a peaceful political period while behind the scenes uniting the different parties to push through attacks on workers’ social and economic conditions.

In a December 25 interview with Thailand’s Matichon newspaper, former UDD leader Worachai Hema stated that it was necessary to “reduce conflict” through an amnesty. Appealing against demonstrations and for all discussions to be conducted “on the platform of parliament,” he warned that if this did not take place “then every group of people will come out and take action. This causes the country to have problems and a bad economy.”

Alongside the amnesty bills, the Srettha government is also calling for a referendum to initiate discussions on a new constitution. According to Thai law written by Prayut’s military government, discussions on a new constitution cannot even begin without a referendum. This is an anti-democratic measure that allows the military to squash any talks of a new constitution that it does not approve of.