2020 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: the Pink Tide May Rise Again

Roger Harris

The balance between the US drive to dominate Latin America and the Caribbean and its counterpart, the Bolivarian cause of regional independence and integration, tipped portside by year end 2020 with major popular victories, including reversal of the coup in Bolivia and the constitutional referendum in Chile. Central has been the persistence of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution against the asphyxiating US blockade, along with the defiance by Cuba and Nicaragua of US regime-change measures.

The grand struggle played out against the backdrop of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, impacting countries differently depending on their political economies.  As of this writing, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba had COVID death rates per million population of 35, 25, and 12, respectively. In comparison, the death rates in right-leaning neoliberal states of Peru, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Honduras, and Guatemala were respectively 1123, 888, 849, 805, 843, 306, and 263. The manifestly lower rates on the left reflected, in large part, better developed public health systems and social welfare practices.

Andean Nations

Venezuela’s continued resistance to the US “maximum pressure” hybrid warfare campaign is a triumph in itself. Hybrid warfare – a diplomatic, propaganda, and financial offensive along with a crippling illegal blockade and attack on the Venezuelan currency – kills as effectively as open warfare.  “It bleeds the country slowly and is much more devastating than direct bombardment,” observes Vijay Prashad of the Tricontinental Institute.

Venezuela featured prominently in the campaign speeches of Trump and Biden, with both promoting regime change, as they vied for the votes of the right-leaning Venezuelan émigré community in Florida, the second largest Latinx group in that critical swing state. US-anointed fake President of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, received a standing ovation at Trump’s State of the Union address in February – about the only thing the Democrats and Republicans agreed on – but received a far less friendly reception back home.

In March, the US falsely charged Venezuela of narco-terrorism, placing multi-million-dollar bounties on the heads of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and other officials. A naval armada was sent off the coast of Venezuela under the pretext of interdicting drugs. US government data, however, show the source of the drugs and the countries through which the illicit substances transit to the US are precisely the US client regimes in the region such as Colombia and Honduras.

In May, mercenaries launched an attack from Colombia but were captured, including two US ex-Green Berets. Initially, some Iranian oil tankers evaded the US blockade to bring critically needed fuel to Venezuela, where refining capacity has been impacted by the US sanctions. But later the US seized tankers in international waters, like pirates of yore, having a devastating impact on transport, agriculture, water treatment, and electricity generation in Venezuela.

In another victory in June, federal charges were dropped against the final four embassy protectors, who had defended the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington last year from being usurped by the illegal Guaidó forces. Kevin Zeese, one of the four and a revered progressive movement leader in the US, tragically and unexpectedly died in his sleep in September.

In October, Venezuela adopted controversial anti-blockade measures aimed at facilitating private investment and circumventing the US blockade. The unrelenting US regime-change campaign has had a corrosive effect on Venezuela’s attempt to build socialism. With the economy de facto dollarized, among those hardest hit are government workers, the informal sector, and those without access to dollar remittances from abroad who continue to be paid in the bolivar, now ever more grossly inflated.

Prior to calling the US presidential elections a fraud, Trump made the same accusation regarding the elections for the Venezuelan National Assembly and for the same reason; his preferred candidates would not win. The opposition to the leftist government in Venezuela was divided between an extremist Guaidó faction, which heeded the US directive to boycott the election, and a more moderate grouping opposed to the US blockade, open to dialogue with the Maduro administration, and in favor of US recognition of  the Maduro government. Although turnout was low for the December 6 election, the ruling Socialist Party enjoyed a landslide victory giving them a mandate.

Guaidó, who has become an embarrassment, may be dropped by the new US administration. Biden, however, is expected to “keep using [the] US sanctions weapon but with sharper aim,” as reported by Reuters.

Colombia is the chief regional US client state, distinguished by being the largest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere and the largest world source of illicit cocaine. With at last seven US military bases, Colombia is a principal staging point for paramilitary attacks on Venezuela. President Iván Duque continues to disregard the 2016 peace agreement with the guerrilla FARC as Colombia endures a pandemic of rightwing violence. In October, the largely indigenous Minga mobilization converged on the capital of Bogotá to protest rampant killings. A national strike followed, called by a broad coalition led by the teachers’ union FECODE. Colombia is the most dangerous country to be a social activist with a leader murdered every other day. The approaching 2022 presidential election could portend a sea change for the popular movement.

Ecuador achieved international notoriety with the streets of Guayaquil littered with dead bodies attributed to mismanagement of the pandemic by President Lenín Moreno. A vice president under leftist Rafael Correa, Moreno turned sharp right after his presidential election in 2017, reversing the anti-imperialist stance of his predecessor. Moreno is prosecuting his former allies and privatizing the state-owned electric and oil companies, while poverty has worsened. Moreno’s popularity rating plummeted to an abysmal 8%, and his administration has been wracked with corruption scandals and popular, anti-neoliberal revolt. Polls for the presidential election, scheduled for this coming February 7, give progressive Andrés Arauz a lead as the Pink Tide may again rise in Ecuador.

Peru. The crises in Peru last year, which saw a succession of corrupt presidents replacing former ones with some sent to prison, were repeated this year. President Martín Vízcarra was dismissed in December, followed by the Manuel Merino presidency of less than a week, followed by the appointment of President Francisco Sagasti. COVID raged in a country, where investment in public health is half that recommended by the World Health Organization, while the youth took to the streets in protest, some demanding a new constitution. A left current is building in Peru as seen with the promising candidacy of Verónika Mendoza in the upcoming April 2021 presidential contest.

Bolivia. Evo Morales returned to Bolivia less than a year after a US-backed coup forced him to escape. Morales had won his reelection bid in October 2019, but the Organization of American States (OAS) conspired with the US and the domestic ultra-right to allege that his victory was fraudulent. Although his reelection was proven fair, the intervention of the OAS gave a patina of legitimacy to the ensuing putsch. Rightwing Senator Jeanine Añez was installed as “interim-president” after Morales was forced to resign by the military and police hierarchy. She presided over two massacres and a campaign of repression against the majority indigenous population and activists of Morales’s party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). A heroic resistance based on strong grassroots organizing by social movements, unions, and the MAS, forced Añez to call a new presidential election, after she had postponed it three times.

On October 18, MAS presidential candidate Luis Arce won with a landslide 55%. The new government has returned to ALBA, CELAC, and UNASUR – regional bodies founded by Hugo Chávez – but is saddled with a $300M loan from the IMF, made by Añez though not authorized by the Senate. The year closed with the Constitution Court propitiously overruling a domestic law that banned same-sex union as inconsistent with international law, permitting the first legal same-sex marriage in Bolivia.

The Southern Cone

Brazil. Jair Bolsonaro’s second year in office was like the first: dismantling social welfare measures and rewarding multinational corporations, while the Amazon burned and the popular sectors protested. His unscientific belief in coronavirus herd immunity contributed to excessive deaths in Brazil, especially impacting indigenous peoples.

Chile has been in turmoil for most of the year with protests against their corrupt President Sebastian Piñera, incidentally the richest person in the country. Finally, on October 23, the rightwing politicians were forced to allow a plebiscite, which passed with a resounding 78% to replace the constitution imposed on the country by the dictator Pinochet. The vote was preceded by a week of massive demonstrations commemorating the first anniversary of the popular struggle against the neoliberal order. Elections for Constituent Assembly members are scheduled for April and presidential elections are scheduled for November, with Communist Eduardo Artés now leading in the polls.

Argentina. The new President Alberto Fernández and VP Cristina Fernández are slowly recovering Argentina after four years of rightwing governance. On October 17, crowds celebrated Peronist loyalty day in support of the center-left government.  Emilio Pérsico said their movement is revolutionary because “it gave power to those who had no power and incorporated the workers into politics.”

Caribbean

Cuba’s Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for its medical missions combatting the pandemic across the world. Cuba is also producing COVID-19 vaccines and is in the process of distributing them to needy countries, all the while suffering under an intensified US blockade. While decrying foreign interference in US internal affairs, the Trump administration has funded some 54 regime-change groups in Cuba through the USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy. The economy has been severely impacted by the pandemic and tightening of US sanctions, forcing Cuba to take pragmatic economic adjustments.

Puerto Rico, a spoil that the US empire gained in the first war of imperialism, the Spanish-American War of 1898, is today one of the few outright remaining colonies in the world. Emblematic of the neglect of Puerto Rico was the physical collapse on December 1 of the Arecibo Observatory’s giant radio telescope, once the largest in the world and source of pride. Nearly 60% of the island’s children live in poverty.

Haiti has been in nearly continuous popular revolt against US-backed President Jovenal Moïse, who has ruled by decree after cancelling elections. Government repression has been violent and intense, which is ignored in the western press.

Central America and Mexico

Central America was battered by not only the pandemic but two devastating hurricanes that hit just ten days apart in October. As conditions further deteriorate, migrants, especially from the US client states of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, continue to flee to the US. Migrants and asylum seekers, who were then deported back from the US, have been killed, raped, or tortured when they were forced to return, according to human rights groups.

El Salvador. In a flagrant overreach of executive prerogative, President Nayib Bukele sent the military on February 9 into the Legislative Assembly to influence a vote on his proposed security program. Bukele, formerly associated with the left FMLN party, has now turned right, militarizing the border between El Salvador and Honduras to enforce the “safe third country agreements” and joining the pro-US interventionist Lima Group.

Guatemala. Angry citizens burned down Guatemala’s congress building on November 21, after a record high budget passed giving the legislators substantial raises and rewarding multinational corporations but cutting social welfare. A national strike followed demanding the resignation of rightist President Alejandro Giammattei, a former director of the Guatemalan penitentiary system.

Honduras. Eleven years since the US-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, the country has devolved into a state where current President Juan Orlando Hernández is an unindicted drug smuggler, the intellectual authors who ordered the assassination of indigenous environmental leader Berta Cáceres run free, Afro-descendent people and women are murdered with impunity, gang violence is widespread, and state protection from pandemic and hurricanes is grossly deficient.

Costa Rica. Workers staged a week-long national strike in October against the neoliberal policies of President Carlos Alvarado, who then ignored the people and resumed negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), sparking more popular demonstrations. Despite intervention by the Catholic Church to diffuse the protests, the rebellion against destructive tax increases, cuts to public services, and privatizations “has changed the political dynamics in a country which was formerly seen as ‘the Switzerland of Central America,’” according to journalist Rob Lyons.

Nicaragua. Under the Sandinista government of President Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua enjoys: “reduction of poverty and extreme poverty, eradication of illiteracy, the highest economic growth in the region for a decade, free quality education, change of the energy matrix to 77% renewable energy, [and] from 90th place to number 5 worldwide…in reducing the gender inequality gap.”

Given this “threat of a good example,” US efforts to isolate Nicaragua economically to achieve regime change continued. Reports by the PBS NewsHour, the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal, and the Oakland Institute of alleged abuses to the indigenous and Afro-descendent communities provided evidence in support of boycotting the import of “conflict beef,” which would have had a major impact on the Nicaraguan economy. After the allegations were exposed as unsubstantiated, the accusers hypocritically claimed their actions resulted in the Nicaraguan government correcting itself.

The US State Department has already called the Nicaraguan presidential election a fraud even though it is not scheduled until November 2021. After Venezuela and Cuba, Nicaragua is the hardest hit country in Latin America by US sanctions.

Mexico is the second largest economy in Latin America, the eleventh in the world, and the US’s top trade partner. After decades of right-wing rule, left-of-center Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his new MORENA party have been in office for two years.

A little over a year ago, Mexico flew then President Evo Morales out of Bolivia, when his life was threatened by a rightwing coup, and gave asylum in the Mexican Embassy in La Paz to other deposed Bolivian officials. Mexico has also defied the US blockade of Venezuela, and AMLO has called for the release of whistleblower Julian Assange.

Last spring, AMLO closed factories in response to the pandemic except for those supplying essential services. Workers went on strike when some factory owners defied the government closures. The US intervened forcing border maquiladoras that produce goods for the US military to open.

With high COVID infection rates, AMLO has been criticized for what some characterize as a lax and delayed handling of the health crisis. He was also confronted by protests from the extreme right nationalist coalition FRENA, demanding that the “Bolivarian Dictator” must resign, while a rightist plan called Project BOA outlined a strategy for ousting him from office.

In July, AMLO made an official state visit to Washington. “Under Trump, Mexico has had to navigate abrupt demands to stem illegal migration or face trade tariffs.” As the nineteenth century Mexican President Porfirio Díaz famously lamented: “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.”

Campaign for 2021

UN Secretary General Guterres’s plea for a “global ceasefire,” ever more necessitated by “the fury of the virus,” has been ignored by the US. Meanwhile, some 30 nations worldwide, including Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, are suffering under suffocating US sanctions, which are a form of hybrid warfare. These unilateral, coercive measures, impacting a third of humanity, are illegal under the UN Charter. As the “liberator” Simón Bolívar presciently observed in 1829: “The US appears to be destined by providence to plague the Americas with misery in the name of freedom.”

Germany’s DAX stock index feasts upon mass death

Johannes Stern

After the holidays, mass deaths continue in Germany and around the world. On Tuesday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported 852 coronavirus deaths, and on Wednesday morning a new record number of 1,129. This makes December by far the deadliest month since the beginning of the pandemic. In Germany alone, more than 15,500 people are officially recorded as having died of coronavirus between 1 and 28 December, more than twice as many as in November (6,231 deaths) and April (5,708 deaths). By the end of the year, the death toll will have risen to about 35,000.

Such a scale of death is usually only encountered in times of war. Worldwide, almost 1.8 million people have now died from COVID-19, including more than half a million in Europe and about 350,000 in the USA. Since mid-March, an average of more than 6,000 people have succumbed to the virus. In the course of World War I, the average number of fallen soldiers per day was about 6,060. Even though the ruling class is at pains to play down the dramatic scale of the situation, reports of overcrowded morgues and crematoria can hardly be suppressed.

The medical situation is dramatic. In hospitals working at full capacity, doctors, nurses and orderlies are desperately trying to keep thousands of patients from dying due to suffocation. Due to the brutal austerity policies of the last decades, there is not only a lack of staff but often also of necessary medical equipment. The social situation can also only be compared to the great crises in the first half of the 20th century. In the US, 50 million people are food insecure, and since March, 73 million people have registered as unemployed. In Germany, the poverty rate reached an all-time high of 15.9 percent (13.2 million people) last year. The pandemic has further exacerbated social inequality.

On the other hand, there is a thin layer at the top of society that has become unbelievably wealthier and are feasting on death and social misery.

After peaking on Monday, the German share index (DAX) reached another record high on Tuesday, temporarily exceeding 13,900 points. The closing level of 13,761 points was only about 30 points below Monday’s all-time high (13,790 points). Other German stock indices also set new records on Tuesday: the MDAX reached a new high of 30,912 points, the SDAX 14,766 points.

The German stock market has thus not only fully recovered from the interim price slump at the beginning of the pandemic but ended the year with a significant uptick. At the end of 2019, the DAX stood at 13,249 points, meaning an overall increase of almost four percent for 2020. The MDAX rose by more than nine percent and the SDAX by over 18 percent.

The stock market bonanza amid the pandemic means the super-rich have further increased their already astronomical fortunes. According to calculations by the consulting firm PwC and the Swiss bank UBS, the total assets of the more than 2,000 dollar-billionaires worldwide had risen to the record value of about €8.7 trillion by the end of July. The sum is more than twice as high as the total annual economic output of Germany (about €3.5 trillion).

In Germany, the net wealth of the ultra-rich rose by almost €80 billion, to €486 billion, between March and July. This is roughly equivalent to the entire federal budget for the coming year and almost 14 times the 2021 health budget (€35.3 billion). The number of super-rich has also continued to explode. Between January and June, the number of US dollar millionaires in Germany rose by another 58,000, while the number of billionaires increased from 114 to 119.

There is a direct link between the record profits and the record deaths; both are the result of the “profits before lives” policy pursued by the ruling class since the outbreak of the pandemic.

In March, stock markets around the world collapsed after governments, under popular pressure and spontaneous strikes, were forced to order lockdowns and partially close schools and businesses. However, the measures were then mainly used to organise the biggest financial redistribution in history, from the bottom of society to the top. Within a few weeks, trillions were transferred to the accounts of the banks, big corporations and the super-rich.

When the grand coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD)—with the support of all the parties in the Bundestag (parliament) and the trade unions—whipped the so-called Coronavirus Emergency Package, worth billions, through parliament on 25 March, the World Socialist Web Site commented: “The class character of the measures adopted is obvious. Their main purpose is to safeguard and increase the wealth and profits of the big corporations and financial oligarchs.”

No sooner had the money been transferred than stock market prices rose again. At the same time, an aggressive campaign began to reopen schools and factories as quickly as possible to squeeze these gigantic sums back out of the working class. Politicians and the media launched a fascistic debate about how many lives should be sacrificed to the interests of business and profit. Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) provocatively declared that human dignity did not necessarily include the right to life and was thus not “absolutely” protected by the Constitution.

Now, of all times, the stock market rally is continuing during the two deadliest months of the pandemic. Between 29 October and 29 December, the DAX rose by more than 2,000 points to its current record level. The reason is as simple as it is brutal: the focus of the current pandemic measures is once again not protecting lives, but corporate profits. Despite the skyrocketing death toll, workplaces remain open and the cost of the pandemic is to be passed on to the working class again in the New Year.

“Public debt means... of course, burdening future budgets” and “the need to pay it back,” emphasised Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) in her last government statement. At the same time, she categorically ruled out any participation in such repayments by particularly wealthy layers through a wealth levy. Next year’s budget is entirely tailored to the interests of the financial oligarchy and German imperialism. While there are massive cuts in health and education, the budgets for defence and domestic security are increasing.

The WSWS has defined the pandemic from the beginning as a trigger event, an “accelerant” that quickens the already far advanced economic, social and political crisis of the capitalist world system. By the end of the year, this process is well advanced. As in the first half of the 20th century, the experience of millions of workers and youth is that capitalism means, above all, profiteering and death. A socialist programme against mass death and the politics of the pandemic racketeers is a matter of life and death under these conditions!

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) demands the immediate closure of all non-essential factories and schools. All workers must receive sufficient income to ensure a decent standard of living until it is possible to return to work. Small businesses facing economic collapse must be given real support.

The billions hoarded by the pandemic profiteers, accumulated by looting the state coffers, must be retrieved to be used to meet social needs. The giant corporations and financial institutions must be transformed into democratically controlled public utilities.

Tens of thousands face eviction after Chinese rental company collapses

Lily Zhao

As winter approaches and temperatures reach below freezing point across many cities in China, hundreds of thousands of people who rented through Danke Apartment, one of the largest rental platforms in China, face potential eviction. Tenants across 13 cities where Danke has established operations, including major ones like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, have either already been evicted or are living in uncertainty.

The Danke Apartment team rings the Opening Bell to celebrate their IPO on the New York Stock Exchange (Source: NYSE Twitter)

The collapse of Danke provides an insight into the far broader housing crisis in China confronting workers and young people, and exposes the profiteering and parasitic character of layers of capitalists in China.

Unlike traditional apartment leasing business where tenants usually pay monthly rents directly to landlords, the service provided by Danke involves four parties. Danke, as the rental agency, pays monthly rents to individual landlords and then sublets these apartments to tenants. It encourages its tenants to pay a full-year’s rent in advance by offering a tempting discount, compared to paying by the month or by the quarter.

Even with the discount, however, a whole year’s rent is a huge expense for most people. Danke encourages them to take out loans with micro-credit companies to pay a full year’s rent to pay Danke while paying back the loan every month or quarter. Danke even cooperates with these micro-credit companies and pay the monthly interest, further encouraging their tenants to take out loans. More than 60 percent of Danke’s tenants are involved in rent loans.

As a result, when Danke experienced a major breakdown in its complex financial operations due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns in January and February, it led to a social catastrophe for its landlords, tenants and employees. According to the Chinese journal Caixin, Danke has an overall debt of $520 million right now, including $171 million in unpaid rents to landlords.

Since early November, up to a hundred or so landlords and tenants gathered at Danke’s office in Beijing to file complaints, demanding rents, or trying to terminate leases. Most landlords have not received rents for at least a month. At the Beijing office, many had to stand in lines for hours on multiple days in a row, hoping their complaints will be resolved. Even if landlords are willing to forgo rents in arrear so they can reclaim their apartments, their contracts with Danke cannot be terminated until the tenants move out.

The result has been forced evictions, and in some cases, violent confrontations between landlords and tenants. For tenants, their loan contracts with micro-credit companies do not terminate automatically if they are evicted. In other words, they still have to make loan repayments after losing their apartments. Moreover, trending posts on social media have revealed that many tenants have been evicted on a very short notice, and had to spend the night sitting in 24-hour fast food stores or sleeping in their cars.

Tragically, a young tenant fell to death on December 3 from an 18th floor apartment in Guangzhou in what was likely a suicide. Days before the incident, the landlord had put a note on his apartment urging him and his flatmates to move out within a week. Their landlord has not received rents from Danke for over two months. The young person just graduated from college this year, was still looking for a job, and took a full-year’s loan to pay his rent.

For those still in their apartments, their living conditions are poor. As early as in September, tenants in most of the 13 cities where Danke operates reported that their internet had been cut off. A large number of maintenance complaints about leaking pipes and water and power stoppages were left unattended. Some tenants found out that Danke has not paid the energy and water bills at their apartments for as long as two years.

Even if tenants found alternative housing, they cannot easily terminate their lease with Danke. Its offices in Hangzhou and Chengdu are already empty. On Black Cat, a platform for customers to submit complaints, Danke has received more than 30,000 complaints, a proportion of which are from the recent few months. Tenants complained that Danke’s service hotline is always busy. Some managed to terminate their leases using Danke’s online system, but deposits and previous cash back benefits in their accounts could not be cashed out.

Danke’s tenants are overwhelmingly young people who are attracted by the more diverse work opportunities in big cities. According to Danke, the average rent for one of its single bedrooms with shared public space (kitchen, bathroom, etc.) is around 2,788 RMB (about $US400) per month. This price is attractive for young white-collar workers and college graduates who have just started their careers and earn a few thousand a month.

The collapse of Danke has turned their lives upside down. One person posted on social media: “My landlord came this morning [to evict me]. We tried to negotiate, but did not reach an agreement. The landlord called the police, but the police said we should seek to resolve it with Danke.… When I got back to the apartment [from the police station] at 1 pm, power and internet have already been cut off. It’s a really windy day in Chengdu today. There’s not much sun out there. My heart has gone cold as well.”

Service workers working for the company were also hard hit by the collapse of Danke. On November 9, a number of maintenance workers went to Danke’s Shanghai office, demanding their wages.

One worker said it is now impossible for him to live in Shanghai anymore because he had been paid nothing in the past four months. Another said Danke already owed him more than 30,000 RMB ($4,285), which should have been enough to sustain his family in the countryside for at least three years.

However, even before these workers reached the office in Shanghai, the company had already called the police. Two workers were taken away by the police with no real explanation. It was also reported that Danke had already dismissed its apartment cleaning team.

Under pressure from tenants, workers and landlords, Danke eventually made a response on November 16 through its official Weibo (a Twitter-type social media platform) account. The company acknowledged its financial crisis, but said, “We are not in bankruptcy and we will not run away.” The micro-credit company with which Danke collaborated, WeBank, announced on the same day that tenants’ credit score would not be affected by Danke’s collapse until at least March 31 next year.

However, neither of these announcements are reassuring. More tenants are being evicted every day, and many who have terminated their leases reported that they still receive calls from WeBank, urging them to pay their loans on time.

Danke’s business model is extremely risky. In order to occupy a larger share of the apartment leasing market, Danke offered landlords high rents while subletting to tenants with a lower price. More than 400,000 apartments have been collected by Danke since its founding in 2015.

In other words, Danke actually loses money from each transaction. However, in each transaction, Danke acquires a whole-year’s rent from the micro-credit company but only needs to pay the landlord one-month at a time, thus retaining a large amount of cash at hand. This constant cash flow, rather than profit from each transaction, has been what the company bases its business on. During the first three quarters of 2018 and 2019, payments from micro-credit companies made up 88 percent and 80 percent of the company’s entire income respectively.

This cash-flow-based model requires a constant expansion of Danke’s business, where payments from new tenants are required to maintain its finances. As an expert from a real estate broker trade association pointed out, an operating strategy like this requires that at least 90 percent of Danke’s apartments to be sublet. By the September 2019, Danke’s occupancy rate was 87 percent.

On January 17, 2020, Danke became a publicly-listed company on the New York Stock Exchange, which, according to its prospectus, aimed to “continue to deploy capital to grow and source new apartment units.”

Expansion cannot go on indefinitely, and Danke was well aware of the risks. In fact, Danke has never made a profit since its founding in 2015 and has been constantly in debt. In the same prospectus, the company acknowledged that they incurred a net loss of hundreds of millions dollars in 2017, 2018, and the first three quarters 2019. They also had a negative cash flow during the same periods.

As the financial collapse of Danke produced a serious social crisis, the Chinese government gave the company a token slap on the wrist. The state-owned CCTV-2 broadcasts on economic programs declared that Danke had violated regulations and relied too much on loans. In late December 2019, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development announced a new regulation mandating that the income of apartment rental companies from loans should not exceed 30 percent of its total income from rents. However, the new regulation allowed until the end of 2022 for these companies to adjust. No measures have been taken to address the immediate difficulties facing tens of thousands of tenants, workers and landlords.

The collapse of Danke is a manifestation of a far broader housing crisis in China. As the housing prices have skyrocketed in the past decade in major cities, it has become ever more impossible for young people whose families do not live in major urban areas to buy an apartment. Even those who manage to make a down payment, usually with financial assistance from their parents, face the heavy burden of large mortgages.

These high housing prices have led to the rapid expansion of the apartment rental market, with companies like Danke exploiting the situation to profiteer at the expense of the immiseration of workers and young people.

South Africa: COVID-19 cases soar with little prospect of widespread vaccination

Jean Shaoul

On Sunday, South Africa reported that its total number of COVID-19 infections had reached one million, just nine days after reporting 900,000 cases.

The death rate has nearly doubled, with the seven-day rolling average of daily deaths rising from 0.25 per 100,000 people to 0.48 per 100,000 people in two weeks. The virus has now killed more than 27,000 people in the continent’s most industrialised nation. This is nearly one quarter of all the deaths from the coronavirus in Africa.

The situation in South Africa is replicated in a second wave of the pandemic that is sweeping across much of the continent, which has seen a steady rise in infections since November.

Dr Zweli Mkhize, South Africa’s health minister told the South African Broadcasting Corporation, “This wave has come up quite unpredictably.” This is a flat out lie.

Most of the casualties occurred after President Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC) government organised a return to work in a bid to stem the fall in corporate profits and the country’s pending insolvency, calling off one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, enforced with extreme police brutality. In the second quarter of the year, when restrictions were in force, output fell 16.4 percent, while unemployment has risen and is expected to reach 35 to 40 percent as companies cut back or close for good.

Cyril Ramaphosa [credit: Tasnim News Agency]

The country is now facing a new and more virulent form of Covid-19, referred to as 501.V2, which has become dominant in many parts of the country. Crucially and most alarmingly, the new infections are spreading among young people between 15 to 19 years, with the four provinces of the Eastern Cape, the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, the most populous parts of the country, the hardest hit. The relatively low mortality rate in African countries thus far has been attributed in part to their predominantly youthful populations.

Ridhwaan Suliman, a senior researcher at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, said that this second wave was likely to see far higher numbers than those recorded in the first, with cases doubling every 14.5 days. Infectious disease specialist Dr Richard Lessells warned, “As people return from holidays at coastal areas, we can expect them to bring the variant with them. We can also expect travelers to take the variant with them across the borders to other African countries.”

On Monday, the South African Medical Association warned that the healthcare system was on the verge of being overwhelmed by the increase in Covid-19 patients. Several hospitals and medical centres have reported wards overflowing with coronavirus patients as healthcare workers are forced to cancel their holidays to tackle the huge influx of patients.

Mediclinic International, one of the country’s top three private hospital networks, stressed the terrible impact the surge in cases was having on healthcare resources including staff, equipment and beds to provide intensive treatment for seriously ill patients. Its spokesperson said, “The numbers of patients seeking care within our hospitals has exceeded previous numbers during the first peak and the majority of our ICU and high-care units are operating at capacity [in the Western Cape province].

Ramaphosa, like his counterparts across the globe, has refused to do anything that would impact on the major corporations’ ability to make profits, instead announcing a series of measures aimed at curtailing freedom of movement and social behaviour. These include a ban on indoor and outdoor gatherings, a curfew between 9pm and 6am, the closure of non-essential establishments, including shops, restaurants, bars and all cultural venues at 8pm, a ban on the sale of alcohol and the closure of beaches and public swimming pools in those areas where the infection is most prevalent. These include the Eastern Cape renowned for its beautiful sandy beaches. Ramaphosa has made mask wearing in public compulsory and the failure to do so a criminal offence subject to a fine and/or imprisonment.

Ramaphosa blamed the population for the spread of the virus, saying “Reckless behavior due to alcohol intoxication has contributed to increased transmission. Alcohol-related accidents and violence are putting pressure on our hospital emergency units.”

Dr Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at the University of Witwatersrand, has noted that while the more advanced countries such as the US, UK and the European Union cut deals with the major pharmaceutical corporations to secure the doses to vaccinate their populations even before they were tested and approved, South Africa does not as yet have access to vaccines.

Ramaphosa has said he expects 10 percent of the population to be inoculated in the first months of 2021 due to the country’s participation in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Covid-19 Global Vaccine Access Facility (Covax), at a cost of $140 million. In reality, this is unlikely to start before the middle of the year and will only be available to the financial elite with ready cash or healthcare insurance packages. The government is also a member of the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team looking at other ways to finance the cost of procuring vaccines for the continent and is seeking supplemental supplies through private deals with the drug companies.

Dr Madhi stressed that it would be necessary to vaccinate as many people as possible to be able to head off what he feared would be “a third and a fourth wave” and that plans to vaccinate just 10 percent of the population would be insufficient.

The situation is made more obscene still because South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare is set to start manufacturing several million doses a day of the vaccine for Johnson & Johnson, which is conducting clinical trials in the country. But its output will be for export not the South African people. While the pharmaceutical giant has promised to sell its vaccines at break-even prices and provide half a billion doses to Covax to help poor countries, there is no guarantee that any of it will end up in South Africa.

As a “middle-income” country, South Africa, which suffers from grotesque levels of inequality and widespread poverty, is ineligible for low-cost vaccines from the international aid organisations. It has therefore to rely, like other poor and middle-income nations, on Covax, a complex vaccine sharing scheme devised by a consortium of international health organizations, including the World Health Organisation, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.

While poor countries can get the vaccines for free, middle-income countries that cannot compete on the open market can buy into Covax and receive vaccines in deals that are opaque and come with strings attached. It involves paying up front without knowing which vaccine they will receive or when the doses will arrive. Covax estimates the price per dose, but the purchaser must bear the risk if the actual cost turns out to be higher, the vaccine fails or if anything goes wrong. Seth Berkley, Gavi’s chief executive, said that it could secure an initial two billion doses and then more later. However, he refused to explain their deals with drug companies, describing them as commercially confidential, even though they were being paid for with taxpayers’ money.

Angry health advocates have threatened to sue the South African government, which has presided over the deliberate looting of taxpayers’ money in a spate of corruption scandals, including in the state power utility Eskom and its suppliers—that have led to severe outages—and among employers that fraudulently claimed Covid-19 relief funds without paying them out to their workers.

Daily deaths near 1,000 as UK Parliament spends day ratifying Brexit treaty

Robert Stevens

Yesterday was a continuing nightmare for the British population, as another 981 deaths were announced from COVID-19. A further 50,023 new cases of the disease were recorded. These numbers will rise as Scotland and Wales are yet to detail deaths over the Christmas period.

But in a world far removed from this death and suffering, Parliament and the House of Lords were engaged in a day long ratification of the Brexit treaty agreed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government with the European Union (EU). A foregone conclusion, the government won the vote in the House of Commons by 521 to just 73 against, a majority of 448. The Bill was sent to the House of Lords, where it was passed before receiving Royal Assent around midnight. With EU member states already endorsing the treaty, it will be implemented by Brussels and London from 11pm on December 31.

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson signs the post Brexit trade deal on December 30, 2020 inside No 10 Downing Street (picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street-FlickR))

Straight after a Commons debate in which all parties and MPs for and against the treaty posed as loyal defenders of the “national interest”, the government confirmed its indifference to the public health catastrophe threatening millions by announcing that all primary school would open as planned on January 4, and all secondary schools would follow —after a meaningless two week delay—on January 18. This is despite the fact that they were forced to take, with the virus raging throughout the country, the token action of placing another 21 million people in England under Tier 4, the highest level of still limited restrictions.

The debate on the 85 page European Union (Future Relationship) Bill was in reality over the 1,246-page Brexit deal Johnson signed last week. It was rushed through in just five hours, with under 60 MPs called to speak. Not one had anything to say that did not start and finish without upholding the interest of the City of London and Britain’s major corporations.

Johnson has a parliamentary majority of 80 and Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer had whipped his 200 MPs to back the government. The pro-EU Scottish National Party (47 MPs) and Liberal Democrats (11) and the Democratic Unionist Party (8) voted against but comprised a small minority in the 650-seat chamber.

Proceedings were dominated by mutual back slapping from the government benches, with non-stop gloating from its hard Brexit wing. There was mainly a collective sigh of relief from the Labour opposition benches.

Mark Francois, the chair of the anti-EU European Research Group (ERG), declared, “What I call the 'Battle for Brexit' is now over. We won." Referring to the sections of the ERG who refused to back the “soft Brexit” deal Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May agreed with the EU, leading to her downfall, Francois spoke of “my Spartan friends” who could now “lower our spears”. Inevitably alluding to the Second World War, he concluded, “We’re about to write a new chapter in what Sir Winston Churchill called our ‘island’s story’.”

Starmer said that voting for a “thin deal is better than no-deal” and was in the “national interest”. This was a “simple vote with a simple choice: do we leave the transition period with the treaty negotiated with the EU or do we leave with no-deal?”

His only concerns were the impact on big business if the deal was not passed, “If we choose not to, the outcome is clear. We leave the transition period without a deal, without a deal on security, on trade, on fisheries, without protection for our manufacturing sector, for farming, for countless British businesses and without a foothold to build a future relationship with the EU,” said Starmer.

He then made a few criticisms of the treaty, saying it would lead to an "avalanche of checks, bureaucracy and red tape for British businesses".

Prior to his speech, Starmer pledged in the Guardian that he would be “supporting the government where it’s necessary to do so and criticising and challenging where it is necessary to do so.”

Summing up the debate for Labour, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves complained that “Farmers, carmakers and our chemicals industry” would now all “all face extra delays, costs and bureaucracy when taking their goods to European markets.” She declared, “More than 80 percent of our economy is made up of services, yet not one of the 1,246 pages of the treaty gives any additional opportunities for those sectors… The EU has a trade surplus in goods with us, and it fought to keep it. We have a trade surplus on services, and the Government have done nothing to protect it.”

Nevertheless “a deal of any form provides a degree of stability, which is what businesses craves,” she insisted.

Johnson was able to declare of Labour MP Peter Kyle, “It is great to hear a member of the Labour party not only backing the bankers and backing financial services—a fantastic development—but also backing this deal.”

Prior to the vote, there was talk of a rebellion of up to 60 Labour MPs, including among the “left” in the Socialist Campaign Group’s (SCG) 30 or so members.

In the event just 36 Labour MPs abstained—made up of Blairites who have never been reconciled to leaving the EU, along with a few supporters of the party’s nominally left former leader Jeremy Corbyn. Three pro-EU right wingers on Starmer’s front bench resigned after abstaining.

Only one of the MPs identified as a Corbyn supporter, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, actually voted against the Bill. Corbyn’s former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell abstained, as did former shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, after first announcing she would vote against. SCG chair Richard Burgon and Dawn Butler also abstained to ensure that they didn’t fall foul of Starmer by directly opposing one of his diktats.

Corbyn too abstained on the vote, even though he doesn’t have to abide by the Labour Whip after having been booted out of the party as part of the anti-Semitism witch-hunt being carried out by Starmer!

Those who abstained were as keen as Johnson and Starmer to profess their loyalty to British capitalism.

Corbyn made a pro-forma complaint that “protecting workers rights, and environmental standards” was “dependent on whether or not they have any effect on ‘trade or investment’.” But his main complaint was that the deal could not be backed as it “does not secure trade or conditions for our future outside the European Union. It paves the way in the future for very disadvantaged trade deals with other countries, particularly the United States.”

In an article in the Stalinist Morning Star, SCG member Claudia Webbe complained, “This deal is also bad for British manufacturing,” making it “very difficult for British car firms to export tariff-free into the EU.” Saying that “British steel is an obvious example,” she added, “This deal also makes it harder for the UK to step in and save firms that are of strategic importance to the UK economy.”

Abbott listed among her reasons for abstaining the fact that the deal “falls short in many policy areas, but I want to talk about security.” Johnson “claimed that they were going to get ‘a security partnership of unprecedented breadth and depth’”. Yet, “On the contrary, our access to Europol and to Eurojust has been compromised, and we will no longer have access to the European arrest warrant and to EU databases that allow for realtime data sharing, such as the Schengen Information System, and are valuable to our police and the National Crime Agency. The database was consulted over 600 million times by UK police forces in 2019.”

The obscene spectacle in Parliament confirmed that the working class has nothing in common with any of the factions of the ruling class or its political parties, including the ever dwindling rump of the Corbynite “left”. For working people protecting the safety of their families, their jobs and livelihoods can only proceed through a unified struggle with workers throughout Europe against Europe’s ruling elites and their governments and for socialism.

Spanish officers plot fascist coup to impose “herd immunity” COVID-19 policy

Alejandro López & Alex Lantier

The stream of revelations of fascist sympathies and calls for mass murder in the Spanish army constitute a warning to the Spanish and international working class. Broad sections of the Spanish political establishment have reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic by planning for a dictatorship. While ostensibly targeting the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, which has tried to lull workers to sleep by denying the mounting evidence that officers are plotting a coup, the coup is in fact aimed at working class opposition to the ruling elite’s murderous “herd immunity” policy.

Members of Military Emergency Unit arrive at Abando train station, in Bilbao, northern Spain earlier this year. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

These revelations are all the more significant in that they come amid a generalized, international breakdown of democratic forms of rule. After attempting to order US military units to attack protests against the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis this spring, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly indicated his willingness to defy the results of the 2020 US presidential elections. In Germany, moreover, far-right operatives who participated in the murder of politician Walter Lübcke were released as details emerged of widespread neo-Nazi networks in the army.

This month, retired Spanish Air Force Lieutenant Colonel José Ignacio Domínguez spoke to the press after hundreds of retired officers sent letters pledging to support King Felipe VI against the PSOE-Podemos government. Domínguez knows the signatories of the letters personally. He was in WhatsApp chat groups where officers called to murder “26 million” people and imitate General Francisco Franco’s fascist coup that launched the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War. The members of these chat groups received friendly messages of support from the fascist Vox party.

In radio interviews, Domínguez traced the coup threats to “the radicalization of Vox” in March: “It coincides with what they called Operation Albatross, that is to create a government of National Salvation. They wanted the Minister of Defence [Margarita Robles] to be prime minister […]- They started to mobilise people in the other promotions of the air force and army […]. As they gave up seeing the king, they agreed on the letters and mobilized the others.”

He added that “there has been and there exists a movement for a pronunciamiento,” that is, an attempt to shift politics to the right by threatening a coup. Speaking of the chat participants, he said: “They are not monarchists or constitutionalists, they are Francoites and they defend dictatorship. I’m not only talking about the past ones, but the future ones. They aspire to a dictatorship.”

The timing is significant: discussion of Operation Albatross began in March, as a wave of wildcat strikes spread across Europe against the European Union’s (EU) herd immunity policy. It was amid the initial upsurge of COVID-19 in Europe, which killed nearly 50,000 people and infected over half a million in Spain alone. The wildcat strikes forced the PSOE-Podemos government to implement a shelter-at-home policy, in line with several other EU governments, including France and Italy, a policy that Vox and the right-wing Popular Party (PP) denounced as a move towards “dictatorship.”

Behind Vox’s calls for a dictatorship and the army’s calls for coups and mass murder were powerful sections of the bourgeoisie not only in Spain but across the EU and internationally. They were determined to impose a back-to-work policy, leading to millions of new infections concentrated, above all in the working class, so as to shovel trillions of euros in European Union (EU) bank bailouts and corporate profits into the pockets of the financial aristocracy.

Vox was soon openly appealing to the army to oppose the PSOE-Podemos government. On April 19, Vox lawmaker Rocío de Meer—the granddaughter of Carlos de Meer, a military governor under Franco who after the Transition to parliamentary rule in 1978 was accused of plotting to topple a PSOE government in 1986—Tweeted: “Today more than ever it is time to remind the armed forces that the nation is not the same as the state. And they pledged loyalty to the first.”

The first public mention of Operation Albatross came on April 21, when far-right news site Mil21 published an article titled “Operation Albatross Arises to Reroute the Political and Economic Situation.” It includes a photograph of a file whose cover reads: “Operation Albatross. Simulation and stages for its urgent implementation given the socio-political and economic gravity that is expected in the next ten years in Spain. … Do not send through computer networks.”

The article’s author, Joaquín Abad, linked Operation Albatross to the political and stock market crisis caused by the pandemic. He claimed the report aimed to “redirect the disastrous economic, social and political situation currently being experienced in Spain. Aggravated, of course, by the pandemic whose effects are estimated to last a decade.” Operation Albatros, Abad added, aims “to neutralize [Prime Minister] Pedro Sánchez and [Podemos leader and Deputy Prime Minister] Pablo Iglesias.”

Significantly, Abad was the chief of reporters of daily El Alcázar, a far-right newspaper published from 1936 to 1988. During the Transition from Francoite to parliamentary rule, El Alcázar played a leading role in the army’s coup plots between 1977 and 1982. It regularly published articles in favour of coups—including one shortly before the 23 February 1981 coup attempt, when Antonio Tejero led 200 armed Civil Guard officers into the parliament during the vote to elect a Prime Minister.

Soon after, further reports began circulating on Operation Albatross. Former Lieutenant Colonel Fernando Reinlein reported, in a May 20 Infolibre article titled “The coup plotters warm up the engines,” that the right-wing press was campaigning for a coup. He wrote that “a certain number of pamphlets and so-called reports, such as the one on Operation Albatross, are ‘discreetly’ circulating among the [press] offices and corporate boardrooms.”

At that time, Vox was backing small, far-right protests against the lockdown in affluent districts of Madrid, denouncing the PSOE and Podemos as a “social-communist” government.

Significantly, the PSOE-Podemos government reacted to the coup threats by doubling down on the “herd immunity” and austerity policies demanded by the army brass, and which it was in any case already trying to implement. While making no effort to establish an effective track-and-trace system after the premature end of the lockdown, the PSOE and Podemos enthusiastically backed EU bank bailouts. At the same time, having already ordered riot police to assault steelworkers striking for the right to shelter at home, they intensified mass Internet spying on the population.

Iglesias had joined the Intelligence Affairs Commission, which supervises the National Intelligence Centre (CNI), in February. Soon after, the CNI was actively carrying out mass online surveillance using ELISA cyber-security software. As the WSWS reported, this was then followed in May with the police’s “Delta Papa Order 21/20” to use mass surveillance against the “high probability” of growing social unrest while the government de-escalated COVID-19 measures.

While the principal target of PSOE-Podemos surveillance was the working class, they also monitored far-right coup plotting and calls for anti-government uprisings on hundreds of far-right web sites. Thus the Interior Ministry has recently approved new guidelines for the Permanent Centre for Information and Coordination. Leaked by El Confidencial Digital, the guidelines show that one of the main targets of monitoring are “involucionista” groups. This term is typically used by the intelligence services to designate military forces opposed to the Transition from Francoism to parliamentary rule.

The PSOE and Podemos were, however, deafeningly silent on the danger of a fascist coup, even though they were well aware of the coup plots hatched by Vox and the officer corps. This underlay the comments of Pablo Iglesias to Vox parliamentary spokesman Iván Espinosa de los Monteros in May; while cryptic, they made clear that Iglesias was well aware of the “Operation Albatross” plans.

Iglesias said he was “willing to talk with anyone,” including Vox, “even if it seems that they are closer to wanting to carry out a coup d’état than to protect democracy.” When Espinosa demanded a rectification, Iglesias replied: “I’m going to be even more precise. I believe that you would like to carry out a coup, but that you don’t dare. Because for that, in addition to wanting it and asking for it, you have to dare.”

In June of this year, the PSOE-Podemos government suddenly dismissed Civil Guard Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos, who until then had enjoyed the unanimous support of the Spanish political establishment for his role in leading the brutal police repression of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. The official reason given was a “loss of trust” in Pérez de los Cobos. Interior Ministry sources soon stated he was behind a court case against the PSOE-Podemos government, suing it for allowing a March 8 feminist demonstration in Madrid despite the pandemic.

A political storm ensued when Vox, PP and the right-wing media came to Cobos’ defence. It got to the point that Defence Minister Margarita Robles was asked on Onda Cero radio if there was a coup danger. She said, “forthrightly no,” adding: “No one has the right to capitalize on our armed forces or our flag. ... I firmly believe that there is no danger of a coup by the armed forces.”

Significantly, the dismissal of Pérez de los Cobos came amid a wave of mass, multiracial protests across the United States, Europe and internationally after the police murder of George Floyd. Spanish far-right circles were hysterical over both the dismissal and the global protests against police violence.

Abascal, who had traveled to Washington in February to hear Trump speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), hailed Trump as he tried to illegally mobilize the military against the protests. Abascal tweeted: “The progressive European and American mafia are trying to impose a spring of rage on the United States. The same progressive millionaires and their media started the Arab Spring which caused wars and immigration. Our support goes to President Trump and North American institutions.”

The PSOE-Podemos government’s denials of the coup threats have only aided the conspirators. In November, a political crisis erupted amid revelations of widespread calls for a fascist coup in the officer corps. Hundreds of former officers sent three different letters to King Felipe VI, pressing him to launch a coup against the PSOE-Podemos government, stressing their “oath to defend the integrity of Spain and the constitutional order, giving our lives if necessary.”

In December, a manifesto signed by nearly 500 former military personnel attacked the PSOE-Podemos government, a few days after it emerged that a group of retired air force officers had used a WhatsApp group to talk about “shooting 26 million sons of bitches,” and describing Franco as the “irreplaceable one.” Vox openly endorsed the signatories of the letters, saying “Of course they are our people” in parliament. The PP endorsed them as “concerned citizens.”

The PSOE-Podemos government is continuing to furiously insist that nothing of any significance is occurring. Defence Minister Robles stressed her loyalty to Sánchez, telling La Vanguardia editorialist Enric Juliana she “had no news of that supposed operation. I had other things to attend to. […] I consider myself a serious, rigorous person, who has a strong commitment to the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. I am going to continue with that commitment. These maneuvers are the furthest thing from me and the vast majority of citizens.”

Iglesias was sent out to downplay the fascist danger after the publication of the fascist WhatsApp chats, giving a prime-time television interviews to brazenly insist that nothing important had been revealed. He said, “What these gentlemen say, at their age and already retired, in a chat with a few too many drinks, does not pose any threat.” His mission was to dampen mounting outrage among workers and youth that was pouring out on social media.

This has since been exposed as a fraud. La Marea leaked videos showing soldiers chanting and dancing to Neo-Nazi songs while making the fascist salute, and Público leaked fascistic WhatsApp chats from soldiers. Iglesias has remained silent on these revelations.

These events vindicate the assessment made by the WSWS: the pandemic is a trigger event in world history. Before the pandemic, faced with mounting working class anger at unsustainable levels of social inequality, the bourgeoisie across Europe was rehabilitating fascism and integrating neo-fascist parties into official life. The rise of Vox, like that of the far-right Alternative for Germany and the brutal police crackdown on the 2017 Catalan independence referendum, all pointed to this.

The staggering death toll of over 530,000 Europeans and 1.8 million worldwide has vastly intensified these antagonisms. EU propaganda that the Transition from Francoism to parliamentary rule and Spain’s integration into the EU had ended the era of fascism and violent military conspiracy stands exposed. In reality, the same objective contradictions of capitalism that led Franco to launch his coup in the 20th century and the Spanish bourgeoisie to rally behind him are driving a turn towards authoritarian forms of rule to impose the banks’ “herd immunity” diktat in the 21st.

Public threats of a neo-Francoite coup in Spain and the treacherous response of Podemos constitute a warning: the lessons of the 1930s must be learned. There is no “progressive” faction of the capitalist establishment, including the “left populists” of Podemos, which the working class can try to pressure to obtain a less callous and repressive policy. Podemos has responded to protests with a vicious policy of “herd immunity” and austerity, while covering up plans for militarized repression. They will respond to a broader movement by shifting further to the right.

Coronavirus deaths reach record high in Germany as hospitals teeter on brink of collapse

Marianne Arens

The death toll from the coronavirus continues to grow relentlessly. Approximately 1.8 million people have died worldwide and more than 81.5 million have been infected. On Monday, the death toll since the beginning of the pandemic in Germany surpassed the 30,000 mark. Since December 10, more than 10,000 people have died, which equates to an average of over 500 per day, or one death every three minutes.

More than 1.66 million people have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 in Germany, although the number of undetected cases is much higher. Over the holiday period, significantly fewer cases have been recorded and transmitted to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s national agency for infectious diseases. On Tuesday, the RKI reported almost 13,000 infections and 852 deaths for the previous 24 hours. On Wednesday morning, the RKI reported 22,459 infections and 1,129 deaths, the first time the daily death toll has surpassed 1,000.

Patient in intensive care unit (Photo: Frank C. Müller, Baden-Baden / CC-BY-SA 4.0)

The fact that the situation is worsening by the day is shown above all by conditions in hospitals. For months, health care staff have been struggling in hospitals to save lives, but the conditions are increasingly catastrophic due to high infection rates. Nurses in Hamburg went public to speak about working conditions shortly before Christmas. The private management of Asklepios Clinics (AK) threatened a nurse with the loss of her job as a result.

Romana Knezevic spoke openly on public broadcaster NDR’s Hamburg Journal show about the conditions at AK St. Georg. “The situation is extremely serious,” she said on December 17. “The intensive care capacity is totally used up.” For some time, they had been short-staffed, especially in intensive care, she continued. Then, the coronavirus pandemic came along and “a flood of coronavirus patients we have to care for in addition, that breaks all structures,” added Knezevic.

“The intensive care colleagues are working with staff-to-patient ratios of one to five; normally it would be one to two or one to one,” she continued. In addition, “we have to take over tasks from the cleaning personnel and service staff. Just like us, they have also been cut back to the bone.” The situation is a tremendous burden for health care staff, especially because it is no longer even possible to provide patients with dignified end-of-life care. “The patients die alone in their rooms,” she said.

The response of the hospital’s management was swift. Instead of seriously investigating the terrible conditions and working rapidly to improve them, they threatened to fire the courageous nurse. A spokesman of the Asklepios Clinics told the Hamburger Morgenpost that it is “unacceptable for employees to deliberately spread false information to media outlets or portray emergency situations as the norm for ideological or political motivations.” This would shake the confidence of Hamburg’s population, they added.

Statements of solidarity with Romana have continued to grow in response. The Hamburg Hospital Movement, a nurses’ organisation, described her threatened firing as a “transparent attempt at intimidation” and confirmed that it had triggered “outrage and anger” among nurses. One user wrote on Twitter, “Are you being damned serious? (Now) firing people for their criticism? Solidarity with Romana Knezevic!”

The reliability of Knezevic’s testimony is underscored by the fact that a growing number of hospitals report that their intensive care facilities are operating at the limits of their capacity. Several hospitals in Thuringia issued emergency calls over the Christmas period, and the Eisenach hospital explicitly declared that it cannot take any more coronavirus patients.

The Eichsfeld hospital also stated that it is operating at its capacity limit, as it has permanently been treating around 30 seriously ill coronavirus patients. “In addition, between six and eight of them are in intensive care,” the hospital’s medical director told the Thüringer Allgemeine. “If there is now an increase, we won’t be able to care for routine cases.” Emergencies have already been directed to other hospitals, such as the university hospital in Göttingen. “We will only get respite by reducing the number of coronavirus infections and thus the serious cases as well,” they added.

The steps required to reduce coronavirus cases and bring the pandemic under control have been well known for a long time. This was pointed out recently by the virologist Prof. Melanie Brinkmann in comments to the Tagesthemen show on public broadcaster ARD. She noted that the official target incidence rate of 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants within a seven-day period is much too high. “That is not an incidence at which we have control,” she said. Only when the incidence sinks below 20 will the local health offices be able to work effectively, find all those infected through tests, and isolate all contacts. The current incidence is 150 nationally, although some regions, such as Meißen and the Vogtland district in Saxony, are well over 500.

In a detailed report in Der Spiegel on Christmas Day, statements from leading virologists on the new coronavirus strain that emerged in England and has spread rapidly around the world were presented. The scientists were agreed that the first and decisive countermeasure must consist of a drastic reduction of infections.

Virologist Isabella Eckerle from the University Hospital of Geneva pointed out that almost all countries have “reached the limits of their health care systems, intensive care units, lab tests, and contact tracing.” A more infectious strain would “lead to a tragedy in January and February,” the virologist warned. “It would be a mistake to first await the confirmation of the presence of the new virus strain in various countries.” In a tweet from December 24, Eckerle advised, “On the basis of this data, the geographical region of Europe (not just the EU) should prepare for a coordinated, complete lockdown.”

But this will only happen if the working class intervenes independently into political events and enforces a lockdown by means of a Europe-wide general strike. Governments of all political stripes have, by contrast, made absolutely clear that they want to lift the limited lockdowns as quickly as possible so as not to threaten the profits of the banks and big business.

A drastic example of the dominance of the capitalist profit system is the closure of hospitals during the pandemic for the sole reason that their operation is “uneconomical.” Shortly before Christmas, the hospital in Ingelheim was closed, with the loss of 190 jobs. “It was an intact facility, with staff and ventilators, everything that we urgently need in the pandemic,” Works Councillor Stefanie Klemann told Radio FFH. The decision to close the facility at this point confirms the catastrophic consequences of the austerity and privatisation policies over the past 30 years. In fact, according to a Bertelsmann Foundation study published last year, fewer than 600 of the current 1,400 hospitals are planned for retention.