Coronavirus pandemic resurges throughout the world

Bryan Dyne

As the different variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus continue to spread, particularly those originating in the United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Africa, reported cases of the coronavirus have again begun to rise.

Since February 20, the number of daily new cases worldwide has increased steadily, from 361,000 cases then, to more than 422,000 cases now, up 17 percent. The increase is being driven in countries across the world. Currently there are more than 22,000 new cases each day in India (an 80 percent increase), just under 25,000 in France (a 24 percent increase), and 22,000 in Italy (an 83 percent increase). The main driver of the new wave is Brazil, where there are at least 66,000 new cases each day (a 36 percent increase) and climbing.

Workers load empty coffins that had contained the remains of COVID-19 victims on a flatbed, to be destroyed by a company specializing in organic waste, at La Recoleta cemetery, in Santiago, Chile. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)

The total number of cases worldwide has now exceeded 120 million, with more than 2,660,000 dead.

Numerous other countries have also seen steady, and in some cases sharp, increases in their case counts, including Chile, the Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Germany, Iran, Paraguay, Poland and the Philippines. And in the United States, where the decline in cases has largely plateaued, there is still an average of more than 55,000 new reported cases each day.

There is every indication that this new wave, if allowed to continue, will be the worst yet. The previous wave was spurred on by relatively limited school and workplace reopenings, driving the number of new cases each day from just under 300,000 at the beginning of October to 745,000 at the beginning of January. Globally, more than 900,000 people died during that three-month period.

The social misery produced by such a state of affairs is staggering. Bloomberg recently reported that 30 million people in Africa were plunged into extreme poverty by the pandemic in 2020, living on less than $1.90 a day, and an estimated 39 million people will be made equally destitute in 2021. The United Nations reports that poverty in Latin America rose in 2020 by 22 million people. The number of “new poor” in East Asia and the Pacific increased by at least 38 million.

Globally, the World Bank estimates that between 119 to 124 million people so far have been impoverished by the coronavirus pandemic.

“After the Second World War, the world has experienced mass trauma, because the Second World War affected many, many lives. And now, even with this COVID pandemic, with bigger magnitude, more lives have been affected,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference Friday. “Almost the whole world is affected, each and every individual on the surface of the world actually has been affected.”

Now, with case numbers higher than they were at the beginning of the last surge, the Biden administration is spearheading an even more complete return to in-person schooling and work. Countries in Europe, South America, Asia and elsewhere are following suit, effectively inducing an even greater expansion of the pandemic. The ongoing reopenings in the United States and around the world are setting the stage for even greater heights of mass death.

The excuse being force-fed to the American and world public is that this is safe because the vaccine rollout is continuing apace.

The truth is quite the opposite. Even in the US, which has one of the highest vaccination rates, only about 10 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, meaning that the majority of the population is still susceptible to the deadly virus.

Moreover, the rollout itself is characterized by “many examples of vaccine nationalism and vaccine hoarding,” according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierres. The Biden administration has openly admitted hoarding doses of the vaccine, including about 10 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, for which the FDA has yet to give emergency authorization. AstraZeneca itself asked to transfer those doses to Europe, where it can be used. The idea was rejected out of hand, with Biden’s COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients proclaiming Friday, “We’re rightly focused on getting Americans vaccinated as soon as possible.”

In other words, Biden has fully embraced the “America First” policy of ex-President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.

Vaccine nationalism has also emerged sharply in Europe. Last week, Italy blocked the export of 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Australia. Tensions between the UK and European Union continued as European Council President Charles Michel accused London of imposing an export ban on COVID-19 vaccines.

As a result, while more than 350 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered internationally, three-quarters of those have been given in just 10 countries, including more than 100 million in the United States alone. In contrast, less than five percent of the population in South America has received even a single dose. In Africa, where the total number of deaths just passed 100,000, less than half of one percent of the population has been vaccinated.

This uneven distribution itself has the potential to drive the pandemic. As Dr. Tedros recently noted, “The inequitable distribution of vaccines remains the biggest threat to ending the pandemic and driving a global recovery,” because “the longer the virus circulates, the higher the chances that variants will emerge that make vaccines less effective.”

In other words, there is nothing “right,” much less at all rational, about hoarding millions of life-saving vaccines in the middle of a pandemic. Every dose that is not used is potentially another infection stopped, another life saved. It is also more opportunity for the virus to mutate, increasing the chances of a variant emerging completely immune to the vaccines, retriggering the entire pandemic. Dr. Tedros rightly condemned this when he noted, “This is putting lives at risk around the world.”

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Wisconsin, made similar comments in a recent piece entitled, “COVID-19 Variants and the Peril of Vaccine Inequity.” In it, he made clear, “Neither the United States nor any other global power can defeat a pandemic by thinking in national terms. COVID-19 vaccines are now a central component of the United States’ national security and defense. But unlike other spheres of defense, this one involves protecting—not fighting—foreigners. As the poet John Donne noted centuries ago, ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ Never has that been truer than during the current worldwide plague. If the bell continues to toll, it will be tolling for us all.”

As has been demonstrated over the past year, however, appeals to the ruling class fall on deaf ears. Neither the Trump nor Biden administrations, or their counterparts internationally, are capable, much less interested, in sharing the vaccine. Stockpiles are viewed as strategic assets to be wielded against geopolitical rivals, not medicine to save lives.

As David North writes in his essay, “Capitalism vs. socialism: The pandemic and the global class struggle”:

The capitalist program promotes a policy of vaccination nationalism, restricting and opposing equitable distribution of vaccines throughout the world. The socialist program, recognizing that the coronavirus can be eradicated only through a scientifically directed international strategy, calls for a globally coordinated inoculation program.

There can be no national solution to the pandemic. The social system bound up with the existence of nation-states, capitalism, must end and be replaced with a socialist society based on the democratic and scientific planning of the world’s resources, where human lives are placed above private profit.

Ten Problems With Biden’s Foreign Policy – and One Solution

Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J. S. Davies 

The Biden presidency is still in its early days, but it’s not too early to point to areas in the foreign policy realm where we, as progressives, have been disappointed–or even infuriated.

There are one or two positive developments, such as the renewal of Obama’s New START Treaty with Russia and Secretary of State Blinken’s initiative for a UN-led peace process in Afghanistan, where the United States is finally turning to peace as a last resort, after 20 years lost in the graveyard of empires.

By and large though, Biden’s foreign policy already seems stuck in the militarist quagmire of the past twenty years, a far cry from his campaign promise to reinvigorate diplomacy as the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy.

In this respect, Biden is following in the footsteps of Obama and Trump, who both promised fresh approaches to foreign policy but for the most part delivered more endless war.

By the end of his second term, Obama did have two significant diplomatic achievements with the signing of the Iran nuclear deal and normalization of relations with Cuba. So progressive Americans who voted for Biden had some grounds to hope that his experience as Obama’s vice-president would lead him to quickly restore and build on Obama’s achievements with Iran and Cuba as a foundation for the broader diplomacy he promised.

Instead, the Biden administration seems firmly entrenched behind the walls of hostility Trump built between America and our neighbors, from his renewed Cold War against China and Russia to his brutal sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria and dozens of countries around the world, and there is still no word on cuts to a military budget that has grown by 15% since FY2015 (inflation-adjusted).

Despite endless Democratic condemnations of Trump, Biden’s foreign policy so far shows no substantive change from the policies of the past four years. Here are ten of the lowlights:

1) Failing to quickly rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement. The Biden administration’s failure to immediately rejoin the JCPOA, as Bernie Sanders promised to do on his first day as president, has turned an easy win for Biden’s promised commitment to diplomacy into an entirely avoidable diplomatic crisis.

Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and imposition of brutal “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran were broadly condemned by Democrats and U.S. allies alike. But now Biden is making new demands on Iran to appease hawks who opposed the agreement all along, risking an outcome in which he will fail to reinstate the JCPOA and Trump’s policy will effectively become his policy. The Biden administration should re-enter the deal immediately, without preconditions.

2) U.S. Bombing Wars Rage On – Now In Secret. Also following in Trump’s footsteps, Biden has escalated tensions with Iran and Iraq by attacking and killing Iranian-backed Iraqi forces who play a critical role in the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Biden’s February 25 U.S. airstrike predictably failed to end rocket attacks on deeply unpopular U.S. bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi National Assembly passed a resolution to close over a year ago.

The U.S. attack in Syria has been condemned as illegal by members of Biden’s own party, reinvigorating efforts to repeal the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force that presidents have misused for 20 years. Other airstrikes the Biden administration is conducting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are shrouded in secrecy, since it has not resumed publishing the monthly Airpower Summaries that every other administration has published since 2004, but which Trump discontinued a year ago.

3) Refusing to hold MBS accountable for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Human rights activists were grateful that President Biden released the intelligence report on the gruesome murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi that confirmed what we already knew: that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) approved the murder. Yet, when it came to holding MBS accountable, Biden choked.

At the very least, the administration should have imposed the same sanctions on MBS, including asset freezes and travel bans, that the U.S. imposed on lower-level figures involved in the murder. Instead, like Trump, Biden is wedded to the Saudi dictatorship and its diabolical Crown Prince.

4) Clinging to Trump’s absurdist policy of recognizing Juan Guaidó as President of Venezuela. The Biden administration missed an opportunity to establish a new approach towards Venezuela when it decided to continue to recognize Juan Guaidó as “interim president”, ruled out talks with the Maduro government and appears to be freezing out the moderate opposition that participates in elections.

The administration also said it was in “no rush” to lift the Trump sanctions despite a recent study from the Government Accountability Office detailing their negative impact on the economy, and a scathing preliminary report by a UN Special Rapporteur, who noted their “devastating effect on the whole population of Venezuela.” The lack of dialogue with all political actors in Venezuela risks entrenching a policy of regime change and economic warfare for years to come, similar to the failed U.S. policy towards Cuba that has lasted for 60 years.

 5) Following Trump on Cuba instead of Obama. The Trump administration overturned all the progress towards normal relations achieved by President Obama, sanctioning Cuba’s tourism and energy industries, blocking coronavirus aid shipments, restricting remittances to family members, putting Cuba on a list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” and sabotaging Cuba’s international medical missions, which were a major source of revenue for its health system.

We expected Biden to immediately start unraveling Trump’s confrontational policies, but catering to Cuban exiles in Florida for domestic political gain apparently takes precedence over a humane and rational policy towards Cuba, for Biden as for Trump.

Biden should instead start working with the Cuban government to allow the return of diplomats to their respective embassies, lift all restrictions on remittances, make travel easier, and work with the Cuban health system in the fight against COVID-19, among other measures.

6) Ramping up the Cold War with China. Biden seems committed to Trump’s self-defeating Cold War and arms race with China, talking tough and ratcheting up tensions that have led to racist hate crimes against East Asian people in the United States. But it is the United States that is militarily surrounding and threatening China, not the other way round. As former President Jimmy Carter patiently explained to Trump, while the United States has been at war for 20 years, China has instead invested in 21st century infrastructure and in its own people, lifting 800 million of them out of poverty.

The greatest danger of this moment in history, short of all-out nuclear war, is that this aggressive U.S. military posture not only justifies unlimited U.S. military budgets, but will gradually force China to convert its economic success into military power and follow the United States down the tragic path of military imperialism.

7) Failing to lift painful, illegal sanctions during a pandemic. One of the legacies of the Trump administration is the devastating use of U.S. sanctions on countries around the world, including Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and Syria. UN special rapporteurs have condemned them as crimes against humanity and compared them to medieval sieges. Since most of these sanctions were imposed by executive order, President Biden could easily lift them. Even before taking power, his team announced a thorough review, but, three months later, it has yet to make a move.

Unilateral sanctions that affect entire populations are an illegal form of coercion, like military intervention, coups and covert operations, that have no place in a legitimate foreign policy based on diplomacy, the rule of law and the peaceful resolution of disputes. They are especially cruel and deadly during a pandemic and the Biden administration should take immediate action by lifting broad sectoral sanctions to ensure every country can adequately respond to the pandemic.

8) Not doing enough to support peace and humanitarian aid for Yemen. Biden appeared to partially fulfill his promise to stop U.S. support for the war in Yemen when he announced that the U.S. would stop selling “offensive” weapons to the Saudis. But he has yet to explain what that means. Which weapons sales has he cancelled?

We think he should stop ALL weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, enforcing the Leahy Law that prohibits military assistance to forces that commit gross human rights violations, and the Arms Export Control Act, under which imported U.S. weapons may be used only for legitimate self defense. There should be no exceptions to these U.S. laws for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, Egypt or other U.S. allies around the world.

The U.S. should also accept its share of responsibility for what many have called the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today, and provide Yemen with funding to feed its people, restore its health care system and rebuild its devastated country. A recent donor conference netted just $1.7 billion in pledges, less than half the $3.85 billion needed. Biden should restore and expand USAID funding and U.S. financial support to the UN, WHO and World Food Program relief operations in Yemen. He should also press the Saudis to reopen the air and seaports, and throw U.S. diplomatic weight behind the efforts of U.N. Special Envoy Martin Griffiths to negotiate a ceasefire.

9) Failing to back President Moon Jae-in’s diplomacy with North Korea. Trump’s failure to provide sanctions relief and explicit security guarantees to North Korea doomed his diplomacy and became an obstacle to the diplomatic process under way between Korean presidents Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, who is himself the child of North Korean refugees. So far, Biden has continued this policy of Draconian sanctions and threats.

The Biden administration should revive the diplomatic process with confidence-building measures such as opening liaison offices, easing sanctions, facilitating reunions between Korean-American and North Korean families, permitting U.S. humanitarian organizations to resume their work when COVID conditions permit, and halting U.S.-South Korea military exercises and B-2 nuclear bomb flights.

Negotiations must involve concrete commitments to non-aggression from the U.S. side and a commitment to negotiating a peace agreement to formally end the Korean War. This would pave the way for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and the reconciliation that so many Koreans desire — and deserve.

10) No initiative to reduce U.S. military spending. At the end of the Cold War, former senior Pentagon officials told the Senate Budget Committee that U.S. military spending could safely be cut by half over the next 10 years. That goal was never achieved, and instead of a post-Cold War “peace dividend,” the military-industrial complex exploited the crimes of Sept. 11, 2001 to justify an extraordinary one-sided arms race. Between 2003 and 2011, the U.S. accounted for 45% of global military spending, far outstripping its own peak Cold War military spending.

Now the military-industrial complex is counting on Biden to escalate a renewed Cold War with Russia and China as the only plausible pretext for further record military budgets that are setting the stage for World War III.

Biden must dial back U.S. conflicts with China and Russia, and instead begin the critical task of moving money from the Pentagon to urgent domestic needs. He should start with at least the 10 percent cut that 93 Representatives and 23 Senators already voted for. In the longer term, Biden should look for deeper cuts in Pentagon spending, as in Rep. Barbara Lee’s bill to cut $350 billion per year from the U.S. military budget, to free up resources we sorely need to invest in health care, education, clean energy and modern infrastructure.

A Progressive Way Forward

These policies, common to Democratic and Republican administrations, not only inflict pain and suffering on millions of our neighbors in other countries, but also deliberately cause instability that can at any time escalate into war, plunge a formerly functioning state into chaos or spawn a secondary crisis whose human consequences will be even worse than the original one.

All these policies involve deliberate efforts to unilaterally impose the political will of U.S. leaders on other people and countries, by methods that consistently only cause more pain and suffering to the people they claim – or pretend – they want to help.

Biden should jettison the worst of Obama’s and Trump’s policies, and instead pick the best of them. Trump, recognizing the unpopular nature of U.S. military interventions, began the process of bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, which Biden should follow through on.

Obama’s diplomatic successes with Cuba, Iran and Russia demonstrated that negotiating with U.S. enemies to make peace, improve relations and make the world a safer place is a perfectly viable alternative to trying to force them to do what the United States wants by bombing, starving and besieging their people. This is in fact the core principle of the United Nations Charter, and it should be the core principle of Biden’s foreign policy.

Crisis of monarchy over Harry and Meghan dominates UK media

Chris Marsden

“The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan.

“The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. Whilst some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.

“Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members.”

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is joined by Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and at rear, from left, Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex during a reception at Buckingham Palace, London to mark the 50th anniversary of the investiture of the Prince of Wales. March 5, 2019 file photo (Dominic Lipinski/Pool via AP, File)

This was the brief statement issued by Buckingham Palace on March 9, around 40 hours after Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and his wife, Meghan Markle, was broadcast on CNN. It combines expressions of sympathy for the couple and an oblique reference to the issue of race with an insistence that these matters should be addressed privately and the caveat that “some recollections” of events “may vary.”

This failed to dampen a media-driven “debate” on the future of the monarchy, centering on whether it can still be reformed to reflect modern cultural norms or should be abolished. It is hard to give the full flavour of how pathetic and out of touch with social and political realities are the statements made on both sides.

Politicians and celebrities in the US, including tennis star Serena Williams, Beyoncé and lesser-known figures, lined up to express their disappointment that Meghan was not welcomed by the House of Windsor—as if a black princess would prove that an institution rooted in hereditary and class privilege and imperial subjugation was fit for the 21st century. Their every stupid comment was presented as of immense interest.

US first National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman declared pathetically, “Meghan was the Crown’s greatest opportunity for change, regeneration, and reconciliation in a new era. They didn’t just maltreat her light—they missed out on it.” It was, she added, “Unclear if this will change the royal family, but Meghan’s strength will certainly redefine family elsewhere.”

US President Joe Biden limited himself to a statement by his press secretary, Jen Psaki, praising Meghan as someone who came forward to speak about her “struggles with mental health and tell their own personal story, that takes courage and that's certainly something the president believes.”

Easily the most nauseating statement came from Hillary Clinton, who found the interview “heart-rending to watch.” It was also “heartbreaking to see the two of them sitting there having to describe how difficult it was to be accepted, to be integrated, not just into the royal family as they described, but more painfully into the larger societies whose narrative is driven by tabloids that are living in the past.”

This is said during the tenth anniversary of the Libyan war, which saw an eight-month bombardment by the US that left the country in ruins. When then Secretary of State Clinton was told of the torture and murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, this supposedly sensitive soul, who cannot bear the suffering inflicted on the Duke and Duchess, laughed and said, “We came, we saw, he died.”

Open calls for abolishing the monarchy have been very rare and most often equally delusional. The Guardian, for example, featured an opinion piece by Nylah Burton, a “lifestyle writer” at Bustle magazine, that combined fawning on Harry and Meghan with a supposedly radical message. She wrote, “Lashing out at the Windsors is the appropriate response, but it’s my hope that those who were outraged at hearing how Meghan was treated will further interrogate the nature of this institution, and become radicalized into being anti-monarchists and anti-imperialists.”

Burton felt compelled to clarify that “these aren’t the Sussexes’ political stances… there is nothing to indicate that they’d like to abolish the system.” Nevertheless, “If that interview chilled us, we should examine whether we believe a monarchy can or should exist in a just world… we don’t need them to be radicalized for us to use this moment to question everything we thought we knew about this elitist system.”

In the real world, the response of those in power was far more cautious regarding an institution that still occupies a central role in British constitutional and political life.

Internationally, accusations of racism were decried as a political blow to “brand Britain”, especially in the 54 Commonwealth countries, of which Queen Elizabeth is the head of state of 16, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand. But the response was mainly limited to calls for carefully calibrated changes only after the queen steps down.

Former Australian prime minister and leader or the Australian Republican Movement, Malcolm Turnbull, said the interview bolstered his case for breaking away from the British monarchy. But he told ABC, “After the end of the Queen's reign, that is the time for us to say, 'OK, we've passed that watershed.’”

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put her republican posturing to one side and said there was no likelihood of a break from the British monarchy in the near future. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the interview should not have a bearing on Canada’s constitutional status.

Domestically, things were also muted. The Guardian’s editorial, “Heavy is the head that wears the crown”, made the only hint of constitutional change, meekly suggesting, “Whether a hereditary head of state is required today ought to be considered in a programme of reform that the British state clearly—and urgently—needs.”

Elsewhere, Good Morning Britain news presenter Piers Morgan was forced to resign after saying he “didn't believe a word” Meghan said in her interview.

Ian Murray, executive director of the Society of Editors, was also forced to resign after organising an open letter stating that Harry’s description of some British tabloids as “racist” and “bigoted” and a “large part” of why he and his wife had left the UK was “not acceptable” without providing evidence.

Labour MP for Halifax Holly Lynch is one of a number reported to have made preliminary enquiries to see if a House of Commons debate could be held on racism in the media, the mental health strains of persistent press coverage and on further press regulation.

While the media focuses on blanket coverage of the doings of the “royals” at Buckingham Palace and Montecito California, Britain is in the grip of a social and economic crisis of unprecedented dimensions. Figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where COVID-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate show there have now been over 144,000 deaths involving coronavirus in the UK. Over 4 million have been infected, often with serious and long-term consequences.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with other members of the royal family going to church at Sandringham on Christmas Day 2017 (credit: Mark Jones--FlickR, WikiMedia Commons)

Fully 1.3 million children under the age of five are living in poverty. The number of people on Universal Credit benefits has doubled in just a few months to 5.7 million. Another 2 million are still waiting to get on the list.

Payroll numbers have already dropped as much as 5.5 percent in London. Going forward, 274,720 jobs are at risk of being lost following the end of the furlough scheme, according to insolvency analysts. A survey by the Office for National Statistics found that 15 percent of businesses that had not stopped permanently trading had little or no confidence that their business would survive the next three months. That figure rises to 53 per cent in the hospitality sector.

At such a point in history, there is nothing “radical” whatsoever about calls for an end to the monarchy when not framed within a call to mobilise the working class against capitalism and for socialism. Policed and safely presented by the mass media, they act as one of many mechanisms through which social and political discontent is directed into safe political channels that do not threaten the ruling class and the profit system. As the saga is played out to mind-numbing effect, ever more people will see through this bogus “debate”.

Millions at risk in expected Istanbul earthquake

Ozan Özgür

Recent official statements on an expected earthquake in Istanbul underscore that millions of people living in Turkey’s largest city face an impending disaster due to official inaction.

On February 18, officials from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) and the Esenler and Avcılar municipalities presented studies to the Turkish Parliament’s Earthquake Measures Research Commission. The Esenler and Avcılar districts are in the high-risk category.

Members of rescue services search in the debris of a collapsed building for survivors in Izmir, Turkey, early Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Their statements made clear that the dimensions of the destruction caused by an expected earthquake in Istanbul could be much greater than thought.

Speaking at the commission meeting, IMM Deputy Secretary General Mahir Polat said that it is estimated that 200,000 buildings in Istanbul will suffer moderate to severe damage in the expected earthquake. As a result, approximately three million people might be affected.

He said that the figures obtained as a result of building surveillance in the Avcılar region quadrupled previous estimates and doubled those in the Silivri region. “We predict that the number of buildings to be damaged across Istanbul will be double the most optimistic figure,” he said, adding, “The number of buildings in Istanbul built before 2000 is 790,000.”

Tayfun Kahraman, head of the IMM Department of Earthquake Risk Management and Urban Improvement, said that there are 1.16 million buildings in Istanbul. One-fifth will become unusable in a possible major earthquake, and many will risk complete collapse.

Stating that 48,000 buildings are expected to be damaged and risk collapse in a magnitude 7.5 earthquake in Istanbul, Kahraman said that they expect damages to water mains, waste water and natural gas systems in a major earthquake. Residents would also face the threat of severe epidemics, should an earthquake erupt amid a raging COVID-19 pandemic.

However, Haluk Sur, president of the Urban Transformation and Urbanization Foundation (KENTSEV), cited the data of Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute and announced that there are 1,164,000 buildings registered in Istanbul and 4,500,000 residents in those buildings.

According to Sur’s interview with the Anadolu Agency on February 23, 22 percent of all buildings in Istanbul were built before 1980. It is estimated that there are 1,051,000 residences, and 3,152,000 people live in these buildings. Given that even the youngest of these buildings are over 40 years old and many are 50 to 60 years old, residents of these buildings are expected to be at serious risk in a major earthquake.

In fact, many more buildings and people are at risk. After the Marmara earthquake on August 17, 1999, building construction regulations in Turkey were changed. In evaluations made so far for a possible earthquake in Istanbul, the year 2000, when the new regulations and laws went into effect, is taken as a landmark in terms of building construction.

The 790,000 buildings built before 2000 are considered risky in terms of materials and engineering. These buildings contain 3,054,123 residences. If these buildings contained the average number of 3.3 inhabitants per residence that prevails in the Istanbul area, the number of people in danger in an earthquake could be three times higher than the number cited by Sur.

These buildings are, moreover, concentrated in the working class districts of Istanbul.

Turkey is an earthquake-prone country, many of whose cities are built on active faults, and has a disastrous earthquake record. In the 1999 Marmara earthquake, official reports said about 18,000 people lost their lives, and more than 25,000 were injured. Unofficial reports estimated that the real death toll was 50,000, and there were 100,000 injured.

A 2011 earthquake in the eastern province of Van left more than 600 dead and nearly 4,200 injured. In the 6.8 magnitude earthquake in Elazığ on January 24 last year, 41 people died and more than 1,600 were injured. After the 6.9 magnitude earthquake off the Samos Island of Greece on October 30, 2020, 117 people died, 1,034 were injured and 15,000 were left homeless in the Turkish city of Izmir.

As scientists continue to warn of dangers, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) national government as well as municipal governments, including those under the control of the opposition parties, are wasting valuable time and concealing official crimes by preparing only optimistic reports on the earthquake.

While the government undoubtedly bears the main responsibility for this great destruction and death endangering millions of workers, the opposition parties are also complicit in the earthquake disasters caused by the capitalist profit system. Last year, the report prepared by the IMM, controlled by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), claimed that there would be only 14,000 deaths after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Istanbul, where 16 million people live.

“This is not true,” well known geologist Professor Naci Görür stated bluntly, describing the dangers facing millions of working people in Istanbul. “A simple account: there are 1.6 million buildings. Let’s reduce all mortal cases to one percent in Istanbul. This means 16,000 buildings. Suppose that each building has four floors. It means 64,000 floors. If we think two apartments on each floor, it means 128,000 apartments. Put four people in each apartment. Does it exceed 400,000 [deaths]?”

Research carried out especially after the 1999 earthquake shows that the anticipated earthquake on the North Anatolian Fault Line will likely be at least magnitude 7.2 in the Marmara Sea, off Istanbul. This would cause a disaster not only in Turkey’s biggest city, but also in neighboring industrial cities such as Kocaeli, Bursa and Tekirdağ.

Nonetheless, the ruling class and governments from all establishment parties have done nothing against this coming disaster in Istanbul, where 16 million people live, or almost 20 percent of Turkey’s population. Instead of preparing for a massive earthquake that scientists have warned about for years, the wealth created by the workers has been transferred to the capitalist class.

For years especially in Istanbul, “urban transformation,” which has been presented as an earthquake preparedness measure, has been a way to drive working class residents from the city centre and build luxury residences for the affluent. The underlying aim of this policy is not to protect residents from earthquakes but to boost profits for construction firms and enrich the wealthiest layers of society.

At the same time, workers are consigned to districts where buildings are largely older and risk turning into death traps in a major earthquake.

This is all the more politically criminal in that tens of thousands of residences remain empty in Istanbul, and the technology and labor exist to rapidly build hundreds of thousands of homes. Such solutions are not implemented by the ruling class and its political representatives, however, because they cut across the profit interests of the construction firms and the political objectives of the capitalist state.

The Erdoğan government is allocating billions of Turkish liras to a canal project between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea, “Canal Istanbul.” At the same time, construction contractors are receiving billions of liras in tax relief, and hundreds of billions are being transferred to the financial oligarchy in bailout money after the pandemic. It is then claimed that there is no money for urban transformation to save hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives.

The contrast between the capitalist system based on private profit and the basic needs of society was recently revealed in the disastrous official handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent breakdown of electricity supplies is the US state of Texas.

A massive plan of public works is necessary to reconstruct cities across the world threatened by natural disasters based on scientific planning and the highest level of security to provide everyone with the fundamental right to safe housing. The implementation of this solution requires the conscious struggle to transfer power to the working class—in a struggle for international socialism, based on planning global economic life around social needs not private profit.

German financial markets, big companies coin money out of the pandemic

Peter Schwarz

The leadership of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has been stricken with panic following revelations that two of its deputies in the German parliament ( Bundestag ) pocketed six-figure commissions after brokering deals with companies producing medical masks. Both men used their parliamentary mandate for personal gain. The revelations come just days before elections take place in the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate on Sunday and six months before the federal election.

Georg Nüßlein, Nikolas Löbel (Photo: Marta Ifrim / Dkckrls / CC BY-SA)

Georg Nüßlein, a Christian Social Union (CSU) deputy, is alleged to have pocketed a “consulting fee” of 660,000 euros ($US790,000) for the purchase of coronavirus protection masks, while CDU MP Nikolas Löbel took home 250,000 euros for brokering a mask deal. Both finalised the deals through companies they ran. The conservative CDU and CSU form a block known as the Union and both parties, which currently govern Germany in a coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), now fear the wrath of the electorate.

After initially refusing to do so, both Nüßlein and Löbel have since resigned from the Bundestag and Löbel has quit the CDU. Both men came under pressure from the party leadership, which feigned astonishment and horror at their behaviour. The leader of the CDU, Armin Laschet, told ARD television that anyone who engaged in business deals involving the protection of the population in the middle of a crisis did not represent the people and should quit parliament as soon as possible. CSU leader Markus Söder wrote on Twitter: “All those concerned should immediately come clean and draw fundamental consequences.”

CDU parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus also called on the pair to immediately relinquish their mandates. He also did not rule out the possibility of further cases of corruption. “We will use the next few days to clarify all doubtful cases accordingly,” he told ARD. This suggests that Brinkhaus is aware of other cases—perhaps also involving members of other parties.

In fact, the cases of Nüßlein and Löbel are only the tip of the iceberg. The two backbenchers simply carried out practices conducted by others on a much larger scale. CDU leader Laschet was involved in a similar scandal this past spring. In his function as the premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, he ordered protective gowns worth 10,000,000 euros from a company for which his son Johannes works as a lobbyist.

Commissions and brokerage payments are just one way in which the pandemic is being used to coin money. Speculators, big corporations and their political stooges are exploiting every aspect of the crisis to profit from the casualties of the pandemic. Profits always take precedence over people’s health and lives.

This began with the refusal of federal and state governments to impose a strict lockdown. Such a lockdown, as the examples of China and other countries have shown, could have prevented most of the 73,000 COVID 19-related deaths in Germany and 2.6 million worldwide. Instead, the German government never contemplated shutting down production in non-essential industries. In order for factories and other workplaces to continue production, daycare centres, schools and public transport were largely permitted to continue operating.

Not only were the health and lives of children, teachers, bus drivers and workers endangered, they also transported the virus into families and nursing homes, where the old and those already sick were infected. Government experts then claimed that infections were taking place mainly in the private sphere, without asking the obvious question of how the virus got into the private sphere in the first place.

At the same time as they played Russian roulette with the lives of children, teachers and others, the German government, the European Union (EU) and the European Central Bank flooded the financial markets and big corporations with trillions of euros. A fraction of this sum would have been enough to compensate for all the wages lost and the losses incurred by the self-employed and small businesses during a lockdown lasting a number of weeks.

This, however, was never the purpose of the “aid packages.” Rather they generated a windfall for the super-rich. The DAX (German stock index) climbed to one record after another despite the economic slump. Last Wednesday it reached an all-time high of 14,540 points—72 percent higher than its level one year ago when the pandemic began. The total value of the 40 DAX companies has risen by 550 billion to 1.3 trillion euros in just under a year—an orgy of enrichment for investors and speculators.

Auto companies such as VW, Daimler and BMW, which received huge amounts of money from the state to subsidise short-time working and purchase bonuses, are now pouring out billions in dividends, while many workers are forced to live for months on meagre short-time working payments. BMW alone plans to hand out 1.64 billion euros to its shareholders for the past business year. Half of this sum goes to the major shareholders—the Quandt and Klatten families, whose wealth originates from the exploitation of forced labour during Hitler’s Third Reich.

At the same time, the pandemic is being used to press ahead with plans for company rationalisations and job cuts worked out long in advance. According to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute, which takes into account the impact of the pandemic, around 10.5 million workers in Germany will confront fundamental changes to their working lives up to the year 2030. Six-and-a-half million will have to “acquire significant new skills and qualifications or retrain,” while 4 million will have to find new jobs.

The snail’s pace of the vaccination campaign in Germany and Europe, which is crucial to overcoming the pandemic, also results in part from profit interests. Despite the fact that coronavirus vaccines were funded with government money and based on scientific knowledge and technologies developed at public universities, the government has flatly refused to lift patent protection rights or in any way interfere with the profits raked in by pharmaceutical companies.

For the latter, the vaccine is a goldmine. They have a vested interest in keeping the supply scarce and in building up the necessary production capacities only when sales of their vaccines are assured. Although supply contracts worth billions were already signed last summer and autumn, only now are some of the factory facilities necessary for mass production being expanded.

Pfizer and Biontech first offered their vaccine to the EU in June last year for the extortionate price of 54.08 euros per dose, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung on February 18, citing internal documents. For 500 million doses, the companies demanded a total of 27 billion euros. They justified the price by claiming that it should not be based on research and development costs, but rather on the medical benefits of the drug, i.e., the damage the pandemic would cause without vaccination.

According to the Süddeutsche, this was one of the reasons why the contract was not signed until November. A price of 15.50 euros per dose was finally agreed upon, less than one third of the original demand. Nevertheless, Biontech expects a pre-tax profit of 4.4 billion based on sales totaling 6.5 billion euros this year—i.e., a profit margin of 68 percent. The stock market value of the company has correspondingly tripled to 27 billion dollars.

Moderna, founded in 2010, whose vaccine has also been approved and which had a turnover of 60 million dollars in 2019, expects sales of 13.2 billion this year and is now worth 62 billion dollars on the stock market.

Compared to the daylight robbery undertaken by the financial markets, auto companies and vaccine monopolies, the two German deputies, Nüßlein and Löbel, resemble mere pickpockets. Nevertheless, alarm bells are ringing in the party headquarters. They fear that public disclosure of enrichment by elected MPs will cause anger over the federal government’s coronavirus policy to spill over.

This policy, based on the principle of “profits before lives,” is supported by all the parties in Germany’s 16 state governments. In their programmes for the federal election this autumn, they advocate the continuation of the same policy. Even such timid demands as the massive taxation of speculative profits, assets and top incomes are not to be found, let alone the demand for expropriation of the crisis profiteers. All of the political parties represented in the Bundestag are determined to recoup the trillion-dollar handouts to the rich by restoring the country’s “black zero” balanced budget policy at the expense of social spending and wages.

Nearly 10 million US jobs lost one year after start of the pandemic

Shannon Jones

With the one-year anniversary since the start of the economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic fast approaching, new claims for unemployment benefits continued for yet another week at the historically unprecedented level of over 700,000.

Meanwhile, new infections and deaths remain at alarming levels while uncoordinated and incompetent vaccine rollouts leave the vast majority of populations unprotected even as governments absurdly talk of a return to “normalcy.”

People wait in line for help with unemployment benefits at the One-Stop Career Center in Las Vegas in May 2020. (AP)

The US economy has recovered only a little over one-half of the 22 million jobs lost during the pandemic. The official unemployment rate is 6.2 percent, but the real rate is closer to 10 percent when the 4 million people who have dropped out of the labor force, so-called discouraged workers, are counted. There are still over 20 million workers receiving jobless relief of some kind, including 4 million receiving traditional state unemployment benefits and others on emergency pandemic aid authorized by Congress.

New claims for unemployment benefits fell to 712,000 for the week ending March 6, a drop of 42,000 from the previous week, but still a very high number compared to a typical week in 2019 when between 200,000 and 300,000 would apply.

For the past year new weekly unemployment claims have exceeded the high point of the Great Recession of 2008–2009. In addition, there were also 478,000 new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance for the week, a increase of 42,000 over the previous week. PUA was an emergency program enacted by Congress to help the self-employed and others not covered by regular state unemployment benefits.

While 379,000 new jobs were added in February, most of these were in the low-wage leisure and hospitality sector, reflecting the reckless reopening policy of the ruling class. Other sectors such as education and construction showed continued declines.

The weekly unemployment claims report came just as President Biden signed into law the coronavirus relief bill, which calls for an additional $300 per person weekly supplement to unemployment benefits and a one-time $1,400 payment to most US residents.

The weekly supplement is only one-half the amount enacted under the Trump administration in March of last year and $100 less than the $400 initially proposed by the Democrats. The much-heralded gradual rise of the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour got stripped out of the relief bill when Democrats capitulated to a procedural challenge.

Even when one figures in the exemption Congress gave to tax payments on the first $10,200 of unemployment benefits and an expanded child tax credit, the COVID relief provided by Congress is far from adequate to make good the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the stimulus is being presented as a social reform of grand and unprecedented scope, most provisions are limited to less than one year. The pandemic relief package is aimed primarily at preventing a complete collapse in consumer spending and bankruptcy of state and local governments while the Biden administration pursues its deadly reopening agenda. This involves forcing workers back into unsafe factories with the help of the unions while forcing the reopening of schools, a measure that will facilitate the spread of the virus under conditions where new, more deadly variants are emerging.

Eventually the stimulus money will have to be repaid to Wall Street through an assault on the working class of unprecedented savagery, of which the Trump administration was only a foretaste. Indeed there are clear indications that the pandemic is already being used by corporations to restructure, continuing the elimination of relatively well-paid jobs and their replacement with low-wage and contingent employment.

The inadequacy of the stimulus package becomes evident when it is seen in the context of the raging social crisis that has been intensified by the pandemic.

In Nevada, one of the states hit hardest by the economic collapse, which devastated the state’s casino gambling industry, 45 percent of residents are behind on basic bills. The statewide unemployment rate hit 30.1 percent last April, the highest for any state on record for at least the last 44 years. It still stands at 9.2 percent.

A 32-year-old waitress from Las Vegas quoted by the New York Times reported, “I feel pretty scared every day, right now, whenever I think about my bills,” adding, “Basically every morning I wake up thinking about where my help is going to come from—is it here? Is it the government? I don’t really know who is looking out for people like me.”

Another woman told the Times, “Every morning I wake up thinking about where my help is going to come from.”

Larry Scott, the chief operating officer for Three Square Food Bank, the largest in Southern Nevada, told the Times, “Stimulus money shortens the line for food from a food pantry and when it evaporates, the lines get longer again.

“We’re going to have a protracted, long, long recovery here. What the politicians should be concentrating on is more than a short-term solution. Rather than a lot of money at a short time, we should have more money over a longer period of time.”

On March 9, hunger relief organization Feeding America released its initial projections for food insecurity in 2021. Despite various inadequate federal relief programs, the situation for tens of millions of US citizens, including children, remains dire. The organization projects that 42 million people, including 13 million children, that is one out of every six, will experience food insecurity in 2021. Included in that number are 15 million people and 4 million children who could experience reduced food intake and the disruption of eating patterns.

Pointing to the extended nature of the economic crisis, the report noted, “After the Great Recession of 2007, it took 10 years for food insecurity levels to recover to pre-Recession levels. It is likely to take time for food insecurity levels to recover from this recession as well.”

According to US Census Bureau data some 10 million people in the US were behind in their rent and at risk of eviction in the middle of January. An estimated 16 million renters had little to no confidence they could pay rent in February. According to Moody’s Analytics, nearly 12 million renters would have owed an average of $5,850 in back rent as of this past January, over 4 times the $1,400 one-time stimulus payment being issued by the government.

Approximately 1 in 5 renters said they were behind in their rent in January, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget Policies and Priorities, and some 36 percent of black renters say they are behind. However, the recently signed stimulus bill does not extend the federal ban on evictions, which is set to expire at the end of March.

While the stimulus package contained another $25 billion in rental assistance, it is not enough. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, renters owed as much as $70 billion in back rent through the end of December.

Businessman launches Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party in Sri Lanka

V. Gnana

A press conference held in the Jaffna Media Center on Saturday, March 6, announced the formation of the “Sri Lanka Bharatiya Janata Party” (SLBJP), a party aiming to work with India’s violently anti-communist and anti-Muslim, Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Video still from SLBJP press conference (source: SLBJP)

This party was formed amid growing class tensions as the bourgeoisie pursues a herd immunity policy on the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions in the Indian Ocean region between China and Washington’s main regional ally, India. India and China are waging a fierce struggle for economic and strategic influence in Sri Lanka. The formation of this party is a warning that factions within the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie are preparing an escalation of communal and political violence aimed at the working class.

The SLBJP was formed after the Indian government called for the formation of precisely such a party. In February, Tripura Chief Minister, Biplab Deb said Indian Home Minister Amit Shah would form BJP governments not only in India but also in neighboring countries like Sri Lanka and Nepal. He also said that the BJP would back attempts by its Sri Lankan supporters to found a BJP in Sri Lanka. His remarks drew condemnation from ruling circles in Nepal and Sri Lanka.

This weekend, there was no founding conference or founding statements issued, but the March 6 press conference announced that the SLBJP is led by Colombo-based businessman V. Muthusamy. Its secretary is M. Indrajith and its treasurer V. Dilan. Until yesterday, they were politically little known to the public.

At the 27-minute press conference announcing the formation of the party, not a word was said about the Indian or Sri Lankan governments’ malign neglect of the spread of the coronavirus or about the military regime that Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse is building. Rather, Muthusamy pointed to the explosive political crisis emerging in Sri Lanka. Tamil nationalist parties that have closely worked with the Sri Lankan regime in Colombo have been discredited by their complicity in supporting herd immunity, austerity and police-state policies.

Muthusamy demagogically asserted that his party aims to fill the political void left by the crisis of the Tamil nationalist parties. He said, “There are many parties representing the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. However, they deny the fundamental rights of the Tamil people. At the same time, they act with their personal interests in mind. That is why among the Tamil people, these parties are unable to survive. We are launching this for the educational development of Tamil students and to promote the sports sector. I think we can start in Jaffna.”

He added that “a political party is needed” to speak directly with the Sri Lankan government about issues in the SLBJP’s program. “I can meet with anyone on behalf of that party,” he said.

Several journalists at the conference asked why Muthusamy would use the name of a party already established in a neighboring country.

These questions followed warnings from Sri Lankan officials against founding the BJP in Sri Lanka. Before the SLBJP’s launch, Nimal Punchihewa, chairman of the Sri Lanka Electoral Commission, had already responded to Deb’s comments on founding the BJP in Sri Lanka by warning that such a party would be illegal, “Any Sri Lankan political party or group is allowed to have external relations with any party or group abroad. But our electoral laws do not allow foreign political parties to operate here.”

Muthusamy and Indrajith responded to reporters’ questions at the interview by trying to maintain the ludicrous pretense that Sri Lanka’s BJP has nothing to do with India’s BJP. However, they also signaled that they have and will maintain close political ties with the Indian government.

They declared that “Indian parties are not new in Sri Lanka. The Congress Party and the Communist Party are also present here.” They added, “We will not betray the nation; we will not fight against the Sri Lankan government on behalf of India. … Service is our goal, not a struggle, and we will not participate in any struggle.”

Muthusamy denied that his initiative to found the SLBJP was in response to Deb’s statement, with the chief minister of Tripura saying, “The report just arrived. We launched this initiative six months ago.”

At the same time, the SLBJP’s founders made clear their acceptance of the BJP’s Hindu-supremacist, anti-working class program, hailing India’s BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi and refusing to rule out Indian state involvement in their party. Asked what he would do if evidence emerged of future Indian involvement in his party, Muthusamy cynically responded, “Let’s just change the name.”

Asked about his party’s political activities, Indrajith commented, “Initially, I had no intention of getting involved in politics.” While declaring that education and sports were the SLBJP’s priorities, he also hailed Modi and stressed that the SLBJP enjoys the political support of the BJP in India. “Modi’s name is on everyone’s mind,” he said. “The BJP has in no way opposed the creation of a party in the name of the BJP.”

The SLBJP’s founding combines bitter hostility to the working class with close alignment on the intrigues and war threats of Washington and New Delhi against China. It comes after years of mounting class struggles across Sri Lanka, in which Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim workers joined hands in strikes and protests. Now, as the SLBJP is founded, a strike wave is developing across tea plantation areas in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan Tamil nationalists, including Tamil National Party leader K. Shivajilingam and several members of the Tamil National Alliance, previously indicated their support for the founding of the BJP in Sri Lanka. Shivajilingam went so far as to suggest, as he endorsed calls to found a Sri Lankan BJP, that US and Indian troops could then invade and occupy northern Sri Lanka. This points to the close connection between anti-Chinese agitation by the Sri Lankan ruling establishment and its hostility to the working class.

Speaking about the Indian government, Maruthapandi Rameswaran, member of Parliament of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress, recently said, “It is good for you when the government [of India] builds 14,000 houses for you, vaccinates, builds hospitals, gives people gardens. Two or three years ago, they said, ‘we are going to give everything to China.’ Now no such thing will happen.”

In India, at the Tamil Nadu BJP youth conference in Salem, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh warned China, “We will not give up an inch of this land as long as my body is alive.” He also boasted that India built 27,000 new houses for war-affected people and that Modi was the first Indian prime minister to visit Jaffna since 2015. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi will work with dedication to ensure that Tamils in Sri Lanka live in peace, equality and dignity.”

In fact, the BJP has responded to mounting strikes, farmers protests and protests against its anti-Muslim laws with brutal and bloody repression.