The Perils of Military 5G

Karl Grossman

Demonstrations will be held this coming Friday and Saturday protesting the deployment of 5G—a technology that, among other issues, presents huge health risks by blanketing the Earth with radiation resulting in cancer and other illnesses, encourages satellite collisions generating space debris, causes depletion of the ozone layer by the huge number of launches planned, and is a major factor in the weaponization of space.

A key aim of the U.S. military is utilizing 5G for “re-targeting” the hypersonic missiles it has been developing—missiles that fly at five times the speed of sound so guiding their trajectories must occur with extreme rapidity.

A “5G SpaceX Satellite Protest” is to be held Friday, March 19 at the headquarters of SpaceX in Hawthorne, California. SpaceX, of which Elon Musk is founder and CEO.

Information on the California protest is available here.

SpaceX is deeply involved in launching the small satellites being placed in low-earth orbit for 5G. Last week, it launched a rocket carrying another 60 and plans to send up tens of thousands in the next few years in a program SpaceX has named “Starlink.” Also, as part of “Starlink,” SpaceX last year was given permission by the Federal Communications Commission to erect up to one million antennas on earth to serve as transceivers linked to the satellites.

On Saturday, March 20, a “5G Global Protest Day” will be held with protests planned around the world. Information on the “5G Global Protest Day” is available here.

Says Julie Levine, coordinator of the organization 5G Free California: “The planet is calling out to us. If ever there was an existential crisis on earth, we are in it now. Please join us in taking action.”

The term 5G represents what is described as a fifth-generation of wireless communication technology. The drive for it has been intense. There has been a barrage in recent times of advertising by telecommunications companies for 5G.

And, with the military component a large factor, there’s been a big Pentagon push.

Dafna Tachover, director of Stop 5G and Wireless Harms Project of the organization Children’s Health Defense, says: “Science on the health risks of wireless radiation has been accumulating for decades. Heedless of the dangers, government and the telecommunications—‘telecom’—industry continue to propagate wireless technologies and infrastructure, helped along by captive regulatory agencies and successful efforts—including legislative—to silence public debate about health effects. At the same time, media campaigns and apps designed to addict the public—and especially children—have been effective in generating consumer enthusiasm. As a result, the wireless transformation has been hugely profitable.”

Epidemiologist Dr. Devra Davis, founder and president of the Environmental Health Trust, says: “The transmissions to and from proposed 5G wireless installations are radiofrequency emissions that are an environmental pollutant found to cause cancer in both experimental animals and humans, DNA damage, neurological damage and other adverse health and environmental effects, e.g., on birds, bees, and trees, according to internationally recognized authoritative research. The prestigious institutions that have conducted these studies include the U.S. National Toxicology Program, the nation’s premier testing institute, and the Ramazzini Institute, a foremost testing center in Italy.”

Dr. Davis notes that “an immediate moratorium on 5G” has been “called for by more than 400 scientists and supported by thousands of medical doctors,” as cited in a court challenge last year by the Environmental Health Trust to the Federal Communications Commission’s actions—and inaction—on 5G.

Moreover, she says, “Wired technologies such as fiber or coaxial cable are far superior to wireless as they are faster, more reliable, resilient, energy-efficient, and more easily defended from cyber-attacks. Above all, wired connections are significantly less hazardous to our health and to other life forms with whom we share this planet.”

In a Scientific American article, Dr. Joel Moskowitz, director of the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, states: “The latest cellular technology, 5G, will employ millimeter waves for the first time in addition to microwaves that have been used for older cellular technologies, 2G through 4G. Given limited reach, 5G will require cell antennas every 100 to 200 meters, exposing many people to millimeter wave radiation.”

His article, titled “We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe,” further notes that “we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G” and “little is known about the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research.”

Dr. Moskowitz asks: “As a society, should we invest hundreds of billions of dollars deploying 5G, a cellular technology that requires the installation of 800,000 or more new cell antenna sites in the U.S. close to where we live, work and play?”

“What 5G means to the military”—was the headline of an extensive article this past December on the Military & Aerospace Electronics website. It began: “Emerging fifth-generation wireless communications—better-known as 5G—will be far more than quick-connect phone calls and fast movie downloads, particularly for the U.S. military.”

“5G holds the promise of ubiquitous high-speed data connectivity; vastly improved intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; fast and secure command and control; more efficient logistics; swarming unmanned vehicles; and wide use of virtual reality and augmented reality,” the piece states.

“The promise of 5G is for instant situational awareness anywhere on earth, smart hypersonic weapons with re-targeting on-the-fly, rich access to mission-critical data on the leading edge of the battlefield,” the article declares.

The “re-targeting on-the-fly” is critical for the newly-developed hypersonic missiles—the first test of which occurred last March 19th from the U.S. military’s Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii. Hypersonic missiles fly at some 3,600 miles per hour or one mile per second. A “re-targeting on-the-fly” thus needs to happen with great quickness. The hypersonic missiles are “nuclear capable.”

The U.S. is seeking to acquire “volumes of hundreds or even thousands” of “stealthy” hypersonic missiles, reported an article last year in Aviation Week & Space Technology.

“Military experts foresee that the 5G system will play an essential role for the use of hypersonic weapons—missiles, including those bearing nuclear warheads, which travel at a speed superior to Mach 5…in order to guide them on variable trajectories, changing direction in a fraction of a second to avoid interceptor missiles,” says an article headed “The Hidden Military Use of 5G Technology.” Written by Manlio Dinucci, it first appeared in 2019 in the Italian web newspaper, Il Manifesto, with an English version published by Global Research.

The article cites a report, “Defense Applications of 5G Network Technology,” issued by “the Defense Science Board, a federal committee which provides scientific advice for the Pentagon.” It quoted the report as stating: “The emergence of 5G technology, now commercially available, offers the Department of Defense the opportunity to take advantage, at minimal cost, of the benefits of this system for its own operational requirements.”

“DOD Announces $600 Million for 5G Experimentation and Testing at Five Installations” was the heading of a Department of Defense press release. “Today, the Department of Defense announced $600 million in awards for 5G experimentation and testing at five U.S. military test sites, representing the largest full-scale tests for dual-use applications in the world,” said the press release. The term “dual-use” is common in the U.S. space program standing for a program that has both a civilian and military purpose.

“The Department of Defense is at the forefront of cutting edge 5G testing and experimentation, which will strengthen the Nation’s warfighting capabilities as well as U.S. economic competitiveness in this critical field,” the press release went on.

It identified the five 5G test sites as: Hill Air Force Base in Utah; Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington; Marine Corps Logistics Base in Georgia; Naval Base San Diego in California; and Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

“Pentagon Looks to Tap 5G in Space,” was the headline summing up the U.S, military’s 5G drive of an article in February 2021 on the website Defense One.

As for the military component of 5G, Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space — www.space4peace.org — said in an interview: “It is no surprise that the corporate media is pushing 5G so widely and eagerly—without the slightest bit of critical thought.”

“The Pentagon knows that faster speeds from 5G will enable greater space surveillance, targeting, and offensive military operations as a result,” he noted.

“Launches of tens of thousands of 5G satellites will ensure that every person on Earth will have a satellite over their head 24/7,” Gagnon continued. “Imagine the surveillance and targeting capabilities that would become available.  And the taxpayer is fronting much of the money. The DOD and NASA are awarding hundreds of billions of dollars to the likes of Elon Musk of Space X and other private launch corporations to hoist the 5G satellites into the heavens.”

“There is an additional downside to all of these 5G satellite launches,” says Gagnon of the Maine-based international organization. “With each launch the resulting toxic rocket fuel is punching a larger hole in our planetary ozone layer which exacerbates the climate crisis. In addition, the orbital parking lots, which are already quite crowded, are quickly filling up which will become a point of conflict in the near future as other nations become agitated that the U.S. is grabbing most of the parking spaces in the increasingly contested orbits.’

Points out Gagnon: “There is presently no national or international regulation over the use of space. Not only is this a worry, because of the resulting increase in dangerous space debris, but one must recognize that humankind is creating a deadly new arena of competition and military confrontation.”

“It is up to all of us,” says Gagnon, “to speak out and demand that NASA, the Federal Communications Commission, the United Nations and the Pentagon quickly undertake a process of fair regulation of space launch operations.  If not done immediately we will face a cascade of deadly collisions and even war in space.”

“There are many reasons to oppose 5G—health impacts, environmental impacts, loss of the night sky which is angering astronomers—but the military use of 5G is possibly the worst,” says Gagnon, “as it needlessly accelerates the already huge concern about keeping space for peace.”

The Stop 5G International announcement on Saturday’s “5G Global Protest Day” includes a “Stop5G International Declaration” which relates: “We envision and seek to ensure a world where 5G, 6G or any other ‘G’ is replaced by safe technology that has undergone scrutiny to ensure the health and well-being of all life on the planet before being unleashed. We envision and seek to ensure a world where the health and well-being of all life takes precedence over corporate self-gain.”

The announcement also states: “The Heavens, our planet’s last precious frontier, are not a commodity to be bought and sold and degraded for private commercial gain; but rather, they are Sacred and held in public trust; and we stewards here on planet Earth are legally and ethically responsible for their wise and careful exploration.”

StopG International has prepared an “Open Letter to Elon Musk & SpaceX” which it is asking individuals and organizations to sign on to. It declares: “We are writing to you at this time because SpaceX is in the process of surrounding the Earth with a network of thousands of satellites whose very purpose is to irradiate every square inch of the Earth. SpaceX, like everyone else, is treating the radiation as if it were not there….We write to you today to ask you to halt the Starlink project because it is so destructive.”

There is also a 5G International Legal Action Network led by attorneys Julian Gresser and Amber Yang which has advanced an “Healthy Heavens Trust Declaration.” It explains, “We are a professional network of lawyers and relevant experts, dedicated to redirecting the 5G Juggernaut toward balance and wisdom. Our species is rushing toward a future that feeds our addiction to speed, instant gratification, energy consumption, and disconnection from Earth. By creatively working together, we have a chance to cause a shift.”

The Simple Rules of Wealth Inequality

Bob Lord

A great deal of confusion surrounds America’s extreme inequality, what causes this inequality, and how we can check and then reverse it.

That needn’t be. Ultimately, economic inequality comes down to the concentration of wealth at the top, and we can explain the dynamics of that concentration in a few simple rules — and one not so simple, but understandable, computation.

Rule One: For those at the top, every tax is a wealth tax.

In America, we have many types of taxes. We have income taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes, and estate taxes. For most of us, how we’re taxed matters. Sales taxes impact our spending decisions. Income taxes impact how hard we work, how much we save, and when we retire.

For those at the top, the type of tax doesn’t matter so much. From the perspective of the wealthy, every tax amounts to a wealth tax. Why should that be the case? Income, sales, and other existing taxes don’t particularly influence the spending decisions the wealthy make or such mundane judgments — to them — as how many hours they work, when they may be able to retire, or whether they need the additional income from a spouse’s job.

Our existing taxes only impact the wealth of our ultra-wealthy. Tax payments, to be more specific, only determine how fast or how slow the wealth of the wealthy grows.

Rule Two: Wealth concentrates at the top when we have insufficiently taxed wealth.

Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has one core takeaway, the simple notion that the wealth of those at the top will grow at a rate faster than the rate of growth for a nation’s overall wealth, unless taxes on the wealthy reach a sufficiently high level.

The reason? The super-wealthy have built-in advantages over the rest of us when it comes to growing wealth. They hire professionals to manage their investments. They have the financial wherewithal to make high-yielding investments — provide the seed money for a promising start-up, for instance — that the rest of us don’t have the resources to make. And the living expenses of the ultra-wealthy consume only a tiny portion of their wealth compared to the rest of us.

Only stiff taxation on the rich can level the wealth accumulation playing field.

Rule Three: Wealth doesn’t concentrate when the rich pay their fair share of taxes.

Politicians and pundits often tell us that the rich must pay their fair share of tax. Nobody disputes that point. The dispute centers on how we define “fair share.”

Let’s start our defining here: Society suffers when wealth continually concentrates at the top. If the rich are increasing their wealth at a rate faster than society at large, the concentration will continue. Inequality will become more extreme, to the detriment of most all members of that society.

So when are the rich paying their fair share in tax? They’re paying that fair share when wealth is no longer concentrating at the top. Over the past four decades, unfortunately, American tax policy has offered a shining example of the exact opposite. We’ve had a tax system that has sped the concentration of wealth. Since 1980, our tax policy in the United States has taxed work more and wealth less. As a direct result, taxes on America’s wealthy have declined dramatically.

A recent Institute for Policy Studies briefing paper estimates that billionaire tax payments, as a percentage of their wealth, have dropped by an astounding 79 percent since 1980.

We can, fortunately, measure how tax policy is impacting wealth concentration and, in the process, estimate how far short of “fair share” the taxes rich people pay end up falling.

Suppose the aggregate wealth of a nation doubles over a given period and, during that same period, the wealth of the nation’s topmost group — say the top .01 percent — quadruples. Without knowing anything else, we’d know that the top .01 percent’s share of that nation’s wealth has doubled over that period. Similarly, if the wealth of the nation’s top .01 percent had increased eight-fold while the country’s aggregate wealth merely doubled, we’d know that the wealth share of that nation’s top .01 percent had quadrupled.

That’s roughly what happened in America over the last four decades. In 2018, the wealth of the average American ran about 8.4 times the wealth of the average American in 1980. But the wealth of the average top .01 percenter in 2018 ran 35 times the top .01 percenter average in 1980. Do the division: 35 divided by 8.4 matches up to slightly more than a four-fold increase in the wealth share of the top .01 percent: from 2.3 percent in 1980 to 9.6 percent in 2018.

That’s runaway wealth concentration — and increasingly extreme inequality — in action.

Things didn’t have to work out that way. They would have not worked out that way if we taxed the wealthy more heavily.

Between 1950 and 1980, we did tax the wealthy more heavily. The wealth of the average American in 1980 ran approximately five and a half times the wealth of the average American in 1950. The wealth of the average top .01 percenter in 1980, meanwhile, also ran about five and a half times the wealth of the average top .01 percenter in 1950. The end result: Top .01 percenters had the same share of the nation’s wealth in 1980 as they had in 1950: 2.3 percent.

At that level of wealth concentration, the average top .01 percenter held about 230 times as much wealth as the average American. In dollar terms today, a 2.3 percent wealth share for the top .01 percent would have fewer than 13,000 households sharing over $2.5 trillion in wealth, an average wealth of approximately $200 million per household.

American society found that level of wealth concentration far from ideal, but tolerable. The more than four-fold increase in wealth concentration since 1980, by contrast, has been intolerable.

How did that transformation occur? America’s tax policy changed radically. After three full decades at the “fair share rate”, the tax payments required of America’s wealthiest dropped precipitously. The taxes paid by top .01 percenters, as a percentage of their wealth, dropped more than four percentage points below the fair share rate — the rate that would have prevented American wealth from concentrating at the top.

Put another way, tax policy in America between 1950 and 1980 kept wealth of the average member of the top .01 percent at 230 times the net worth of the average American. Then, changes in tax policy allowed the wealth of America’s average top .01 percenter to increase to 960 times the wealth of the average American.

If we’re ever going to stop — and reverse — America’s extreme inequality, the radical tax policies of the past four decades must change and must change soon.

The University Deception: Rankings and Academic Freedom

Binoy Kampmark

Forget the global university rankings of any list.  The global university promotion exercise is filled with snake oil and perfumed refuse, an effort to corrupt the unknowing and steal from the gullible.  The aim here is to convince parents, potential students and academics that their institutions of white collar crime are appealing enough to warrant enrolment and employment at.

Writing in 2019, Ellen Hazelkorn, who has had an eye on the rankings system for some years, observed that 18,000 university-level institutions could be found across the globe.  “Those ranked within the top 500 would be within the top 3% worldwide. Yet, by a perverse logic, rankings have generated a perception amongst the public, policymakers and stakeholders that only those within the top 20, 50 or 100 are worthy of being called excellent.”

Rankings are complicated by a range of factors: methodological problems in arriving at the figure, what institutions themselves submit, their wealth (endowments, well moneyed donors, grants received) and age (old ties, networks), and, fundamentally, what is being asked of that institution.  Such grading systems have been found, as Nancy Adler and Anne-Wil Harzing describe it, to be “dysfunctional and potentially cause more harm than good”.

One factor that does not find itself into the rankings bonanza is that of academic freedom.  This surely would be one of the primary considerations in what is irritatingly called the “knowledge economy”.  None of the three most consulted registers – the QS rankings, Times Higher Education or the Shanghai Academic Rankings of World Universities – makes mention of it.

This has obvious implications.  Higher education institutions in countries where repression, censorship, surveillance and punishment of academics are condoned do not need to worry about being compromised in the climb up the ladder. An obvious example is the application of the Chinese National Security Law to Hong Kong, which has seen entities such as the Chinese University of Hong Kong sever ties with the freshly elected student union.  Campus events at both CUHK and the University of Hong Kong have also been cancelled for fears of violating the NSL.

The PRC is merely an obvious example.  Countries supposedly romping home in any academic freedom contest also face questions.  In Australia, thuggish administrators and academic turncoats are moving in on crushing the contrarians, reducing the entire teaching syllabus and research agenda to the drool of wonky projections and outcomes.  The idea is simple: You must be decent and liked, boringly acceptable in discourse and compliant in observing directives from management.  The project is guaranteed through such slime-coated documents as the “code of conduct”, which is meant to make everyone good by keeping education and incompetence in the higher echelons of university governance safe.  Discomfort is eschewed; different thoughts suppressed.

Australian learning and research institutions, as in other developed countries, have been tempted by various powerful financial incentives – money from Chinese sources, for instance – to make any campus criticism difficult.  Last year, the University of Queensland took a dim view of the protest efforts of student activist, Drew Pavlou citing 11 allegations of misconduct in a bulky 186-page document befitting any show trial process.  Pavlou was suspended for “prejudicing” the university’s reputation by, in his words, “using my position as an elected student representative to express support for Hong Kong’s democratic protesters.”  UQ’s Vice Chancellor Peter Høj was damning in silence, telling the university’s alumni in a July 17, 2020 email that UQ lived and breathed “an ongoing commitment to the protection and promotion of free speech every day.”

A number of scholars and activists have suggested an institutional corrective to the deceptive picture of rankings.  The Academic Freedom Index is one such proposal, developed by members of the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), the Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), the Scholars at Risk Network and the V-Dem Institute.

In their report Free Universities: Putting the Academic Freedom Index Into Action, Katrin Kinzelbach, Ilyas Saliba, Janika Spannagel and Robert Quinn hope to “bring a rights and freedoms perspective into debates on higher education governance and policy.”  They make the point that academic excellence and reputation are currently considered mere functions of outputs in the current scheme.  “As a result, institutions in repressive environments have climbed the reputation ladder and now occupy the top ranks.”  Confidently, the authors make the claim that featuring an adjusted rank “would lower the chances for institutions constrained by such restrictive environments to improve their international reputations and attract academic talents”.

The AFi is also drawn from 2,000 experts who were asked to contribute on various indicators “in the de facto realization of academic freedom”: the freedom to teach and research; freedom of academic exchange and dissemination; institutional autonomy; campus integrity; and freedom of academic and cultural expression.

As with any index, questions will be asked about what is left out.  There is also something inherently artificial in the exercise of correcting a ranking using the AFi measure.  Even the contributors to the report admit to not knowing “enough about academic freedom and the factors that sustain or threaten it.”  Declining levels of academic freedom are noted in Belarus, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and Zambia; Gambia is earmarked as being stellar for permitting scholars’ freedom to collaborate and disseminate their findings.

As Saliba explained, most states which had witnessed a deterioration of academic freedom relative to 2019 were those implementing “novel regulations that limit freedom to research, teach and publish” and initiated “repressive political acts against pro-democracy movements with a strong base among students and faculty.”  These are conventional measures, and do not consider the more subtle forms of suppression and regulation to be found in various Western states.  Australian institutions, for instance, maintain their undeservingly high rankings, suggesting that much more needs to be done to make the index accurate.

A recommendation to the collective can be suggested.  One of the most potent threats to the academy lies in the commercial and corporate bureaucratisation of the university, suggesting that the very notion of rankings, drawn from a global knowledge economy parceled in the language of outcomes, is not only misplaced but deeply flawed.  The AFi has merit on some level, but does not shed light on the more sinister policies focused on reputation management.  In its current form, the index risks becoming a tool for managers keen to show they are making changes which leave no substantive effect.

Germany: Open schools, day-care centres and businesses increase risk of new coronavirus variants

Gregor Link

New daily coronavirus infections are rising steadily again in Germany, as well as in France, Poland, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands. Previously, the numbers of infections and deaths had fallen to a level corresponding to the peak of the first wave.

The R-value, which indicates the incidence of infection eight to 16 days ago, is currently back at 1.26 (compared to 0.96 only three days ago). Although only 7 percent of the population has received an initial vaccination and of these people only one in two is fully immunised, the federal and state governments are systematically lifting the remaining protective measures. In this way, they are setting the course for mass fatalities that goes far beyond what has happened so far.

The widespread and comprehensive reopening of primary schools three weeks ago has resulted in the incidence rate among primary school children officially exceeding the average rate for the population as a whole for the first time. Among 0-to-four-year-olds, the incidence rate has risen from 48 to 60 in 100,000 within one week, according to the RKI’s current situation report. Among five-to-nine-year-olds, the incidence rose from 54 to 72 and among 10-to-14-year-olds from 51 to 62.

School children in Frankfurt (Michael Probst / The Associated Press)

In the German capital Berlin, the incidence rate among children under four years of age has more than doubled in the past fortnight. Among five-to-nine-year-olds, it rose from 41 to 77 and in the 10-to-14-year-old age group from 32 to 75.

Robert Koch Institute (RKI) head Lothar Wieler described the increase in cases of infection among the under-15s since mid-February as “very rapid.” At the same time, he noted that more outbreaks were currently being observed at day-care centres than in the period before Christmas, when a wave of 1,000 deaths per day occurred.

A map compiled by a teacher from North Rhine-Westphalia, providing a geographical overview in which reports from parents and teachers are entered, lists a total of 147 “school clusters” for the period “from February 2021,” including 58 infection clusters with “3 to 9 infections” and at least five mass outbreaks “with 10 or more infected persons.” In the same period, 110 “day-care clusters with mutated virus strains” were reported.

In an interview with the Rhein-Zeitung, Leipzig epidemiologist Markus Scholz reported a “tripling of infections” in Saxony and urgently warned against further school openings: “In our state, not even four weeks after schools reopening, we see the number of cases exploding among children and adolescents.”

At the press conference, RKI’s head Wieler also explicitly named the B.1.1.7 variant, which is now responsible for a total of 55 percent of infections, as a possible reason for the explosion of infections at day-care centres. A recent publication in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal ) concludes that the virus strain is more contagious than the original type and is associated with a 64 percent higher mortality.

Yet despite the exponential spread of this highly dangerous variant and hundreds of outbreaks at day-care centres and schools, the deadly reopening policy is to be further intensified in the coming days and weeks. After the chairperson of the Conference of State Education Ministers, Britta Ernst (Social Democratic Party, SPD), declared on Friday that there was a nationwide “consensus” to bring all pupils back to school “before the end of March,” the state governments are outdoing each other with their life-threatening reopening plans.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, schools are to reopen completely as early as March 15. This is despite the fact it is “quite possible” that there “will be no testing for pupils in the coming week,” as Education Minister Yvonne Gebauer (Free Democratic Party, FDP) flatly declared. For the 2.5 million pupils in the state, they plan to provide a total of 1.8 million tests by the Easter holidays.

From Berlin, the Tagesspiegel reported on Friday that the Greens, the Left Party and SPD-led education administration agree to implement “the reopening of schools to all classes” as soon as possible, i.e., without the necessary protection. By Tuesday, grades four to six are to be attending school again.

Meanwhile, in Baden-Württemberg, ruled by a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Greens, fifth and sixth graders are to return to in-person learning in full classes today, without protection against infection and without mass testing. In Saxony, too, the 240,000 pupils in secondary schools are to return to school without regular testing, although state Education Minister Christian Piwarz (CDU) had promised the timely provision of tests only a few days ago. There is not even a voluntary testing option for grades 5 and 6.

Bavaria is even planning to open primary schools in “coronavirus hotspots,” i.e., in districts and cities with a seven-day incidence above the devastating mark of 100 cases per 100,000. State Education Minister Michael Piazolo spoke of a “pilot experiment” with additional tests, but strictly rejected “compulsory testing,” i.e., a systematic investigation of the incidence of infection. In Rhineland-Palatinate, where the incidence rate is currently lower than in other federal states, the government had introduced alternate in-person and at home teaching for primary school pupils on February 22.

These policies threaten countless lives and fly in the face of any scientific assessment of the pandemic.

Virologist Melanie Brinkmann told the press on Thursday that she was “appalled” by the decision to “open up schools—without a testing concept—given the current high incidence rates in Germany.” She said the current decision was an “intellectual insult to everyone,” which would lead to “intensive care units filling us up” and the country “rushing” into a third wave. “I feel let down there as a citizen with old parents, on the one hand, and three school-age children, on the other.” Back in February, Brinkmann had warned, in the event of extensive reopenings, 180,000 people under the age of 60 in Germany would not see the next spring—including children.

The prestigious medical journal The Lancet published an open letter from scientists on Wednesday titled, “School reopening without robust COVID-19 mitigation risk accelerating the pandemic.” The letter cites modelling studies by the University of Warwick and Imperial College London that suggest the school reopening scenarios proposed in the UK will be associated with “at least 30,000 more deaths from COVID-19.” The scientists conclude, “Reopening fully in the setting of high community transmission without appropriate safeguards” provides “fertile ground for virus evolution and new variants.”

A commentary by immunology professors Daniel Altmann and Rosemary Boyton in the medical journal BMJ further warns of the risk of COVID-19’s long-term effects on children (“Long COVID syndrome”) in light of the schools reopening. The article refers to national research according to which 79,000 of those affected by Long COVID in the UK are “less than 19 years old.” The symptoms are similar to those of older people: “fatigue, shortness of breath, joint pain, rashes, headaches.”

The authors also recall the “high prevalence of asymptomatic spread” among children and adolescents and point out that the resumption of classes was always accompanied by “jumps in the R-value.” Overall, the researchers say, children play “a significant role” in carrying the virus “into the community and to older relatives.” The BMJ had called the governments’ pandemic policy “social murder” in February, citing the writings of socialist Friedrich Engels.

“I seriously wonder who doesn’t notice the connection between the day-care/school reopenings and the case numbers rising again,” educator Raphael W. told the World Socialist Web Site. “As an educator, how are you supposed to feel about working every day with children from whom you can’t keep your distance? Even before coronavirus, many children came to school or day-care sick. If I wanted to work with serious illnesses and potential risk of infection, I would have chosen a different profession. The kids are the only reason I still do the work at all.”

“Parents and educators find out a day in advance what the phase is for the next three days,” Raphael continued. “Instead of adjusting our salary to the importance of our job, we are asked to put our health, our lives and those of our loved ones on the back burner. Add to that the bad press that constantly screams ‘open up!’ and suggests that we are lazy. The fact that educators have one of the highest incidence rates, don’t keep their distance and can’t demand it because of the children doesn’t occur to them.”

Raphael’s experience is supported by comprehensive health data. Recent figures from Techniker-Krankenkasse (TK)—the largest public health insurance company in Germany—have confirmed that workers in social professions have the highest risk of contracting COVID-19.

For example, nurses, educators and occupational therapists are more than twice as likely to be on sick leave due to coronavirus than the average person with health insurance. Special needs teachers, doctors, social workers and paramedics are also particularly severely affected. Teachers, who are not covered by the TK statistics, are just below day-care workers, according to figures obtained by the authorities from broadcaster NDR. A study by health insurer AOK in October had come to comparable results.

While contact restrictions apply in the private sphere, “I am forced to have contact with 200 households per week while on duty,” says teacher Simone E. in a Facebook group for teachers from all over Germany. “Because of the lack of pre-quarantine, I was not able to celebrate Christmas with my elderly parents. I am still very angry about that.”

Before Christmas, Simone reports, “we teachers mutated into auxiliary police officers: Mask checks, supervision, toilet guard, following up contacts—with all the conflicts that entails. I won’t do that anymore, I’m not a soldier.” The few rapid tests available “provide relative safety for three to five hours and yet only serve to pull the wool over parents’ eyes,” Simone concludes. “I don’t do that kind of thing.”

Instead, Simone advocates the continuation of at-home teaching: “Distance learning is the finest hour for the quiet ones and a fiasco for class clowns. My students can learn well in distance learning. They also dare to write and say more at home than in the group.”

The devastating impact of the 10-year US-orchestrated war on Syria

Jean Shaoul

March 15 marks a decade since the start of the campaign by Washington and its regional allies to topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Obama administration utilised anti-government protests in several Syrian cities that were suppressed with lethal force in March 2011, as in Libya before it, as the pretext for a large-scale operation in pursuit of its geo-strategic interests—against a regime with which it had long been at odds.

In a chorus of moral outrage, the United Nations, the US and the European Union all condemned Syria’s crackdown while issuing only pro-forma criticisms of far worse repression in allied states Bahrain and Yemen, amid the broader upsurge of the working class in the region that became known as the Arab Spring.

The U.S. launched an attack on Damascus, Syria on April 14, 2018. U.S. President Donald Trump announced airstrikes in retaliation for the country's alleged use of chemical weapons. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

The CIA and Washington’s regional allies—the Gulf petro-monarchs, Turkey and Israel—financed, sponsored, trained and aided a succession of Islamist militias as their proxies to carry out the task of unseating Assad. These Sunni sectarian forces, some of whom like al-Nusra Front were linked to al-Qaeda, were ludicrously hailed as “revolutionaries.”

A plethora of pseudo-left groups, including France’s New Anti-Capitalist Party, Britain’s Socialist Workers Party, and the US’s International Socialist Organisation (now dissolved into the Democratic Socialists of America, a faction of the Democratic Party) and academics such as the University of Michigan’s Juan Cole and the School of African and Oriental Studies’ Gilbert Achcar, also hailed these “revolutionaries,” in many cases discredited former regime figures. No attempt was made to describe their political programme or to explain why feudal Gulf despots who outlaw all opposition to their rule at home would support a progressive revolution abroad.

Despite this assistance, these opposition forces proved unable to topple Assad, testifying to the lack of popular support for their far-right, often jihadist politics.

Today, the situation in Syria, formerly a middle-income country, is in UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s words a “living nightmare,” where, “The scale of the atrocities shocks the conscience.”

The appalling suffering produced by imperialist warmongering—other than that in the opposition-held Idlib province—has largely been ignored by the world’s media. The fighting has led to the deaths of more than 400,000 people. It has spawned the world’s largest refugee and displacement crisis, forcing around 5.6 million people to flee the country, with another 6.1 million displaced within Syria. Nearly 11.1 million people—around 60 percent of the population—need humanitarian assistance.

About half of those affected by the refugee crisis are children. Half the children have never lived a day without war. Their life expectancy has fallen 13 years. More than half a million children under the age of five in Syria suffer from stunting due to chronic malnutrition. Nearly 2.45 million children in Syria and a further 750,000 Syrian children in neighbouring countries are out of school.

According to a recent report by World Vision, the war has cost the Syrian economy a massive $1.2 trillion in lost GDP. Worse is yet to come with 60 percent of the population likely to face hunger this year as the cost of an average food basket rose by over 230 per cent in the last twelve months.

As a reader in the capital Damascus told the World Socialist Web Site, life is a daily struggle just to get basics like food and fuel. Bread at affordable prices is in short supply. A wheat exporter before the war, Syria saw its growing areas seized by militias that prevented farmers from selling their produce to the government, smuggled wheat out of Syria, and resorted to burning the land of farmers who objected, forcing the government to import wheat. While the government has set up a smart card rationing system to distribute bread at subsidised prices, it means standing in line for more than four hours. The alternative is bread at ten times the price.

Syria used to export small amounts of oil, but after armed groups took control of the oil producing areas, it had to import oil. While gasoline and diesel are also distributed via a smart card, it means waiting for hours, often to find that supplies have run out. As a result, the streets are largely traffic free. The lack of electricity has affected production while factories have been unable to replace equipment and machines destroyed in the war, compounding unemployment and economic hardship.

Even in relatively upscale areas in Damascus, the city least affected by the war, electricity is available for just three hours at a time. Power cuts last much longer in the countryside and in other cities.

The cost of a kilo of meat has risen to 25,000 lira, equal to half the average monthly wage, while the cost of chicken, eggs, fruit and vegetable has soared due to the plummeting currency—the lira trades at 4,000 to the dollar compared to 50 in 2010—high transport costs, and rampant profiteering.

Our reader concluded, “While everything is available in Damascus for those who have money, the poor and those on low incomes, more than 75 percent of the population, suffer terribly.”

The authorities have officially recorded around 16,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 1,000 deaths. Figures are widely assumed to be a gross underestimate with President Bashas al-Assad and his wife both testing positive recently.

According to the International Rescue Committee, only 64 percent of hospitals and 52 percent of primary health care centres are functioning, while 70 percent of healthcare workers are believed to have fled the country as healthcare facilities became targets for the rival militias. Some 84 percent of healthcare workers reported that attacks on health care directly affected them, their team or their patients, while 81 percent know of patients or colleagues who were killed in attacks.

One in four health professionals witnessed attacks that left facilities beyond repair, with many setting up alternatives in places such as caves, private homes and underground cellars. The situation has been compounded by US sanctions preventing medical supplies and equipment reaching the country. All this has left 12 million Syrians in need of health assistance. Around one third require routine reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health services.

Guterres, and almost all the western media and analysts, blamed the country’s economic collapse on a combination of “conflict, corruption, sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic.” This is a flat out lie.

The proxy war in Syria was bound up with decades of military and covert operations, sanctions and other economic measures by the US and its allies in the resource-rich Middle East that have devastated not just Syria, but Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, as well as Iran and Lebanon.

The US-orchestrated intervention was in large part driven by Washington’s efforts to isolate Iran, Syria’s chief ally in the region, and cut it off from its ally Hezbollah, the bourgeois clerical group in Lebanon. It came amid the discovery of significant offshore oil and gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean, including in Syria and Lebanon’s territorial waters.

Even as Assad, with the help of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, regained control of most of the country, the situation did not improve. The Trump administration sought to ramp up the economic pressure on Damascus by implementing economic sanctions against Syria. This drastically increased the demand for dollars, led to a massive rise in the cost of living and prevented any aid to help with the country’s reconstruction.

The incoming Biden administration has already signaled, with its launching last month of airstrikes against Syria in violation of international and its own domestic law, that it is intent on escalating the provocative and militaristic policies pursued by its predecessor in Syria, the Middle East and internationally.

The US strikes follow the revelation that Israel has not only conducted hundreds if not thousands of airstrikes on Iranian and pro-Iranian militias and Hezbollah in Syria, and more recently similar attacks in Iraq, but also—according to the Wall Street Journal — attacked 12 ships on their way to Syria with Iranian oil and possibly also with Iranian weapons.

Further evidence of the perils of US college reopenings

Bhuvana Tumakur

A recent article published in the science journalism web site Science News, “How 5 Universities tried to handle COVID-19 on campus: Fall semester was the start of a big experiment,” shows that in-person education remains a breeding ground for the spread of the pandemic. It lays out much of the growing evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads easily through indoor and community living.

Students wear masks on campus at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Science writer Betsy Ladyzhets found a 56 percent increase in COVID-19 cases during the three-week period of in-person instructions in comparison to the three weeks before, when the universities offered remote learning. The piece also found that in the same counties where universities offered remote learning, COVID-19 cases dropped by almost 18 percent. The author states, “With these kinds of risks, a college campus seems like one more dangerous place to spend time.”

The author looked at five large universities: University of Wisconsin, Madison; North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University; University of Washington, Seattle; Colorado Mesa University; and Rice University in Houston, Texas. Data was extracted from university staff self-studies and university dashboards during the fall semester of 2020. Growth in new daily cases on a 7-day rolling average supported the evidence that in-person instruction increased COVID-19 virus spread significantly.

Some universities experienced late-semester peaks in infection from Halloween parties while others from surges in nearby cities. Each of the schools failed to fix the spread of the virus, even at the University of Washington, where the student and staff population was a fifth the normal level. Levels rose despite all schools cobbling together some type of mandatory PCR testing and mandating mask-wearing and restrictions on public gatherings. A large number of these efforts were initiated by the student “health ambassadors” to protect themselves, their friends and teachers, and loved ones at home.

This high risk is further corroborated by an analysis reported in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering on January 13, 2021, which showed that at 30 large universities COVID infections spiked in 14 colleges within 14 days of class, with seven-day incidences well above 1,000 per 100,000, an order of magnitude larger than nationwide peaks of 70 and 150 during the first and second waves of the pandemic.

The danger is not only to college students, but to surrounding communities. In December, the New York Times reported that infection rates have risen faster than the national average in counties where students make up at least 10 percent of the population.

The Washington Post in a recent article, “As U-Va. and U-Md. try to curb surge in coronavirus cases, neighbors brace for impact,” reported that these schools have seen an alarming surge of new COVID cases after reopening in-person. The article stated that University of Maryland and University of Virginia officials claimed that they had not seen incidents of viral transmissions in the classrooms. While U-Md., temporarily cancelled in-person classes after coronavirus infections surged past 60 cases a day, U-Va. kept classes open even after it logged in 229 cases in a single day. In fact, Jim Ryan, U-Va.’s president, said at a virtual town hall, “We knew that if we went too far or were too aggressive, it would feel like we are living in a totalitarian state and it contravened our foundational culture of trusting students to govern themselves.”

According to the U-Va. and U-Md. officials the outbreak and surge in cases could not be traced to a single source. They claimed that the spike in infections was due to widespread noncompliance with the health guidelines and protocols, specifically blaming large student gatherings, not wearing of masks at dinners, holding in-person recruitment events by student sororities and fraternities, other social meetups, and the possibility of more infectious variant in the campus. The majority of the U-Va. and U-Md. COVID cases were from students living off campus, and the officials reported that there was no link to cases spreading from their students to the wider Charlottesville or Prince George’s County communities that surrounded these universities.

On March 1, the Erie Times-News posted an article on the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania that reported a dramatic surge of COVID cases at its campus in the last week of February. Out of only 420 students living on-campus this semester, about one-third the usual number, 58 students and 3 university employees tested positive for COVID-19. It was also reported that only 16 university students and one employee had tested positive for COVID-19 previously in this semester.

This spike caused the university to stop all in-person classes. Dale-Elizabeth Pehrsson, university interim president, said in the letter to university students and staff, “Our contract tracing had not revealed any evidence of transmission from in-person instructions” and “The decision to impose the 10-day pause is being made out of an abundance of caution for our students, faculty and staff. We plan to resume in-person classes and approved activities on Monday, March 8.”

The Times-News article further noted that Erie County saw 98 new cases on Saturday and 29 new cases on Sunday of this past week. The county reported that the amount of COVID-19 virus detected in the samples from the Erie Wastewater Treatment Plant had increased for the second straight week in a row. The estimated cases per day based on the sampling had risen from 40 to 120 in the past two weeks. The concern of the county officials was that fewer people were getting tested and these untested people could spark off an increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations over the next two weeks.

Another article posted on 6 Action News reported an alarming spring surge of over 70 COVID cases a day at the University of Delaware, where the count was 134 a week in the prior semester. A spokesperson for the university said based on their contract tracing a lot of transmission is happening because students are taking off their masks and are in larger groups in the dining halls, are not following protocols, and are meeting in large gatherings. Here as well, the officials reported a lack of evidence in transmission of virus from in-person instruction.

Australian government announces poverty-level welfare boost

Martin Scott

With the Coronavirus Supplement to Australia’s JobSeeker scheme set to terminate at the end of March, the federal government has announced a paltry $50 per fortnight increase to the unemployment welfare payment.

In reality this “increase” represents a further cut to the current sub-poverty “supplemented” payment of $716 per fortnight.

Signs in store window advertise that they are closing in Sydney, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

A senate inquiry into the proposed changes received more than 500 submissions from charities, individuals, and think tanks, all calling for a genuine increase to the Jobseeker rate.

The slated $3.57 per day increase will bring the payment to just $616 per fortnight, almost $298 below the poverty line.

Prior to the Coronavirus Supplement, unemployed Australians received, on average, 38 percent of what they earned while working, the lowest of any OECD country. The proposed increase would shift the country up only one place, above Greece, and far short of the OECD average of 68 percent.

In return for this pathetic boost, welfare recipients will be forced to comply with increasingly punitive “mutual obligations,” including applying for at least 20 jobs each month (beginning in July), in circumstances where there are currently nine applicants for every advertised job.

With the onset of the pandemic last year, a sudden wave of job cuts forced the Morrison government to introduce the Coronavirus Supplement in April, initially at a rate of $550 per fortnight, almost doubling the income of Australian welfare recipients.

As a result, the number of Australians living in poverty fell from 3 million prior to the pandemic, to 2.6 million, despite at least 600,000 workers losing their jobs, and a similar number having their hours drastically reduced.

The reduction of the supplement to $250 per fortnight at the end of September, along with lower payments and tightened eligibility for the JobKeeper wage subsidy, condemned another million people to poverty.

While the federal government and corporate media have proclaimed a strong economic recovery, only 200,000 people have stopped receiving JobSeeker since the peak of 1.6 million in August last year.

Economist Jeff Borland estimates that between 125,000 and 250,000 jobs will be lost when the JobKeeper wage subsidy is terminated at the end of March, meaning that peak will likely be surpassed.

Already, “real” unemployment, as measured by survey firm Roy Morgan, was at 13.2 percent in February, the highest level (excluding last year) since January 1994.

Despite this stark reality, the federal government, big business, and the corporate media are attempting to justify the slashing of welfare payments with claims of a supposed labour shortage.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the Australian Financial Review (AFR) Business Summit on Tuesday that “unemployed Australians are simply and regrettably not filling” 54,000 vacant jobs in rural areas.

Aside from the fact that this represents one job for every 36 unemployed workers, the reality is that any regional labour shortage is a product of pay and conditions so poor that they only attract backpackers and temporary visa holders, who are compelled to work in regional areas by draconian immigration laws and desperate poverty.

Despite this, 10,500 unemployed Australian workers did accept fruit picking jobs in the last six months, and 3,500 more applied for this work but were not hired.

Morrison suggested that JobSeeker recipients may be forced to move to rural areas for work, or face being cut off from welfare entirely.

“If there is a job available, and you are able to do that job,” he insisted, “then it is reasonable for taxpayers to expect that you will take it up, rather than continue to receive benefits. And if you don’t, then payment should be withdrawn.”

The reality is, while the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on jobs has been sharpest in major cities, long-term unemployment remains higher in rural areas, meaning such a move is likely to leave workers worse off.

This heightened form of “mutual obligation” will be enforced through a hotline allowing businesses to “dob in” job applicants who do not accept positions they are offered.

This is typical of the ruling elite’s attitude to the working class. Speaking in September 2019, Federal Minister for Families and Social Services Anne Ruston said, “Giving people more money will do absolutely nothing … probably all it will do is give drug dealers more money and give pubs more money.”

In fact, submissions to the Senate inquiry contain numerous accounts of what “luxuries” JobSeeker recipients were able to afford when the payment was temporarily increased last year.

One Queensland resident wrote: “With the Covid 19 supplement I have been able to pay my bills, get my life preserving medication, and buy fresh fruit and vegetables. Life on $44 a day will mean I have to go back to eating packets of pasta and sauce, two minute noodles, and rice with frozen vegetables.”

Another JobSeeker recipient said: “The supplement allowed us to get new clothes for our daughter and we were both able to get some dental work done. … As the months rolled by, our home life in lockdown was at least secure, we were in front with our rent, we had food, were able to afford internet service, prepaid phone credit and pay our licence and rego.”

Labor leader Anthony Albanese did not criticise Morrison’s plan at the AFR summit, instead stressing his support for business “growth,” which means further job cuts and attacks on wages and conditions.

The latest changes to welfare are a continuation of a decades-long offensive against the unemployed, presided over by Labor and Liberal-National governments.

Pitiful though it is, the $50 per fortnight JobSeeker increase is the largest in more than 30 years. In real terms, welfare payments were not increased under the Labor governments of Keating, Rudd or Gillard or by Liberal-National leaders Howard, Abbott or Turnbull.

Because the payment is indexed to inflation, rather than wages, it has fallen, in real terms, from 35 percent of the average wage in 2001, to 27 percent in 2019.

In the same period, housing prices have outstripped wage growth by a factor of five, meaning even workers with steady employment are struggling to keep up with rent or mortgage payments.

A December report, by Equity Economics, estimates that 7,500 more Australians will be homeless by June. Almost 880,000 households will experience housing stress, an increase of 24 percent.

In stark contrast to the government’s callous approach to the working class, Morrison announced yet another handout to big business on Thursday, in the form of 800,000 subsidised airfares to a handful of tourist hotspots.

The $1.2 billion package will primarily benefit major airlines Qantas and Virgin, which have stood down or sacked tens of thousands of workers in the last year, despite receiving billions of dollars in government aid.

The message from the Australian ruling elite is clear. The time has come for the working class to pay for the unprecedented upward transfer of wealth carried out during the pandemic.

Millions of workers are now presented with the choice of a life of abject poverty on JobSeeker, or a desperate scramble for whatever poorly-paid, insecure work they can find.

The alternative is for workers to join the struggle for a socialist program aimed at transforming society to meet social need, rather than the profit interests of the corporate and financial elites.