Global Wealth Report: Fortunes of Germany’s super-rich soared during pandemic

Elisabeth Zimmermann

The COVID-19 pandemic has enormously increased social inequality throughout the world. This is illustrated by the Global Wealth Report, which was published on June 10, 2021. Its authors, from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), had initially expected a decline in total wealth, but their research shows that during the pandemic period, the wealth of the rich and super-rich reached new heights.

Susanne Klatten at the BMW stand, IAA 2017 [Credit: Olaf Kosinsky/CC BY-SA 3.0 DE]

While more than 3.8 million people died of COVID-19, according to official figures, wealth in the form of financial and physical assets, including real estate, rose last year by 8.3 percent. Total global wealth, minus debt, reached $431 trillion (about 355 trillion euros), an unimaginable sum with 12 zeros that exceeds five-fold the world’s gross domestic product.

According to the BCG report, private financial assets alone rose by 8 percent to a record $250 trillion, mainly due to rising stock prices.

As consistently reported by the World Socialist Web Site, stock markets have exploded, fueled by pandemic bailouts and “rescue packages” forked out by capitalist governments to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, euros, pounds and so on. These handouts to the corporations and banks drove the profit-before-lives policies of the world’s capitalist governments that forced the international working class to continue working despite the dangers of COVID-19.

According to the Global Wealth Report, the number of super-rich increased by about 10 percent last year, to 60,000 people, who alone own 15 percent of the world’s wealth. To be counted among the super-rich, one needs a net worth of over $100 million.

This development finds extraordinary expression also in the rise of the super-rich in Germany and the exorbitant rise of the wealth of the already rich, who profiteered in the course of the pandemic.

Stock prices rose in parallel with COVID-19 deaths. There have been 90,000 fatalities in Germany alone. During the same period, the number of German super-rich owning over $100 million grew by 186, to 2,900, placing Germany only behind the USA (20,600 super-rich) and China (7,800 super-rich), followed by France with 2,500 and the United Kingdom with 2,100.

The number of dollar millionaires in Germany increased by 35,000 to 542,000. Although the increase is partly due to the strengthening of the euro versus the dollar, its primary cause is the world’s rich and super-rich amassing more wealth in the crisis year 2020 than they ever have before. They have profited from the hardship and misery into which hundreds of millions of people around the globe have been plunged by the pandemic.

The Tagesspiegel, which reported on these developments in its June 10 edition, tabulates the 10 richest people in Germany, based on the Forbes list of richest individuals, indicating their wealth in 2019 and 2021 in billions of dollars. The top five places are occupied by the following individuals:

• Beate Heister and Karl Albrecht Junior (Aldi Süd): their combined wealth rose from $36.1 billion (2019) to $39.2 billion (2021) in those two years—an increase of $3.1 billion.
• Dieter Schwarz (Lidl, Kaufland): from $22.6 billion (2019) to $36.9 billion (2021)—an increase of $14.3 billion (the largest increase in this list)
• Susanne Klatten (BMW): from $21 billion (2019) to $27.7 billion (2021)—an increase of $6.7 billion
• Klaus-Michael Kühne (Kühne & Nagel, logistics): from $12.9 billion (2019) to $26.3 billion (2021), more than doubling his wealth!
• Stefan Quandt (BMW): from $17.5 billion (2019) to $21.6 billion (2021)—an increase of $4.1 billion

Andreas Sprüngmann & Family (Hexal) follow in 10th place. They are among the major shareholders of BioNTech, the company that has made huge profits in recent months on its eponymous vaccine. The Sprüngmanns’ fortune has also more than doubled, from $4.4 billion (2019) to $11 billion (2021)—a $6.6 billion increase.

Ugur Sahin, founder and CEO of BioNTech, likewise leapt up Germany’s list of super-rich. With a fortune of $7.7 billion, he ranks 20th.

All of those named are direct beneficiaries of the pandemic. They either own shares in discount supermarket chains, such as Aldi, Lidl, Kaufland; or they run logistics groups like Kühne & Nagel and own assets in other companies, which also made big profits; or they control pharmaceutical companies, like the BioNTech owners. BMW’s major shareholders, Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, profited from rising share prices based on maintaining production despite the pandemic and restructuring measures at the expense of workers.

While the rich and super-rich raked in staggering fortunes, the situation for the working class worsened. Thousands have paid with their health and lives for the ruling class’s profit-before-life policies.

Corporate boards and unions have used the pandemic as a pretext to eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs. Wherever workers are fighting layoffs, plant closures, wage cuts and deterioration of their working conditions, they face a battle on two fronts: they face not only the inhabitants of the boardroom, but also works councils and unions that function as corporate co-managers.

In February of this year, unemployment in Germany had risen by 500,000 to 2.7 million compared to a year before. Many marginalized and low-wage workers also lost their jobs without being mentioned in the official statistics.

In May of this year, 2.3 million Germans were still on reduced hours, with a corresponding loss of wages.

More than 40 percent of German workers suffered income loss last year, and lower-income workers were hit particularly hard. In addition, the inflation rate also rose to 2.5 percent in May, with prices for energy and food rising particularly sharply.

Two years ago, in 2019, the poverty rate in Germany reached an all-time high of 15.9 percent (13.2 million people). The pandemic has now further exacerbated social inequality.

The concentration of wealth at the top of society and of unemployment and poverty at the bottom have produced a degree of social polarization that is no longer compatible with democratic forms of rule. Once again, the ruling class is preparing dictatorship and fascism in the face of social dissent. This is evidenced by regular revelations of right-wing extremist conspiracies in the state apparatus, the armed forces, the police and the secret services.

The hoarded billions, provided to the pandemic profiteers from state coffers, must be reclaimed! They are urgently necessary to attend to the needs of society. The giant corporations and financial institutions must be transformed into democratically controlled public utilities.

Fiji regime resists lockdown despite escalating COVID-19 crisis

John Braddock

The COVID-19 outbreak in Fiji is rapidly escalating, with record case numbers being confirmed virtually every 24 hours.

Following 116 new infections on Tuesday, Wednesday saw 121 cases with health officials identifying two new clusters. On Thursday, 91 new cases and one death were reported in just 14 hours, followed by 115 on Friday and another death at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital (CWMH).

Fiji military directing people at a testing centre in the Lami-Suva-Nausori containment areas [Credit: Republic of Fiji Military Forces via Twitter, @Rfmf_Media]

New Zealand epidemiologist Michael Baker told Radio NZ on June 16 that the situation in Fiji is “extremely worrying” and an urgent national lockdown needs to be “seriously considered.” It would be “devastating” if the virus were to spread from the main island of Viti Levu where it is currently centred, he warned, due to the paucity of healthcare. Baker called on the government to act “very decisively now” to return to an “elimination position.”

In just eight weeks 1,578 cases of the Delta variant have been identified. In the year between March 2020 and 2021, there had been just 70 infections recorded. There are now 1,182 active cases in isolation, 452 recoveries and 6 deaths.

Testing, however, remains inadequate, with 117,221 samples tested since the outbreak started and 160,082 since testing began in early 2020. Only 2.1 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, while 43 percent of those aged 18 and older have received their first dose. The country’s total population is 890,000.

On Wednesday, Health Secretary James Fong told the media that most of the current cases are linked to existing clusters, “but there is a need to review other cases where the source is unknown.”

Thursday’s count included significant increases at the main clusters: 17 cases from the CWMH, 13 from Navosai, five from the government’s Rewa Emergency Operations Centre, two from the Nasinu Police Barracks, four from Korovou in the Tailevu Province, four from Tramline in Nawaka, Nadi and one from the Townhouse Hotel.

The cluster at the Town House Hotel in Suva is where infected CWMH and Incident Management Team staff are being accommodated.

Outside the capital Suva and the area around it there is a new, fast-growing cluster in the regional centre of Nadi, where 35 infections were identified this week. Six infants who tested positive to COVID-19 are meanwhile in a stable condition at Lautoka Hospital in the west of the main island. Fong told the Fiji Times they were from a community in lockdown in Nadi.

While 10 people have died after testing positive for COVID-19, only 6 have had their deaths attributed to the coronavirus. The Health Ministry says seven other patients died from existing chronic conditions they had when admitted to hospital in Suva. This has raised concerns among Fijians who are calling for an explanation over what constitutes a COVID-19 death.

As the crisis has intensified, the government, led by former military coup leader Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, is resisting calls for a 28-day lockdown, saying it would “destroy” the economy. Bainimarama flatly declared this week that shutting down completely would be “too drastic” and lead to higher unemployment.

Echoing governments around the world that are prioritising business demands above public health, Fong earlier declared that the government would “fight this virus in a targeted way.” The policy, he falsely stated, “allows Fijians to access essential services and allows the economy to function as normally and safely as possible.”

In a tacit admission that the situation is out of control, Fong said this week that he is looking at getting assistance “from our partners in Australia to come and help us develop some of the contingency plans that are required in case we persistently get up to 200 [daily cases]. So I am already planning up to that phase in case we get up to 200.”

The deepening crisis is opening up divisions within the ruling establishment. Leader of the opposition National Federation Party called the government’s strategy a “disaster.” He said Bainimarama “has failed miserably to have a comprehensive health and economic plan,” and the longer a lockdown was delayed, “the greater the economic pain will be.”

The outbreak is meanwhile exacerbating the impoverished country’s social crisis. Fiji’s unemployment rate, which hovered around 6 percent before the pandemic, is estimated to have increased to about 35 percent. Thousands have lost their jobs, particularly in the moribund tourism industry, while thousands more have had massive pay cuts or seen work hours reduced. A general food crisis is hitting the working class and rural poor.

Save the Children Fiji head Shairana Ali said: “Many families have told us they are exhausted… Whatever little savings they had are gone” and they are turning to charities. Many parents are going hungry to stretch out the little food they have to be able to feed their children.

The charity’s New Zealand arm has launched an emergency appeal to provide grocery parcels. Spokesperson Heidi Coetzee said more than 1,000 requests for assistance had already been received. The aid is aimed at helping single parents, families with young children and grandparents looking after their grandchildren. Coetzee said Fiji, still recovering from last year’s major tropical cyclones, has been hit on a “second front” with the pandemic.

The response of the region’s local imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand to the growing crisis remains paltry and self-serving. In addition to limited supplies of PPE and vaccines, Canberra and Wellington will provide a meagre $A67 million to support Fiji’s 2021–22 budget.

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta hypocritically declared that New Zealand wouldn’t tell other countries, including Fiji, how they should respond to COVID-19. She said New Zealand’s role is to “assist” and “not infringe on any sovereign rights.” In fact, both Australia and New Zealand have long histories of carrying out military and regime change operations across the Pacific to advance their own interests.

A major aim of both imperialist countries is deterring China’s diplomatic and economic influence in Fiji and other countries in the region, as Australia and NZ are integrated into US military preparations against China.

Sri Lankan health unions shut down protests following rotten deal with government

W.A. Sunil

Following discussions with Sri Lankan Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi, the Health Employees Trade Union Collective (HETUC) announced on Tuesday that it had struck an agreement with the government covering thousands of medical employees. The HETUC includes 35 health unions, including the Medical Laboratory Technologists Association and the Government Nursing Officers Union.

The deal betrays health employees’ demands in exchange for a meagre special allowance payment. It seeks to prevent further nationally-coordinated protests by health workers and provides for closer union collaboration with management.

Health workers protest in Ampara on June 11 [Source: Facebook]

Apart from doctors, who were granted a special allowance two weeks ago, tens of thousands of health workers have been involved in demonstrations across the island over recent weeks. On June 4, more than 20,000 of them participated in a four-hour protest called by the HETUC. This was followed by a five-hour national strike on June 11 involving over 50,000 HETUC members.

Health employees’ demands included a special allowance equal to 78 percent of the basic salary; provision of personal protective equipment and other COVID-19 safety measures; meals on working days; transport during travel-restriction periods, and special leave for pregnant employees working on a contract basis.

Since the eruption of the pandemic 18 months ago, these overworked employees have attempted to cope with rising COVID-19 infections without proper safety equipment and in a run-down health system, which is the product of grossly inadequate funding by successive governments.

Under HETUC’s sellout deal with the government, all health employees, including those on contract, will be paid a special 7,500-rupee ($US37.50) allowance. The payment, which is limited to three months, from June to August, is one fifth of the amount the union alliance had called for.

Health workers will be provided with just one mask a day, woefully inadequate and in violation of international health standards. Other demands by health workers have been met with vague promises, but any concrete measures are subject to finance ministry approval.

Gampola hospital health workers protest [WSWS Media]

In a June 15 letter to Health Minister Wanniarachchi, the HETUC admitted that the 7,500-rupee allowance was “less than one fifth of the expected amount.” The union body nevertheless declared that it was “content with it considering the prevailing crisis situation in the country and the essential nature of the health service.”

The “crisis situation” referred to by HETUC is not the catastrophe confronting health workers and the rest of the population, but the political and economic crisis facing President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s government amid rising popular opposition, strikes and protests. The HETUC’s agreement is an attempt to make its members pay for the government’s crisis.

The Rajapakse government and the unions equally feared that the ongoing struggle of health workers across the island would become a pole of attraction for other sections of the working class.

In recent months postal, power and water board workers, along with development and village officers and teachers have demonstrated for higher pay and improved COVID-19 safety measures.

Private sector workers, particularly in the garment industry, have held protests and threatened industrial action over coronavirus infections and management demands that they continue working during the pandemic. Protests have also erupted in the tea plantation against pay cuts, workload increases and management-police victimisations.

Nervous about the possible eruption of mass strikes, President Rajapakse on May 27 and June 2 declared the essential public services act to criminalise any industrial action by state-sector employees.

Wathupitiwala Hospital health employees demonstrate in southern Sri Lanka [WSWS Media]

The strike ban covers nearly a million state sector workers, including port, petroleum, gas, railway and bus transport employees, as well as district-level government administrative offices, state banks, insurance and customs-related services, health services, state consumer goods distributions institutions and all government offices at nine Provincial Councils.

Under these draconian measures, workers exercising their democratic right to take industrial action can be punished by harsh prison sentences and fines. Freedom of expression and speech endorsing or calling for industrial action is similarly punishable. Rajapakse’s laws clearly indicate that Colombo is preparing for class war and authoritarian forms of rule.

Not a single trade union in Sri Lanka, including all those in the health sector, has opposed these repressive laws, indicating their tacit approval.

The HETUC deal was explicitly backed by President Rajapakse. Discussion notes with the health minister reveal that Rajapakse agreed to the 7,500-rupee allowance and that Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse prepared a cabinet paper for its approval.

In other words, the Rajapakse regime, even as it prepares to step-up its brutal repression of workers taking industrial action, continues to enlist the services of the unions and their bureaucratic apparatus.

In fact, the HETUC has escalated its collaboration with health sector management and the government. One of the points agreed to in discussion with the minister is that the trade unions will hold “weekly management meetings, headed by the director general of health services, to resolve health employees’ problems.”

These meetings will not serve health workers. Instead they will be used to help management undermine workers’ legitimate demands so as to overcome the “crisis situation of the country” and the government.

The protests and actions of health employees and other sections of the Sri Lankan working class are a part of a rising tide of struggles by workers internationally against government and employer efforts to impose the economic burden of the coronavirus pandemic on them.

Last weekend, the Rajapakse government, as part of its escalating attacks on the living conditions of the masses, sharply increased fuel prices, unleashing a spate of hikes to the cost of food and other essential commodities.

The HETUC’s betrayal of health workers is a warning to workers throughout Sri Lanka. It makes clear, yet again, that the unions are tools of the state and big business.

As COVID-19 variant continues to spread, World Health Organization warns “we expect things to only get worse”

Bryan Dyne

The more infectious and deadly Delta variant of the coronavirus, first detected in India last October, is now present in at least 80 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It is expected to overtake the Alpha variant, first detected in the UK, in the coming months as the dominant variant of the coronavirus worldwide.

In countries such as India and the United Kingdom, it has already become the dominant variant of the coronavirus, with at least 90 percent of all new cases caused by the Delta variant. In countries such as the United States, it accounts for at least 10 percent of all new cases and will “probably” become the dominant variant in the country, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky warned Friday on Good Morning America.

A driver in protective suit in a school bus assigned to take people who tested positive for coronavirus to a referral hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia, June 18, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Dita Alangkara]

In Lisbon, Portugal, authorities ordered a weekend lockdown of the entire region after more than 1,300 new cases were recorded in the past 24 hours, of which roughly half were of the Delta variant. In Moscow, local health authorities have determined that the Delta variant is now the most prevalent COVID-19 variant in the city, making up 89.3 percent of all new cases.

And in India, while cases and deaths have continued to decline, with confirmed counts currently standing at two-month lows of 69,000 and 1,600 respectively, experts are concerned that such figures greatly undercount the true toll the Delta variant took on India when it began to spread like wildfire in late February and early March.

There are also surges of the Delta variant across Africa and South Asia, including countries such as Namibia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Rwanda, Myanmar, Zambia, South Africa, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. As a result of the spread of the disease, the global decline in new cases since the beginning of May, largely a result of mass vaccination campaigns in the world’s wealthier countries, has slowed.

Worldwide, the number of new cases on Thursday totaled just over 367,000, just 20,000 less than new cases reported seven days previously. In contrast, the decrease in daily new cases from two weeks ago to one week ago was more than 71,000. Similar changes were detected in the trajectory of the world’s daily new coronavirus cases in the weeks leading up to the emergence of the Alpha variant as the dominant form of the coronavirus, which helped to fuel the skyrocketing cases this past December and January. Daily deaths remain above 9,000 internationally.

World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus further warned on Friday, “Every region has countries that are now facing a steep increase in cases and deaths. Many countries in Latin America have rapidly increasing epidemics, and others have plateaued at a high level. In Africa, cases have increased by 52% just in the past week, and deaths have increased by 32%. And we expect things to only get worse.”

Spikes in the Delta variant are particularly happening in the countries and regions that have the lowest vaccination rates. “It's a trajectory that is very, very concerning,' said Dr. Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization’s executive director. “The brutal reality is that in an era of multiple variants, with increased transmissibility, we have left vast swathes of the population, the vulnerable population of Africa, unprotected by vaccines.”

The emergence of the Delta variant as dominant is even more concerning given how dangerous it has shown itself to be. It is up to 60 percent more infectious than the Alpha variant, and thus up to 2.5 times more infectious than the original wild variant. It also causes more than 4 times as many hospitalizations as the wild variant. And while those fully vaccinated are largely protected from the Delta variant, most of the world remains extremely vulnerable.

As Dr. Tedros noted, “More than half of all high- and upper-middle income countries and economies have now administered enough doses to fully vaccinate at least 20% of their populations. Just 3 out of 79 low- and lower-middle income countries have reached the same level.” He also made explicit that, “Vaccines donated next year will be far too late for those who are dying today, or being infected today, or at risk today,” before calling for further increases in vaccine production and for their more equal distribution around the world.

Moreover, data from Public Health England tracking the Delta variant has revealed that this particular mutation of the coronavirus can “escape” immunity granted by those that have only received their first dose of the two-dose mRNA vaccine regimen developed by Moderna, Pfizer and others. Thousands have gotten sick as a result.

These dangers are compounded by the fact that as the virus is allowed to spread among those partially vaccinated, there is every possibility that, under the selective pressure of partial immunity, it will evolve to evade the immunity of those fully vaccinated.

In a world where public health measures such as masking, testing and contact tracing are largely being abandoned, such a development would reignite the pandemic in an even more explosive form. Vaccination is in many areas the only form of protection against the coronavirus, and if it fails, cities could once again resemble the horrors of Wuhan, Italy and New York City in the early days of the pandemic.

And in many ways, this evolution of the pandemic would be even worse. Records from the UK indicate that children are more susceptible to the Delta variant, meaning that reopened schools are not just vectors of transmission but also have the potential to become charnel houses for the youth that attend them. More broadly, the increased infectiousness of the Delta variant indicates that, if it was not stopped by vaccines, a dozen people infected could become millions inside a month.

There is no shortage of warnings about just how bad the pandemic could become, even in countries with high vaccination rates like the United States. To date, nearly 4 million lives have been lost. On the other hand, there are still 7.8 billion lives which can be saved from premature death caused by the coronavirus.

The capitalist class which controls society’s resources, however, is more concerned with making profits than human lives. Only token amounts of funds are directed towards vaccines and next to nothing for other life-saving public health measures. The real solution to the pandemic is not medical or scientific, but social and political, the international working class taking the immense wealth hoarded by the bourgeoisie and using it to end the mass death inflicted on the world over the past 18 months.

Grants for African women’s Rights Organisations/Groups

Application Deadline: 1st July 2021

About the Award: For 16 Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence, AWDF will support women’s rights organisations and groups employing innovative approaches, methodologies, tools and resources that show positive results through awareness creation and advocacy to promote women’s mental health and wellness.

Type: Grants

Eligibility: This call for proposals is opened only to African Women led organisations with budgets of under USD100,000.

Eligible Countries: African countries

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: This call for proposal is opened to African Women led organisations with budgets of under USD100,000.

How to Apply: AWDF GRANTS PORTAL

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

USA’s Hypocritical Dealings with Taliban

Yanis Iqbal

Speculations abound over Taliban’s aim to exploit the vacuum left by the partial withdrawal of US-NATO troop to seize control of the capital Kabul and re-establish an Islamic Emirate, similar to the one the US dislodged from power after its 2001 invasion. The ground reality seems to confirm these concerns about an impending civil war.

Violence and territorial contestations are steadily increasing. There has been an over two-and-half fold increase in terrorism-linked fatalities in May, 2021, in comparison to the previous month; the security forces have suffered a three-fold surge in fatalities in the same period. The Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) have suffered disruptions in supply of essentials like ration, shortage of ammunition and witnessed 26 of their bases surrendered to Taliban in May 2021.

Supporting Taliban

The morass in Afghanistan is a byproduct of USA’s hypocritical dealings with Taliban. Beginning from July 1979, Washington financed and armed extremist Islamic forces to invade and destroy the secular, modernizing, Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, with logistical support from the Pakistan military and intelligence agencies and financial backing from Saudi Arabia. The strongest of these reactionary mujahedeen groups were called the Taliban. It was they who claimed victory in 1996.

Glyn Davies, then US State Department’s spokesperson, told reporters that he found “nothing objectionable” in the laws of the Taliban state; these, he suggested, were “anti-modern”, not “anti-western” and, therefore, presumably legitimate. He hoped the Taliban would “form a representative interim government that can begin the process of reconciliation nationwide.”

From 1996 to 2001, US relations with Afghanistan revolved around proposed pipelines to bring oil and gas from the Caspian basin on a route that would bypass Russia, Iran and China. Before the September 11 attacks, the American oil giant Unocal had been negotiating with Taliban for the construction of an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea.

In December 1977, a delegation of Taliban mullahs traveled to USA and met State Department officials and Unocal executives in Houston. Zalmay Khalilzad – a consultant for Unocal who would later become the US ambassador to Afghanistan – met the Taliban leaders in a luxury hotel, chatting pleasantly about a proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline deal. He publicly voiced support for the radical Islamists at the time. The “Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran – it is closer to the Saudi model,” Khalilzad wrote in 1996.

In January 1998, the Taliban signed an agreement that would allow a proposed 890 miles, $2 billion natural gas pipeline by Unocal to proceed. Unocal also considered building a 1000 mile, 1 million barrel-per-day capacity oil pipeline that would link Charzou in Turkmenistan to Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast via Afghanistan. The cost of this project was estimated at $2.5 billion.

All negotiations over these initiatives collapsed in 1998, when Al-Qaeda bombed two US embassies in Africa. By then, the terrorist group, led by Osama bin Laden, had relocated from Sudan to Afghanistan, where it was offered safe harbor by the Taliban. The US now realized that Taliban was not a dependable instrument for the realization of its interests in Central Asia. Thus, American strikes were being planned against the jihadist entity two months before the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington.

Invasion

The September 11 attacks provided USA with the perfect excuse to implement a strategy it had been considering for months. In 2001, President George W. Bush launched an offensive in Afghanistan. The US war aims were straightforward: prevent Afghanistan from being a haven for al-Qaeda and bring democracy to Afghanistan by expelling the Taliban. There were also noises made about liberating women and educating the Afghan citizenry.

Bush forged an alliance with powerful local warlords – remnants from the war against the Soviets and subsequent civil war during the 1990s – who had retreated to northern Afghanistan to quickly overthrow the Taliban government. The war lasted a few days, and the Taliban barely resisted. However, after capturing Kabul and defeating the standing army, USA spent the next two decades in losing irregular warfare.

The initial victories laid the groundwork for future defeats. Bombing drove millions of peasants and farmers, shopkeepers and artisans into the local militia. The invaders were defeated by the indigenous forces of religious nationalism linked to families and communities. Billions of dollars were spent devastating the economy and impoverishing the vast majority of Afghans. Only the opium trade flourished. The efforts to create a puppet regime failed miserably.

US military and coalition presence in Afghanistan generated hatred among the Pashtun population – the majority ethnic group constituting the social base of Taliban. Since the invasion, an unstable government, commanded by leaders of different Afghan minority ethnic groups (Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras, etc.), has been in power. This has resulted in a weak government, maintained solely due to the US’ political support and military presence along with NATO’s.

The US, its NATO allies, and the ANSF have killed more than 50,000 Taliban fighters over the years, including, in 2016, its foremost leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor. In 2019-2020, several senior commanders were killed, including the governors of Badakshan, Farah, Logar, Samangan, and Wardak provinces. Yet, the Taliban has managed to replenish their ranks, procure new weapons and ammunition, and raise money, above all through taxes on opium poppy farming.

The US government has spent more than $1 trillion on an invasion that has killed at least 175,000 Afghans since the first air strikes were launched on October 7, 2001. In addition, 3,500 soldiers from the invading coalition have been killed, and many thousands more have committed suicide once they returned home. After all this bloodshed, Afghanistan is on the verge of another civil war. This is the result of the American empire’s disastrous engagement with the country, which is purely motivated by imperialist and commercial interests.

UK Delta variant surges with cases rising fastest among schoolchildren

Margot Miller

Governments around the world are using the far from complete vaccination programmes as justification for letting coronavirus rip through their populations.

As well as putting at risk the huge numbers of people still unvaccinated, and those for whom the vaccine has not produced a robust response, this policy is submitting millions of children to a programme of unmitigated herd immunity.

Alex Dickerson the reception class teacher, left leads the class at the Holy Family Catholic Primary School in Greenwich, London, Monday, May 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

COVID-19 infection can have serious consequences for young people. It has resulted in thousands of children’s deaths in countries like Brazil. Just yesterday in India, three children had eyes removed after developing the Black Fungus infection having fallen ill with coronavirus. Around 8 percent of children infected in the UK go on to develop long-COVID symptoms. Much remains unknown about the longer-term consequences of COVID-19 in children—a small number of studies have drawn a link between the virus and the development of diabetic conditions.

Moreover, allowing the virus to circulate in any significant section of the population gives it an opportunity to develop new variants which threaten the whole vaccination programme.

The speed with which coronavirus spreads through the young population when public health restrictions are withdrawn is being demonstrated in the UK. COVID-19 infections, driven by the more transmissible and deadly Delta variant, are rising exponentially in Britain, with over 11,000 cases reported on Thursday.

Ten days ago, Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted that a “huge proportion of the latest cases are in children”. Infections in schools have risen even more since. The latest Office for National Statistics data show the highest infection rates are in secondary schools. Pupils in years 7 to 11 had the highest rate of any age group, with one case in every 210 on June 2.

Thursday’s REACT-1 study from Imperial College London indicated that the prevalence of COVID-19 is highest among those aged five to 12, as well as younger adults aged 18 to 24.

How dangerous the new variant may prove to be for children is clear in the number of hospitalisations. Ten children—from babies up to age nine—were admitted to hospital in Scotland during the last week of May alone.

Instead of closing schools immediately and returning to remote learning until the virus is suppressed, the Department for Education (DfE) emailed school leaders to “encourage staff, and students… to continue to test twice weekly”, stating that “student bubbles… should stay in place.”

On May 27, the DfE reported 4,000 COVID-19 cases in children. The estimated absence rate in England’s state schools was 1.8 per cent—the highest since summer term began. The number of children self-isolating surged from 60,000 to 90,000 in a week. This week, Public Health England data (PHE) confirmed 149 school outbreaks have been linked to the Delta variant since April 26—with 136 of them coming in the four weeks up to 6 June.

Up to the start of half-term, the proportion of pupils in England absent from school because of COVID-19 nearly doubled from 1 to 1.8 percent. According to official data, this amounted to more than 140,000 pupils.

A June 11 article by five experts in the BMJ, (formerly, British Medical Journal) condemned the government for leaving “children, staff, and communities exposed to the rapid spread of a new and more transmissible variant, and at risk of long covid.” Absent in schools were “basic mitigations of face coverings, space, and fresh air.”

Such is the spread since the government almost fully reopened the economy on May 17 that, as the school summer term resumed, many schools reintroduced mask-wearing. This was against government advice, which insisted any mask-wearing could be relaxed in schools and other education settings.

Speaking to Sky News on June 7, Sir David King, chair of Independent SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), and former chief government scientific adviser said mandatory face coverings in schools should be enforced. King questioned whether the government actually believed “in herd immunity amongst school children? Is that why they are saying take masks off, so that the disease spreads rapidly and that they all become immune by having had the disease?”

The government decided to lift mask-wearing despite knowing the Delta variant was spreading in schools. Advocacy group The Citizens and data rights firm AWO have sent a pre-action legal letter to PHE accusing the government body of withholding vital data regarding outbreaks of the variant in schools. A report was due to be published last month.

The fact that COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire through schools is nonetheless impossible to hide.

Last week, 15 schools across all 10 areas of Greater Manchester confirmed cases of the Delta variant. Almost one in three children were absent in Bolton schools in the last week of May due to the variant.

In nearby Liverpool, the Bluecoat school sent 180 pupils home after positive cases were confirmed.

Downend School had to resume remote learning in Gloucestershire after 31 cases were confirmed.

In the London borough of Bromley, health chiefs wrote to parents in Ealing, Hillingdon, Brent, Harrow, and Hounslow advising mask-wearing continue “until further notice”. With 58 confirmed cases, Bromley is the eighth-worst affected borough in London with the new strain.

Bristol, which reported 25 schools with outbreaks of the variant, has also reintroduced face coverings.

In Yorkshire, Sandal Castle Primary School in Wakefield and Outwood Academy Hemsworth reported Delta cases as term began. Tadcaster Grammar school reverted to remote learning after positive cases were identified.

Haslingden High School, in Rossendale, Lancashire had no cases in the run-up to half term. As school resumed on Monday, two students tested positive, by Friday there were 35 and by the weekend, 70.

Students at Wilmington Grammar Schools for Girls and Boys, Kent are being tested after outbreaks at the University of Kent and King’s School, Canterbury.

Hertfordshire County Council issued a Covid warning in the Three Rivers district—with a population of 93,323—as a cluster of coronavirus cases was found May 27-29 in children aged 10 to 14. Children aged five to nine tested positive.

In Watford, Cherry Tree Primary closed before half-term after cases were confirmed.

In Wales, children at Goitre Primary School in Merthyr Tydfil went home for a week after a school visitor tested positive. An outbreak of the Delta variant involving schools was reported in Denbighshire. Basseleg school in Newport sent 300 children home after 100 tested positive.

In Scotland, 316 children in Perth and Kinross self-isolated after pupils tested positive in five schools. St John’s RC Academy reported nine cases between May 26 and June 1. Positive tests were identified in students at Balhousie Primary School, Inch View Primary School, Kinross High School and Perth Grammar School.

Relying on scientifically discredited lateral flow testing in schools to control the spread has utterly failed. The UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is expected not to recommend vaccinating most all under-18s.

The response from the education trade unions to this unfolding disaster is only to call on the government to reintroduce mandatory mask-wearing. Joint NEU general secretary Mary Bousted said lamely, “We advised the government it was premature to be taking the masks away”.

The NEU has consistently refused to mobilise its membership of 450,000 to keep schools closed during the pandemic. Along with the other education unions, it suppressed opposition by parents and teachers, who wanted face-to-face learning replaced with remote teaching until it was safe to return to the classroom. So opposed is the NEU to closing school sites that the union’s joint leader, Kevin Courtney, tweeted last week that “Outdoor lessons should be encouraged wherever possible.”

General Secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT Paul Whiteman said complacently, “the number of children not attending school due to Covid is low overall” while noting a “distinct rise… in some areas.”

The virus was able to spread and mutate because the Labour Party and unions agreed schools and the economy must reopen. Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham backed the government’s roadmap to reopening the economy. Before Monday’s announcement of a four-week delay in ending all restrictions on social distancing (originally scheduled for June 21), he said, “I want to try and stick to the 21st June … but it's got to be done safely.”

Without the introduction of the most stringent public health measures, until the whole population is vaccinated, more cases and deaths will follow.

Peru ending second week since presidential election with no declared winner

Bill Van Auken

Peru is gripped by sharp political tensions, as the country is set to complete a second week since the June 6 presidential election without a winner being officially declared.

With 100 percent of the ballots counted, Pedro Castillo, the former teachers’ strike leader and candidate of the Peru Libre party, leads the right-wing Fuerza Popular candidate Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori, who is imprisoned for 25 years for crimes against humanity, by a margin of 50.12 percent to 49.87. Just 43,000 votes out of the more than seventeen and a half million cast separate the two candidates, but it is clear that Castillo has won.

Supporters of Fujimori (left) and Castillo (right) demonstrating in Lima (Credit: Andina)

A declaration that Castillo has won, however, has been blocked by the Fujimori camp, which has mounted a legal offensive based on spurious claims of election fraud, seeking to overturn the results from hundreds of polling stations in the Andean highlands and Amazonian regions where Castillo won by overwhelming margins.

As of Wednesday, the National Election Board (JNE) announced that of the 942 challenges brought by the Fujimori camp, 792 have been resolved, without one of them establishing electoral fraud of any kind. Most of the claims had been brought after a June 9 cutoff for making such challenges.

While the challenges have no basis in either fact or law, they have been brought by an army of high-powered lawyers drawn from Lima’s top law firm, with the aim of delaying confirmation of the election results as long as possible. The Fujimori camp is playing for time, with the intention that its challenges and ceaseless claims of fraud will create the conditions for overturning the election by extra-constitutional means, up to and including a military coup.

This conspiracy enjoys the support of the corporate media, the bulk of the country’s financial oligarchy and sections of the military.

The similarities between the tactics pursued by Fujimori and those employed by Trump in the 2020 US presidential election do not stop at the use of fabricated charges of electoral fraud to overturn the election or, at the very least, delegitimize the incoming government. Like Trump, Fujimori, along with other members of her family and top aides, face the prospect of criminal conviction and imprisonment if they fail to seize the presidency.

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has asked that Keiko Fujimori be returned to pre-trial detention on charges of money laundering connected to political bribes, including from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. She is also charged with heading a criminal organization, i.e., her own party, Fuerza Popular.

The threat of political violence or even a military coup is real. Fujimori’s followers have staged fascistic demonstrations, replete with torches and the singing of the national anthem while giving the Nazi salute.

Castillo’s supporters, including many who have come to Lima from the interior, have also demonstrated in the capital demanding that their candidate be officially declared the winner.

Meanwhile, 63 retired generals and other high-ranking officers issued a communique demanding the resignation of the head of the election board, warning of the danger of a Castillo victory and calling for the “strengthening of confidence in the armed forces and the police.” The Defense Ministry felt compelled to issue a statement in response deploring the use of official military symbols in the communique.

Ever since Castillo emerged with the highest number of votes in the first round, and Fujimori with the second highest—each of them with less than 20 percent—the Peruvian right and the media have conducted a rabid campaign branding Castillo a “communist” and a “terrorist,” charging that he would turn Peru into another Venezuela.

Since winning the second round, Castillo and his backers have sought to disassociate themselves from radical policies, including the nationalization of mining industries called for in Peru Libre’s platform, while drawing in a group of moderate “advisers.” The most prominent among them is Pedro Francke, a Catholic University economist and former official at the World Bank and Peru’s central bank. Francke had served as a chief adviser to Veronika Mendoza, the candidate of the pseudo-left Juntos por el Perú party, who placed a distant sixth in the first round of the presidential elections.

The increasing role of Mendoza’s advisers is politically significant. In the 2016 presidential election, Mendoza threw her support to the ex-Wall Street financier Pedro Pablo Kuczynski as the “lesser evil” in his successful second round run-off with Keiko Fujimori, making clear Mendoza’s “responsible” approach to the interests of Peruvian and international capital.

At a press conference in Lima Tuesday, Francke reassured the Peruvian and international bourgeoisie: “There will not be expropriations, there will not be nationalizations. Nor confiscations, nor anything.” It is widely expected that Francke will be tapped as Castillo’s economy minister.

Earlier in the week, Scotiabank Peru, the country’s third-largest financial institution, issued a statement declaring its approval of Francke’s role and of a document issued in Castillo’s name “suggesting a softer, more pro-market (or at least, less radical) stance on issues such as property rights, respect for economic institutions, the relationship with private business, price controls and other concerns.” It concluded that rather than being a “radical leftist,” Castillo’s chief economic adviser is a “Keynesian.”

Both Castillo and Francke have carried out a whirlwind of meetings with big business figures. As a result of these meetings, Roque Benavides, head of the Buenaventura mining company, which for decades has extracted billions of dollars’ worth of minerals at the cost of the destruction of Peru’s rivers and valleys, and also president of the main business organization, Confiep, declared that he would accept proposals for tax increases, but he would not tolerate nationalizations.

Castillo’s program has been whittled down to tax reform, renegotiation of royalties from the transnational mining corporations and an agrarian reform that forswears any expropriation of redistribution of land.

The corporate media and the Peruvian political establishment have demanded that Castillo prove his reliability by breaking with the founder of Peru Libre, Vladimir Cerrón, the ex-governor of the central department of Junín. Combining pseudo-Marxist rhetoric, populist demagoguery and extreme right-wing social policies—embraced by Castillo—on issues such as abortion and “gender politics,” Cerrón was criminally convicted on corruption charges.

The official declaration of Castillo’s victory will hardly resolve Peru’s deep-going political, social and economic crisis. The country is among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, registering the highest per capita death toll in the world. The effects on the economic conditions of the working class and oppressed masses have been catastrophic, with an estimated nine million jobs wiped out, poverty increasing by 10 percent and soaring prices of basic commodities.

The real fear of the Peruvian bourgeoisie is not of Castillo, who is already making clear that he is someone with whom they can do business, but of an eruption of class struggle driven by declining living standards and a dramatic increase in social inequality as those at the top have enriched themselves, while working people have faced death, disease, unemployment and impoverishment.