Spain quietly drops probe into “Russian meddling” in Catalan referendum

Alice Summers

Spain’s National Court has dropped an investigation into alleged “Russian interference” in the 2017 Catalan independence referendum due to lack of evidence.

The investigation had been opened in November 2019 but was secretly closed by the judge presiding over the case only nine months later, in July 2020, on the advice of the prosecution. The collapse of the case was not made public until last month, almost a year later, when it was reported by Eldiario.es, with sources from the National Court verifying it to numerous other news sites.

Carles Puigdemont (Credit: govern.cat)

One of the most ludicrous allegations made by the probe was that Russia had offered to send 10,000 troops to Catalonia in support of the now-exiled former President of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, under whose tenure the referendum had taken place. Puigdemont allegedly turned down the offer at the eleventh hour.

The case is yet another exposure of this type of propaganda used by NATO powers aiming to create casus belli against nuclear armed Russia and China. No lie is too big for the imperialist powers in their bid to whip up nationalism and deflect social tensions outwards.

The main characteristic of this form of propaganda is that it is sensational and fact-free. The sources tend to be either anonymous intelligence officers, government sources or the police. Whatever the target, usually Beijing and Moscow, the aim is to portray the countries as the source of all evil.

The Spanish probe followed other similar smear campaigns, including the lie that Moscow interfered in the US elections in 2016 and 2020 and the story that the Russian military intelligence agency GRU had paid bounties to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan to kill American soldiers.

The latest are that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory, and that Beijing is carrying out genocide against the Muslim Uyghur minority.

The Spanish campaign centred on claims that Russian intelligence officers had been present in Catalonia in the days leading up to the October 2017 referendum and that Russia had sought to influence the election in favour of the secessionists through funding, disinformation campaigns and potentially even military intervention.

Among those mentioned in the investigation was businessman Oriol Soler, considered one of the top communication strategists of the Catalan secessionist movement. Soler was last year accused of masterminding a “disinformation strategy” with the input of the Kremlin, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The accusations against Soler stem from his November 2017 visit to Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder was at the time effectively imprisoned, after being granted asylum by that country. Soler then reportedly travelled to St Petersburg. But the investigation mentioned no evidence of any “conspiracy” linking Soler, Assange and Russia to the referendum in Catalonia.

The majority of the links cited came from Bellingcat, a “research collective” which has specialised in “uncovering” and disseminating spurious and often falsified anti-Russia propaganda stories since it was founded in 2014.

Calling for the closing of the probe last summer, the assistant prosecutor in the case, Miguel Ángel Carballo, issued a scathing letter, reported by Eldiario.es, in which he explained that the only “evidence” provided by the police had been one testimony from an unnamed source and a number of links to online news articles on the subject.

Pointing to the bogus nature of the case, Carballo’s letter stated: “Nothing has been brought by the police that would allow us to keep this investigation open, unless we seek a general case to search for any evidence which would confirm the basic premise. This would be ignoring the fact that in criminal proceedings, with all the safeguards, these sorts of investigations are prohibited.”

On the allegations of links between Assange, Russia and the Catalan nationalists, the Prosecutor’s Office was forced to admit: “These statements are devoid of any factual basis.”

The dropping of the case is further confirmation that the whole investigation was a fraud from the very beginning, carried out with definite political objectives.

The investigation shines a light on the methods employed in such politically motivated and state-promulgated disinformation campaigns. Ludicrous media claims that Russia meddled in the Catalan referendum and even planned to invade the region—likely fed to the press by the police and secret services themselves—are then cited by the very same agencies as evidence of the fabricated crime.

Opposition to these bizarre stories is cited as proof of “misinformation propaganda” made in Moscow. Thus, NATO operative Daniel Iriarte tweeted last year against those who were criticising the case as baseless from the start, saying it was “a classical example of Russian disinformation technique called ‘hahaganda’: each time Russia comes out badly from an event, they look at the most extreme or bizarre example, it’s laughed at, ridiculed and then the WHOLE [story] categorised as absurd.”

In contrast to the wall-to-wall coverage given to the initial claims of Russian interference, the cases are dropped with little media comment.

While news sites like El País devoted numerous prominent articles and editorials to promoting the lie that there was indisputable evidence of Russian meddling in the referendum, reporting on the collapse of the case quickly disappeared.

Claims of “Russian meddling” were aimed at fabricating a spurious conspiracy involving Madrid’s two “evil” enemies, Russia and Catalan nationalists, while dragging in figures hated by the NATO powers for exposing their war crimes, incarcerated journalist Julian Assange and persecuted whistle blower Edward Snowden.

This served not only as a pretext for stepped-up attacks on the democratic rights of Catalan nationalists and pro-independence protesters but have also been used to further escalate tensions with nuclear-armed Russia, increasing the danger of an all-out war.

A military conflict between the United States and China or Russia —the largest militaries in the world stocked with 12,000 nuclear warheads between them —would have catastrophic consequences for all of humanity.

Child malnutrition and hunger skyrocket in Haiti as COVID-19 infections spike

Alex Johnson

At least 86,000 children are at risk of developing “severe acute” child malnutrition this year in Haiti, according to sources connected to the United Nations Children’s Fund. The number of children projected to suffer from starvation this year has doubled as the impoverished nation continues to grapple with extraordinary political and social crises exacerbated by the pandemic.

Amazon Annegardine, 11, being treated for abnormal blood sugar levels at the Hospital of Immaculate Conception, in Les Cayes, Haiti, Wednesday, May 26, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Joseph Odelyn]

According to a UN survey, there are now 217,000 children currently suffering from acute malnutrition. Acute malnutrition had been steadily rising in the child population for several years before the pandemic triggered a massive food crisis that raised the total by 61percent in 2020. In an interview with the Miami Herald, Bruno Maes, Haiti’s UNICEF representative, said that nearly 5 million Haitians are affected by malnutrition and struggle to obtain daily nourishment.

In the first three months of this year alone, the number of admissions of severely acute malnourished children in health facilities has increased by more than 26 percent compared to a year ago. Jean Gough, the UNICEF Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, pointed to the significant danger facing a large portion of small children if the crisis continues unabated.

“We can’t look the other way and ignore one of the least funded humanitarian crises in the region,” declared Gough in a UNICEF press release. Gough warned that without “urgent funding in the next weeks,” treatment against malnutrition “will be discounted and some children will be at risk of dying.”

Meanwhile, Haiti has been left dangerously unprepared for the onslaught of COVID-19. Despite being noticeably unaffected at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, Haiti has witnessed in recent weeks an alarming acceleration of infections and deaths, with its dilapidated medical infrastructure completely unequipped to handle a significant outbreak.

On May 6, the Ministry of Health reported 13,245 COVID-19 infections and 268 deaths. Exactly one month later on June 6, the number of infections had ballooned to more than 16,079, while confirmed deaths rose to 346. These numbers, however, are surely gross undercounts, as the healthcare infrastructure needed to perform contact-tracing and identify all coronavirus-related deaths is all but absent.

New cases are already starting to stretch hospital capacity and the country’s oxygen supply. Antiviral treatments and other crucial supplies remain, for most of the population, out of reach. Reports are emerging every week of at least one hospital in the country's capital and most populous city, Port-au-Prince, running out of beds and denying the entrance to COVID patients.

Haiti remains the only country in the Western Hemisphere that has yet to administer any vaccines to its population. A shipment of 132,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses from the UN-backed COVAX program was supposed to be sent to the country on Monday, but has been delayed indefinitely, according to the Pan American Health Organization.

The Biden administration belatedly announced this week that it plans on delivering a significant number of US vaccine doses to the country. A White House official said the administration was “actively engaging” with the Haitian government on how best to conduct a national vaccination program. The official made this declaration before admitting that no plans had been finalized on how exactly vaccines are to be delivered or when they would arrive.

Behind the inability of the poorest countries of the world such as Haiti to procure necessary vaccines is the noxious nationalism and profit-gouging of the governments of the US and other more advanced capitalist countries, which have systematically sabotaged all international efforts to deploy vaccines outside their national borders.

Dr. Richard Frechette, a health practitioner working in St. Luke Hospital, which runs one of the few COVID-19 treatment centers in Port-au-Prince, spoke on the contradiction between the supposed generosity of the Biden White House and Haiti’s hospitals receiving expired vaccines due to constant delays. Frechette said it was “totally absurd from every humane point of view and justice.” St. Luke is one of many hospitals running low on oxygen tanks and beds.

Haitian doctors have stressed that the $16 million the US Agency for International Development said it is donating is grossly insufficient for combatting the massive influx of COVID-19 patients. In many hospitals, doctors are seeing so many patients that anywhere between 400 and 500 oxygen tanks a day are required, which dwarfs the 50 oxygen concentrators the USAID is proposing to distribute to a dozen or so facilities.

The surge in the pandemic has also intensified Haiti’s staggering food crisis. More than one in four Haitians is facing acute food insecurity. This includes at least 1.9 million children, according to Integrated Food Security Phase Classification and UNICEF estimates. UNICEF reports that it is desperately seeking US $48.9 million to meet the humanitarian needs of 1.5 million people and 700,000 children, a situation which has been significantly exacerbated by COVID-19.

In 2020, UNICEF and the Haitian government had to treat well over 33,000 acutely malnourished children through the UN’s Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food program, which provides live-saving assistance to the most poverty-stricken communities. UNICEF has warned, however, that it has begun to run out of funds to support the program and needs at least $3 million to purchase supplies to carry out preventative treatment.

The food crisis engulfing the Caribbean nation is just one manifestation of a global spike in malnourishment and famine. In a Global Report on Food Crises released by the World Food Program last month, at least 155 million people in 55 countries were found to have faced acute hunger in 2020—20 million more than 2019.

Blame for the hunger crisis and the surge in COVID-19 cases in Haiti and other underdeveloped countries lies squarely with the profit-driven capitalist system, which has prioritized the enrichment of the world's ruling classes at the expense of saving lives. In stark contrast to the surge in malnourishment for the world’s poor, the world’s richest billionaires increased their wealth from $8 trillion to $13 trillion while the pandemic spread and claimed 3 million lives.

Haiti’s ultra-wealthy oligarchy and their political henchmen like authoritarian President Jovenal Moïse have presided over a social crisis where Haitian households have seen their income drop by more than 60 percent. The Moïse regime has spent the past year shrugging off the danger of the pandemic and ignoring the need to adopt preventive health measures against outbreaks.

Moïse’s government has been at the core of a political crisis that has gripped the country for months after his attempts in February to upend the constitution and establish a presidential dictatorship.

Backed by the United States and other imperialist powers, Moïse remained in power after his five-year term as president expired in early February. His government has orchestrated plans to hold a referendum that would effectively grant him sweeping dictatorial powers. The referendum proposal included removing the prohibition on presidents serving more than two consecutive terms, which was instituted after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986.

The president was forced to backpedal on his plans after tens of thousands of people carried out protests in Port-au-Prince and other cities against his right-wing agenda. Police responded to the groundswell of social opposition by attacking protestors with tear gas, rubber bullets and other means of repression. Popular anger against the government had been rising since early 2020 when Moïse refused to hold constitutionally required parliamentary elections after the terms of deputies in the legislature expired, thereby ruling by decree. Moïse has since dismissed all the country’s mayors and handpicked his own reactionary loyalists to fill critical positions in the police and federal agencies.

Moïse stated Thursday that there was “nothing to worry about” about in terms of the country holding its parliamentary, local and presidential elections scheduled to take place September 21.

These comments are aimed at deflecting the international bourgeoisies’ growing unease over the protest and strike movements that have erupted in Haiti against homicidal pandemic policies, obscene levels of social inequality and the lurch towards dictatorship. The only way that the tragic and life-threatening crises facing the Haitian people can be resolved is through a revolutionary socialist movement, led by the working class and allied with workers across the globe, aimed at overthrowing capitalism and ending the centuries-long legacy of imperialist oppression.

COVID-19 cases surge in Britain as government considers ending restrictions weeks earlier than announced

Robert Stevens

COVID-19 cases are surging in Britain. Daily cases have risen more than fivefold in the last month. According to Public Health England (PHE) data out this week, case rates per 100,000 people continue to increase in all regions and age-groups.

On May 17, the day most of the economy was reopened, 1,979 coronavirus cases were reported. A month later, on June 17, the daily case number was 11,007—the highest for almost four months. In the week to Friday 61,181 people tested positive, up 15,286 on the week prior.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson gives a press conference concerning the Covid pandemic with the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty and the Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance. 9 Downing Street, June 14, 2021 (credit: Picture by Andrew Parsons /No 10 Downing Street)

Deaths due to the disease are increasing after having finally reached zero in Britain on June 1 due to the rollout of the vaccination programme and limited lockdown measures. In the last week, 72 deaths have been reported, up 18 percent on the week before.

The R (Reproduction) rate of the virus jumped in the last week in England from between 1 and 1.2 to between 1.2 and 1.4. The north-west had the highest rate at 1.3 to 1.5, with London’s surging from 1.1 to 1.4.

According to data compiled for the last seven days by Worldometers, and based on official government figures, the UK’s 34 percent increase in cases is second only to Russia (40 percent) in Europe.

The surge is being driven by the Delta variant of COVID-19, which just months after being detected in Britain has become the dominant strain. Delta was first detected on April 1, but the government did not make its existence public until April 15. A PHE report issued yesterday found that cases of Delta had increased by 80 percent in just the last week, making up 99 percent of all COVID cases nationwide.

These figures torpedo claims made in the media this week that virus infections were levelling off. The assertions were made based on data from the ZOE Covid study app. However, the lead scientist on the app, Prof Tim Spector, has consistently played down the danger of the Delta variant. On May 20, Spector said that the Delta variant “hasn't altered numbers significantly”, adding, “While the outbreaks remain localised and UK numbers are steady and most cases appear mild, it’s highly unlikely to cause the NHS to be overrun or stop us coming out of lockdown [scheduled for June 21].”

The reality was that the surge in COVID cases was such that even Boris Johnson’s government, which has overseen at least 152,000 deaths due to its herd immunity agenda, did not feel able to end all restrictions on June 21, with Parliament voting Wednesday to extend the deadline by a month.

This week Spector said, “The good news is that this isn’t going up as fast as it was… This has been a much better week than it was last week. I think we can start to see an end to this little mini wave in the young and the extra time [after the government was forced to back down on the June 21 reopening] we’ve got should be able to squash this from getting out of control.”

He concluded, “If we look at the way past waves have come and gone I would be predicting that this should be peaking around 10 to 14 days’ time and then start to fall, so by four weeks we are at a much lower level than we are now, and much more manageable.”

In fact, the government is preparing for substantial new waves of infection and death. In announcing the delay to the final ending of restrictions, Johnson said, “At a certain stage, we are going to have to learn to live with the virus”.

Johnson declared that July 19 would be the “terminus date” for a full reopening, justified on the basis that it would allow more people to be vaccinated and establish a “very considerable wall of immunity around the whole of the population'”.

This ignores the fact that millions of people, particularly the youngest in society, will remain un- or partially vaccinated, allowing the virus to circulate in high numbers. Dr Susan Hopkins, the strategic response director for COVID-19 at Public Health England, told Parliament’s science and technology select committee on Wednesday that the Delta variant would spread with an R of 5-7 with no restrictions in place.

As well as infecting the unvaccinated, with potential long-term health impacts, the virus will quickly find the vulnerable whose vaccines have not produced a strong immune response. It will be given every opportunity to mutate again into an even more dangerous variant. Hopkins told the committee that PHE is currently monitoring 25 new variants, eight of which were under investigation.

What “learning to live with the virus” really means was partially admitted by SAGE member Professor Graham Medley and the government’s chief scientific officer Chris Witty. Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether the country could see hundreds of deaths a day again, Medley replied, “Oh easily. I think we still might at some point.”

Witty told the NHS Confederation conference, “My expectation is that we will get a further winter surge, late autumn/winter surge… I think we need to be aware of and brace for the fact that the coming winter may well be quite a difficult one.”

These consequences will overwhelmingly fall on the working class, especially its poorest sections, as they have done throughout the pandemic. Witty added during his speech, “The geographical areas where COVID has hit have been extremely defined, where the biggest problems have been repeated.

“So, you see in situations in Bradford, in Leicester, in bits of London for example, in bits of the North West, you see repeated areas where places have been hit over and over again in areas of deprivation.”

In a chilling statement, given the government’s responsibility for overseeing social murder in the pandemic, Whitty noted, “Indeed in many of them, if you had a map of COVID’s biggest effects now and a map of child deaths in 1850, they look remarkably similar. These are areas where deprivation has been prolonged and deeply entrenched.”

On this basis a substantial section of the Tory party and the media are calling for an end to restrictions as soon as possible.

Fifty-one Tory MPs voted against any delay to June 21, including former party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, chair of the 1922 committee Sir Graham Brady, and chair of the Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs and former chief whip Mark Harper. Rebel MP, Sir Desmond Swayne, said of a delay in ending all anti-COVID measures, “I could understand it if we were a communist party, but this is the party that inherited the true wisdom of the Whig tradition.”

Under a headline “Could we be free on July 5?” The Daily Mail reported Friday, “Downing Street has opened the door to ending restrictions on July 5, amid growing evidence that assumptions used by government scientists to justify delaying Freedom Day were too pessimistic.”

The paper cited a government source who said, “The decision to delay reopening was so finely balanced—probably the most difficult decision of the whole pandemic—that the PM wanted a review point built in so that if things did change we could move sooner.”

The newspaper editorialised that “on the back of scientists’ scaremongering, lives are being wrecked. The economy is shackled, pubs and restaurants are going bankrupt and jobs are lost.”

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.