About the Award: Awards of USD $5,000 each will be conferred to five early-career scientists working in an African NARES institution (National Agricultural Research and Extension System) or African university. The award is to encourage scientific programs relevant to understanding and improving phosphorus (P) management in agro-ecosystems.
Type: Fellowship
Eligibility:
Scientists working at an African NARES institution or university who are age 40 or younger at the time of application are eligible for the Fellowship.
Applicants must submit a creative proposal that addresses current knowledge gaps or synthesizes existing information leading to improved P management. Include a description of how the award will be used (such as to support research activities and/or support travel) to achieve the proposal objectives.
Evidence of any scientific partnerships and institutional collaboration will be reviewed favourably.
Female scientists are especially encouraged to apply.
Eligible Countries: African country
Number of Awards: 5
Value of Award: $5,000 (U.S. Dollars)
Duration of Award: one-time award
How to Apply: In order to complete the application process, you will need to submit the following materials in English or French:
1 A description of how the Fellowship will lead to improved understanding of P management in agricultural systems. This should outline any new research, data synthesis, or travel that will be supported with the Fellowship funds. Include sufficient detail that will permit evaluation of its originality, innovative approach, and relevance.
2 Electronic copy of two letters of support, one of which must be from the applicant’s supervisor. Letters must be signed and written on official letterhead and include the phone number and e-mail address of the letter writer.
3 A resume that includes date of birth, academic degrees, and any relevant publications dealing with P behaviour in soil, water or plants.
4 A short report will be required at the end of the award period that describes how the funds were used to support the outcomes of the proposal.
5 You will be required to upload documents during the on-line application process. It is recommended that electronic (pdf) copies of these documents be prepared in advance.
It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.
On Thursday, European Union (EU) heads of state met for a two-day summit in Brussels that endorsed EU policy on the pandemic, while clashing bitterly on foreign policy, especially Russian.
On Thursday evening, the EU issued an initial summit communiqué whitewashing its pandemic policies in Orwellian terms. It hailed “good progress on vaccination and the overall improvement in the epidemiological situation” and stressed “the EU’s commitment to international solidarity in response to the pandemic.”
Angela Merkel [Wikipedia Commons]
In reality, over 1.1 million people have died in Europe due to EU opposition to scientific social-distancing policies. It kept hundreds of millions of workers and youth on the job and at school, even in many of the deadliest weeks of the pandemic. Now, EU states are pressing to end all social distancing, even as the Delta variant spreads, threatening a new contagion. Moreover, EU countries are starving the Covax global vaccination program of doses, pledging to deliver only 100 million by the end of 2021 though they have already administered 325.1 million doses in Europe.
The heart of the summit, however, was planning an aggressive imperialist foreign policy, targeting refugees and Russia. Even before the summit opened, conflicts were mounting over EU relations with Moscow, after the bilateral summit between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month.
It came after a dangerous incident on Wednesday between Russia and Britain in the Black Sea, in which Russian aircraft dropped bombs in the path of a British destroyer allegedly violating Russian territorial waters in the Black Sea. In response, Berlin and Paris proposed to renew EU-Russia talks, which have been suspended since the 2014 NATO-backed regime change operation in Ukraine.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel floated the proposal before the German parliament on Thursday morning. “It is not enough for the US president to speak to the Russian president. I am very happy about that, but the European Union must also create different formats for discussion,” she said. Citing wars in Libya and Syria, Merkel added: “We must define an agenda of common strategic interests, for instance on climate protection, but also in the areas of peace and security.”
French President Emmanuel Macron supported her remarks as he arrived in Brussels on Thursday. “Dialog is necessary to stabilize the European continent but it must be firm, as we will not give up any of our values or of our interests,” Macron said. He added, “We cannot remain on a purely defensive attitude to Russia, on a case-by-case basis, while, very legitimately, we saw a structured discussion unfold between President Biden and President Putin.”
The proposal went too far for most EU states and was rejected out of hand, especially by Eastern European governments. The Polish government demanded that Putin first meet EU demands, first and foremost the implementation of the Minsk agreement on Ukraine. Approaching Russia before that would be “a bad signal,” said Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, right at the start of the EU meeting. “It would be like trying to talk to the bear to save some of the honey.”
Instead, the EU called for a tougher course against Russia. Its communiqué “stresses the need for a firm and coordinated response by the EU and its Member States to any further malign, illegal and disruptive activity by Russia, making full use of all instruments at the EU’s disposal, and ensuring coordination with partners.” To this end, the EU Commission and the High Representative are tasked to “present options for additional restrictive measures, including economic sanctions.”
In reality, the proposal of Merkel and Macron had nothing to do with a more peaceful policy. It aimed to develop a foreign and military policy towards Russia more independent from Washington, in order to strengthen the EU’s hand against its foreign rivals and to impose its policies of austerity and “herd immunity” on the coronavirus at home.
From their point of view, however, it was not enough to “let ourselves be debriefed about talks with the president of the United States,” Merkel explained. She said the EU must be “man enough and woman enough to put forward its point of view in direct talks.”
Berlin and Paris are stepping up military pressure on Russia. France will participate in the massive Sea Breeze naval maneuver, scheduled for June 28–July 10 in the Black Sea. Hosted by US and Ukrainian forces, it includes 5,000 troops, 32 ships and 40 aircraft from dozens of countries.
This week, the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) is participating for the first time in a NATO airspace surveillance mission over the Black Sea. Two Eurofighters from Tactical Air Wing 71 “Richthofen” landed at Romania’s Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base in Constanta on Thursday. Until July 9, they will patrol Black Sea airspace together with British forces.
As the EU escalates its military threats, divisions between the member states are growing. Writing on Paris’ and Berlin’s failure to secure support for their proposal, the German weekly Der Spiegel warned: “Merkel’s and Macron’s defeat extends beyond the day. … The Union is also divided over its dealings with Hungary: the rift between East and West threatens to become an abyss.”
At the summit, besides Hungary and Portugal—which holds the rotating EU Council presidency—eight Eastern European states (Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic) refused to sign a joint letter attacking Hungary’s new anti-LGBT law, banning schools from using material seen as promoting homosexuality. A Reuters report called it “the most intense personal clash among the bloc’s leaders in years.”
The EU is responding to its explosive internal divisions and to growing social and political opposition among workers and youth with a constant police state and military build-up.
In the Mediterranean and Africa, the EU called for closer cooperation with regional allies to halt migrants, deny their right to asylum and imprison them in camps. It stated that “mutually beneficial partnerships and cooperation with countries of origin and transit will be intensified.” This has led to the construction of detention camps including in Turkey, Libya, Bosnia, Greece and Spain where hundreds of thousands of refugees are kept in appalling conditions.
The EU identified Turkey as a key partner against refugees. It hailed “preparatory work for high level dialogues with Turkey on issues of mutual interest, such as migration, public health, climate, counter-terrorism and regional issues.”
“The European Council calls on the Commission to put forward without delay formal proposals for the continuation of financing for Syrian refugees and host communities in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and other parts of the region,” it added. It also hailed “de-escalation in the Eastern Mediterranean,” where Turkey has clashed with Greece and France, and new customs deals with Turkey.
The EU communiqué also endorsed France’s war in Mali and its collaboration with the military junta installed in an August 2020 coup in Bamako. It reaffirmed its “call on the Malian transition authorities to fully implement the Transition Charter” and return to nominally civilian rule.
This came as a car bomb attack wounded 12 German troops supporting French forces in Mali, near Ichagara in the northern Gao region, as well as a soldier from another unidentified country, four days after a car bomb injured six French soldiers near Kaigourou. German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said three German soldiers were seriously wounded.
Nonetheless, the EU hailed its missions in Africa in support of France, including “the continuation of EU CSDP missions and engagement in the Takuba Task Force,” which involves troops from 12 European countries beyond France.
The summit concluded with a closed-door discussion of the Next Generation EU bailout, one of the multiple bailouts that collectively will funnel over €2 trillion to the banks and corporations during the pandemic. Such bailouts are to be paid for with austerity attacks targeting the working class, such as renewed labor reforms in Spain and pension cuts in France that are already being prepared.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) concluded on Wednesday that there is a “likely association” between mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (i.e., Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna) and cases of inflammation of the heart called myocarditis and pericarditis. In addition, it appears to have a higher propensity in younger people, with a predominance in males and occurs more frequently several days after the second booster dose.
Myocarditis results in inflammation of the heart muscle, while pericarditis causes inflammation of the heart’s membrane. Symptoms associated with the diagnosis include chest pain, shortness of breath and the feeling of a rapid heart rate or pounding in the chest. In most cases, it can be treated with a course of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories. (Some have required steroids.) A significant majority of patients have made a seemingly full recovery.
“Clinical presentation of myocarditis cases following vaccination has been distinct, occurring most often within one week after dose two, with chest pain as the most common presentation,” said Dr. Grace Lee, chair of ACIP.
Frozen vials of the COVID-19 vaccine (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
According to Tom Shimabukuro, MD, MPH, MBA, the deputy director of the Immunization Safety Office at the CDC, the agency has received reports of 1,226 cases of myocarditis, of which 827 (or 67.5 percent) occurred after the second dose of the mRNA vaccines. This translates to approximately 12.6 cases per 1 million doses administered (about one in 80,000). Among the 1,226 patients, 484 were younger than 29, and two-thirds were men.
A COVID-19 infection carries a higher risk of causing heart inflammation as compared to the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. A small study conducted last year at Ohio State University that examined COVID-19 cases among 26 college athletes, using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, found four athletes had possible myocarditis, and eight had evidence of scar tissue, which may have been a byproduct either of the infection or normal athletic adaptation.
Approximately 1 in 3,000 people under the age of 21 infected will develop multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a debilitating, potentially fatal neurological condition that could cause permanent impairment to vital functions. Meanwhile, only 1 in 100,000 vaccinated children seem to develop a mild form of myocarditis. Thus, the benefits of the vaccines appear to vastly outweigh the risks that accompany the shots.
Immediately following the CDC ACIP meeting, the US Department of Health and Human Services issued a statement explaining the risks: “The facts are clear: this is an extremely rare side effect, and only an exceedingly small number of people will experience it after vaccination. Importantly, for the young people who do, most cases are mild, and individuals often recover on their own or with minimal treatment. In addition, we know that myocarditis and pericarditis are much more common if you get COVID-19, and the risks to the heart from COVID-19 infection can be more severe.”
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will add a warning to the fact sheets for these vaccines, while medical experts will investigate why these adverse events are occurring. Dr. Doran Fink, MD, PhD, deputy director of the FDA’s Division of Vaccines and Related Products Application, told the CDC expert panel that they were finalizing the wording of the warning statement. He told the panel, “Based on limited follow-up, most cases appear to have been associated with resolution of symptoms, but limited information is available about potential long-term sequelae.”
With the demand to fully open schools in the fall for in-class instruction, federal, state, and local officials are pushing the FDA to authorize the vaccines for children under 12. However, scientists have urged caution because there is limited data on vaccine safety for younger age groups, requiring more rigorous study. The urgency is compounded by the more transmissible Delta variant spreading rapidly among children. There are roughly 48 million children under the age of 12 in the US.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky has said that she expects the Delta variant will soon become the dominant strain in the US. As cases of COVID-19 infections are beginning to rise in the Midwest, where vaccination rates are lower than in the Northeast and West Coast, President Joe Biden has urged younger people to get vaccinated. This comes on the heels of a sharp slowing of the vaccination campaign that has seen a 38 percent week-to-week decline in the number of doses administered. Only 45.6 percent of the entire US population has been fully inoculated.
Based on an ACIP report dated June 11, 2021, when cases were broken down by age categories, among 16 to 17 year olds who had received 2.3 million doses, there were 79 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis reported through the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). This is far higher than the expected 2to 19 cases, or about four times normal. For 18 to 24 year olds, who had received 9.8 million doses, there were 196 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis reported, compared to an expected 8 to 83 cases, or about twice the normal rate.
Preliminary myocarditis-pericarditis reports to VAERS following two doses mRNA vaccination - expected vs observed
Young males reported the condition at a much higher rate than young females. However, Haitham Ahmed of Harvard Chan School of Public Health, now the chair of cardiology at AdvantageCare Physicians, New York, cautioned against misinterpreting the data since “high odds of a low number can still be a very low number.”
Placing the present discussion into context, if 1 million boys aged 12 to 17 received a second dose of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, 70 cases of myocarditis might develop. However, by vaccinating these million boys, 5,700 infections would be prevented, including 215 hospitalizations and 2 deaths.
However, the pandemic cannot be controlled by vaccinations alone. As scientists have stressed, the pandemic must be eradicated by strict mitigation measures while expanding vaccinations to everyone across the globe. No one country can exit the pandemic without the rest of the world. This only highlights the deep contradictions of the ruling class policy of vaccine nationalism.
Sweden’s Social Democrat-led minority government became the first administration in the country’s history to be toppled by a no-confidence vote initiated by opposition parties last Monday.
Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, who led a coalition with the Greens that was tolerated by the ex-Stalinist Left Party and the centre-right Liberal and Centre parties, has until today to resign, reach a new deal to keep his government afloat, or call a snap election.
Löfven’s government is deeply unpopular. It has presided over a criminal “herd immunity” policy during the pandemic, allowing the virus to run rampant with virtually no public health measures. As a result, in a country of just 10 million people, over 1 million have been infected and more than 14,200 have died at a per capita rate far higher than its Nordic neighbours.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven (Credit: Estonian Presidency-Wikimedia Commons)
The Social Democrat/Green coalition has also continued the steady march to the right in social spending, tax policy, and privatisations that has proceeded uninterrupted since the 1990s. The issue over which his government finally fell was a proposal to lift rent controls on newly built apartments to enrich multi-millionaire and billionaire property speculators—a proposal that the Left Party felt it could not support without committing political suicide.
The housing crisis in Sweden is a major social issue, with over two-thirds of municipalities reporting a housing shortage. The lack of affordable housing reflects the rapid growth in social inequality over recent years, regardless of whether a government of the “left” or “right” has been in power.
The initiative for the no confidence vote was taken by the far-right Sweden Democrats, whose roots are in the neo-Nazi milieu of the 1980s. Sweden Democrat leader Jimmy Akesson was joined by the Christian Democrats and by the Moderates, traditionally the largest conservative party, in voting against the government. The motion succeeded because the votes of the Left Party’s 27 deputies secured a majority of 181 to 168 in the 349-seat Riksdag (parliament).
The fact that the far-right is the beneficiary of widespread popular opposition to the Social Democrat/Green coalition’s right-wing, big business policies is the responsibility of the ex-Stalinist Left Party, which has for decades worked to subordinate the working class to the Social Democrats and their trade union allies.
Over recent years, this policy has been justified by the need to prevent the rise of the far-right. The events of the past week have made clear that this disastrous course has only handed the political initiative to the far-right and paved the way for the fascists to come to power. Akesson, jubilant at the success of his no confidence vote this week, was able to denounce the Löfven government as historically weak, adding that it “should never have come to power.”
The Left Party sought to cover its tracks by presenting itself as the voice of workers and the oppressed. In a speech to the Riksdag, party leader Nooshi Dadgostar claimed to be defending the “Folkhemmet” (People’s Home), a term used to describe the relatively generous social services and welfare programmes introduced by successive Social Democrat-led governments in the post-war period.
“The political situation remains difficult, but I’m proud of having contributed to making sure that the voice of Swedish tenants were heard,” commented Dadgostar on Twitter.
The Left Party’s attempt to portray itself as a defender of the “Swedish social model,” which no longer exists for the majority of the population, is a political fraud. It has played a critical role in propping up every Social Democrat government over the past three decades, helping to dismantle the “social model” and turn Sweden into a paradise for private investors. It backed the Social Democrats as they carried out sweeping privatisations, business deregulation, the gutting of workers’ rights, and attacks on social programmes. This is the product of the Left Party’s acceptance of Sweden’s official political setup, identifying the establishment parties as two opposed blocs: the “left", which includes the Social Democrats, Greens, and Left Party; and the right-wing “Alliance,” composed of the Moderates, Centre, Liberal, and Christian Democrat parties.
Under the Social Democrat-led government of Göran Persson (1996-2006), which relied on Left Party backing for a majority between 1998 and 2006, a wave of privatisations and public spending cuts was initiated. This laid the basis for the right-wing Alliance government under Prime Minister Frederick Reinfeldt to launch the largest privatisation drive in Swedish history between 2006 and 2014.
When Löfven first came to power after Reinfeldt’s defeat in the 2014 election, he failed to secure a majority within the traditional framework of the “left” bloc. This was a reflection of growing disillusionment with the Social Democrats, whose support fell from well over 40 percent during the 1970s and 1980s to 31 percent in 2014. Due to the lack of any genuine alternative to the right-wing programmes offered by all the major parties, the Sweden Democrats more than doubled their vote to over 13 percent.
Löfven struck a deal with the right-wing parties to ensure his minority government remained in power, including the adoption of the Alliance’s budgetary framework and the imposition of one of the most aggressive anti-refugee policies in Europe. The Left Party voted in favour of this government, which it touted as a bulwark against the far-right. Instead, after four years of a right-wing Social Democrat-led government, the Sweden Democrats were able to grow their support further to 17.6 percent in the 2018 election. In contrast, support for the parties in the “left” bloc dropped from over 43 percent in 2014 to 40.6 percent in 2018.
Löfven responded by deepening his collusion with the right. Instead of relying on an informal understanding, he secured a formal deal with the Centre and Liberal parties not to topple his government while still being guaranteed the informal backing of the Left Party.
Löfven agreed to major tax cuts for the wealthy and big business, and the undermining of workplace seniority rights. The Centre and Liberal parties, for their part, justified the January Agreement by saying that the alternative would have been to prop up a government led by Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson, which would have been reliant on the support of the right-wing extremists. The Left Party backed this arrangement for over two years, until this week.
In March, the Liberal Party passed a formal motion announcing that it would return to campaigning for an Alliance government at the 2022 election and did not rule out working with the Sweden Democrats. Liberal leader Nyamko Sabuni told the daily Dagens Nyheter, “My analysis is that no government can be formed without having to at least have a relationship with one of the outer fringe parties (the Left Party and Sweden Democrats). We will from now on negotiate with all parties in parliament and look for a majority where we can find it.”
The prospect of a government including the Sweden Democrats has taken a major step forward. On Thursday, Sabuni told the TT news agency that she would not enter talks to keep Löfven in power, a reversal of her party’s position in March pledging to continue backing the government until it had passed the 2022 budget. A day earlier, Centre Party leader Annie Lööf offered Löfven a compromise that included the implementation of further tax cuts. Even assuming Löfven can persuade the Centre and Left parties to back a new edition of his Social Democrat/Green coalition, the opposition of the Liberals would prevent him from achieving a parliamentary majority.
The Moderates’ Kristersson is openly pushing for a change of government without an election, based on an agreement among the Alliance members to join a government backed by the Sweden Democrats. He demanded in an interview with Sveriges Radio that the Centre Party should choose sides and back a “bourgeois government,” an alternative description for the Alliance.
A sharp warning must be made to workers in Sweden. The policies of the Social Democrats and Left Party have facilitated a dramatic shift to the right in official politics. To oppose this the working class must repudiate the Left Party’s reactionary claim that workers' interests can be protected and advanced by lending support to the Social Democrats and seeking to revive the “Folkhemmet”.
Last weekend, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) expressed her “fundamental confidence” in Germany’s Special Forces Command (KSK). She announced that the secretive fighting unit would not be disbanded despite a long string of far-right scandals and serious weapons offences.
“In an organization like the Bundeswehr [Armed Forces],” she said, right-wing extremists can never be “ruled out in absolutely every instance,” even more so “in the special forces.” She has arranged for the command to be sent back to Afghanistan to “secure” the redeployment of German troops there.
KSK unit at the Bundeswehr Day 2017 (Image: Tim Rademacher / CC BY-SA 4.0)
By deciding to leave the KSK largely untouched, the defence minister is protecting the fascist networks that have developed within the force. Extensive stockpiles of ammunition and explosives, which are said to have been funneled toward a nationwide fascist network that recruits members from across the state and security apparatus and is preparing for a violent coup on a “Day X,” disappeared from the KSK and other special units.
Given detailed witness statements and press research that painted a picture of a “shadow army” in May 2020, the Defence Ministry felt compelled to convene a “KSK task force,” which was officially charged with investigating “right-wing extremist ties” within the elite unit. The “task force” is comprised of KSK Commander Markus Kreitmayr, Germany’s most senior military brass; Inspector General Eberhard Zorn, as well as Defence Commissioner Eva Högl (Social Democratic Party, SPD). In reality, it served to shield the unit, along with its armed parallel structures, from the critical gaze of the public.
For example, Kreitmayr, who was supposed to take action against those in possession of the unit’s “lost” war materiel, instead ordered an illegal “ammunition amnesty” under which KSK soldiers could hand over privately stashed Bundeswehr stocks without fearing any consequences. The public only learned of this by chance during the trial of one of the soldiers involved, who maintained an underground weapons cache. In March, his two-year sentence was suspended.
Although criminal and military investigations are underway against the KSK commander because of the amnesty measure, Kreitmayr will not be suspended but will assume a new leadership position “in rotation.” His successor as KSK head will be Brigadier General Ansgar Meyer, who currently commands the German contingent of NATO’s “Resolute Support” mission in Afghanistan.
That Kreitmayr’s blatant attempt to obstruct justice was only the tip of the iceberg is borne out by other details that have come to light recently. According to a report by Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland, the possibility of returning the stolen ammunition without punishment “was evidently known in the Defence Ministry (BMVg) at least since last summer.”
The Bundestag (federal parliament), however, was not informed of this. “The Inspector-General personally deleted the relevant passage in the report to the parliamentarians,” according to TV news show Tagesschau.
The working group’s “final report,” signed by Inspector General Zorn and published early last week, now claims that “more than 90 percent” of the defence minister’s “60 measures” announced last summer have “already been implemented” and that “comprehensive structural changes” have been implemented that are “effectively tantamount to a reorganization of this unit.”
The World Socialist Web Site commented on the alleged “reform measures” at the time. It stated: “The defence minister’s move is primarily a damage control operation. The discredited right-wing extremist force is not to be disbanded but rather organised more effectively and given more influence within the Bundeswehr as a whole.”
This assessment has since been fully confirmed. For example, the Bundeswehr website states that “exchanges of the KSK with special forces of other branches of the armed forces and the police as well as international exchange in training” should be “specifically promoted” in the future. However, research by broadcaster ZDF suggests that it was precisely such regular “exchanges with other special forces,” which, under the auspices of politicians, benefited the development of the nationwide terrorist networks.
As for the grandiloquent announcement of the “disbanding” of a KSK company in which the right-wing extremist activities were particularly comprehensively documented, this turns out to be a mere regrouping. On its website, the Bundeswehr explains that the “formal dissolution” of the company was not connected with the suspension and disarmament of its members but was the prelude to “personnel decisions” that could include “transfers out of the unit or to another area of the KSK.”
In parallel with these manoeuvres, the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD), which reports directly to the Defence Ministry, also established a “working focus” on the KSK and was given broad powers to monitor telecommunications. The ministry thus strengthened the authority under whose eyes the armed command structures had developed: both Robert P. alias “Petrus” (a KSK soldier and administrator of the far-right “Nord” chat group), and André S. alias “Hannibal” (a former KSK instructor and alleged head of the group) were, at least temporarily, “informants” of the military intelligence service.
In 2018, MAD agent and former KSK soldier Peter W. had to stand trial on suspicion of having warned his informant, “Hannibal,” about the ongoing investigations against the latter’s network. At the time, Peter W. was also acting as an official “contact person” for the investigating Federal Prosecutor General and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).
In June 2020, various media outlets finally reported that eight KSK soldiers were regularly provided with information about the trial of their comrade by at least one MAD agent. “The head of evaluation at MAD” had “passed on internal documents from ongoing investigations to a KSK soldier,” who had subsequently forwarded them, Tagesschau reported.
Such an approach is standard practice for a secret service whose annual report unapologetically describes its task as protecting Bundeswehr soldiers in contact with suspected right-wing extremists “from unjustified suspicion.”
That the KSK, riddled with right-wing extremists and intelligence operatives, is again being deployed to Afghanistan, the country where it was used to torture and murder people, speaks volumes.
The unit was the first German force to set foot on Afghan soil in 2001 as part of “Operation Enduring Freedom.” Just weeks later, KSK soldiers allegedly physically abused Murat Kurnaz, who was born and raised in Bremen, Germany, at a US airbase in Kandahar province before transferring him to the torture chambers at Guantánamo, where he was subsequently detained without charge for five years with the knowledge of the German government.
American special forces who then collaborated with the KSK in “processing” so-called “capture-or-kill” lists later reported hearing “music from World War II” at the German troops’ debauched drinking parties.
Significantly, on 1 September, outgoing KSK Commander Kreitmayr will take over the post of head of training at the Armed Forces Base, previously held by Brigadier General Georg Klein. Klein, who in turn was promoted within the Armed Forces Base Command, is responsible for the Bundeswehr’s bloodiest war crime to date.
In 2009, the then Bundeswehr colonel, working closely with members of the KSK, ordered the bombing of two tanker trucks in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, resulting in the deaths of between 100 and 140 people, including many children of primary school age. As documents obtained by Wikileaks later showed, the operational command knew in advance “that the bombing would result in numerous deaths and injuries without adequate action being taken immediately before and after the incident.”
Kramp-Karrenbauer’s rehabilitation of the KSK sends an alarm. In the face of growing social tensions, the ruling layers need such forces and methods to enforce their interests abroad and at the same time to suppress growing resistance at home.
As early as 2017, former KSK Commander and Brigadier General Dag Baehr publicly described a “KSK deployment at home” as a scenario that urgently needed to be rehearsed. In June 2020, a whistleblower reported that soldiers in the unit were ordered by superiors to write essays about a “KSK deployment inside the country.” Last month, a former Bundeswehr colonel who “helped build” the KSK, according to a report by broadcaster ZDF, appeared at an anti-lockdown demonstration in the capital and declared that “the KSK should be sent to Berlin for a change” to “clean things up properly.”
Last week, building industry employers in Germany prematurely broke off collective bargaining for some 890,000 workers in the main construction sector. Although the existing contract expires on June 30, the third round of negotiations will not take place before August.
The employers are sticking with their first offer, a total pay increase of 3 percent with a two-year contract, which they had already presented in May. It is an obvious provocation that aims to postpone discussion as far as possible into the autumn. The industry negotiators are the Saxony-based building contractor Uwe Nostitz, vice president of the Central Association of the German Construction Industry, and Jutta Beeke, managing director of the Echterhoff Bau Group in Osnabrück, for the Main Association of the German Construction Industry.
The IG BAU trade union is doing nothing to oppose the move. Union President Robert Feiger and chief negotiator Carsten Burckhardt merely complained about the ruthless behaviour of the employers saying, “They showed a complete lack of understanding; they were without any concept, they were without any plan.” This had never happened before. “They left the hall before our eyes.”
Construction workers in Detroit (Source: WSWS Media)
Without any resistance, the union is acquiescing to delaying tactics aimed at letting the main construction season pass and dragging out the dispute into the winter, if possible. After last week’s meeting of the federal bargaining commission, the union leaders said they wanted to go into arbitration as the next step. At the same time, Burckhardt stressed that the union was “ready for further talks; our door was and still is open.”
The union is demanding 5.3 percent more in wages and salaries, compensation for the often long commuting times to construction sites and the alignment of incomes in the former East Germany with levels in the west of the country. These demands are at best a drop in the bucket.
The construction industry is one of the few sectors, which despite the coronavirus pandemic, has benefited from growth and was able to make high profits. Nevertheless, workers must slave until they drop and are constantly exposed to physical danger. The construction industry has a 48-hour workweek. Working hours go up to as high as 10 hours a day, and in the summer a six-day week is also possible, often with no overtime pay. As a result of the complex subcontractor arrangements, there is a lack of regulation on large construction sites, and workers are subject to arbitrary treatment.
They have worked through the entire pandemic, bearing the brunt of the construction boom and risking their health, safety and livelihoods. Over the course of just five days, from June 9 to 14, no less than three fatal accidents occurred in the German construction industry.
In early June, a 34-year-old laborer fell to his death in Karlsruhe. The man was working on the site of a new building for the KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). He was carrying weather stripping on the roof. It was around noon, and it was hot, when he suddenly fell 20 metres, succumbing to severe injuries at the scene of the accident. Although the cause of the accident has not yet been clarified, it was immediately claimed that there were “no indications of fault on the part of third parties.” However, the man was working alone on the roof in the midday heat without sufficient personal protective equipment.
Another terrible accident occurred three days later near Göttingen, when a crane fell over on a construction site in Esebeck. One construction worker from Southeastern Europe was killed instantly, and a second was so badly injured that he had to be put into an artificial coma following emergency surgery. This took place on a Saturday, when normally no work should be done.
At that time, only workers from a subcontractor, which owns the crane, were working at the apartment building site. An expert has since determined that the crane was defective: a screw to secure it against overload had broken off or had been removed for some time. At the time of the accident, a weight of almost 2.2 tonnes was hanging from the crane, although it was approved for only 1.25 tonnes. The crane tilted and smashed through the ceiling of the building on which the two men had been working. Both fell into the depths and were buried under concrete parts.
The capitalists put profits before lives. To save time and money, workers are put under enormous pressure to labor under unsafe conditions. Construction equipment is jerry-rigged or not repaired, with deadly consequences.
Just two days later, another fatal accident occurred in Freiberg am Neckar in the Ludwigsburg district. A 49-year-old excavator operator fell into a construction pit and was crushed between the upended excavator and a wall. Several eyewitnesses immediately ran over, joining forces to raise the excavator a little and pulled the worker out from under it, but in vain. He died of his injuries in hospital.
In addition to the deadly conditions, time and again migrant workers from Eastern Europe are cheated out of their wages. When they complain, it turns out that the subsidiary or subcontractor is insolvent. Anger among workers is rising as a result.
In August 2018 in Buntingford, UK, Romanian excavator driver Daniel Neagu, who was sacked and cheated out of his wages, got in a digger and demolished five newly built terraced houses. They subsequently had to be rebuilt. A judge sentenced Neagu to four years in prison as a result.
The extreme exploitation and workers’ growing anger highlights the importance of the perspective advanced by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP). Workers must build action committees in the construction industry to take up a common struggle against the criminal methods of the building and subcontracting companies. In doing so, they must act independently of the trade unions and above all the IG BAU.
The IG BAU emerged 23 years ago from its predecessor organisation Bau-Steine-Erden. Under Klaus Wiesehügel, the union leader for 18 years, it developed into a kind of right-wing auxiliary police, attacking foreign migrant workers and stirring up racist sentiments in the name of the fight against moonlighting in construction.
Since then, the IG BAU has lost two-thirds of its 700,000 members. Today, it has only 247,000 members, even though it includes not only construction workers but also workers in building cleaning and waste collection, disposal and recycling (so-called “environmental management”).
The IG BAU executive members all sit on the supervisory boards of large construction companies, for which they are well rewarded. Burckhardt is on the supervisory board of Hochtief AG together with his fellow union executive member Nicole Simons. Ulrike Laux, a member of the supervisory board of the WISAG holding company Aveco, currently shares responsibility for the dismissals of long-serving WISAG workers at Frankfurt Airport.
Classified UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) documents supposedly left accidentally at a bus stop in Kent confirm that the incursion by HMS Defender into Russian territorial waters of Crimea were a calculated provocation, planned at the highest levels of the government and the armed forces.
Two sets of documents were found sodden by a member of the public on last Tuesday morning. One set details discussion held Monday evening on the possible reaction by Russia to HMS Defender’s passage through disputed waters off the Crimea coast that took place on Wednesday. The other leaks outline plans for a possible UK military presence in Afghanistan after the US-led NATO operation ends.
The member of the public, who wishes to remain anonymous, handed the documents to the BBC, allowing for them to be made known prior to the military incursion Wednesday, possibly making it impossible to carry out had the state broadcaster not sat on them.
A screen grab taken from a video released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, June 23, 2021, show a view of the British destroyer HMS Defender as it sails near Crimea in the Black Sea. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
The almost 50 pages of documents include emails and PowerPoint presentations of alternative routes that might have been taken by the Defender, a Type 45 destroyer that is part of the UK Carrier Strike Group led by the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, now heading to the Indo-Pacific region. They originated in the office of a senior official at the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
It was already announced earlier this month that the Defender was to break away from the larger strike group and conduct what the MoD insists was an “innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters,” with guns covered and the ship's helicopter stowed in its hangar. But the documents confirm that the UK was aware of a possible hostile response by Russia and decided to proceed anyway.
The UK’s pose of innocent intent is premised on the assertion that the waters concerned are Ukrainian. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea determines that the passage of a foreign ship is regarded as “innocent” when “it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order, or security of the coastal state.” But Russia has claimed sovereignty over the waters off Crimea since it was annexed in 2014, amid rising tensions with the rightist government installed by a coup in Ukraine that was backed by the United States and the European imperialist powers.
An official at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), which encompasses the UK Army, Navy and the Air Force, asks, “What do we understand about the possible 'welcome party'…?”
Potential Russian responses were outlined ranging from “safe and professional” to “neither safe nor professional.” The documents concluded that “neither safe nor professional” was a distinct and growing possibility.
It was noted that recent interactions in the eastern Mediterranean between Russian forces and the Carrier Strike Group had been unremarkable, “in line with expectations.” However, “Following the transition from defence engagement activity to operational activity, it is highly likely that RFN (Russian navy) and VKS (Russian air force) interactions will become more frequent and assertive.”
Two routes were considered, including passing through “a short stretch through a ‘Traffic Separation Scheme’ (TSS) close to the south-west tip of Crimea,” or one that kept HMS Defender out of contested waters. This was rejected because it would be portrayed as “the UK being scared/running away,” when the UK’s intent was to reinforce Ukraine’s claim to the disputed waters.
“We have a strong, legitimate narrative,” the documents stated, with the presence of embedded journalists, Jonathan Beale from the BBC and Marc Nicol of the Daily Mail, providing “an option for independent verification of HMS Defender's action.”
The Defender sailed about 12 miles off the cast of Crimea, where it was first shadowed by 20 Russian aircraft and two coastguard ships before warning shots were fired and bombs dropped in its path by Russian jets.
Most of these papers are marked “official sensitive,” to be distributed on a “need to know” basis. But the papers also include a document marked “Secret UK Eyes Only,” addressed to Defence Secretary Ben Wallace's private secretary, which outlines the recommendations for the UK to possibly stay in Afghanistan, following the end of NATO’s Operation Resolute Support.
It notes an American request for British assistance, warning that “Any UK footprint in Afghanistan that persists... is assessed to be vulnerable to targeting by a complex network of actors.”
The deliberations are bound up with discussions over Britain’s post-Brexit foreign policy, including over where arms export campaigns put the UK in competition with European powers. But the main concern is over the intentions of President Joe Biden's new administration, including the fact that there is “still much continuity from the previous administration” regarding its focus on China and the Indo-Pacific.
The leak was a major political embarrassment, with the MoD initially stressing that the employee concerned with the loss of documents had reported it promptly last week and that “It would be inappropriate to comment further.”
This satisfied no one, given that the leak clearly came from the office of a senior official at the MoD and could indicate something more than carelessness. A police investigation has been announced, reportedly involving a “top official”, who may even face prosecution under the Official Secrets Act—given that the documents should never have been removed from the building and the strange place they were then discovered before being passed to the BBC.
A source told the Daily Telegraph, “The Ministry of Defence Police were immediately informed and have launched an urgent investigation. Nothing is being ruled out at this stage and it is entirely possible that this could result in a prosecution for the person responsible.”
An incensed Rear Admiral Chris Parry, a former naval commander, told the Telegraph, “In future if people find sensitive documents, they should take them to the police. You might as well take it to the Russian embassy as the BBC.”
“The person responsible should be severely dealt with. They should lose their security classification. This person has proven themselves untrustworthy with secrets at the highest level.”
Amid a potential government crisis, Labour has said nothing about the reckless provocation carried out by the Royal Navy that ramped up tensions with Russia and could have sparked military conflict. Afterwards Moscow summoned British Ambassador Deborah Bronnert to the Foreign Ministry, with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warning that should such an event occur again, “we can bomb… on target.”
Labour’s sole concern is to support a swift investigation by Wallace and the Conservative government to reassure the House of Commons and the public that no military operations had been put at risk. Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey said, “Ultimately ministers must be able to confirm to the public that national security has not been undermined, that no military or security operations have been affected and that the appropriate procedures are in place to ensure nothing like this happens again.”
The rate of new confirmed coronavirus cases globally, which has declined steadily since the end of April, largely as a result of the global vaccination drive against COVID-19, is again beginning to rise as the Delta variant continues to spread internationally.
Daily cases reached their most recent nadir on June 21, which had a 7-day average of 359,833 reported new infections of the coronavirus, according to Worldometer. Since then, cases have been rising, reaching 368,854 on June 26. Daily confirmed deaths worldwide caused by COVID-19 currently stand at just over 8,000, a figure which is expected to rise in the coming weeks following the rise in infections.
In total, there have been nearly 182 million known cases and more than 3.9 million recorded deaths caused by the pandemic.
A worker in protective suits takes a break amid graves at a newly opened cemetery for the victims of COVID-19 in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)
The dangers of the spread of the Delta variant were made clear on Friday by World Health Organization official Dr. Mariangela Simao who warned that, according to CNBC, “People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves.”
Dr. Simao continued, “Vaccine alone won't stop community transmission. People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene... the physical distance, avoid crowding. This still continues to be extremely important, even if you're vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing.”
The World Health Organization’s warning about the continued need for vaccinated people to wear masks constituted an unstated rebuke of the US Centers for Disease control, which last month encouraged unvaccinated people stop masking, leading to the abandonment of mask mandates throughout the country.
The current uptick in cases has been caused, from an epidemiological standpoint, by the fact that the Delta variant is 2.5 times as transmissible as the original variant of the disease, a result of the virus mutating and optimizing itself for human infection over the course of the past 18 months and hundreds of millions of cases. It was this variant that was responsible for the cataclysmic surge in cases and deaths in India this past March, April and May, when cases in that country soared to nearly 400,000 a day, at the time about half of the world’s cases.
The Delta variant also causes four times as many serious cases and hospitalizations, a major factor in the surge in daily deaths in India in April and May, which peaked at more than 4,600, a third of daily deaths globally. And even that horrific figure is widely regarded as a vast undercount, especially in India’s rural regions.
Similar instances of skyrocketed case counts are now underway in countries across the world. New cases in the United Kingdom have increased six-fold in the past two-and-a-half months to 13,900 a day, with the Delta variant now accounting for at least 90 percent of all new cases in the country. In Russia, new cases have more than doubled since the beginning of June to more than 18,700, while new cases in Indonesia have more than tripled to 16,800 over that same period.
Cases in South Africa have increased 15-fold in April, standing at 14,800 cases per day. Equally dramatic spikes have occurred in Zambia, Namibia and, to a lesser extent, Tunisia. Numerous countries in Latin America have also seen their case counts double or triple over the past few months thanks to the Delta variant, including Colombia, Paraguay and Venezuela. This list also includes Trinidad and Tobago, a country which has had its number of total cases triple since April, and which was recently gifted a derisory 80 vials of coronavirus vaccine from the country’s United States embassy.
That the virus has been allowed to mutate to become so dangerous, however, is the direct result of the homicidal policies of herd immunity promoted by the world’s capitalist governments. In the United States, for example, where the Delta variant is on track to become the dominant variant by the end of June (July at the latest) and which has already suffered more than 619,000 deaths, states across the country are letting even the most basic protections, such as mask mandates, fall by the wayside.
Moreover, schools are slated to fully reopen in a the fall, a measure championed by President Joe Biden and his administration and which will inevitably lead to an increase of community transmission across the country. Even now, outbreaks of the Delta variant, especially among the unvaccinated, have emerged in Missouri, a state with one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates.
The dangers of such policies was underscored on Friday by a Wall Street Journal report revealing that half of the adults infected in a recent outbreak of the Delta variant in Israel had been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The outbreak raises the danger of both the fact that vaccines are not infallible when community transmission is allowed to continue, and the fact that the Delta variant is capable of, at least in some cases, breaching the protections provided by the vaccines.
In response to the resurgence of the pandemic, World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a press conference on Friday, “Delta is the most transmissible of the variants identified so far, has been identified in at least 85 countries, and is spreading rapidly among unvaccinated populations.”
He continued, condemning the reduction of public health measures around the world, noting “It’s quite simple: more transmission, more variants. Less transmission, less variants. That makes it even more urgent that we use all the tools at our disposal to prevent transmission: the tailored and consistent use of public health and social measures, in combination with equitable vaccination.”
