New Zealand PM aligns with Washington over Indo-Pacific

John Braddock

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern used several key opportunities this month to firmly align the Labour-Green Party government with US imperialism’s escalating economic, diplomatic and military confrontation with China.

Speaking to an audience of diplomats and government officials at the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs conference, “Standing in the Future: New Zealand and the Indo-Pacific Region,” held in Wellington on July 14, Ardern for the first time embraced the phrase “Indo-Pacific” to describe NZ’s foreign policy positioning.

The use of the term by Washington and the Pentagon, rather than the Asia Pacific, signified a significant shift to an integrated strategy towards the Indian and Pacific Oceans aimed at encircling China. The Indo-Pacific Command based in Hawaii took over responsibility for planning and operations in the Indian Ocean and the US has markedly boosted military ties with India.

Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern (Source: Scott Morrison Facebook)

Ardern announced that New Zealand, along with other countries, is now adopting the Indo-Pacific “outlook” in reaction to “more challenging geopolitics.” Her government has faced increasingly strident demands from Washington and Canberra to fall into line with the US-led build-up to war, regardless of the impact on economic relations with China.

Led by US President Biden, the so-called “ Quad ”—the quasi-military alliance of the US, Japan, Australia and India—is ratcheting up the confrontation with China throughout the Indo-Pacific. Australia and Japan are formal US allies, while India is in a strategic partnership with Washington involving basing arrangements and arms sales.

Other imperialist powers, including Britain, France and Germany are also intervening to stoke preparations for war. In April, the British government dispatched a Carrier Strike Group to the region in its largest military deployment since the Falklands War. The NATO-backed operation involved a provocative sail-through in the South China Sea.

Ardern cloaked her remarks in hypocritical concerns about climate change and COVID-19. “The Indo-Pacific is to some degree at an inflection point ... The forms of cooperation needed to overcome COVID-19 require countries to let go of narrow nationalistic approaches,” she intoned. Ardern cynically declared that the term “Indo-Pacific” was often used to “exclude some nations from dialogue”—meaning China—but New Zealand would not use the phrase as a “subtext for exclusion.”

However, Ardern said New Zealand wanted a world where there was respect for “rules,” consistency in international law, open trade and investment, and transparency in foreign policy objectives and “initiatives beyond borders.” This echoes Washington’s demands that China abides by the “international rules-based order”, in which the US sets the rules.

Again lining up with the US, Ardern expressed “concerns” over the South China Sea, “including artificial island building, continued militarisation, and activities which pose risks to freedom of navigation and overflight.” Success in combatting these, she said, would depend on “working with the widest possible set of partners,” that is, the US and its allies.

The US has repeatedly conducted provocative “Freedom of Navigation Operations” challenging Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea and encouraged other countries to do the same.

Ardern used the Wellington conference to praise the Biden administration, declaring: “New Zealand’s relationship with the United States has deep roots, built over many decades of cooperation. We share values and have common interests in how the region operates.”

Biden’s National Security Council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell live-streamed into the conference, explicitly attacking China, whose diplomacy and economic activities, he claimed, “go against global norms and values.”

Campbell declared that the US is determined to maintain “peace and stability”—i.e. its own unchallenged hegemony—“through deterrence, through necessary military actions and through engagements with partners who share our interests.”

Clearly impressed with Ardern’s performance, Biden subsequently made a personal phone call. Ardern told the media the two leaders discussed the “stability of the Indo-Pacific region,” trade and investment, and the domestic and Pacific vaccine roll-outs. She again stressed that NZ and the US shared “common values and interests… including a commitment to an open and rules-based Indo-Pacific.”

The issue surfaced again during a special online meeting of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) leaders on July 17, convened by Ardern as the organisation’s current host. The stated aim was to discuss a “collaborative approach” to tackling the COVID pandemic, but, according to New Zealand Herald correspondent Fran O’Sullivan, “geopolitical tensions did still colour the event.”

While Biden attended, Chinese President Xi Jinping sidestepped it, his officials playing a video address instead. Both Xi and Biden emphasised their respective countries’ contribution to regional vaccine rollouts, with China announcing a $US3 billion fund.

However, as O’Sullivan wrote, “Biden went way beyond the APEC script, using the event to reiterate his commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” saying he hoped the region would adopt a “values-based” and “transparent” vision.

The government’s solidifying pro-Washington stance takes place against an increasingly bellicose anti-China propaganda campaign in the political and media establishment designed to stir up popular sentiment for war preparations.

New Zealand joined its Five Eyes allies—the US, Australia, UK and Canada—last week in condemning alleged Chinese state involvement in hacking. A particularly blunt official statement, headlined “New Zealand condemns malicious cyber activity by Chinese state-sponsored actors,” was described by a Radio NZ commentator as a signal to both China and NZ’s allies that “New Zealand can talk tough on China when it wants to.”

The Chinese embassy in Wellington dismissed the statement as a “malicious smear,” and urged the NZ government to “abandon the Cold War mentality.” The Chinese ambassador took the unusual step of summoning NZ foreign affairs officials to a meeting to protest the accusations.

NZ Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta released a statement declaring that areas of difference “need not define our relationship,” but New Zealand would “continue to promote the things that we believe in, and support the international rules-based system.”

Earlier in the month Labour MP Louisa Wall gained significant media attention after she told reporters on July 6 that she believed “genocide is happening” against the Uyghur population of Xinjiang. This blatant and inflammatory lie is being used by Washington as a potential “humanitarian” pretext for war.

Wall is part of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a network of 200 politicians from 20 parliaments. It includes members of the Australian Liberal and Labor parties, politicians from the UK, Canada, Germany and other European countries, and leading US anti-China hawks—Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Rob Menendez. IPAC’s website says it aims to “foster deeper collaboration between like-minded legislators” to develop “security strategies” to counter China.

Divisions persist within New Zealand’s ruling elite, with some business leaders clearly disturbed by the rapidly deteriorating relations. Export New Zealand executive director Catherine Beard said the trade repercussions of the government’s stance were a big concern but she hoped the two countries could “keep politics and trade separate.”

New Zealand China Council chair Don McKinnon, a former National Party deputy prime minister, warned: “Once you reach a stage where you feel you have to criticise China publicly… you’ve got to be prepared for the consequences of that… Trade with China means money in people’s pockets in New Zealand from one end of the country to the other.” China took more than $19 billion of New Zealand exports in the 12 months to June last year.

UK “Borders Bill” criminalises asylum-seekers

Julie Hyland

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government's Nationality and Border Bill has passed its second reading in parliament by 366 votes to 265.

The Bill criminalises asylum-seekers and migrants, overturns the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention and significantly strengthens the power of border agencies.

Its reading coincided with the government's so-called “Freedom Day” on July 19, when it lifted all remaining protections to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic, despite cases soaring.

Border force officials stand up as people thought to be migrants who made the crossing from France are brought into port after being picked up in the Channel by a British border force vessel in Dover, south east England, Thursday, July 22, 2021. AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Home Secretary Priti Patel claimed the Bill will “increase the fairness of our system” and “break the business model of people smuggling gangs”. It does nothing of the sort.

The government has already blocked all “legal” means for migrants to reach Britain, through fines on airlines and other transportation companies for allowing someone to travel without a visa. Between 2015 and 2019, less than 5,000 people a year were able to come to the UK through official channels. This at a time when the annual number of refugees worldwide rose from 15.48 million to 20.45 million, and the number of asylum-seekers from 2.32 million to 4.15 million. In 2020, due to the pandemic, asylum applications fell to 29,456, compared to 93,475 applications in France and 121,955 in Germany.

The official policy of creating a “hostile environment” for migrants and refugees means those arriving already face appalling conditions. On Sunday, an unidentified 24-year old Sudanese asylum seeker was found dead in a hotel near Heathrow airport. He had reportedly been housed at the Crowne Plaza, used by the government for asylum seekers, for four months, after several months sleeping rough in Calais. He is among some 29 asylum-seekers who had died in Home Office accommodation in the last year.

Many asylum seekers, often fleeing persecution and torture, that were placed in hotels during the pandemic are being “decanted” into barracks and similar inhuman accommodation. This follows the xenophobic campaign by former UK Independence Party leader, Nigel Farage, charging that migrants were living in “luxury” at “tax-payers expense.”

The Napier Barracks in Folkstone, a former military garrison, witnessed a mass outbreak of Covid-19 among its 300 detainees, followed by a fire that left many without electricity, heating or drinking water. There are also reports of children being placed in immigration removal centres with no concern for their welfare.

Nonetheless, the government and media are attempting to stoke a right-wing frenzy over desperate migrants braving the Channel crossing in tiny vessels to reach Britain, virtually the only route now open to them.

Some 8,000 people, including many women and children, have made the perilous journey this year. On Saturday, a small inflatable with 12 migrants from Iran, North and Eastern Africa, including children too young to walk, were filmed landing on the beach at Dungeness, Kent. They were some of more than 430 people estimated to have made the crossing that day.

The bill also criminalises those attempting to help refugees by redefining the offence of “facilitating” illegal immigration. While the pretext is clamping down on “people smugglers”, the real target is those providing humanitarian assistance. The volunteer Royal National Lifeboat Institution was derided by Farage as “a taxi service for illegal immigration” when it released a craft to search for the migrant boat in distress off the coast at Dungeness. The clear intent is to leave migrants to drown.

Those who do make it to shore will be classed as “illegal” immigrants, as only those making a resettlement claim from abroad, before arriving in Britain, will be considered. The maximum sentence for entering the country via “unofficial means” is to be increased from six months to four years.

These measures jettison the 1951 Convention which recognised that refugees, forced to flee by irregular routes, may be without visas, and protected those assisting refugees on humanitarian grounds from prosecution.

The Bill will increase the reliance of refugees and migrants on the real people-smugglers. The “business model” of these operations, referred to by Patel, depends on the wreckage caused by imperialism's plunder of the globe. The decades of war inflicted by the major powers in the Middle East and Africa especially has caused the collapse of entire countries, widespread economic and social dislocation to which must now been added the catastrophe of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Significantly, the Bill enables the setting up of offshore “accommodation and reception centres” in Europe and Africa. Patel is reportedly in discussions with Denmark's social democratic government to share an immigration centre in Rwanda. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's government last month adopted legislation enabling it to open asylum centres outside Europe. Those submitting an asylum application at the Danish border are to be flown to Africa while it is processed.

Attacks on asylum rights are escalating across Europe. In Sweden, under measures piloted by the Social Democrat-Green government, residence permits for refugees will be time-limited. In Spain, the Socialist Party-Podemos government, with European Union backing, has deployed the army to drive back migrants attempting to cross the border between Morocco and Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta.

This underscores the critical role in the assault on migrants played by the social democratic and pseudo-left parties that are increasingly adopting the slogans and policies of the far right. This is epitomised by the nationalist diatribe penned by Germany's Left Party leader, Sahra Wagenknecht, denouncing migrants and refugees as wage depressors, strike-breakers, and foreign cultural elements.

Britain is also working with France to strengthen border patrols.

This week, London agreed to pay Paris £54 million to double its anti-migrant police to 200, twice the amount it had initially settled on in November.

The agreement came under attack, with Tory MP Tim Loughton complaining that French border patrols “are not doing their part” to prevent crossings. One former immigration official called for the British military to be called in as the UK’s Border Force is just “operating a collection service from the Channel.”

Increasingly, the language used is one of war, with talk of migrant's “massing” on the French coast, and of a refugee “invasion.” A major factor behind such hysteria is intimidating opposition to the anti-migrant campaign. In January, protestors who broke into Stansted Airport in 2017 to stop a jet deporting people to Africa, won their appeal against convictions usually meted out to terrorists. In Glasgow in May, hundreds surrounded immigration officials attempting to detain two asylum-seekers, forcing their release.

The measures have been condemned by refugee agencies, with the United Nations describing the bill as a “neo-colonial approach”. The opposition Labour Party tabled an amendment to Patel’s Bill that, while referencing the breach of the 1951 Convention, focused on government incompetence over migration. Even this milquetoast complaint was overwhelmingly defeated.

UK media declares contact-tracing “pingdemic” to distract from raging pandemic

Thomas Scripps

Headline after headline in the past week has proclaimed the dawn of a “pingdemic”. The story goes that the National Health Service (NHS) test and trace app, which uses Bluetooth to detect when people have been in close contact with an infected person and notifies (“pings”) those who need to self-isolate, is causing havoc by forcing hundreds of thousands to absent themselves from work unnecessarily.

The Daily Telegraph, described by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as “my real boss”, has been most prolific, publishing the front-page stories, “Neighbours ‘pinged’ through walls by app”, “Freedom day farce as PM told to end ‘pingdemic’”, “Critical workers given route out of isolation to prevent ‘pingdemic’ laying country low”, “PM urged to expand Covid app exemptions” and “Pingdemic disrupts supermarket food supplies”.

“What kind of state are we in?” and “Now will Boris see sense on Pingdemic?”, asks the Daily Mail, as the “Shocking toll of pingdemic is laid bare” and “Top firms demand an end to ping peril”.

Railway passengers at London Euston station during rush hour on July 19, 2021 (credit: WSWS Media)

The Times has published, “Fears over shortages as stores hit by pandemic”; the Mirror, “Britain is grinding to a halt”; the Express, “Covid chaos as 500,000 ‘pinged’ in one week”.

A Google News search for the term “pingdemic” returns 2,590,000 results, despite its very recent origin.

The substitution of a supposed “pingdemic” for a very real and escalating pandemic is a calculated ploy, designed to create the impression that the biggest danger to the UK population is not COVID-19 but the measures used to contain it. Its purpose is to reinforce the message that we must all “learn to live with the virus.”

The big business mouthpieces in the media are effectively regurgitating former US President Donald Trump’s infamous assertions that test and trace procedures “create more cases”. In a series of interviews last July, Trump told reporters that testing in the US was “really skew[ing] the numbers” and “in a way, we’re creating trouble”. He demanded of his officials at a campaign rally, “slow the testing down”.

The real responsibility for the huge numbers of people currently required to self-isolate in the UK does not lie with an inaccurate or “oversensitive” app. It lies with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative government’s catastrophic herd immunity policy. The spiraling numbers of self-isolations are a reflection of the already rapidly escalating number of infections and an anticipation of more to come.

In the week to July 15, just under 619,000 self-isolation alerts were sent out by the NHS app. In the same week, 240,307 confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported in England, giving an entirely plausible average of 2.6 close contact alerts per case. According to the Office for National Statistics coronavirus survey, one person in 75 had the virus in the week to July 17, or 832,000 people.

Specific examples paint the same picture. At the Iceland supermarket chain, where 1,000 workers are self-isolating, fully 27 percent have tested positive for the virus. This means 2.3 people isolating for every confirmed case, discounting of course infections they may have been exposed to outside of the workplace.

In any scientifically based pandemic response, a test and trace system would not have to deal with such large numbers of contacts. Cases of the virus would be brought to a sufficiently low level, by lockdowns as required, and kept there with the necessary measures such as mask wearing, adequate ventilation, social distancing and ultimately vaccines, so that only small, isolated outbreaks would have to be traced.

Johnson, however, is not using contact tracing to control the virus. The test and trace system has been maintained to apply the veneer of a public health response to the thoroughly anti-scientific policy of “allowing the virus to let rip throughout the nation,” in the recent words of the British Medical Association.

For the same reason, next to nothing is in place to support those asked to self-isolate, as has remained the case throughout the pandemic. If workers’ employers do not grant sick pay, they are left on an unliveable £96.35 a week, with a miserly £500 grant nominally available to those on low incomes.

Business leaders are pushing for Johnson to dispense with the charade altogether and bring forward the August 16 date for ending all self-isolation requirements so that profit-making can resume unimpeded. Tony Danker, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry, said Britain risked “grinding to a halt”, complaining, “The current approach to self-isolation is closing down the economy rather than opening it up.”

Their demands will soon be enacted. Speaking to Times Radio on Tuesday, business minister Paul Scully said whether to self-isolate or not after being alerted by the app was “up to individuals and employers”.

The government distanced itself from these remarks but announced yesterday that double-vaccinated workers in 16 key sectors would no longer have to self-isolate if alerted by the app or contacted by NHS test and trace. Instead, they will have to prove negative on a PCR test and take daily lateral flow tests for the next 10 days. These steps are a precursor to the scrapping of self-isolation more broadly, and ultimately of all serious test and trace procedures.

As over 1,200 scientists and doctors have warned, the breakneck removal of public health restrictions will leave millions of people vulnerable to unacceptable levels of risk. The millions of infections registered in the next months will leads to thousands of deaths, multiple times more cases of debilitating illness, and severe strain on the NHS. They will also give the virus ample opportunity to develop new and possibly more dangerous variants. On Friday it was confirmed by Public Health England that a new coronavirus variant, known as B.1.621, is under investigation. Sixteen confirmed cases of B.1.621 have been identified across Britain.

The homicidal “pingdemic” narrative, that all of this suffering should be allowed to take place without the added inconvenience and financial hardship of self-isolation, can only gain traction thanks to the complicity of the Labour Party and the trade unions. They have responded to the “pingdemic” not by denouncing the policy of mass infection but by demanding the Tory government find a way to end the disruption.

Unite Assistant General Secretary Steve Turner, touted by sections of the pseudo-left milieu as a possible “left” leader of the union in ongoing elections, said, “The reports Unite is receiving from our members and their employers are extremely worrying. It is not an exaggeration to say factories are on the verge of shutting and that at some sites hundreds of staff are off work…

“The government absolutely must not wait until August 16 to come up with a solution to significantly reduce the amount of people self-isolating unnecessarily.”

At the Nissan car plant in Sunderland, where some 900 workers are self-isolating, the Unite union praised management for having “done brilliantly” in preventing production lines shutting down.

Workers must reject the choice offered by the ruling class between herd immunity and mass self-isolation, or unmitigated herd immunity. The wealth and scientific knowledge exists in abundance to permanently suppress and, in time, end the pandemic. But it is monopolised by the major corporations who will accept no more public health measures cutting into profits.

Nigeria’s President Buhari clampdown on reporting of “security issues” amid mounting turmoil

Jean Shaoul

Nigeria’s National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has ordered TV stations to refrain from “giving details of either the security issues or victims of these security challenges”, and “collaborate with the government in dealing with the security challenges” by withholding information about kidnapping incidents.

This latest media clampdown, ostensibly aimed at the reporting of the wave of kidnappings and banditry sweeping Nigeria’s northern provinces, is part of a broader effort by the government of President Muhammadu Buhari to keep a lid on the social tinderbox that is Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and largest economy. It comes amid mounting turmoil across the country as devastating poverty and the economic fallout from pandemic, including its impact on oil prices on which Nigeria depends, threaten the breakup of the state.

People protest at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday Oct. 21, 2020. Nigerians protesting against police brutality stayed on the streets in Lagos on Wednesday, breaking the government curfew following a night of violence in which demonstrators were fired upon, sparking global outrage. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

The federal government in Abuja has been waging war against an Islamist insurgency in the North East for years, while North West and Central Nigeria have witnessed a wave of kidnappings as armed gangs raided schools and students for ransom and gangs of cattle thieves and kidnappers raided villages, killing and kidnapping residents, looting, burning homes and stealing livestock. Ransom demands have forced many families and even entire communities to sell property and take on debt.

Earlier this week, the authorities in the northwestern state of Zamfara announced they had secured the release of 100 villagers kidnapped in early June following negotiations with their abductors, apparently without paying a ransom. It follows the abduction of more than 300 boys from a school in Katsina in December and another of hundreds of schoolgirls in Zamfara in February. While they were later released without a ransom, according to the government, three of the 23 students abducted from Greenfield University in Kaduna in April were found shot dead. The kidnappings have forced hundreds of schools to close.

Nearly 1,100 people were abducted last year, more than twice the number kidnapped by the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram in 2014, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. In the northwest, escalating violence killed 2,690 civilians in 2020, nearly as many as the 3,044 killed in the northeastern Borno State, once Boko Haram’s stronghold, leading to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.

Attacks on villages and livestock in northern Nigeria have been attributed to clashes between Hausa farmers and Fulani herders, as the nomadic pastoralists as they encroached on farmland as climate change forced them to move from their traditional pastureland, triggering ethnic massacres and kidnappings.

Banditry, abductions and ethnic tensions have escalated as social conditions have deteriorated amid two recessions in six years. Well over half of Nigeria’s 15 to 25-year-olds, in a country where young people form 125 million of the 210 million population, are officially without work, leaving them to seek casual work if they can find it or hawk on the streets.

The federal government has deployed the airforce to attack bandit camps with daily and nightly flights over Zamfara, Kaduna and Katsina states. Buhari has ordered security forces to “shoot any person or persons seen carrying AK-47s in any forest in the country” and banned all mining activities in Zamfara, where the illegal hunt for gold is fueling the crisis. According to the United Nations, 279,000 people were displaced in the northern states of Sokoto, Zamfara and Katsina by the end of 2020, with nearly 2.6 million people across the three states facing food insecurity in 2021. Zamfara’s provincial governor has ordered 6,000 troops to root out bandits from their camps in the vast Rugu forest spanning northern Nigeria and parts of neighbouring Niger.

None of this has succeeded in quelling the violence. The security forces’ brutality and corruption have only served to exacerbate hostility to the federal and state political and economic elites. On Monday, a gang ambushed and killed 13 policemen in Zamfara state who were protecting a village from imminent attack. On Sunday, bandits brought down a Nigerian fighter jet in the northwestern state. The pilot was able to eject from the aircraft and flee to safety.

In June, Buhari’s ruling All Progressives Congress party proposed two new laws that would allow the government to change the code of conduct for the country’s media organisations and prosecute, fine and imprison journalists for publishing “fake news” and other breaches.

Days earlier, Buhari, the 78-year-old former general and military head of state from 1983 to 1985 who was elected president in 2015, had banned Twitter, which is used by 40 million Nigerians. He claimed the platform was being used to destabilise Nigeria after it removed one of his posts threatening to treat armed Biafran militants in a “language they understood” and referring to the bitter 1967-70 Biafran civil war, one of the bloodiest post-independence conflicts in Africa in which he served as a brigadier commander.

Biafran separatists in the southeast have been blamed for a surge in attacks and the killing of dozens of police officers. Two weeks ago, the Nigerian authorities arrested Nnamdi Kanu, a British-Nigerian citizen and Biafra separatist leader. He was arrested in Kenya and taken to Nigeria. Armed separatism has been on the rise in Biafra after security forces used lethal force to suppress mass protests that began in 2015, killing at least 150 people at pro-Biafra rallies between August 2015 and August 2016 according to Amnesty International.

Social media networks will be required to register with Nigeria’s regulators and have offices in the country. It follows the widespread use of Twitter and other social media networks to organise mass anti-government #EndSARS protests against the brutal Special Anti-Robbery Squad. The #EndSARS protests erupted last October, morphing into the largest anti-government rallies in Nigeria’s modern history.

Information Minister Lai Mohammed has also accused Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who also founded Square and Cash App, two payment processing platforms with interests in cryptocurrencies—especially Bitcoin—of raising funds through Bitcoin to sponsor one of the protest groups. In February, the central bank placed restrictions on the use of cryptocurrencies, estimated at $400 million and the largest in Africa, banning financial institutions from dealing in them.

The growing adoption of digital currencies as a means of circumventing Nigeria’s plummeting currency and soaring inflation is viewed as a threat to the government’s control of the economy on behalf of the country’s venal elite.

Last month, police used tear gas to disperse anti-government protesters in Lagos and Abuja with reports of arrests and injuries, with smaller protests in in southwestern Nigeria in the cities of Ibadan, Osogbo, Abeokuta and Akure. These were the first to take place since last year’s #EndSARS movement. Activists had called for nationwide anti-government protests on Democracy Day—named after the transition to civilian rule in 1999—over poor governance, the lack of security and the recent Twitter ban. In Lagos, protesters carried banners and placards saying “Buhari Must Go” and called for reforms. Despite the march being peaceful, police started firing tear gas at protesters and journalists to disperse the crowds, later firing live rounds in the air.

Hunger strike of hundreds of undocumented migrants in Belgium

Will Morrow

Over 430 undocumented migrants in Belgium have staged a hunger strike, lasting more than two months, to protest against their brutal treatment at the hands of Belgian authorities amid the coronavirus pandemic.

A Red Cross health worker calls an ambulance to transfer a man on hunger strike to a hospital as he occupies with others a large room of the ULB Francophone university in Brussels, Tuesday, June 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

The workers are reportedly mainly from Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and Pakistan. They have demanded that the government grant them the right to stay in the country, after many of them have worked for years there without receiving residency papers. Belgian authorities have insisted that they can be deported and returned to their countries of origin.

Representatives of the protesters announced on Wednesday, at the Beguinage church in Brussels, one of the sites where the hunger strike has taken place, that they would provisionally bring an end to the protest. “Yesterday and today, there were meetings with the government and with supporters. We were able to reach agreements which are yet to be ratified. We hope that they will be. So that there will be no more anguish inside the church, we took the decision to stop the water strike and to suspend, for the moment, the hunger strike,” they stated. Several protesters are reportedly continuing the hunger strike, however.

On Thursday afternoon, the Union for the Regularisation of Sans-Papiers (USPR) announced on Facebook that the occupation of the church and two university canteens in Brussels would be maintained in support of the migrant workers who remained there.

The Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, Sammy Mahdi (Christian-Democrats), insisted to RTBF (television) that nothing had changed in the government’s anti-migrant policy. Throughout the hunger strike, he repeatedly denounced the protesters.

“We are not going to make deals on our migration policy,” he said on Wednesday. “There is a policy with rules that must be followed. We explained that many times …” Mahdi released a statement Wednesday, contemptuously declaring: “After 60 days, the hunger strikers have brought an end to their action, which placed their lives in danger. The way in which the situation worsened these last weeks had a major impact on me. It is good that we were able to convince the different civil groups that a collective regularisation is not a solution and that the existing procedures are humane.”

In reality, the protesters have described the inhumane conditions that they have been compelled to live under as a result of the anti-migrant policies of the Belgian political establishment and European Union. They received no government assistance throughout the pandemic, many of them having worked informally in the hospitality, construction, cleaning and services industry and having quite literally been left to starve during the pandemic lockdowns.

Kiran Adhikeri, originally from Nepal, worked as a chef until restaurants were closed. He has lived in Belgium for 16 years but still has no legal protection. He told Reuters: “I am 37 years old. I love this society, its people, but I have no legal existence. In this city, we live like rats. I am begging them (the Belgian government), please give us access to work, like others. I want to pay taxes, I want to raise my kid here.” The workers have described being exploited by employers paying them as little as €3 per hour due to their lack of work permits.

There are reportedly a staggering 150,000 people living under these conditions across the country.

The hunger strike had developed into a major scandal for the government, triggering widespread popular opposition to the government’s inhumane policies. A number of migrants in the protest had sewn their lips shut and were in danger of dying. The United Nations was compelled to release a statement after a visit by two rapporteurs on July 8 to Brussels, stating: “The information that we have received is alarming. Many hunger strikers are between life and death.” It warned of the “violation of the human rights” of more than 150,000 undocumented workers across the country.

On Monday evening, the French-language daily Le Soir reported that the vice prime minister of the government, Pierre Yves Dermagne, of the francophone Socialist Party (PS), threatened that the PS ministers and secretaries of state would resign if a protester died. This would include himself, Karine Lalieux (pensions), Ludivine Dedonder (defence) and junior minister for strategic investments, Thomas Dernine.

The co-president of Ecolo (the Greens), pledged to do the same, stating that the party had “made known yesterday to the Prime Minister” that “our actions will be heard and in clear correspondence with our words.” The Greens and PS make up part of the seven-party coalition government in Belgium, which includes both the Francophone and Flemish social democrats, Greens, Liberals and the Flemish Christian Democrats.

The Flemish Socialist Party, which split along linguistic lines from the francophone Socialist Party in 1978, backed Belgian President Alexander de Croo’s open denunciations of the protesters. “Regularisation remains an exceptional procedure and is a favour, not a right,” he said.

The PS and Greens’ threats to resign were entirely hypocritical, and motivated by fear of the development of mass opposition in the working class against the government’s policies. While the deputies declared their outrage at the prospect of the hunger strikers dying, they have no similar compunction over the conditions of social misery imposed on tens of thousands of undocumented workers across Belgium.

This did not prevent Nabil Boukli, the deputy for the pseudo-left Belgian Workers Party, praising their actions in a speech to the parliament on July 2. Boukli stated, “Mr Secretary of State, even inside your government, parties like the PS and the Greens have risen up to demand a solution to this situation. I encourage them and support them in this initiative.”

In reality, in both Belgium and in neighbouring France, the Socialist Party has maintained and deepened anti-migrant policies over a period of decades. The hunger strike in Belgium underscores the criminal character of the anti-immigrant regime of the entire European Union.

The EU works to prevent rescue operations in the Mediterranean—condemning untold thousands of refugees to drown as they try to make the journey from Africa or the Middle East to Europe—in an effort to dissuade asylum seekers from exercising their democratic right to asylum. It has erected a network of detention camps around its borders, such as at Moria, Greece, where hundreds of children are held in horrific conditions. Those who manage to arrive in the continent and to then avoid deportation are routinely denied access to state support and working rights.

US, Germany strike deal over controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline

Clara Weiss

On Wednesday, Washington and Berlin announced that they had signed an agreement over the highly contentious Russian-German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The deal means that the US will not sanction the $11-billion project and will allow it to be completed.

Stack of pipes at Mukran port for natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2. (Wikimedia Commons)

The pipeline is an extension of the already active Nord Stream pipeline and will roughly double the amount of gas that Russia can deliver directly to Germany. The two Nord Stream pipelines bypass traditional transit countries, such as Belarus and particularly Ukraine. Ukraine, already economically devastated and highly dependent on revenues from gas moving across its territory, is set to lose additional billions of dollars because of the pipeline extension.

The pipeline has been a major point of contention in German-US relations for a decade. The latest round of sanctions was announced by former US president Donald Trump in 2019, in a stark indicator of the growing tensions between the two imperialist powers.

While the pipeline has been bitterly debated within the German ruling class, the German government has adamantly opposed all calls to stop its construction, insisting that it is a purely “economic” project. In reality, the pipeline provides Germany with significant energy and geostrategic advantages, strengthening its position as a major energy hub in Europe. Some of the gas deliveries from Russia will be delivered onward to the Czech Republic and countries in Western Europe.

The deal was announced just about a week after German chancellor Angela Merkel met with Biden in Washington. The Biden administration has escalated US war preparations against China that had been advanced significantly under Trump. As part of this refocusing of US foreign policy, Biden has also sought to somewhat improve the severely strained relations with Germany, not least of all in order to bring Berlin as well as other European countries to the side of the US in the conflict against China, while preventing them from developing an independent foreign policy.

The joint statement announcing the deal stressed that the US and Germany “are united in their determination to hold Russia to account for its aggression and malign activities by imposing costs via sanctions and other tools. We commit to working together …to respond together to Russian aggression and malign activities, including Russian efforts to use energy as a weapon.”

The statement emphasized that Washington and Berlin “are steadfast in their support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence and chosen European path.” The agreement states that Germany will impose sanctions on Russia should it “use energy as a weapon.” It notably also includes a commitment to the Three Seas Initiative, an alliance of states in Eastern and Central Europe “in the fields of regional energy security and renewable energy. The coalition has been spearheaded by Poland with US support. While it is directed primarily against Russia, it has also provoked concerns in Berlin.

As part of the deal, the US and Germany committed to donating at least $1 billion to a Green Fund to help Ukraine transition to cleaner sources of energy. Germany will also appoint a special envoy to support bilateral energy projects with Ukraine.

The Kremlin denounced the joint statement for its “hostile tone” vis-à-vis Russia and said that it included “political attacks” on Russia. The Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, said that the tone and content of the statement contradicted the core of the meeting between US president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin in Geneva in June. With the meeting, the Biden administration appeared to seek to ease tensions with Moscow in the context of its escalating war drive against China.

Discussing the new deal on Wednesday, US president Joe Biden defensively said that stopping the pipeline would have been impossible since “Nord Stream is 99 percent finished.” US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, one of the most ardent anti-Russia war hawks, said in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday, “This is a bad situation and a bad pipeline, but we need to protect Ukraine.”

German chancellor Angela Merkel commented that the agreement “does not overcome all differences either. The differences remain.” The German business newspaper Handelsblatt called the deal “a classical compromise of formulas,” noting that “the deal looks like a house of cards that you have to protect from the mildest winds.”

Despite the aggressive statements against the Kremlin, the agreement has provoked an uproar among both Democrats and Republicans, who have been united for years in their bitter opposition to the project. It has also provoked ire among the right-wing nationalist regimes in Eastern Europe, such as Poland and Ukraine, that have long been aligned with US imperialism.

The office of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky stated on Wednesday evening, “The decision on Nord Stream 2 cannot be taken behind the backs of all those whom the project poses a real threat to.”

In an apparent attempt to somewhat smooth over these tensions, hours after the deal was announced, the White House declared that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had been invited to Washington for his first meeting with Biden on August 30.

The State Department had reportedly dispatched a special counselor to Kiev ahead of the announcement to persuade the Zelensky government to accept the deal, but to no avail. Ukraine and Poland published a joint statement Wednesday evening, denouncing it as a “political, military and energy threat for Ukraine and Central Europe.” They announced that Warsaw and Kiev “will work together …. to oppose NS2 until solutions are developed.”

In 2014, the US as well as Germany backed a coup in the country that overthrew the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich and installed a pro-Western regime with the help of fascist forces. Since then, the US and EU have armed the right-wing governments in Kiev and fascist forces, which have been fighting in a civil war in East Ukraine against pro-Russian separatists.

However, relations between Washington and Kiev have worsened in recent months, as the Biden administration has made moves to ease tensions with Russia as part of its refocusing on war preparations against China. In recent months, the White House has repeatedly rejected the calls by the Zelensky government to join NATO as soon as possible. Kiev was also concerned about the meeting between Biden and Putin in June. At the meeting, no mention was made of the Crimea peninsula in the Black Sea, which has been the focal point of military tensions between Russia and Ukraine since the 2014 coup and a renewed military crisis this spring.

In both the US and Germany, the deal has brought to the fore divisions in the ruling class over foreign policy. In the US, Republican Senator Rob Portman denounced it as a “serious misstep that endangers US, European and Ukrainian security” and warned that it would give “Russia a strategic advantage over our allies.”

Writing for Bloomberg, Eli Lake fumed, “Biden accused Trump of being soft on Russia, but is now selling out Ukraine to provide Germany with natural gas.” He wrote that “Biden appeased Moscow and got next to nothing in return,” and suggested that Republican lawmakers would still try to kill the agreement in Congress. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen said that the deal “empowers the Kremlin to spread its malign influence throughout Eastern Europe.”

In Germany, the chancellor candidate and co-chair of the Greens, Annalena Baerbock, denounced the deal, saying that it “is not a solution, especially not for the security of Ukraine.” She said that it was “in Germany’s hands” to stop the project and stressed, “I still consider this pipeline to be wrong, from the standpoint of climate policy, but above all geostrategically.”

Scientists uncover ancient coronavirus epidemic in East Asia

Frank Gaglioti

In a stunning breakthrough that has considerable implications for the current day, scientists have shown that a coronavirus epidemic ravaged East Asia 25,000 years ago. The study published in Current Biology in June was titled, “An ancient viral epidemic involving host coronavirus interacting genes more than 20,000 years ago in East Asia.”

The research team was led by Yassine Souilmi, of the University of Adelaide Australian Centre of Ancient DNA, along with scientists based in the United States. The study highlights that a coronavirus similar to the SARS-CoV-2 currently ravaging the world, with 191 million people infected and claiming over 4.1 million lives, afflicted humanity many millennia ago.

The researchers found strong suggestion that 42 coronavirus interacting proteins (CoV-VIPs) in East Asian populations interacted with an ancient coronavirus about 900 generations ago—that is, approximately 25,000 years ago. This pattern was unique in East Asian populations.

Ancient coronavirus genetic changes (credit: University of Adelaide)

The scientists estimated the ancient epidemic lasted until 5,000 years ago. They determined the timeline by looking at the number of mutations in a gene. Mutations occur at a regular rate so they can be used to determine a timeframe.

The coronavirus is a messenger RNA virus that attacks the lungs. Its spherical structure is surrounded by numerous protein spikes that enable the virus to attach itself to human cells. Coronaviruses are unique in that they reproduce by invading a host cell and hijacking its genetic structure in order to make more virus. The virus infection is known to leave telltale signs in an organism’s genetic structure.

The scientists examined thousands of genomes in the 1000 Genomes Project database across 26 populations around the world for signs that a coronavirus had infected humans in the past. The 1000 Genomes Project, established in 2008, is a comprehensive international database of human genetic variations. The study found evidence that a previously unknown ancient coronavirus infected people in China, Japan and Vietnam.

“There have always been viruses infecting human populations,” said David Enard of the University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, a collaborating scientist in the study. “Viruses are really one of the main drivers of natural selection in human genomes.”

Scientists examined several hundred genes that are known to interact with coronavirus. They identified five groups of people who had 42 genes with mutations that suggested interaction with coronavirus. The modified genes may have given some sort of protection from the virus.

“So what happens over several generations is the gene variants that are beneficial will rise in frequency, and that leaves a very distinctive mark several generations later,” Souilmi told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Scientists think it takes 500 to 1,000 years for these modifications to emerge as a shared trait in the genome.

Souilmi and his team examined virus interacting proteins (VIPs), proteins that are known to interact with viral proteins, viral RNA and/or viral DNA. They targeted 420 VIPs that are known to interact with coronaviruses (CoV-VIPS).

According to the study, “throughout the evolutionary history of our species, positive natural selection has frequently targeted proteins that physically interact with viruses…”

The VIPs are important, as they are the central mechanism the virus uses to attack the host cell.

“Our focus on VIPs is motivated by evidence indicating that these protein interactions are the central mechanism that viruses use to hijack the host cellular machinery. … Accordingly, VIPs are much more likely to have functional impacts on viruses than other proteins,” the study stated.

“We really can’t tell if this was a periodic thing that occurred every winter like the flu, or slightly different viruses that jumped from animals to humans every five to 10 years like what happened in the past 20 years with SARS, MERS, and SARS-CoV-2. … The adaptation of several genes around the same time and at the same rate can only be explained by the exposure to coronaviruses back in time,” Souilmi said.

Some scientists have expressed differences over the estimation of the timing of the epidemic. Aida Andres, an evolutionary geneticist at University College London, who was not involved in the research, commented: “The timing is a complicated thing. …Whether that happened a few thousand years before or after—I personally think it’s something that we cannot be as confident of.”

The research is part of the deepening understanding of the evolutionary history of coronavirus. Although the scientists are not able to identify the actual viruses and only found an indirect expression of the impact of the viruses on the human genetic structure, their research still indicates the existence of ancient viruses.

An important study titled, “A Case for the Ancient Origin of Coronaviruses,” published in the Journal of Virology in 2013, discusses the evolution of coronavirus. The virus exists in four basic groups termed alpha, beta, delta and gamma coronaviruses. The alpha and beta groups are known to infect mammals while the others infect birds.

The research team led by Joel O. Wertheim of the Department of Pathology at the University of California, San Diego, found evidence of “thousands or millions of years of evolution in the coronavirus phylogeny.”

Wertheim speculates that coronaviruses have been infecting birds and bats possibly since their evolutionary divergence in the carboniferous period over 300 million years ago.

The discovery that a coronavirus outbreak lasted for approximately 20,000 years has very important implications for the current pandemic. Modern science has enabled humanity to understand viruses and intervene to predict and control any pandemic, but this scientific knowledge has been ignored by the political elite as they impose a herd immunity program that has allowed the virus to proliferate almost unhindered. Scientific knowledge has been shunted aside as governments act to defend the profit interests of the major corporations.

“It should make us worry … What is going on right now might be going on for generations and generations,” Enard told the New York Times .

One of the starkest aspects of the pandemic is the disproportionate impact on the poorest layers of society, who have been systematically exposed to the virus, while wealthy people can easily isolate themselves.

The study identifies that the “research on SARS-CoV-2 epidemiology has revealed [that] socioeconomic (e.g., access to health care, testing, and exposure at work), demographic, and personal health factors all play a major role in SARS-CoV-2 epidemiology.”

Although Souilmi and his team do not comment on the current controversy that the current pandemic was the result of a deliberate or accidental leaking of the virus that causes COVID-19 from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, their research indicates the ancient lineage of cross infections from bats to humans that have occurred on numerous occasions in the past and present the most likely origin of the current pandemic.

The Wuhan laboratory hoax was originally proposed by extreme right-wing supporters of the Trump administration and has been resurrected by President Joe Biden in order to divert from the government’s disastrous response to the coronavirus in the US and to promote Washington’s geostrategic aims against China.

An important aspect of the study is that it indicates the areas for future investigation in how to treat coronavirus infections, targeting the 42 genes that evolved in response to the ancient epidemic.

“It’s actually pointing us to molecular knobs to adjust the immune response to the virus,” Souilmi said.