“Red tide” bacteria toxin devastates marine life along Florida’s Gulf Coast

Alex Johnson

Over the past several weeks, more than 600 tons of marine life have been found dead amidst an explosive growth of bacteria along the beaches of Florida’s Gulf Coast. The rapid spread of the harmful toxin, known as the “red tide bloom,” has been recklessly encouraged by human-induced nutrient pollution, mainly from the Tampa Bay area, which is placing the lives of wildlife and humans at significant risk.

The massive flood of red tide bacteria that has killed large numbers of fish has been reported in numerous counties in the region, including Pinellas (St. Petersburg), Hillsborough (Tampa) and Pasco. Investigations of the deadly bacteria have found them to be the result of a higher-than-normal growth of algae along Florida’s coastline.

On Friday, the National Weather Service issued an advisory warning for the Florida Gulf coast of the respiratory dangers residents face as a result of encountering harmful red tide bacteria. The warning was directed at Pinellas County in particular, where a Beach Hazard Statement was put in place to warn beachgoers and local authorities of respiratory irritation from the outbreak.

A red tide. (Image Credit National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Wikipedia)

In opposition to demands from environmentalists, fisherman, and local officials that a state of emergency should be issued to address the crisis, Governor Ron DeSantis rebuffed calls for an emergency declaration during a news conference on Thursday in St. Petersburg.

Although the governor told the media the state harnessed enough funds to ameliorate the disaster, nothing was said on how the crisis would be tackled in the next coming weeks or of any strategic planned outline. Most revealing during the conference was the governor’s tacit admission that an emergency declaration would create more problems for the state’s profitable vacation hotspots and that a wider-scale public health response would affect tourist revenue.

The type of dangerous algae appearing around the state’s bay and inlets areas are known as Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB), with this year’s HAB comprising one of the largest the Gulf coast has seen since 2018. HAB growth has been led by a bacteria known as Karenia b revis, a marine phytoplankton that grow within the algal blooms. K. b revis are known for congregating together under conditions of three ingredients: low water salinity, warm waters, and nutrient-rich waters.

Blooms such as red tide are significant threats to life and well-being, as they can lead to major respiratory issues in people. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, K. brevis produces toxins that cause “neurotoxic shellfish poisoning.” The bacteria can endanger people when they ingest shellfish compromised by toxins. This can lead to numbness, tingling, loss of coordination, vomiting and diarrhea.

Perhaps most ominously, hospital records researchers discovered after analyzing hospital records that respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses increase during periods of red tides. In one study, hospital admissions for respiratory diagnoses rose 54 percent for coastal residents.

When asked about the refusal to implement an emergency response, DeSantis declared during Thursday’s press conference that it would “hurt some of these people [tourists] because it would send the message that somehow all of Florida has problems.”

Democratic St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman pleaded with DeSantis to provide more assistance to derail the inundation of toxins on the city’s shoreline. The DeSantis administration responded with hostility, as a spokesperson issued a statement accusing Krisemen of “deliberately lying and using Red Tide as an attempt to score cheap political points.”

Krisemen, who was not invited to the press conference, criticized DeSantis on Twitter for his “politicization” of the state’s response, before calling the administration’s actions “truly sickening.”

In denying the accusation, DeSantis unconvincingly asserted that the threat of algal blooms was something he had “tackled from Day 1” while in office. The right-wing governor also claimed the state had prepared in advance for red tide outbreaks and supposedly had the resources to resolve the crisis.

This declaration is belied by the fact that the administration and state officials ignored warnings from scientists in April of this year when a massive amount of nutrient-rich wastewater was dumped into Tampa Bay from the Piney Point phosphate plant, an industrial site in Manatee County. While the full impact of the accident took months to discern, pollution experts feared that the elevated concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus in the wastewater were dangerous, as they are known to fuel phytoplankton growth and toxic algal bloom.

Three weeks before a hazardous emergency was publicly sent out to evacuate nearby Manatee County residents, a dangerous leak had sprung at Piney Point, which had been defunct since 2001. The facility houses stacks of phosphogypsum, a toxic, radioactive substance that is commonly utilized in fertilizer production. The phosphogypsum was placed within open-air ponds and was used as part of accumulated stacks of solid waste, which can reach up to five stories tall while becoming crudely efficient containment ponds for liquid waste.

Managing the open-air ponds requires round-the-clock supervision. In the Piney Point leak, one wastewater pond’s inch-thick plastic liner tore, releasing thousands of gallons a day into the sediment beneath. Despite the efforts of crews to plug up the berm, wastewater by the hundreds of millions of gallons ended up being unleashed.

An investigation conducted by the Tampa Bay Times following the leak quickly confirmed that the environmental disaster was the product of criminal neglect and subordination of public safety to the profit interests of financial firms. The crisis was triggered after the site’s current owner, private investment company HRK Holdings, added waste from a Port Manatee dredging project to Piney Point’s gyp stacks. This was despite opposition from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which warned that the project might come with unacceptable risk.

These warnings were repeatedly swept under the rug even after an independent engineering firm hired to evaluate the site in March of 2020 found an imminent danger of “catastrophic damage to the public and the environment” due to the “unknown and likely compromised condition” of the liner.

Numerous environmental organizations have released statements denouncing the governor’s failed response to deter red tide. Many have lambasted the governor for greenlighting the same disastrous and negligent policies of his predecessor, Rick Scott, now a US senator. Scott was embroiled in a similar crisis in 2018 when a massive red tide bloom along Florida’s southwestern coast killed approximately 2,000 tons of marine life and caused much damage or state and local businesses.

Scott’s tenure as governor is infamous for slashing funding for water management safety across districts and eliminating environmental regulations. Shortly after becoming governor in 2011, Scott spearheaded budgets that cut more than $700 million in funding for water management boards. The South Florida Water Management District, the agency that works on Everglades restoration and advises the Army Corps of Engineers on Lake Okeechobee discharges, had its budget slashed nearly in half and was forced to lay off more than 100 people.

While falsely hailing the budget reductions as the only method to protect the state’s waters, Scott signed legislation that capped the amount in property taxes water management districts could collect. Revealing his contempt for all regulatory restrictions that hamper the interests of the corporate and financial elite, Scott said in a news release announcing the cuts that they would allow “businesses to use more of their hard-earned money in the way they see best, rather than having to send it to a government agency.”

In subsequent years, the cuts had the effect of weakening environmental protections for the state’s wetlands, springs and rivers threatened by pollution. To date, water district budgets statewide are still $400 million less than when Scott took office. Scott also repealed a 2010 law requiring septic tanks to be inspected once every five years to curtail toxic sewage flowing into freshwater streams. Environmentalists say that unregulated and unchecked leaky tanks are helping fuel algal blooms on the Gulf coast.

COVID-19 surge explodes Biden’s claim of “independence” from pandemic

Andre Damon

On July 4, President Joe Biden gave a speech in which he effectively asserted that the COVID-19 pandemic was over in America. Biden said the United States was “declaring our independence from a deadly virus… We can live our lives, our kids can go back to school, our economy is roaring back.”

It was a theme Biden has repeated in speech after speech. On May 13, he said America was nearing the “finish line” of the pandemic. On June 15, he said: “America is headed into the summer dramatically different from last year’s summer: a summer of freedom, a summer of joy, a summer of get-togethers and celebrations. An all-American summer that this country deserves after a long, long, dark winter that we’ve all endured.”

In reality, since Biden’s announcement of “independence” from COVID-19, cases have surged seven-fold and hospitalizations and deaths are rising as the dangerous Delta variant of the disease has become dominant. In the epicenters of the current pandemic outbreak—Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida—cases are at the highest level since January and are on track to set new records.

President Joe Biden speaks during an Independence Day celebration on the South Lawn of the White House, Sunday, July 4, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Throughout 2020, then-President Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that the pandemic would “disappear.” Trump’s lies were aimed at eliminating all social distancing measures that had been imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19, with the aim of getting workers back on the job to increase the profits of the financial oligarchy.

Biden’s lying declarations of “independence” from the pandemic had the same aim: to justify the abandonment of restrictions on the spread of COVID-19. “Take your mask off. You’ve earned the right,” Biden declared in May.

And just as Trump’s insistence on reopening businesses and schools fueled a massive resurgence of the pandemic, the Biden administration’s encouragement of Americans to abandon mask-wearing and social distancing has fueled what may become the greatest outbreak of the pandemic to date.

“Almost the same number of cases were reported today (70,264) as this day last year (71,600),” stated Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University on Sunday.

But the worst is yet to come. Last Wednesday, the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, a consortium of researchers working in consultation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), released a model showing that the number of daily US COVID-19 deaths could surge to 4,000 by October—the highest level of any period of the pandemic.

While this is the worst case scenario in the model, the study’s authors stress that the current surge of the pandemic is in line with their earlier worst case projections. “What’s going on in the country with the virus is matching our most pessimistic scenarios,” noted Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, who helps run the modeling hub.

This is an extraordinary warning. Despite the availability of vaccines, death rates could again reach the levels seen last fall—a predictable result of the policies of the Biden administration and other governments around the world.

CNN led its Sunday “State of the Union” program with an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to Biden. The moderator began with the question: “Do you think it’s really possible it could get that bad, 4,000 deaths a day?”

While Fauci did not answer the question directly, he gave a blunt warning: “We’re going in the wrong direction.”

Separately from the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, epidemiologist Eric Topol told New York Magazine that a likely scenario would lead to US cases surging to 250,000 a day—nearly four times the current rate. “We’re tracking right with the UK,” he said. “They got to 50,000-plus cases. And if you multiply that by five, for the population difference, we’d get to 250,000—that’s easy extrapolation. That could be where we’re heading.”

Topol warned ominously that 10 percent of those infected could experience major “long COVID” symptoms lasting weeks, months or even the victim’s entire life. As he put it, “[T]he ones that can’t work, the real, significant brain fog, the ones that really are suffering—it’s probably one out of 10.”

In the face of this disaster, with hundreds of thousands of people dying and tens of thousands suffering debilitating long-term symptoms, the US ruling class is demanding the continuation of its murderous “herd immunity” policy.

In an interview on NBC News Thursday evening, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky doubled down on the Biden administration’s demand that schools fully reopen this fall, months before any children under 12 will be eligible to be vaccinated.

Asked, “Is there any consideration, any scenario in which you might want to reverse yourself on reopening schools,” Walensky replied, “I remain emphatic that our schools need to open in the fall. They need to open for full, in-person learning.”

Asked if the “CDC is not recommending people who are fully vaccinated wear masks?” Walensky bluntly stated, “We are not.”

In its total indifference to the defense of human life in the face of the pandemic, the Biden administration is carrying out the common policy of the ruling classes throughout Europe, the Americas and virtually every other part of the world.

This is perhaps expressed most nakedly by the government of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In a tweet this past weekend, UK Health Minister Said Javid said the public must not “cower” from the disease, instead learning to “live with” the pandemic.

Epidemiologist Deepti Gurdasani, a leading author of the Lancet study condemning the UK government’s promotion of “herd immunity through mass infection,” denounced Javid’s statement, saying, “Caring isn’t cowardice. Removing protections from people when almost half of our population hasn’t been vaccinated to bow to ideology is.”

The UK is, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, carrying out a “test case” for whether it is possible to “enjoy something approaching pre-pandemic life in the face of fast transmitting versions of the virus.”

The Journal elaborated: “The experiment should give a strong signal of whether COVID-19 can be relegated to the status of a manageable, seasonal menace such as influenza and whether lockdowns and social distancing can be consigned to the past.”

This “experiment” is being repeated around the world, including in the United States. As former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb made clear last weekend, “The assumptions built into those models is no mitigation, no mandates for masks, no closures of businesses.” He added. “I think that’s likely to be the norm.”

In response to the total intransigence of governments on abandoning all social distancing measures and enforcing the full reopening of schools and businesses, the financial markets have surged, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting a record of 35,000 on Friday.

From the start of the pandemic, the response of governments around the world has been animated entirely by the aim of preserving the wealth and privileges of the financial oligarchy, at the expense of preserving human lives.

In response to the murderous “herd immunity” policies of the ruling class, workers must demand urgent measures to stop the spread of the disease, including the closure of all non-essential production facilities, work locations and schools, with full compensation for lost wages and trillions of dollars in additional health care spending to ensure the ability to test, track and isolate every case.

All students must be provided broadband internet and high quality computers, and additional teachers must be hired to ensure the best possible remote learning until the pandemic is brought under control.

As scientists have repeatedly made clear, COVID-19 can be contained and must be contained if millions more lives are to be saved.

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.