Biden, European powers in crisis talks over Afghan evacuation policy

Patrick Martin

The Biden administration is under increasing pressure, both within ruling circles in the US and from its imperialist allies, particularly Britain, to extend the US military presence at the Kabul airport and provide for a longer and more extensive evacuation from Afghanistan’s capital.

A virtual meeting of the leaders of the Group of 7 (US, Canada, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Japan) set for Tuesday morning will be the first occasion for Biden to address a global forum on the collapse of the US- and NATO-backed puppet regime in Afghanistan, which fell in only 11 days to a Taliban offensive.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds the rotating chairmanship of the G-7 and will be the nominal host of the meeting. British officials have been the most vocal about seeking a longer occupation of the Kabul airport, which depends entirely on the presence of nearly 6,000 US troops.

In this Aug. 22, 2021, photo U.S. service members during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla/U.S. Marine Corps via AP)

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said there might be “hours now, not weeks” left for the Kabul airlift, which has removed an estimated 50,000 people, counting diplomats and other personnel of the major imperialist powers and a much larger number of Afghan citizens, who facilitated their operations, including interpreters, clerical and service workers, drivers, bodyguards, spies, informers and many others.

Wallace rejected suggestions that British forces or those of other NATO countries could remain in Afghanistan after a full US pullout. “I don’t think there is any likelihood of staying on after the United States,” he said.

British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey admitted that any extension of the August 31 withdrawal deadline would involve a clash with the Taliban, who “gets a vote” on such a decision. “It’s just the reality,” he said. “We could deny them the vote; we have the military power to just stay there by force,” but added that evacuation flights could not continue with “Kabul becoming a warzone.”

In televised comments Sunday afternoon, Biden reiterated his decision to end the US role in Afghanistan in order to continue refocusing US foreign policy to the major strategic rivals of American imperialism, China and Russia. “Let me tell you, you’re sitting in Beijing or you’re sitting in Moscow—are you happy we left?” he asked, then laughed sarcastically. “They’d love nothing better for us to continue to be bogged down there, totally occupied with what’s going on.”

This remark, a consistent theme of Biden since he first approved final withdrawal of US troops in April, underscores that the US government has not pulled out of Afghanistan in response to the mass popular opposition to “endless wars.”

Rather, American imperialism is pursuing a course of action that poses the danger of a war that could bring an end to human civilization—a global strategic confrontation with its most powerful nuclear-armed rivals. At the very time that the last US forces were being drawn down in Central Asia, the US Navy was stepping up its anti-China provocations in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, and US commanders in the Pacific region were predicting war with China within a half dozen years.

Despite the shattering impact of the rapid collapse of its puppet regime in Afghanistan, American imperialism remains committed to using its massive military machine, still the most powerful of any country, to offset the vast decline in its economic strength and maintain its position of global dominance.

That belligerence is likely to be on display at the G7 summit, where the US president will listen to the urging of his European allies, particularly the British, to stay a bit longer in Kabul. Asked Sunday what his response would be to such pleas, Biden said dismissively, “I will tell them that we’ll see what we can do.”

As the British armed forces minister indicated, that depends also on the Taliban. Biden indicated that the Islamist group has been in daily discussions with the US military at the Kabul airport, and Pentagon officials said Monday these talks were happening “several times a day.”

The Taliban has not offered military opposition to the US and NATO operations at the airport, or to incursions into the city of Kabul to remove specific groups of American and other foreign residents of the capital, including at least two cases when huge US transport helicopters were employed.

Biden and Pentagon officials also said that US forces had been able to move on the ground outside the walls of the airport, and to “expand the perimeter” around it, although they refused to give any details. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby flatly denied that Taliban fighters were accompanying US soldiers “side by side” on patrols.

Appearing on the CBS program “Face the Nation” Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was taunted with the question, “So we have to ask the Taliban for permission for American citizens to leave. True or not true?” In words that confirmed the scale of the US defeat in Afghanistan, Blinken responded, “They are in control of Kabul. That is the reality. That’s the reality that we have to deal with.”

Meanwhile the campaign in the corporate media over the plight of Afghan civilians at and outside the Kabul airport continues, in conjunction with demands by a faction of the Republican Party for a more aggressive deployment of US troops there. The Sunday television talk shows were given over to harrowing footage of the conditions at and around the airport, and to right-wing critics demanding a reversal, in part or in whole, of Biden’s withdrawal decision.

These included Representative Liz Cheney, whose father, as vice president in the Bush administration, played a major role in the original decision to invade and occupy Afghanistan. Also appearing were Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, a veteran of the Afghanistan war; Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, another former military officer; Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse; and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.

As is always the case in the corporate media, there was not a single representative of the more than 70 percent of Americans who now oppose the Afghanistan war—which Biden voted for when he was in the Senate—or anyone who criticized the military aggression from an antiwar standpoint throughout its 20-years duration, in which hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians were killed.

The comments of Senator Sasse, a supposed “moderate” because he voted for the impeachment of Donald Trump over the January 6 attack on the Capitol, were particularly revealing. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, he called for sending more troops, canceling the August 31 deadline, pushing the military perimeter “well beyond Karzai Airport” and for immediate discussions “to figure out if we should be retaking Bagram,” the huge military airbase outside Kabul that was handed over to the Afghan government last month and is now held by the Taliban.

“They abandoned Bagram Air Force Base in one of the stupidest military blunders in all of US history,” Sasse continued, “and now we’re left in a situation where we’re relying on a civilian airport, Karzai, that has only one runway. I don’t think the American people fully appreciate the danger and the peril into which the president has put us because one RPG … taking down a plane onto that runway means we are stranded. So the president needs to make sure that this hostage situation into which we’re drifting, that the Taliban knows we will not stand for it.”

The precarious situation at the airport was underscored by the outbreak of a firefight between Afghan security guards working for the US military and unknown attackers early Monday morning. German and American military forces intervened and brought an end to the combat, but one Afghan guard was killed and three were wounded.

The bitter recriminations which have broken out within the US ruling elite and its military-intelligence apparatus were also given voice by the Wall Street Journal, in an editorial Monday headlined, “Dancing to the Taliban Timetable.” It cited Blinken’s comments about the reality of Taliban control of Kabul, and then declared, “Yes, but this isn’t the reality the U.S. has to accept. The U.S. military has more than enough force to dictate better terms to the Taliban …”

Swirl of sexual assault and misconduct allegations trigger unprecedented clash between Canadian military top brass and government

Roger Jordan

Just days before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau triggered Canada’s pandemic federal election, a series of extraordinary events unfolded in Ottawa that exemplify mounting tensions between the top brass of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and their civilian political overseers.

On August 11, lawyers for Admiral Art McDonald issued a statement that asserted it was his right, “indeed obligation,” to immediately resume his duties as the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), that is, as head of Canada’s military. Canada’s military police had announced the previous week that a six-month investigation had determined there was no basis to lay charges against McDonald under either the Criminal Code or the military’s own Code of Service Discipline. The admiral had voluntarily stepped aside as CAF head last February, just five weeks into his CDS appointment, after an allegation of sexual misconduct was made against him by a CAF member.

McDonald’s very public attempt to reclaim his command clearly broadsided the Liberal government. In response, it hastily issued two orders-in-council, legislative instruments requiring the Governor General’s signature. On August 12, it placed McDonald on indefinite “administrative leave.” The next day it promoted the acting CDS, Wayne Eyre, to the rank of general. This strongly suggests the government intends to sideline McDonald, since the CAF commonly only has one active full general at a time.

Admiral Art McDonald (right) and his predecessor as Canada's Chief of the Defence Staff, Jonathan Vance

This clash is the latest episode in a crisis that has roiled the CAF top brass for the past seven months. There have been longstanding complaints that the officer corps have ignored or downplayed sexual violence within the military, an institution that for more than two decades has been at the forefront of wars of aggression and the brutalization and devastation of entire societies on behalf of Canadian imperialism.

However, with allegations of sexual assault and misconduct now being levelled against some of the CAF’s senior-most officers, the crisis over this issue has reached a qualitatively new stage. McDonald’s predecessor as Chief of the Defence Staff, Jonathan Vance, was accused of two counts of sexual misconduct in February for relationships he allegedly had with female subordinates, including while serving as the military’s top commander. In July, he was charged in civilian court with one count of obstruction of justice. Several other top officers are also under investigation, including Vice-Admiral Haydn Edmundson, the military’s head of human resources, who is accused of raping a 19-year-old navy recruit in 1991.

Evidence of widespread sexual assault, including rape and other forms of violence, in Canada’s military is well documented. According to a recent report, there were 581 officially filed reports of sexual assault within the CAF in the five years since 2016. This at a time when the military was supposed to be prioritizing stamping out sexual violence and harassment under its Operation Honour. Given the nature of this institution as a volunteer army of trained killers tasked with providing the “hard power” to ruthlessly uphold Canadian imperialist interests around the world, these exposures are just one element—and not a particularly surprising one—of the criminality, brutality, and thuggery that pervades the armed forces.

That being said, the unprecedented conflict between Admiral McDonald and the government underlines that the sexual assault-misconduct crisis has intersected with other disputes within and between the military and the government and is being weaponized.

Vance has received demonstrative support from a faction of the military, who deem the government insufficiently supportive and appreciative of the armed forces. Vice-Admiral Craig Baines, the commander of the Royal Navy, and Lt. Gen. Mike Rouleau, the vice chief of the defence staff, joined him for a round of golf at the military’s private golf course last spring. Rouleau, who quickly gave up his vice chief post under pressure from the media and political establishment, was at the time directly overseeing the military police responsible for investigating Vance.

One element in the backing given to Vance is no doubt concern among senior officers that the military’s independent justice system, which sees military officers adjudicate alleged crimes committed within the organization, is under threat. Strengthening the authority of the civil justice system over the military was in fact a recommendation of a 2015 government commissioned report that found rampant sexual abuse within the armed forces, but this and its other chief recommendations were never implemented.

The bitterness of the dispute between the government and a section of the CAF top brass was highlighted in the comments made by Major-General Dany Fortin last Wednesday, when he was charged with one count of sexual assault. Speaking to the press outside an Ottawa area police station, he denounced the move as driven by “political calculus.” Fortin, who only a few months ago was lauded by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his role in heading Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout, added, “For the past three months, my family and I have been living this nightmare of not knowing. Not knowing the nature of the allegation, the status of the investigation and not knowing if I would be charged.”

Tensions have long been simmering between the government and military leadership over delays to and alleged mismanagement of major procurement programs, including warships, submarines, drones, and fighter jets. Despite the Trudeau government’s commitment to vastly increase military spending by over 70 percent from 2017 levels by 2026, the military top brass, Conservative and New Democrat opposition, and sections of the media have complained that the process of equipping the armed forces for the wars of the 21st Century is not moving fast enough.

In 2017, Vice-Admiral Mark Norman’s house was raided and he was suspended from his position as second-in-command of the Canadian Armed Forces after being accused of leaking a confidential cabinet document relating to a contract to convert a civilian ship into a military vessel. The criminal case against him, which was dropped in 2019, triggered competing claims of political interference in military procurement programs from Norman’s defenders and opponents alike.

A related point of contention is the drive to “modernize” the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) for “strategic conflict” with China and Russia, including control over Arctic Ocean energy and mineral resources. Military-aligned think-tanks and other strategists for Canadian imperialism see this as a golden opportunity to secure Canada’s participation in the US ballistic missile defence shield—something that they strongly support because it would strengthen the Canada-US military-strategic alliance and give the CAF greater access to the Pentagon’s most advanced weaponry.

Its name notwithstanding, the defence shield’s ultimate purpose is to enable US imperialism to wage a “winnable” nuclear war. In 2005, the minority Paul Martin-led Liberal government decided against joining the defence shield, due to fears of riling anti-war sentiment in the population. The Trudeau government has indicated it might at some point be ready to integrate Canada into the missile shield. However, much of the military and foreign policy establishment are frustrated by the reluctance of the government and the opposition parties to openly debate this issue, and others, such as a greater Canadian role against China in the Indo-Pacific, and press forward in implementing a more belligerent policy in defiance of public opposition.

Whilst the scandal roiling the military top brass has cut across the longstanding establishment efforts to promote the CAF as the incarnation of “Canadian values” and an instrument of the Liberal government’s “feminist foreign policy,” the allegations against Vance and others have been used by the media and political establishment to divert public attention away from the widespread support within the military for far-right and outright fascist organizations.

In July 2020, right-wing extremist military reservist Corey Hurren attempted to assassinate Trudeau at his Rideau Hall residence. Over subsequent months, much evidence emerged pointing to support among CAF personnel for far-right groups like the Proud Boys and Three Percenters. But any examination of this has been dropped and the public’s attention instead focused on the high profile sexual assault and misconduct allegations, which inevitably have been given a #MeToo narrative twist. The issue of how to deal with far-right sympathizers within the military remains in dispute, with a faction of the officers corps at the least prepared to downplay and tolerate their presence in the CAF.

As important as these issues are, they are merely expressions of the much deeper crisis of Canadian imperialism. The very same week the dispute between the military leadership and Liberal government erupted into the public eye, the US-backed puppet regime in Afghanistan, which Canadian imperialism played no small part in fashioning, was collapsing to the Taliban. The debacle in Afghanistan, with the puppet regime built up by the imperialist powers over two decades with hundreds of billions of dollars proving to be a political zero, represents a devastating defeat for Washington and its allies, and their three decades of virtually uninterrupted wars in pursuit of their global predatory ambitions.

From Yugoslavia to Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya, and Iraq, Canadian military personnel have been bombarding countries, massacring civilians, and propping up corrupt, pro-Western regimes in alliance with its US imperialist partner on a more or less continuous basis since the late 1990s. In the course of these criminal operations, the military has been implicated in a series of war crimes, from complicity in torture and child-rape in Afghanistan, to the abuse and massacring of prisoners in Iraq. In Haiti in removing the country’s elected president in 2004 and in the Ukraine following the 2014 Kiev coup, the CAF closely collaborated with fascist forces. Its role in NATO’s 2011 regime-change war Libya war amounted, to use the words of one senior Canadian commander, to serving as “al-Qaida’s air force.”

The wars Canadian imperialism has waged as Washington’s junior partner over the past two decades have not only killed hundreds of thousands and devastated entire societies. They have had a disastrous impact on every aspect of social and political life at home. Canada’s perpetual wars have made social relations more violent, exacerbated social inequality by further enriching the wealthy elite, facilitated the corruption and co-option of the media, and legitimized the gutting of democratic rights.

They have also emboldened the armed forces and intelligence agencies to essentially operate as laws unto themselves, as underscored by their systematic lying to the courts about Canada’s involvement in torture, construction of a comprehensive network of spying and surveillance since 9/11, and refusal to acknowledge their involvement in war crimes in Afghanistan. The military responded to the pandemic by activating plans modelled on its neocolonial occupation of Afghanistan to monitor political discussion, promote government propaganda and, in a “worst-case scenario,” to suppress popular opposition.

All the lies employed by various factions of the political establishment to justify the wars—that Canada is a “warrior nation,” that “force works,” that the military is fighting for “human rights” and “democracy”—have been thoroughly undermined by their ruinous results and the war crimes with which they are inextricably associated. The Trudeau government’s desperate efforts to intervene and manage the fallout from the series of sexual assault scandals only goes to show that the political establishment is painfully aware of this fact, and determined to do whatever it can to preserve the ideological as well as practical and political authority of the military so it can continue to ruthlessly assert Canadian imperialist interests.

But that will prove a much harder task than they think. The last two decades have not only witnessed an upsurge of military aggression and war, but also a radicalization of the working class. Workers in Canada, the United States and internationally, who have witnessed the squandering of vast resources on wars of aggression and the propping up of the super-rich during the pandemic, are entering into mass struggles to overturn decades-long attacks on their social rights, fight for wage increases and secure jobs, and oppose the destruction of public services. These militant struggles can and must find political expression in the growth of a conscious anti-war and anti-imperialist movement among the Canadian and international working class.

Whatever the personal fates of the individuals involved in the latest controversy, the conflicts emerging between the military leadership and civilian authorities testify to the putrefaction of Canada’s bourgeois-democratic institutions and norms. In the final analysis, the dramatic growth of social inequality, which has been accelerated by the pandemic, and the expansion of military operations in conjunction with the United States can no longer be concealed by the ruling elite’s portrayal of Canadian capitalism as a bastion of “democracy” and “human rights.” While the response of ruling circles will be to turn ever more openly to the right and to authoritarian forms of rule, working people must oppose Canadian imperialism on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program.

Delta variant starts to hit global economy

Nick Beams

There are growing indications that the uncontrolled spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus is having a significant impact on the global economy, due to shortages in the production of computer chips.

Last week the supply chain problems afflicting a range of companies was highlighted by the announcement by Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, that it would cut its production for September by 40 percent. It will now produce 540,000 vehicles for the month as compared to the original plan of 900,000.

A shopper passes a hiring sign while entering a retail store in Morton Grove, Ill., Wednesday, July 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

The company has been hit by a surge of COVID-19 cases in Vietnam and Malaysia which has contributed to an already existing computer chip shortage as well as affecting the supply of other vehicle parts. The company is also being impacted by the rise of cases in Thailand, the location of its largest manufacturing hub in Southeast Asia.

Announcing the decision, Kazunari Kumakura, the company’s global procurement chief, said: “It became difficult to secure the necessary volume for several parts, which led to this sudden and large-scale production cut.”

Until now Toyota has been able to sustain production because of its build-up of inventories.

Other car companies, including Ford and General Motors are also being affected by supply chain problems and have announced reductions in output. Ford said it was halting the assembly of a pick-up truck for a week and GM has announced downtime at production lines.

The Chinese car firm Geely has also warned of “uncertainty” over production because of the chip shortage and Jaguar Land Rover halved its sales forecast last month for the same reason.

The Toyota decision will hit almost all its production facilities in Japan, where 27 production lines will be disrupted. Plants in North America and China will each cut production by 80,000 vehicles and production in Europe will be reduced by 40,000.

The shortage of chips is by no means the only problem confronting the world economy. There is growing evidence that the Chinese economy, which rebounded last year after effective measures were taken to deal with the pandemic, has started to slow.

As the Financial Times (FT) reported last week, the latest data coming from China “have suggested that the increase in industrial production and other key gauges has been decelerating in the latter summer months.”

One of the most significant indicators of this process is the fall in commodity prices, particularly iron ore.

Last Thursday, its spot price dropped by close to 15 percent, continuing a sharp downward trend over the last three months. At start of the year the price of iron ore was $160 per tonne. It peaked at $230 a tonne in May. Since then, it has fallen by 44 percent and is now back down below $160.

Some of the fall may have been due to an outbreak of the Delta variant in China. But that has now been brought under control and the fall in the iron ore price is being attributed to broader issues.

A note issued last week by Kieran Cleary of Capital Economics said: “Chinese steel exports have fallen sharply since May and the restrictions on steel mills could spark an even sharper fall in output through the remainder of this year.

“We expect the slowdown in the latest Chinese activity data for July to deepen over the rest of the year, leading to lower demand for steel and iron ore in turn.”

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Stephen Bartholomeusz last week commented that a “near perfect storm had hit the market for iron ore” and while some of the issues would be transitory others would have lasting effects on demand for Australia’s most valuable commodity.

“At a macro level China’s economy has been slowing amid a renewed effect by authorities to reduce leverage, particularly in the over-indebted property and construction sectors where some of the country’s biggest companies are teetering. Those sectors are the biggest sources of the demand for steel.”

But, he continued, the slowdown was broadly-based with recent data showing “industrial production, retail sales, investment and even employment” falling short of expectations.

Economic slowdown in one part of the world and especially China, the world’s second largest economy, is soon transmitted to the rest of the globe. In this case, the fall in industrial production and the demand for iron ore will rapidly hit the budget of the Australian government, which is highly dependent on tax revenue from iron ore sales.

Iron ore prices are not the only indication of a global slowdown. The price of copper, considered to be the world’s most important industrial metal and an indicator of the health of the global economy, fell by 2 percent last week to reach to reach a five-month low.

The optimistic forecasts for growth in the US economy are also being revised down on the back of rising Delta infections and falling retail sales and consumer confidence.

Last week, Goldman Sachs sharply lowered its forecast for US growth in the third quarter. It now predicts a 5.5 percent expansion in gross domestic product between July and September compared to its earlier forecast of 9 percent.

“The impact of the Delta variant on growth and inflation is proving to be somewhat larger than we expected,” the bank’s economists said.

According to calculations by Citigroup, economists’ predictions for US economic expansion have been overstated by the largest amount since the start of the pandemic.

The worsening economic outlook is leading to jitters in financial markets with the S&P 500 index having its largest fall in a month last week. It had earlier reached a record high, doubling its level since the lows it recorded in March 2020.

The financial oligarchs are looking to the central bank again to step in if Wall Street starts to fall. They have already pocketed hundreds of billions of dollars as a result of the injection of more than $4 trillion into the financial system by the Fed since the spring of last year.

Their eyes will be turned to the conclave of central bankers to be held online at the end of this week, following indications in the minutes of its latest Fed meeting that it may consider winding back its asset purchases.

“COVID risks are re-emerging as a really important downside risk,” the senior US economist at Barclays bank told the FT. “It’s back on the [Fed’s] radar and the wording in the minutes gives them the freedom to put a hold on tapering.”

Delta cases mount in New Zealand

Tom Peters

Since New Zealand entered a “level four” lockdown, the strictest level, on August 18 after the discovery of one case of the Delta variant of COVID-19, testing has identified a total of 148 active cases in the community, as of today. Of those, 137 cases are in Auckland, NZ’s largest city, and 11 in the capital, Wellington.

A COVID-19 testing centre in Wellington, May 2020. (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

On Monday, Labour Party Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern extended the lockdown in Auckland until September 1 and the rest of the country until August 28. It could be extended further.

The outbreak shows the extraordinary speed with which the highly infectious variant can spread. Officials believe that the outbreak stems from a single person who returned to New Zealand from Sydney, Australia, on August 7. Auckland’s Crowne Plaza Hotel, one of several hotels serving as managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities for returned travelers, is being treated as a possible source for the outbreak.

The outbreak highlights the danger of using hotels in central locations, rather than properly-equipped facilities outside of the cities.

There will undoubtedly be more cases. The Ministry of Health has identified 421 locations where positive cases visited while infectious, including cafes, nightclubs, schools, universities, churches, retail outlets and the SkyCity Casino. More than 15,700 people have been identified as being potentially exposed to the virus.

Although New Zealand has pursued stricter lockdowns than many other countries and has not experienced mass deaths, the country remains highly vulnerable. The government’s vaccination campaign has only begun to ramp up in recent weeks. Just over 23 percent of the population is fully vaccinated and 59 percent have not had their first dose. At present, only people aged over 40 and those aged 12 to 15 are eligible for vaccination. The 30 to 40 age bracket will become eligible tomorrow and those aged 15 to 30 on September 1.

The majority of the positive cases are from Auckland’s Samoan community, who are disproportionately poor and more likely to suffer from health conditions such as diabetes, and to live in overcrowded conditions. Pacific Islanders also have lower rates of vaccination.

Significant numbers of essential workers, who are working during the lockdown, are unvaccinated, including in supermarkets, at the ports and in food processing. Newshub reported on August 20 that 3,000 hospital workers in Auckland had not received a single dose, despite being designated as high risk and a priority.

About 150 staff at the North Shore Hospital were told to self-isolate, after possible exposure to the virus. However, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation told Radio NZ that some nurses in some areas of Auckland have been called to work to fill staffing shortages, despite being identified as close contacts of positive cases and thus potentially placing hospital workers and patients at risk.

An uncontrolled outbreak would quickly overwhelm the public healthcare system due to decades of underfunding. According to the New Zealand Herald, there are just 284 fully staffed ICU beds across public hospitals. Dr Craig Carr, from the Australia New Zealand Intensive Care Society, told the newspaper on August 18 that although more medical equipment had been procured over the past 18 months, “we actually have very few extra staff, and in some instances, we’ve got fewer staff.”

More than 30,000 healthcare workers held a nationwide strike in 2018 and another strike in June 2021 to demand better pay and safe staffing levels. The Labour government, while refusing to address the staffing issue, is relying on the trade unions to enforce austerity, including a pay freeze across the entire public sector.

On Monday, Ardern told the media that “for now” the government remains committed to an “elimination strategy,” which means using lockdowns to stamp out the virus wherever cases are detected. She rejected the approach of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is insisting that the population must “live with this virus,” i.e., tolerate its continuing spread. This policy has led to an ever-expanding outbreak, along with hospitalisations and deaths, in New South Wales.

Governments in many parts of the world have adopted the policy of “living with” COVID-19, which means ordering schools to open so that people can return to work and corporations resume making profits, while the virus continues to run rampant, killing hundreds of thousands more people.

New Zealand epidemiologist Michael Baker stated during the panel discussion hosted by the World Socialist Web Site yesterday that he expected New Zealand to “squash” the Delta outbreak “in the next week or two.” He described the UK government’s complete abandonment of restrictions, by contrast, as an “almost barbaric experiment on the British people.”

Baker and other experts stressed that vaccination alone is not enough to stop the pandemic. They outlined the public health measures that are necessary to eliminate the coronavirus nationally, and to eradicate it worldwide.

The Ardern government, however, has begun talking about modifying its elimination approach. Speaking on TVNZ on Sunday, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said “At some point we will have to start to be more open in the future… some of the measures that we are using, like lockdowns, like a very, very constrained border, you can’t sustain those forever… we can’t sustain doing level four lockdowns every time there’s a community [outbreak].”

Without going into detail, Hipkins said “different settings at the border” would bring a “different risk profile.” The government has already said it plans to ease isolation requirements for international travelers from some countries next year.

The government is facing pressure from big business, reflected in the corporate media. Right-wing radio host Mike Hosking declared that the lockdown was costing “billions” and declared: “is elimination real? And how long before they put the white flag up on that?”

Columnist Matthew Hooton wrote in the New Zealand Herald that almost every country “has accepted that Covid is here to stay,” and basically implied that New Zealand could do the same if the country had more ICU capacity and vaccinations.

Stuff columnist Andrea Vance similarly complained: “The rest of the world is embracing its post-pandemic future while New Zealand enters a March 2020 time warp.” She blamed the lockdown on the government’s slow rollout of the Pfizer vaccine and rundown hospitals.

None of these commentators mentioned the horrific consequences for countries like the UK and the US, whose governments have “embraced” living with the virus, in order to fully resume the extraction of profits from the working class. The reopening of schools and workplaces has produced a resurgence in hospitalisations and deaths, including among children. The working class internationally must oppose these murderous policies.

Sri Lankan president reluctantly imposes pandemic lockdown

K. Ratnayake

In a sudden “special address” on Friday evening, Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse declared a 10-day limited national lockdown in response to rising coronavirus infections and deaths.

Rajapakse’s speech came after he had consistently rejected repeated appeals by independent medical experts for the imposition of stringent restrictions to save the population from rising numbers of Delta variant infections.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

Rajapakse made clear that he was reluctantly imposing the lockdown because the national economy was in tatters. He warned that the population had to be “prepared to make more sacrifices” if longer lockdowns were required.

Between August 1 and 23, Sri Lanka’s official number of coronavirus infections increased by 85,516 and the death toll climbed by 2,838. These numbers are relentlessly rising in line with climbing infections and deaths globally from the Delta variant.

Colombo fueled the spread of the virus by removing remaining travel restrictions on July 5 and on August 2 ordering all state employees working from home to return to their usual workplaces. Sri Lanka’s rundown health system is now unable to cope with the overflowing numbers of coronavirus patients.

Rajapakse’s decision on Friday to announce a limited national lockdown is not out of sympathy for people but in response to developing working-class unrest which is escalating towards a showdown with the government. Opposition to the government has increased in line with reports of rising infections and deaths in various workplaces. Last Wednesday, thousands of health workers protested demanding an immediate lockdown.

Fearing that the situation would escalate out of control, several trade unions in the health, railways, banks, education, postal, electricity and private sectors issued a joint “ultimatum” demanding the president implement a “scientific lockdown.” If the government failed to heed this demand, the unions said they would direct their members to stay at home.

These unions, however, had previously endorsed “reopening” of the economy in mid-April last year and supported the continued operations of big business. They only began calling for the imposition of increased restrictions and COVID-19 health and safety measures two weeks ago.

By their silence, they also in effect backed the Rajapakse government’s draconian Essential Public Services Act that has banned strikes in almost all state institutions. Their lockdown call is aimed at deflecting the mounting anger among workers and saving big business and the Rajapakse regime.

Rajapakse did not utter a word of concern about the rising death toll or health catastrophe, offer condolences to bereaved families who have lost loved ones, or sympathise with those undergoing immense hardships. Instead, he arrogantly posed as a saviour of those impacted by COVID-19 claiming to be doing everything to protect them.

In line with the daily mantras uttered by governments around the world, Rajapakse declared that the people “have to understand the reality,” that all countries “are adapting to the method of ‘New Normal’” and people have to “live with the virus.” In other words, workers must keep toiling and ensure that big business continues boosting their profits.

“The only solution is vaccination,” he said, while falsely claiming that this was “the accepted opinion of the World Health Organisation, the majority of medical experts and… the global standardized methodology.”

Rajapakse said that the government was importing enough vaccines to ensure 100 percent of those over 30 years would be vaccinated by 10 September. After that health authorities would begin giving doses to all those between 30 and 18 years of age.

With this development, the number of patients and the number of deaths will decrease,” he declared. Rajapakse has since admitted that so far only 43 percent of those vaccinated have received both doses.

While vaccination is an important tool to combat the COVID-19 it cannot by itself eradicate the pandemic anywhere in the world. The working class everywhere needs a program to eradicate this deadly virus.

Much of Rajapakse’s 16-minute speech consisted of explaining the economic crisis facing the regime and the capitalist class and why lockdowns and restrictions were anathema.

Sri Lanka, he said, last year faced its lowest economic growth since independence in 1948—$US5 billion in foreign revenue generated by the apparel sector was “gravely affected;” tourism, worth $4.5 billion annually had collapsed; and local and foreign investment had been lost.

Medium and small business, which contributes 50 percent to the gross domestic product, were also affected, he added. Around 4.5 million people in tourism, daily wage earners and self-employed had lost their sources of income.

Rajapakse then cynically declared that the government had not “abdicated its responsibility,” but provided relief payments of 5,000 rupees ($25) and spent a total of 30 billion rupees. These sums, which were paid three times last year to a limited number of families, can only be described starvation payments. Desperate families were forced to pawn whatever valuables they had.

He then shamelessly insisted that families forced into quarantine had been paid 10,000 rupees for two weeks supplies of essentials, an utterly inadequate amount for families attempting to deal with the health crisis.

Revealingly, Rajapakse said the government has “not taken any action to reduce the salaries or curtail the allowances of more than 1.4 million public servants.” The fact the president mentioned wage and allowance cuts indicates that was—and is—under consideration.

In line with placing the burden of the crisis on the masses, the government is increasing the price of essentials, such as rice, flour, lentils, potatoes, dry fish, and fuel, including gas. Shortages of essentials have been reported.

The president carefully avoided any reference to the government’s lavish concessions to big business and investors. The providing cheap credit, tax concessions, and allowing them to cut wages and jobs, generated huge profits. Last year, Sri Lanka’s nine largest companies earned 80 billion rupees in profit with the prospect of higher profits this year.

Rajapakse said that the government had continued paying an average of $4 billion a year in foreign debt repayments, maintaining its commitments to international financial institutions.

Revealing why his government was reluctant to impose strict lockdown measures, Rajapakse said: “A large number of orders have been received by the apparel industry in the export sector. If we are not able to deliver these orders on time, we may lose a large amount of foreign exchange.”

Rajapakse is desperately attempting to defend the profit interests of not only the apparel industry but the ruling elite and capitalist system as a whole by placing profits ahead of human lives.

Ending his speech, Rajapakse made an appeal for national unity and issued a veiled threat. “This situation is not a rivalry or conflict between different ideologists, trade unions, doctors, other health officials and the government… This [is] not a time for strike actions and protests. Do not attempt to destabilize the country… The health sector looks at this issue from one angle, we as a government will have to manage the small economy in our country.”

Protesting Gampola Hospital health workers demanding lockdowns and PCR testing on August 11 (WSWS Media)

Health workers have been at the forefront of escalating protests across the country in recent months, demanding health protections and other improvements in order to deal with the unprecedented health emergency.

The president’s threat, however, is not just against health employees but the entire working class. “Everyone in the country has to be prepared to make more sacrifices,” he said, if the country is to be placed in lockdown for a longer period.

Rajapakse did not elaborate on these “sacrifices.” Government ministers, however, have begun campaigning for wage cuts in the state and private sectors and the media is running editorials on the need for such measures.

An editorial in yesterday’s Island declared that “such drastic action [wage cuts] will become inevitable… If the state revenue continues to decrease at the present rate, there will be no funds left for salaries or even life-saving medicines. The people must be told this bitter truth.”

Unsafe school reopenings in US fuel surge of COVID-19 among children

Andre Damon

The reopening of schools throughout the United States is fueling a massive surge of COVID-19 cases among children.

Analyn Tapia, left, and Dezirae Espinoza hold their supplies as they wait to enter the building for the first day of in-class learning since the start of the pandemic at Garden Place Elementary School Monday, Aug. 23, 2021, in north Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

The US reported 180,000 child COVID-19 cases in the week ending August 19, a 50 percent increase in just one week, according to the latest report from the American Academy of Pediatrics. There were 120,000 child cases the prior week, and less than 10,000 just two months ago.

Even worse, 24 children died of COVID-19 in the same period, twice the previous record set in the week ending August 5.

The reopening of schools, more than 60 percent of which have already resumed classes, has led to outbreaks in K-12 institutions throughout the country.

Metro Atlanta school districts have reported thousands of cases of COVID-19 among students and staff just weeks into the school year. Gwinnett County, Georgia’s largest school district, reported over 800 active cases of the virus Friday. That is up from 470 active cases in the district last week.

COVID-19 cases have exploded in Mississippi schools. Nearly 6,000 students have tested positive for the disease, 30 times more than in the previous semester. There have been 1,496 infections among teachers and staff, a six-fold increase over last semester.

Within less than a week after the August 11 reopening in New Mexico, schools in Albuquerque, Belen, Carlsbad, Los Lunas and Roswell have had major outbreaks. According to the state Environment Department, 109 schools around the state recorded at least two COVID-19 cases, including students, staff and faculty.

In the four days since the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest district in the US with over 600,000 students, reopened last Monday, outbreaks have taken place throughout the city. According to data released Thursday by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, 118 students and staff tested positive in the 24 hours from Tuesday to Wednesday morning. Of these, 107 were K-12 students, who were on campuses during that time.

The growth of COVID-19 cases among children is only the most visible expression of the spread of the pandemic throughout the country.

Daily new cases have reached 150,000, a 10-fold increase over the past two months. In states throughout the country, hospitals are filled to capacity as the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients hit 85,000 last week, a six-fold increase since June. And most troubling of all, over 1,000 people died on Friday, a quadrupling of the daily deaths compared to two months ago.

Last week, Florida set an all-time record for COVID-19 deaths, reporting an astounding 1,486 new deaths. One person in the state is dying of COVID-19 every 7 minutes.

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly said more people in the state were admitted to the hospital on Wednesday than any other single day on record. She added that six of the state’s largest hospitals are at 100 percent capacity for ICU beds.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said the state has seen an “astronomical” number of COVID-19 cases during the latest surge. The governor said Friday, “28 percent of all the new cases that we’re reporting are in children zero to 17.”

Katie O’Neal, chief medical officer of Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, summed up the disaster facing young people. “We never saw that amount of young death before,” she told MSNBC. “What we’re seeing today is a much younger population. … We have teenagers coming into the ICU to tell their parents goodbye. We have teenagers FaceTiming with their parents to tell them goodbye.

“We have people stacking up for care which we never had to do,” O’Neal added, warning that hospitals are running out of beds and staff. “People don’t get the care they need, and people are dying.”

In the face of this disaster, the Biden administration has demanded the full return to in-person instruction. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said last week that “our priority must be” to “return to school in person.” Replying to parents opposing the reopening of schools under unsafe conditions, Cardona said, “But the reality is, if we follow the mitigation strategies, we can keep our children safe.”

The Biden administration speaks for the entire US political establishment. All factions of the ruling class—from Republicans, who are demanding an end to every mitigation measure, to Democrats, who claim that reopening can be carried out safely—are opposed to the measures that are necessary to eradicate the virus, including the shutdown of schools.

The Democrats are working closely with the trade unions and in particular the American Federation of Teachers, which is bankrolling a campaign to promote school reopenings. AFT President Randi Weingarten has declared that “the number one priority is to get kids to be back in school.”

This has been accompanied by a massive campaign in the corporate media. The New York Times published an editorial on Sunday (“The School Kids Are Not Alright”) condemning local governments for being too slow in reopening schools to in-person learning.

The Times cynically framed its demand that all schools reopen as necessary for children. “The resulting learning setbacks [from school closures] range from grave for all groups of students to catastrophic for poor children,” it claims. But what about the consequences for children who get sick and die? This is of no concern to the Times. While denouncing “those who have minimized the impact of school shutdowns,” the Times does not even mention in its long editorial the surge in cases among children. Nor does it note the studies documenting the long-term impact on children of COVID-19, including on mental health and cognitive development.

These same arguments are being used by capitalist governments throughout the world to reject the necessary measures to stop the deadly spread of the pandemic. The all-out campaign to reopen schools defies the recommendations of scientists, who have warned that it is entirely unsafe while the disease is spreading uncontrolled.

“If we have transmission in the community, it’s not safe to reopen schools, full stop,” said Dr. Malgorzata Gasperowicz, a developmental biologist and a researcher at the University of Calgary. “Unless we have no transmission, we shouldn’t reopen in-person schools.”

Gasperowicz made these remarks at the online event, “For a global strategy to stop the pandemic and save lives!” sponsored by the World Socialist Web Site on Sunday . Together with Dr. Michael Baker, a public health physician and professor at the University of Otago Wellington Department of Public Health, and Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam, founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, Gasperowicz outlined an eradication strategy for ending the pandemic through aggressive public health measures.

“If we combine both vaccines and public health measures ... we can stomp it out,” Gasperowicz said.

If these measures are not taken, Baker warned, “you’re going to have essentially several million children and young people infected over the next few months. ... Just the sheer number of children, young people being infected means that we’re going to have a huge burden of preventable illness in young people, and some of this may be permanent.”

The current surge of the “Delta” variant of COVID-19—together with every other variant that has yet to emerge—must be stopped through an emergency program to eradicate COVID-19. This means the shutdown schools and nonessential production, with full compensation for workers, and a multi-trillion-dollar emergency public health program, including mass testing, contact tracing and quarantining.

The Poison of Nationalism

Graham Peebles

Once upon a time Nationalism was an ideology reserved for extremists. But in recent years it has moved from the irrelevant fractious fringes to become a central movement in western politics. Rooted in fear, it feeds on tribal instincts and has become mainstream by offering oversimplified explanations to complex problems, such as poverty and immigration.

The ideal of a post-cold war tolerant world where resources (including food and water), are shared equitably, governments cooperate and borders soften has been usurped by rabid intolerance and racism, wall building, flag waving, cruel unjust immigration policies and violent policing of migrants and migrant routes. Rather than addressing issues and tackling underlying causes the ardent nationalist blames some group or other, ethnic, religious or national.

Love, distorted but potent, and hate sustain the monster: Love and corrupted pride of nation and ‘our way of life’, seen among the flag wavers as somehow superior; hatred of ‘strangers’, and hatred of change to that which is familiar. It is an insular reactionary movement of introspection and division based on false and petty notions of difference: skin color, religion, language, culture, even food.

Such prejudices lead to an agitation of suspicion and hatred of ‘foreigners’. National interests are favored over international responsibilities; minorities and refugees insulted, abused or worse. Covid has intensified such vile human tendencies, and highlighted what were already strained relations with ‘outsiders’ – those that are different — with ‘the other’.

People of Asian appearance have been victimized in various countries, most notably the US, Australia and Britain; trapped in refugee camps, asylum seekers/migrants have been forgotten, and vaccine nationalism, the “me first approach”, with wealthy western countries buying up vaccines, has been widespread. As a result of this injustice, while the rich will have their populations vaccinated by late 2021, developing countries (relying on the inadequate COVAX scheme) are looking at mass vaccination by the end of 2023, if ever. It is a moral outrage that flows from and strengthens ideas of global separation, enflames resentment and will prolong the virus.

Central to the fear inducing nationalist program is reductive national identities and cultural images tightly packaged in ‘the flag’. Described as “primordial rag[s] dipped in the blood of a conquered enemy and lifted high on a stick” (in Flags Through the Ages and Across the World by Whitney Smith), national flags evolved from battle standards and means of group identification held aloft during the Middle Ages. They are loved by nationalists who always believe their country to be ‘the greatest on Earth’, their people the strongest and the ‘best’, their way of life superior.

Such ignorant, meaningless and completely false ideas have become common elements of political rhetoric. Politicians (of all colors) in many, if not all western democracies, believe they must reinforce such crass sentiments, or face losing populist support, being attacked as ‘enemies of the people’ – as High Court Judges were in Britain during the Brexit fiasco, or labelled ‘traitors’.

Torrents of abuse

There are various interconnected threads to and expressions of Nationalism, from the political realm to mainstream and social media, popular culture to education. This suffocating network strengthens discrimination and prejudice of all kinds, including racism. During the recent Euro ’21 tournament black England players who had missed penalties in the final were subject to a torrent of abuse online. The same England ‘fans’ booed opposition teams singing national anthems and their own team, when they ‘took the knee’ before matches; a universal non-political act of solidarity that UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel disparagingly described as “gesture politics”.

She was later (rightly) accused of “stoking the fires of racism”, by refusing to endorse the players’ actions. Her new widely condemned immigration policy, has also given license to nationalist bigots and racists. Some of them have recently been recorded hurling abuse from the beaches of southern England at refugees in boats crossing the English Channel.

Irresponsible nationalist politicians like Patel (and the world is full of them), thick with ideology and ambition, are dogmatic in their beliefs and concerned solely with getting and retaining power. To this narcissistic end they employ the inflammatory rhetoric of nationalism – ‘our country’, ‘this great nation of ours’, ‘controlling immigration’, and ‘the flag’. Predictable and crude methods used to cajole the slumbering masses and agitate their tribal tendencies.

In order to strengthen their nationalist credentials presidents, politicians and military men and women, adorn themselves with the national emblem: embossed badges, a trend led by the US, who are flag-waving world leaders, and at press briefings/interviews they are rarely seen without a flag at their side – two, where there were none pre-Covid, in the case of the totally inept UK Government, desperate one suspects to shift the focus away from their homicidal management of the pandemic, and the calamity that is Brexit Britain. The flag is not in itself the problem, but its growing use is a powerful sign of the unabated rise of nationalism, a trend that with the fall of Trump, many had hoped was in decline.

Unifying acts of kindness

Nationalism grows out of fear, it feeds hate, leads to violence, and creates a climate of ‘us’ and ‘them’, indeed it thrives and is dependent upon such divisions. The stranger, the foreigner, refugee, asylum seeker or migrant is targeted. Blamed for the country’s ills, slandered as criminals, rapists, murderers. Accused of stealing jobs, draining health care services, degrading housing, corrupting the pristine national culture with their vile, primitive habits and beliefs.

In this way the ‘stranger’ becomes dehumanized, making it possible to abuse and mistreat him or her in varying degrees: From verbal insults on the street, the workplace or in the classroom to violent assault; detained in offshore prisons (Australia), imprisoned for years without charge (Guantanamo e.g.), housed in inhumane conditions in refugee camps, detention centers and/or temporary housing, or allowed to drown in the Mediterranean, North Sea and elsewhere.

Such atrocities are all fine, because the men women and children who are being mistreated constitute the ‘them’. ‘They’ are the enemy, the destroyer of civilisation and decency, less than human, even the children, and as such they deserve it. And the further away such ‘strangers’ are kept the easier it is to perpetuate the demonisation myth, maintain suspicion and strengthen hate. Conversely as Joe Keohane makes clear in The power of strangers: the benefits of connecting in a suspicious world, “connecting with strangers helps to dispel partisanship and categorical judgements, increase social solidarity and make us more hopeful about our lives.” Mistrust of ‘strangers’ is strengthened by division and dispelled by contact; by sharing a moment, by acts of kindness – given and received, in which our common humanity is acknowledged.

Nationalism poisons the mind and the society and must be rooted out. Despite the apparent signs to the contrary, it is completely at odds with the tone of the times, which is towards unity – greater cooperation, tolerance and understanding. It is in reaction to this unifying movement that the demon of nationalism has risen; it is cruel, ugly and extremely dangerous and must be countered by unifying acts of kindness and compassion wherever it is seen.

If the unprecedented crises confronting humanity – environmental emergency, displacement of people, poverty and armed conflict – are to be faced, mitigated and overcome, individuals, communities, businesses and governments must increasingly come together, agree methods and global policies and build united integrated societies founded on compassion. Given the unprecedented scale and range of the issues, particularly climate change and the broader environmental calamity, there is no alternative.