Imperialist powers hold Libya “peace” conference, 10 years after NATO war

Will Morrow

On Friday, government representatives of more than 30 countries gathered in Paris for a fraudulent “peace” conference ostensibly devoted to organizing a transition to “democracy” in Libya. The event was jointly hosted by France, Germany and Italy, and was also attended by US Vice President Kamala Harris.

In reality, the very same imperialist powers who professed their commitment to the “self-determination” and stability of Libya are directly responsible for plunging what was previously among the most advanced countries in Africa into a devastated society.

French President Emmanuel Macron, center , German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi attend a conference on Libya in Paris, November 12, 2021. (Yoan Valat/Pool Photo via AP)

Ten years ago, Washington, Paris and London launched a seven-month war on Libya, cynically justified under the banner of “human rights,” involving a campaign of aerial bombardments and support for Islamist and tribal militia forces. The war led to the overthrow of the Libyan government and the lynching of its former President Muammar Gaddafi. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton infamously rejoiced at his grisly murder.

Ten years on, the infrastructure and social fabric of the country is destroyed, while it has been in a permanent state of civil war, with rival militia gangsters backed by competing regional and imperialist powers battling for control over the country and its lucrative oil reserves.

The Paris conference communiqué nonetheless grotesquely affirmed its “respect for the sovereignty, the independence, the territorial integrity and national unity of Libya and our firm commitment to them. We are opposed to all foreign interference in the country.” While it pledged to support “democracy,” among its main participants was Macron’s leading ally in Africa, Egyptian military dictator General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, who took power in a 2013 coup and has since ruled Egypt through mass executions, torture and arbitrary detention of protesters and journalists.

The Libya conference was ostensibly held to promote the upcoming elections on December 24 as a path to stability in the country. It is still unclear if the elections will actually be held. The Guardian newspaper, a vocal supporter of the 2011 Libyan war, admitted that “there is a strong chance that [the] militia will seek to intimidate voters.”

In the decade since the NATO war, the different local militias that NATO de facto placed in power have carried out war crimes, including mass killings, arbitrary detentions, torture and the expulsion of thousands of people from their hometowns. These were documented in a recent UN report, which avoided any mention of the NATO war and its responsibility for creating the present bloodshed in Libya.

There is currently no constitution governing the election, and candidates have not been announced, just over a month before polling day. Registration for candidates opened last week. Current Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah has still not announced his candidacy, and current electoral law states that any current office holder must announce his candidacy three months before the vote. The date of the vote remains unclear: presidential and legislative elections had previously been scheduled for the same date, but the legislative elections were pushed back to January in October.

It has been speculated that there will be election bids by Gaddhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, and ex-CIA “asset” Khalifa Haftar. Haftar is the head of the so-called Libyan National Army, one of the country’s two main factions based in the east of the country, that has been backed by France, Russia, Egypt and the UAE.

The rival Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, which has been backed by Turkey, Qatar and Italy, has already proclaimed that it will not accept the election results if Haftar is declared the winner. Chairman of the High Council of State Khaled Al-Meshri stated in televised comments that the group would resort to violence to prevent Haftar from taking office. An unstable truce has held since 2020 between the different factions.

The day before the Paris summit, Haftar’s forces claimed that they would dismiss some 300 foreign fighters active in Libya, ostensibly to show their commitment to a de-escalation of the conflict. No information has been provided about the fighters’ countries of origin. The announcement was clearly coordinated with Paris in order to provide legitimacy to the conference’s call for the withdrawal of foreign fighters from Libya.

The French government has particularly demanded that Russia and Turkey withdraw their mercenaries from the country, absurdly presenting Paris as a defender of Libyan sovereignty.

In a press conference on Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that “a first step has been taken with the announcement by the Libyan military committee for the retreat of 300 mercenaries. … It is only a beginning. Turkey and Russia must also immediately withdraw their mercenaries and military forces, whose presence threaten the security and stability of the country and the entire region.”

The statements point to intensifying geo-political conflicts and military tensions across the region and internationally. In April, Turkey summoned Greek and French ambassadors after a joint Greek-French naval excursion into territorial waters claimed by Turkey, while France has backed Greek claims over the territory.

The conference was also held amid a rapid escalation of tensions between Russia and the NATO powers over a border conflict in Eastern Europe, with the EU and NATO states illegally denying entry to thousands of refugees at the Polish-Belarusian border and accusing Moscow of carrying out “hybrid warfare” against NATO.

There is an escalating struggle for control over the geo-strategically and economically important region of northern Africa. France has waged a neo-colonial war in Mali and the Sahel since 2013, under the banner of combating terrorism. In September, the Malian government announced that it had requested that Russia’s Wagner security forces be deployed to the country in response to a French announcement of a withdrawal of occupying forces.

A further element in the European powers’ determination to set up a neo-colonial government in Libya is that country’s key role in enforcing the European Union’s criminal refugee policy in the Mediterranean Sea.

The EU provides Libyan militias with funding and naval equipment to catch refugees who seek to travel by boat across the Mediterranean to Europe. From there they are thrown into prisons, tortured and held in inhumane conditions, and either held hostage until their families can pay their ransom or literally sold into slavery. These conditions are a conscious policy on the part of the European powers to deter refugees from exercising their democratic right to claim asylum in Europe.

China and Solutions to Climate Change

K.J. Noh & Michael Wong

The Earth’s greenhouse gas concentrations are at their highest levels in 2 million years, driving catastrophic climate change, and creating an existential threat to the planet. But there is a way out.

Last year, President Xi Jinping, pledged that China’s CO2 emissions would peak before 2030, and China would become carbon neutral before 2060.

China has a track history of setting ambitious, nearly impossible goals and then achieving them–often before deadline–so this pledge is significant. Under the CPC, China has already created “an economic miracle” in transforming China into the largest economy in the world. It ended extreme poverty while creating the largest middle class in the world.  It has virtually eradicated Covid through non-pharmaceutical methods, while vaccinating up to 20 million people daily, and pledging the largest number of vaccines (2.2 Billion) and distributing over 1 Billion-to the rest of the world. It has also been applying this incredible focus and national resolve to tackle Climate change.

China has the greatest program of renewable energy of any country. It generates more renewable power than North, Central, and South America–42 countries–combined.  It has more solar parks and wind farms than any other country.  Last year it built more wind power than the rest of the world combined.

It has more electric vehicles than any other country: it operates 420,000 electric buses, 99% of the world’s total; Shenzhen alone has 16,000 e-buses and 22,000 e-taxis. It aims to have 325 million electric vehicles operating by 2050. Its high speed rail network of 38,000 km is so extensive and effective that domestic air travel is starting to become obsolete.  No country has as dense, large, and efficient system of clean public transportation and high-speed rail as China.

In addition, China also has the greatest carbon-sequestration afforestation program in the world, creating forests the size of Belgium every year. It has doubled its forest coverage to 23% over the past 40 years. Satellite analysis by NASA’s Ames Research Lab proves that China has contributed more to greening the planet than any other country in the world.

In other words, by almost every sustainability index, China a world leader–far ahead of the US–and is pioneering a way forward for the planet. It will likely hit its targets ahead of time.

These things are happening because the CPC has written sustainability and ecological development directly into its constitution.  This is then implemented into regional and local policy, such as sustainable eco-city mandates, transportation policy, energy infrastructure, advanced research, as well as dedicated funding for alternative energy development for companies to start up and build clean energy technology.

These commitments exist despite the fact that China’s historical and per capita GHG and CO2 emissions are a fraction of the world’s total. According to the World Bank, on an annual per capita basis, China share is less than half of the United States; its household energy consumption is 1/8^th of US’s.

Even more important, here’s a chart showing the cumulative emissions by country.

Source: Carbon Brief/No Cold War.

Cumulative historical amounts matter because CO2 does not dissipate but accrues in the atmosphere: stocks, not flows, are what matter. In accounting, you look at a person’s total accrued debt, not their daily credit expenditures, to determine what they owe to others. Likewise, you have to look at historically accrued GHG to accurately understand harms, liabilities, and mitigation responsibilities.

Note also, between 14–33% of China’s annual GHG emissions–are the West’s that has been offshored through manufacturing. This way, the West gets to have its cake and eat it, too: consume, pollute and destroy the planet, while virtue-signaling and blaming developing countries like China for the cost of its consumption.

Much, too, has been made of China’s coal plants, but the fact is that China’s plants are advanced supercritical or ultra-supercritical plants, which means they are much more efficient and cleaner than many of the industrial-era legacy plants of the US.  China has a more sustainable approach along the entire chain of production and consumption. That said, China understands coal as a transitional source that it wants to phase out, except that the US has an explicit military plan to choke off China’s alternative fuel imports at the South China Sea. China needs to maintain back-up capacity in clean coal, as it leapfrogs into renewables, which will constitute fully 80% of its energy portfolio by 2060. As for overseas coal plants, 87% of that funding comes from the West or Japan, and China has committed to not fund any foreign coal plants. With these commitments, China has demonstrated that it is dedicated and committed to both national and global sustainability and carbon neutrality.

Lastly, most calculations of GHG emissions leave out the US military boot print, the single largest institutional emitter in the world, ranking higher than the emissions of 140 nations. Add the cost of endless US wars, and subtract offshored GHG from the West from China’s total, you get a different picture of responsibility for global emissions.

Despite the hypocritical finger-pointing at China at COP 26 by the worst polluters, the US and the West, the simple facts refute the lies. China is a net GHG creditor nation, not a debtor. The Lancet showed that 92% of emissions above the safe level of 350ppm can be attributed to the Global North, of which 40% of these emissions are the US’s alone. By contrast, China is a net creditor nation. In other words, the atmosphere (atmospheric carrying capacity), a global commons, has been colonized and monopolized by the West to the detriment of the rest of the world. In this, the US bears the greatest individual responsibility for the Global Climate crisis.

Despite all this, China leads in solutions–in technology, policy, transition planning, and implementation. It is not only pulling its weight, it is showing the world a way forward.

This is in stark distinction to the US, where 25% of the US Congress still refuses to believe in human-caused climate change and where the last President claimed that “Global warming was a Chinese hoax”. The US was also responsible for disabling the original 1997 Kyoto protocol by lowering targets, engineering carbon indulgences (“carbon trading”), exempting military emissions, and unjustly trying to offload responsibility to developing countries.   (After all this cynical, rapacious, profit-driven sabotage, led by Al Gore, the US still refused to ratify, demoralizing global efforts for decades). These cynical actions by US leadership, along with US overshoot of its share of the carbon budget, bear a large responsibility for the current critical state of affairs.

Despite decades of denialism, evasion, and sabotage by the US, there is still a path forward to tackle Climate change. But the US needs to step up to do its part and it needs to engage honestly with China’s sustainable, ecological model of development.  With low-carbon eco-cities with 40% greenspace, pollution-free mass transit, mass afforestation, GHG capture technologies, mass shift to renewables, ecological mandates written into their constitution, China offers an inspiring and feasible policy model.

But this cannot happen if the US continues to threaten China militarily, encircle it with hundreds of bases–all emitting GHG–and resorts to carbon intensive military Keynesianism and neoliberalism, and denigrating and attacking everything positive China does.  By constantly bashing and attacking China, instead of engaging and learning from the structural solutions they are implementing, the US is abdicating its duties as a responsible global stakeholder and undermining—yet again–the world’s chances of tackling Climate Change.

In the recent China-US Joint Glasgow Declaration on Enhancing Climate Action, the US momentarily dropped its China-bashing, and pledged to strengthen implementation of the Paris agreement.

However, the constant demonization of China by the US leadership, not only on Climate change, but on all fronts, along with endless echo-chambering in the MSM, would suggest that this is not a good faith change of heart, but only a temporary tactical reset. The fact that the US still bans Chinese polysilicon for environment-critical solar panels on fraudulent charges is evidence of this dishonest opportunism.

For the sake of the planet, sanity must prevail to seek real win-win cooperation on all fronts to tackle the existential threat of our time. China is doing its part by demonstrating what an ecological, sustainable civilization based on socialist common prosperity could look like.

Will the neoliberal West and the US follow suit, learn and cooperate, or will they play at politics and war, doubling down on the suicidal Carbon-fueled endgame?

Clear-sighted citizens must challenge the lies, the mendacity, and the escalating demonization, and urge their governments to work for peace and cooperation.

The future of the world depends on it.

African National Congress suffers electoral collapse, as its rotten record is underscored by the death of de Klerk

Jean Shaoul

Recent nationwide municipal elections in South Africa delivered President Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC) just 46 percent of the vote, the first time it had failed to cross the 50 percent threshold.

It was by far the ANC’s worst result since taking office in the 1994 elections following the end of the hated apartheid regime and minority white rule.

According to the official tally:

• The ANC won 46 percent of the vote, compared to 54 percent in the 2016 municipal elections
• The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), which gets most of its support from white and coloured (SA’s term for multiracial citizens) voters, won 22 percent, compared to 27 percent in 2016
• Julius Malema’s black nationalist Economic Freedom Fighters won 10 percent, compared to 8 percent in 2016
• The Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), based on Zulu ethno-nationalism, won 6 percent
• The largely Afrikaner nationalist Freedom Front Plus Party won 2 percent and
• The newly formed ActionSA, whose leader has made vociferous xenophobic remarks, also won 2 percent.

The ANC suffered defeats in key cities including Johannesburg, Pretoria and Gqeberha (previously known as Port Elizabeth) and lost its majority in KwaZulu-Natal, by far the largest ANC region and home province of former President Jacob Zuma. It holds a majority in 161 of the 250 councils, down from 176 in 213 councils in 2016, while the DA has a majority in 13 and the IFP in 10. A total of 66 municipalities are hung.

The debacle was expressed not only in the loss of votes for the ANC and the main opposition parties. Voter turnout was just 47 percent of South Africa’s 26 million registered voters, 11 percentage points down on the last election. But even this fails to capture the extent of the debacle. More than 13 million of South African’s 40 million people eligible to vote—one in three eligible voters—mainly first-time voters disillusioned with electoral politics, did not bother to register.

Cyril Ramaphosa (Credit: Tasnim News Agency)

It follows ANC losses in both the municipal elections in 2016 and the parliamentary elections in 2019 as anger mounted over widespread corruption. In 2018, Ramaphosa’s faction in the ANC forced then President Zuma to resign over longstanding claims of corruption, amid fears his actions and those of his cronies were impacting adversely on South Africa’s business interests at home and abroad and costing the ANC electoral support.

Earlier this year, the 79-year-old Zuma, a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle since the age of 17—serving a 10-year prison sentence on Robben Island in the 1960s alongside Nelson Mandela, and a member of the Stalinist South African Communist Party (SACP) until 1990—received a 15-month prison sentence for contempt of court for refusing to testify before the Zondo Commission into corruption and state capture. Protests by his supporters, largely in KwaZulu-Natal, morphed into a wider movement against the ANC government. Released two months later after being granted medical parole, Zuma now faces a long-postponed trial for fraud and corruption relating to payments made for a 1999 arms deal.

Ramaphosa, Zuma’s successor, likewise expresses the trajectory of the ANC and its politics. A former leader of South Africa’s largest trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers, Ramaphosa became ANC general secretary in 1991. He soon became a multi-millionaire and in 2012, in his capacity as a shareholder in the Lonmin mines in Marikana, he called on the authorities to take action against striking miners. This was orchestrated by the ANC government and its allies in the official trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), with the security forces firing on the strikers, killing 34 and wounding 78 others.

On becoming president, South Africa’s richest politician promised to root out ANC corruption, revive the country’s flagging economy and reduce unemployment, especially among the youth, in a bid to restore the ANC’s electoral fortunes. Far from achieving this, he has presided over a deepening economic crisis that has turned South Africa, with one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world, into a social tinder box.

While the ANC deputy Secretary General Jessie Duarte stressed, “We're not losers, we are the winning party,” there is no question that the faction-ridden ANC leadership is dismayed at the result. Ramaphosa is likely to face a leadership challenge from within the ANC or be forced to fire some of his more openly corrupt colleagues, potentially precipitating splits in the party.

What is playing out is an historic collapse in the ANC’s popular support. In the most immediate sense this is the price paid for its handling of the pandemic, the vaccination rollout, power outages, water shortages, rising prices, the 34 percent unemployment rate and endemic corruption. But this is only the end product of the failure of the ANC to advance the social interests of the millions of black workers who looked to it for leadership and an end to the grotesque inequalities that characterized white minority rule under apartheid. The ANC has instead, having rescued capitalist rule, presided over a deepening of social and economic inequality while a thin layer of black bourgeois clustered around the party have reaped the benefits of “Black Economic Empowerment” as stooges and frontmen for the major corporations.

The ANC’s difficulties would not have been helped by the efforts of international figures and the corporate-controlled media to eulogise F. W. de Klerk, South Africa’s last president under apartheid, who died last week. Nothing better epitomizes the ANC’s role in suppressing the revolutionary strivings of the workers and oppressed masses than the reappearance of de Klerk in the role of Banquo’s ghost—reminding everyone of its great political crime.

It was de Klerk who in 1990 announced the end of the reviled apartheid regime, lifting of the 30-year ban on the ANC, releasing Mandela from prison and opening the way for universal suffrage that would bring the ANC to power in the 1994 elections.

But those praising de Klerk as a “man of courage” are perpetrating a deeply cynical fraud. Steeped from childhood in apartheid politics, he became a legislator for the ruling National Party in 1972, entering P. W. Botha’s cabinet in 1978 and serving for years as his right-hand man, before becoming president in late 1989.

De Klerk decided to work with the ANC as the only means to preserve South African capitalism and indeed to prevent its collapse, which would have set off a chain reaction throughout the former colonies of the imperialist powers.

De Klerk made his surprise announcement in January 1990, after South Africa’s apartheid regime had faced years of mass protests and strikes since 1984, losing control over the black, working-class townships and teetering on the brink of civil war.

His act of realpolitik in seeking a modus vivendi with the ANC can be compared to a degree with the adoption by his contemporary, Mikhail Gorbachev, of certain limited democratic measures (glasnost) to placate popular opposition, while he presided over and economic programme of marketisation (perestroika), that set the course for capitalist restoration. Capitalist restoration proved catastrophic for the mass of the population in the former Soviet Union, while a small layer of old bureaucrats and new capitalists usurped state owned property and made fabulous fortunes.

De Klerk’s action was likewise bound up with saving all that could be saved for South Africa’s capitalist elite. Like Gorbachev, who relied on the disorientation of the working class after decades of Stalinist rule and the support of petty-bourgeois dissidents, de Klerk understood that only Mandela and the ANC could provide the capitalist class with a political life jacket. The ANC’s political perspective, like that of its allies in the Stalinist South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, utilized the Stalinist two-stage theory to proclaim the formal end of apartheid as a democratic revolution and a necessary stage before any struggle for socialism could be mounted. This reflected the aim of petty-bourgeois social layers to develop a black bourgeoisie standing alongside its white counterparts—politically dominant even though possessing less economic power.

The ANC, no less horrified than the white bourgeoisie by the militancy of workers and youth in the townships, channeled everything into a negotiated programme of “democratic reforms” that preserved the wealth and property of the international corporations and the country’s white capitalist rulers, ditching all pledges to take the banks, mines and major industries into public ownership and signing secret agreements with the International Monetary Fund to implement free market policies and open up South Africa to international capital.

The ANC served as a means of suppressing the black working class whose revolutionary struggles threatened the continuation of South African capitalism in a period of rapid transition, during which the globalisation of production had become widespread, rendering nationalist and autarkic regimes, including South Africa’s apartheid regime, obsolete.

ANC governments, first under Mandela, who even appointed de Klerk to serve as his deputy, then Thabo Mbeki, Zuma and now Ramaphosa, are now widely seen by South African workers as the corrupt representatives of a wealthy ruling establishment they once claimed to oppose. Like its counterparts in the Middle East and Africa, the ANC was unable to provide any solutions to the social and economic problems confronting the working class and peasantry. Its only response to steeply escalating social tensions is repression, arrests and the lethal crushing of protests and strikes.

Once again, the South African bourgeoisie confronts a working class seeking to advance its independent social interests, embodied most recently in last month’s three-week-long strike by 155,000 steel and metal workers that was betrayed by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa.

The path of the ANC from opposition to co-option has been replicated across Africa and the Middle East, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, which pursued similar policies, making its peace with imperialism and pursuing wealth and privilege for a narrow layer following the first intifada that erupted in 1987.

The national bourgeoisie, dependent upon imperialism and fearful of the working masses below it, cannot resolve the fundamental democratic, economic and social problems confronting the masses.

Leaked “Operation Rampdown” document insists nothing will be done to stop spread of COVID in UK

Robert Stevens

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson held a COVID-19 press conference yesterday, at which he warned that “storm clouds that are gathering over the continent. A new wave of Covid has steadily swept through central Europe and is now affecting our nearest neighbours in Western Europe.”

He added, “We don’t yet know the extent to which this new wave will wash up on our shores, but history shows we cannot afford to be complacent. Indeed, in recent days cases there have been rising here in the UK, so we must remain vigilant.”

Johnson is of course lying. The pandemic continues to rage in the UK, fueled by the elimination of virtually all measures of mitigation and the reopening of the economy, including schools. But Johnson, along with Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance made these “warnings” while proposing no measures to protect the population, beyond calling for the over 40s to get a booster vaccine and announcing that 16-17 years olds will now be offered a second dose.

Johnson’s pose of concern was sickening. His government has already decided that nothing will be done ever again to stop the spread of a deadly disease. He spoke after documents were leaked revealing that the government’s overarching goal is for the disease to become endemic in the population for years to come.

The Mail on Sunday revealed details of “Operation Rampdown” in a two page spread, consisting of four articles. The Mail, which has long opposed lockdowns and any mitigation measures impeding the profit interests of the capitalist class, featured a picture of a face mask being burnt, alongside the words, “It will appal some but be music to the ears of others.” Making clear what was meant, its main article states baldly, “The leaked Rampdown plans will be hailed by business owners…”

Screenshot of the Mail on Sunday's two page spread on Operation Rampdown

The Mail reports, “The Rampdown strategy is being hammered out as part of a six-week review of the Government's ‘test, trace and isolate regime’ by officials at the UK Health Security Agency, a new body headed by former Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Jenny Harries.”

The “strategy” is effectively already policy, with the newspaper reporting, “Their [UK Health Security Agency] conclusions are due to be finalised by Dr Harries and other key officials this weekend before being submitted to Health Secretary Sajid Javid.” [emphasis added]

The opening paragraph of the first article by Isabel Oakeshott and Mark Hookham reads, “Britain's response to Covid is set to be dramatically scaled back early next year as part of a pandemic ‘exit strategy’ codenamed Rampdown.” It notes, “The secret Whitehall plan” is detailed in a “extraordinary 160-page dossier” that “includes a string of documents marked ‘official sensitive’ drawn up by the senior Government officials tasked with winding down Britain's battle against the pandemic.”

The titles of the Mail’s other articles confirm the homicidal basis of Operation Rampdown: “We’ll have to live with the virus for years say the experts”; “It’s the end of free tests for everyone”; “No more self-isolation from March”.

The government plans to have no measures in place by March/April of next year to stem the spread of the pandemic, and, in all essentials, no measures to prevent its resurgence.

The Mail reports, “The file reveals how the Government is set to:

• Axe the legal requirement for those who catch the virus to self-isolate for ten days;
• End free Covid tests and instead allow private companies to charge for lateral flow and PCR tests;
• Shut down the national ‘Test and Trace’ system, which identifies those who may have been exposed to the virus;
• Focus the fight against Covid on tackling local outbreaks and protecting ‘highest risk settings’, such as care homes;
• Scrap £500 payments for those on low incomes who must quarantine.”

Officials “are examining ‘what activities can we start ramping down before April?’ and what the ‘end state’ of Britain's response to Covid should be after April.”

The direction of travel is so rapid that the newspaper reveals “one Whitehall source has told The Mail on Sunday that some systems for monitoring the spread of the disease have already been shut down sparking alarm among top Government scientists.”

“Crucially, the documents reveal that Ministers are set to abandon attempts to stop Covid-19 spreading ‘at all costs’”.

At all costs? Such language could not be more chilling, given it is policy of a government headed by a maniac, Johnson, who said at the end of last October, only weeks before the peak of the pandemic in January/February this year, “No more fucking lockdowns. Let the bodies pile high in their thousands.”

At that point, Johnson’s herd immunity policy had officially taken 46,807 lives. In allowing the virus to rip throughout 2021, Johnson prepared the way for nearly 100,000 more lives lost in Britain.

These figures do not depict the true scale of carnage. Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics last week showed there have been 167,000 deaths registered in the UK where COVID-19 is mentioned on the death certificate.

At every stage of the pandemic, the Johnson government has led the world in rolling out policies that have led to mass murder. At the beginning of the pandemic, before the intervention of the working class and concerned scientists prevented it, the government’s plan was to let rip COVID tear through the population, with up to 800,000 deaths being contemplated.

Ruling out preventing the spread of COVID takes place with the advantage gained by vaccinating much of the adult population undermined by waning immunity, and with children either partially vaccinated or unvaccinated.

The ruling elite’s aim is to end all spending aimed at containing in any way the spread of COVID and to explicitly implement a cost-benefit criteria to determine who lives and dies from COVID infection.

The Mail notes that “health officials will judge future policies against the same kind of cost-benefit analysis used to decide whether the NHS [National Health Service] can afford expensive new drugs.”

It reports the chilling words of another of the documents, “We will no longer be prioritising the previous objectives of breaking chains of transmission at all costs.”

The Mail adds, “Insiders say the Rampdown strategy was partly being driven by the need to rein in the vast sums being spent on the pandemic.

One cost cutting exercise is scrapping “hugely costly free tests… Essentially they have to run everything down by the end of March because then the funding has gone,' a source said”.

COVID will be taking life for the foreseeable future, with one document stating, “Given the extent of transmission throughout the world, we now have to consider how society might concurrently suppress and live with the virus and reach an endemic state for years to come.”

Living with COVID must happen, even though one of the documents warns that “an extreme event could emerge at any time.” The Mail states that such an event could be the “spread of a vaccine-busting new strain” or as the document notes, “severe supply chain issues” with booster jabs. One document warns of “an unforeseen event or combination of events” that would “leave us in a worst case scenario with no end in sight.”

With the lives of countless thousands at stake, the priorities of the media, who are at one with the government’s agenda, is to tell everyone to look the other way. One question posed to Johnson during Monday’s COVID-19 press conference by Channel 4’s Ayshah Tull, was framed in reference to the remarks of Sir Nick Carter: “Do you agree with head of armed forces that the UK must be ready for war with Russia?”

A comparative analysis of COVID-19 and the flu highlights the immense dangers of the pandemic

Benjamin Mateus

The flu and COVID-19 are very contagious respiratory infections caused by the influenza virus and SARS-COV-2 coronavirus, respectively. As respiratory viruses, they are transmitted from one infected individual to another via small, aerosolized particles during breathing or speaking/screaming/singing and by respiratory droplets. Evidence gathered throughout the pandemic has shown that the aerosol form is dominant in spreading the disease through communities, propelling the pandemic from region to region.

Aside from sharing some of the same symptoms of fever, cough, and chills, the comparison, even attempts to suggest that these two infections are the same, has been repeatedly promoted to downplay the dangers of COVID and compel workplaces and schools to open to ensure the economy is up and running. The blatant disregard for the population’s health, given the calamity COVID has wrought, has been willfully criminal. However, what has also been lacking is an effort by the mainstream media to provide a more concrete scale by which people may compare COVID’s havoc to understand the true seriousness of this disease.

Therefore, it would be instructive place the figures for the flu and COVID toe to toe, to comprehend the magnitude of their differences and recognize the deceit being peddled to the population.

To begin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had reported that the number of children that had died from the flu during the 2019-2020 season was one of the highest, matching that of the 2017-2018 season. In all, there were 188 pediatric flu deaths during the season that inaugurated the COVID pandemic. Eighty-one occurred in children younger than five years of age and 107 deaths among those 5 to 17. Many of them for whom information on their medical condition was known had pre-existing conditions. Reviewing the reported pediatric death toll for the six flu seasons from 2011 to 2020, an average of about 130 children died annually. (In the 2018-2019 flu season, 118 children reportedly died.)

Figure 1 Flu season pediatric deaths in the United States. Source data from CDC.

If we expand our analysis to all ages, incorporating reported flu deaths from 2010 to 2020, the average number of people that died each season was around 36,000, with a high in 2017-2018 at 61,000 and a low of 12,000 in the 2011-2012 season. COVID-19, by comparison, killed well over 400,000 during its first full year in the United States, March 2020 through February 2021, more than ten times the annual average death toll from influenza.

An astounding finding comes to light when these figures are compared to the 2020-2021 flu season that occurred from October 3, 2020, to July 24, 2021, amid the COVID pandemic. During the last flu season, more than 1.3 million flu specimens were obtained. Only 2,136 were positive for the influenza virus, a yield of 0.16 percent positivity. More so, only 748 deaths were reported. Overall, there was a 98 percent reduction in mortality, a byproduct of the meager measures to mitigate the COVID pandemic. Among children, only one perished. This is a remarkable reduction in the number of deaths. Arguably, the flu in the population was brought to near elimination, and an incredible achievement deemed impossible in the centuries that civilizations have suffered living with the flu.

In line with this investigation, placing the COVID pandemic in context to the flu season will be important. Using the Worldometer COVID dashboard, during the same period in the US, from October 3, 2020, to July 24, 2021, reportedly over 410,000 people perished from COVID. In other words, for every flu death, there were almost 550 COVID deaths.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, there have been at least 6.5 million child COVID-19 cases or 16.7 percent of all COVID cases. In all, as of November 4, 2021, 614 children have died. In the intervening months that coincide with the 2020-2021 flu season, 237 children died. The comparison to the one child that died from the flu demonstrates how much deadlier COVID has been by comparison.

Figure 2 Number of influenza deaths in the United States from 2010 to 2020. Source Statista.

In the last four months, COVID has killed 265 children. If we compare these figures to the typical flu season, COVID is twice as deadly as the flu for children. But for the population, it has been elevenfold deadlier, ranging between sevenfold to 34-fold, compared to the highs and lows in flu mortality for a particular season. In other words, even for the youngest children, who are most resistant to the worst effects of COVID, the coronavirus kills many more than the flu, and it has even more horrific secondary effects, such as Long COVID, for which there is no real influenza equivalent.

During the initial foray with the pandemic, as noted by Business Insider, Figure 3 below breaks out the mortality for a typical flu season vs. COVID-19 deaths in the US by age brackets, highlighting the dangers of COVID for all age ranges. These types of analysis, for the most part, have ceased in the press.

And these figures must recall the repeated waves of infections that have left health care systems in many regions pushing them to the brink of collapse with resources like medicinal oxygen running critically low in many facilities. Some states even had to ration care to those deemed most likely to survive their infection.

Anecdotally, the categories of “mild” to “moderate” COVID were anything but minor in their effects on patients. They typically suffered a severe bout of infection with significant shortness of breath, severe coughs, profound fatigue, chills, and high fevers, that could last for several weeks. A considerable number also went on to develop Long COVID, including depression and brain fog. Untold millions will face the prospect of developing chronic diseases as a consequence of long-term complications to their organs from their initial COVID infection.

Figure 3 Typical flu season vs COVID-19 in the US compared by age ranges.

Certainly, other comparisons need to be made.

According to the CDC, during the 2019-2020 flu season (largely pre-COVID), 51.8 percent of people ages six months and older got a flu vaccine. Despite the target of 70 percent set by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2010, this was the highest level since the 2009-2010 flu season.

By and large, for children six months to 17 years, 63.8 percent received the flu shot, while among adults, only 48.4 percent were inoculated. The flu vaccine’s effectiveness reduces the risk of flu illness by 40 to 60 percent if the vaccines are well-matched to the circulating flu viruses. By comparison, approximately 50 percent of the US population had been fully vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 by the end of July 2021. COVID vaccines have proven to be more than 90 percent effective. However, a more recent appreciation for waning immunity means that the population will depend on repeat (booster) vaccinations to maintain some immunity against the virus.

The influenza virus is endemic in human populations. Though the efficacy of the vaccines is dependent on predicting the strain of the virus for a given season, they afford those who receive them some level of protection. Given the mutations of the virus, however, and the limited take-up of vaccinations, the level of immunity is entirely insufficient to deprive the virus of a sufficient number of hosts to fuel its spread, so that it dies out (the actual meaning of herd immunity).

SARS-CoV-2 is a novel coronavirus, meaning that when it emerged into human populations, no one had ever been exposed to it, and therefore no immunity against it existed, and every human being was a potential host. However, very efficacious vaccines have been developed quickly, and nearly 60 percent of the US population has now been fully vaccinated. And yet, since taking office, the Biden administration has pursued the same policies against COVID that his predecessor had enacted—profits over life. Another 350,000 have succumbed since Biden took the oath swearing to defend the Constitution.

The US is now facing another winter surge in new cases of COVID-19 as the pandemic spreads into the upper Midwest and Northeast. Given the widespread abandonment of masking and other protective measures, and the mass return to schools, which reduced influenza to near-zero last year, there are now warnings from health experts of a possible twindemic of flu and COVID. This means that a harsh flu season, as experienced in the 2017-2018 season, combined with the uncontrolled spread of COVID could have catastrophic implications to health systems that have been repeatedly deluged by floods of patients throughout the pandemic.

A report in The Economist from October 2021, “How the world learns to live with COVID-19,” states that the influenza virus, “one of the most dangerous endemic diseases,” kills between 290,000 to 650,000 people every year worldwide, in particular the elderly. Dr. Trevor Bedford, a professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at Fred Hutch, explained that in the next few years, SARS-CoV-2 would cause annual deaths in America from 50,000 to 100,000 while the flu kills about 12,000 to 60,000. Extrapolating from these miserable estimates means millions worldwide could die each year from these pathogens combined.

In concluding the comparison between the flu and COVID, it is worth reviewing COVID mortality in countries that implemented elimination strategies to the pandemic.

China, thus far, has sustained 4,636 deaths, nearly all of them during the first few months of the pandemic, before it was fully understood. New Zealand has registered only 33 deaths. Life expectancy actually climbed for the tiny island nation in 2020, in contrast to most of the world. Until May of 2021, Taiwan had seen only 14 deaths. A sudden surge in cases over the summer and fall led to more than 800 deaths, although the figures have stabilized after efforts were taken to control the rise of infections. Until July 2021, Vietnam had approximately 225 deaths. Norway has experienced only 950 deaths.

The United States has reported 783,439 deaths, 100 times the total number of deaths in all the above-mentioned countries, with estimates that another 60,000 people will die before the New Year.

Tragically, in Vietnam, the Stalinist government in recent months has adopted a US-style strategy of “learning to live with the virus.” Since July, the COVID death toll has jumped from 225 to over 23,000, with a million cases.

These statistics unequivocally demonstrate that appropriate public health measures and strict mitigation measures could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, in the US and around the world, even before the development of the vaccines, which can now be deployed to assist with elimination measures.

Instead, the reckless policies the capitalist countries have implemented to ensure no infringements are made on the extraction of surplus value have only created the conditions ripe for the continued mutation of the virus. The attempt to dismiss the dangers of the virus and claim, like the fascistic president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, that it is “just a little flu,” only plays into the hands of the most reactionary demands of the financial oligarchs. Only an elimination strategy can help stem the further loss of life.

New neo-Nazi weapons cache discovered in Austria

Markus Salzmann

A huge cache of weapons was uncovered recently by security officers during a house search of a suspected neo-Nazi in the Lower Austrian district of Baden. This is the third such weapons cache found within a year and underlines the extent of far-right terrorist activities in the Central Alps.

During the search, 1,200 kilograms of ammunition, several machine guns and submachine guns, an assault rifle, a sniper rifle and more than 20 other weapons were seized. The weapons inventory also included 17 revolvers and pistols, seven partially operational pipe bombs, 21 so-called “shooting pens” brass knuckles, Asian close combat weapons and other weapons designed to inflict cuts and stabbing wounds.

Weapons seized in Austria (Bild: BMI/Karl Schober)

In addition to weapons and explosives, the security forces also found a large number of Nazi devotional objects. These included steel helmets with swastikas, medals, a bust of Erwin Rommel, Hitler’s Mein Kampf and other National Socialist literature. According to the Minister of the Interior, Karl Nehammer (Austrian Peoples Party, ÖVP), the discovery of the weapons held by right-wing extremists was capable of “plunging the Republic into a massive crisis.”

Despite the considerable size of the weapons cache, only a temporary weapons ban was issued against the 53-year-old neo-Nazi Peter Binder and his wife while charges were filed. Both currently remain at large, although the pair are regard to be part of an extensive far-right terrorist network. The official investigation into their backers and accomplices continues.

Interior Minister Nehammer congratulated the investigators of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BVT): “The consistent action against right-wing extremism is not only part of our historical responsibility, but also a very clear commitment to our democratic coexistence in Austria.”

In fact, numerous far-right extremists have been able to build their networks in Austria in recent years under the noses of the BVT, other Austrian security authorities and not least the government itself.

Since the summer of 2019, 20 illegal weapons caches have been unearthed in Austria, according to the blog “stopptdierechten.at,” which documents such finds. This latest weapons cache is now the third to be uncovered in the course of investigations into a network of far-right extremists in Austria and Germany.

In July, house searches were carried out in the neo-Nazi milieu in Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Vienna and Burgenland. Large numbers of fully and semi-automatic firearms plus ammunition were found, in addition to Nazi memorabilia. Among the weapons were rifles issued by the Austrian armed forces, indicating that the network maintains contacts with the military.

As was subsequently announced, a so-called “Militia of the Upright” wanted to “overturn the system” through right-wing terror. Once again, only two weapons bans were issued in Vienna and Burgenland.

In December, during an investigation in Lower Austria, the authorities discovered a huge arms depot run by the well-known neo–Nazi Peter Binder. In this case, 76 submachine guns and assault rifles, 14 handguns as well as about 100,000 rounds of ammunition, hand grenades, explosives and an extensive collection of Wehrmacht (Germany’s army during WWII) equipment were seized.

According to Interior Minister Nehammer, the weapons were intended for Nazi circles in Germany in order to build up “a far right militia.” In the course of the investigation, two kilos of TNT, four mines, two hand grenades, ammunition and several other weapons were found during further house searches. It was notable that the finds were uncovered in the course of investigating organised drug trafficking, although the mastermind was a known neo-Nazi with multiple convictions, who had already been involved in similar practices in the past.

Peter Binder is a well-known figure in the Austrian neo-Nazi scene and has close connections to Germany. He was arrested in the mid-1990s in the course of a series of far-right attacks in Austria involving letter bombs which killed four people and injured another 15, some seriously.

Although explosives and instructions for building bombs were found on Binder’s person at the time, he was acquitted of complicity and sentenced to just five years in prison for crimes aimed at reviving National Socialism. The neo-Nazi Franz Fuchs was later found guilty of acting as a sole perpetrator, although massive doubts were raises at the time about his ability to work alone.

In the following years, Binder received further sentences, including in 2010 for drug trafficking. Most recently, in January 2018, he was sentenced in Passau to ten months’ imprisonment on probation for importing weapons and narcotics. During a check at the Passau border crossing, 250 shotgun shells and 2 grams of amphetamines were found on his person.

In the same year, Binder was sentenced by the regional court of Wiener Neustadt for wearing a belt buckle with Nazi symbols and sending far-right messages. As a result, he received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence but was able to serve it on day release. During this period, he assembled the weapons cache that has now been found.

Binder had been an activist in the Volkstreue Ausserparlamentarische Opposition (VAPO) funded by the leading Austrian neo-Nazi Gottfried Küssel. VAPO referred to Hitler as one of history’s “greatest men” and organised rallies and military exercises involving well-known politicians from the Freedom Party (FPÖ), such as Andreas Reichhard and later Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache. The VAPO had links to terrorist circles and was dismantled in the 1990s.

There are clear indications that the weapons found were intended for far-right militias in Germany. Evidence indicates that Binder had been in close contact with neo-Nazis in Berlin for years, who also supported him in the procurement of explosives. According to the platform “stopptdierechten.at,” his name was also mentioned in investigations into the far-right German terrorist cell, the National Socialist Underground, NSU. Apparently, right-wing extremists close to the NSU had already been in contact with Binder before the NSU committed its years-long series of racist murders. Weapons depots in Austria were also mentioned in investigations into other right-wing networks in Germany.

Already a year ago, the question arose how a known neo-Nazi with a criminal record, who had already been released from prison and was at the centre of investigations into a terrorist series, could have managed to stockpile weapons and explosives on a large scale to build a far-right terrorist network.

Binder and his followers were clearly operating on the radar of the security authorities. The BVT has known for years how the far-right milieu finances itself. It is no coincidence that the case recalls the so-called Object 21, a “cultural association” founded by neo-Nazis in 2010 which financed its activities through drug and arms trafficking as well as extortion.

Object 21 also had contacts in Germany. Its cadres had connections to the Thüringer Heimatschutz (THS), to which the NSU terrorists Böhnhardt, Mundlos and Zschäpe all belonged. The THS, in turn, was financed by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, via its undercover agent Tino Brandt.

Willi Mernyi, chairman of the Mauthausen Committee Austria, summarised the findings as follows: “Organised crime finances Brown violence: we already know this connection from ‘Object 21’ in Upper Austria. On that occasion, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution also failed in its duties. In both cases, the neo Nazi groups came unstuck, not for their plans to overthrow the government, but over their drug trafficking. In the process, the two weapons caches could have led to the deaths of hundreds of people.”

The new finding makes clear that the BVT has not “failed.” Not only has it not made any effort to seriously dismantle the right-wing extremist networks, it even encourages them. In Germany, too, radical right-wing networks like Nordkreuz and Hannibal have links deep into the state and security apparatuses.

In Austria, the BVT is also known for links to the extreme right-wing spectrum. During the FPÖ’s participation in government from 2000 to 2007 and from 2017 to 2019, the BVT was reshuffled with recruits from persons politically close to the FPÖ. At the same time, surveillance of the far right was deliberately scaled back. In particular, the FPÖ Interior Minister Herbert Kickl aggressively sought to cover up the close ties between his party and neo-Nazi circles and intervened accordingly using the services of the BVT.

At the end of 2018, two high-ranking BVT employees were investigated for sharing photos with anti-Semitic and racist slogans in a Whatsapp group. In 2015, the former head of the BVT, Peter Gridling, appeared at a meeting of the notorious Vienna Akademikerbund, a platform for anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and other far-right extremists.

The FPÖ’s links to openly fascist groups are well documented. The most recent example is the latest issue of Info-direkt, a far right, anti-Semitic “Magazine for Patriots.” The Salzburg FPÖ not only placed advertisements in the magazine, there is also an article profiling the FPÖ’s provincial leader.

Up until 2002, the government published an annual report on far-right extremism, until the ÖVP and FPÖ discontinued it.

Even after the FPÖ left the government at the end of last year, its far-right policies continued to be enacted. All of Austria’s established parties have essentially adopted the policies of the far right. In the ruling coalition, the Greens have replaced the FPÖ and are continuing its course. The Social Democrats (SPÖ) have long been involved in pacts with the far right at a local level.

In this climate, the number of far-right crimes have risen dramatically in recent years. In 2019, 797 “offences with a far-right background” were registered, 65 more than in 2018. From January to June this year, 443 far right, racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic offences were registered, i.e., 100 more than in the same period of the previous year, according to figures from the Austrian Interior Ministry.