Partial lockdown in Slovakia and Czech Republic following record COVID-19 infections

Markus Salzmann

After a partial lockdown had already been imposed in Austria, stricter measures and contact restrictions were also imposed in Slovakia and the Czech Republic last week. This is against a background of the rapid spread of coronavirus infections, with new highs almost every day, which was made possible by the criminal reopening policies of the governments.

Slovakia recorded 14,402 new infections on Saturday. The previous record of 13,266 infections had been reported earlier in the middle of the week. In the country of just 5.4 million people, 1.13 million have now been officially infected and 14,177 have died as a result. Not even 43 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.

Nurses transport a COVID-19 patient in Ceska Lipa in the Czech Republic (AP Photo/Petr David Josek, File)

The situation in the neighbouring Czech Republic is similarly dire. As of Friday, the number of new infections was 27,793, nearly double those at the peak of the last wave in March this year. With 2.09 million registered infections, about 20 percent of the population has now contracted the virus. That does not take into account the number of unreported infections. On Friday alone, 120 people died, bringing the total death toll to 32,642. Again, experts expect the death toll to continue to rise as the vaccination rate stands at a low 59 percent.

On Thursday, a two-week partial shutdown went into effect in Slovakia, announced the day before by the right-wing government in Bratislava. Restaurants and stores selling nonessential goods are to remain closed during this period. At the same time, an emergency law will once again come into force that provides for restrictions on free movement. For example, people are only allowed to leave their own homes to go to work, visit the doctors or hospitals and go shopping. Taking walks is also allowed.

Until recently, the government of Prime Minister Igor Matovic had opposed implementing any further protective measures and allowed the virus to spread freely. The governing parties OĽaNO, Za ludi and SaS, are all right-wing, pro-business parties. The fourth coalition member, Sme Rodina (We Are Family), led by businessman Boris Kollar, is also far to the right and maintains close ties to coronavirus deniers and right-wing extremists.

Only after the country’s hospitals collapsed did the coalition decide to take this step. Hospitals are at full capacity, with 3,200 COVID-19 patients. Tomas Sulik, head of intensive care medicine at the hospital in Trencin, a town near the Czech border, sees the country on the brink of a humanitarian disaster, according to Tagesschau. In fact, triage, the selection of which patients do not receive life-saving treatment and which do, is already underway. “For now, we are only selecting patients who are severely poly-morbid and have no longer perspective of surviving on the ventilator. We are on the edge of triage.”

In addition, there is a severe shortage of staff. A result of frustration felt among physicians and nurses after recent waves, says Peter Vislolajsky, head of the physicians’ unions. “We are now short more than 1,300 nurses who have left the healthcare system. And hundreds of experienced physicians have also left. We have less capacity today than we did during the COVID surge last winter.”

Clearly, the measures being taken are far from sufficient to significantly curb the incidence of infection. Despite the dramatic situation, which has been exacerbated by the spread of the new Omicron variant, the government continues its profits-before-lives policy undeterred.

After just 10 days, the measures adopted are to be reviewed and possibly lifted. Businesses and schools will remain open without restrictions. In recent weeks, it has become clear that classroom instruction in schools is one of the main drivers of the pandemic. The tests that are now mandatory for schoolchildren will do little to change this.

Slovak Economic Minister Richard Sulik (SaS) made clear that the government will stick to its homicidal policies. “Schools will be the last to be closed. We insist that they remain open,” he declared.

Earlier, a consortium of health experts had called for a three-week lockdown and the closure of schools. They stated, “The epidemic situation in Slovakia is critical and is reaching the level of a humanitarian crisis.”

Health care in the Czech Republic is also on the verge of collapse, with a seven-day incidence rate of over 1,200 per 100,000 inhabitants. The number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals is over 6,000.

In several parts of the country, no more patients can be cared for. The situation is particularly extreme in the border regions with Austria and Slovakia, the only countries with an even higher infection rate per capita. Here, only acute emergencies have been treated for weeks. On Thursday, 19 seriously ill patients had to be transported from Brno to the capital Prague, 200 kilometres away.

In view of this situation, the government of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, which was voted out of office last month and is now only in office on a caretaker basis, has again declared a 30-day state of emergency.

Since Thursday, bars and clubs have had to close at 10 p.m. and Christmas markets are not permitted to open. Sports and cultural events are only allowed with up to 1,000 participants. In addition, a vaccination requirement for certain occupational and age groups could be decided next week.

Schools in the Czech Republic are also remaining open and work can be undertaken in factories without restrictions and any significant protective measures. This further encourages the spread of the virus. On Saturday, it became known that a case of the Omicron variant had probably occurred for the first time in the Czech Republic. The sample came from the PCR test of a woman who entered from Namibia via South Africa.

Scientists and medical experts had warned multibillionaire Babiš and his government about the consequences of the policy of keeping the economy open. His party ANO, the Social Democrats (CSSD) and the Communist Party (KSCM), however, pushed it through without any qualms—and with disastrous consequences. The government faced a reckoning in the October elections. All three parties lost massive numbers of votes, with CSSD and KSCM no longer represented in parliament.

On Sunday, President Milos Zeman appointed the conservative Petr Fiala as the new Czech prime minister. Zeman took the oath of office behind a transparent screen at Lany Castle near Prague, having tested positive for COVID-19 shortly before. The 77-year-old Zeman had been in hospital for 46 days.

Fiala’s new five-party government had made clear before taking office that it would immediately lift the state of emergency and all related restrictions. In other words, it will continue the criminal policies of the previous government with even greater brutality.

The government includes the right-wing conservative Alliance of Civic Democrats (ODS), Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) and TOP-09, as well as the Pirate Party and the Stan Mayoral Party. Representatives of the ODS said they would intervene in the pandemic at most “regionally” and would not declare a nationwide state of emergency. Fiala ruled out closing schools during his term. Future Health Minister Vlastimil Valek (TOP-09) categorically opposed mandatory vaccination and lockdowns. In addition, all restrictions on the unvaccinated that have been in place until now are to be completely lifted.

This cold-blooded policy of deliberate mass infection, which will cause thousands more deaths, follows the coalition agreement signed by the parties early last week. Fiala announced sharp austerity measures across the board, centered on massive pension cuts. The money saved is to go directly into rearmament. The new government aims to spend 2 percent of GDP on military procurement from 2025.

The coalition is expressly committed to greater integration of the country into the EU and NATO. The Pirate Party in particular is calling for a more aggressive policy toward Russia and China. Pirate Party leader Jan Lipavsky, who has been tapped as foreign minister, stands for a foreign policy modelled on that of Poland and the Baltic states. He is calling for strict sanctions against Russia and threatens the use of the military.

G7 health ministers agree to do nothing over Omicron variant threat

Robert Stevens

The health ministers of the seven major imperialist powers met yesterday in what was trailed as an “emergency meeting” in light of “the new Omicron Covid-19 variant spreading across the world.”

The online session was attended by representatives from United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, plus a guest from the European Union.

The G7 health ministers meeting, along with Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety (credit: Stella Kyriakides/Twitter)

A concluding statement declared in its first paragraph, “The global community is faced, at a first evaluation, with the threat of a new, highly transmissible variant of COVID-19, which requires urgent action.” But the ministers agreed to do virtually nothing to prevent the spread of Omicron.

The rest of the communiqué, just five paragraphs and less than 200 words long, consisted of a series of pat phrases. One could almost hear their feet dragging as the ministers declared “strong support to set up an international pathogen surveillance network within the framework of the World Health Organization (WHO).”

All agreed with the “strategic relevance of ensuring access to vaccines” and “providing operational assistance, taking forward our donation commitments, and tackling vaccine misinformation, as well as supporting research and development.”

The Omicron variant has now been detected in at least 17 countries, including five of the G7 nations. Japan and the US are the only exceptions—with the US likely due to its poor testing system. Along with Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy, the new variant has been found in Denmark, Hong Kong, Israel, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Botswana, South Africa, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands.

There will be no “urgent action” by any of the G7 or other capitalist powers to stop this spread.

• In the United States, with almost 50 million total COVID cases and whose official death toll passed 800,000 yesterday, President Joe Biden said with criminal complacency, “Sooner or later we’re going to see cases of this new variant in the United States,” but it “is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic”. Biden declared that his administration would not implement “shutdowns or lockdowns,” vowing to “reopen our country ... reopen our businesses” and … “reopen our schools.”
• In Britain, the Johnson government’s herd immunity policy has seen over 10.1 million infected, (almost 15 percent of the population) and more than 167,000 people dead. Eleven cases of the Omicron variant have been detected so far, including six cases in Scotland. Health Minister Sajid Javid, who convened the G7 meeting, told MPs afterwards only that the UK’s vaccination and booster programme would be stepped up.
• In Canada (over 1.7 million cases and almost 30,000 deaths), virtually all non-pharmaceutical anti-COVID-19 public health measures have been withdrawn, facilitating the widespread transmission of the virus. At least six possible cases of Omicron have been detected in the last 48 hours. Dr Malgorzata Gasperowicz, a developmental biologist, tweeted on Sunday, “Waves don’t come by themselves. Bad policies make waves.”
• In France (7.6 million cases and 118,894 deaths), eight possible cases of Omicron have been detected. The virus has been allowed to run rampant, with 31,600 COVID-19 cases recorded Sunday and 37,218 Monday. All flights have been suspended from southern Africa but only until December 1.
• In Germany (5.8 million cases and 101,558 deaths) sitting Chancellor Angela Merkel and her successor Olaf Scholz are waiting until today before holding talks over possible further restrictions. On Monday, Germany saw another weekly infection rate record, with 452.4 per 100,000 people contracting the virus.
• Italy passed five million COVID cases over the weekend and has seen 133,739 deaths. The 82,131 cases over the last seven days were a 25 percent increase over the previous week. According to Bloomberg, “The first Italian to test positive for the omicron variant had a negative test before his flight and moved around Italy for days before his diagnosis…” The man arrived in Rome on November 12, travelled to his home in a town north of Naples and then flew to Milan for a previously scheduled medical exam. The other five members of his family have also tested positive for COVID.
• In Japan (1.7 million cases and 18,358 deaths) cases ran rampant under the previous government of Yoshihide Suga. Japan hosted the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, despite widespread opposition and warnings from medical experts. Less than a month ago, Japan eased travel rules for foreigners and reduced the quarantine period from 14 to 10 days for those vaccinated. With the news of the circulation of the Omicron mutation, Suga’s successor Fumio Kishida authorised the closure of Japan’s borders from Tuesday.

Speaking to the World Socialist Web Site yesterday, immunologist Dr Anthony Leonardi, warned, “The Omicron variant is probably everywhere, and it now has a huge capability to mutate… As it outpaces Delta, it’s going to create even more infections. It’ll therefore evolve even faster than Delta. But you never know because any one of these variants can now get into an immunocompromised person and just do some fantastic evolution.”

The callous indifference of the practitioners of herd immunity internationally was summed up in the comments of UK Health Minister Javid. Speaking to the media Sunday—after Prime Minister Boris Johnson had revealed the previous day that cases of Omicron were circulating in Britain and that masks would be required in shops and on public transport from today—Javid said that there was no need for any extra restrictions to be implemented. “If one was to make decisions like that, it would have to be done very, very carefully. We’re not there yet. We’re nowhere near that.”

The G7 statement concluded with a declaration amounting to a collective shrug. “Ministers committed to continue to work closely together, with WHO and international partners to share information and monitor Omicron. Ministers committed to meeting again in December,” without a date even being specified.

This mirrors Saturday’s statement by Johnson who told everyone that the situation would be reviewed in three weeks and that all should continue to act as normal and prepare for a Christmas that “will be considerably better” than last year.

These are policies aimed at the deliberate further mass infection of the population, motivated by ensuring that the profits of big business are in no way curtailed during the busy holiday season.

Even as the G7 meeting proceeded, it was reported that Spain and Sweden had found cases of Omicron and that pockets of infection not linked to travel had been detected in Scotland and Portugal.

The Johnson government has pursued a homicidal policy against schoolchildren, with the virus allowed to spread freely among the youngest in society for the bulk of the pandemic. 113 children are dead as a result. Hundreds of thousands of children have been forced out of classrooms due to illness and needing to self-isolate. Among the first cases of Omicron in Britain was one traced back yesterday to a primary school in Essex, England.

Even as they feign concern over the spread of Omicron, the political representatives of the capitalist class will move rapidly to tear up even the mildest regulations they have been forced to put in place. Speaking to MPs Monday, with many baying for restrictions to be permanently shelved, Javid insisted, “If it emerges that this variant is no more dangerous than the Delta variant, then we won’t keep [these] measures in place for a day longer than necessary.”

Fracturing Australian government effectively closes down parliament

Mike Head

Beset by internal revolts, mounting social tensions and the arrival of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19, the Liberal-National Coalition government yesterday moved to virtually shut down parliament for the next eight months.

Scott Morrison (Wikimedia Commons)

The government’s disarray was underlined when it released next year’s proposed parliamentary schedule. This allows only 10 or 14 sitting days for the entire first half of 2022, depending on when Prime Minister Scott Morrison calls a federal election, which must be held before the end of May.

By bringing forward the date for the annual budget from May to March 29, the government narrowed down its options for holding an election. It must now announce an early election in January, to be held in March before the budget, or delay as long as possible, making the call after the budget, which would mean an election in May.

Either way, the timetable seeks to effectively prevent parliamentary sessions, which might not resume until August if the election were conducted in May. At the same time, a succession of bills that the government had previously touted as major legislation are being put on hold, or hived off to parliamentary committees, until after an election.

This includes bills to give religious bodies the legal power to disregard anti-discrimination laws, to set up a token anti-corruption commission that will protect politicians from scrutiny, to force social media companies to identify people posting allegedly defamatory comments, and to introduce historic anti-democratic vote ID provisions.

With seven Coalition MPs having already voted against the government on various measures last week, and numbers of others still refusing to vote for any government legislation, the Coalition has essentially lost its majority, producing another “hung” parliament.

Staggering from crisis to crisis, the government is anxious to avoid any parliamentary debate that would further expose the rifts tearing it apart. It is also extending the sidelining of parliament since the pandemic erupted in early 2020. Parliament barely sat that year, displaced by an unelected “National Cabinet” of federal, state and territory leaders, most from the Labor Party.

This week marks the end of the last two-week parliamentary session for 2021, during which several months-long breaks also occurred between parliamentary proceedings.

There is no guarantee that this government will last until an election. Morrison hopes to become the first prime minister to survive for a full three-year term since John Howard lost his own seat in the Coalition’s landslide defeat in 2007. But the events in Canberra are an intensification of the instability of the parliamentary order over the past decade, during which social inequality has soared, working class conditions have worsened and the dangers of war and global warming have escalated.

While the opposition Labor Party has criticised the lack of parliamentary sitting days for 2022, it is providing bipartisan support to the fracturing government on all the major fronts, and equally trying to prevent any public debate. Typically, Labor’s caucus decided today not to oppose the supposed “religious discrimination” bill if the government brings on a vote, while saying Labor would reserve its position until after a parliamentary committee report in February.

In particular, Labor supports the government’s determination to push ahead with fully “reopening” the economy for the sake of corporate profit despite the worsening global pandemic and rapid emergence of Omicron infections in Australia.

Likewise, Labor fully supports the signing of the AUKUS pact that underpins accelerated preparations for a catastrophic US-led war against China, the pouring of billions of dollars into the pockets of the corporate elite throughout the pandemic, and the fraud that government and corporate pledges of zero carbon emissions by 2050 will avert the climate change disaster.

This bipartisan front extends to trying to prop up the increasingly discredited and distrusted political establishment itself. With media polls showing Labor’s popular support still languishing at the historic lows of the 2019 federal election, despite disintegrating support for Morrison and the Coalition, Labor helped the government impose new anti-democratic electoral laws.

These laws, rushed through parliament jointly by Labor and the Coalition in August, set an abrupt three-month deadline for the deregistration of all parties without seats in parliament unless they submit to the election authorities the names and details of 1,500 members—trebling the previous requirement—by December 2.

Above all, these laws are directed at preventing the rising social, economic and political discontent from taking a more conscious form in support for the alternative socialist perspective and policies advanced by the Socialist Equality Party (SEP). If the SEP is deregistered, it will be unable to stand candidates under the party’s name in the looming election, identifying them as genuine socialist representatives.

This is under conditions in which the rapid spread of the Omicron variant around the world, and in Australia, will intensify the opposition in the working class, already seen especially among anxious and angry teachers, parents and healthcare workers.

Despite a media propaganda campaign, promoting individual “freedom,” there is deep hostility to the deadly risk to health and lives presented by the demand of big business and its media and political mouthpieces that the population, young and old, must learn to “live with” COVID-19, no matter what terrible mutations inevitably emerge.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, the leader of the agribusiness and mining-based National Party, blatantly advanced the government’s pro-business agenda yesterday. “We can’t just shut down every time there’s a new variant, because there’s going to be new variants, and they’re going to continue on,” he declared. Otherwise “the economy won’t work.”

New South Wales Liberal-National Premier Dominic Perrottet had a similar message. “We need to learn to live alongside the virus and to live alongside the various strains of the virus that will come our way,” he said.

In other words, people must “live with,” or die with, the pandemic, no matter how deadly the mutations become.

That is Labor’s policy too. Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews today took a further step toward meeting the demands of the financial markets by insisting that vaccine mandates would be temporary. He boasted that “just over a few weeks ago, we took all the rules off pretty much except for masks in a number of sensitive settings.”

The worldwide emergence of Omicron is a devastating indictment of these policies, which are being pursued by capitalist governments on every continent. Their refusal to take the necessary, and scientifically proven, measures to eliminate the virus, and their profit-driven rush to prematurely reopen economies has turned the globe into a COVID-19 incubation dish, not least in the poorest countries with the worst public health resources of all.

Nevertheless, Australia’s governments are pushing ahead with reopening international and domestic borders, and lifting all basic safety measures, even mask-wearing and contact tracing. That is despite potentially fatal and long-lasting Delta infections still running at more than 1,000 a day nationally because of these criminal government responses.

These governments are defying the latest warning issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Contrary to all the unsubstantiated misinformation being propagated by governments and the media about Omicron being a “mild” variant, the WHO said yesterday it was already clear that Omicron would produce a “very high risk” of infection surges that would overwhelm public hospitals, leading to increased morbidity and mortality, regardless of any change in the severity of the virus.

Propped up by the complicity of Labor and the trade unions—which are trying to keep suppressing the resistance of workers—the Morrison government is desperately attempting to impose the further economic restructuring demanded by the corporate boardrooms.

Representing the largest corporations operating in the country, Business Council chief executive Jennifer Westacott issued a statement yesterday demanding that the federal, state and territory governments “stay the course” on reopening, in order to give “businesses clarity and certainty.” She insisted: “That means no state-wide lockdowns and domestic border closures that throw peoples’ lives into chaos.”

After a meeting of its national security cabinet last night, the Morrison government confirmed that it would not reverse the “reopening roadmap,” except to “pause” for 14 days, until December 15, the return of overseas workers and international students, and a planned “travel bubble” with Japan and South Korea.

Chinese study warns ending zero-COVID policy would be “a great disaster”

Peter Symonds

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on China would have been “disastrous” if the country had followed the “herd immunity” and “opening up” policies adopted by the United States and European countries, according to a paper published by China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention last week.

Mass COVID-19 testing in Beijing on Oct. 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

The group of mathematicians, who produced the report, concluded: “Even in a highly underestimated outbreak scenario under the most optimistic assumptions, once China adopts the control and prevention strategies of some typical western countries, the number of the daily new confirmed cases in China would likely rise up to hundreds of thousands of cases, and among which more than 10,000 cases would present with severe symptoms.”

By contrast, the number of confirmed cases in China on Saturday in the current widespread outbreak was just 23—down from 25 the day before.

The paper warned that “severe cases would exceed the peak number nationwide in early 2020 within 1–2 days, which would have a devastating impact on the medical system of China and cause a great disaster within the nation.”

The vast majority of China’s total of 127,764 confirmed cases and 5,697 deaths occurred when authorities were wrestling with the outbreak of an unknown severe respiratory disease in Wuhan in the early months of 2020, which was finally successfully suppressed. Subsequent outbreaks have all resulted from the entry of infected individuals from outside China.

To make their estimates, the mathematicians used a well-known epidemiological model to calculate case numbers if China had followed the policy of the reference countries. The estimates were based on conservative assumptions—that the population densities, vaccination coverage and vaccine efficacy for China were the same as the other countries.

The calculated figures are thus a “plausible lower bound.” China’s higher population densities, lower vaccination coverage and less effective inactivated vaccines mean that the case numbers would be even higher.

The results are staggering. With the US as the reference country, China would expect the number of daily cases to exceed 637,000. Based on an analysis of the ratio of cases to severe cases in a recent COVID-19 outbreak in Yangzhou, the paper concluded that daily severe case numbers if China followed US policies would be more than 22,000.

The results for the other reference countries—the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Israel—were similar with huge numbers of daily cases and severe cases. The lowest estimate for the UK was still in the hundreds of thousands—275,000 daily cases with nearly 10,000 daily severe cases.

The mathematicians concluded that China should not adopt the “living with the virus” policy that has been implemented by governments around the world with disastrous results. The figures are not only a warning of the dangers of China abandoning its zero-covid strategy, but an indictment of the murderous policies adopted by virtually every other government.

The total number of cases and deaths to date based on the World Health Organisation (WHO) for the other countries considered in the study are as follows:

The United States: 47,837,599 cases and 771,919 deaths
The United Kingdom: 10,146,919 cases and 144,775 deaths
France: 7,388,196 cases and 116,427 deaths
Spain: 5,131,013 cases and 87,955 deaths
Israel: 1,342,439 cases and 8,189 deaths

If the mathematicians had done their estimates in reverse—that is, had calculated the daily and cumulative cases and serious cases for all of the reference countries if they had adopted China’s zero-covid policy—then the vast majority of the more than a million deaths in those five countries would not have taken place.

With a total population less than half that of China, it would certainly be reasonable to expect the cumulative death toll of the five countries to be less than that of China—currently 5,697. That figure is exceeded every week in the United States.

Undoubtedly, the consequences of the criminal “herd immunity” policy were calculated behind closed doors in Washington, London, Paris, Madrid and Tel Aviv but never made public. The priority of the governments was “open up” in line with the demands of the financial and economic elites—in other words, to put profit ahead of the lives and health of working people.

Now the same governments are responding to the emergence of the new Omicron strain that appears to be more transmissible and deadly than the Delta strain with the same criminal indifference for the terrible death toll that it will exact.

Moreover, the Western media is pressing for China to end its zero-covid strategy—firstly, because it is disrupting China’s huge manufacturing export industries on which the world economy relies, and secondly, because it too graphically exposes the homicidal policy of “living with the virus.”

A growing stream of articles and comments in the US and international media attempts to discredit the zero-covid policy by focusing on the inconveniences posed by mass testing and contact tracing, limitations on travel and public health restrictions. While acknowledging the broad popular support inside China for the government’s policy, articles play up limited complaints that mainly come from elements of the upper-middle class. At the same time, other articles hammer away at the economic impact of the restrictions.

In a thinly-veiled criticism of China, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken gushed with praise for South Africa last weekend for its quick identification of the Omicron variant and “its transparency in sharing this information, which should serve as a model for the world.” Along with its promotion of the lie that COVID-19 emerged from a Wuhan laboratory, the US has repeatedly blamed China for its supposed “lack of transparency”.

In reality, Chinese scientists very rapidly identified the virus that caused the disease and its full genetic sequence. Chinese health authorities quickly provided that information to the WHO which was the basis of its warnings to other countries. The highly transmissible and deadly character of the virus was well known to governments around the world as well as the measures taken in China to suppress it.

The Trump administration deliberately ignored and downplayed the dangers for weeks, resulting in the very fast spread of the virus once it emerged in the US. The limited public health restrictions followed by the lifting of those measures under pressure from big business—a policy continued by the Biden administration—have led to a horrendous death toll, unparalleled except in the time of war.

While Blinken praises South Africa’s rapid response and transparency, the Biden administration, along with most governments around the world, has again chosen to downplay the likely consequences of the Omicron variant. Other than a restriction on travelers from southern Africa, none of the necessary public health measures have been implemented—a decision that can only accelerate the current wave of infections and deaths.

Testing the waters: Russia explores reconfiguring Gulf security

James M. Dorsey

Russia hopes to blow new life into a proposal for a multilateral security architecture in the Gulf, with the tacit approval of the Biden administration.

If successful, the initiative would help stabilise the region, cement regional efforts to reduce tensions, and potentially prevent war-wracked Yemen from emerging as an Afghanistan on the southern border of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf of Aden and at the mouth of the Red Sea.

For now, Vitaly Naumkin, a prominent scholar, academic advisor of the foreign and justice ministries, and head of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, is testing the waters, according to Newsweek, which first reported the move.

Last week, he invited former officials, scholars, and journalists from feuding Middle Eastern nations to a closed-door meeting in Moscow to discuss the region’s multiple disputes and conflicts and ways of preventing them from spinning out of control.

Mr. Naumkin, who is believed to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, co-authored the plan first put forward in 2004. The Russian foreign ministry published a fine-tuned version in 2019.

Russia appears to have timed the revival of its proposal to begin creating a framework to deal with Houthi rebels, seemingly gaining the upper hand against Saudi Arabia in Yemen’s seven-year-long devastating war.

The Iranian-backed rebels appear to be closer to capturing the oil and gas-rich province of Marib after two years of some of the bloodiest fighting in the war. The conquest would pave the way for a Houthi takeover of neighbouring Shabwa, another energy-rich region. It would put the rebels in control of all northern Yemen.

The military advances would significantly enhance the Houthi negotiating position in talks to end the war. They also raise the spectre of splitting Yemen into the north controlled by the Houthis and the south dependent on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“The battle for Marib could be a final stand for the possibility of a unified Yemen,” said Yemeni writer and human rights activist Nabil Hetari.

A self-declared independent North Yemen would potentially resemble an Afghanistan sitting on one of the world’s critical chokepoints for the flow of oil and gas. North Yemen would be governed by a nationalist Islamist group that presides over one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, struggles to win international recognition, restore public services, and stabilise a war-ravaged economy while an Al-Qaeda franchise operates in the south.

The Russian initiative also appears geared to take advantage of efforts by Middle Eastern rivals Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, and Iran to reduce regional tensions, get a grip on their differences, and ensure that they do not spin out of control.

Russia seems to be exploiting what some describe as paused and others as stalled talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran mediated by Iraq. Iraqi officials insisted that the talks are on hold until a new Iraqi government has been formed following last month’s elections. The discussions focused at least partially on forging agreement on ways to end the Yemen war.

Mr. Naumkin suggested that the Russian initiative offers an opportunity to carve the Middle East out as a region of cooperation as well as competition with the United States in contrast to southeastern Europe and Ukraine, where US-Russian tension is on the rise.

In the Middle East, Russia and the United States “have one common threat, the threat of war. Neither the United States nor Russia is interested in having this war,” Mr. Naumkin told Newsweek.

A State Department spokesperson would not rule out cooperation. “We remain prepared to cooperate with Russia in areas in which the two sides have common interests while opposing Russian policies that go against US interests,” the spokesperson said.

The Russian proposal calls for integrating the US defense umbrella in the Gulf into a collective security structure that would include Russia, China, Europe, and India alongside the United States. The structure would include, not exclude Iran, and would have to extend to Israel and Turkey.

UAE efforts to return Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the Arab, if not the international fold, although not driven by the Russian initiative, would facilitate it if all other things were equal.

Inspired by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the proposal suggests that the new architecture would be launched at an international conference on security and cooperation in the Gulf.

Russia sees the architecture as enabling the creation of a “counter-terrorism coalition (of) all stakeholders” that would be the motor for resolving conflicts across the region and promoting mutual security guarantees.

The plan would further involve the removal of the “permanent deployment of troops of extra-regional states in the territories of states of the Gulf,” a reference to US, British, and French forces and bases in various Gulf states and elsewhere in the Middle East.

It calls for a “universal and comprehensive” security system that would take into account “the interests of all regional and other parties involved, in all spheres of security, including its military, economic and energy dimensions.”

In Mr. Naumkin’s reading, Middle Eastern rivals “are fed up with what’s going on” and “afraid of possible war.” Negotiations are their only remaining option.

That seems to drive men like UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, his Saudi counterpart Mohammed bin Salman, Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Iranian leader Ebrahim Raisi to reach out to one another in a recent flurry of activity.

“These are talks between autocrats keen to protect their own grip on power and boost their economies: not peace in our time, only within our borders,” cautioned The Economist.

University workers in UK set to strike over pay, terms, conditions and pensions

Henry Lee

On December 1, workers at 58 universities across the UK are set to begin a three-day strike following the latest ballot over a years-long pensions dispute and what the University and College Union (UCU) refers to as the “Four Fights”: pay, workloads, casualisation and equality.

The attacks on pensions being pushed through by the employers increase contributions for many members of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) by thousands of pounds per year and will slash benefits by a third. University workers have faced real-terms salary cuts for many years, leaving real pay 20 percent below the level of 2009, while most researchers are on temporary fixed-term contracts, making it impossible to apply for a mortgage or make plans for the future. A UCU survey revealed that working conditions have deteriorated during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 78 percent reporting increased workloads.

The ballot showed that over 26,000 workers in higher education are ready to fight back against attacks on their pay and pensions, but they have run into a dead end due to the betrayal of the UCU and its pseudo-left apologists, grouped around the UCU Left.

The willingness to fight over these issues by Higher Education (HE) staff is combined with a growing understanding that the UCU will not wage a serious struggle. Only just over half of UCU members eligible to vote in the ballot did so. Most universities will not take part in the strike due to failing to meet the 50 percent turnout requirement set by the anti-strike laws, which were brought in with no resistance from the trade unions.

The UCU has divided Wednesday’s strike into four separate actions on an institution by institution basis, with staff at major universities—even in the same city—called out over different issues. 33 institutions will strike over both pay and pensions, 21 will strike over pay only, and four will strike over pensions only. Workers at six institutions will not strike, but take action short of a strike over pay.

In 2018, the mass opposition of UCU members to an initial attempt to sell out a national strike involving 50,000 workers forced General Secretary Sally Hunt to resign. The replacement of Hunt by current General Secretary Jo Grady was hailed by the Socialist Workers Party-led UCU Left as “a leap to the left,” amid claims that the union would be transformed into “a democratic fighting union that can send shivers down the spine of every employer.” Since then, Grady has worked just as hard as Hunt to prevent HE workers from unifying in a joint offensive against the employers.

Hundreds of striking lecturers and academic staff revolt against the UCU union outside its London HQ during the 2018 strike (WSWS Media)

Following the mandate for strike action, Grady put out a video statement calling for a single day’s walkout for each of the pensions and “Four Fights” disputes in the current term. This would have meant at most two days of strike action before Christmas, and in many universities where staff are not members of the USS pension scheme would mean only a single day.

Indicative of the way the UCU seeks to divide its members, Grady suggested trading off the interests of one section of workers in the “Four Fights” against another. A list of questions sent out to be discussed by each branch included, “Do members support the strategy of prioritising the injustice of casualisation, over pay, equality and workloads?” Days earlier Grady had acknowledged that the mandate of tens of thousands of workers for a strike put the union in “an incredibly strong position” to fight for its demands—only to turn around and suggest that workers can only win one demand by abandoning others!

Grady and the UCU are making last minute pleas in a desperate attempt to get this week’s strike settled and warning employers that many more workers could be involved in the new year. A November 25 article on the UCU site announced that “members at 42 universities will be asked to back strike action” over pensions, pay and working conditions, “in ballots that open on Monday 6 December and close on Friday 14 January.” This could result in “a period of sustained and escalating industrial action. There is still time to avoid this disruption, but that is in the gift of vice chancellors who sadly are still choosing to ignore the serious concerns of staff rather than address them,” said Grady.

This right-wing, corporatist response to workers’ demands for a struggle is typical of the unions, which aim not to fight for workers’ independent interests—a secure, well-paid job with decent retirement benefits—but to sell to workers what the employers consider acceptable. Hunt betrayed the 2018 pensions strikes to establish a corporatist Joint Expert Panel, whose suggestions were then partly used by the employers to form their current demands for an increase in contributions and reduction in benefits.

Grady has already established her own record of forcing through sweetheart deals.

After staff at 15 further education (FE) colleges voted in July to strike against a below-inflation pay offer, the UCU set about rapidly shutting down the dispute. Grady called on the other colleges to “follow the example of Weymouth [College]”, where workers accepted in a below-inflation 2.2 percent offer in a second ballot after they had already rejected the same figure. More recently the union agreed a pay deal of 2 percent for all but the lowest-paid staff at the four colleges in the South Thames College Group. With RPI inflation currently at 6 percent, these deals represent massive real-term pay cuts.

In higher education, despite claims of “victory” in multiple fights against university job cuts, the UCU only ever calls for compulsory redundancies to be cancelled. The aim is to convince the employers they can get what they want through pressuring workers to take “voluntary” redundancy. At the University of Liverpool, the union claimed that all the 47 jobs the university wanted to eliminate in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences had been saved, but by the end of the strike almost half of that number had taken voluntary redundancy or early retirement. Last Tuesday, UCU members at Goldsmiths University of London began a 15-day strike against a plan to make at least 52 redundancies. A statement from the local UCU branch calls only to “#OpenTheBooks” and “engage in meaningful consultation with the union”—a de facto pledge that it will undermine any fight against the redundancies themselves.

Grady’s proposals were slightly modified from two separate strike days to three days at each university, following two national meetings of delegates from UCU branches. The Socialist Worker, unable to make any more excuses for Grady in the face of the open attempts to undermine workers by the union bureaucracy—of which the SWP themselves comprise a substantial section—painted the polite criticism offered by the UCU Left as a “rank and file rebellion.” The UCU Left and SWP described a two-day stoppage as “tokenistic and ineffective,” but their own call was only for a five-day stoppage before Christmas.

Their mealy-mouthed criticism of Grady is paired with promoting the union’s own structures for diverting workers’ anger. The UCU Left describes the two branch delegates’ meetings, purely advisory affairs which can be entirely ignored by the Grady faction, as “an informal mechanism for a kind of direct democracy in UCU.”

The calling of strikes scattered about the term, and strictly limited in their scope—in this instance thanks to the UCU’s past betrayals—has been a tactic long used by the bureaucracy to avoid leading a genuine fight. While Grady’s former supporters in the UCU Left now offer up a few muted criticisms of her, and the SWP says that the strike must not be “left to the foot-dragging union leaders,” none of these groups explain why the previous rebellion against Sally Hunt has led workers back into a dead end.

Workers in HE want a way forward, after tens of thousands have repeatedly voted for strikes despite the UCU undermining every action. The latest strikes have been curtailed before they even start, and education staff need to learn the lessons. No amount of pressure can cause the union bureaucracy—who are thoroughly integrated into management structures and who form a privileged layer within society—to stop agreeing deals favourable to the employers. Any political perspective that seeks to tie workers to these corporatist organisations will lead to betrayals and demoralisation.

Amid record deaths from COVID-19, Ukrainian president accuses Russia of planning a “coup”

Jason Melanovski

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the health care systems of both Russia and Ukraine as Kiev and its NATO allies fuel military tensions with Russia.

On November 25, Ukraine reported 15,936 new cases. Throughout November the country has regularly reported record highs in both deaths and new cases, a testament to the criminal failure of the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky to take any serious measures to curtail, let alone stop, the spread of the virus in a largely unvaccinated population.

Last Tuesday, the country reported a record 838 deaths. Just two days later the country’s National Academy of Sciences reported that the peak of the country’s COVID-related mortality had passed between the dates of November 8 and November 12 and that the pandemic was now likely to decline.

Medical staff treat a coronavirus patient at a tent hospital erected for COVID-19 patients in Kakhovka, Ukraine, on Sunday, Nov. 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

However, with vaccination rates among the lowest in Europe and the spread of the new Omicron variant, it is likely that prognosis of a decline may turn out to be little more than wishful thinking. Just 21 percent of Ukraine’s population are vaccinated, and 96 percent of severe COVID-19 cases are among the unvaccinated, according to the Ministry of Health.

Doctors working in the country’s underfunded and dilapidated hospitals continue to deal with new cases and mass death.

“We are extinguishing the fire again. We are working as at the front, but our strength and capabilities are limited,” Doctor Oleksander Molchanov told the Associated Press in the southern city of Kakhova.

“The situation is only getting worse. Hospital beds are running out. There are more and more serious patients, and there is a lack of doctors and medical personnel.”

The situation has reached such a severe level that Kiev’s crematorium was working around the clock to keep up with the spike in daily cremations.

“To date, compared to the summer period, the number of cremations has doubled,” Andrey Yashchenko, a spokesman for the Kiev crematorium, told Euronews. “If during the summer there were on average 60 processions per day, there are now between 100 and 120,” Yashchenko reported.

Opposition to the vaccine has been promoted by the Orthodox priesthood and far-right elements who continue to spread lies of “micro-chipping” and other misinformation that is common worldwide among the right wing. On Wednesday, over 1,000 right-wing anti-vaccine protesters rallied in Kiev to denounce even the limited measures introduced by the Zelensky government.

“We are protesting against the compulsory vaccination and demanding (that the government cancel) restrictions,” said Mykola Kokhanivskyi, who is also the leader of the far-right OUN Volunteer movement.

The organization which Kokhanivskyi leads derives its name from the World War II-era Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), whose military component, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), was involved in the mass killing of Poles and Jews. Like other far-right formations, it has been systematically promoted by the Ukrainian government and ruling class, especially since the 2014 US-backed coup that toppled the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovich.

Neighboring Russia also reported record deaths several days in a row two weeks ago. While the number of deaths slightly declined last week, Russia still reports deaths in the 1,200s, more than during any previous wave of the virus. Case numbers have slowly been declining as well but still hover well over 33,000 every day.

As in Ukraine, vaccine misinformation has been spread by the country’s Orthodox priesthood. The influence of the Church and the promotion of irrational and unscientific conceptions has been compounded by widespread distrust of authorities. As a result, less than 40 percent of the country’s 146 million people have been vaccinated.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, Russia has reported approximately 265,000 COVID-19 deaths while Ukraine has reported 89,307, although the true numbers for both countries are undoubtedly much higher, according to several independent analyses.

The Financial Times reported that there have been 753,000 excess deaths during the pandemic in Russia. Data from the Institute for Health and Metrics and Evaluation suggest that Ukraine’s real COVID-19 death toll could be above 120,000.

The working class in Russia has also been hard hit by inflation, as prices for basic food staples have increased by over 10 percent and sometimes more, since the beginning of the year. The Russian ruble has devaluated significantly vis-à-vis the dollar in recent months, almost reaching 80 rubles per dollar. In Ukraine, the government has promised the IMF that it will eliminate gas price subsidies, putting many working-class Ukrainians at risk of losing heat this winter as gas prices continue to soar. Zelensky’s approval ratings have already plummeted to just 24.7 percent in October.

This public health and social crisis is unfolding as the US and NATO are systematically fueling tensions over the almost eight-year-long civil war in East Ukraine between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists. Over the past few weeks, the US has sent several warships to the Black Sea, while claiming that Russia was planning an “invasion” of Ukraine.

Russia, which has been accused of amassing close to 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border, continues to deny it is preparing for an invasion of Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed such claims as “hysteria.”

During a marathon press conference on Friday, Ukrainian President Zelensky vowed that his country was ready for war while accusing Moscow of sponsoring a coup against him in early December. “There is a threat today that there will be war tomorrow. We are entirely prepared for an escalation,” Zelensky ominously stated.

Zelensky stated, “I received information that a coup d’etat will take place in our country on December 1-2.” He accused Russia of having planned the coup against him and suggested that the Ukrainian billionaire oligarch Rinat Akhmetov was involved in the plot.

While being careful not to accuse Akhmetov directly, Zelensky stated, “I believe [Akhmetov] is being dragged into the war against Ukraine.” Without providing any evidence or details, he said that the coup had a price tag of $1 billion. Zelensky added, “It’s not only intelligence that we have, it’s also audio intercepts, where representatives of Ukraine, so to speak, discuss with representatives of Russia [about] Rinat Akhmetov’s participation in the coup in Ukraine.”

With a net worth of $7.3 billion, Akhmetov is Ukraine’s richest man and owns a number of media outlets, which have criticized Zelensky in recent weeks. Earlier this year, Zelensky shut down a number of media outlets associated with Viktor Medvedchuk, an oligarch and opposition politician with ties to the Kremlin, for supposedly spreading “Russian propaganda.”

Akhmetov described Zelensky’s accusation as “an absolute lie” and stated that he was for a “united Ukraine with the Crimea and my home region, Donbas.” The Kremlin also rejected the claims, with press secretary Dmitry Peskov stating, “Russia never engages in such things. There have never been such plans.”

On the same day of Zelensky’s press conference, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg again publicly backed Ukraine, stating, “If Russia uses force against Ukraine, that will have costs, that would have consequences.”

As Omicron spreads in Europe, Paris commits to mass COVID-19 infections

Samuel Tissot & Alex Lantier

Speaking yesterday on the far-right CNews TV channel, French government spokesman Gabriel Attal confirmed that the highly-mutated and contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus has likely arrived in France, but that the government will not take action in response.

“We’re still at the monitoring stage,” Attal said. “We have several possible cases, 10 or so. For now, these are potential cases. … These cases will be genetically sequenced, and we will know in the coming hours if they are cases of the virus.” Nonetheless, Attal insisted that President Emmanuel Macron’s government would not take action to tighten health restrictions and slow or stop the spread of the virus “in the short or medium term.”

Yesterday morning, Health Minister Olivier Véran said it was “a matter of hours” before Omicron cases are confirmed in France but dismissed its significance. “Currently, whether there are two or 10 infections by this variant in Europe or in France does not change the profile of the pandemic wave we are seeing,” Véran said. Complacently declaring that “a new variant does not necessarily mean a new wave,” he admitted that he could not say whether currently existing vaccines would give any protection from the Omicron variant, saying it is “too early” to tell.

Like at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, governments in France and across Europe are responding to a deadly surge in the virus with politically criminal indifference and complacency.

A COVID-19 patient under Ecmo (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) remain unconscious, at Bichat Hospital, AP-HP, in Paris, Thursday, April 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly)

With nearly 2.7 million cases and 29,298 deaths of COVID-19 confirmed in Europe last week, a surge driven by the Delta variant is already devastating the continent. Seven-day averages of new cases are at all-time highs in Germany (57,598), the Netherlands (22,257) and Denmark (3,994) or surging towards them in Belgium (17,162) and Poland (22,964). As hospitals collapse in parts of Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, patients are already being sent across national borders to less affected parts of Germany and Italy for treatment.

France is rapidly catching up to its worse hit northern neighbors. On November 27, 37,218 cases were COVID-19 cases were reported in France, and ICU occupancy for COVID-19 patients reached 1,617 with 9,271 people hospitalized for COVID-19, levels not seen since the peak of the fourth wave in mid-September. The seven-day average for infections is 27,597, and each day averaged 61 deaths last week in France, respective increases of 61 percent and 38 percent on the previous week.

Under these conditions, the spread of the newly identified Omicron variant, which is thought to be at least partially resistant to existing vaccines and more infectious and lethal than the Delta variant, threatens to provoke a horrific wave of death in the coming weeks.

The spread of the Omicron variant threatens to deepen already devastating conditions across the continent. The variant has been identified in Germany, Italy, Czechia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. On Sunday, it was reported that 13 people on just two flights from South Africa to the Netherlands tested positive for the variant.

One worrying sign about Omicron’s resistance to existing vaccines is a report that a person who tested positive for the Omicron variant in Israel had received three doses of the vaccine. The French Health Ministry has also announced that those who have been in contact with individuals infected with the Omicron variant will have to self-isolate, whether or not they are vaccinated.

In South Africa, the Omicron variant is already “out-competing” the Delta variant and has become dominant in just 13 days, compared to the 50 days it took for the Delta variant to account for more than 50 percent of cases in the country, according to data from the Financial Times. As this variant has become dominant, South Africa has witnessed a huge surge in infections and deaths. In the last seven days, infections rose 231 percent to 11,661, and deaths rose 128 percent to 219.

Any circulation of the Omicron variant threatens another massive increase in infections and deaths, creating a further wave on top of the current surge. Despite the immediate and deadly risk posed by both Delta and Omicron variants to the French population, there are no significant health measures in place. Schools, workplaces, universities, restaurants and even nightclubs all remain open, creating conditions where the current surge will only continue to spiral.

The WHO’s projection released last week that 700,000 Europeans will die before March 2022 without further restrictions was based on the Delta variant. If, in addition, a highly infectious and lethal variant unaffected by existing vaccines were to tear across an unprotected population, the death toll could easily be in the millions.

Preventing this requires immediate implementation of social distancing measures, including strict lockdowns, closing schools and nonessential production, to eliminate transmission of all variants of the virus. This also entails the allocation of trillions of euros to workers, the self-employed and small businesses to allow them to survive without hardship for a period.

Imposing this entails building a political movement in the working class against the European Union (EU) and the Macron government, which have demanded a policy of mass infection to keep workers on the job, producing profits for the financial markets. This is what Véran meant last week when he said: “We can succeed in crossing this wave without further constraints for the population.” In reality, the Macron government does not care about lives but about the profits of the major banks and corporations.

On Friday, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer affirmed the Macron government’s commitment to the anti-scientific notion of immunity by infection among school children. With 9,000 classes closed due to COVID-19 across the country, Blanquer confirmed to France Inter that classes with positive cases will no longer be closed. This will inevitably accelerate the spread of the coronavirus in schools, after the government’s school policy has already led to hundreds of thousands of cases, thousands of Long COVID cases and over a dozen deaths among children.

Indeed, COVID-19 incidence rates per 100,000 children in France doubled last week to 70.53 among children under 3, 172.83 among those aged 6-10 and 212.42 among those aged 11-14. It rose by 60 percent to 141.18 among teens aged 15-17. It tripled to 346.19 among children aged 6-10.

The current situation has sinister echoes of the situation in February and March 2020. At that time, the government was firmly opposed to any social distancing measures. As late as March 3, 2020, with the danger of the virus already well known to French health authorities, Blanquer said, “It wouldn’t make sense to confine everyone at home, to paralyze the country.”

It was only following a wave of wildcat strikes that began in Italy and spread through France, the UK, and eventually to the US that compelled European governments in mid-March to implement significant lockdown measures which rapidly brought down cases and deaths in the region.