Finance capital and the COVID-19 pandemic

Nick Beams

Nothing like it has been seen in economic history. According to analysis by the Bank of America, reported by the Financial Times at the weekend, central banks have pumped $32 trillion into financial markets since the pandemic began.

This means that since the interventions, led by the Fed, started in response to the market meltdown of March 2020, central banks have been buying financial assets at the rate of $800 million per hour for 20 months.

The result has been a massive speculative boom that has resulted in a rise in stock market capitalization of $60 trillion.

The scale of this increase can be seen when compared to figures for gross domestic product (GDP) which measures growth in the real economy. The annual economic output of the US is around $22 trillion while global GDP is about $84 trillion. In other words, the growth in market capitalisation, which is most pronounced in the US, is equivalent to more than two and half times annual American output. It is roughly three quarters that of the entire world economy.

A Christmas tree stands in front of the New York Stock Exchange, lit red, on Wall Street in New York City on Sunday, December 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)

These comparisons serve to underscore the nature of the escalation of the stock market and its divorce from the underlying real economy.

Stocks, bonds and other financial assets do not embody real value. Vast profits can be made when they are traded but these profits do not signify that any real value has been expanded. By contrast, in the real economy, a company makes profit from the extraction of surplus value from the labour power of the workers it employs.

Shares and other financial assets are what Marx called fictitious capital, that is, they are titles to property and, in the final analysis, are a claim on the surplus value extracted by real capital in the economy.

The situation is, of course, more complicated than depicted here, but, whatever its complexities, this is its essential dynamic.

While fictitious capital can exist for a considerable period in a kind of heaven where money begets ever greater quantities of money, often through all kinds of arcane operations, it can never completely separate itself from its earthly foundations.

This heaven can be sustained by the provision of ever greater quantities of virtually free money from the central banks through the lowering of interest rates to near zero and the purchases of financial assets. Ultimately, however, it depends on the continuous extraction of surplus value from the living labour of the working class upon which it feeds as a gargantuan vampire.

And if that flow is threatened with an interruption—by a cessation of production or through the development of strike struggles for wages—it finds expression in the markets as financial confidence is shaken.

All financial operations are highly leveraged and therefore sensitive to even small movements in interest rates. So even a minor disturbance can have significant consequences.

The latest data on the rise of the financial markets, the result of debt-fueled speculation financed by the Fed and other central banks, directs attention to the underlying driving force behind the refusal of capitalist governments in the US and around the world, whatever their political stripe, to implement meaningful public health safety measures.

They have insisted, despite all evidence to the contrary, that a “vaccine only” policy is sufficient. Whatever the level of death and disease, the population must “learn to live” with the virus.

As the data from China reveals and analysis by conscientious scientists demonstrates, rigorous protection measures, if implemented on a global scale, could eliminate COVID-19 and all its variants from the human population.

When the measures implemented in China are cited as concrete evidence that the pandemic can be stopped, the response is often that its figures are not to be trusted.

One can be sure if that were the case, however, it would have been immediately seized on by the capitalist media which has so heavily promoted the lie that COVID-19 emanated from the Wuhan virology lab. But no such reports analysing and questioning the Chinese data have appeared in any of the world’s media outlets.

Why then have meaningful public safety heath measures of protection—so often dubbed as “restrictions” on human “freedom”, not as what they really are, protections—not been carried out?

The necessary measures, including the cessation of non-essential production and economic activity, with compensation for those affected, mass vaccinations on a global scale, rigorous contact tracing combined with quarantining, as well as with other public safety measures, are well known. But they are not implemented because that would interrupt the flow of surplus value necessary to sustain the mountain of fictitious capital.

The claim is advanced that it is necessary to “learn to live” with COVID, that is, with disease and death, because the “economy” could not sustain the necessary measures.

To accept this claim, however, is to fall for an essential mystification widely promoted by bourgeois economists. This is the false identification of the economy—the productive activity of billions of workers worldwide which is the source of all real wealth—with the financial system. The financial system does not contribute an atom of real wealth. It is an institutionalised mechanism for siphoning wealth into the hands of the financial oligarchy and the pandemic billionaires.

In the 21st century, the vast productive forces created by the labour of billions of workers worldwide, combined with enormous advances in technology, mean that the economic resources exist for the full-scale implementation of public safety measures for the time necessary to eliminate the pandemic.

The resources available to society, if mobilised on a rational and planned basis in the interests of the population, rather than according to the dictates of profit, would be more than capable of dealing with the pandemic.

However, the stock markets and global financial system, bloated to an extent never seen before, cannot tolerate even the smallest interruption in the flow of the lifeblood—the surplus value extracted from the working class, on which it feeds.

This fact of economic life was demonstrated at the start of the pandemic. As the coronavirus hit, the walkouts and strikes by workers in the US, Italy and elsewhere, sent a wave of terror through the financial system.

Wall Street underwent a precipitous fall and, even more significantly, the $22 trillion US Treasury bond market—the basis of the global financial system—froze, such that at one point there were no buyers for US government debt.

Faced with a crisis that had the potential to go far beyond the meltdown of 2008, the Fed intervened, doubling its holdings of financial assets, virtually overnight, to more than $8 trillion. It stepped forward as the guarantor for all areas of the financial system at one point spending $1 million every second.

The intervention stabilised the markets but none of the underlying causes of the crisis have been resolved as numerous official reports on the March 2020 events make clear. Very definite conclusions, however, were drawn. The market meltdown led to adoption of the mantra “the cure cannot be worse than the disease,” that is, no matter what the extent of the death nothing must be done that impacts on the financial system.

The emergence of the even more virulent Omicron variant has resulted in a new stage of the crisis. The claim that a “vaccine only” policy suffices has been refuted by events. The overriding fear in financial markets is the eruption of a movement in the working class fighting for measures to end the wave of death.

The issues confronting the global working class are emerging ever more clearly. For long decades, the ruling classes and their ideologists have maintained that the capitalist market, private property and the parasitic financial system that has arisen from it, is the only possible socio-economic order. The Marxist analysis of the inevitable breakdown of capitalism was mythology.

However, the lesson which must be grasped from the events of the past 20 months is that the complete inability and refusal of the present order to deal with the pandemic is the form in which the breakdown of capitalism is emerging.

The incompatibility of the capitalist socio-economic order with the advance of society and with life itself is being established not simply in theoretical form, but in living events themselves.

German government refuses to take action to avert Omicron disaster

Gregor Link

The criminal inaction of European governments has allowed the highly contagious and partially vaccine-resistant Omicron variant of the coronavirus to spread across the continent. To this day, the German government refuses to take any action to prevent the looming catastrophe.

Last Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared that Omicron would become the predominant variant on the continent “by mid-January.” Since then, between December 16 and 19, 1,533 Omicron cases were confirmed in the European Union and European Economic Area, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). This means that of the 4,691 total Omicron cases reported in 28 European countries so far, about one in three cases has occurred in the last few days.

Designated German new chancellor Olaf Scholz, second left, presents the ministers of his Social Democratic Party (SPD) (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

The exponential spread of Omicron comes on top of the rampant Delta variant, which has infected about 2.5 million people in Europe and killed 25,000 just in the past week. Germany currently accounts for the most COVID-19 deaths in Western Europe, with more than 370 people dying every day and hospitals completely at their limits.

According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI, the German agency responsible for disease control and prevention), the Omicron variant has already been detected in all German states except Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. The official share of total infections has already increased sixfold, from 0.1 to 0.6 percent in the first week of December and will be many times higher by now. The real numbers are certainly even higher as only 1.3 percent of positive PCR tests undergo the necessary genomic sequencing to identify the variant.

All serious physicians and scientists are warning that the unhindered spread of the Omicron variant threatens to trigger mass death far eclipsing anything seen before and during the pandemic.

Carsten Watzl, secretary general of the German Society for Immunology, warned in the Augsburger Allgemeine that “even after boosting, protection against Omicron infection could be only about 75 percent.” Moreover, it cannot be assumed that Omicron is “more harmless” than the Delta variant, stressed Watzl. On Friday a study by the British Imperial College found “no evidence” for this widely reported claim.

The national weekly Zeit speaks of a “wave of unprecedented force,” whose growth curve has the shape of a “wall.” The German Hospital Association fears a situation that “goes beyond anything we have experienced so far” and threatens to arrive “before the current high occupancy rate in intensive care units has significantly dropped.” Already, crematoria are putting in extra shifts, and the military is airlifting intensive care patients across the nation to find beds.

Despite this catastrophic development, the German government is sticking to its murderous mass infection policy, insisting that there will be no life-saving shutdown of public life—not even briefly. Shortly before the Christmas holidays, when families traditionally gather together, children are to continue going to unsafe schools and workers to unsafe factories, whatever the cost, in order to generate the maximum profit for the capitalist oligarchy.

Speaking to Bericht aus Berlin on Sunday evening, the new federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democrats, SPD) said: “A lockdown like in the Netherlands before Christmas—we won’t have that here.” In an exclusive interview with the notoriously right-wing Bild channel he added that there would not be a “hard lockdown” even after Christmas, nor would there be a “Christmas pause” or even “regionally limited lockdowns.”

Instead, according to Lauterbach, the population “must be prepared” to experience high case rates by “early January at the latest.”

“Omicron is here and will spread,” he declared. This development is “no longer stoppable.”

The summit of federal and state governments, which took place yesterday, rejected a lockdown out of hand entirely. Its resolution envisages no new restrictions on factories and businesses, nor an early closure of child care facilities. Vice Chancellor and Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Green Party) on Monday likewise dismissed any “lockdown that would affect schools, day care centers and cultural events.”

The resolution states that while clubs and discos will be temporarily closed, restaurants will be kept open. In private households—where restrictions are impossible to enforce—a contact restriction of “a maximum of 10 vaccinated or recovered persons” is to apply starting December 28, excluding children under 14.

Significantly, the RKI on the same day published “strategic amendments” to its pandemic control plan, demanding “a maximum of contact reduction” and “a maximum of infection prevention measures”—set to “begin immediately.” According to news magazine DerSpiegel and tabloid Bild, Health Minister Lauterbach and Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) reacted “angrily” to these demands which had “not been coordinated” with the government.

The federal and state governments know full well the deadly consequences of their criminal inaction. The expert council set up specifically by the new coalition government, which includes serious scientists and pro-government herd immunity advocates alike, released a paper Sunday that speaks of “enormous challenges” to governance and a “new dimension” to the pandemic situation.

The statement, unanimously adopted by the 19 scientists, states:

Should the spread of the Omicron variant in Germany continue in this manner, a relevant part of the population would be simultaneously ill and/or in quarantine. This would put an extreme strain on the health care system and the entire critical infrastructure of our country. Further collateral effects are to be expected, especially in the working population, among other things due to necessity of caring for children or people in need of medical assistance.

The paper paints a picture of a catastrophic situation not seen in Germany since the end of World War II:

Rapidly rising incidence rates pose a high risk to Germany’s critical infrastructure. This includes hospitals, the police, fire departments, rescue services, telecommunications, power and water supply and the corresponding logistics. Therefore, comprehensive and immediate preparations are needed to protect our country’s critical infrastructure.

With regard to the already dramatic situation in hospitals which will be exacerbated by Omicron, the paper states:

Due to the simultaneous, extreme volume of patients, a significant overload of hospitals is to be expected (...). Even if all hospitals focus exclusively on the care of emergencies and urgent interventions, it will no longer be possible to provide qualitatively adequate care for all patients. Strategic patient transfer can no longer contribute significantly to regional relief due to the expected high load across the board.

Both the explosive spread of the Omicron variant and governments’ profit-driven pandemic policies confirm the perspective of the World Socialist Web Site. The pandemic is not a purely medical problem but rather the result of deliberate policies that put the profit of a narrow financial elite and the stability of financial markets ahead of the health and lives of millions of people. The refusal of the new German government to close schools and businesses—for even a few days—must serve as a warning and a wake-up call to workers.

Britain’s National Health Service faces disaster as Omicron surges

Ben Trent & Richard Tyle

Doctors, nurses and health workers are warning that the National Health Service (NHS) could soon be totally overwhelmed because the Johnson government is allowing the Omicron variant to rip through the population so as not to interrupt the flow of Christmas profits.

The number of new infections in the UK surged to 90,629 Tuesday according to official figures after topping 100,000 on December 15, according to backdated government figures, as reported in the Daily Mail. The real number will be much higher due to the constraints of testing capacity.

St Thomas' National Service Health hospital in London (WSWS Media)

Since the detection of Omicron, total COVID cases have risen from around 10 million to more than 11.5 million in little over three weeks. The 579,428 cases recorded in the last week represent a 62 percent increase over the 358,200 over the previous week.

Cities such as London, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow are seeing cases of the far more transmissible Omicron variant rising exponentially atop already high numbers of the Delta strain. Modelling by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) found that between 3,000 and 10,000 people a day could be hospitalised if the government did not immediately implement further public health measures.

On top of the devastating impact of increasing hospitalisations, an analysis by the British Medical Association (BMA), based only on current case numbers and trends, found that even in the best scenario more than 32,000 staff could be absent through sickness by December 25. The worst-case scenario sees almost 130,000 NHS workers off sick, 10 percent of the workforce, not including those who were self-isolating due to another household member having COVID19.

BMA Council Chair, Dr. Chaand Nagpaul, said the estimated levels of staff absences “would be truly devastating, leading to an inability to provide even some of the most urgent care.”

The situation in the nation’s capital, London, is already disastrous. The Health Service Journal (HSJ) reported Monday that the NHS in London was “likely to be overwhelmed” by early January, according to a leaked document from NHS London.

Health services in the capital were “again facing significant operational pressure as a result of the current surge in covid-19 cases from the new variant of concern, Omicron,” the document states. Citing recent modelling, “it is predicted that the London Ambulance Service (LAS), Emergency Departments (EDs) and the General and Acute (G&A) bed base are likely to become overwhelmed due to rising covid demand in the next 2-3 weeks.”

Lisa Elliott, Royal College of Nursing (RCN) regional director for London, said, “We should not underplay how catastrophic it could potentially be,” telling ITV News the situation was “very worrying.”

Days ago, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan declared a “major incident” in the capital as a result of the surge in coronavirus cases. This is the first time this has been invoked since the height of the pandemic last winter. Khan reported that the Omicron variant now accounted for 80 percent of all new cases and was seriously impacting staff absences in the emergency service across London.

Last week, Glen Burley, Chief executive of three NHS trusts in Coventry and Warwickshire, told the Independent, “We’ve got a situation where sickness levels are higher than they have ever been because of Covid and it’s a time of year when sickness levels are always higher…”

The current sickness rate across the three hospitals was already at a staggering 7 percent, almost double the usual rate of around 3.5 to 4 percent.

On Merseyside, Dr Nikki Stevenson, Medical Director at the Arrow Park Hospital, told Planet Radio “Staffing is our biggest worry. Trying to make sure we've got sufficient staff is one of our main areas of focus…”

The government’s reaction to the concerning levels of staff off sick is to remove isolation requirements for those NHS staff who have been in contact with the Omicron variant. As has been the government's stance throughout the pandemic, healthcare workers are essentially expendable.

The NHS staff left to cope as their colleagues succumb to coronavirus face intolerable conditions. Patricia Marquis, Royal College of Nursing (RCN) England director, said the present situation was “catastrophic, there is no doubt about it.”

“The workforce is already short, the workforce is already exhausted–mentally and physically” she told BBC’s The World This Weekend .

Even before the impact of Omicron, bed occupancy was at a dangerous 94 percent in England, with four in five critical care beds already full. Some hospitals already have no free beds. For example, every day between December 6 and 12, Dorset County Hospital, George Eliot Hospital, Portsmouth Hospitals University, Royal United Hospitals Bath and Sherwood Forest Hospitals were all at 100 percent occupancy.

Data provided by the NHS highlights each day of the last week in November, there were on average 10,500 people occupying beds that were medically fit to leave, amounting to one in every 10 beds. The growing crisis in the social care sector means that such patients, who could be discharged, must stay in hospital as their local authority is unable to provide the necessary home support.

Some hospital Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments have had to effectively close their doors as they were too full to accept further patients. This occurred on 28 separate occasions in the week of December 6, with ambulances redirected to other nearby hospitals.

Dr Ian Higginson, vice president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told the BBC, “Emergency departments are full and with no beds to move patients into ambulances are being held outside and unsafe handover delays are becoming normalised rather than being seen for the failure that they represent.

While patients should normally be transferred within 15 minutes, in the week of December 6, almost one in four took over half an hour, whilst one in 10 (8,401 people) took over an hour—almost double the same period last year 2020.

University Hospitals Birmingham reported the highest number of delays with 472 patients waiting more than 60 minutes before being transferred from an ambulance. Portsmouth Hospitals University was next with 354 delays, followed by University Hospitals of North Midlands with 320 delays.

The Association of Ambulance Chief Executives managing director Martin Flaherty told the BBC, “The extent of potential harm that is being caused to patients when there are lengthy delays remains a significant and growing problem.”

In October, Conservative government Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid said he thought the pressures faced by the NHS were “not unsustainable”. It has taken less than two months to expose his lies.

Rather than implement any serious public health measures to halt the spread of COVID, such as closing inessential businesses while providing full recompense to workers and the self-employed, the Tory government advocates an essentially “vaccination only” approach. However, as many leading scientists and doctors have shown, the pandemic cannot be curbed through vaccines alone.

A peer-reviewed paper published in The Lancet Monday found that COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness was decreasing, with two doses being insufficient to offer protection against Omicron. The latest government figures for the UK show that just under 30 million people have received the required three doses, while only 47 million have received two doses. This leaves millions dangerously susceptible to infection from both the Delta and Omicron variants, including many children.

Inflation soars to record level as UK wages stagnate

Robert Stevens

Rampant inflation is plunging millions of British workers into a cost of living crisis, with incomes already slashed by more than a decade of austerity and the impact of the COVID pandemic.

Inflation is at its highest level in the UK since 2011. In the 12 months to November the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rate of inflation has surged by 5.1 percent, up from 4.2 percent the month before. The main factor in the CPI surge is the rocketing of the price of petrol, which reached a new record of 145.8p a litre compared with 112.6p the previous year.

According to the Official for National Statistics (ONS), the Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation has soared even higher. It rose to 7.1 percent last month, up from 6 percent in October and its highest level in more than 30 years.

RPI is considered a more accurate measure of inflation as it includes factors such as mortgage payments.

Factors including higher factory prices and a tightening labour market mean that inflation is set to continue rising into 2022 and into 2023.

Last week the Joseph Rowntree Foundation predicted that hundreds of thousands more people will be thrust into “deep poverty” by the inflation surge. It’s assessment by Katie Schmuecker notes, “Times are hard, food is expensive now… But if you didn’t have enough to begin with, and you’re already struggling to afford the essentials, there comes a point where you can snip no further. Then the rising price of essentials simply pulls more people deeper into poverty…”

A shopper enters a supermarket in London, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021 during England's third national lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Immediately ahead “the gap between incomes and expenditure for people worst-off will grow.”

Schmuecker explained, “Back in October the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] forecast inflation to be 4.4% in April 2022. New JRF analysis, based on those OBR forecasts, finds the gap between benefit uprating and the projected cost of living in April would result in around 100,000 individuals being pulled deeper into poverty (below 50% median income after housing costs, which is often used as the benchmark for deep poverty) if inflation was 4.4% in April 2022. The majority (7 in 10) will live in households with children, and around half will live in working households. Considering today’s higher inflation figure, if inflation were to stay as high as 5.1% in April, our model suggests the number of people being pulled into deep poverty would double to around 200,000.”

The Resolution Foundation think tank concludes in its analysis that the average household will be down by £1,000 next year due to rising prices.

The cost of every staple has shot up, with increases disproportionally hitting the working class. In an analysis of the inflation crisis, the Guardian reported, “Used car prices were up 31% since April. Petrol prices were up 29% from a year earlier to stand at a record high of 145.8p a litre. Apples and pears are up by a quarter since November 2020 from about £1.90 to almost £2.40 a kilo. The average price for a joint of beef has risen by 18% in a year from £9.91 to £11.73, while the average 250g pack of teabags has gone up more than 10% from £1.80 to more than £2.”

Further prohibitive costs will be added due to surging household energy costs. Many household already face energy bills of £1,000, after suppliers were allowed to increase bills by 10 percent in October. The price cap, supposedly in place to prevent bills becoming unaffordable to the poorest families, is likely be breached by a further 50 percent or more next April, taking the cost of average bills for a household to over £2,000 a month.

Speaking to the Times, Martin Young, an analyst at Investec said, “With wholesale commodity prices remaining elevated, we suggest that the tariff cap could jump by 56 per cent reaching £2,000 [a year] for the summer 2022 period.”

Many of the smaller energy suppliers have gone to the wall in the last few months due to wholesale energy prices and a substantial portion of any increase is due to families losing out on deals they had with them. Young warned that the energy bill increase would be “a shock to many, with implications for discretionary spend, inflation and fuel poverty.”

Such is the surge in inflation that CPI that the Bank of England has been forced to uprate its forecast for next spring to 6 percent, having said last August that it would reach 4 percent before falling. The Bank said that this will necessitate a rise in interest rates 0.1 percent to 0.25 percent. Writing in the Times, Andrew Sentence, a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, said, “If we are to stay on top of the present surge in inflation, however, more rate rises are likely to be needed next year. It would not be surprising if we end 2022 with the official interest rate at somewhere between 1 per cent and 2 per cent—a significant move up from the near-zero rates that we have become accustomed to since the 2008-09 financial crisis.”

The increase in prices is so devastating to millions because wage growth has been stagnating. According to the ONS annual wage growth, excluding bonuses, stood at just 4.9 percent in the three months to October. But other studies point to a sustained collapse of wages.

According to an analysis of official figures by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) this month, real wages, taking the cost of living into account, are set to be 0.8 percent less than they were in September. The TUC’s report found that in the last quarter of the year pay hardly grew, rising only by 0.8 percent, while inflation was double that rate, at 1.6 percent.

Figures compiled in November by the XpertHR consultancy, and reported by the Guardian found “that pay bargaining across some of Britain’s biggest private and public sector employers showed median basic pay increased 2% in the three months to the end of October, unchanged for the seventh consecutive month.”

Among the hardest hit will be young workers and the poorest in London. Last week, a poll by Ipsos MORI funded by local London borough councils found that the issue most concerning around one in five of all Londoners is the rising cost of living.

Rising costs of basics will devastate young workers. An Evening Standard/Independent joint investigation published this month found that 67.4 percent of jobs held by 18 to 21-year-olds pay less than the London Living Wage. Many receive the National Minimum Wage of just £6.56, maybe a little more, as opposed to the London Living Wage of £11.05 per hour.

New German Defense Minister visits German combat troops in Lithuania

Johannes Stern

Germany’s new Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (Social Democrats, SPD) made her inaugural visit to the German NATO combat troops in Lithuania, which have been stationed in Eastern Europe since 2017.The signal sent by the visit was unmistakable. The “traffic light” coalition of the SPD, Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens will further escalate German militarism, especially by stepping up confrontation with the nuclear-armed Russia.

“My first mission trip deliberately takes me to Lithuania. I came here because I want to support the clear signals of solidarity among the Allies,” Lambrecht said during a joint press conference with her Lithuanian counterpart Arvydas Anušauskas. Germany stands “very firmly by the side of our partners and friends. And we are also continuing the excellent cooperation between our armed forces.”

The Defense Minister added that the “common challenges” were “diverse.” They had “spoken intensely about the situation on the Belarusian border.”

German soldiers in Lithuania (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

“The situation in Ukraine” is also “serious,” she said, and she can “understand the concerns of our Baltic allies” and “understand when one feels threatened.” Lambrecht declared that the situation had to be “resolved diplomatically,” but threatened Russia explicitly with sanctions and increased military armament.

“We have to keep an eye on the question of possible sanctions—and we’re doing that very intensively. And of course we also have to keep an eye on the question of deterrence and consistency—and we’re doing that too,” stated Lambrecht. She reported that “for example, Germany has increased the readiness of the rapid reaction force.” This is an “important signal that we also act when it is necessary.” Of course, they will continue to talk to Moscow, but “it cannot be that Russia tells NATO partners how to position themselves.”

This is more than provocative. Eighty years after the Third Reich’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, the German Defense Minister denied Russia the right to even criticize the threatening military build-up on its border. The stationing of German combat troops in Eastern Europe is directly in the tradition of the imperialist great power politics of the German Empire and the Nazi regime.

Before her trip, Lambrecht claimed in an interview with the Bild newspaper that Russia was the “aggressor.” This is an obvious lie. The NATO powers have been systematically encircling Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Ukraine, Washington and Berlin organized a coup against pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014 in close cooperation with fascist forces. Since then, the imperialist powers have been using Russia’s primarily defensive reaction to systematically advance the course of war and rearmament.

The “excellent cooperation” of the NATO armed forces in Eastern Europe, praised by Lambrecht, is increasingly taking the form of direct war preparations against Russia. “Iron Wolf, Saber Strike, Flaming Thunder or Eager Leopard—combat exercises take place regularly at Enhanced Forward Presence,” comments an article on the German army’s official website entitled “EFP: Alliance Defense at the Eastern flank.” In “combat exercises and maneuvers” they train “numerous scenarios—from house and position combat to delaying an approaching enemy.”

In fact, it is the NATO units that keep advancing. According to a report by Der Spiegel, the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe (Saceur), US General Tod D. Wolters, proposed a secret video conference with the military leaders of the allied NATO powers a few days ago, similar to the one in the Baltic states and Poland also to set up “battlegroups” in Romania and Bulgaria within the framework of the EFP.

The already existing “Battlegroups” were set up in 2017. They are each composed of about 1,000 soldiers and armed to the teeth. The German-led combat group in Lithuania has been led by the German-Dutch tank battalion 414 from Lohheide (Lower Saxony) since August, in what is now the tenth rotation. It is supported by other units, including parts of the Panzer Pioneer Battalion 130 from Minden and the 43rd Mechanized Brigade from Havelte. According to the German army, they are equipped “with a large number of large vehicles, including several dozen tanks (combat, recovery, pioneer, bridge-laying and armored personnel carriers).”

In its military march to the east, the German ruling class relies directly on fascist forces. In the summer, a complete armored infantry platoon from Lithuania was ordered back to Germany prematurely after it became known that soldiers had sung a birthday song for Adolf Hitler and had attracted attention through racist and sexist attacks. It is known that extensive right-wing extremist networks exist in the German army. They are systematically protected and used by the ruling class to enforce the return of German militarism internally and externally.

Lambrecht’s interview with the Bild leaves no doubt that the traffic light coalition will further escalate the armament and war course of the grand coalition in every respect. When asked by the paper whether she was ready to “send German soldiers to Ukraine,” she did not rule it out. One must “exhaust all options of diplomacy and economic sanctions. And all further steps must be closely coordinated in the alliance.”

Similar to the new Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in an earlier interview, Lambrecht also gave her full backing for German nuclear participation and indirectly threatened Russia with nuclear weapons. Germany will replace “the air force [jets] that would carry American nuclear weapons to their target” by 2030 with new combat aircraft capable of deploying nuclear weapons, said the Defense Minister. In doing so, she will “weigh all options.” In the case of the Eurofighter, it is necessary to “clarify whether and how quickly the USA would certify it for nuclear weapons.” Germany would therefore “do well to also consistently investigate a European solution.”

The German ruling class is pursuing the declared goal of organizing Europe under German leadership in order to assert its economic and geostrategic interests against the other great powers. That requires a massive program of rearmament. When asked by the Bild whether she “stands behind the NATO target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defence,” Lambrecht replied, “I stand behind the 3 percent target, as agreed in the coalition agreement and encompassing our military, diplomatic and development policy expenditures.” It is “good that [the new Social Democratic Chancellor] Olaf Scholz has made it clear that he would like to provide the German army with better financial resources within the scope of the budget.”

As UK Omicron cases and deaths surge, Johnson government does nothing to protect population

Robert Stevens

On Sunday, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) announced that 12 people in Britain had died with the Omicron variant and 104 were currently in hospital with it. With 12,133 additional cases confirmed across Britain Sunday and another 8,044 Monday, this brought the total for the new variant to 45,145.

These are only the confirmed cases. Scientific advisers told the government over the weekend that in reality there are already hundreds of thousands of daily Omicron infections. The growing number of deaths due to Omicron puts paid to false statement from governments around the world that the variant is “mild.”

On Monday, another 91,743 new coronavirus cases and 44 deaths were announced, the third time in a matter of days that the UK has reported more than 90,000 daily cases. Each Monday normally sees a smaller number of cases reported due to reporting delays over the weekend, yet yesterday’s figure was the second highest daily total on record.

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson updates the media in the study of No10 Downing Street after a Cabinet meeting on the Omicron variant . 20/12/2021. London, United Kingdom. (Picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/FlickR)

The Omicron variant is ripping through the capital London. An Evening Standard investigation published Monday found that cases had “exploded by up to 500 per cent among young adults and also increased among pensioners.”

Citing “front of house staff shortages which have been impacted by Covid-19 infections and isolation requirements,” London’s Natural History Museum announced Monday it will temporarily close. A number of other major tourist attractions, including Edinburgh Castle and leading cultural venues have also shut their doors.

Despite warnings from its own advisers that the ineffectual “Plan B” measures currently in place will allow the population to be overwhelmed by an avalanche of COVID cases and deaths, Johnson announced no new measures yesterday after meeting with his Cabinet.

The UK prime minister has been one of the world’s foremost advocates of a herd immunity agenda, declaring last year, “no more f**cking lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands.” The Times reports that a sizable proportion of his Cabinet is determined to hold him to that statement and opposes any measures that would hinder the spread of the deadly virus. “A third of the cabinet have made clear that they will not support them and have questioned official modelling,” it explained. The newspaper added that “[Chancellor] Rishi Sunak was one of at least ten cabinet ministers who were resisting calls by scientific advisers for tougher curbs to be introduced before Christmas.”

The money-mad representatives of the financial elite will not allow any anything to impede the profit-making concerns of big business in the pre-Christmas period. The Mail cited one of the Cabinet figures opposed to any anti-COVID measures who “made clear they will quit if there is a return to lockdown,” and said, “hospitals are not being overwhelmed” and “we’re in a battle to save Christmas.”

Serving these interests, Johnson claimed absurdly on Monday that arguments for and against further restrictions are “finely balanced” and that there are “some things that we need to be clearer about before we decide to go further.” The government, he said, “will have to reserve the possibility of taking further action.”

The government’s own Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) have advised that between 3,000 and 10,000 people could be hospitalised with COVID each day from January if Plan B is continued.

With the refusal of the social murderers in Downing Street to take any action, large sections of the population have gone into an effective self-imposed lockdown, with millions also queuing up to receive a vaccination. On Saturday 904,598 people received a third dose, 44,599 a second and 37,492 a first.

The numbers of people in city centres and retail outlets that are normally heaving at this time of year are significantly down. Due to a lack of customers, many pubs, restaurants and cafes are closing their doors or moving to reduced hours.

The Daily Mail complained yesterday, “Offices and city centres have been abandoned as Omicron cases continue to soar across Britain—with many businesses now working from home in the run-up to Christmas after the government latest ‘work from home if you can’ advice, leaving roads empty and public transport barely used.”

“Transport for London said there were 660,000 entries or exits on the Tube up to 10am this morning—down 35% week-on-week, and down 46% over a fortnight. There were 720,000 boarding taps on buses for the same period this morning—down 38% week-on-week.”

Trafalgar Square, one of London’s main attractions, was deserted Monday.

In the absence of a coordinated policy to bring down infections, however, huge numbers of people, especially frontline workers, continue to contract the disease. The continued staggering increase in COVID cases has brought the National Health Service (NHS) to its knees, with the British Medical Association warning that almost 50,000 health care workers could be sick with the virus by Christmas.

How dire the situation is was summed by Professor John Edmunds, who advises the government as a member of SAGE. He told the Times, “We’re close to the point where there already may be enough cases in the system to overwhelm the NHS.” The newspaper reported yesterday, “Edmunds said it was possible that the UK had as many as 400,000 Omicron infections yesterday and that the doubling time is believed to be roughly two days.”

The latest warnings came amid revelations by the Independent over the weekend that “London’s ambulance service is in the midst of a severe crisis, with 100 emergency service vehicles taken off the road for two days in a row due to hundreds of staff being unable to work because of Covid.” The newspaper reported that at a London Ambulance Service Trust briefing last Friday, attendees were informed that Omicron meant that “we’re going to be engulfed.”

The crisis-ridden Johnson government has been reliant on the backing of the opposition Labour Party to remain in office since the outset of the pandemic. In alliance with the trade unions, they function as a de facto coalition with Johnson. A critical role has been played by both in keeping open schools so that parents are able to be in work churning out profits for big business. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer infamously insisted that schools remain open “no ifs, no buts,” while National Education Union leader Kevin Courtney regularly issues tirades against any measure that could cause “education disruption.”

They are now doubling down to ensure that schools open up again in two weeks’ time after the Christmas holidays, no matter what—despite them being the main vector for the transmission of COVID. The TES reports that Labour’s shadow schools minister Stephen Morgan has written to the Department for Education calling for a “proper workforce plan” for schools in the new year in order to prevent “defacto school closures.”

Under conditions in which 120 children of all ages are already dead from COVID and one in 20 primary children are infected with the disease, Morgan called for a few useless mitigations as a pretext, declaring, “I urge you to ramp up basic Covid protections in schools to minimise ongoing disruption to children's education and keep kids learning together next term. We both agree schools must be open, with real and effective steps to drive down transmission in every community.”

Summing up Labour’s alliance with the Johnson government, Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, despite having to declare a “major incident” due to COVID cases in the capital on Saturday, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show Sunday, “I think we should be able to celebrate Christmas safely,” relegating “social distancing, household mixing” to something “sooner rather than later... we’re going to have to look at.”

Classified documents reveal Israeli government cover-up of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948

Jean Shaoul

Recently released documents, including minutes of Israel’s provisional government meetings in 1948, throw fresh light on the Nakba (“Catastrophe”) of 1948-49, when around two-thirds of Palestinians living in what is now Israel were driven from their homes.

An investigation by Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, published in Ha’aretz, produces incontrovertible evidence that the conquest of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of their inhabitants during the Arab-Israeli war were achieved by criminal actions amounting to ethnic cleansing. Israel’s leaders knew this, with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion opposing demands for a full investigation with the power to subpoena witnesses and the crimes swept under the carpet.

Israeli Prime Minister (right) David Ben-Gurion and US President Harry S. Truman (left) in 1951 (Credit: Public Domain)

The Akevot report reveals that testimonies about several massacres of Palestinians and war crimes committed by Israeli military forces during the 1948-49 war were presented to the cabinet in 1948.

The report refutes the government’s lying claims that the Palestinians fled of their own accord, or due to the incitement of their leaders. Its public relations machine worked long and hard to portray Israel as a country built on empty, neglected or uninhabited land. Censorship was used to ensure that any evidence challenging such a view was suppressed and any criticism denounced as anti-Semitism. That censorship continues more than seven decades later.

This was bound up with suppressing the fact that the establishment of the state of Israel as a Jewish State, in a country where Jews constituted just one-third of the population, necessitated the forcible dispossession of the Palestinian inhabitants and can only be maintained through constant repression.

According to a 1947 British census, the population of Palestine was 1,157,000 Palestinian Muslims, 146,000 Christians, and 580,000 Jews. Two years later, only about 200,000 Palestinians remained in the parts of Palestine that became Israel. Those that left were to become permanent refugees, scattered in neighbouring countries.

In 2019, the United Nations estimated there were some 5.6 million Palestinian refugees, including those expelled following the 1948-49 Arab Israeli war and the June 1967 war or their descendants, as well as others who have since been expelled from the Occupied Territories or Israel. Denied the right of return to their homes, most have been forced to eke out a wretched existence in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Many now live elsewhere in the Middle East, while others have moved to the West.

Palestine refugees "Making their way from Galilee in October-November 1948" (Creative Commons public domain)

The takeover of Palestinian-owned land was even more dramatic: in 1946, Jews had owned less than 12 percent of the land in what became Israel; this rose to 77 percent after the 1948-49 war.

As Professor Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, explained in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, this process began, not as Israel likes to maintain and is generally believed, after the Arab armies attacked Israel in May 1948, but almost immediately after the UN vote for partition. A UN resolution “that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbour should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date” passed in December 1948, and annually re-affirmed, confirms this.

In the months up to the end of the British Mandate in May 1948, more than 375,000 Palestinian became refugees, driven out by a combination of force, atrocities and a campaign of terror. Several thousand were killed and many more injured.

One of the most notorious incidents was the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when between 117 and 250 men, women and children were murdered by the terrorist Irgun Group led Menachem Begin, who would become prime minister in 1977. The Irgun went from house to house to drive out Palestinians.

Menahem Begin during one of his public speeches in Tel Aviv, August 14, 1948 (Credit: Public Domain)

As Israeli historian Benny Morris, who used archival material to document some 24 massacres in his ground-breaking 1988 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem:1947-1949, makes clear, this was far from being a random act of terrorism by an “out of control” group. The Hagana, forerunner of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), aided and participated in the massacre that was part of a broader Zionist plan to systematically empty Palestine of its Arab population. The sheer brutality of Deir Yassin was, Morris explains, one of the most important factors in “precipitating the flight of Arab villagers from Palestine”.

The latest revelations of ethnic cleansing

The Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research’s investigation adds further evidence of Israel’s ethnic cleansing and subsequent cover up. In the last weeks of October 1948, the Hagana launched two large-scale operations. The first was Operation Yoav, designed to open the road to and take control of the whole of the Negev in the south. On October 29, soldiers from the 8th Brigade massacred between 100 and 120 Palestinians in the village of al-Dawayima.

A soldier who witnessed the events explained, “There was no battle and no resistance. The first conquerors killed 80 to 100 Arab men, women and children. The children were killed by smashing their skulls with sticks. There wasn’t a house without people killed in it.”

According to the United Nations Refugee Relief Project, the Gaza Strip’s refugee population rose from 100,000 to 230,000, as a result of the operation.

The second, Operation Hiram, was designed to conquer Galilee in the north, where 120,000 Palestinians were still living, half the number in November 1947, as well as 14 villages in southern Lebanon. Within a couple of days, Israeli forces defeated the Arab Salvation Army made up of volunteers from Arab countries, overran dozens of Arab villages and took control of Galilee and part of southern Lebanon. They carried out ten massacres of civilians and captured Arab soldiers, causing the flight of all but 30,000 villagers by the end of the operation.

One of the most egregious incidents was the massacre on two successive days of 18 and 15 of the 60 residents of Hula that had remained and surrendered without resistance at the end of October. In Saliha, soldiers executed between 60 and 80 inhabitants by driving them into a building and then blowing it up. In Safsaf, where dozens of residents were butchered, one testimony stated, “Fifty-two men were caught, tied them to one another, dug a pit and shot them. Ten were still twitching. Women came, begged for mercy. Found bodies of 6 elderly men. There were 61 bodies. 3 cases of rape.”

The government’s systematic cover-up of ethnic cleansing

Days after these events, the cabinet decided to appoint a committee of three ministers to investigate the massacres, but without the power to subpoena witnesses. With soldiers maintaining a code of silence and refusing to give evidence, it was almost impossible to get testimonials. One week later, Ben-Gurion called it off, saying, “Since the committee did not fulfill the role it was tasked with, it is hereby abolished.”

Ben-Gurion then called on the attorney general to investigate, and while he brought the main points of the report to the cabinet, as the newly released minutes of the meeting show, the report itself remains classified to this day.

David Ben Gurion (right) visits 101 First Fighter Squadron. August 17, 1948 (Credit: Public Domain)

The only person to be charged with murder in Operation Hiram was Shmuel Lahis, the company commander, who shot 15 Arabs. Sentenced to seven years imprisonment, later reduced on appeal to one year, he was pardoned on his release by Israel’s president and 30 years later became the director general of the Jewish Agency whose mission is to promote the immigration of Jews to Israel. No one was charged with the massacre at al-Dawayima.

This was not unique. A parliamentary report some six months later referred to an officer who during the fighting had ordered the murder of four wounded individuals, a crime for which he served a six-month prison sentence, while someone who had sold stolen army equipment was sentenced to three years in prison. One month after the war ended, the government issued a retroactive general pardon for any crimes committed during the war.

As part of the government’s cover-up of its crimes against the Palestinians, it has systematically hidden evidence of its expulsion of villagers. As Israeli journalist Hagar Shezaf explained in Ha’aretz, teams from the Defense Ministry’s Malmab, its secretive security department, whose activities and budget are classified, have scoured Israel’s archives and removed historic documents relating not only to Israel’s nuclear project and relations with foreign governments but also evidence of the Nakba.

Malmab removed documentation from archives illegally and without authority, in some cases even sealing documents that the military censor had previously cleared for publication, or which had already been published, as in the case of Benny Morris. In some instances, Malmab even threatened the archives’ directors. In one case, when Akhivot found a crucial document in the United Kibbutz Archive, the military censor refused permission to publish it.

A former head of Malmab, Yehiel Horev, admitted he had launched the project to conceal the 1948 atrocities to prevent unrest among the country’s Arab population. Asked why documents that had already been published about the origin of the refugee problem were being removed or were in open and accessible archives but could not be published, he explained that this was to undermine the credibility of studies about the history of the refugee problem since any allegations could not be substantiated by referring to the source document.

A few years ago, Akhivot found a copy of an Israeli report with the fraudulent title The Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine, which Morris had earlier cited and Malmab had censored, but the military censors had authorised for publication. Despite its anodyne title, its contents contradicted the official narrative that Arab politicians had encouraged people to leave their homes and ranked the reasons for their departure in order of importance as:

• “Direct Jewish acts of hostility against Arab places of settlement”.
• Their impact on neighbouring villages.
• “Operations by the breakaways,” meaning the Irgun and Lehi groups, whose political wing, the Herut Party, was the forerunner of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party. The report noted that “many in the villages of central Galilee started to flee following the abduction of the notables of Sheikh Muwannis [a village north of Tel Aviv]. The Ashinrab learned that it is not enough to forge an agreement with the Haganah and that there are other Jews [i.e., the breakaway militias] to beware of.”
• Orders issued by Arab institutions and “gangs,” the term used to denote all the Arab fighting groups.
• “Jewish ‘whispering operations’ to induce the Arab inhabitants to flee” and;
• “Evacuation ultimatums” including loudspeakers using the Arabic language, particularly in central Galilee.

The report’s author insisted that “without a doubt, the hostile operations were the main cause of the movement of the population” and listed the specific causes of the exodus from each of scores of Arab villages.

Under Netanyahu, the Defence Ministry repeatedly extended the confidentiality period for the oldest documents in the Shin Bet and Mossad archives, Israel’s domestic and external spying agencies respectively. In February 2019, it was extended again to 90 years. The IDF’s archive, which is according to Akhivot the largest in Israel, “is sealed almost hermetically. About 1 percent of the material is open.”

Benjamin Netanyahu [Photo: Office of the Israeli Prime Minister]

That these crimes and their cover-up by successive generations of Israeli politicians are being exposed points to the opposition developing against Israel’s growing embrace of apartheid and support for some of world’s most authoritarian and fascistic regimes. This comes amid a resurgence of the international class struggle and mounting revulsion towards the political disaster created by capitalism, endless wars to assert US hegemony in the resource-rich Middle East, insecurity, poverty, climate change, and now the pandemic, driving the desire for historical truth.