Six Things the Media Won’t Tell You About Ukraine

Ted Snider

On January 10, American and Russian officials will meet to discuss Putin’s proposal on mutual security guarantees. Western media and political analysts have cast Putin’s demands that NATO not expand further east to Ukraine and that NATO not establish military bases in former Soviet states nor use them to carry out military activity as bold and impossible.

Here are six crucial pieces of background that the western media will not tell you.

The NATO Promise

Putin’s demands are only bold if it is bold to ask NATO to keep its promises; his demands are only impossible if it is impossible for NATO to keep its promises.

On February 9, 1990, Secretary of State James Baker assured Gorbachev that if NATO got Germany – a huge concession – NATO would not expand one inch east of Germany. The next day, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher made the same promise to his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadz. Earlier, on January 31, 1990, Genscher had already publicly declared in a major speech that there would not be “an expansion of NATO territory to the east, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union.”

Recently declassified documents make it clear that all the western powers, including not only the US and Germany but also the UK and France, repeatedly made Russia the same promise.

Seven years later, when the US had already broken that promise, Clinton made Russia a second promise. Having expanded NATO far east of Germany, at least they would not permanently station substantial combat forces. That was the promise the US signed in the NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations. It was a reiteration of the earlier February 1990 promise that, not only NATO membership, but NATO troops would not extend east.

So, far from being bold or asking the ridiculous, what the media will not tell you is that Putin is not asking for any new Western concessions. He is asking only that the West honor the commitments it has already made.

The Coup

The catalyst for the crisis today in Ukraine was the 2014 coup. That coup was set up and supported by the US. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was faced with the choice of economic alliance with the European Union or with Russia. Polls at the time clearly showed that Ukrainians were nearly evenly split on which economic alliance to choose. Yanukovych’s choice of either package would have divided the country. Putin offered Yanukovych a way out: both Russia and the EU could help Ukraine and Yanukovych doesn’t have to be forced to choose. The US and EU rejected Putin’s peace offering. According to Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies at Princeton, “it was the European Union, backed by Washington, that said in November to the democratically elected President of a profoundly divided country, Ukraine, ‘You must choose between Europe and Russia.’”

The stage was now set for strife in Ukraine. And the US stoked that strife. Led by Senator John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs Victoria Nuland, the US publicly endorsed and supported the coup protesters. The White House then provided cover and legitimacy to the violent protesters in the streets. Through The National Endowment for Democracy, the US also funded projects that helped fuel the coup.

More sinister than that even, the US was deeply involved in the plotting of the coup itself. Nuland was caught plotting who the Americans want to be the winner of the regime change. She can be heard on an intercepted call telling the American ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, that Arseniy Yatsenyuk is America’s choice to replace Yanukovych (and he did). Most importantly, Pyatt refers to the West needing to “midwife this thing,” a metaphorical admission of America’s role in leading the coup. At one point, Nuland even seems to say that then Vice President Biden, himself, would be willing to do the midwifery.

Nuland then pressured security forces to stop guarding government buildings and allow the coup protesters in. The opposition then took advantage of the absence of MPs from the south and east because of a pre-scheduled congress of regional politicians and of intimidation that forced many others to flee to ensure that it had the numbers to take over parliament in a coup disguised as democracy.

So instead of a Russian puppet president betraying his people and abandoning an economic alliance with the European Union in favor of an economic alliance with Russia, what the media will not tell you is that the catalyst of the current crisis was a US engineered and supported coup of a democratically elected president.

The Connection

The media will also not tell you about the crucial connection between the NATO promise not to expand east and the coup in Ukraine. The economic alliance with the EU was not the benign package presented to the Western pubic. It was not just an economic offer. According to Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies at Princeton, Stephen Cohen, the European Union proposal also “included ‘security policy’ provisions . . . that would apparently subordinate Ukraine to NATO.” The provisions compelled Ukraine to “adhere to Europe’s ‘military and security’ policies.” So the proposal was not a benign economic agreement: it was a security threat to Russia in economic sheep’s clothing.

Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent Richard Sakwa says, “EU enlargement paves the way to NATO membership” and points out that, since 1989, every new member of the EU has become a member of NATO. It’s not only that the EU package subordinated Ukraine to NATO, since the EU Treaty of Lisbon went into effect in 2009, all new members of the EU are required to align their defense and security policies with NATO.

Far from being just an economic agreement, Article 4 of the EU’s Association Agreement with Ukraine says the Agreement will “promote gradual convergence on foreign and security matters with the aim of Ukraine’s ever-deeper involvement in the European security area.” Article 7 speaks of the convergence of security and defense, and Article 10 says that “the parties shall explore the potential of military and technological cooperation.”

So, the EU economic alliance was an aggressive package that hid in it NATO’s expansion right up to Russia’s border. The media won’t tell you that either.

What Crimea Wants

What made Russia’s annexation of Crimea so threatening to the US was not the annexation itself. In itself, Crimea is not so important to the US. What was so threatening was what the annexation meant in terms of Russia’s relationship to the US and in terms of its changing role in the world order.

Alexander Lukin, who is Head of Department of International Relations at National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow and an authority on Russian politics and international relations, explains that the reason the annexation of Crimea was crucial is that, prior to that, since the end of the Cold War, Russia had been considered a subordinate partner of the West. In all disagreements between Russia and the US up to then, Russia had compromised, and the disagreements were resolved rather quickly. “The crisis in Ukraine and Russia’s reaction to it have fundamentally changed this consensus,” Lukin says. “Russia refused to play by the rules.” Crimea marked the end of the unipolar world of American hegemony. Russia drew the line and asserted itself as a new pole in a multipolar world order. That is why the US is so threatened by Russia’s response to the events of 2014 and the US coup. It is the battle over which US hegemony will be fought.

The coup in Ukraine led to the Russian annexation of Crimea. But that was not an act of aggression. It was a defensive reaction to Western encroachment deep into its sphere of influence and right up to its borders. It was a defensive reaction to the oppression of Russian-speaking people on its borders. NATO expansion had knocked on Russia’s doors. In 2014, “it came to ‘brotherly’ Ukraine,” as Lukin puts it, “a region for which Russia has special feelings and most of whose residents consider themselves Russian.” That was Russia’s red line, and it annexed Crimea. But not as an act of aggression. Rather the annexation was “in response to the aspirations of a majority of its residents.”

Sakwa says that “It is clear that the majority of the Crimean population favored unification with Russia.” A majority voted for unification with Russia when the question was put to a referendum. The accuracy of the exact result has been the subject of debate, but Sakwa says that “even in perfect conditions a majority in Crimea would have voted for union with Russia.”

So, far from being an act of Russian aggression in seizing Crimea, what the media will not tell you is that Russia was responding to Western aggression and answering the call of the majority of the people of Crimea.

What the Donbas and Russia Want

While the US and the Western media exaggerate the threat of an unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine – an invasion Noam Chomsky has recently said that “most serious analysts doubt” – what they won’t tell you is that Russia wants very badly not to invade Ukraine. That’s why they haven’t for the past seven years. Anatol Lieven, who is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, points out that “Russia has not annexed Donetsk and Luhansk (the two Ukrainian provinces that make up the Donbas) or recognized their independence.” He says that “annexation is not Russia’s preferred option for the future of the [Donbas] region,” and adds the important reminder that “Moscow could have annexed the Donbas (as it did Crimea) at any time during the past seven years but has refrained from doing so.”

When the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine tried to follow Crimea’s path back to Russia, Putin tried to prevent their referendums, even while he accepted Crimea’s. Sakwa reports in Frontline Ukraine that “Putin showed little sign of wanting a Crimea-style takeover of the region, repeatedly rejecting requests to accept the territory as part of Russia.” When Donbas did hold elections, though Putin “respected” the results, he declined to accept them or be bound by them.

In addition to Russia’s actions being defensive and not expansionist, there are a number of reasons Putin would be hesitant to invade Ukraine. One is the US promise that it “will respond decisively.” Another is the difficulty in winning, controlling and holding the Donbas region. But another is that it is strategically more beneficial for Russia not to annex the Donbas. Anatol Lieven told me in a personal correspondence that “it makes much more sense for Russia to leave the Donbas as part of Ukraine and use it as a lever first to block NATO expansion and secondly (if it can be made an autonomous part of Ukraine) to influence Ukrainian politics from within.” As long as the Donbas is part of Ukraine, it can vote against NATO membership; if Russia annexes it, it loses that vote.

So, contrary to the media message, Russia doesn’t even want to annex the Donbas. And what do the people of the Donbas want?

The US maintains that it is helpless to promise that Ukraine won’t join NATO because it is up to the people of the Ukraine to make that decision. That is ironic because it is not clear that the people of Ukraine want to join NATO, and it is certainly unclear that the people of the Donbas do.

Contrary to the portrayal in the media of a people desperate to escape Russian and to run into the arms of NATO, Volodymyr Ishchenko, research associate at the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, reports that “Ukrainians are far from unified in support of NATO membership.” Ishchenko says that the majority of Ukrainians do not favor NATO membership. He reports that support stands at about 40% but that even that minority number is misleadingly bloated. The number has swelled to 40% by no longer including Ukrainians from the pro-Russian regions of Crimea and Donbas in the surveys. He adds that even where support for an alliance with Russia has dropped, it has not migrated to the NATO camp but to the neutral camp.

So the real picture is one the media won’t tell you: Russia doesn’t want the Donbas and the Donbas, and possibly even Ukraine, don’t want NATO.

Hypocrisy

Russians also feel the sting of hypocrisy when it comes to Ukraine and Crimea. They point to Kosovo and Cuba.

In 2008, the US supported the secession of Kosovo over Russia’s objections, but they call Crimea’s secession a gross violation of international law by Russia. “As a result,” Lukin says, “Russia sees the West’s position on Crimea . . . as nothing more than a case of extreme hypocrisy.”

Sakwa points out in Frontline Ukraine that Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia without even having a referendum. Yet “many Western countries, with the US in the lead, had recognized Kosovo’s independence despite repeated UN resolutions upholding the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia.” Sakwa also points out that the US endorsed “the infamous advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice . . . that Kosovo’s declaration of independence ‘did not violate general international law’.” Why is what’s fair for Kosovo not fair for Ukraine?

And what about NATO troops and weapons pushing right up to Russia’s borders? How would the US respond if Russia placed troops and weapons on America’s border? The Munro doctrine tells us clearly how the US would interpret Russian encroachment into the American sphere. And the Cuban missile crisis tells us clearly how the US would react to Russian troops and weapons on America’s border.

The annexation of Crimea was not a Russian act of expansionist aggression or intervention. It was the defense of a red line against US expansionism that broke a foundational US and NATO promise and against an interventionist US supported coup. Russia has been unwilling to annex the Donbas and responsive to the will of the majority in annexing Crimea. The US is threatened by Russia’s activity because Russia has drawn the line and is no longer playing a submissive and cooperative role in the US led world order. The Eastern Ukraine-Russian border is the line over which the battle of US hegemony is being fought. But the Western media won’t tell you that.

Kazakhstan mobilizes military, kills dozens in attempt to suppress mass protests

Jason Melanovski & Clara Weiss

The Central Asian country of Kazakhstan has been hit by a wave of mass protests over hikes in the price of liquified petroleum gas (LPG), presenting a major challenge to the continued rule of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

Demonstrators stand in front of police line during a protest in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022. Demonstrators denouncing the doubling of prices for liquefied gas have clashed with police in Kazakhstan's largest city and held protests in about a dozen other cities in the country. (AP Photo/Vladimir Tretyakov)

On Thursday, the Kazakh government mobilized the military against protesters. In an “anti-terrorist operation” to “cleanse the streets” of Almaty, the country’s largest city, dozens of people were reportedly killed, hundreds injured and over 2,000 arrested. Channels on the social media app Telegram indicate that the state’s action has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of demonstrators in recent days and the hospitalization in critical condition of dozens more.

Earlier attempts by the president to stem the protests, which began on January 2, by announcing the resignation of his cabinet and the possible dissolution of parliament failed. Starting on Tuesday, a state of emergency, including a ban on all strikes, was imposed across the country.

The government has also shut down the internet and various telecommunications services and social media, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram and the Chinese app WeChat. The Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, has begun sending troops to the country to help quell the protests. Most countries have cancelled air travel to Kazakhstan, as airports remain shut.

The protests erupted on January 2 in the industrial town of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan when the government refused to continue providing subsidies to contain the price of LPG, which is used by many Kazakhs as car fuel rather than gasoline. According to the government, the elimination of subsidized prices was intended to attract foreign investment and increase the profits of local gas producers who claimed to be operating at a loss. As a result, the price quickly doubled from US$.14 per liter to $.28 per liter. From Zhanaozen, protests spread quickly to other areas, soon engulfing virtually the entire country.

Speaking to Radio Azattyq, a protester in Zhanaozen gave vent to the social anger felt by masses of people over three decades of social decline and misery. “The authorities say there is not enough gas, that a plant built 50 years ago is decrepit and outdated. So, what have they been doing for the last 30 years?” he asked. “Sleeping?”

Almost a decade ago, Zhanaozen was the site of a police massacre of 16 striking oil workers. It is one of many industrial monotowns, created around a single industry, that emerged as a product of Soviet industrialization in the 1930s and 1940s. Many such cities throughout the former Soviet Union, most notably in Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine, are still population centers of the industrial working class.

Attempts by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to deflect responsibility for the crisis by blaming gas stations for price-fixing and making promises to “introduce a set of measures in order to regulate the price of gas” have failed to stem the social unrest. The government’s statement that it had instructed gas station owners to reduce the price of LPG to 21 cents per liter has also not contained the situation.

Protest have drawn in both the Russian- and Kazakh-speaking populations. Many demonstrators have raised demands for the government to resign and for the creation of a new system for the election of regional governments. One of the most popular slogans reportedly has been, “Old man go away” (“starikh ikhodi”), a reference to the 81-year-old Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose family has dominated Kazakh politics for the past three decades.

Nazarbayev, a former Stalinist bureaucrat who oversaw the restoration of capitalism in Kazakhstan and served as the country’s president from 1991 to 2019, epitomizes the post-Soviet oligarchy that has enriched itself on the sale of oil, metals and other natural resources for 30 years. While the average Kazakh salary is just $570 a month and many earn the minimum wage of just $97 a month, Nazarbayev reportedly has a net worth of $1 billion and owns more than $107 million of luxury properties in London.

After his resignation as president in 2019, Nazarbayev continued to retain significant influence as head of the country’s Security Council. It was only in December 2021 that he handed over the reins of the ruling party to Tokayev. On Wednesday, Tokayev removed Nazarbaev and his nephew from the State Security Committee in another failed attempt to quell the protests.

While demonstrations in Zhanaozen and most of the country have remained peaceful, protesters in Almaty have increasingly clashed with authorities. The Kazakh government claims that police and national guard troops have been killed. On one day, some protesters seized control of Almaty’s airport and its main government buildings, smashing bank windows and overturning police cars in the process. The presidential palace was also set on fire. Video on social media shows protesters distributing rifles. The exact circumstances and forces involved in the events in Almaty remain unclear.

Tokayev blamed foreign trained “terrorist” gangs for the street clashes and claimed that five aircraft had been stolen from Almaty’s airport. He called the events “an undermining of the integrity of the state.” Some reports indicate that the government is no longer certain of the loyalty of its armed forces.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday endorsed the measures taken by the Kazakh government to quell the protests, called for the fastest possible “normalisation” of the situation and warned against any “outside” intervention.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who brutally cracked down on protests and a strike movement in his country in 2020, called upon Kazakh demonstrators “to get on your knees and apologize before the military.”

The oligarchies that have emerged out of the restoration of capitalism 30 years ago are united by their fear that events in Kazakhstan are the harbinger and potential starting point of a much broader movement by the working class across the entire region. Western media reports also have stressed the threat of “instability’ in Kazakhstan.

In the absence of an independent socialist political leadership, the danger facing the working masses of Kazakhstan is that the protests will be both brutally suppressed by the government and exploited by reactionary political forces. Russian media reports already indicate that the country’s main political opposition party, the right-wing “Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan,” has begun to play a role in the demonstrations.

Kazakhstan is of major economic and geostrategic significance, bordering both on China’s Western Xinjiang region and Russia. It has vast resources of oil, gas, uranium and wheat, and is a hub for various gas and oil pipelines in Central Asia.

While the Kazakh government has historically aligned itself with the other oligarchies of the former Soviet Union, including Russia, it has also opened its doors to the US. The New York Times reports that Exxon Mobil and Chevron have invested tens of billions of dollars in the western part of the country. Chevron is the more heavily invested of the two oil giants, holding a 50 percent stake in the country’s largest oilfield, Tengiz. Kazakhstan has also recently forged closer ties with Turkey, another NATO member.

Over the past decade, Kazakhstan has developed close economic relations with China, which have become the focal point of tensions within the country’s ruling elites.

Mounting crisis in Australian hospitals drives workers to quit

Martin Scott

As COVID-19 infection numbers and positivity rates rapidly climb across Australia, more and more health workers are warning of the mounting catastrophe in the hospital system.

Westmead Hospital nurses protest on December 1 over staffing levels and COVID-19 safety (Source: Australian Nursing and Midwifery Journal)

Amy Halvorsen, a registered nurse (RN) from Westmead Hospital in Western Sydney, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation she had resigned because she could not continue working under “chaotic and dangerous” conditions.

“I am just so sick of the COVID narrative and constantly feeling the pressure of the government’s failures,” Halvorsen said.

The nurse explained that staff shortages exacerbated by the large number of health workers currently infected with COVID-19 or in isolation, had left her ward with only one third of its usual workforce.

She said: “It’s scary. We don’t have the support to care for our patients the way they need to be cared for.”

Health workers and patients had also been put in danger, Halvorsen said, because, in a desperate bid to plug the staffing gap, nurses who had been exposed to the virus and were possibly infectious have been ordered back to work by NSW Health. “They’re told to get tested, keep their mask on and only go home if they test positive.”

She continued: “I believe this is becoming a health crisis and the public needs to know how dire the situation is inside the hospitals right now.

As of Wednesday, more than 3,800 health workers in New South Wales (NSW) were in isolation.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, 260 workers at Liverpool Hospital alone have contracted the virus, while a further 105 are in isolation. As a result, the Herald reported, surgeons were this morning emailed an urgent appeal to fill in and provide basic patient care on wards.

Despite the already dire conditions, the southwest Sydney hospital has reportedly been told to expect 600 COVID patients within weeks, up from around 200 at present. Concord Hospital, in inner-west Sydney, is also preparing to treble its COVID capacity.

Halvorsen described the immense pressures on health workers to continue working and remain silent. With staff “too scared” that speaking publicly would get them sacked, and reluctant to strike because “if we walk out people will die,” the RN came to the conclusion “the only way I can protest is to leave.”

At Tweed Hospital in northern NSW, 18 staff—more than 10 percent—have resigned since December. Nurses at the hospital have reported working “double shifts every day,” while doctors have been forced to use their own cars to drive asymptomatic COVID-positive patients home because no alternative transport is available.

Infections are also growing in the highly vulnerable aged care sector. NSW Health authorities have reported around 400 new COVID-19 cases in the sector over the past four days.

At the Lilian Wells aged care facility in western Sydney, 56 residents and 19 workers have contracted COVID-19. Two double-vaccinated residents have died and a further 15 have been transferred to hospital.

In addition to the risk to residents and workers of severe illness and death, isolation measures have also affected care in other ways. The Australian yesterday reported a 72-year-old woman in a southwest Sydney facility had not been able to shower in almost a week due to staff shortages.

Across the country, there are currently more than 1,800 COVID-19 cases in aged care.

NSW Health yesterday told the state’s hospitals to expect more than 4,500 admissions for the virus within the next month. A senior NSW doctor warned this trebling may occur even sooner, telling the Guardian, “in two weeks we’ll be having 400 admissions a day,” up from around 120 at present.

The doctor warned this would severely limit the capacity of hospitals to treat non-COVID patients: “Almost the entire staffing structure will be diverted to Covid with very little left for people, you know, having heart attacks and strokes [or] gastrointestinal bleeds, or whatever else it is that people are normally in hospital with.”

Currently 1,738 patients are being treated for COVID-19 in NSW hospitals, up from 834 a week ago. The number in intensive care units (ICUs) has also doubled in the past seven days to 134, while 33 are on ventilators.

At least 13,000 additional NSW COVID-19 patients are being “cared for outside the hospital setting,” while more than 186,000 others are “self-managing” their disease at home, as hospitals and health authorities urge people not to present for treatment unless absolutely necessary.

Ambulance services and emergency departments in NSW and around the country are so overwhelmed that even people who are struggling to breathe are waiting hours for transport and admission to hospital.

Another senior Sydney doctor told the Guardian: “This is a real crisis. There’s going to be triage medicine,” meaning doctors will be forced to delay treatment, even for serious conditions, including “not-super-urgent cancer.”

The rapid surge of COVID-19 in Victoria, where new infections over the past seven days are 323 percent higher than the previous week, prompted the cancellation of elective surgery starting yesterday.

The number of patients hospitalised for COVID-19 in the state has grown from 428 on New Year’s Eve to 644 today, while the number in ICU has almost doubled from 54 to 106.

A pause on elective surgery was also announced in NSW today.

More than 78,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Australia today. The national positive test rate of 34.41 percent indicates that this is a mere fraction of the real total.

Around the country, 20 deaths from the virus were reported today, the highest daily figure since late October.

Yesterday, NSW reported the death of James Kondilios, a 23-year-old former weight lifter who had received two vaccination doses and had no underlying conditions.

The death of this healthy young man exposes the lies promoted by governments, health officials and the corporate media that young people are not at risk from COVID-19 and that vaccination alone can end the pandemic.

Both Victoria and NSW have in recent days made minor changes to public health settings.

In NSW singing and dancing will be prohibited in hospitality venues, entertainment facilities and major recreation facilities from tomorrow, but this will not apply to weddings. In Victoria, the capacity of indoor hospitality and entertainment venues will be limited to one person per 2 square metres.

The changes will have minimal impact on these industries, with many businesses already forced to close because of staff shortages and low patronage as a result of concern over the pandemic.

While these puny measures will do nothing to stem the raging pandemic, they sharply expose the anti-scientific character of the recent limiting of the definition of “close contacts” to only include exposure in a household.

Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said yesterday the density limit had been reintroduced because the surge in cases was “overwhelmingly” among young people working in hospitality.

The deepening crisis is the product of the criminal “let it rip” policies of Australian state, territory and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike. In line with the profit-driven demands of big business, these governments have refused to implement even the most basic public health measures, known and understood for centuries, to prevent mass illness and death.

The rampant infection caused by the murderous actions of the ruling class has crippled the already desperately underfunded public health system, which has been starved of resources through a decades-long bipartisan attack on wages and funding, enforced by the unions.

Omicron is not “mild”

Andre Damon

As the Biden administration abandons any pretense to stopping the spread of COVID-19, the White House and the corporate media have adopted a new slogan to justify the mass infection of the population: The Omicron variant that is overwhelming hospitals and killing hundreds of Americans daily is “mild.”

An elderly patient lies on the floor of the emergency department of UK's Royal Bournemouth Hospital in November, before the Omicron surge. (Credit: WSWS Media)

“A case of COVID-19 for a fully vaccinated and boosted person will most likely mean no symptoms or mild ones similar to the common respiratory viruses,” US President Joe Biden said on December 21, effectively equating the pandemic that has killed 855,000 Americans with the common cold.

Omicron will result in “legions of asymptomatic, mild and untested cases,” writes financial executive Rob Arnott in a column in the Wall Street Journal, prompting him to ask, without irony, “Should I try to catch the Omicron variant of Covid to advance the cause of herd immunity?”

“Omicron Is Milder,” declares David Leonhardt in a New York Times column published Wednesday, which uses the term “mild” eight times.

“Because it is milder than earlier versions of the virus, Covid now appears to present less threat to most vaccinated elderly people than the annual flu does,” Leonhardt says, adding “Covid increasingly resembles the kind of health risk that people accept every day.”

All of this, however, is, according to Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead of COVID-19 response at the World Health Organization, “dangerous” misinformation.

“To suggest that Omicron is ‘just a mild’ disease is dangerous,” Van Kerkhove said. “Case # are astounding…even with lower risk, we will see hospitals overwhelmed.

“Omicron is not mild. Omicron is not the common cold. And that rhetoric that is out there, the narrative that is out there, is dangerous and it is deadly.

“Omicron and Delta are infecting individuals, they’re putting people in hospitals, and if you have huge numbers of cases, you will have increased hospitalization.

“This virus, Omicron, will reach vulnerable populations, it will reach older populations, and will see increasing deaths among those individuals. So to suggest that Omicron is just a mild infection, is just really dangerous.”

“New year, new delusion. ‘It’s mild.’ It’s turtles all the way down,” sighed virologist Kristian G. Anderson, comparing the endless stream of misinformation about COVID-19 to an infinite regression.

As developmental biologist Malgorzata Gasperowicz pointed out over a month ago, “A virus that spreads more rapidly, even if milder, could cause much more deaths.” But Omicron is “not mild” because “Transmission. Is. The most important.” And Omicron is massively transmissible.

Her warnings have been proven catastrophically correct by the spread of the disease:

• On Thursday, there were 126,000 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the United States. By the end of the day today, the number of people hospitalized will exceed the highest level ever. Overwhelmed hospitals are cancelling elective procedures and prematurely discharging ill patients, while those coming to emergency rooms are forced to wait for hours.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects that, over the next month, the death toll will shoot up rapidly, reaching 3,500 per day toward the end of January—close to the highest since the pandemic began.
• Child COVID-19 hospitalizations have soared, with 672 children being hospitalized each day in the United States, more than double the week before.
• There is no indication that Omicron involves a reduction in the incidence of Long COVID, potentially meaning millions of people will be debilitated for months, years, or their entire lives.

The reality is that use of the term “mild” to describe COVID-19 does not come from the lexicon of scientists studying the disease, but from the advertising business.

The US Food and Drug Administration has long warned that “Tobacco products that are labeled or advertised with the” term “mild...mislead the public into thinking that these products cause fewer health problems than other cigarettes. However, they still pose a heavy health risk.”

The technique used by big tobacco companies to sell death in the form of cigarettes has now been co-opted by the media and federal government to sell death in the form of mass illness.

There are certain tropes used by the American media to make the inhuman and immoral seem familiar and ordinary. “Enhanced” interrogation. “Targeted” killing. “Moderate” Al-Qaeda-linked militias sponsored by the US in Syria.

So, too, the enormous power of the American media has been used to make the population accept death on a massive scale. One article by Ezekiel Emanuel, whose previous claim to fame was his statement that “society” would be “better off” if people did not live past 75, states that the government should no longer even bother counting COVID-19 deaths.

But for all the endless spin, for all the endless lies and cover-ups, the pandemic is real. Close to a million people are dead in the US alone. And hundreds of thousands more will die unless urgent action is taken.

Carbon Justice and Global Survival

Thomas Klikauer & Meg Young

Unlike rather known concept of “climate” justice, the idea of “carbon” justice is so advanced that it does not even have a Wikipedia entry, yet. One of the countries that might serve as a near perfect example for carbon justice is Australia. With its massive coal export, Australia is one of, or perhaps, “the” worst country polluting our world. Its coal export contributes substantially to global warming. Unmatched by others, Australia is poisoning our environment, not so much at home, but abroad.

If one would combine emissions from Australia’s exports with its local emissions, Australia contributes a colossal 3% to 4% to the world’s entire emissions. With a population less than the city of Shanghai (26.4 million), Australia (25.69 million) remains the world’s 6^th largest emitter behind super-polluters like the USA, China, India, Russia and Japan.

Globally, 76% of all emission are from fossil fuels to which corporations operating in Australia make a sizable contribution. Some of these corporations are what the philosopher Jeremy Moss calls carbon majors: BHP, Glencore, Yancoal, Peadbody, AngloAmerican, Chevron, Whitehaven, Woodside, ExxonMobil, and Santos. Combining their emissions results in them being the world’s 8^th biggest contributors to global warming.

This alone challenges the idea of an Anthropocene in favor of Capitalocene, as a handful of capitalism’s major corporations alone have the power to change our climate. Beyond that, around 63% of all global emissions over capitalism’s main period –1854 to 2010 – are traceable to the activities of just 90 global corporations. Capitalism has been creating global warming since many decades.

Yet, inside Australia, these carbon-intense corporations lobby Australia’s (mostly) neoliberal government. In this, they are kindly assisted by Australia’s corporate media (e.g. Murdochracy) winning election after election. In terms of propaganda, the triangle of ecocide – (1) mining corporations and corporate lobbying, (2) corporate media, and (3) Australia’s Liberal Party – largely define Australia’s debate on global warming.

They engineer PR slogans like, “we export coal we do not burn it, it is not our problem.” Hidden behind tabloid-slogans remains a dark fact. Just as tobacco corporations selling cigarettes to children, it is not their problem when children die of cancer.

Of course, Australia’s neoliberal Prime Minister (an ex-marketing manager) – commonly known as Scomo – likes to carry coal into parliament to show how harmless coals are. He also likes to fly to Glasgow’s blah-blah-blah Greenwash festival where he spoke to an empty room.

Unlike many Australians, the world has realized that Scott Morrison’s climate change policies are pure propaganda designed for his audience back home, which remains shielded from much of international news through Murdoch’s near-monopoly media apparatus owning 70% of print media, and up to 100% in Queensland. Only North Korea has a higher monopoly. Thankfully, Australia is called a democracy while North Korea is called a dictatorship.

Meanwhile, the tripod of corporate media, neoliberal politicians, and carbon majors (multi-national corporations) assures that most Australians are kept ignorant to ideas such as carbon justice. Key principles of carbon justice are concepts such as historical responsibility, polluter pays, inherited debt, and Utilitarianism’s no harm principle. Virtually all of these rely on a connection between contributing to a global harm (e.g. global warming), and being liable for the consequences these corporations and countries (guided by neoliberal governments) have caused. Someone will have to pay for all this, eventually.

Key to carbon justice is an acute awareness that climate change is a truly global problem. As a consequence, solutions also need to be global. This means that major emitter like mining corporations and countries that enable these corporations to pollute, can no longer claim, we just export coal – not our problem.

Worse, the disproportionally large contributions of these corporations to global warming assure that a global response can no longer be to simply focus on delivering benefits to mining corporations and a handful of countries that allow their business to flourish to the detriment of humanity.

One of the most serious problems in all that is the allocation of benefits (corporate profits) and burdens (the public and the environment) during an impending transition away from fossil fuels. In many countries, this has started several years ago. This transition might result in the potential bankruptcy of mining companies. It also creates what is known as stranded assets – oilfields and coal mines becoming worthless. Beyond all that, there is likely to be a loss in royalty revenues.

All this indicates that corporations might quickly vanish or that neoliberal governments will shield them from liability under the ideology of de-regulation, i.e. pro-business regulation. In short, the public might be left with un-rehabilitated mines, vast geographical areas that look worse than the dark side of the moon, and with potentially debilitating impacts on entire regions and local communities.

Set against this is the idea of fault-based justice which means that companies and corporations that are at fault are liable to repair the harm they have done. But before that, there needs to be an awareness on what coal corporations and other polluters do is harmful.

The business of coal corporations has to be a contribution – or at least a very likely contribution – to environmental harm. Creating greenhouse gas emissions obviously contributes to global warming. It does so independently of, where the coal is burned or dug up. And, so is the supply of coal extracting equipment, materials, tools, finances, etc. making dangerous emissions possible.

In a wider understanding, this will – or better “will have to” – include corporate lobbying as well as the neoliberal policy outcomes enabling mining corporations to be harmful to nature and its final consequence: threatening the very existence of humanity. Carbon justice sees to prevent this from happening.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC which has 197 countries as signatories, calls this a Scope 3 Justice in its Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard. All this sounds very technical and complicated. Yet, it boils down to the fact that:

Scope 1+2: emissions are polluting discharges produced within a country’s borders from things such as, for example, mining, transport, power generation, agriculture, etc.

Scope 3: are emissions produced outside a country’s borders. These emissions result, for example, from products that are exported, such as, for example, coal.

In short, the concept of carbon justice not only includes harmful emissions made “inside” a country but also those created “outside” of a country when polluting products of a country – used elsewhere – are still harmful to the environment.

In other words, a cigarette produced by a tobacco corporation in country “A” and sold to children in country “B” is still harmful and causes cancer. A tobacco corporation in country “A” remains liable for the cancer it causes in children in country “B”. The neoliberal excuse that “cancer-causing tobacco is just an externality” does not bite, not legally, and not morally. It never has and never will be.

Here is how it works in the case of global warming: when a mining corporation digs up coal and sells it, these are scope 1+2 emissions (domestic). It is produced by extracting coal (e.g. dynamiting, running mine trucks, machinery, miles of conveyor-belts, etc.). Its scope 2 emissions come from products and goods (electricity to power the site), but also services (banking, corporate finance, insurance, etc.) that enable harmful mining operations. These are all responsible for the environmental harm they have created.

Scope 3 emissions are not only the responsibility of those countries and companies that use coal. They are also the responsibility of those producing coal. In short, burning coal elsewhere does not diminish the responsibility of those corporations that have contributed to carbon emission by producing coal in the first place. This is carbon justice.

To make sure that people do not become aware of the global environmental vandalism, the aforementioned tripod – 1. Neoliberal governments, 2. Corporate media, and 3. Corporations and their corporate lobbying – work very hard.

One of the top corporate lobbyists in all this is the Koch family who, incidentally, have very significant fossil fuel interests. The Koch brothers have spent over $127 million during 1997–2017 in lobbying for their cause: unhindered capitalism, neoliberal deregulation, and profit-making.

The Koch Machine support groups such as the non-scientific but highly neoliberal-free-market Ayn Rand Institute which is devoted to attacking climate science. The $127 million over ten years is a whopping $12.7 million per year – every year. It comes from just the one family – the Kochs!

By contrast, the entire budget of the United Nations’ The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC for 2018 was a meagre 7.7 million. In other words, just one family spends 1.7-times more money on destroying science than the IPCC can muster. No wonder we face the Uninhabitable Earth.

Back in the world’s largest coal-producing country, its very own corporate lobbying group – the Minerals Council of Australia – had spent A$22 million to defeat the Rudd government because it had dared to introduce a modest mining tax on corporate super-profits – the Minerals Resource Rent Tax.

It paid off handsomely. The incoming neoliberal government abolished the tax. This system is called democracy. Some call it, Media Capitalism. Noam Chomsky called it, The Spectacular Success of Propaganda.

Of course, much of the anti-global warming propaganda is dedicated to disconnect global warming from, for example, bushfires even though global warming has led to an 800% increase in bushfires. There is a more or less direct link between:

+ mining corporations and their corporate lobbying; and

+ supportive corporate media broadcasting anti-environmental propaganda; and

+ winning elections and the resulting neoliberal government that support mining corporations.

This triangle (1-2-3) of environmental annihilation assures that in Australia’s 2019/2020 bushfires, 1.5 billion animals were killed and 5,900 homes were destroyed. The estimated cost of all that was A$100 million. Yet, neoliberal governments work hard to eliminate the “coal / global warming” link. The calculation of mining corporations and neoliberal governments is that this would assure that the contribution model of carbon justice is delayed as long as possible. For obvious reasons, neoliberalism-loved “user pay” model is not applied here. Those who use coal to make profits are excused.

To fight such neoliberal hallucinations, the carbon justice model says that if companies and corporations contribute to harm climate change by knowingly impacting in a manner that could be avoided, then these corporations are liable for the harm and damages they have caused. To avoid any awareness of this, there is a relentless attack of neoliberal governments on climate science, scientists, and scientific institutions.

One of Australia’s prime apostle of neoliberalism is ex-PM Malcolm Turnbull who said in 2015,  “if Australia stopped exporting coal, the country to which we export would buy it from somewhere else.” A masterpiece of propaganda. It is a bit like saying, I will rob a bank because if I do not do it, someone else will.

Beyond that, carbon justice places mining corporations that have dug up coal in Australia and Australia’s government at the centre because that coal was mined in Australia, and not somewhere else. Cranking up the Liberal Party’s pro-coal propaganda, Turnbull’s very own predecessor – Tony Abbott – once said, coal is good for humanity.

Why do these neoliberal politicians say all that? Well, coal corporations have deep pockets. They finance elections. After all, in 2018–19, the value of exported coal and gas was A$120bn – very serious money.

Yet, the propaganda of saving jobs in the mining industry remains a mirage. The Australian Bureau of Statistics notes for 2020 that the coal industry employs about 39,000 people – a microscopic number given Australia’s 12.5 million workers. In other words, just 1-in-321 workers is employed by the coal industry – the other 320 workers are not employed by the coal industry.

Worse, mining corporations pay next to no taxes. Interestingly, in the financial year 2016 to 2017, the ExxonMobil Corporation paid no tax on its revenue of AU$8.3 billion. The Woodside Corporation also paid no tax on its A$6.5 billion in revenue.

Instead of paying taxes – like workers – mining corporations as a whole receive substantial subsidies from Australia’s neoliberal government – unlike workers. Since there are no exact numbers (for a good reason!), most estimates of tax subsidies range between $12 billion to $29 billion per year for Australia’s fossil fuel sector.

Yet, mining corporations do pay royalties on the coal, oil, and gas they extract. Royalties are not taxes. Royalties are monies paid to state governments for publicly- (or more correctly: Aboriginal) owned resources, such as coal. In one of Australia’s key resource states –Queensland– this state’s government receives a meagre 7% of the state’s budget from coal royalties – inconsequential. Among those who pay peanuts in taxes is coal giant BHP.

In terms of carbon justice, this means the following: if BHP were a country, its global warming enhancing mining emissions from its products (coal, gas, etc.) is larger than the combined domestic emissions of 25 million Australians. Yet, BHP is only “one” corporation making huge profits, paying no taxes, receiving taxpayers’ subsidies, employing next to no people, and working tirelessly to accelerate global warming.

So, what does all this mean? A 2020 report by an evil-anarchist organisation called Deloitte notes that, if unchecked, global warming could result in shrinking Australia’s GDP by A$3.4 trillion – trillion, not billion, and not million! – by 2070, with 880,000 jobs lost.

880,000 jobs is 22 times as many as currently employed in Australia’s coal industry. In other words, job losses because of global warming will outstrip coal jobs by a whopping 22-times. And this comes on top of environmental devastation in Australia and globally.

Another report commissioned by Australia’s very own oil industry lobbying body – the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association – found that the costs of decommissioning Australia’s 65 offshore oil platforms could reach $60 billion over the next thirty years. This figure does not include onshore gas, Australia’s huge coal mines and export terminals.

$60bn is a huge sum. In numbers, it looks like this: 60,000,000,000. The average house price in Australia is: $994,579. In other words, for the money decommissioning offshore oil rigs, 60,327 people could buy a house in Australia – a huge sum.

To finish up with big numbers, Australia’s fossil fuel industry employs just 0.19% of all workers but rakes in a whopping $350 billion (in 2016/17). No wonder, Australia’s prime corporate lobbyist – The Minerals Council – notes that Australia’s stable political (read: we can win elections) and legal systems (read: resulting in favourable laws), our proximity to markets and the cost of Australia’s fossil fuel resources (read: we pay peanuts in royalties and taxes) are all significant factors driving demand (read: we make money while hopefully off-loading the environmental damage onto the taxpayer).

In Carbon Justice, the philosopher Jeremy Moss suggests, “it is time to face the scandal of Australia’s true contribution to climate change.” In reality, the triangle of environmental death – (1) corporations and corporate lobbying, (2) supportive corporate media propagating supportive propaganda, and (3) frequently elected neoliberal governments – will assure that this is not going to happen.

Instead of merely facing a scandal, we face a stark choice of “socialism or barbarity” as Rosa Luxemburg once said. Between the 100 years of her murder and today, barbarity has mutated into the annihilation of planet earth – our common home. During the same 100 years, socialism has become what Hans A. Baer recently called democratic eco-socialism – pretty much the only chance we have if we want to survive.